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He’s surprised and his mouth falls open. But he’s not scared. And then he laughs. “Hey, where’d you get that thing?” he says, pointing at the gun. “You pla
Off in our room, Jarrad’s bottle falls out of his crib and he cries harder.
All of a sudden Kyle starts throwing the basketball against the wall close to me. He breaks a lamp. Down the hall Jarrad screams like the world’s gone crazy and Kyle turns purple. “I told you, shut that stupid kid up!”
I say, “You’re scaring him.”
Kyle screams, “I’ll scare him okay!” And then he throws the basketball hard right at me and hits me in the head with it. Then he grabs the ball back and spins around to run down the hall. And that’s when I pull the trigger. The pistol goes off. The noise was so loud it hurt. Most of the back of Kyle’s head flies away. But he spins around and it goes off again and then it flings out of my hand. His knees bend, and it’s weird, it’s just like he’s at the free-throw line and is going for a basket. But then he drops the ball, which is all crumpled because I shot it, and his knees give way like the floor fell out from under him. He jerks over sideways and lands hard. The whole room shakes. Down the hall Jarrad keeps screaming. All I can think about is, at least Jarrad didn’t see it but the noise must have scared him. I run and go pick up my baby and I hide his eyes against me so he can’t see Kyle lying there and we run out of the house. I drive Jarrad to Mawmaw’s and tell her I can’t go to church. I say I had a fight with Kyle and I can’t talk about it now. Then I go back home and Kyle’s still lying there with blood oozed out all around his head and his stomach. I have to run to the bathroom ’cause I’m sick to my stomach. I don’t know what to do. I just keep wishing I could make it go away. After a while I get an old blanket and wrap him in it. He’s cold but I try not to touch him. I think I fainted. I don’t remember the rest but I must of drug him out to the backyard and poured the kerosene on him and lit it.
That’s the truth. If I could take the stand and tell Dr. Nina Rothma
But Mr. Goodenough made out how I’d plotted and pla
Mr. Goodenough spent a lot of time telling the jury, “Imagine the horror and anguish” of Mr. and Mrs. Markell when they saw their only son smoldering on a brush pile. Then he’d hold up the crime scene photos (that my lawyer tried to get excluded but he lost) and wave them right at the jury and shout, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, just imagine!”
Both the Markells testified against me. They were the State’s last witnesses. Mr. Markell slumped and looked beaten down. Mrs. Markell could scarcely sit still on the stand she hated me so much. Course that was true even before all this. I didn’t like her either. She had spoiled Kyle so bad he told me himself how when he was little he would kick and slap her and she wouldn’t do a thing about it if they were in public except give him what he wanted. On the stand Mrs. Markell said it didn’t surprise her at all that I’d killed her son and she wouldn’t rest easy till I had paid the price. They had to haul her off the chair she was shouting at me so loud even after she was excused. Her face looked just like Kyle’s when he was yelling.
I’ll tell you how I could rest easy even strapped down in the death chamber. That’s if I knew Priscilla Markell had lost her case trying to get my baby Jarrad away from Mawmaw. I can’t stand the thought of her screaming at Jarrad until he turns into a screamer too. And Tilden Snow has promised me he won’t let that happen even if I do get the maximum. Which he’s worried I’m going to get if all he’s got on the defense side is character witnesses and the emergency doctor saying I really did try to kill myself judging from my stomach.
But some things you can’t do. And letting Mr. Goodenough ask me sarcastic personal questions and twist my answers around into lies and make fun of me and say I don’t deserve to be Jarrad’s mama is one of them.
So that’s all the far we’d got to in my trial by this morning. And that’s when all of a sudden Dr. Rothma
About an hour later, Tilden Snow comes back looking surprised but sort of smug. He motions for Mawmaw to lean forward and he whispers to us all this stuff about how Mr. Goodenough was backing down and dropping Murder One because otherwise he’s going to get a hung jury and how if they could work it out would I agree to say I’d shot Kyle but I didn’t plan to. Would I say I did it without premeditating and when I’d gone to pieces for a minute. I look at Mawmaw and she pats my hand. I tell him yes I will say that because it’s the truth. Tilden Snow says I ought to thank my stars he got Dr. Rothma
So we wait some more. After a while Mawmaw leans over again from the row behind me and every now and then I can feel her hand patting me on the back. Right through my blouse I can feel the stiffness of her fingers and the calluses and rough spots on her hand like each one had a memory in it like a electric spark. I can see her mopping the kitchen floor of this house, and me helping her make the beds in that house, and us walking in the rain to the bus stop from this other house, dropping off the trash bags on the way. I can see her fingers working to tie the bow on my dress the day she took me to Tilden Snow’s grandma’s big house that they called Heaven’s Hill. That was the day the little boy ran out the front door and hollered, “That’s my swing. Get off of it.” It was only after his grandmama came out with Mawmaw and told him to be nice to me because I belonged to the cleaning lady that he said, “I’m Tilden Snow. You want to marry me?”
I said to him, “No, I don’t.” And I looked over at Mawmaw ’cause I was worried she’d be mad but she was smiling like I had said the right thing.
So I’m feeling all these memories in Mawmaw’s hand while she rubs my back. Then the jury comes back with the judge and all, and Dr. Rothma
After a lot of talking, the judge tells me to stand up and I do and say I’m guilty and I get fifteen years. The first thing I think is, I’ll get out in time for Jarrad’s high school graduation. Then they come over to take me out. I turn around and I grab both of Mawmaw’s hands and I kiss them. I say, “I’m sorry, Mawmaw, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”