Cargo of Orchids

by Susan Musgrave

  “When you find yourself listening to their keys, and owning none, you will come close to understanding the white terror of the soul …” The white terror of the soul had been, for me, the prospect of living without cocaine. Maybe if I hadn’t held on to that last small bit, my testimony would have had more credibility. I was caught, red-handed, as they say, with an ounce of what had once been pure flake. They exaggerated: it wasn’t an ounce—it was, at the most, a couple of grams. But it didn’t matter in the end, because they opened the plane’s luggage compartment and found two hundred kilos.

  I had no bargaining power. Tiny Cattle had disputed my story, turning on me and telling a whole different version to the Panamanian officials, so that by the time the combined forces of the DEA and DAS were called in, I didn’t stand a chance.

  Frenchy said my mistake was cornering a rat, that he had to do what he did in order to save himself. I see that now. All I could think of at the time was what would happen to Angel. A good mother wants what’s best for her kids, Rainy always says. At least Rainy knows her kids are in a better place than this one.

  The following is the scenario as told to the Panamanian authorities by Tiny Cattle. He had been hired to fly me to the States with a deceased infant. He’d been around a long time, and one of the reasons was that he knew better than to get mixed up in any drug dealings with Las Blancas. He signed a deposition saying I had planned to sell the drugs for personal gain when I got to Los Angeles.

  It isn’t written anywhere, but I know Tiny Cattle bribed the Panamanians, paid them to back up his story. Tiny Cattle turned state’s evidence in exchange for immunity.

  Frenchy said, “Don’t blame yourself. You got kidnapped; they got you doped up. They stole your baby, and they set you up.” I should have had Frenchy for a lawyer. Whatever else she might screw up, she wouldn’t assassinate my character.

  I was the missing link, the police maintained. Las Blancas had been under surveillance in what they called Operation Orchid, for five years. While they couldn’t touch Consuelo or the Black Widow as long as they stayed on Tranquilandia, they had her people in Panama and Los Angeles. And they had me.

  I was under arrest for murder. I tried to stay calm, even when a doctor came and told me to take off my clothes; I told him they had already found everything I had. Two soldiers helped him strip me and strap me to the bed. The doctor took my temperature, rectally, then conducted his oily rape. “There’s nothing in there,” he said. I could hear his irritation, his little eyes like slits in the birthmark covering his face. It seemed to me he kept his fingers inside me for much longer than was necessary, but when you’re arrested you lose all your rights—you’re banished from commerce with mankind.

  The doctor tested me for venereal disease. He asked when I had lost my virginity. If my feet hadn’t been restrained I would have kicked him. The soldiers snickered. I heard Angel saying, “You shouldn’t worry so much. Don’t start worrying until they start shooting, and even then you shouldn’t worry. Don’t start worrying until they hit you, because then they might catch you.”

  I had been caught. The doctor told me to get dressed, to wait. Then one of the DEA agents came back with the photographs.

  Before he led me out of that room, in leg-irons and with a chain wrapped around my body, the agent asked if I had any requests. I asked him to give back the picture of my baby, the one they’d taken from my shoe, and he did. This small act of kindness was more than I could bear. After they had restrained me, and jammed a needle in my arm, I sat quietly, between two Drug Enforcement Administration officers, on a U.S. military plane bound for Los Angeles and tried to sleep. Everything that could not be finished by weeping or enduring seemed to brush past me into the night, taking flight towards the next world that awaited me.

  chapter twenty-nine

  Death Clinic, Heaven Valley State Facility for Women

  Religion can be a significant influence in a person’s life, especially during imprisonment, when more time for thought and reflection is available.

  —Inmate Information Handbook

  There are no peoples, however primitive, without religion and magic; neither are there peoples so civilized that they are devoid of magic. All people turn to magic when knowledge, technology, and experience fail.

  — Bruno Malinowski

  If childhood is a time when we allow the creation of gods, adulthood is bound to be a disappointment. The damage is that in writing, you may recall what you’ve tried to erase, you dig up what you buried, then phhtt—a flying cockroach hits the bug-zapper—the moment you find out what it is you don’t want to know about yourself. Then it’s over. Your ringing, shining life.

  The photographs of Daisy and me in bed were exhibits for the prosecution, numbers 3 to 10. They had been found in the coffin, along with my journal, my pipe for smoking basuco and my X-acto blade. Even in court, the sight of the pipe and the blade made my mouth start to water.

  The photographs of the baby wearing the coke spoon I had around my neck when I was in bed with Daisy were exhibits for the prosecution, numbers 11 through 21. When I first saw them, I wasn’t prepared for the colour transparencies. Somehow I’d always pictured death as being in black and white, as if all the colour drained out of you along the way. Most of the pictures you see of dead bodies are in black and white, after all, as if there’s no point in wasting colour film when there isn’t a heartbeat. I’d even accepted that dead people’s blood was black.

  This time they’d spared no expense and used Kodachrome, so the blood looked real and the baby’s skin the colour of the cocaine paste I’d been holding under the light when the authorities came through the door.

  The American coroner testified that the baby had not died from natural causes. His chest had been split open and his heart removed. All his vital organs, in fact, were missing. The coroner said there was evidence the organs had been removed while the baby was still living.

  Some of the jurors got sick looking at those photographs. One, who was pregnant, started crying, and the judge let everybody go home for the rest of the day. Everyone except me.

  In the photographs, the baby is lying on a porcelain slab; I think that’s what affected me more than anything else. If I have had a moment in my life that mattered, it was the moment Angel was born, and I looked up and saw the wreath of crucifix orchids and the baby boots sprouting, from their heels, a pair of newborn wings.

  This morning I am served with a copy of the State Execution Guidelines (by Officer Gluckman, who else?). I sit in my house as she leans on my bars and complains about how she sometimes wonders if all the people who expect normal, productive, reasonable, cheerful, effective behaviour from her every day have ever gone through the kind of pain and anguish that she has over the past months because of her back.

  There is a moment, though, when she looks at me and I think she might possess some empathy. But the moment passes, and she asks if I want anything; I say, “A cup of hot tea would be appreciated,” and she goes away and comes back half an hour later with a lukewarm coffee.

  The State Execution Guidelines give me an idea of what I can look forward to. Next will come the reading of the death warrant. I’ll be moved to Death Watch and isolated from other Death Clinic inmates. With Rainy and Frenchy gone, I’m used to living alone.

  When Phase I of Death Watch begins, all my “personal items” will be taken away, including my wedding ring, which I’ve asked to be returned to Vernal. The only books I’ll be allowed are “religious tracts, maximum possession ten (10).” I’ll be given tobacco, though I don’t smoke, and couldn’t smoke even if I wanted to: the dance-hall has been designated a smoke-free environment, and their policy is one of zero tolerance. The state legislators have gone even further: they decided to air-condition the death chambers at Heaven Valley “to make it more comfortable for everyone.”

  Once Death Watch begins, all visits with “outsiders” will be “non-contact.” Legal visits may continue to be of the “contact” typ
e, up until one week before the execution, when Phase II of Death Watch begins. It won’t make any difference in my case. All my visits with Pile, Jr. have been non-contact, even when we’ve sat side by side sharing a soft drink in the visiting park. Non-contact in every sense—with Pile, Jr. being utterly beyond reach.

  With Phase II of Death Watch, whatever property you have left is taken from you, except for a few “comfort items”: “one (1) TV (located outside the cell), one (1) deck of cards, one (1) Bible.” Very specific day-by-day regulations go into effect as the countdown to D-Day begins, starting with “Execution Day Minus Five (5),” when your executioner, wearing a black hood over her head, comes to introduce herself. On “Execution Day Minus Four (4),” testing of the equipment to be used for the execution begins. This is the day, too, when you take an inventory of the property they have taken from you and make a list of who gets what. You also write down what you hope will be your funeral arrangements, and get measured for the clothes in which you will be executed.

  I have asked that my remains be sent home for burial. Vernal is supposed to be looking after this. He still can’t forget about Angel. “I would have looked after him, you know. You only had to ask.”

  Vernal says we need to talk about “practical matters,” like a last will and testament and where I’d like to be “put.” I tell him, “in the same place as Dad,” and that I don’t want Mum ordering anything like “Rest in Peace” for my headstone. I never was, and I never will be. At peace with anyone or anything. Except Angel.

  Another practicality is the dog. Brutus has been diagnosed with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. “It is difficult to watch your dog age,” Vernal writes, with a P.S. from Brutus to show me how far the disease has progressed. “I used to remember where I buried every bone, but now I can’t even remember how to bite.”

  He wanders aimlessly, sleeps more during the day and makes mistakes on the carpet, Vernal says. His pet-care provider recommends a new drug that is supposed to give old dogs a new lease on life, but there are side-effects.

  “I’d give him a choice between lethal injection and the firing-squad,” I write. But Vernal never sees the humour in anything I say.

  On “Execution Day Minus Three (3),” you get the day off. A guard will be posted to sit outside your cell to record, every fifteen minutes, what you are doing—probably as close as most of them will ever get to creative writing.

  On “Execution Day Minus Two (2),” the equipment is tested again, and there’s an execution-squad drill. If they really wanted to get your underwear in a knot, they’d make you sit in the Chair, or stand on the gallows, as a kind of dress rehearsal. I’m not going to suggest this to Officer Gluckman, though. She’d bring it up for discussion at the next guard meeting and wouldn’t even credit me with having thought of the idea.

  “Execution Day Minus One (1)” is the day the kitchen takes your last-meal order. Unless you are like Frenchy, who always got her order in early.

  Your last meal is served on a paper plate, and your only utensil is a plastic spoon. If you request a steak, the cook has to cut it into bite-sized bits for you, then reassemble it to look like a steak.

  I haven’t thought about what I will order, but I know it won’t be anything I have to chew. I don’t think I could lift the plastic spoon as far as my mouth either, so I won’t start with soup.

  The Aztecs called on priests to perform their sacrifices, and each one sat disguised as a god. Chanters came forward and began to dance with the prisoners and encourage them to sing.

  The only ones dancing and chanting around here are the death-penalty proponents who wait outside the prison gates with their placards, cheering and hooting when the power dims or they catch a whiff of the deadly gas spewing from a T-shaped exhaust pipe high atop the dancehall.

  Inside the prison no one is celebrating. Sometime around midnight you are allowed a one-hour contact visit with a clergy person, if you want one. At four in the morning you are served your last meal, and no later than 5:30 a.m. the official witnesses to the execution, thirteen in number, meet at the prison gate and push their way to the front of the mob. If you are the person being executed, you are allowed to designate the thirteenth witness (in Frenchy’s case it was Rainy, but Rainy didn’t ask me—she said she wouldn’t even ask Jesus to get out of bed for her at that ungodly hour). I miss Rainy more than I had thought I would. I miss her Rainyisms—the dead if you dos, dead if you don’ts; the whoopee fucking dings. I almost miss her interrupting me all the time with her dumb but honest questions.

  The twelve witness seats are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. As I’ve already said, they have no trouble filling the seats; people would pay to watch if there were standing-room-only, but fire regulations don’t allow it.

  At 6 a.m. the media witnesses arrive, also thirteen in number, and everyone is escorted to the Witness Viewing Park, where they are seated. Your execution team assembles in the death chamber. Somewhere behind this scene you are allowed to shower, change into your last new clothes. The superintendent reads your death warrant to you one final time. Only the prison chaplain will be allowed to accompany you as far as the death chamber.

  The Aztecs led their victims, one by one, to the sacrificial stone. Each was given a drink of divine wine and shown how to defend himself. Some preferred to throw themselves on the altar and get it over with, some tried to fight; but it was all the same in the end. The heart was torn out, held up, offered to the sun, then sealed in a jar.

  The state never shows much interest in the bodies of executed criminals. As soon as you are pronounced dead, you are taken to a waiting ambulance and transported to a medical examiner’s office. An autopsy is performed, as if there can be any doubt about what killed you! I once read an interview with a coroner who said that even in death, no two bodies are alike, none is unremarkable. Sometimes in suicides you find advanced liver cancer, impending appendicitis, right-sided hearts; in the bodies of women who have been executed you might find a heart with a hole in it, as if an average-sized fist had slammed right through her body and out the other side.

  Your remains are returned to your family, if your family will accept you. A mortician will prepare your body so you look natural, covering the cyanide rash on your leg with make-up, forcing your tongue back into your mouth. If no one claims your body, you’ll be sent out for cremation. Then you’re brought back to prison in a jar.

  Rainy followed Frenchy to the Hill—you get a view of it from the chow-hall window—which is where they bury the ashes of all unclaimed Death Clinic inmates. She got a Styrofoam urn, and her inmate number on a slab of white-painted wood. The dead in prison don’t even get their names back.

  For most women, it’s a pretty sad way to end up. I mean, each of those women was somebody’s baby once. A mother, like me, nursed each one and loved her—even if it was just for a little while.

  ——

  Having looked at it from both sides, I have come to believe that the death penalty is another symptom of the confusion in our society. Capital punishment does no more to deter crime than the Aztec human sacrifices did to keep the sun burning in the sky. Capital punishment, in our present-day state, could be described as an institutionalized “spiritual” response to a problem in modern life when our knowledge and technology fails. The right-wing religious groups like this magical solution. Their advocacy of capital punishment is a symptom of their own disease, their need to focus their hatred on those among us in society who are already most diminished.

  The criminal has become the enemy, the only person left to hate now that we are expected to love our neighbour, no matter what his race, religion or sexual persuasion. The criminal is the Jew being chugged away to Auschwitz, the nigger on the chain gang, the queer in the closet, the spic, the wop, the wog; the criminal is a stranger, a monster, Female Evil incarnate. Through our hatred, criminals become something much bigger, more frightening, than what they really are. Men. Women. Like me. Like you.

&nb
sp; I’ve seen enough here to know that nothing is certain, certainly not death, but I can’t say I was prepared for Pile, Jr.’s latest letter.

  “Do you think you are a good risk to be let back into society?” my classification officer asks.

  A good risk? Well, I tell her, I won’t invade Kosovo.

  She says this isn’t the answer she is hoping for. What am I supposed to say?

  Pile, Jr.’s letter explained that as a result of the Women’s Empowerment Coalition’s latest efforts, I have won a new hearing. The coalition received an affidavit from a woman in Tranquilandia, casting a new light on the prosecution’s version of the events in my case. And because of the passage of time and the difficulty of reassembling witnesses and evidence, the state might be willing to make a deal. The result would be a sentence under which I would be eligible for parole. If I accept the deal, Pile, Jr. said, I would be the first woman in history ever to become eligible for parole from a life sentence while still being held under a sentence of death.

  A hearing would mean going through the whole process all over again. Many woman have had their sentences commuted or reduced by the Supreme Court who seem eager, these days, to overturn a death verdict; Pile seems to think I’ve got a real chance at Life.

  I recalled Daisy’s warning: she was Colombian—she’d always know where to find me. She wrote to me also, in her best King’s English, saying she was married now, had two healthy boys of her own and worked at Hacienda la Florida as a drug-rehabilitation counsellor. The hacienda had been raided again not long after I left, she said, and was now (she drew a happy face) under new management. “There is no one left from the old days, except I.”

  No word of the Black Widow. Or Consuelo. Nothing about my boy. Daisy, though, had finally come to accept the truth about how her first son, Alias, had died.

  Inside the card was a pressed butterfly. “The dead one can tell no stories,” she wrote. “But for my son’s sake, for Angel’s, it is time I tell yours.”