{"id":27749,"date":"2024-10-29T05:37:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T05:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/?p=27749"},"modified":"2024-10-29T05:37:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T05:37:31","slug":"happy-birthday-melody-mine-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/happy-birthday-melody-mine-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Melody Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow will be my fortieth birthday, and I will have spent 21 years in prison — fourteen years longer than I was married, eighteen years longer than the life of my precious baby girl. When I look back \u2013 and I have no choice but to look back \u2013 I can still see the ways that brought me here. They\u2019re easy to see, like the seam of black water that remains when your boat has passed beneath moss-dripping trees, pushing the weeds and algae aside. You can see what the oars disturbed, the signs of your passing, and if you\u2019re knowing, you could almost follow those signs and go back the way you came. Except, you can\u2019t. At least, I can\u2019t. But I can tell you all about it.
\n+++++<\/span>I was born somewhere close to Morgan City, Louisiana, is what I was always told, but there\u2019s no proof of that. The actual place has been swallowed up by the sea. Or the swamp. Just as there\u2019s no proof of who my Daddy was \u2013 we moved around, a lot, when I was little, and Momma\u2019s line of work didn\u2019t lend much to certainty about that sort of thing. I do know she drank, she took drugs, she rolled drunks, she traded sex for money, and we moved \u2013 a lot \u2013 right up until I was ten. That was the year Momma got religion, the most serious kind, and she quit all her wicked ways. Most of them.
\n+++++<\/span>She started going to a tent meeting and kept going when they all decided to make it a church building. Then she moved in with the youth minister, and a few weeks later, she married him. So, he became my official Daddy then, instead of Brother Dennis, and we had a quiet couple of years. Nothing really happened \u2013 the church women took to Momma after she confessed some of her sins, and it was only now and again I\u2019d see one or two of them looking at her kind of sideways. I remember once or twice a couple of them came to the house, after bible study, wanting to correct some error in the way she dressed — you must wear a bra, dear, even in this hot weather \u2013 you don\u2019t want to put that temptation out there on your brothers in Christ (meaning, their husbands) — and things like that. Maybe she was still, just a little, too much inclined to touch people when they were talking, or get into their personal space \u2013 but they would try to remember she\u2019d been in the personal space business for a long time, before she saw the light.
\n+++++<\/span>One of the things that did happen, though \u2013 a couple of things \u2013 I started to get my figure, and I started getting my period. Wasn\u2019t any mystery to either of those things \u2013 I took after Momma, and she was built generous, with long legs on her and dark curly hair and dark beautiful eyes. I took after her in all those things, except I wasn\u2019t so big in the chest. But I began to notice that Dennis would look at me sometimes, in a certain way, and I knew enough that he hadn\u2019t ought to be noticing me that way. And I overheard a couple of the church ladies, too, talking to Momma about she ought to find me a husband quick, while I was still a virgin. If I was still a virgin. Really. Like it was any of their business who tried to get a hand up my skirt at the crawfish boil \u2013 alright, it was Brother Tom — and I\u2019m not saying anything else, because I didn\u2019t allow it, even if he did show me his thing.
\n+++++<\/span>Long and the short of it, Momma married me off when I was twelve, to the Reverend Eli of all people.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cIt\u2019ll keep you on the right path,\u201d Momma said, \u201cbeing married to a good man, a god-fearing man \u2013 and I don\u2019t want you to make none of my mistakes. Besides, he\u2019s not that old, not really \u2013 not even forty-five yet, with a lot of good years ahead of him.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>So, they got special permission, and they married me off to Eli, and I remember his mouth tasted like chewing tobacco and bourbon, same as Brother Tom\u2019s had when he\u2019d tried to kiss me, and I remember I never even got to take off my wedding dress before Eli hoisted up my skirts, yanked off my pants and did it to me. Once from the front, once from behind \u2013 both places.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYou\u2019re mine now, Melody,\u201d he said to me then, \u201ctill the day you die, or I do \u2013 properly married \u2013 and I can plow your field whenever I want. That\u2019s what marriage is, so keep a civil tongue in your head and we\u2019ll get along fine.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>Eventually he got tired of me crying, every time he wanted to have me. He hit me good \u2013 slapped me so hard that two of my teeth came loose. But I didn\u2019t lose them, not that time.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYou really disappoint me, Melody. A man\u2019s got his rights without a whole lot of snivelling. You keep that up, I\u2019m really gon\u2019 hafta show you what\u2019s what.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>For a while then, a few months, I managed to bite my lip and let him have what he wanted, and I tried not to mind too much. I mean, a woman who can\u2019t be submissive and mind her manners, she\u2019s just crying out to be corrected by a loving and dutiful husband \u2013 that\u2019s what he said, often enough, from the pulpit, or with a belt in his hand, and then, increasingly, with his clenched fist. He\u2019d come home from some counselling session with his tie all crooked, and once or twice with his shirt mis-buttoned and before I knew what for he\u2019d correct me into the middle of next week.
\n+++++<\/span>On my thirteenth birthday, he come home late with a hickey on his neck. I probably spoke up harsh because I\u2019d been waiting all evening to give him his favorite meal and break the news I was carrying his baby. Anyway, I spoke right out.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cI hope you took some of those rubbers with you, that you got hidden away, for your counselling session,\u201d I said. \u201cI sure don\u2019t need any of what that Louisa\u2019s got.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>It wasn\u2019t the left hook that did the damage, but after he knocked me down, he hauled me back to my feet and punched me hard, three or four times, in my gut. And lower down. Then he took his coat and went out again, into the night, left me crying and crumpled up and still alone when the horrible pains and the bleeding started. I lost my baby.
\n+++++<\/span>After, when my Momma came to visit, I told her what happened. She just shook her head.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cI thought you\u2019d be wiser, baby girl,\u201d she said to me. \u201cI thought you\u2019d know better.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cWhat are you saying? That he was right?\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYou brung it on your own self, is what I\u2019m saying, no right or wrong about it. He\u2019s your husband \u2013 he\u2019s there to chastise you in the Lord, teach you to be respectful and obedient.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cSure, Momma,\u201d I said. \u201cHe ever does it again, I\u2019m gonna shoot him dead, six ways from Sunday, with his own gun. You mark my words \u2013 he can explain himself to God, as God is my witness.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>We say these things, in an angry moment. Who expects them to be remembered?
\n+++++<\/span>I always wondered, if maybe Momma hadn\u2019t told Eli what I said. For a long while, he was almost decent and kind, and even thoughtful. It got so when we laid together, it was less like rape and more like\u2026 what I\u2019d always imagined it could be. But we ran into some hard times, round then \u2013 there was a hurricane or two, the fishing was crap, and work got scarce for many of the families in our congregation. No amount of \u2018believing things\u2019 or \u2018name it and claim it\u2019 or \u201ctake it on faith\u201d would put meat or even bread on the table, and the collection plate was skimpy or even empty, \u2018cause nobody had anything to give. Tithing? Well a tenth of nothing is still nothing, and the church had to cut back. Of course, the first cut was to Brother Dennis, but he stayed around, just like always, even though he wasn\u2019t making anything. Then Dennis started my Momma back to working nights, or maybe, she started it again and he never said no. The women of the church stopped talking to her, \u2018cause she got all the gossip she needed from their husbands, and every now and then I\u2019d see that Dennis had done some correcting of his own. In truth I took no real satisfaction when I saw her bruises, but I could see that she remembered what she\u2019d said to me, and it would eat her up a little bit.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYou think you\u2019re better than me now?\u201d she asked me once, outside the church. \u201cYou want to tell me I had it coming too?\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cNo Momma,\u201d I said to her. \u201cYou\u2019re my Momma, and I don\u2019t think or feel those kinda things. I just wish things were different \u2013 better \u2013 for both of us.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>But she looked away, and I never saw so much of her, after that. She left town for a short while, the two of them did, but she came back alone, a few weeks later. I think Dennis left her, or she threw him out, but I think she also started to drink again. I mean, to excess.
\n+++++<\/span>It was about then I got pregnant again, and then I had my own little baby girl \u2013 beautiful Carla, who came into the world with so much pain and blood I thought for sure I would die, but I understood more of what my Momma felt, after that. I thought I did. Even when Carla cried all night, or pooped all the time, or wouldn\u2019t suck and screamed and fussed \u2013 all the things that babies do \u2013 I thought I was happy, and blessed. And I guess I was.
\n+++++<\/span>Time went by and things began to improve again, around the parish, and Eli started to go out more at night. Counselling, he\u2019d call it, but I suspected it was the same old thing. There were a couple women I knew about for sure, and a time or two, I wondered if he\u2019d been seeing Momma. Ministering to her needs. Still, I had baby Carla to look after, and I made sure to get what we needed, before Eli could spend all the money on drink and loose living. Then one day he came home early, walked up to me fast, and just cracked me a hard slap across the face. Left my ears ringing and blood in my mouth. Clara just looked at us both and started to wail.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cWhat\u2019s that for?\u201d I asked, but I thought I knew.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYou took thirty dollars from my pants pocket, \u2018fore I went out.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cWhat if I did?\u201d I said. \u201cThere\u2019s no groceries in the house, hardly, just booze, Clara needs some of that medicine for her ears, and she won\u2019t sleep if she can\u2019t get it, they hurt so bad. You got responsibilities, husband.\u201d I\u2019m afraid I said it kind of sarcastic; he didn\u2019t take it well. He commenced to slapping me again \u2013 two, three, four times, till I almost couldn\u2019t stand up, and Clara just stood there screaming, her eyes wide with shock and fear, tears on her cheeks, and her nose dribbling. I\u2019d have a job to clean her up, get her calmed down, after.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYou shut her up,\u201d Eli said. Then he spoke to her directly. \u201cStop that caterwaulin\u2019 right now, you hear me Clara? You just quit it, y\u2019hear?\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>Clara just stared at her Daddy as he towered over her shouting, and her crying got louder, and then he hauled off and hit her. Just the once, with the back of his hand.
\n+++++<\/span>I don\u2019t expect he meant to kill her, but he\u2019s a grown man and her just a little speck of a baby girl. She went down like a stone, and he went into our room and started pulling my dresser apart, looking for his money. I rushed to Clara and gathered her up into my arms, but then I saw she wasn\u2019t breathing.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cClara!\u201d I said. \u201cCLARA. Oh Lord Jesus God Christ help me. Clara??\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>It was no use. She was so still. I laid her down on the sofa chair, and I picked her up again and I sat with her on the sofa and rocked her and whispered to her and I crooned over her and begged her to come back. But it wasn\u2019t any use. Then I laid her back down, and I went into Eli\u2019s study \u2013 the room that he used when he needed to make up his sermons and such \u2013 and I opened his desk drawer. There was a pistol there, a big black heavy thing with a long barrel, and I carried it with me into the bedroom. Eli was all done tearing apart my dresser, and he hadn\u2019t found the money, because it wasn\u2019t there. I had it hid in my shoe. What I didn\u2019t have hid was Eli\u2019s gun. I showed it to him.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cNow, you listen, Melody, you listen\u2014\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cClara\u2019s dead,\u201d I said. \u201cYou killed my baby girl. You killed her. How could you? HOW COULD YOU?\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>Then I pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger. I hit him square in the chest and his eyes got big and round and he grunted and the gun kicked up but I pointed it again, and I kept on pulling the trigger till the gun just clicked and clicked again. My ears were ringing. I stood there over him, looking down, till his mouth stopped moving and the light was gone from his eyes. Oh, what a stink he made \u2013 I never knew that, about dead people. Then I dropped the gun and went back to my baby girl. I sang all of her favourite lullabies to her, over and over, until the police came and took her away from me. Then I wailed like a baby girl, myself.
\n+++++<\/span>Clara was nearly three, when they buried her. I was just shy of sixteen, when they arrested me. Said I was to be tried for murder, in the first degree. Whatever that meant.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

At the trial, Momma tried her best not to put me in a bad light. But they put together a jury of real bible-believing folks, some from our own congregation, and the Prosecutor, he made me out to be a real problem child. He started out with my Momma, and how we\u2019d lived, and went to how I\u2019d been married so young and was fractious and disobedient, and a trial to the patience of a godly man. Then he got my Momma on the stand, and got her to repeat those words I said before, how if Eli did it again, I would shoot him dead.
\n+++++<\/span>Truth is, that Prosecutor sounded real regretful when he summed things up \u2013 how it was a terrible tragedy, how the baby\u2019s father had accidentally killed her like that, and it could happen to anyone, but that wasn\u2019t the matter they had before them, right now, so don\u2019t be distracted by it.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cHe will pay for whatever he did, in a higher court than this one. Only goes to show, even a godly man, a saint, can fall into a grievous error, like your late brother Eli. Shooting him once, I could understand,\u201d he told the jury, \u201cin her moment of grief. A mother\u2019s grief. But she didn\u2019t stop there. Premeditation,\u201d he said, \u201cmakes what happened a premeditated murder. She said she\u2019d kill him\u2026 and then she did kill him. She kept on shooting him, until he was long past dead. You\u2019ve seen the photos. Do I need to show them again? No, I thought not. Now, in this state, the penalty for premeditated murder is death. That\u2019s the verdict you need to settle on. Get your minds around it. That\u2019s the only choice you can make, a case like this, and it\u2019s your sad and solemn duty to choose it.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>The jury was only gone long enough for a pee break and a coffee, it seemed like, before they filed back in and delivered their verdict, as instructed. I had a defense attorney \u2013 I\u2019m sure he meant well, but he wasn\u2019t up to much. Not then, not ever. Not him, or the ones who came after. Hardly matters, now.
\n+++++<\/span>Momma came to see me, after. She was pale as a ghost, when they let her in, and she just wrapped me in a hug so tight, I thought I would die right then, with her tears running down my neck.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Melody, my baby girl, how they made me repeat those words. Look what they done to you.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cI did it myself, Momma. Like the man said, the first shot was free \u2013 but five times more, that was on purpose. He shouldn\u2019t have killed my baby Clara.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cMaybe we can do something\u2026 an appeal.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span> \u201cI don\u2019t hope for much \u2013 but I don\u2019t suppose they\u2019ll kill me right away. You can try.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>I\u2019ve occupied this same cell for close to fifteen years, and I suppose it\u2019s about as comfortable as you could expect, for a room on death row. It was never supposed to be home, and never going to be. You could call it a room with a view, but like I said before, the only view is looking back.
\n+++++<\/span>Momma did try \u2013 she kept her word — and a whole bunch of other people who got all exercised on my behalf. They pushed for new trials, and appeals, and then asking for some kind of mercy. I hoped, but I put no stock in it. Still, every year, Momma used to get them to bring me a card on my birthday; it always said the same thing, \u201cHappy Birthday, Melody Mine.\u201d Once she even talked somebody into bringing me a chocolate cupcake on my birthday, with a little white candle on it, besides the card. Used to \u2013 Momma died earlier this year. I heard she killed herself, when all the appeals ran out. Or maybe it was something else. It\u2019s unlike her to move on without me, but she always had her reasons. I don\u2019t hold it against her \u2013 I\u2019ll tell her, when I see her. If there was a card this year, I know what it would have said: Happy Birthday, Melody Mine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Image Credit : Photo by Steve Johnson<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow will be my fortieth birthday, and I will have spent 21 years in prison — fourteen years longer than I was married, eighteen years longer than the life of my precious baby girl. When I look back \u2013 and I have no choice but to look back \u2013 I can still see the ways […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":328,"featured_media":27772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1454,1402,1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b","category-bruce-madole","category-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Zyqm-7dz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/happy-birthday-melody-mine.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}