The phone call

“Are you doing okay?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

I should have said yes. I should have been strong and said yes. Instead I said no and he ended up convincing me that things would be alright, that he was alright, that he felt calm, no matter what the outcome.

I had just finished making a Vietnamese beef stew. It was sitting beside me as I spoke to him. I didn’t touch it.

“It’s so good to hear your voice,” I told him. He laughed gently.

I thought he would have some contact time with his family but I later read that the only time they are allowed to see him is after he has died, in the funeral home. They are allowed to go and touch his body while it is still warm.

He asked what I had been doing that evening. I told him I’d been watching RuPaul’s Drag Race Allstars. We laughed about the whole drag queen scene. He said he once dressed up as a woman to go to a Halloween party when he was about 20. A man had grabbed his bum at the party, thinking he was actually a woman, and he had been horrified. He’d never dressed up as a woman ever again.

The truth is, I’ve never entertained the idea of grieving for Vaughn because I didn’t want it to tear me apart. When I first met Vaughn, about five years ago, I had also met another man on death row, Ruben. Meeting them both devastated me. I couldn’t believe the situation these men faced every day. It was one of those things I couldn’t ignore.

I came back completely different. I intentionally fell out of contact with some friends. I applied to law school. And I resolved to do something about the situation. I read everything I could lay my hands on about the death penalty in America. My mind was totally absorbed.

For about two months after returning, my mind was in a completely different world. A world of unfairness, of bad lawyers and bad trials, of men from poor backgrounds who were killed and faded from the world without a trace. A world of brutal murders and serial killers. Of guilt and of innocence.

And I felt hopeless. I felt crushed and hopeless. My every waking thoughts were of the men I had met and my struggle to understand that they would be dead one day soon.

It was hard. It was really hard.

I suddenly realised I was facing a beast bigger than myself and if it wanted to take these men from me, it could. It just could. I could fight and I could kick and I could scream. And still, it would take them.

That’s a horrible thing to realise. We are lead to believe that we can affect positive change if we speak up. If we use our voices to enable those less fortunate than ourselves, then we can help them.

Realising that the intention to kill carried the might of the state and that my ability to beat it was minuscule was a hard thing to take on board.

I felt sad. I just felt overwhelmed and sad.

Yes, I enrolled in law school and yes, I sold my soul to the bank for a loan for the fees and yes, I studied the most boring land statutes with gusto but my intention could only ever be to help in a very small way. To someone who has always thought big, this was hard.

Then, a few months ago, I got a letter from Vaughn about his execution date. I was worried for him and I was worried for me. I was worried about coming back from visiting him and being crushed. I worried that my hope and faith in the world would be lost.

And so I determined not to be destroyed by it. I determined to go and see him and have a nice time and hopefully cheer him up in his last few weeks of life but not to return a broken woman.

I couldn’t. I just couldn’t let myself be destroyed. It wasn’t an option. Things are nice in my life right now. I mustn’t let this draw me away into a shell and re-realise the devastating truth that a man had been killed and I couldn’t do anything to help him or to stop it.

And so I came home from Texas and I was fine. I barely mentioned that I’d been away or where to or why unless it came up in conversation and I was asked specifically why I went. I managed to keep my thoughts and feelings in a box and keep it shut.

Every so often, waves of panic washed over me when I thought of the approaching date. I waited til they subsided then went on as normal.

And then July 18th came. What a horrible horrible night.

After we spoke for a while on the phone, there was a beeping on the line and mid-conversation, he said, “It’s call waiting. I’ve got to go.”

And I said, stupidly, like a rabbit in the headlights, “O! Ok, bye! I… I wish this wasn’t happening.” And he hung up.

And that was how I said goodbye to him.

At 00:46 that evening, I read that he was dead. I gasped. I knew it was coming but I felt someone had ripped a body part off. Torn my throat out or punched me in the stomach or something. Unexpectedly, there were tears. I thought I’d be too shocked to be upset.

I went upstairs and lay down and stared at the ceiling. I had an early start the next day and I hadn’t the time to sit up and understand it all.

I just knew that I mustn’t be ruined by it. I mustn’t let it overwhelm me. I mustn’t shut down and shut people out.

So I continued on. I kept a level head and I worked and read books about other things.

And I forgot.

I forgot about Vaughn. And about his death. And about the time I spent with him.

And I didn’t feel anything. That scared me. The fact that I didn’t have any emotional response to the situation anymore.

I remember calling Vaughn back after about an hour. I wanted to talk to him again and I was suddenly frantic about what was about to happen.

The lady on the other end said the line was busy.

I called back twenty minutes later and she said that he had made a choice to take no more phone calls.

In his last words, he said “Miriam, I love you,” and I thought, “Who’s Miriam?”

Lazy Laura and the big hospital strop

Almost two years ago, as mentioned in C is for…, I had a bit of an emergency. Like a life-threatening, I-thought-it-was-some-mild-food-poisoning, extremely-rare colon thing.

It was a Wednesday, any old Wednesday, no forewarning, nothing out of the ordinary. I ate my dinner, felt a little ill, it got worse and worse til, by Friday, I hadn’t slept in two days and was becoming a little delirious. By 3am on Saturday morning, it dawned on me that it wasn’t going to be ok and I got scared and went to hospital.

It was supposed to be my first day back at law school after the Christmas break. I had all my books ready. I was hoping they could just give me a little painkiller and send me on my way and I could still make classes at 10am.

Then things went crazy. I didn’t have any time to prepare myself for it. I honestly thought I was going home in a few hours. Then all of a sudden, there were things being jabbed into me with liquid painkillers, there were x-rays being taken, I was in a ward full of people waiting for operations and, wait a minute, I was waiting for an operation! And they were talking to me about my colon and I couldn’t hear them properly through the haze of fear that was throbbing in my ears.

Anyway, I woke up from the operation later that day and proceeded to spend the next three days in bed, sulking over why I had become ill, “why me?” etc. Doctors and nurses would come round and be nice and friendly but I had turned into Little Miss Grumpy. I was having a tantrum at ‘Life’ and that’s how it was going to be!

I spent all day asleep, too terrified to eat anything so sleeping through meals or refusing them, then spent all night awake, with my headphones in, watching Supernanny or Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen on my little TV, gently weeping to myself like an idiot.

I was allowed visitors but mostly just watched while they talked. I think I had convinced myself that I was quite legitimately ‘depressed’ and that was that.

Then Danda came to visit.

“Try and get her up and about,” they had said to Danda. “She lies in bed all the time, she needs to be a bit more active if she’s going to recover.”

So Danda came to my bedside and shook me awake. I was sleeping, as usual.

“Come on, Laura. Let’s go for a little walk.”

I looked at him with my No Face.

“Come on. It’s been four days since the operation. You need to pick yourself up a bit. Don’t you want to get well so you can leave the hospital?”

I did my best quivery-lip, I’m-so-sad-and-ill face, which he ignored. What?! My sad face wasn’t working?! Panic set in. I’m busy sitting around feeling sorry for myself here! You’re interrupting me! Don’t you get it?

“Come on. Put your little slippers on. Let’s go for a little walkies,” as though talking to a child.

That was it. I had had it.

‘Danda, can I tell you a secret?”

He nodded and leaned close so I could whisper in his ear.

“I don’t WANT to go a walkies!” And I stuck my bottom lip out.

And suddenly he was laughing uproariously. He had to sit down and clutch his stomach. I heard what I had said and realised what a baby I was being and put on my little hospital-issue slippers and went for a walk down the corridor, which tired me out for the rest of the day.

But that, that little strop, that was the beginning of the recovery period.

These days, if I don’t want to go a walkies, I at least come up with a more decent excuse, like “It’s a bit cold,” or “I’m far too busy making this cup of tea” or “Family Guy is on.”

Embracing London

A few days ago, if you remember, I said I was off to see a maze made out of books. So, on Tuesday, I set out on my mission. I also wanted to see an exhibition about the Olympics, a world arts and music exhibition, an underground pavilion and there was a walk around Hyde Park which looked good.

Off I went, London 2012 app at the ready, to have my day of fun. The info about the aMAZEme exhibition said it started at 8am. It was about 9.20am by the time I got to the Southbank Centre. For some reason, it has never occured to me to think which bit exactly was the Southbank Centre. I just thought it was the bit which was lit up different colours in the evening. But I was always seeing that from the other side of the river. So as I approached the buildings in that area, I thought something would become clear, a sign or something. I walked in.. and around… and up stairs… and down ramps… and took this photo of a massive baobob tree, whilst trying to work out which exact building was the right one.

It is made using material from all over the world as part of the Festival of the World exhibition

It was shortly after stalling for time taking these photos that I found an information board about the Southbank Centre. It turns out, it’s all of the buildings I was circling blindly. It’s not one building with a big sign on. Embarrassingly enough, I should know that. I’m really familiar with this area. My law school is a stone’s throw from here. O well. I worked out that I needed the Royal Festival Hall and made my way there.

It was now a little after 9.30am. So why were all the doors closed? You know when a building doesn’t look like it wants you to enter? That’s what this one looked like. But my faithful London 2012 app said it started at 8am, so there must be a door open somewhere. There must be. THE APP SAID IT! THE APP CAN’T BE WRONG! The app wouldn’t let me down… would it?

I saw a door to a cafe inside the building open because the chairs and tables were being brought outside. I made my way there and saw a security guard. When I asked him how to get inside he said, ‘The building doesn’t open until 10am.’

What?! Bewildered, I produced my trusty app and showed him. ‘But it says! It says here! On my London 2012 app! It says it will start at 8am….’

‘That must be wrong, we definitely don’t open til 10am. Sorry.’

O, London 2012 app. Our relationship, which has been one of much excitement and adoration, has suddenly hit rocky ground. I shall not speak to you for a short while.

So I had a dilemma. Stick around and wait for half an hour to see this, or skip to the next thing and then come back later? I had too much to cram into one day to be hanging around at the confusing Southbank Centre.

I left and crossed the Hungerford bridge over the Thames, heading toward Covent Garden. I love the shops in Covent Garden but I know what I’m like on a day out. I get that holiday mentality on. ‘O! You’re only on holiday once! Just buy it! Don’t worry about money on holiday!’ For this reason, I’m reluctant to let myself too near large shopping malls or markets on a day out. I passed through the main square and headed for the Royal Opera House at the opposite end. Here, my (untrustworthy) app told me, was an exhibition called The Olympic Journey, about the history of the Olympics.

I was ushered up a ramp and told by a young woman in a white cardy and a strange white-to-green faded skirt (I tried, and failed, to work out how it fitted with the Olympics) that her name was Laura (snap!) and she was going to take us on an Olympic Journey.

‘Great!’ I thought. ‘There’ll be so much cool Olympic stuff in here that I can take pics of, to show everyone on the blog, they’ll love a bit of that.’ You see? I’m always thinking about you, about how to keep you entertained. Just call me Selfless Laura.

Anyway, up the ramp I go, camera at the ready. Before the curtain is swept back to let everyone in, Laura Of The Strange Skirt says, ‘Just to remind everyone, there’s no photography allowed inside and no touching of the artefacts.’ FAIL! Big fat Olympic exhibition fail. Never mind.

I got a little booklet about afterwards with the stuff in, but it’s not the same, so I’ll just tell you the best bits. When we first entered, they had made a Greece room, in essence. There were olive trees and loads of info about how and when the games started. The most interesting fact I discovered in this bit was that the Greek word for naked is ‘gymnos,’ which is where the words ‘gymnastics’ and ‘gymnasium’ come from. This is because the competitors used to all be naked when the Olympics first started! Something about showing the unity between the body and the surrounding environment, or something.

Immediately my mind got to work. Imagine! Just imagine you’re there, on your chariot, ready to compete in the pentathlon or whatever, and your chariot falls apart or you get dragged off and hit the ground, naked. You’d be torn to pieces! After I imagined gruesome naked deaths and embarrassing naked wrestling, we were ushered into the next room, about how it came back to life in the late 1800s.

Pierre Coubotin started them up again because loads of countries had already been captivated by this idea of a sports competition like the Greeks had. He mobilised them all to have a worldwide one and it’s been going ever since.

There was a room which had one of all the torches that had been used. The Sydney one was quite cool, all new-agey. I liked the Rome one too and the Beijing one was pretty. Interesting fact from this room was that the idea to have a flame on the torch was first used in the Berlin games. Hitler came up with it! Presumably before then, the torch was just being carried along, as a symbolic thing. I also didn’t realise that when they held the games in Sydney, they used some amazing new technology flare thing, to swim the flame underwater to Australia!

In the last room there was a copy of a gold, silver and bronze medal from each of the games. The London 2012 ones look massive in comparison and, to be honest, like they’re made of plastic! Of course they’re the colours of gold etc, but because they’re quite big, they almost look like children’s toys.

In the same room were stories of 16 Olympians. I loved the story about the Ethiopian marathon runner, Abebe Bikila. Adidas were sponsoring the event and provided shoes for all the runners, but Abebe couldn’t find a pair to fit, so he ran barefoot, and won! They had a video of him running barefoot, way ahead of all the other runners. Amazing.

After this onslaught of amazingness, it was time to head back to the site of my earlier disappointment to find the book maze. As I entered the Royal Festival Hall, it was in a room to my right, which is completely open, down a few stairs. I feel like it suffered a bit due to this, because I entered from above it and could easily see the way to get to the middle and that it wasn’t as massive as I had initially thought it would be.

Because the first layer of books was a waist height, it wasn’t really a maze, because I just looked where the path went. As I got further back, though, the walls got higher.

Once I had gone around this one bend, though, it took another ten seconds or so to get to the middle. While it was fun to be surrounded by so many books, the ‘maze’ part took me all of one minute to work out. I revelled in being around so many books and hung around for a bit longer, looking at them. There was a section of the low part, where a load of Braille books had been left open and there was someone reading them, which was quite a lovely thing to watch.

I headed to the Festival of the World exhibition next, just down some stairs from the book maze. The exhibition was all about educational innovations that have spread around the world and the result of some were on display. There was artwork from an amazing South American woman who lived on a rubbish heap in a slum but had used the plastic bottles to make artwork.

There was music from a Cuban orchestra, which I sat and listened to for a while. Then I came to a room which just had a photo booth in. It asked me to put 20p in and get my passport photos done, to become a citizen of the world! Yes, please! This sounded fun. I got my photos done, cut out the best one and walked into the next room, where someone handed me a blue Antarctica passport, someone else glued my photo in and I filled in my details and got a country stamp for Antarctica.

This is because they have open borders, so anyone can choose to become a citizen of Antarctica, if they choose! So I did. Quite exciting.

After this I headed back to Waterloo station and got the tube to Kensington, to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. On the way to the park, I happened upon this fantastic free exhibition for the Travel Photograph of the Year, located in the main hall and gardens of the Royal Geographic Society.

When I got to the underground pavilion outside the Serpentine Gallery, it wasn’t what I was expecting. In fact, I’m not sure I knew what to expect. On the top was a large round plate thing, which had water in it, and underneath was a series of steps and stools and blocks, all made out of cork, where people were sitting and relaxing, chatting with friends. It seemed like a nice chill-out place but I didn’t stop because I had seen something near the gallery itself.

There is an exhibition by Yoko Ono and one of the things she had outside was a wish tree. I love reading these! Here are a few of my favourites from this one:

I wish I had more than one cat.

I wish someone else’s wish comes true (I don’t really need anything) x

I wish for a nice job, a nice place to live and a nice boyfriend.

I wish I was a superhero like Spiderman so I could shoot webs.

I wish you were on me.

I wish for no distance between us. I wish to be the girl of your dreams.

I wish life was not that hard.

I wish that I could have chocolate every day. Joe, 5 years.

I wish that Lego keep making good sets 🙂

07912413886. Call me and make me wish come true. Jordan x

I wish I had a pigg.

So after looking at the wish tree for ages, I remembered seeing something when I came in the gates of Hyde Park, so I went back that way and found the Africa Village. Exciting! I headed in, ready for an onslaught of Africa-ness and nostalgia. There were stands with each country’s name on. I set about finding the Namibia stand, to go and pretend I’m fluent in Afrikaans and see if they had any Namibia stuff I could take away with me. Some stands had food or little souvenirs. I looked… And I looked… And I looked. There was no Namibia stand! I searched around but it wasn’t that big so after a few minutes I realised there mustn’t be one, and left the village a bit disappointed.

At this point I thought about setting off on my historic walk around Kensington and was wondering whether my legs were maybe too tired for that. I’d been on my feet for a long time by this point. And that’s when I saw it….. The sign for Whole Foods…

Holiday head kicked in and I abandoned my proposed walk around the area, for a walk around Whole Foods. I grabbed a trolley (I should have known better!) and started putting one of everything in. Do I really need Malaysian chicken skewers?! Of course! And a swordfish steak? Seriously now! A swordfish steak? Don’t be ridiculous. O, but it’s holiday, just get it! Live a little. In went the swordfish steak. And the raw chocolate and goji berry bar. And the handcrafted smoked haddock fish cake. And the sundried tomatoes from the mountains of Italy. And the gently steamed spinach with shallots and garlic. Ridiculous.

After this, I slumped to the tube station in shame, stuffing my face with a chicken samosa and a roasted vegetable wrap, washed down with a swig of pure Fijian rainwater, gathered at dusk by dragonflies or something just as ridiculous, and felt equal measures of shame and smugness.

And in this way, my epic day of embracing London was ended.

 

P.S. The app and I are now friends again.

Being friendlier

The day I finished my exams, I told myself (and all of you) that I was going to give ‘being friendlier’ a go. I did ‘getting excited about stuff’ and that was good fun. I did ‘being sporty’ and I still swim most days (people have started to comment on my arms in a complimentary way but I’m still worried they’re getting Madonna-ish).

So now it’s time to try being more friendly. Now I’m not unfriendly. I’m perfectly nice to people I like. But I don’t often go out of my way to be nice. You know when people have those stories about how they met their new best friend in the launderette? Or on the train or something?

That is never me. I am never saying those things. Firstly because I don’t ever go to a laundrette. I don’t think I’ve ever been in one in my entire life. I also try to avoid public transport by living my life within a distance that doesn’t require me to go on public transport. If I am on public transport, I put my earphones in and listen to a book. I don’t look around for people to chat to.

I usually think I’m kind of ok without new friends. My phone book has as many names in it as I need and, to be honest, I’m quite busy a lot of the time.

When I started law school, my excited classmates gathered in the hallway after tutorials, chatting enthusiastically and working out which pub was closest to get to.

“Yeh, that sounds great. Let’s go there. Come on guys! Is everyone coming? Yeh? Yeh, come on. Laura, are you coming?”

And me… Little old me… Little old antisocial me…. What did I say? Did I say “Sure, I’m there! I don’t have any plans. I’m definitely coming”?

Of course I didn’t. I said something along the lines of “I’m sure you’re all really nice but I’m here to get a degree not some new friends, so actually, I’m going to go home and get started on the stuff they told us to read for next week.” Paraphrased slightly, but essentially that.

I’ve always thought it’d sometimes be great fun to be the person who’s all carefree and lovely and nice to everyone. But most of the time, I don’t feel like being nice to people, especially when they’re swimming at me in the swimming pool or standing in my way in the shop.

But I am going to try. I am going to try to be friendlier, to not be annoyed by people who don’t stick to the unspoken rules of social etiquette, or who swim in my way, or who push in front of me in a queue, or pronounce something wrong, or appear to be unfriendly to me. I will be relaxed and smiley and friendly, regardless. I’m not sure how well this will go, or how long I will last before someone annoys me. I am going to try though. I am up at the crack of dawn today so by about mid afternoon, grumpiness will set in. That’s when it will be hardest to keep up the friendliness. Wish me luck. I’ll report back.