The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver Page B
Authors: Elizabeth L. Silver
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for his summer internships. He chose our firm in Philadelphia for his first permanent job. I actually remember his original application over the summer several years ago. (I always remember the foreign applicants. Their résumés are usually printed on A-4 paper, and they never bother to Americanize the spellings to fit. He did, though.) Right now it’s just the two of us. I set up Mothers Against Death shortly after he came into my office with his mammoth smile and perfectly tailored suit. You probably would have had a crush on him. I’m fairly certain Noa already does
.
So, I’ll just come out and say it and hope that you approve. Through Mothers Against Death, Oliver and I are putting together a clemency petition for Noa. It really is almost a formality, a futile plea to deliver to our trusty executive, and is more than likely to be turned down
.
Before you worry, though, make no mistake—Noa will never see the light of day. We are just trying to get the governor to commute her death sentence into a life sentence, where she’ll spend the last of her too many remaining decades behind bars. She will still be in maximum security, still a convicted murderer, and will still continue to agonize over what she’s done, turning her arrogant, self-centered, self-righteous mind into mulch. But she will be alive while she does all of this. It’s not really our place to kill her, just like it wasn’t her place to kill you. I believe that now. It took me nearly ten years to get here, but I believe it. You understand, sweetheart, don’t you? I know you do. She deserves this. It’s afar worse punishment for taking you away than getting to leave this life before me
.
I have to go now. I probably shouldn’t have written you, but I had a few minutes to spare and there was nobody else with whom I wanted to spend it
.
Forever yours
,
Mom
Chapter 4
I THINK THE THING I ACTUALLY MISS THE MOST IS WATCHING A sun sit still on a solid evening hour, its talons skewering the clouds beneath. That elongated stretch through the clouds; that beam downward, pointing like a strict schoolteacher, informing everyone around that, yes, there is a higher purpose. I’m not saying I found religion in here just because I can’t watch a sunset anymore. God, that would be cliché, and I’d rather die than pass on that impression. But I do sit alone, sometimes, wondering whether the clouds are gathering together, communing like a collection of cotton balls in a tightly sealed ziplock bag, or whether they’ve been flattened out like a stack of pancakes. Or if they’ve been vaccinated with a syringe of rainy dye so that only a select few darken into grays, blacks, and charcoals.
It’s funny how most things come in threes. Cumulus, nimbus, stratus. Three times a charm. Three strikes and you’re out. Hickory, dickory, fucking dock. I suppose, then, that it would only make sense that I’m going to die in a trio of poisons. Sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride. A three-drug cocktail designed first to anesthetize, second to paralyze, and third to exterminate. This, my lawyers told me, was a far more humanitarian way to finish the job than its predecessors, which included all but not limited to public executions of any and all forms, a firing squad, hangings, gas chambers, electrocutions, and, of course, our very own lethal injection. For some reason, people still like to call it The Chair,as if they’re holding on to the good old days. But nobody fries from the needle. They know this as well as they know the instrument of death that brought them here. No. They just experience botched anesthesia, welcoming the paralysis that precludes them from informing a single living being that the potassium chloride stings. It stings so much that the volcano at the vein has erupted prematurely, and as a result, molten lava is slowly rolling through the body, incinerating and smoldering arteries and organs in its track, like being burned
.
So, I’ll just come out and say it and hope that you approve. Through Mothers Against Death, Oliver and I are putting together a clemency petition for Noa. It really is almost a formality, a futile plea to deliver to our trusty executive, and is more than likely to be turned down
.
Before you worry, though, make no mistake—Noa will never see the light of day. We are just trying to get the governor to commute her death sentence into a life sentence, where she’ll spend the last of her too many remaining decades behind bars. She will still be in maximum security, still a convicted murderer, and will still continue to agonize over what she’s done, turning her arrogant, self-centered, self-righteous mind into mulch. But she will be alive while she does all of this. It’s not really our place to kill her, just like it wasn’t her place to kill you. I believe that now. It took me nearly ten years to get here, but I believe it. You understand, sweetheart, don’t you? I know you do. She deserves this. It’s afar worse punishment for taking you away than getting to leave this life before me
.
I have to go now. I probably shouldn’t have written you, but I had a few minutes to spare and there was nobody else with whom I wanted to spend it
.
Forever yours
,
Mom
Chapter 4
I THINK THE THING I ACTUALLY MISS THE MOST IS WATCHING A sun sit still on a solid evening hour, its talons skewering the clouds beneath. That elongated stretch through the clouds; that beam downward, pointing like a strict schoolteacher, informing everyone around that, yes, there is a higher purpose. I’m not saying I found religion in here just because I can’t watch a sunset anymore. God, that would be cliché, and I’d rather die than pass on that impression. But I do sit alone, sometimes, wondering whether the clouds are gathering together, communing like a collection of cotton balls in a tightly sealed ziplock bag, or whether they’ve been flattened out like a stack of pancakes. Or if they’ve been vaccinated with a syringe of rainy dye so that only a select few darken into grays, blacks, and charcoals.
It’s funny how most things come in threes. Cumulus, nimbus, stratus. Three times a charm. Three strikes and you’re out. Hickory, dickory, fucking dock. I suppose, then, that it would only make sense that I’m going to die in a trio of poisons. Sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride. A three-drug cocktail designed first to anesthetize, second to paralyze, and third to exterminate. This, my lawyers told me, was a far more humanitarian way to finish the job than its predecessors, which included all but not limited to public executions of any and all forms, a firing squad, hangings, gas chambers, electrocutions, and, of course, our very own lethal injection. For some reason, people still like to call it The Chair,as if they’re holding on to the good old days. But nobody fries from the needle. They know this as well as they know the instrument of death that brought them here. No. They just experience botched anesthesia, welcoming the paralysis that precludes them from informing a single living being that the potassium chloride stings. It stings so much that the volcano at the vein has erupted prematurely, and as a result, molten lava is slowly rolling through the body, incinerating and smoldering arteries and organs in its track, like being burned
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