Sleep Toward Heaven Read online

  Tiffany will not discuss her own execution, but says that needles in general give her the willies. She has always hated shots, she says, and even when her girls, may they rest in peace, had to get their shots, she would close her eyes. Needles, she says, are gross.

  Jackie wants the needle. It won’t hurt, she says, and she’s always loved the drugs you get at the dentist. Those big pink pills? Vicodin, like after you get teeth pulled, good old Uncle Vikey. She loves that stuff. It’s like getting taken down a warm river, she says—bring it on. She has three weeks until her execution.

  Karen wants to go cleanly, and without pain. She wants to slip into silence. Jackie says that if quiet is what she wants, she should go for the needle. Sharleen does not join them on the patio while they eat breakfast and talk. There isn’t a chair for her, anyway. Not yet.

  Thursday is Karen’s birthday. She is twenty-nine, and has been on Death Row for five years. She feels a hundred years old.

  Karen was born in Uvalde, Texas, a tiny town near San Antonio where there weren’t many black people. Her mother spent her nights in the city, turning tricks and shooting whatever she could find into her arm. When Karen’s mother was pregnant, she had settled down for a while, living with Karen’s grandmother in the trailer in Uvalde, but soon after Karen was born, her mother took off for the high life of the city again. She would come to town once in a while, take Karen for ice cream cones. When Karen was twelve, her grandmother died and her mother started selling Karen to men, bringing them to the trailer and then bringing Karen to the city.

  When Karen’s mother died (beaten to death, one cheekbone snapped), Karen did not know how to feel. There was relief, but there was also loneliness. Karen no longer had a home. She left Uvalde for good when she was fifteen. Once, when she was small, her grandmother made Apple Brown Betty for her birthday.

  Since she is sick, the guards do not make Karen work. She lies on her cot. If she looks to the right of her cell, she can just see the others sewing in the cage. They sit behind the machines, underneath the dolls. They are not supposed to talk, but they whisper occasionally, and touch each other’s arms and hands, pressing skin to skin. On top of the television, there is a photograph from their Christmas party. They had made invitations for each other, and the guard had taken the invitations and delivered them the next day, like mail, like real invitations. In the picture, their arms are around each other, and they are smiling: Highway Honey, Black Widow, Baby Killer, and the Hairdresser of Death (in a Santa hat).

  By afternoon, Karen is so dizzy that she falls when she tries to make it to the table for lunch. Two guards take her to the Medical Center. A nurse slides a needle in her arm. Her nausea subsides, and her limbs feel heavy. She is given her meds with a cup of water. She does not ask what has happened to Dr. Wren, and no one tells her.

  Lying on a cot in the Medical Center, Karen thinks of Ellen. She can see Ellen in her mind: the curly thick hair, the wide smile. The tummy, just the tiniest bit soft, before she started using again and her stomach sank into her hipbones. Ellen. She was the only one who had loved Karen, but she loved her the most when they had money. That was why Karen turned tricks, why she went out on the road, thumbing from rest stop to rest stop, getting it stuck in her for a few dollars, a twenty, a ten. For Ellen, it was all for Ellen, to come home to their room at the Hi-D-Ho Motel with beer and clothes, cash for Ellen’s smack.

  Ellen had cried on her birthday. She cried because Karen had nothing to give her. Karen had worked for five days on the highway to come home with enough money for the previous month’s rent and for beer. “You don’t love me,” Ellen said. “You didn’t even bring me a birthday present.” And she put her clothes in a suitcase, slammed it shut, her eyes bright with the heroin.

  Karen begged her not to leave. “I’ll get you a present,” said Karen, “I promise I will, please,” and finally Ellen was soothed. Karen tucked her into bed, turned on the television, left Ellen the beer. And after four nights with no sleep, she went out again onto the highway.

  The first car that slowed had two men in it, and Karen kept walking. Her jeans were dirty and her shirt smelled of sweat, but she was skinny then and wore bright lipstick and push-up bras. The second car was a white Toyota with a heavy man. Karen got in.

  At the Evergreen Rest Stop, she let him stick it in her. He didn’t want to get muddy, so he laid a blanket on the ground. He gave her a twenty—she always made them pay first. He gave her some whiskey to drink, pretended like it was a date, and then he stuck it in her. He was fat and heaving, his stomach white and soft and Karen thought about Ellen, her skin, her strawberry lotion, and the man pumped away. Finally he finished, got off her, and went to the car. Karen pulled her jeans on, the fabric rough on her hips. Was a twenty enough to go home? She could buy Ellen some chocolates with a twenty, or some flowers at the Circle-K. A bottle of champagne? She saw the man rummaging in his glove compartment.

  “You can just leave me here,” Karen said, standing, brushing a twig from her hair. The man moved toward her, his feet making crunching sounds in the grass. Karen knelt to fold up the blanket. She would hitch a ride home. The flowers would buy her another week with Ellen. Another day, at least. She needed sweet sleep.

  When the man’s fist hit her cheek, it was a complete surprise. The gun was in his hand, and the force knocked her to the ground. He straddled her. “Give me my money back, whore,” he said, his lip curling. Karen put her hand to her cheek. There was blood. The man pressed the gun to her temple.

  “In my jeans,” said Karen. Her voice was surprisingly even.

  He heaved off her, watched her put her hand into her pocket. She kicked him in the groin as hard as she could, her bony knee in the softest flesh. He cried out, loosened his hold on the gun, and she grabbed it. She shot him in the face, she shot him in the heart. It was too much. It was enough. She shot him again and again and then she took the ring from his finger and she ran.

  Ellen was sitting up in bed, playing solitaire. “What happened?” she said, when Karen arrived.

  “Nothing.”

  Karen went into the bathroom, rinsed her clothes. There was not too much blood on them. She stood under a hot shower and lathered herself with the cheap motel soap.

  When she climbed into bed, the sheets smelled like Ellen. Karen put her head on Ellen’s belly, hiding the throbbing, bruised cheek. “I love you,” she said.

  “I know,” said Ellen. Her fingers played with Karen’s hair.

  “Happy birthday,” said Karen. She opened her hand.

  “A ring!” said Ellen, “It’s gold! Where did you get it?”

  “Is it good?” said Karen.

  Ellen slipped it on her finger. It was huge, and it shone in the lamplight. “It’s perfect,” she said. The next day, she would buy a length of leather cord and wear the ring around her neck, nestled between her clavicle bones.

  Karen had closed her eyes then, but before she drifted into the deepest sleep, she thought, This is it. The beginning of the end.

  When Karen gets back to her cell from the Medical Center, the area around the patio is strewn with toilet paper. There are buckets filled with Tang and broken-up candy bars arranged on paper plates. There are tubs of ice cream, melting quickly. (They can order ice cream from the commissary, but have to eat it right away: they have no refrigerator, let alone a freezer.) In the middle of the table is a honeybun, a sliver of cardboard made to look like a candle stuck deep in its frosting. There is also a piece of paper.

  Karen unfolds the paper. It says, “Happy Birthday from The Girls” in fancy writing, and then there is a picture of a daisy. Karen turns around, and they are all looking at her. Tiffany claps her hands. She is smiling so widely that Karen can’t help but smile too. Even Jackie has stopped scowling.

  Veronica points with a long fingernail. “I drew the card,” she says. Sharleen is watching from her cell, standing with her hands around the bars. A few steps, and she could join them. Karen feels a welling inside her,
hot and sweet. She leans in, holds her arms out, and for a moment, they hold each other, the girls.

  franny

  Instead of getting married, Franny flew to Waco, Texas. She felt like a bad country song. She left JFK, an airport filled with sleek women dressed in black, and arrived in Waco surrounded by men in Stetson hats. She leaned against the wall of the airport under a poster of a longhorn bull and watched the bags turn lazily on the carousel: camouflage duffel, red Samsonite suitcase, cardboard box tied with twine. There was a poster on the wall that read “Visit Gatestown: The Spur Capital of the World!”

  Finally, Franny’s bag came around, and she grabbed it and headed outside. The electric door slid open and the heat seared Franny’s lungs. The air was swampy heat, a marshy bath. The smell was barbecue smoke, truck exhaust, cow manure, and dust. It was scorched earth and cheap beer. Stars, sausage, ham sandwiches, lemonade, padded bras, sweaty pantyhose, hairspray, gum, condoms like slippery fish on her fingers.

  She was back in Texas, and felt as if she had never left.

  Evenings with Uncle Jack in front of the TV, chicken pot pies, fish sticks, ketchup, losing her virginity to Joey Ullins in the bed of his Toyota pickup. The night Sheriff Donald found her with Joey, sixteen years old and half-undressed under the starry sky. The Sheriff brought Franny home to Uncle Jack. She smelled of sex and was hot with shame.

  Uncle Jack sent her away to boarding school the following year. After that, Franny rarely came home. She spent the school years in Connecticut, going to sleep-away camp and then to Cape Cod in the summers. She had forgotten the stifling heat. She struggled for breath, and lifted her hand for a cab.

  “First visit to Texas?” said the driver, a dark man with bushy nose hair, as she collapsed into the cab.

  “Please,” said Franny, “turn on the air-conditioning.” The man laughed. He was covered with a thin sheen of sweat. He rolled up his window, and in a few minutes Franny could breathe. She gave the man the hospital’s address.

  As the ribbon of road unfolded before her, Franny tried to remember the last conversation she had had with Uncle Jack. For years, they spoke every Sunday evening, but after Franny moved in with Nat, the phone calls became less frequent.

  When Uncle Jack finally visited New York, things had not gone well. Franny winced when she remembered Nat’s expression, looking Uncle Jack over, from his hat to his boots. Nat had even pulled Franny aside and told her “the doc” might want to change if they were really going to go out to dinner. “I’m just looking out,” Nat had said. “And he’s my size, so if he wants to borrow something…”

  Franny had told Nat to go to hell, but then, as Uncle Jack pulled a jacket over his worn denim shirt and leaned over to wipe his boots (the good leather ones), she saw him suddenly through new eyes: a country bumpkin, a man out of a Wynonna Judd video. And she had looked up and met Nat’s gaze, realizing how Nat had seen Uncle Jack from the beginning, how he must see Franny at times. Franny could cry now thinking about it. She had asked Uncle Jack into the kitchen and had suggested that her proud uncle, a doctor, the man who had raised her, might want to change his clothes. Franny had half-hoped he’d laugh at her, something to bring her back to herself, but he just shook his head. He went into the bedroom and put on the suit Nat had laid out for him. Brooks Brothers.

  As soon as Franny walked inside the Waco hospital, the cold air on her skin like water, she felt that something was wrong. It was in the hollow sound of her footsteps, the nervous glance of the nurse when she asked for Uncle Jack’s room. Even as she walked down the gleaming hallway, she thought, he’s gone. She felt Uncle Jack’s absence from the world in the pit of her stomach. And she was right.

  “He tried to hold on for you, Fran. It was his heart gave out,” said the man standing next to the empty bed. Franny blinked. She recognized the man as a friend of Uncle Jack’s. His name was Ed. “You look great,” he added, lamely.

  “Thanks,” said Franny.

  “Do you want to see him?” asked a woman standing to Ed’s right. She was plump, with long reddish hair. She wore gray slacks and a pink cotton cardigan, and her eyes were teary. Franny nodded, and the woman reached into her pink purse and pulled out a business card. She gave it to Franny. Franny knew the address on the card; it was where her parents’ funeral had been. “I’m Deborah,” said the woman, pressing her fingers into Franny’s palm.

  Stay focused, Franny told herself. “What was the time of death?” she asked.

  Ed looked at her strangely, but said, “Early this morning, four or five.”

  She had been at the airport then, checking the bag she had frantically packed for what she thought might be a long visit.

  “Fran?” said Ed, reaching into the pocket of his jeans.

  “Yes?”

  “These are his keys.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Franny watched as Ed opened his fist, and she took the familiar keychain from it, a silver loop.

  “Do you want a ride? Jack’s car, it’s at the prison. Mountain View Unit.”

  “Thanks,” said Franny. The woman named Deborah still stood at the foot of the bed, staring. The hospital had re-made the bed. The sheets were tight, and Franny reached out to feel the cool fabric against her fingers.

  “What are you doing?” said Deborah.

  “Nothing,” said Franny.

  Ed’s car was large and smelled of cigars. “Well, it’s been some time,” he said. “What, ten years since you’ve been home?”

  Franny didn’t answer, and Ed fell silent. He turned on the radio, and the country song was faintly familiar. They drove slowly along the road, flat trees on either side of them. They came to Gatestown, passed the cemetery where Franny’s parents were buried, and then the prison complexes, and Main Street. On Fourth, Ed took a left, and the house came into view.

  The house. There was the tree Franny had fallen from, breaking her ankle, her cry bringing Uncle Jack running with his medical kit, holding her ankle still and wrapping it with cold, wet plaster strips. The lawn where Franny had laid out elaborate tea parties and then invited Uncle Jack, who would fold his long legs awkwardly and sip from the tiny cups. The front step where they sat in the evenings, Uncle Jack with his pipe and Franny with her glass of lemonade. Franny had been Uncle Jack’s girl for so long that she didn’t know what she was supposed to be, now that he was gone.

  The house looked better than Franny had remembered; Uncle Jack had always taken care of the lawn, but now there were flowers in the window boxes, and the front door was newly painted. “Well, you know I’m here, honey,” said Ed, as he eased the car to a stop.

  “Yes,” said Franny. She looked sideways at Ed, his solid frame, and she suddenly wanted to throw her arms around him. But she did not.

  “Well, thank you,” said Franny. “Thank you, Ed.”

  “How about I have Joanne bring over some food for you?”

  “No, thank you,” said Franny, “I’m fine. I’ll go over to the funeral home tomorrow.”

  “Well, honey, I don’t think you should be alone just now,” said Ed, but Franny was already out of the car, and halfway to the house.

  How easily the key slid in the door. Franny remembered sneaking into the house after lying in the grass with Joey Ullins until nearly dawn, her lips and chin chafed by kisses, her key fumbling in this very lock. Uncle Jack had been awake, of course, sitting in the living room and fixing her with a disappointed stare. Until the last night, when the disappointment had turned to anger.

  Some of the furniture had been moved around—the wing chairs had been replaced with a couch, and the television no longer blocked the fireplace—but after ten years, the smell was the same: pipe tobacco, Old Spice, and pine needles. Franny sighed and stepped across the threshold. She dropped her bag on the floor, and walked slowly up the stairs to her room.

  Her room was not the same. Her bed was there, and her bureau, and the green rug with fish on it that she had begged so doggedly for one Christmas. But her posters were gone,
and there was a large desk in the room that was covered with scraps of cloth. Uncle Jack, sewing? Franny lay down on her bed, the familiar bedsprings folding around her bones, and she waited for the sorrow to come.

  Pictures flashed in her mind: Anna reading in her hospital bed, Uncle Jack shaving in the bathroom mirror. Franny sat up. There was no point to this.

  She couldn’t find any liquor in the house, which was strange. Uncle Jack had always liked his Scotch, but the cabinets were empty. In the refrigerator, there was diet soda, Tab, which was another mystery. Franny opened the front door. The edge of the heat had faded now that the sun had set, and she began to walk briskly. Eventually Franny came upon an old apartment building that had been converted into a motel, the Gatestown Motor Inn. She sighed. It looked as if the market for housing visitors to the prison was growing faster than Gatestown’s population.

  She walked into the lobby, and the smell of cigarette smoke raised her hopes that there was a bar. At the front desk, an old lady sat knitting.

  “Is there a bar in this motel?” asked Franny.

  The woman looked up. “There’s a lounge,” she said, pointing to a frosted-glass door.

  The air in the lounge was smoky and wet. A woman in a muumuu played piano, a martini balanced on the piano bench beside her. A few men in suits drunkenly watched Franny as she walked in. She sat on an orange barstool.

  “Can I help you?” The bartender was young, blond, skinny. His nametag said, “Hello! I’m FRED.”

  “Scotch on the rocks,” said Franny.

  Fred poured the drink. “You in town long?” he said.