Sleep Toward Heaven Read online

  SLEEP TOWARD HEAVEN

  A Novel by Amanda Eyre Ward

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-865-7

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  via United Kingdom

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  Originally published by:

  MacAdam/Cage Publishing

  155 Sansome Street, Suite 550

  San Francisco, CA 94104

  www.macadamcage.com

  Copyright © 2003 by Amanda Eyre Ward

  All rights reserved.

  “Sleeping Toward Heaven” ©1987 William Stafford from An Oregon Message (Harper & Row).

  Reprinted by permission of The Estate of William Stafford

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ward, Amanda Eyre, 1972—

  Sleep toward heaven / by Amand Eyre Ward

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-931561-23-0 (Hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Executions and executioners—Fiction. 2. Murder victims’ families—Fiction. 3. Death row inmates—Fiction. 4. Women librarians—Fiction. 5. Women physicians—Fiction. 6. Women murderers—Fiction. 7. Widows—Fiction. 8. Texas—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.A725 S58 2003

  813’.6–dc21

  2002153549

  Book and jacket design by Dorothy Carico Smith

  For Tip, my love.

  While they slept, faith flowered, an outside dream,

  and surrounded them in their cave. All they had to do

  was to sleep toward Heaven and open their eyes

  like dolls. Up there on the ceiling was all they needed.

  —William Stafford

  SLEEP TOWARD HEAVEN

  A novel by Amanda Eyre Ward

  CONTENTS

  JUNE:

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  JULY:

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  AUGUST:

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  KAREN

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  FRANNY

  CELIA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  part one

  june

  karen

  On Wednesday, they begin to get ready for the Satan Killer, who is due to arrive after lunch. They order a lamp and a radio from the commissary, and charge them to Tiffany’s account. Karen makes the bed in the empty cell with clean sheets. All the women on Death Row, who had been using the cell as a storage room, have removed their belongings to give the Satan Killer a fresh start.

  Lifting the sheet in the air and snapping it tight over the mattress, Karen remembers the pure relief that flooded through her when she first saw her own cell: bare, clean, and smelling of ammonia. It was almost five years ago.

  Tiffany takes two books from the bookshelf, Women Who Kill and The Jane Fonda Workout. She puts them by the Satan Killer’s bed. “There,” she says.

  It is four-thirty in the morning. Breakfast is over, and there is the long, pre-lunch stretch ahead of them. Tiffany stands outside the vacant cell, one thin arm around her stomach and the other against her chin. “Should I, like, draw her a picture or something? It looks so sad.”

  “Leave it alone,” says Karen.

  “But it looks pathetic,” says Tiffany. She shakes her Farrah Fawcett hairdo, and it settles back into place. Underneath her white jumpsuit, her limbs are strong. Tiffany runs in place and does sit-ups and push-ups inside her cell. She takes recess daily, has made a dusty path the shape of the number eight in the small, fenced yard. She believes that she will be set free, and the belief makes her restless. Karen recognizes the sharp hope, like a piece of gravel in a shoe. The knowledge of time, and of missing out. When you let go of the hope, there is a dull, numb peace in its wake.

  “Leave it alone,” says Karen.

  They live in a row, in Mountain View Unit. They share the television and the table bolted to the rectangle of cement in front of their cells. During the day, they are locked into the cage, where they work. Unlike the rest of the prisoners, they are not taught skills for the future. Instead, they make dolls called Parole Pals, which prison employees can special-order, choosing hair color, skin color, an outfit. All afternoon in the cage, the women paint faces on the Parole Pals, and make tiny clothes and shoes. Sometimes, Karen wakes in the night and sees the naked, faceless dolls that hang above the sewing machines. She has to remind herself that they are not babies, and not alive.

  Veronica agrees with Tiffany. She says, in her low, hoarse voice, “That cell certainly does need something. Something decorative.” Veronica has been on Death Row the longest, and has a manner that commands respect, something about the way she holds her shoulders back and peppers her statements with words like “certainly,” “absolutely,” and “indeed.” She is sixty-three years old, and wears her white hair in a bun. Her skin is loose, and she is fleshy, wide at the hips.

  She rises from her cot and wraps one of her veined hands around a metal bar. Although they are no longer allowed cigarettes, Veronica has retained a smoker’s way of speaking, pausing between statements, a pause that should be punctuated by a deep inhale and elegant exhale of smoke. They wait, and Veronica decrees, “Art.”

  “Excuse me?” says Karen.

  “Art,” says Veronica. “Everyone find something or make something. Some sort of art.”

  “Let her do it herself,” says Karen. She points to Veronica’s cell. “You don’t want someone else’s crap on your wall, you know?”

  Veronica turns to look at her cell, which is filled with yellowing photographs. She has wedding pictures of herself with all her husbands: Allen, Grady, Bill, Patrick, Stephen, another Bill, Chuck. In the earliest pictures, she is small-boned, engulfed in dresses like cakes, layered and creamy. Over the years, her body grows solid and her wedding dresses become darker and more spare. Patrick is the last husband for whom she wore a veil. Veronica’s face goes slack looking at the photographs. She is lost in one of her wedding days, spinning on a dance floor while the band plays “Starlight Melody” and her new husband presses his warm lips to her forehead.

  Tiffany jumps in. “I wish you had put something in my cell. It was so horrible, being dragged here and dumped like a bag of garbage!” Her voice goes shrill, indignant. Tiffany insists that she is innocent, that somebody else drowned her daughters, Joanna and Josie. Somebody else took them to the pond behind Tiffany’s house and put rocks in the girls’ matching sleeping suits. Somebody threw them in, held them under until they drowned, and watched them sink. Their open mouths, throats filled with water. Eyes open to stinging darkness. In Tiffany’s cell, she has twenty-six shades of nail polish, lined up in a gleaming row.

  Karen tries not to roll her eyes. Jackie looks up from her sewing. “What about one of my quilts?” she says. “It would add some color, anyway.” She brushes her hair from he
r freckled forehead with a quick motion, and something in her jaw snaps. Jackie is filled with mean energy. She moves fast, talks fast, has bony elbows and knees. To keep her hands moving, she sews: quilts, pillows, the dress she will be executed in. The dress is red, with sequins she orders from a catalog.

  They will only let her have one dull needle, so her sewing goes pretty slowly. Although “Mountain View Quilts” seemed like a good idea for a business, Jackie has only sold one through the Web site her sister maintains. Jackie used to be a hairdresser, and likes to do everyone’s hair. Obviously, she can’t cut anything, but she brushes it around and sprays hairspray. Also, she does Tiffany’s nails. She is due to be executed in a month.

  “I think the Satan Killer would love a quilt,” says Tiffany, looking at Veronica.

  “She can have this green one,” says Jackie. “It’s all fucked up.” She gestures to a quilt that is uneven and badly stitched.

  Karen reaches both arms behind her and pulls her thin ponytail taut. “Fine,” she says. “Go ahead and make some art.”

  Veronica is still staring at her photographs. She does this: fades from the situation at hand. They all assume Veronica won’t make anything for the empty cell. Besides disguising the taste of arsenic in home-cooked dinners, she isn’t really talented in domestic arts.

  They have already seen the Satan Killer on TV. She is black, like Karen. Her name is Sharleen Jones. She is nineteen years old.

  Karen, who since childhood has been unable to ignore the dark edges around every situation, had a terrible dream about the Satan Killer. It was after her shower, the tooth powder still gritty in her mouth. Karen lay down on her cot, and the dream came to her unbidden: the thick forest where the children crouched, frightened, around a campfire. The air was hot and wet, and smelled like things growing.

  In the dream, Sharleen looked kind. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a teddy bear on it. Sharleen’s hair was parted in the middle and stuck behind her ears. She was dark-skinned, with brown eyes. Her shoulders were wide, like a man’s. At her throat, a necklace rested, her name spelled in gold.

  Karen saw it all in the dream: Sharleen, her boyfriend, and the four small children walking down the trail and then into the undergrowth. Pine needles against their cheeks, the lifeless limbs of a dead tree. It was hard to make a fire. Sharleen took the clothes off the children, peeled them off, like fruit. Folded them (small pants, shirts, socks, boots, hats) and put them in a paper bag. The pattern of leaves against the darkening sky, flickers of light from the smoldering fire. Sharleen’s voice, high, chanting, a glinting knife, and the blood. Karen woke from the dream to the screaming from the mental ward down the hall.

  One day the guards forgot to change the channel, and the women on Death Row watched Sharleen’s trial with rapt attention. Karen already knew, but found that she had been right: each child had been sliced across the throat, their hearts cut from their bodies.

  Jackie unfurls the ugly quilt and smoothes it over the Satan Killer’s bed. Veronica has decided to pencil something onto paper in a fancy script. So far, she has written “S” and “E.” Sex? wonders Karen, Seagull? Secret?

  Tiffany fancies herself a painter, and has settled at the picnic table with her watercolor set. She appears to be painting a bird of sorts, with long talons. When she dips her brush in the bowl of water, color streams from it like smoke.

  “You’re not going to do anything?” Jackie is standing in front of Karen’s cell, her eyes narrowed scornfully. Karen rolls over on her cot to face the wall. “Bitch,” says Jackie.

  The Satan Killer arrives at two. Tiffany and Veronica are at showers, and Jackie is sewing her sequins. Between the guards’ strong arms, Sharleen looks like a giant rag doll. She lets her head loll forward, exposing the bare skin where her hair parts, and is dragged to her cell, putting up no resistance. The guards are Keith and Edward, both new.

  Guards do not stay for long on Death Row. When they find themselves smiling at a joke from Tiffany, or giving Karen extra cups of tea, the guards seem to know that it is time. Something happens to them. Their skin grows soft; the sadness seeps inside them. They are replaced. The guards that remain are solid as steel.

  Sharleen sinks down onto her cot, and Karen thinks she can hear crying. Jackie is always mean, as mean as a snake. She puts down her sewing, runs her hands through her red mane, and saunters over. Karen closes her eyes.

  “You the Satan Killer?” Jackie asks. She gets no answer from Sharleen. “I made you that quilt,” says Jackie. Again, there is no reply. “I made you that fucking quilt!” says Jackie. She has to shout to be heard above the television. Jackie walks to the middle of the room and stretches. Her white prison clothes are loose. She begins to practice high kicks. “I could have been a dancer,” she says. “Everybody said so.” She kicks and kicks until she is out of breath, and then she goes back to Sharleen.

  Don’t blame Jackie. She is so tired of sequins. She has sewn three hundred and seventeen sequins. She has been on Death Row for ten years, has made twelve quilts, and is going to die. There has been no stay of execution, and the news says there will not be one. The TV shows a picture of Jackie with her hair like fire and then they show the governor with his tight mouth and smiling eyes. The governor says, “Tough on crime” and “Eye for an eye.” No, there will be no stay for Jackie. They have not executed a woman in Texas since 1863, when they hung a woman named Chipita Rodriguez for murdering a horse trader.

  “Satan Killer?” says Jackie. “Why don’t you answer me?”

  It seems to Karen that Sharleen is asleep. She faces the wall in her cell, and has her knees drawn up. Karen tries to remember being nineteen. She had not yet met Ellen, and had just started to turn tricks, still got high from beer. Karen remembers being on a bus, eating a cheeseburger half-wrapped in paper. She had been going from Houston to New Orleans, and had hope inside her. It makes Karen’s head hurt to think of those times, before she had known that life would always suck, no matter where you went or who was sticking it in you.

  Jackie is getting worked up. She kicks at the bars of Sharleen’s cell. “Wake the fuck up, Satan Killer!” she says, over and over again. When Sharleen does not move, Jackie goes inside the cell.

  Between breakfast and bedtime, their cell doors are open so they can stretch and walk around the three hundred square feet of concrete, which they call “the patio.” Their cells line one side of the patio, and a metal table and chairs are attached to the concrete. Above the table is the television, bolted high on the wall. Opposite the cells is the chute, where the guards watch the women’s movements and listen to their words. Next to the cells the cage, which is kept locked whether or not the women are inside it, holds the row of sewing machines.

  Jackie sits on the floor next to Sharleen’s bed. “Why don’t you answer me?” she says, right in Sharleen’s ear.

  There is a muffled reply.

  “Because you what?” says Jackie.

  Sharleen whispers again, a faint sound that Karen cannot make out.

  “Damn right you scared!” says Jackie. She laughs, and then her laughter stops. All Karen can hear is a smack, and then another sound, more like a thud against concrete. Then there is only the sound of the TV laughing.

  The guards from the chute come running, and then there are more guards, and then a stretcher. Sharleen’s voice is quiet and small and she tells them that Jackie fell and hit her head on the floor. “I don’t want no trouble,” says Sharleen.

  That night, they are all searched. While they stand in their underwear, they look at the floor, and do not talk to each other. Karen’s underwear is worn and yellow, like Veronica’s. Tiffany has Calvin Klein underwear, from her husband. Sharleen, who has a T-shirt instead of a bra, is big and muscular, just as she was in Karen’s dream. She looks as if she could lift a house. Her legs shake when the guard sticks a finger in. When she has been searched, she goes right back to bed, turning her face to the wall. Above her bed is Tiffany’s bird, wings spr
ead in flight. Next to the picture is Veronica’s word: SERENITY.

  Karen thinks about things to say to Sharleen. She wants to tell her that she is not alone in knowing what it feels like to tear through human life. She wants to tell Sharleen that hatred ebbs to a steady ache. Instead, she mixes Tang with cream cheese from the commissary. The mixture is bright and soft. She spreads it on a plate, takes only a mouthful, and slides the plate into Sharleen’s cell.

  Sharleen, she does not say, there is such joy in breathing out, knowing you can breathe in again.

  franny

  The graveyard smelled of fresh earth and rain. Franny’s face was raw, her hair wet knives on her cheek. She balled her hands inside her coat pockets and willed herself not to cry. The priest said something about God’s plan, and mystery. There was no mystery about it. Franny bit the words down. It was cancer, it had metastasized, eaten Anna’s cells, refused every form of therapy, even burning the marrow from her bones. “God’s mystery,” whispered Franny, closing her eyes. If only she could believe in such a thing.

  Anna’s father was sobbing, his mouth open and his tongue exposed. Anna’s mother stared straight ahead at the tiny coffin. She wore a black suit and her platinum hair seemed inappropriate, bright. Franny fought the urge to walk over to them, put Mr. Gillison’s tongue back in his mouth and cover Mrs. Gillison’s hair with something. That black piece of fabric on the coffin, maybe.

  Franny had known they made coffins for children, of course she had known, but the shock of seeing one put to use had almost made her cry out. The coffin was shiny, covered in flowers and Beanie Baby dolls. Franny had not attended the open-casket wake. According to Clyde, they had put a wig on Anna, the long red curls she had missed so dearly.