Extrait
Editor’s Note
Though this story is true, some names have been changed. Otherwise there have been few alterations.
The writer intended both the Spanish and her translations into English to be included in the text, but in most cases the Spanish has been dropped for the sake of expediency. A few words and phrases and colloquialisms have been retained for flavour, and she would like to thank Paul Oscar Nelson for his input. Also Gustavo Gomez, for his fine-tuning. It is the writer’s wish that her name appear nowhere in the book.
Part One / Valentine’s Day in Jail
Stop and imagine for an instant a world where someone is grateful for something.
–Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Chapter One
Death Clinic, Heaven Valley State Facility for Women
If you are a new inmate only recently sentenced by the courts, this will probably be an entirely new experience for you. –Inmate Information Handbook
When you find yourself listening to their keys and owning none, you will come close to understanding the white terror of the soul that comes with being banished from all commerce with mankind. –Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides
When a reporter asked Rainy to compare being given the death sentence to being hit by a train, she said, “The train was quicker, the train was softer.”
I’ve lived next door to Rainy for ten years, on the Condemned Row. They call it the Death Clinic–as if it’s a place you go to get treatment for a terminal disease. You can’t cure death, but while you wait for it, they make life impossible.
In many cases death-row inmates are not allowed to write anything longer than a one-page letter, double-spaced. That they permit me to write this story is not a right, they remind me every chance they get, it’s a privilege. If I write gossip, to spread rumours that might end up embarrassing the staff, this privilege will be revoked. So I do as I am told, and “confine all writings to inside the lines.” If you ignore the lines, you are considered “out of bounds without authorization and subject to disciplinary action.”
When I write the word lines, I think of cocaine. My care and treatment counsellor, Mrs. Dykstra, would say the word lines is a trigger, a connection to my former “drug-seeking ways.” Not to mention connection.
La Reina de la Cocaína is what they called me in the papers after my arrest: the Cocaine Queen. They gave me other names, too. La Madre Sin Corazón. The Mother without a Heart. When I told one reporter I wished I’d been called Oriana Fallachi, a name that sounds like you’re having sex without doing it, he said he could understand why a woman like me would want to change her identity.
Rainy says I shouldn’t take it personally, what they say about me in the press. They always end up bad-mouthing mothers who kill their kids.
***
Frenchy, my only other neighbour at the moment, is suing the railway. When the train passes the prison at 2:16 every afternoon, it whistles and wakes her up.
Rainy says, what does she expect? She sleeps all day.
Every day is a gift, I say. Who can blame her for not wanting to get out of bed?
***
Each Christmas Eve we are issued a new calendar so we can start X-ing off the days – until next Christmas or our date certain, whichever comes first. But aside from the barbed-wire sculpture meant to symbolize a Christmas tree in one corner of the chow hall, and the matron who has a “negativity scene”–what Rainy calls it–on her desk, Christmas is like any other day on the Condemned Row. The Salvation Army used to donate a poinsettia for our common room, until one year a girl made a salad out of the leaves.
This morning in the shower, Rainy started singing, “Deck the halls with marijuana, fa-la-la-la-la-la la la la.” She would have gone on, but Frenchy, who doesn’t have the Christmas spirit, told her to shut up. The rule here is that if someone asks you to shut up, you shut up. Because they’re not asking for a debate, and they’re not asking again.
Rainy says she and Frenchy are the two best friends I could “hope to never have.” She also insists that if anyone reads this book, they will want to know what my best friends look like; she doesn’t understand when I tell her I don’t care about appearances. Rainy’s expressions, actions and thoughts count for more in this story than the fact that she is so thin her elbows and knees look like they’re going to slice through her clothing, or that her eyes are empty because she’s cried all the colour away, or that she has no chest at all and a mouth that turns down from the way things have gone.
Despite the freight of anger she carries, Rainy seems so frail it is hard to imagine her giving birth to anything heavier than tears. Rainy gave birth to twins, and six months later left them on the railway tracks. She claims it prejudiced the jury. If she’d smothered them or driven them off a pier, it would have been more socially acceptable. She might have been able to cut a deal, had her sentence commuted to life. She could have gone on “Oprah” and become a celebrity, maybe even a role model for women who are child-free by choice.
The train was quicker, the train was softer. But abandoning your kids on the tracks wasn’t in fashion. She wishes now she’d gone out drinking for the evening instead, but she didn’t have enough money to hire a babysitter and pay for the beer.
I can hear Rainy singing, under her breath as she leaves the shower room, “’Tis the season to be jolly.” In prison, time does not progress, it goes round and round in a spiral of endless pain. I want to say, Rainy, there are no seasons in prison–only time.
***
Frenchy has a little peacock-like crest of hair shooting from the white bandanna she says she wears “to keep my brains wrapped up in.” There’s a male heaviness about her face: her broad nose, brown eyes, a mouth made for smiling and for grief. Her most distinguishing feature, though, is the white, heart-shaped mark, shining like a beauty spot in reverse, on her cheek. Frenchy calls it her “ugly spot.”
Frenchy’s here because she killed her sixteen-year-old son. “The two of us was just fooling around, you know. Robbing a bank. I’ve made a few mistakes in life I probably shouldn’t have made. And we was doing more drinking than we probably should have, considering we was both on probation. And I was high at the time. So I think I might have overpanicked when those alarms went off, but I don’t recall shooting anyone on purpose.
“We got away from the bank, even though he couldn’t run fast and had to drop most of the money and got blood all over the rest. I was pretty hot about that. I left him by the river, thinking I could go back and find a doctor when things cooled off. The whole town was looking for us, so I stayed at Laverne’s getting high for a week. When Laverne and me went back for him, some animals had eaten on him and there was bugs everywhere, and Laverne shot his teeth out. She told me she done it so that his dental records couldn’t be used against me. That’s what I loved best about Laverne–you could count on her to take care of the details.
“The shooting his mouth part, that made it look bad, but I kept my own mouth shut and never gave up Laverne to the cops, even though I could have got a deal if I did.” Frenchy’s got a few good qualities like that–loyalty. And hindsight. She sees now she made some bad choices, but Frenchy didn’t have a lot of positive influences when she was growing up. She still likes to shock people by telling them, “I was so young when I started sucking cocks, I had to be burped afterwards.”
Her father was “good part Cajun, mostly bad part black”; her mother, who gave birth to her in a mental institution, Crow–you can see it in Frenchy’s bones. She’s got one finger missing–she gave the finger to her father when he boxed her one time; sliced it off right in front of him. Frenchy has no regrets. Nine fingers, she says, gets you a discount at the manicurist’s.
After Laverne shot her boy’s teeth out, Frenchy told me they went on a road trip, stealing a Grand Prix, refuelling with hot credit cards. Laverne made one more mistake, Frenchy said, when she paid for a Diet Coke with a gold American Express card at a Holiday Inn. Then when the card came up invalid, she pretended she didn’t speak English and left Frenchy holding the bag. When she went to trial, Frenchy asked Laverne for a character reference, “because Laverne, whatever else she might screw up, wouldn’t screw up my character.”
****
I found one book in the library that says there are five ways to die, all of them painful. Even when you die in your sleep, it hurts. Those five painful ways don’t include the choices I’ve been presented with under the state’s new pro-choice with a twist policy. Pro-choice means the freedom to choose which form of capital punishment is best suited to your personality–lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair, hanging or the firing-squad. If you can’t make up your own mind, they choose for you. “Dead if you do, dead if you don’t,” says Rainy.
Unlike those whom society invests with authority, most people who live on the Row have learned that killing people is wrong. When I write that the death penalty is an unambiguous disgrace to civilized humanity, I suppose there are people who say that’s because I have an axe to grind. I do, and it’s blunt from being ground down over the ten years I’ve lived waiting to die in prison.
Another book I read says the key to understanding capital punishment is to be found in its ritual element. Many cultures have made ritual sacrifices–the Aztecs, for instance, spread their victim on a stone altar, cut open his chest with an obsidian blade, then ripped his heart out. State-sanctioned murder should be, in theory, no more curious than that.
Rainy has come with me to the library to see what I do with myself all day. When I describe how poor Aztec children were sold to priests by their parents, who couldn’t afford to keep them, she wants to know if those children got their hearts torn out, too. Not unless the priests wanted it to rain, I say; they believed the rain god favoured little children’s tears. Rainy says those kids were lucky if getting sacrificed was the worst thing that ever happened to them in their lives.
Rainy never learned to read or write; she thinks a sentence is something you have to serve. She’s never been in a library before, and didn’t know God had created that many books. The one book she recognizes is the Bible. I tell her parts of it were written in prison, and that capital punishment, like feeling guilty about having sex, has all its roots in religion.
Rainy thinks about this, then says she hasn’t had sex for so long she is afraid her parts have healed shut, like a pierced ear you don’t wear a post in.
I sign out The Rituals of Human Sacrifice to save Frenchy the trouble of stealing it for me. Frenchy prides herself on her ability to steal, but where books are concerned, I’ve had to tone her down.
When we were back in the general population, I caught her tearing the last page out of a mystery I’d been on the waiting list to read. She claimed to have “edited” hundreds of books this way; if she was going to die, she said, she wanted to make sure those left behind would remember her. I said I’d pay her a bale of tobacco for every book she could steal for me that came with an ending. Before long I had to put a limit on the number. It was easier for Frenchy to pinch books than it was for me to find places to hide them, and soon I was paying her to steal books back to the library.
***
When I told my mother I was writing a book, she begged me to write it under a pseudonym. I’ve never heard of a person writing her memoirs under an alias; if anyone reading this wonders why I’ve left my name out of this story, one reason is to make my mother proud of me. When I asked her not to visit me here, I think she was relieved. She toured a dungeon once, in the Azores, and found it “stuffy.”
I write to her once a week, but I’m careful about what I say. She’d only worry if she knew I lay awake at night thinking up ways to short-circuit the electric chair, or calculating how long I’d be able to hold my breath in the gas chamber.
In her most recent letter, she told me she was going to the Caribbean, “to some island where they speak English, I hope.” She will be wearing the watch passed down from her great-great-grandmother, with its diamonds and sapphires “worth more than my house.” She wears it because she’s afraid she’ll lose it otherwise. There’s logic.
If anything happens to her, and she doesn’t make it back in one piece, she says, I should be sure to file a claim. I don’t remind her where I live, or that I won’t be able to spend her insurance money where I’m going, but I do warn her that if she flaunts the watch, some cracked-out desperado might hack off her whole arm with a rusty machete. That might not be such a bad thing. A lost arm would provide her with a permanent conversation piece now that my father is gone, or, at the very least, give her something new to talk about besides the unreliable lamp in her life.
Last night I dreamed I buried my face in my father’s nut-brown jacket, reaching for the smell of him in the old corduroy. I could smell his pipe tobacco, the kind I used to catch a whiff of on the street, like sugared leather dipped in wildflower honey mixed with dust. My mother still keeps his jacket over the back of his chair, as if she expects him to walk in from the garden with a handful of the Chinese tea roses he bred. In my dream, the roses smelled like tea leaves when you bruise them.
***
When I first came to the Row, they made me sign forms saying that in the event of death or injury sustained during my incarceration, I would not hold the institution responsible. I can’t say they haven’t been taking care of me.
When they escort me to the chow hall, they attach a trip chain to my leg shackles so the guard behind me, holding the chain, can pull my feet out from under me if I make a break for it and try to vault the seventeen-foot-high fence of electrified wire–assuming I make it through all six electronically controlled doors and across six hundred feet of open yard first. My wrists are handcuffed too, although they undo the cuffs to let me eat. Then they just watch me extra hard.
I have been classified as an escape risk, among other things. It doesn’t take them long to classify you. They read your file, look you over, ask your age, race and religion, and then write down whatever Representation of Female Evil they figure you most closely represent.
a) Cold Calculators: Women who ruthlessly kill their husband(s) or loved one(s) for financial gain.
b) Black Widows: Serial murderers of husbands, male lovers and next of kin. Some killings seemingly have no motive. Most common modus operandi is poisoning.
c) Depraved Partners: Highly charged, (hetero)- sexual, violence-loving young women who link up with an evil, murderous male partner to commit serial murders, often involving the kidnapping and torture of young white women.
d) Explosive Avengers: Manlike or lesbian women. Premeditation is far from clear.
e) Robber Predators: Women who murder while committing or covering up financial-gain felonies.
My classification officer got excited when I asked her to read again the definition of an Explosive Avenger. When she reread it, watching my face this time, I asked for clarification on “Premeditation is far from clear.” She said “p...
Revue de presse
“Susan Musgrave's third novel alternates between brutal emotion and raw, dark humour . . . . It's a beautiful, poetic book with a well-constructed plot and a conclusion with enough twists for a crime fiction novel.” — January Magazine
“In the annals of death-house literature it’s rare that a novel leans on stand-up comedy. Susan Musgrave’s Cargo of Orchids does so brilliantly . . . . Cargo of Orchids is wonderful fun; terrifying, unforgettable and sui generis.” — BC Bookworld
“Tropical locales, illicit affairs, desperate escapes, cocaine addicts and hot sex scenes . . . . In a lyrical narrative sliced with dark graphic humour . . . Musgrave artfully turns up the tension as she twists the plot, humanizing the characters despite their ugly underbellies. It’s a disturbing but eloquent argument against incarceration and capital punishment.” — Chatelaine
“[Musgrave] inhabits her subjects like a second skin, injecting them with a sad wisdom and complex sympathy.” — Elm Street Magazine
“Musgrave’s poetic gift is evident in the powerful depiction of the island of Tranquilandia, where the narrator is held against her will. The reader feels the sweltering heat, flinches at the sound of scurrying rats and catches the penetrating scent of orchids.” — The Gazette (Montreal)
“In Cargo of Orchids, Musgrave has created an engaging and extremely moving story.” — Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Graphic in its depiction of what execution actually entails, Musgrave’s novel provides an effective protest against the calculated brutality of state-sanctioned murder, and the Death Rows that warehouse their human cargo for years on end. By placing this issue squarely in our faces, Cargo of Orchids, a novel laced with equal parts black humour and outright horror, succeeds in fulfilling a higher purpose.” — Times-Colonist (Victoria)
“Her prose is lucid, eloquent and poetic. The tone of the piece is alternately despairing, ironic, erotic and fearful; the pacing of the narrative is perfectly tuned to the tension of the subject matter. This is a mature writer in her stride – giving the reader a taste of just how versatile her writing arsenal is when put to the test . . . . Cargo of Orchids is a love letter to those who are serving time and the families who serve with them.” — Calgary Straight
“A vivacious . . . compelling mélange of slapstick, dark humour and outlandish incident . . . . Perhaps the novel's greatest pleasures are aesthetic. Musgrave's depiction of perverse and dream-like Tranquilandia, where a stone pineapple spouts blood-coloured water, and tiny gold chains linked to fingernail studs make a woman's hands appear webbed, offers the delirious thrill of a vigorously imagined journey.” — The Globe and Mail
Praise for Things That Keep and Do Not Change
“The poems here are often about loss and violation, but Musgrave’s characteristic mirth and penchant for harmless mischief keep breaking in. She conjures ghostly or violent images, but the comic muse is never far away.” — The Globe and Mail (Top 100 Books of 1999)
Praise for The Dancing Chicken
“If there were an alternative to the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour – the Lenny Bruce award for Black Humour, perhaps – The Dancing Chicken should get it . . . . Read it and laugh. Nervously.” — The Gazette (Montreal)
“A tightly structured comedy of manners, all of whose many threads the author ravels and unravels with great skill. There are many large and small triumphs in The Dancing Chicken.” — Quill & Quire
“The most consistently funny Canadian novel in years. Perversely dry humour that never misses the mark . . . . Musgrave's commendable range is matched by the precise quality of her writing.” — Vancouver Province
“Musgrave shares with Tom Robbins a talent for redeeming mundanity by bringing in the lunatic fringe. Like Robbins, she is a verbal cartoonist, though her satire is more effervescent than the savage truth in the humour of Leacock and Haliburton.” — The Ottawa Citizen
“This cleverly crafted picaresque novel is enough to make your head spin, your sides split. A bawdy, rollicking tale, broadstroked with Runyonesque characters offering acute insights. If you have friends starved for something really funny to read, you should gift-wrap this romp of a novel and shove it under the Christmas tree.” — Edmonton Journal
“Musgrave would do anything rather than miss out on a chance to take a risk. [Her language is] deadpan, understated, full of non sequiturs, wisecracks, black humour and clever word-play.” — Times-Colonist (Victoria)
“Musgrave approaches her subject in the manner of Salvador Dali – she distorts reality until it approximates her bizarre vision of the world.” — The Globe and Mail
Praise for The Charcoal Burners
“. . . powerful writing . . . irradiates the narrative like atomic particles. Musgrave is concerned with intimation of another world just below the glistening skin of life, where there awaits something unpalpable, dark, and unknowable.” — The Toronto Star
“A thriller indeed, but one whose ghosts don't stay in the grave. Read this and weep – or laugh.” — Maclean's
“Imagine Miss Lonelyhearts, the Bad Seed, She, and Animal Liberation all woven into one organic tale, with an ending from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” — The Hamilton Spectator
“Engrossing and deeply affecting.” — Quill & Quire
“Closest in vision to Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers. The apocalyptic vision of Musgrave's first novel shows a ravaged country in dire need of new ghosts to believe in.” — The Gazette (Montreal)
“A riskier novel than Atwood’s The Edible Woman, more ambitious and visionary. When there is humour, it is blacker than charcoal.” — The Globe and Mail
“Unquestionably an extraordinary book by an unquestionably gifted writer, The Charcoal Burners . . . proves that Susan Musgrave is destined to become a first-rate poet-novelist in the tradition of Margaret Atwood. [The Charcoal Burners] contains much of the brilliance and evocative power that typifies her best poetry.” — Vancouver Province
“A powerful and disturbing vision of man at his worst – or best – and there are more than a few flashes of brilliance.” — The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)
“Like Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the net of madness Susan Musgrave weaves in The Charcoal Burners is an immense poetic swirling affair.” — Monday Magazine
“This book is devastating. It will not leave you alone. The impact is similar to that of Edvard Munch’s The Cry, but poet Susan Musgrave paints with words, a bleak, apocalyptic vision of the human course.” — Calgary Herald
“The Charcoal Burners is evidence of Musgrave's deep concern for people.” — The Kingston Whig-Standard
“The sound of one hand slapping – B.C. poet Susan Musgrave's fictional hand slapping the reader's sensibilities – continues with shock after shock of gory violence through her first novel, The Charcoal Burners” — Ottawa Citizen
“A stomach churner.” — Times-Colonist (Victoria)
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