Just Mercy: A Novel (8 page)

“I tried, sweetheart,” she whispered as she brushed her lips over the picture. “I tried.”

Sometimes, when she talked to Veronica like this, she believed she actually heard her daughter talking back to her. But now she wondered if it was only her imagination. Had Veronica really told her Raelynn Blackwell was being truthful that day or had Bernadette simply wanted to believe it so bad that she had imagined hearing Veronica’s voice? And if the latter was true, did that mean she had betrayed her daughter by going on to tell Raelynn Blackwell so much about her?

***

It was near the end of their time together that afternoon, and Bernadette held Veronica’s picture up to the window for Raelynn Blackwell to see one more time.

“I want you to know who you murdered,” she said. “I mean, really
know
her. Look at how pretty she was. Look at that brilliant smile. You snuffed that out and don’t even remember doing it.”

Bernadette’s pulse was racing as she continued.

“Do you know what she was doing the night you killed her? She was on her way home from helping a friend with her homework. She started out tutoring Natalie as part of a service project, and the two of them became good friends. She took the bus to the east side of Austin all the time to see Natalie. She was getting ready to go to her first prom. She would have been the prettiest girl there. That’s the hardest thing to think about: everything she missed, everything she never got to experience.”

She stopped to catch her breath and saw that Raelynn Blackwell was trembling so hard the table shook and that her eyes were so puffy they were almost closed. But the memories rushing through Bernadette made it impossible for her to stop even if she’d wanted to.

“She always gave people the benefit of the doubt. Like in middle school when this one girl called her a nasty name. Veronica said the girl must be unhappy or she wouldn’t try to make others unhappy. She wondered if the girl’s father beat her or if her mother yelled at her too much, or if maybe she felt ugly. Annamaria told her she should be nasty right back, but Veronica said that would make the girl even more miserable. My baby girl didn’t have it in her to be mean to anyone. She had the biggest heart of anyone I know. Just think about all the good she could have done if she had lived.”

Bernadette blew her breath out through her mouth. Raelynn Blackwell was squeezing the chain that held the silver cross around her neck so tightly that it made her veins pop out. Her suffering evoked pity in Bernadette, the way a friend’s pain does. She removed the picture of Veronica from the Plexiglas and laid it on the table.

“It wasn’t personal,” she whispered. “You didn’t mean to kill her.”

“No. But I did.” Raelynn Blackwell’s voice shook, but her resolve was unmistakable. She wiped her face with the upper part of each arm in turn.

“Veronica never did any drugs or alcohol,” Bernadette said with a sigh.

“I wish I never done any.”

“When did you start?”

“I’m guessing I were about five.”

“Good lord.” Bernadette shook her head.

“It were my job to clean up after Ma’s parties. There was always butts in the ashtrays and booze left in the glasses. Pills, too, sometimes.”

“Your mother didn’t know?”

Raelynn shrugged. “She gave me junk herself.” Then she frowned and looked into Bernadette’s eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Baker. None of that don’t excuse me for what I did.”

“I’m not saying Veronica was perfect. But she knew there were consequences for her behavior. So did Annamaria and Fin. I can’t count the number of times I had to ground one of them or take away their privileges.”

“That’s what good mothers are s’posed to do,” Raelynn said, “I wish…” She brought her hands up and covered her mouth as if holding back forbidden words.

Bernadette bit her bottom lip. Regis smiled at her. He looked satisfied. She heard the ticking of the clock on the wall and looked up at it, wondering where the time had gone.

“I know I should forgive you,” she said.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“It’s not about what you deserve or don’t deserve. It’s about what I need.”

***

Still sitting on the edge of the bed, Bernadette rolled her shoulders and then stretched her arms above her head. When she had left Gatesville that day, she was convinced that things would never be the same again, that she had forgiven Raelynn Blackwell. But had she really? Right now, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about anything.

“Is it even possible,” she said aloud, “when someone does something so brutal, so cruel? Is it even possible?”

“Who are you talking to?” It was Marty, coming into the room with a tray of food.

“Just thinking out loud.”

He put the tray down on the bed and rested his hand on her forehead as if checking for a fever.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Breakfast time for you. Dinnertime for the rest of the world.”

The smell of scrambled eggs and two pieces of buttered whole-wheat toast made her realize how famished she was. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything.

“Freshly brewed,” Marty said as he handed her a pottery mug shaped like a troll, her favorite, the one he bought her when they were first married. She cupped it in both hands, ran her fingers over the rough texture of the troll’s silly face on one side and its behind on the other. She ran her tongue over its rim before taking a sip of coffee.

“You had me worried, Bernie.”

“I was terrible to Fin,” she said.

“He understands. Eat. Before it gets cold.”

The eggs, tasting of goat cheese and fresh ground pepper, melted in her mouth. Smile lines crept across Marty’s face, and his shoulders relaxed a bit as he watched her take a bite of toast and a gulp of coffee.

“I keep going over it all in my head. Was it a sham, Marty? The way Raelynn Blackwell cried? Was all that an act? Wouldn’t Regis have known if it was?”

“Do you still think she knew what the governor was going to do?”

“What else would make her smile in the face of death like that? You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“Let’s just say it isn’t like you.” Marty smiled as he picked up the newspaper from the tray. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “It’s on the front page.”

She read the article in silence, stopping every once in a while to shake her head. When she was finished, she laid the newspaper down on her lap.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why didn’t Raelynn Blackwell tell me her lawyer sent a letter to the governor? Why would she keep that from me?”

TWELVE

It had only been a few days since the governor postponed the execution. Marty had warned Bernadette that it might be too soon, that she might not be ready just yet, but she couldn’t wait. She had to find out. From the passenger seat, she stared out the window and imagined herself dancing among the wild mustard and bluebonnets; soaring with a flock of indigenous scissortails over the scrub oaks, mesquites, and cottonwoods; and possessing both the toughness of the ubiquitous cactus and the composure of the grazing cows that peppered the rolling Texas hills. But as soon as the low red-brick buildings and guard towers of the Gatesville prison compound came into view, the sinister six-stranded barbed wire on its double chain-link fences overwhelmed both nature’s beauty and her imaginary courage. They were here. Ready or not, she had to do this.

“Don’t worry,” Regis said, reading her mind as usual. “No way I was going to let you do this alone.”

She smiled at him. She thought she had been prepared to come without him, but now that they were here, she couldn’t imagine confronting Raelynn Blackwell again without Regis by her side. The rules didn’t allow it anyway; that had been made very clear to her.

“Did anyone from the trauma team call you?” he asked. “Amy Whitehall, maybe?”

“I don’t know why she would.”

“They want to make sure witnesses don’t experience any problems after an execution—any physical or mental reactions.”

“But there wasn’t an execution, was there?” Her face burned with guilt and not a little embarrassment for snapping at him again. Even though she’d apologized several times, she still felt bad about how she’d treated him the night everything fell apart.

“You’ve had a lot to absorb in such a short period of time.” He smiled his forgiveness. Then he paused and, keeping his eyes on the road, asked, “You sure about this meeting?”

“I need to know why she didn’t tell me about that letter.”

“What if she didn’t know about it?”

“Impossible.”

“What would it mean to you,” he asked, “whether she did or didn’t know?”

She repositioned herself on the seat. Her cotton dress was twisted into a knot under her, the edge of it stuck in a tear in the plastic seat cover. She yanked it loose. The first time Regis had asked her that question, she’d responded without hesitation, said that she was prepared to deal with Raelynn Blackwell’s answer, whatever it was. Such bravado. The truth that she’d kept not only from him but also from herself was that she wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure about anything except her need to know. So what if Raelynn Blackwell said she didn’t know about the letter? Would Bernadette believe her? She didn’t know that, either. Her stomach did a flip-flop—a warning that she might not be ready for this confrontation after all, that maybe she should have taken Marty’s advice and waited a few more days.

At the red brick Texas Department of Criminal Justice sign, Regis turned left onto the asphalt road leading into the compound. In the adjacent field, a line of white-clad women marched in single file under the watchful guard of several gray-uniformed men on horseback. The threatening way the guards fingered their rifles made beads of sweat break through the surface of Bernadette’s skin—on first her forehead, then her arms, and then the small of her back.

A burning sensation worked its way up her nostrils and down her throat when she saw that the temperature gauge duct-taped to the cracked dashboard of Regis’s ancient Toyota registered over one hundred brutal degrees. She grabbed her trusty battery-powered spray water bottle and misted her face, then held the bottle up to Regis. He shook his head. She misted her face again.

“There’s no shade out there,” she said. “Even farmers provide shelter for their animals on days like this.”

Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, Bernadette recognized the old dilemma for what it was. She sighed. It was a familiar conflict, her struggle between believing there should be consequences for bad behavior and the difficulty of determining what the appropriate punishment should be. She thought about all the times she had reduced her kids’ timeouts or the number of days they were grounded. Following her heart is what Marty called it. Annamaria called it leading with her chin. And now it seemed she was in the same weightless position again, supporting Raelynn Blackwell’s execution while simultaneously troubled by it.

“We can come back next week,” Regis said.

“No. I have my questions ready.”

“But are you ready for the answers?”

THIRTEEN

The visiting room was hot, the air stuffy. Bernadette pressed her hand down on the family photo album that she’d brought along and willed her racing heart into submission. Raelynn Blackwell was on the other side of the Plexiglas divider, her sagging shoulders swallowed up in the starkness of her white prison uniform. Her hands, fingernails chewed down to the quick, rested on the table, almost touching the wire mesh at the bottom of the window. With each hammer-like tick of the big round clock on the wall, she seemed to wince, which made her look worried. Or maybe she was scared.

Regis handed Bernadette a glass of ice water. When she saw a drop of sweat making its way down the side of Raelynn Blackwell’s elfin nose, she pushed the glass toward the window, only to be stopped by the wire mesh. Why did she do that? What was she thinking anyway? No one was allowed to pass anything to prisoners on the other side. There were no exceptions. That was the deal. That’s what Raelynn Blackwell wanted. Bernadette pushed the glass off to the side.

“Both of you know,” Regis said, “but just to remind you, we’ll follow the same process and rules as before. Do either of you have any questions?”

Neither of them did.

“Whenever you’re ready, then.” He nodded at Bernadette.

She wiped her sweaty hands on her skirt. She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths, letting each one out as slowly as she could. And when she opened her eyes, the scared rabbit eyes of Raelynn Blackwell told her everything she needed to know. The woman knew the jig was up.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bernadette asked.

“What?”

“About the letter. You know, the letter?”

“I didn’t know about it, Mrs. Baker.”

“You smiled.”

“I didn’t know. Honest.”

“You
smiled
.”

“I was glad you was there. I wanted you to know it was okay.”

“Your attorney told you he wrote that letter.”

“No. Mr. Pearl never did tell me.”

“My daughter is a lawyer, and she says lawyers tell their clients everything.”

“But Mr. Pearl didn’t. Swear to God. He didn’t want me to get my hopes up and then be all disappointed.”

Bernadette’s face flushed. So there it was. Raelynn Blackwell wanted to live. And if she wanted to live, how could she have smiled in the face of death the way she had? It wasn’t possible to want to live and still be at peace with dying.

“You said you deserved to die,” Bernadette said.

“I do deserve to die.”

“But you don’t
want
to, do you?”

Raelynn Blackwell’s eyes shifted to the side, then flashed toward Regis. In spite of the room’s harsh artificial light and Raelynn Blackwell’s obvious panic, Bernadette could see there was a natural beauty to the woman, and with her hair down instead of pulled back in a ponytail, her face looked softer than before. There was something about her—the way her feathery blonde curls grazed her pink cheeks; the innocent way she tilted her head and arched her eyebrow.

“It would of messed me up to know. Mr. Pearl was right about that.”

Bernadette squirmed in her chair, and its metal legs squealed in protest. She fidgeted with a piece of invisible dust on the photo album. Then she clenched her fists; opened her hands, palms up, on the table; clenched her fists again. Could it be that Raelynn Blackwell was telling the truth about the letter?

“If you did know, would you have told me?”

“Jesus tells us always to say the truth.” Raelynn Blackwell fingered the silver cross hanging from her neck. There were tears in her eyes. “Are you mad at me?”

“I would be mad if you knew and didn’t tell me.”

“Nobody told me nothing. Honest. I know I don’t deserve for you to believe me.”

The sound of her voice, so childlike and innocent, broke straight through to Bernadette’s heart. She reached for the glass of water, took a sip. Sat back in her chair with a sigh.

“Fin wondered what it must have been like,” she said after a few minutes of silence.

“What?”

“To come so close to dying.”

“Jesus was holding my hand.”

Bernadette frowned, sat up straight. “Does Jesus want you to live?”

“I can’t pretend to know his ways.”

At that, Bernadette’s body went rigid. “Does Jesus think you deserve to die for what you did?” she asked.

“I
do
deserve to die for what I done.”

“Then why file so many appeals?”

“I’m done with them. I weren’t lying to you about that, Mrs. Baker, honest. I never asked to
ever
get out of here.
Never
. Just for some time to try to make up for what I done. Some of them in here are pretty messed up. Some had it worse than me coming up.”

When Raelynn Blackwell’s voice trailed off, Bernadette wondered if she was aware that no matter how many good works she performed, it would never make up for what she did.

“You don’t want to die,” Bernadette said again, this time in a whisper.

“It don’t matter what I want. Whatever happens is Jesus’s will. ”

Bernadette tightened her jaw. “Was it Jesus’s will for you to murder Veronica?” she asked. “Was it his will for you to pump your body with so much junk that you didn’t even know what you were doing?”

Agonizing minutes passed as Bernadette tried to calm herself. It didn’t matter if she thought Raelynn Blackwell’s faith was childish and illogical.
What mattered was whether her remorse was real—whether it came from the core of her, from a place as deep inside as her faith.

“You say you’re sorry,” she said, “but you don’t know what it did to us.”

“I can’t pretend to know what it was like, Mrs. Baker.”

“What it
is
like. Don’t even think it’s over. Annamaria is consumed with rage. And my granddaughter, Patty—she’s the same age Veronica was when you killed her—has to live under that cloud every day. Fin keeps trying to make up for Veronica’s death. He thought what you did was his fault. Can you imagine?
His
fault? He still blames himself, deep down. I can tell. And Veronica’s friend, Natalie, the poor girl she was helping the night you killed her? She’ll never stop blaming herself for making Veronica miss that bus.”

Raelynn Blackwell’s hands covered her mouth, muffling her voice so much that it was impossible for Bernadette to tell what she was saying, if she was saying anything at all.

“I brought pictures.” Bernadette opened the photo album and propped it up so that it was facing the Plexiglas window. “This was at Disneyland. Veronica was ten. That’s her father with his arm around her. He doesn’t look like this anymore. When you killed Veronica, you sucked the life out of him.”

She turned the page and pointed to another picture. “This was our last Thanksgiving together. No one smiles like that anymore. See how relaxed I look here? I used to love the mess of the holidays. The dirty dishes, the leftovers, the chaos. But you killed that. You about killed me, too. I was out of my mind for a while. All I could do was clean and clean and clean. I couldn’t help myself. I still don’t do any of the things I used to do, except shop for food and cook. We still have dinner together every Friday, but it’s not the same without Veronica. It never will be. See the smiling faces in this picture? Look at this one, too. And that one. Those faces don’t exist anymore. Do you understand? Those happy faces are gone. My family is being eaten alive by grief, and you want to know what I do?”

She stopped, out of breath. Regis handed her a wad of Kleenex. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I pick up,” she said with a sigh, “that’s what I do. I pick up.”

Bernadette thought about how just this morning she’d kept Regis waiting because she couldn’t leave the house until she picked up Marty’s empty coffee cup from the table next to his recliner by the fireplace, put his philosophy journal in the magazine rack, fluffed up the pillows on the leather couch and put them in color-coded order, straightened the slightly askew candle on the dining room table. Then she’d had to check one more time to be sure everything was in its place. Just thinking about it was exhausting.

“I want my life back,” she said. “I want myself back. I want my family back. Don’t you see? It’s about more than what you did to Veronica. It’s what you’re doing to us. Every day.”

Raelynn Blackwell’s face was a blotchy red, twisted beyond recognition, as if the words she was hearing were cutting so deep that they threatened her very existence.

“Guard,” Bernadette called out to the man standing by the door on the other side of the window, “please get her some Kleenex.”

The round-faced guard jumped, then nodded and stepped forward. He slipped his hand into the front pocket of his gray uniform slacks, pulled out a clean, pressed handkerchief, and placed it in Raelynn Blackwell’s cuffed hands. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and, with an apologetic look, handed the soiled handkerchief back to him with a whispered “thank you.” The guard stepped back to his place by the door and resumed his stoic position.

“I won’t never stop being sorry for what I done to you and your family,” Raelynn Blackwell said. “Even when I’m dead, I won’t stop.” Her voice was hoarse.

Bernadette sighed, let out her breath. She believed her.

“I know I can’t never make it right, Mrs. Baker.”

During the silence that followed, Bernadette felt her heart stop as she went into a place deep inside that, while devoid of any hope that she could change the past, contained profound hope for the future.

“I forgive you, Raelynn Blackwell,” she said.

A high-pitched gasp, almost a scream, came from the other side of the window as Raelynn Blackwell’s face fell onto the table. Bernadette pushed against the Plexiglas with her hands. She looked to Regis for help and saw that he was struggling to hold back tears. The guard shuffled his feet and stared down at the floor with wetness on his cheeks, and Bernadette felt his tenderness merge with her own.

After what seemed like a very long time, Raelynn Blackwell, choking on a sob, lifted her head. “I wish you was my ma,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not my place to say that.”

“I’m sorry about your mother,” Bernadette said.

“If you can forgive me, maybe I can forgive her, too.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Raelynn Blackwell shook her head and bit her lip. “The welfare split us all up when I was eleven,” she said. “Timmy was six and Anthony was five. My sister Jenny, poor baby, she was just three. I never seen any of them again after that.”

“There were four of you.”

“Five, counting my baby brother. I never did know him. Never seen him. One day Ma went to the hospital pregnant, and when she got home she weren’t pregnant no more. I asked where was the baby, and she said to forget about any baby. I never knowed what happened. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he died. I never even knowed his name. It was all my fault.”

“Your fault?”

“It was me that told. I was scared Ma would do to Jenny and maybe even my brothers what she done to me. I didn’t know what else to do. But I never should have called the police. That’s when the welfare came.”

“What about your father?”

“There was as many daddies as there was us, but we didn’t know none of them. It was just us and Ma. And most of the time she was drunk or asleep or gone.”

“How did you manage?”

Splotches of pink sprang up on Raelynn Blackwell’s neck and spread up to her cheeks. “I ain’t proud of what I done sometimes,” she said. “I never was right in the head. Ma said it was because I was born with the cord tight around my neck. I tried to be good. In school I stuck up for the little kids when they were being bullied, and when I got teased about being slow at learning I didn’t even fight back. But it don’t matter. I think Ma was right, I was just born wrong.”

“No one is born wrong.” Bernadette ached to reach across the table and hold Raelynn’s hands in hers.

“I just hope they was all adopted. My baby brother, too.”

“You don’t know what happened to them.”

Raelynn shook her head. “It would be selfish of me to stir things up for them now. I just pray everything turned out good for them.”

Tears stung Bernadette’s eyes. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to care for her brothers and sisters, like she did after her own mother died, and then have them snatched away, never to be seen again. Regis had already told her what happened to Raelynn after protective services intervened—how she escaped the sexual abuse of her mother’s boyfriends only to be sexually abused by the father in one foster home and the teenage son in another, how she kept running away, trying to find her siblings, until she finally gave up and escaped into alcohol and drugs, somehow managing to avoid the juvenile justice system, probably because no one cared enough to look for her—but the reality of it hadn’t hit her until now.

“What about your mother?”

“I asked Jesus, if he wants me to see her before I die, to bring her to me.”

Raelynn Blackwell was a woman of faith, all right—in spite of a lifetime of evidence that would have convinced anyone else that a God of any kind had abandoned her. Bernadette, who had never seen such faith before, found herself in awe of it.

“I’m sure he will,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m sure he will.”