In Memory of

The technology was new and untested - the guinea pigs, as always, were the prisoners.  For some of them, the deal seemed too good to be true: instead of a sentence of ten years (or longer), they could spend a month with the eyes of the victim.  This was meant in a literal sense: the guilty person would have their eyes temporarily covered over with new eyes.  The theory was they would develop an empathy that they’d never had a chance to foster, whether for reasons of upbringing or genetics.  A second chance, as it were.  No one knew if the innovation would have the desired result or drive the criminal mad.  Ethicists flashed warning signs, but the government went along with the experiment.  They were tired of footing the bill for these young men, in prison from nearly cradle to grave, and the public, increasingly, was tired as well.  One poll put public support for the measure at nearly 80 percent.  

Shortly after the new policy went into effect, Frank Morgan, a seventeen-year-old man, accidentally killed a young girl with a stray bullet.  She had been at the playground with her grandma.  He had been aiming for a member of a rival gang, when the bullet ricocheted off the monkey bars and hit her squarely in the chest.  She was brave and fought hard, but after a week she succumbed to her injuries.   At the playground, Frank was ID’ed by several eyewitnesses as having curly dark black hair, a squarish jaw framed by a goatee, and dressed all in black.  He was found by the police hours later, at a coffee shop.  Frank professed ignorance of the entire event, but he was still carrying his gun and hadn’t even changed his clothes.

Frank was unaware of the new policy because he wasn’t exactly a peruser of the daily papers so he had to ask the judge to repeat the choice several times, which the judge did, begrudgingly.  

The judge said, “Six years in prison for the accidental death of a minor by gunshot wound or one month spent looking through the eyes of her grandmother.  If you choose the latter, upon the conclusion of the month, your record will be expunged and you will be a free man.” The judge had seen too many young men who had already destroyed any chance they had to be productive members of society.  He was hoping that Frank would choose the other option, but government officials were present to make sure the judge didn’t bias the choice.   Civil rights organizations were already preparing their lawsuits.  

In court, Frank was no longer wearing his black clothes and the goatee had vanished.  He was wearing what his mother would have called his church clothes though he hadn’t been in years: an ironed, baby blue button-down shirt, buttoned except for the top one, a pair of khaki pants and new, black suede shoes his mother had bought for the occasion.   He had an angry look on his face.  

“I’m not going to explain it again,” said the judge, a grandfatherly man with a salt and pepper beard and a few thin wisps of hair.  He had been chosen as the first judge to offer the option because he wasn’t as steadfastly tied to tradition as the other judges.  Still, the first four men he had offered the option to had all chosen prison.  “I don’t want nobody playing with my mind,” said one, who was barely sixteen.  He had shot his victim purposely and comprehensively - six bullets in the head.   He chose a life sentence with the possibility of parole after forty years rather than the new procedure.  Still, the judge had hope for Frank.  His murderous act was accidental.  The fact that he didn’t appear to be a sociopath was in his favor.  

Frank stood there for a moment, staring at the judge.  The jury had already adjourned.   He looked at his mom in the back row, her eyes covered with a clump of Kleenex. Finally he said, “I’ll do it.”

“I’ll need you to be more specific,” said the judge.

“The eyes.  Give me the eyes.”  His voice betrayed a whisper of emotion, but his hands shook.  

The government official, a Black man in his thirties, pointed his eyes at the judge, laser-like, to make sure he was following the letter of the law.  

The judge said, “Is it understood that for the period of one month you will wear implants provided by a doctor that will allow you to see the world through the eyes of Laticia Brown, grandmother of Neveah Jackson, may the Lord rest her soul?”

Frank tried to stop his shaking hands, but they were adamant in their refusal.  

“Well?” said the judge.

“Yes, I do sir,”  he said, his voice cracking.

“It is so ordered.  The hospital will arrange for you to have the procedure at their earliest convenience.  I thank everyone present for their time and participation.  Court adjourned.”  He banged the gavel with an intensity unusual for him and left the room.

------

   The hospital was able to take Frank the next day.  It had already been set up for some weeks waiting with the eyes of families of the various victims, produced with their DNA.  The procedure itself was anticlimactic.  As Frank’s mother watched, Frank was outfitted with a pair of contact lenses embedded with strands of the DNA of Laticia Brown.  It took only a moment.    

“Blink a few times,” said the doctor.   

Frank did so.

“Now, what do you see?”

Frank blinked again.  At first, he saw the same antiseptic hospital room and his mother, again bawling her eyes out with a collection of tissues.  But then things started to change, as if he were turning a kaleidoscope.  He noticed a girl. She was wearing tightly wound braids and jumping up and down on a bed.  Some teddy bears and dolls were bouncing up and down next to her.

Frank said, “I don’t understand.  Who is the girl I see?”

The doctor responded, “You’re seeing the girl you killed.  At this moment, wherever her grandmother is, she is seeing the girl so you are too.”

Frank looked down on the floor. Neveah was playing with her Barbies in a bright, pink dollhouse.  Barbie and Ken were dressed up to go on their first date.

“But I don’t hear her,” said Frank.

“No, scientists are still working on the audio capabilities.  You can envision her, but you can’t hear her words or her laughter.  You should be grateful for that.  The torment of her voice would likely overwhelm you.      

The doctor said, “Well, it’s time for your discharge.  No reason to hang around here.   Any final questions?”

“What if I change your mind?”

“I don’t know.  I imagine you’d have to go back to the courts for that.  You’re the first so the judge wouldn’t be pleased I’m sure.”

Frank’s mother, having exhausted her supply of tissues and her tears, said, “Come dear, let’s go home.”

As Frank and his mother took a cab home, he saw Neveah playing hopscotch with her friends and then sitting in a corner after receiving a timeout.   Frank wondered why he would see visions of bad things, too.  Wouldn’t his grandmother only want to see the good things?  And then, he thought, at least she wasn’t perfect either.  That thought, more than the happy memories, perforated his soul.

His mother banned him from hanging out with the gang, and of course his gun had been confiscated, so his days mostly consisted of playing on his phone.  She signed him up for an online class on marketing which he tried diligently to focus on, but he was constantly interrupted with visions of bubble baths and princess movies.  

One evening, he said, “Mama, just let me go back to the judge.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  I’ll take my time in prison.”

“And have a record forever?  Like hell, you will.  You’ve been given a gift, and you’re not going to squander it.  If you won’t do it for me, do it for your father, G-d forgive him.  ” His father had fled before he was born, but Frank always thought he was saving money to come back one day and buy them a nice house.  The day he found out he shot the girl, he cried not for his mother, but for his dad.  He couldn’t bear the fact that he’d disappointed him.    For his mom, it was yet another dagger in the heart.  

On day 4, Frank woke up to visions of a man he had never seen before.  He seemed to be in his early sixties.  He had black-rimmed glasses and a long neck.  Neveah’s grandmother was in the picture, too.  They were talking to each other until the man walked out the door.  For the first time, Frank wished that there was audio, but he could guess that the man had been Laticia’s lover, either now, or in the past.  Frank didn’t know where Neveah was, and that scared him. Why wasn’t his grandmother thinking about her?  She was almost like an addiction for him now.  He needed to see her playing with her toys or in the bath.   He needed to know that she was still alive in her grandmother’s mind.  She couldn’t have forgotten her so soon.  But Frank had no power.  He could only see what Neveah’s grandmother saw, nothing more, nothing less.   

Frank panicked and turned to newspaper photographs of the day of the murder.  There was a candid snapshot of Neveah smiling and waving her hands in the air.  The picture was in black and white.  He strained his mind to think of the colors she might have been wearing.  

Neveah appeared again in the evening in his mind’s eye, reading stories to her teddy bears, and Frank was relieved.  She hadn’t been entirely forgotten, but the visions were shorter now.  Other people appeared whom he hadn’t seen before - some middle-aged, some younger.  Occasionally, it looked like the characters were fictional, perhaps from a TV show that Laticia enjoyed.  

Frank longed to go to Laticia’s house, to share his memories of her granddaughter.  He offered to tell his mother, but she said the pain would be too much for her.  It was his own personal hell.  He remembered that the judge said that at the conclusion of the month, he would have an opportunity to go to the grandmother to beg for forgiveness.  But the suffering came first.  

By the second week, Neveah was only appearing sporadically in his visions.  Frank had gradually pieced together Laticia’s story.  She had married young, divorced, and found someone new recently, possibly just before Neveah died.  But he hadn’t stayed to comfort her.  She was alone again now.  He had seen only a few short images of Neveah’s parents; they both seemed to be drug users.  Laticia didn’t spend much time thinking about them.    

Then Neveah came back.  She was at the zoo, pointing at the tops of the giraffes’ heads, the lions’ manes, the Siberian tigers.   As always, he couldn’t hear her, but he knew that she was yelling in ecstasy.  He wondered, if like many children, she had wanted to be a vet when she grew up.  Maybe if the conversation with her grandmother went well after the month, he could ask her that.  

The next morning, he woke up and didn’t see Neveah at all.  There was a party, and he didn’t know anyone there.  He felt completely alone.  He screamed out, “You have to remember her.  You have to!” But the people at the party couldn’t hear him.  They seemed to be celebrating some sort of anniversary.  This was the first time he saw Leticia happy in all the visions he’d had.  He couldn’t bear it.  What right did she have to be happy?  Her granddaughter was dead.  Frank picked up a coffee mug and slammed it against the wall.  Then he waited for the tears to come but they were obstinate.  

While his mother was in the other room watching TV, Frank left the house and asked a cab driver to take him to the courthouse.  He demanded to see the judge to get permission to remove the contacts from his eyes.  The judge was in the middle of a trial, but he agreed to see him in his quarters.  He had a stern look on his face.

Frank started to talk, but the judge stopped him.  “I know why you’re here.  They said that this is about the time that you would come.”

“I’ll kill myself if I have to be in this woman’s mind for two more weeks.  Neveah is being forgotten.”

“So you’ve learned how fast things can slip away.”

“How can she forget her so soon?”

“She’s not forgetting, but mourning turns into different things over time.”

“I don’t want her to go away.”

“I know you don’t, but you did kill her.  Inevitably she’s going to disappear.”

“It’s not fair.  I wasn’t trying to shoot her.  I wouldn’t shoot a little girl.  She liked to play with legos and dolls and take baths.  She should have lived forever.”

“Yes, I know,” said the judge.  “And I don’t blame you completely.  You’re seventeen, your brain is undeveloped, your mind has been brainwashed by a godforsaken gang.  I pity you more than anything.”

“Then you’ll release me from this sentence?  This is worse than prison.”

“I can’t.  I’m sorry they made the laws the way they do.”

“If I go to jail, can I still meet her?”

“Who?”

“Her grandmother.  I want to say I’m sorry.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Frank’s mother was furious when she found out, but she was powerless.  She went to the store and bought out their supply of kleenex.  

The judge set up the meeting with the grandmother.  At her house, he asked her about Neveah’s dreams.  She said Neveah had wanted to be a lot of things: a dancer, an engineer, and yes, a veterinarian.  Then he asked her if she would visit her in jail from time to time so they could talk about Neveah.  

She breathed a sigh of relief.  She had felt so guilty of having thoughts about other people, but now she knew there would always be someone to remember her sweet granddaughter.  

In the moments before they removed the contacts and returned Frank’s vision to his own, he saw Neveah for the last time.  As always there was no audio, but to his dying day he believed that she was mouthing the words, “I forgive you.”