Albert Gaines killed Marty Henderson. It wasn’t an accident per se, though he certainly did not purposefully intend for it to happen. Still the court ruled in favor of murder charges because Gaines, a noted disrepute and troublemaker, was a “lost cause” with a rap sheet over seventeen pages long even though he was barely eighteen. That Henderson was in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire during a liquor store robbery, meant little to the prosecutorial staff. They threw the book at him and deservedly so.
At his sentencing, Henderson’s mother was allowed to address Gaines, who showed no remorse or emotion whatsoever, even though the judge intimated it could affect his sentence. Mrs. Henderson pointed out that if given the opportunity, she would kill Gaines herself—in fact, she promised that one day she would get her revenge. She swore it; she would kill him. For he clearly did not know what it meant to be a human being, to be loved, to love. So, she said, he may as well die. And she would be the one to do it.
And with that Mrs. Henderson spent the next three years of her life searching and plotting, for she knew she would not rest until she had her revenge. She read and traveled around the country and in the East, all the while composing long letters in her head filled with rageful promises and vengeful pledges.
Then she came about a solution. And for the first time in years she slept.
In the spring after she returned, she would sit in the shade of an acacia tree in her backyard quietly attended to by a warm, blooming breeze and write letters to Albert Gaines in prison. They were filled with her pain, but also with questions for him and stories about Marty. Eventually she told Gaines everything she remembered about her son: about his first pet—a cat named Abbyola whom Marty found on a bike ride to the Cheese Factory; his high school sweetheart, Julianna, who made him oatmeal raisin cookies and broke his heart; his postcards home from summer camp which he signed “Love Marty” and always in parenthesis wrote”(your son)” as if she might forget. She wrote about Marty failing his driver’s test because he didn’t yield to an emergency vehicle and about her feeling so bad that she bought him and his friend a bottle of tequila and some 7UP; she wrote about his unending curiosity for life; she wrote about his heart.
For two years, Gaines never wrote back. Henderson wasn’t sure if her letters were even being read. But she sent them every week anyway, because she enjoyed feeling close to her son—the one person who, at a glance, could read her mind, could see to her core. Sometimes she talked out loud to Marty, but mostly she wrote about her memories and tried to wrap her mind around the enormity of her pain, as if understanding it might take away some of her quiet, biting grief.
* * *
One day, a letter arrived in the mail. It was from Gaines. It sounded tentative and defensive, rambling and wayward. But Henderson wrote back anyway, responding to his questions and starting a weekly correspondence with Gaines that continued for the next seven years. In his letters, he gradually began to talk about himself. He thanked her for her honesty and inquisitiveness, but also for the shame and sadness and guilt that her letters helped him feel. He told her that he now understood the quality of love a mother has for her child, a love he’d never before known, “like ripples in a pond, the initial splash of love radiates outward, gently pushing against the broken leaves and twigs that happen to float by.” He’d been numbed by drugs and anger for so long, his emotions completely shut down, that he’d forgotten how to feel. But now he found himself moved to tears by the gentle morning sun chasing away the unknowing, lonely darkness or when watching a vee of returning gulls migrate home for the summer or in his prison cell the night he received his high school diploma. Even though he’d been in prison for more than a decade, he wrote, for the first time in his life he had begun to feel free.
* * *
When Gaines went before the parole board for what would be the final time, Henderson was invited to attend and was asked to address the inmate who had killed her son during a botched robbery over twelve years ago. She stood and spoke to both Gaines and the court, telling them the following:
“Twelve years ago when I stood at your hearing, you were a brash, arrogant, unrepentant thug who had taken my child,” she said, her voice calm as tears trickled down her face and neck. “I told you, I swore, that I would kill you, Albert Gaines…And I succeeded. I killed you. I killed that young, cold, heartless child who took my son. He’s dead. That child would have been kept alive by my hatred, so I killed him with my love, with my heart. In his place is you, Al, a grown man with a second chance to live your life. I forgive you for killing my son. I free you from that burden and hope you will find the way to free yourself.”
She wiped her tears with the palms of her hand, turned, and walked out of the courtroom. She did not look at the judge or the parole board or Albert. She did not make eye contact with anyone seated in the audience. When she reached the door, she did not turn around or even glance back over her shoulder. She did not stay to hear the verdict or talk to reporters or answer questions. She did not wait to be consoled or admired. She had said her piece, had shared her burden.
And with that, Mother Henderson walked down the courthouse steps and back into the world, letting the summer wind tousle her hair and dress while turning her face to the blue, cloudless sky, closing her eyes, and feeling the warmth of the sun wash over her. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the dewy, thick scent of cut grass and turned soil. She walked through the courtyard lined with irises and lilies and neatly trimmed hedges and into the teeming bustle of the streets filled with engines purring and shoe heels scuffing and people laughing. She walked past a schoolyard filled with children screaming and playing and wondering. She walked to the gentle, flowing creek where she had spread Marty’s ashes so many years ago, took off her shoes and, letting the hem of her dress drag in the water, waded to the far side where she sat in the shade of an oak tree, closed her eyes, and held her son.
THE END
