DEAD WOMAN WALKING

Dead Woman Walking

by Rebecca Lewis

She was turning  tricks at age eleven.  She didn't have to hide it from her mother.  It was her mother that had turned her out.  It was a strange form of child abuse, and it had the same result most kids experience when a parent is the source of their pain.  They try to please them. Somehow they reason it's not the abusers fault, it must be theirs.  She brought in a lot of money.  It paid the bills.  It paid for the drugs.  She contributed to the family.  But she lost her childhood.  By her early twenties she had done it all and now had found a pseudo love with a local hit man.

     Then it all came tumbling down. Her mother died.  Emotional anger unreconciled, her mother became deified in her mind, the ugly betrayal of motherhood pushed into oblivion.  When in a fit of anger a male friend rips up the last picture of her mother, she concocts revenge against him.  In the dead of night she and her hit man boyfriend break into the offenders apartment to steal his beloved motorcycle he keeps inside.  The plans go wrong. They had miscalculated, thinking he was out for the night.  He wasn't.  A fight ensues.  The hit man takes a climbers pickax found in the corner of the bedroom and plants it in the man.  Leaving the man dead on the floor, her boyfriend exits the bedroom and the girl enters the room to steal valuables.  A sudden movement at the end of the bed under the covers startles her.  Motorcycle man's girlfriend had visited on the wrong night. The drugged out avenging girl engages her in a fight, while calling for her boyfriend  He enters and kills the girls with the pickax leaving it embedded in her chest. He again leaves the room, but motorcycle man's girlfriend begins to gurgle as the blood seeps into her mouth from her lungs.  The young dark haired prostitute takes the pickax and buries it again in her chest. The gurgling stops.  So does the life of the young eleven turned twenty something drugged out victim of a worthless mother.  She got the death penalty.

     But it doesn't end yet.  Throughout years of waiting for trial, the actual trial, the death sentence and the wait for the execution date, her life now free of drugs ad men, she was able to see clearly.  Some call it jailhouse religion, a bargaining chip for reprieve from the needle.  She served the Lord while on trial and while on death row.  She saved two of her fellow dead women walking cohorts from ending their own lives.  She testified to guards and did community service making dolls for abused children.  But she never asks for reprieve. Others were asking for her, even the judge that sentenced her.

     Her take on her situation?  She said she deserved the sentence of death.  It was just.  She'd take the reprieve if it came and be a witness for the rest of her life in prison if given the chance.  But she'd leave that up to God.  But her time came and the governor refused to commute her sentence to life.

     I didn't get involved in her last days.  I didn't write letters to add to the pile going to the Governor.  I had played a part in her early discipleship while she was locked up in the county jail, and I had visited her on death row.  I, like her, figured that was all in God's hands.

     She gave me one of her dolls when I saw her last on death row.  It had a full smile on it's face, just like she always did those days.  And it wasn't fake.  A day before the execution I called the chaplain there and told her to tell her I'd see her in heaven. I have no doubt I will.