Colloquium... (Based on a true story)
Mar. 27th, 2020 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zarathrustra_inkBut who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
A woman, whose origins were unknown, gazed kindly from the picture frame. Her long, graceful fingers pressed either side of a bowl and yet, her attention was not on the contents. Her piercing, baby blues coaxed you to acknowledge the words above her head. It was a quote by Mark Twain. For several years, that sign watched me pass twice daily. Since it was right around the corner from the cafeteria, I used to think they hung it there to remind us not to judge the people we broke bread with. I never thought the day would come when my faith would be tested and I would come face to face with the apparition in the flesh. Every piece of literature I’d ever held in my hands had preached Satan was not just any fallen angel. He was the fallen angel. The one whose misdeeds brought forth the birth of sin itself. An angel who wanted too much only to be banished for his greed and in human form, he was a she.
Whispers passed from priest to priest did not sound like the description of a soul that needed saving. My robes bristled every time a new story found its way to my ears. I’m sorry to admit, the more I heard, the more I couldn't believe she had the nerve to ask for a priest. Yes, I am a man of God, but everyone has their limits and this happened to be mine. Whispers about tongues being carved out and tossed to the side like trash.
She had the choice of whether or not to see a priest and she wanted one. Everyone was entitled to final words before an execution but, why was she allowed to use her tongue? The irony. Unfortunately, it turned out to be me. How could they? Letting such a monster have the last word! Is what I wanted to argue, but there would be none of that. No one wanted to be the one to listen to her story, but someone had to.
I'd lost when we drew straws.
As I was walking down the hallway, for some reason, I began to feel hints of intrigue creeping through my disgust. I wanted to know what could turn a woman into a killer. Women were supposed to be nurturers. To know a woman was capable of such violence... The thought was unnerving to say the least.
I approached the warden. He was accompanied by a prison guard. Their backs were facing a large metal door, standing guard as if they were trying to keep a wild animal inside.
“I'm taking it that you're Father Tatum.” He stated authoritatively. “She's in there. Take all the time you need. Just knock on the door when you're done.” He cleared his throat.
The prison guard withdrew a ring of keys from his belt to unlock the door. I slipped inside, immediately wondering why it was so dark. Before I could ask though, the door slammed shut behind me. The next thing I heard was the click of the lock. Lord, they'd locked me in the dark with... With what? Who? Where was she? Frantically, I ran my fingers up one wall, then the other, in search of a light switch. When I couldn't locate one, I began to panic. Tiny beads of sweat were began to form on my skin. I have to admit: I was terrified.
“There's a cord hanging from the ceiling.” Came a voice from the darkness. “Above your head.”
My hand shaking, I reached up in search of the cord. The sight that met me when light filled the room startled me.
"Hello." She greeted me. "You must be Father Tatum. Do you know who I am?"
I nodded anxiously.
Her eyes were brown, empty yet attentive, inhabited with so much anger. She scruntinized my habit, eyes staying on the rosary beads. Her skin was practically covered in grime beneath dull, gray shackles. There was a deadly air about her that made her seem all the more beautiful. Nothing like the woman I'd heard whispers about. She didn’t appear as if she would hide from anything. You would always see her coming. Everything about her screamed that she had been on death row for quite awhile. Tomorrow was her last day though. She would never see the inside of this prison ever again... Or anything else for that matter.
“You're here because I requested a priest aren't you?”
Again, all I could offer was a nervous nod.
“Well, I requested one because they said one was allowed.”
"You cut out his tongue." I didn't even pause. I slapped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. I hadn't meant to blurt it out that way.
"A man with no tongue doesn't have time to weave lies." She said as if she was reading off a random item on a grocery list. "There were so many opportunities for it not to happen but he left me with no choice."
"He chose to have his tongue cut out?"
Despite the gaze pausing on my face, it didn't feel as if she was watching me at all. I might as well not have been there.
"I recognize your tone." The way she said it caused the hair on my arms to stand at attention. "He used to speak to me that way."
The chains on her wrists momentarily forgotten, I almost dove from my chair.
"I only killed him once." Were it not for us being the only two in the room, her voice would have gone unheard. "He spent years upon long, agonizing years chipping away at who I was. His death was quicker than mine." Her voice became an angry whisper. "Do you think I've spent everyday in fear; regretting what I've done? I'm not being put to death tomorrow. I'm already dead. The me who would be trembling right now has been dead for longer than I care to remember. If you've come here searching for a confession filled to the brim with shame and regret, you’re in the wrong place. These halls are for the forgotten. Just know that yes, I carved out his tongue... It was the last thing I did." Though her eyes never left my face, now her gaze carried a cold, angry reverie. "This is not the place for conscience or remorse."
"He was the father of your-"
She held up one chained wrist, slashing the end of my sentence. "He was whatever he wanted to be. He hid behind the veil I provided for him. I was a single parent in a two parent household. He did no real parenting. All the weight of child rearing fell to me. He was no father. He was a body. Don't cross that line again."
"Why ask for a priest if you aren't ready to be honest?"
A humorless smile crept across her lips. "Is it honest that this was spun into a racial debate? Is it honest that this was treated as if I, a black woman, took the life of a hard working, doting white man? Is it honest that every step I took was put on display and yet, he was cast as the good man? The recovering addict? They all but called him my savior." She leaned forward. "Were my skin as pale as a sheet of paper, would it have been treated differently?"
I remembered the headlines. Who could forget the picture of the police dragging her from their home with her legs dangling behind them? Nestled in the corner of the display, a moment I'll never forget: Four children in tears. Their little hands pressed against their faces in a silent scream so loud that I could hear it in my head: "MOMMY"
"No one looked at the facts. Not even my lawyer." She spat. "Court appointed counts for nothing when she's looking at you with distain. They all did." She sat back in the chair and sighed. "Still do."
"If things were so bad, why did you stay?"
She didn't bother to pause to think it over. "Stupidity. We are all in possession of toxic traits. We live our lives trying to ignore them, carry on as if they aren’t there, but no one is immune. My biggest and the most damaging was that I wanted to be the solution to everything for everyone. I convinced myself that no matter what, I had all the answers." Her eyes shifted back to the table. "I was too stupid and embarrassed to admit that in some cases, the only answer is to walk away."
"So what you're after is to be humanized?"
"Why would I need that?" She snapped. "Even behind bars, am I not still human... Or did they take that too and no one informed me?"
"You..."
"No." She shook her head. "You can take the world from a person, but only they have the power to leave their humanity behind. I don't need someone jogging through those doors to give me what I never lost."
"Then why did you do it? You don't seem like..." I gathered my thoughts to choose my words carefully. "You don't look like a murderer."
"And yet, here we are."
"Why? Why did you do it?"
"Now you're asking real questions. Everybody always starts their story with 'we were young when we blah, blah, blah,' but in our case, it was true. We were young when we started our family. In some ways, too young. He wasn't ready to be a father but he let outside influences gas him up to believe he was ready. The only person who was equipped for that kind of job was me and within three months of our son drawing his first breath, it was already starting to show. He didn't want the responsibility. He wanted the title, you see. It wasn't long before he was hooked on drugs and avoiding even that. He let his auntie convince him he wasn't the father; as if she had front row seats to all the sucking and fucking."
I flinched at the onslaught of vulgarity. Another humorless smile found its way to her lips. "I lost my virginity to him so obviously, I took it hard. I mean, how could someone allow someone to convince them that someone they claimed to love would trap them with a baby and not just any baby, a baby that they were hardly ever home with? How is it a trap when your ass was never home to fall in?" Her eyes flashed angrily into mine. "It wasn't long before we were evicted twice and living out of hotels. I chose to move on on my own. When he came back, all was forgiven but I wasn't completely honest. I should have told him that I had changed. Everything had changed in those two and a half years that we were apart. I would undergo many changes as time went on but this was the first major one and now that I think on it, the most important." She sighed and adjusted in the chair once more. "Things were fine until I found out about the drugs. He assured me that he'd left that life behind and I trusted him... I wanted to believe because of what I'd left behind to choose my family above myself."
"What did you leave behind?"
"The most important ingredient." She answered as if it were obvious. "Myself." She held up her shackled wrists. "Long before these found my arms, I was chained down in my own mind. There was no right. No wrong. After awhile, I used what was going on around me to venture out and experience life on my own terms."
"Terms?" I rolled the word around in my mind. “You mean-“
“Don’t you dare.” She hissed. “I know what you’re about to say and don’t you dare say that name. I’ve all but stripped those four letters from my vocabulary. I won’t have them here. Is that why you’re really here; hoping to be on the front lines of all the salacious details? I hate to spoil all the fun but this isn’t that kind of discussion nor will it ever be.”
“Why do you get the final say?”
“Have you seen any petitions? Who was all lives mattering over this mess? Where were my thoughts and prayers?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Exactly. Not a single soul wanted to hear my truth and now that I’m ready to talk, you want to waltz in here in your skirts and tell me what I have to say. No… Fuck that.” She narrowed her eyes. They faded from brown to a haunting black. “Fuck that.”
"I got tired of feeling like a man who was desperately trying to stay in the running to become America's Next Top Crackhead felt he had a right to cast a shadow over who I was. I allowed him back in my home, my life... And what was my thanks?" She shook the silver links.
"He didn't put you here. You did."
"It's amazing the kind of perspective you can provide from an outsider looking in standpoint isn't it?" She shrugged. "From that side of the room, it's easy to prattle off what you think or how you feel, but as a priest, aren't you saying that it is your right to judge a story that you know nothing about? Pfft. Some priest. You're just like everybody else... The only thing separating you from the rest of the world is that." She gestured at my rosary beads. "Without those, you're just a man in a dress sitting in a chair thinking he has all the answers."
"These are robes." Was my only response. I didn't want to give her the pleasure of knowing she had a point. Tucked safely in a chair with nothing more than a table between us, it was easy for me to wrap myself in my ideals. For the longest of seconds, she held my gaze, searching for something. Whatever it was, I could tell when she felt as if it had been found. Slowly, a real smile found its way to her lips.
"He had a way of chipping away at me. A way that was so silent, such a slow crawl… I didn't even realize was what happening so I didn't know to protect myself. An insecure soul that latches to a free spirit will do everything within its power to tether it to the ground so that it can't flutter away. An insecure presence will feed off the energy of those around it in order to sustain itself... Its sense of control, so to speak. They control you in such a way that you'll convince yourself that all the changes you've made were to protect their security when in reality, all it does is place you beneath the heaviest thumb known to man."
"But you-"
Her eyes flashed a look I couldn't quite place. "I remained silent on many things around me and how was I rewarded? Drinks laced with drugs.” She paused at my expression. “He did it for a week. Didn’t matter what he was handing me. A cup of soda. A cup of Kool-aide. None of it mattered. What mattered was he was sprinkling meth over each cup like it was a fucking garnish.” She made a sprinkling movement with her right hand. “I didn’t tell him for years how I figured it out. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know I knew until the day I said something because I had to have a drug test. He sat there with the blankest of looks. Like he couldn’t believe I knew. Each time something happened, I would remain silent. I wouldn’t tell a soul but, do you know what silence does to a person? Silence gives the impression that you’re okay with your surroundings. What you feel. What you’re going through. Silence is consent. You’re pretty much giving the go ahead each time you choose to remain silent. For years, I went through it all, drowning more and more every year in a sea of silence.
Cheating even though he never had to… When he met me I had both a girlfriend and a boyfriend. I’ve always dated in multiples and was fine with the same. He told me he couldn't be with someone who thought that way. I was so stupid. So fucking stupid. I muted that part of myself because I loved him so much… Only for him to turn around and cheat. He never had to but he did. I guess what he meant was he was completely into monogamy but for me… Not him." She shrugged. "He stole from me! Money constantly plucked from my wallet. Money snatched from my pants pockets. Money stolen to the point that I started hiding it just so I could stay afloat. I never told him that; about the money. For years he went thinking he'd outsmarted me when in reality I was putting money in places knowing it would be stolen. What he didn’t know was why the entire situation caused yet another change in me. The money situation had gotten out of control. I was drowning and nobody knew about it… Then came the rent money. He stole the entire envelope. He even helped me look for it as if there was a chance in hell that it was under the couch cushions and not in some dealer’s greedy palms. I couldn’t find anyone to lend it to me. Nobody wanted to help me but everyone had a front row seat to my downfall. The next day I was offered help. I should have said no. I should have walked away at the suggestion, but where else was I going to come up with the money on such a short notice? Who was going to help me? No one knew. I walked in that house myself and walked out several thousand richer but it changed me. It changed me to know why I allowed someone to stuff my pockets with money I should have never needed. Not only did I forgive, I moved forward… Again, in silence. The money I had left over after bills, I slipped all over the place, knowing it would be taken. My family, my responsibility. I wasn't a part of his family. He was a part of mine."
“Is that why-“
She stopped me again. "You will never be able to turn back time to before the moment you put a price tag on something so valuable... So priceless. Every move I made... Every choice... Was easy after that day. Any value I had was destroyed in that house. I know who you want to discuss and I know why. It’s easy to focus on those four letters because of what they stand for. I did so many things after that day. Made so many choices. Most of them… Bad. I was fueled by depression though,” She smirked. “That sounds like such a typical excuse, doesn’t it? Depression made me do it. Just know; it didn’t make me do it. I did those things. Understanding why we do things doesn’t excuse our actions and my reactions were never right. Cause and effect, so to speak. Because of this, I did that. My choices were always wrong but things just kept happening. It didn’t end. It felt like it never would. After awhile, I was so numb to the world around me that we were living two separate lives and every once in awhile, we would check in with one another. I felt nothing. I still don’t.”
"I've seen photos of you at family functions." I said, though a part of me was busy combing her expression and my memories for the look in her eyes. “You were a part of his family.”
She scoffed. "Pictures are just that. Pictures." Her brown eyes bore down into mine. "A flash in time. They don't show you all the times I went disrespected by his mother and he did nothing. He huddled behind her skirts like a frightened little lamb and allowed it to go on for years. They don't show him threatening to throw my son and I out into the streets because his friend felt comfortable calling me a nigger…" She paused at my left eyebrow rising faster than my mind could stop it. "Yes, that happened. He got angry at slurs thrown in my face but not at his friend… No, at me. Like I was nothing more than a slave on a plantation somewhere and because he was paying the bills, I had to accept being treated as such." She smirked humorlessly. "That's the thing though. He wasn't paying the bills. We got evicted twice. So many things happened…" She shook her head. "When I stood up as the head of the family, I forgave all of it. I even showed up to give him a place to lay his head after his own blood relatives didn't see fit to allow him a slot on the family couch. I protected him from being arrested. Not once but three times. I didn't even get mad at him when I found out that the reason he couldn't be at my bedside when I almost bled to death is because he was busy getting his knob slobbed by some piece of work. I forgave all of it so to have you feeling like you have the right to pass judgment on me with your fancy robes and your shiny beads… It's almost laughable. I remained silent to the point that my own family and many, many of my friends thought I was doing wrong by a good man. I even had who I thought was my best friend; tell me that he could do so much better than me…" She shrugged. "In hindsight, maybe she was right. If we'd parted ways, he would still be alive and I…"
"Your forgiveness was commendable but, why? Why did you stay? Why push forward when you knew how you felt?"
"At first, it was for love. After awhile, it became more about the responsibility. Like I already said, I was stupid… I was embarrassed." She leaned back in the chair, eyes pointed at the ceiling. "I wasn't ready to leave home when I left. Pictures don't tell you that either. They also don't tell you how I listened to my mother repeatedly remind me of the responsibility I had and after awhile, I took on this my happiness be damned mentality. Once that settled into my soul that was a wrap. I began to tell myself nobody cares if I was alive or dead as long as I kept my family intact. After awhile, I started to call home less and less because I didn't have the heart to open my mouth." Her eyes still on the ceiling, she shook her head. "Because of this, when I did try to speak, it came off like I was the problem. What made it worse was the road to accepting that I may not have been the entire problem but I was a part of it. To this very day, my family and possibly his as well, believes we never married because of me. That I had commitment issues. I never corrected this way of thinking. Who was I to tell the world that our wedding dreams went up in smoke the day I walked in on him in the bathroom practically putting vacuum cleaner companies to shame over some pills? My part was I participated in the illusion. I helped project this perfect image. I allowed myself to be villainized so that he could masquerade as the good guy, the man who was doing it all right. The recovering addict.
"And now you've made him a martyr."
It was shining brighter now that her eyes were back on my face. Before, there was a faint glimmer of it. Now it was undeniable. Tearing through her pained expression, smothering all else: Rage.
"I'm so tired of that shit!" The table trembled beneath her palms. She slapped the table once. Twice. "I didn't make him shit. Do you know how many times I had to listen to the ideals that I wasn't respecting how many years we’d shared knowing what I knew? How many times I had to listen to it was my fault, MINE, the reason he was the way he was the way he was?! When I fucked up, it was my fault. When he fucked up, it was still my fucking fault?! How hard it was to always choose to move forward not just suspecting but knowing that he was only apologizing to silence me further? He wasn't sorry and after awhile, neither was I. That's when we should have parted ways, but that's not what happened."
"So what really happened that night?"
"You know what else a picture will never be able to convey?"
When I didn't respond, she repeated the inquiry. I hadn't realized she was expecting a response. Honestly, I hadn't prepared myself for answers. Only questions of my own.
"Leave." One word. One syllable. Very final.
"W-What?" I stammered, taken aback.
"I spent years ignored, forgotten and disrespected. Do you honestly think I'm going to allow the same from you because you have Jesus on your side? Get the fuck out!"
She dove from the chair, fingers reaching for my throat. Halfway across the table, she remembered the chains, but it was too late. She landed face first against the wood.
To this second as I'm writing this, I cannot fathom why I didn't flee. With how petrified I was, I probably would have tripped over my robes before my hand could grab the doorknob, but even with fear tickling my senses, for the second time, I didn’t move. Petrified was actually an accurate description.
She tilted her head upward. From her lips, a chilling, empty laugh rang. "Pictures don't tell you that tomorrow they will put a needle in my arm. Tomorrow they will tell me that I'm so wrong for killing that man. No… That white man." She forced herself from the table, still laughing. "Ask yourself this: Were he a black man, would you know this story? Would you even be interested?" Now sobering, her laughter faded into the air between us. "Would you be in here judging me or would you be like everybody else… Shrugging your shoulders like it's another day in the hood? I want you to think about that."
"Y-You cut out…"
"Stop." She shook her head. "I'll never forget how I felt opening the bathroom door to him cradling his meth stash like a toddler being caught with a hand in the cookie jar. It was like I was frozen in time. I closed the door and went to sit down." For the first time, vulnerability weaved its way through her words: "I'd taken out a loan for this vacation and there he was: Packing meth amongst his tube socks and underwear." A single tear lined the curve of her cheek. It splashed to the wood when she closed her eyes. "He got in the tub as if everything hadn't changed. See, I blame myself for this. I should have thrown him into the streets years ago but I didn't and in that, I was accountable. I adapted. I accepted. I accommodated. I reduced myself to the role of enabler. Silence is consent, as I said." Tears were flowing uncontrollably now. She wiped away a few. "I grabbed a tennis racket from his suitcase. He didn't hear me re-enter the bathroom so there was no time to react. I swung. He tried to fight me off but I was too fast. Too angry. Too everything. I kept swinging until blood was dripping from the ceiling. The racket had snapped in half by then. I stabbed him over and over with the jagged ends until I was too tired to lift my arms anymore. One stab for every time I forgave. One stab for every time he promised me change. One stab for every time he chose the outside world over our family." She swiped a few more tears though they no longer mattered. "I fell to the floor thinking: What had I done? Why didn't I stop? I didn’t have to get close to know it was too late. There was no going back. On the floor, covered in splotches was an Altoids tin. For what felt like an eternity, I sat on that floor holding that tin. I thought about how meth was the reason our family lost its way in the first place. I thought about how he drugged me with that shit. I thought about how I dragged our baby boy to that meth house every Tuesday though he had no interest in being a father. I thought about how I could have been killed. I thought about how I had been thrown away time and time again. I thought about every lie, every promise, every chance wasted to do right by our family… Then I thought about how many times I was too stupid, too embarrassed. How many times he would say: “I’m not that bad.” Or “It’s just…” Insert bullshit here. I thought about all the work I’d put into mentally crawling back to the last time I’d truly felt value. How I changed everything about myself because I was told that’s what was needed and I believed because I couldn’t bring myself to blame him. Through it all, I never saw those things as him. Not once. All the therapy. The two years I’d spent proving my location to the point that for four years, I barely took a step outside our home. Proving who I was talking to. Proving that I was different. Constantly proving that I’d changed. I thought about how I’d gotten back on my depression meds, not for me, but so that I could deal with everything around me. I used to say: ‘I was the ideal ride or die until the day I faced my reflection and realized I was the one who had died. What I never told anyone was that I killed pieces of myself bit by bit, day by day until there was no me left. I was still clutching that tin when I reached in the tub. I don’t know. I was just shaking… Sobbing even. How could he? How could he not only know but see every ounce of my change, accept it and then do this to me?" She wiped her face once more. "Inside the tin was his razor. He was probably about to snort some lines before he slithered into that fucking tub for a shower. Before I knew it, I was carving out his tongue with the same razor… Then I curled up beside my suitcase and fell asleep."
I sat straight up, taken aback. "Wait… You took a nap after all of it?"
She dabbed the remaining tears from her eyes before responding: "I was so tired and I don't mean physically. I'd given up everything only to be disrespected at every turn then forced to listen over and over as I was presented as the problem. The second I dropped his tongue on that bathroom floor, that was it. The last of me." She shrugged. "You know, in my Uber, on the way home, a feeling of calm like I'd never known washed over me. I was free." Before I could voice my thoughts to the contrary, she shook her head. "You're about to say but I'm here. You're about to point at these." She shook the shackles. "Even with these, I'm no longer tethered to the ground. My heart isn't heavy with his hypocrisy. My heart isn't aching under the weight of his thumb. My soul isn't wrapped around him. There's only me. No matter what these cold, stone walls tell you, I'm free." She went to stand up. "And that's what you can whisper into every ear that will have you. No matter what anyone believes, no matter what they say, when that needle goes in my arm tomorrow, I've been gone a long time ago. They're throwing a shell in the ground and nothing more." She nodded at me. "And that's all I have to say."
For what could only be measured in forever, she stared at me. I averted my gaze to the left of me. The wooden planks on the ground shown upward, reminding me where I was. Finally, I inhaled a small breath: "Guard!"
She watched me stand, still silent. Still angry. I marched to the open door, my spine ridged with the weight of her steely gaze. I touched the wall with my right hand and chanced a glance backwards. Her eyes had not left me.
Finally, in such a way that normally would have gone unnoticed, she nodded.
On my way home, I could not help but ponder how far someone had to fall to see prison walls as an escape and death as freedom. The light turned yellow. I slowed to a stop at the flash to red. As I waited, tears sprang to my eyes. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and sobbed. I didn't even know what the tears were for. I clutched the wheel and held on, trying to catch my breath.
HONK!!! I jerked upward. The green light signaling that I should have been on my way seconds ago startled me. HONK!!! The horns from several cars behind me snapped me back into my reality. Slowly, ever so slowly, I lowered my foot to the gas. My car purred to life. I watched the cars in my rear view mirror, some probably heavy with choice words me, but in that moment, I didn't care.
I reached in my pocket to grab my rosary beads.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
For the first time, I had an answer for her; that woman cradling the bowl. What if Satan wasn’t a demon at all, but someone who was haunted by what they'd become? Smothered slowly, slowly day by day until the only solution was to break free... Wouldn’t that reasoning alone mean Satan needed the prayers more than anyone? My lips brushed across the beads once more.
I didn't wipe a single tear from my face. I didn't try to stop the new ones either. I just drove and drove as I normally would have and yet, it would never feel the same again after that conversation.
Nothing ever would.
And I couldn't help but wonder if it ever should.
A woman, whose origins were unknown, gazed kindly from the picture frame. Her long, graceful fingers pressed either side of a bowl and yet, her attention was not on the contents. Her piercing, baby blues coaxed you to acknowledge the words above her head. It was a quote by Mark Twain. For several years, that sign watched me pass twice daily. Since it was right around the corner from the cafeteria, I used to think they hung it there to remind us not to judge the people we broke bread with. I never thought the day would come when my faith would be tested and I would come face to face with the apparition in the flesh. Every piece of literature I’d ever held in my hands had preached Satan was not just any fallen angel. He was the fallen angel. The one whose misdeeds brought forth the birth of sin itself. An angel who wanted too much only to be banished for his greed and in human form, he was a she.
Whispers passed from priest to priest did not sound like the description of a soul that needed saving. My robes bristled every time a new story found its way to my ears. I’m sorry to admit, the more I heard, the more I couldn't believe she had the nerve to ask for a priest. Yes, I am a man of God, but everyone has their limits and this happened to be mine. Whispers about tongues being carved out and tossed to the side like trash.
She had the choice of whether or not to see a priest and she wanted one. Everyone was entitled to final words before an execution but, why was she allowed to use her tongue? The irony. Unfortunately, it turned out to be me. How could they? Letting such a monster have the last word! Is what I wanted to argue, but there would be none of that. No one wanted to be the one to listen to her story, but someone had to.
I'd lost when we drew straws.
As I was walking down the hallway, for some reason, I began to feel hints of intrigue creeping through my disgust. I wanted to know what could turn a woman into a killer. Women were supposed to be nurturers. To know a woman was capable of such violence... The thought was unnerving to say the least.
I approached the warden. He was accompanied by a prison guard. Their backs were facing a large metal door, standing guard as if they were trying to keep a wild animal inside.
“I'm taking it that you're Father Tatum.” He stated authoritatively. “She's in there. Take all the time you need. Just knock on the door when you're done.” He cleared his throat.
The prison guard withdrew a ring of keys from his belt to unlock the door. I slipped inside, immediately wondering why it was so dark. Before I could ask though, the door slammed shut behind me. The next thing I heard was the click of the lock. Lord, they'd locked me in the dark with... With what? Who? Where was she? Frantically, I ran my fingers up one wall, then the other, in search of a light switch. When I couldn't locate one, I began to panic. Tiny beads of sweat were began to form on my skin. I have to admit: I was terrified.
“There's a cord hanging from the ceiling.” Came a voice from the darkness. “Above your head.”
My hand shaking, I reached up in search of the cord. The sight that met me when light filled the room startled me.
"Hello." She greeted me. "You must be Father Tatum. Do you know who I am?"
I nodded anxiously.
Her eyes were brown, empty yet attentive, inhabited with so much anger. She scruntinized my habit, eyes staying on the rosary beads. Her skin was practically covered in grime beneath dull, gray shackles. There was a deadly air about her that made her seem all the more beautiful. Nothing like the woman I'd heard whispers about. She didn’t appear as if she would hide from anything. You would always see her coming. Everything about her screamed that she had been on death row for quite awhile. Tomorrow was her last day though. She would never see the inside of this prison ever again... Or anything else for that matter.
“You're here because I requested a priest aren't you?”
Again, all I could offer was a nervous nod.
“Well, I requested one because they said one was allowed.”
"You cut out his tongue." I didn't even pause. I slapped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. I hadn't meant to blurt it out that way.
"A man with no tongue doesn't have time to weave lies." She said as if she was reading off a random item on a grocery list. "There were so many opportunities for it not to happen but he left me with no choice."
"He chose to have his tongue cut out?"
Despite the gaze pausing on my face, it didn't feel as if she was watching me at all. I might as well not have been there.
"I recognize your tone." The way she said it caused the hair on my arms to stand at attention. "He used to speak to me that way."
The chains on her wrists momentarily forgotten, I almost dove from my chair.
"I only killed him once." Were it not for us being the only two in the room, her voice would have gone unheard. "He spent years upon long, agonizing years chipping away at who I was. His death was quicker than mine." Her voice became an angry whisper. "Do you think I've spent everyday in fear; regretting what I've done? I'm not being put to death tomorrow. I'm already dead. The me who would be trembling right now has been dead for longer than I care to remember. If you've come here searching for a confession filled to the brim with shame and regret, you’re in the wrong place. These halls are for the forgotten. Just know that yes, I carved out his tongue... It was the last thing I did." Though her eyes never left my face, now her gaze carried a cold, angry reverie. "This is not the place for conscience or remorse."
"He was the father of your-"
She held up one chained wrist, slashing the end of my sentence. "He was whatever he wanted to be. He hid behind the veil I provided for him. I was a single parent in a two parent household. He did no real parenting. All the weight of child rearing fell to me. He was no father. He was a body. Don't cross that line again."
"Why ask for a priest if you aren't ready to be honest?"
A humorless smile crept across her lips. "Is it honest that this was spun into a racial debate? Is it honest that this was treated as if I, a black woman, took the life of a hard working, doting white man? Is it honest that every step I took was put on display and yet, he was cast as the good man? The recovering addict? They all but called him my savior." She leaned forward. "Were my skin as pale as a sheet of paper, would it have been treated differently?"
I remembered the headlines. Who could forget the picture of the police dragging her from their home with her legs dangling behind them? Nestled in the corner of the display, a moment I'll never forget: Four children in tears. Their little hands pressed against their faces in a silent scream so loud that I could hear it in my head: "MOMMY"
"No one looked at the facts. Not even my lawyer." She spat. "Court appointed counts for nothing when she's looking at you with distain. They all did." She sat back in the chair and sighed. "Still do."
"If things were so bad, why did you stay?"
She didn't bother to pause to think it over. "Stupidity. We are all in possession of toxic traits. We live our lives trying to ignore them, carry on as if they aren’t there, but no one is immune. My biggest and the most damaging was that I wanted to be the solution to everything for everyone. I convinced myself that no matter what, I had all the answers." Her eyes shifted back to the table. "I was too stupid and embarrassed to admit that in some cases, the only answer is to walk away."
"So what you're after is to be humanized?"
"Why would I need that?" She snapped. "Even behind bars, am I not still human... Or did they take that too and no one informed me?"
"You..."
"No." She shook her head. "You can take the world from a person, but only they have the power to leave their humanity behind. I don't need someone jogging through those doors to give me what I never lost."
"Then why did you do it? You don't seem like..." I gathered my thoughts to choose my words carefully. "You don't look like a murderer."
"And yet, here we are."
"Why? Why did you do it?"
"Now you're asking real questions. Everybody always starts their story with 'we were young when we blah, blah, blah,' but in our case, it was true. We were young when we started our family. In some ways, too young. He wasn't ready to be a father but he let outside influences gas him up to believe he was ready. The only person who was equipped for that kind of job was me and within three months of our son drawing his first breath, it was already starting to show. He didn't want the responsibility. He wanted the title, you see. It wasn't long before he was hooked on drugs and avoiding even that. He let his auntie convince him he wasn't the father; as if she had front row seats to all the sucking and fucking."
I flinched at the onslaught of vulgarity. Another humorless smile found its way to her lips. "I lost my virginity to him so obviously, I took it hard. I mean, how could someone allow someone to convince them that someone they claimed to love would trap them with a baby and not just any baby, a baby that they were hardly ever home with? How is it a trap when your ass was never home to fall in?" Her eyes flashed angrily into mine. "It wasn't long before we were evicted twice and living out of hotels. I chose to move on on my own. When he came back, all was forgiven but I wasn't completely honest. I should have told him that I had changed. Everything had changed in those two and a half years that we were apart. I would undergo many changes as time went on but this was the first major one and now that I think on it, the most important." She sighed and adjusted in the chair once more. "Things were fine until I found out about the drugs. He assured me that he'd left that life behind and I trusted him... I wanted to believe because of what I'd left behind to choose my family above myself."
"What did you leave behind?"
"The most important ingredient." She answered as if it were obvious. "Myself." She held up her shackled wrists. "Long before these found my arms, I was chained down in my own mind. There was no right. No wrong. After awhile, I used what was going on around me to venture out and experience life on my own terms."
"Terms?" I rolled the word around in my mind. “You mean-“
“Don’t you dare.” She hissed. “I know what you’re about to say and don’t you dare say that name. I’ve all but stripped those four letters from my vocabulary. I won’t have them here. Is that why you’re really here; hoping to be on the front lines of all the salacious details? I hate to spoil all the fun but this isn’t that kind of discussion nor will it ever be.”
“Why do you get the final say?”
“Have you seen any petitions? Who was all lives mattering over this mess? Where were my thoughts and prayers?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Exactly. Not a single soul wanted to hear my truth and now that I’m ready to talk, you want to waltz in here in your skirts and tell me what I have to say. No… Fuck that.” She narrowed her eyes. They faded from brown to a haunting black. “Fuck that.”
"I got tired of feeling like a man who was desperately trying to stay in the running to become America's Next Top Crackhead felt he had a right to cast a shadow over who I was. I allowed him back in my home, my life... And what was my thanks?" She shook the silver links.
"He didn't put you here. You did."
"It's amazing the kind of perspective you can provide from an outsider looking in standpoint isn't it?" She shrugged. "From that side of the room, it's easy to prattle off what you think or how you feel, but as a priest, aren't you saying that it is your right to judge a story that you know nothing about? Pfft. Some priest. You're just like everybody else... The only thing separating you from the rest of the world is that." She gestured at my rosary beads. "Without those, you're just a man in a dress sitting in a chair thinking he has all the answers."
"These are robes." Was my only response. I didn't want to give her the pleasure of knowing she had a point. Tucked safely in a chair with nothing more than a table between us, it was easy for me to wrap myself in my ideals. For the longest of seconds, she held my gaze, searching for something. Whatever it was, I could tell when she felt as if it had been found. Slowly, a real smile found its way to her lips.
"He had a way of chipping away at me. A way that was so silent, such a slow crawl… I didn't even realize was what happening so I didn't know to protect myself. An insecure soul that latches to a free spirit will do everything within its power to tether it to the ground so that it can't flutter away. An insecure presence will feed off the energy of those around it in order to sustain itself... Its sense of control, so to speak. They control you in such a way that you'll convince yourself that all the changes you've made were to protect their security when in reality, all it does is place you beneath the heaviest thumb known to man."
"But you-"
Her eyes flashed a look I couldn't quite place. "I remained silent on many things around me and how was I rewarded? Drinks laced with drugs.” She paused at my expression. “He did it for a week. Didn’t matter what he was handing me. A cup of soda. A cup of Kool-aide. None of it mattered. What mattered was he was sprinkling meth over each cup like it was a fucking garnish.” She made a sprinkling movement with her right hand. “I didn’t tell him for years how I figured it out. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know I knew until the day I said something because I had to have a drug test. He sat there with the blankest of looks. Like he couldn’t believe I knew. Each time something happened, I would remain silent. I wouldn’t tell a soul but, do you know what silence does to a person? Silence gives the impression that you’re okay with your surroundings. What you feel. What you’re going through. Silence is consent. You’re pretty much giving the go ahead each time you choose to remain silent. For years, I went through it all, drowning more and more every year in a sea of silence.
Cheating even though he never had to… When he met me I had both a girlfriend and a boyfriend. I’ve always dated in multiples and was fine with the same. He told me he couldn't be with someone who thought that way. I was so stupid. So fucking stupid. I muted that part of myself because I loved him so much… Only for him to turn around and cheat. He never had to but he did. I guess what he meant was he was completely into monogamy but for me… Not him." She shrugged. "He stole from me! Money constantly plucked from my wallet. Money snatched from my pants pockets. Money stolen to the point that I started hiding it just so I could stay afloat. I never told him that; about the money. For years he went thinking he'd outsmarted me when in reality I was putting money in places knowing it would be stolen. What he didn’t know was why the entire situation caused yet another change in me. The money situation had gotten out of control. I was drowning and nobody knew about it… Then came the rent money. He stole the entire envelope. He even helped me look for it as if there was a chance in hell that it was under the couch cushions and not in some dealer’s greedy palms. I couldn’t find anyone to lend it to me. Nobody wanted to help me but everyone had a front row seat to my downfall. The next day I was offered help. I should have said no. I should have walked away at the suggestion, but where else was I going to come up with the money on such a short notice? Who was going to help me? No one knew. I walked in that house myself and walked out several thousand richer but it changed me. It changed me to know why I allowed someone to stuff my pockets with money I should have never needed. Not only did I forgive, I moved forward… Again, in silence. The money I had left over after bills, I slipped all over the place, knowing it would be taken. My family, my responsibility. I wasn't a part of his family. He was a part of mine."
“Is that why-“
She stopped me again. "You will never be able to turn back time to before the moment you put a price tag on something so valuable... So priceless. Every move I made... Every choice... Was easy after that day. Any value I had was destroyed in that house. I know who you want to discuss and I know why. It’s easy to focus on those four letters because of what they stand for. I did so many things after that day. Made so many choices. Most of them… Bad. I was fueled by depression though,” She smirked. “That sounds like such a typical excuse, doesn’t it? Depression made me do it. Just know; it didn’t make me do it. I did those things. Understanding why we do things doesn’t excuse our actions and my reactions were never right. Cause and effect, so to speak. Because of this, I did that. My choices were always wrong but things just kept happening. It didn’t end. It felt like it never would. After awhile, I was so numb to the world around me that we were living two separate lives and every once in awhile, we would check in with one another. I felt nothing. I still don’t.”
"I've seen photos of you at family functions." I said, though a part of me was busy combing her expression and my memories for the look in her eyes. “You were a part of his family.”
She scoffed. "Pictures are just that. Pictures." Her brown eyes bore down into mine. "A flash in time. They don't show you all the times I went disrespected by his mother and he did nothing. He huddled behind her skirts like a frightened little lamb and allowed it to go on for years. They don't show him threatening to throw my son and I out into the streets because his friend felt comfortable calling me a nigger…" She paused at my left eyebrow rising faster than my mind could stop it. "Yes, that happened. He got angry at slurs thrown in my face but not at his friend… No, at me. Like I was nothing more than a slave on a plantation somewhere and because he was paying the bills, I had to accept being treated as such." She smirked humorlessly. "That's the thing though. He wasn't paying the bills. We got evicted twice. So many things happened…" She shook her head. "When I stood up as the head of the family, I forgave all of it. I even showed up to give him a place to lay his head after his own blood relatives didn't see fit to allow him a slot on the family couch. I protected him from being arrested. Not once but three times. I didn't even get mad at him when I found out that the reason he couldn't be at my bedside when I almost bled to death is because he was busy getting his knob slobbed by some piece of work. I forgave all of it so to have you feeling like you have the right to pass judgment on me with your fancy robes and your shiny beads… It's almost laughable. I remained silent to the point that my own family and many, many of my friends thought I was doing wrong by a good man. I even had who I thought was my best friend; tell me that he could do so much better than me…" She shrugged. "In hindsight, maybe she was right. If we'd parted ways, he would still be alive and I…"
"Your forgiveness was commendable but, why? Why did you stay? Why push forward when you knew how you felt?"
"At first, it was for love. After awhile, it became more about the responsibility. Like I already said, I was stupid… I was embarrassed." She leaned back in the chair, eyes pointed at the ceiling. "I wasn't ready to leave home when I left. Pictures don't tell you that either. They also don't tell you how I listened to my mother repeatedly remind me of the responsibility I had and after awhile, I took on this my happiness be damned mentality. Once that settled into my soul that was a wrap. I began to tell myself nobody cares if I was alive or dead as long as I kept my family intact. After awhile, I started to call home less and less because I didn't have the heart to open my mouth." Her eyes still on the ceiling, she shook her head. "Because of this, when I did try to speak, it came off like I was the problem. What made it worse was the road to accepting that I may not have been the entire problem but I was a part of it. To this very day, my family and possibly his as well, believes we never married because of me. That I had commitment issues. I never corrected this way of thinking. Who was I to tell the world that our wedding dreams went up in smoke the day I walked in on him in the bathroom practically putting vacuum cleaner companies to shame over some pills? My part was I participated in the illusion. I helped project this perfect image. I allowed myself to be villainized so that he could masquerade as the good guy, the man who was doing it all right. The recovering addict.
"And now you've made him a martyr."
It was shining brighter now that her eyes were back on my face. Before, there was a faint glimmer of it. Now it was undeniable. Tearing through her pained expression, smothering all else: Rage.
"I'm so tired of that shit!" The table trembled beneath her palms. She slapped the table once. Twice. "I didn't make him shit. Do you know how many times I had to listen to the ideals that I wasn't respecting how many years we’d shared knowing what I knew? How many times I had to listen to it was my fault, MINE, the reason he was the way he was the way he was?! When I fucked up, it was my fault. When he fucked up, it was still my fucking fault?! How hard it was to always choose to move forward not just suspecting but knowing that he was only apologizing to silence me further? He wasn't sorry and after awhile, neither was I. That's when we should have parted ways, but that's not what happened."
"So what really happened that night?"
"You know what else a picture will never be able to convey?"
When I didn't respond, she repeated the inquiry. I hadn't realized she was expecting a response. Honestly, I hadn't prepared myself for answers. Only questions of my own.
"Leave." One word. One syllable. Very final.
"W-What?" I stammered, taken aback.
"I spent years ignored, forgotten and disrespected. Do you honestly think I'm going to allow the same from you because you have Jesus on your side? Get the fuck out!"
She dove from the chair, fingers reaching for my throat. Halfway across the table, she remembered the chains, but it was too late. She landed face first against the wood.
To this second as I'm writing this, I cannot fathom why I didn't flee. With how petrified I was, I probably would have tripped over my robes before my hand could grab the doorknob, but even with fear tickling my senses, for the second time, I didn’t move. Petrified was actually an accurate description.
She tilted her head upward. From her lips, a chilling, empty laugh rang. "Pictures don't tell you that tomorrow they will put a needle in my arm. Tomorrow they will tell me that I'm so wrong for killing that man. No… That white man." She forced herself from the table, still laughing. "Ask yourself this: Were he a black man, would you know this story? Would you even be interested?" Now sobering, her laughter faded into the air between us. "Would you be in here judging me or would you be like everybody else… Shrugging your shoulders like it's another day in the hood? I want you to think about that."
"Y-You cut out…"
"Stop." She shook her head. "I'll never forget how I felt opening the bathroom door to him cradling his meth stash like a toddler being caught with a hand in the cookie jar. It was like I was frozen in time. I closed the door and went to sit down." For the first time, vulnerability weaved its way through her words: "I'd taken out a loan for this vacation and there he was: Packing meth amongst his tube socks and underwear." A single tear lined the curve of her cheek. It splashed to the wood when she closed her eyes. "He got in the tub as if everything hadn't changed. See, I blame myself for this. I should have thrown him into the streets years ago but I didn't and in that, I was accountable. I adapted. I accepted. I accommodated. I reduced myself to the role of enabler. Silence is consent, as I said." Tears were flowing uncontrollably now. She wiped away a few. "I grabbed a tennis racket from his suitcase. He didn't hear me re-enter the bathroom so there was no time to react. I swung. He tried to fight me off but I was too fast. Too angry. Too everything. I kept swinging until blood was dripping from the ceiling. The racket had snapped in half by then. I stabbed him over and over with the jagged ends until I was too tired to lift my arms anymore. One stab for every time I forgave. One stab for every time he promised me change. One stab for every time he chose the outside world over our family." She swiped a few more tears though they no longer mattered. "I fell to the floor thinking: What had I done? Why didn't I stop? I didn’t have to get close to know it was too late. There was no going back. On the floor, covered in splotches was an Altoids tin. For what felt like an eternity, I sat on that floor holding that tin. I thought about how meth was the reason our family lost its way in the first place. I thought about how he drugged me with that shit. I thought about how I dragged our baby boy to that meth house every Tuesday though he had no interest in being a father. I thought about how I could have been killed. I thought about how I had been thrown away time and time again. I thought about every lie, every promise, every chance wasted to do right by our family… Then I thought about how many times I was too stupid, too embarrassed. How many times he would say: “I’m not that bad.” Or “It’s just…” Insert bullshit here. I thought about all the work I’d put into mentally crawling back to the last time I’d truly felt value. How I changed everything about myself because I was told that’s what was needed and I believed because I couldn’t bring myself to blame him. Through it all, I never saw those things as him. Not once. All the therapy. The two years I’d spent proving my location to the point that for four years, I barely took a step outside our home. Proving who I was talking to. Proving that I was different. Constantly proving that I’d changed. I thought about how I’d gotten back on my depression meds, not for me, but so that I could deal with everything around me. I used to say: ‘I was the ideal ride or die until the day I faced my reflection and realized I was the one who had died. What I never told anyone was that I killed pieces of myself bit by bit, day by day until there was no me left. I was still clutching that tin when I reached in the tub. I don’t know. I was just shaking… Sobbing even. How could he? How could he not only know but see every ounce of my change, accept it and then do this to me?" She wiped her face once more. "Inside the tin was his razor. He was probably about to snort some lines before he slithered into that fucking tub for a shower. Before I knew it, I was carving out his tongue with the same razor… Then I curled up beside my suitcase and fell asleep."
I sat straight up, taken aback. "Wait… You took a nap after all of it?"
She dabbed the remaining tears from her eyes before responding: "I was so tired and I don't mean physically. I'd given up everything only to be disrespected at every turn then forced to listen over and over as I was presented as the problem. The second I dropped his tongue on that bathroom floor, that was it. The last of me." She shrugged. "You know, in my Uber, on the way home, a feeling of calm like I'd never known washed over me. I was free." Before I could voice my thoughts to the contrary, she shook her head. "You're about to say but I'm here. You're about to point at these." She shook the shackles. "Even with these, I'm no longer tethered to the ground. My heart isn't heavy with his hypocrisy. My heart isn't aching under the weight of his thumb. My soul isn't wrapped around him. There's only me. No matter what these cold, stone walls tell you, I'm free." She went to stand up. "And that's what you can whisper into every ear that will have you. No matter what anyone believes, no matter what they say, when that needle goes in my arm tomorrow, I've been gone a long time ago. They're throwing a shell in the ground and nothing more." She nodded at me. "And that's all I have to say."
For what could only be measured in forever, she stared at me. I averted my gaze to the left of me. The wooden planks on the ground shown upward, reminding me where I was. Finally, I inhaled a small breath: "Guard!"
She watched me stand, still silent. Still angry. I marched to the open door, my spine ridged with the weight of her steely gaze. I touched the wall with my right hand and chanced a glance backwards. Her eyes had not left me.
Finally, in such a way that normally would have gone unnoticed, she nodded.
On my way home, I could not help but ponder how far someone had to fall to see prison walls as an escape and death as freedom. The light turned yellow. I slowed to a stop at the flash to red. As I waited, tears sprang to my eyes. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and sobbed. I didn't even know what the tears were for. I clutched the wheel and held on, trying to catch my breath.
HONK!!! I jerked upward. The green light signaling that I should have been on my way seconds ago startled me. HONK!!! The horns from several cars behind me snapped me back into my reality. Slowly, ever so slowly, I lowered my foot to the gas. My car purred to life. I watched the cars in my rear view mirror, some probably heavy with choice words me, but in that moment, I didn't care.
I reached in my pocket to grab my rosary beads.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
For the first time, I had an answer for her; that woman cradling the bowl. What if Satan wasn’t a demon at all, but someone who was haunted by what they'd become? Smothered slowly, slowly day by day until the only solution was to break free... Wouldn’t that reasoning alone mean Satan needed the prayers more than anyone? My lips brushed across the beads once more.
I didn't wipe a single tear from my face. I didn't try to stop the new ones either. I just drove and drove as I normally would have and yet, it would never feel the same again after that conversation.
Nothing ever would.
And I couldn't help but wonder if it ever should.
