The Buddhist on Death Row by David Sheff

Author:David Sheff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

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Jarvis admitted that he’d never had a committed relationship that lasted long and didn’t know if he knew how to. At twelve, he was introduced to sex by a girl who’d been introduced to sex by an uncle. As a boy in Harbor City and in juvenile lockups, Jarvis had had girlfriends, but those relationships didn’t last. He reflected back on whether he’d ever seen a man treat women kindly and lovingly. There was one: Dennis Procks, who’d doted on Mamie. That was all he could think of. Otherwise he’d been told to respect women by men who beat their girlfriends, wives, and daughters. He’d seen girls being slapped, thrown out of their homes, and called whores by their mothers, who were whores, and their fathers, who were pimps. His mother had been abused by one violent man after another.

Years earlier, he and Melody had talked a lot about masculinity, and she’d given him books on the subject. In one of those discussions, she’d asked him, “What does a boy learn about women from a mother who was a prostitute, who sometimes offered love but sometimes withheld it, who was violent and failed to protect her son from violent men?”

Jarvis looked grave. “You don’t have a lot of trust,” he said, “and you don’t necessarily become somebody who can be trusted. You learn to run. You leave before you’re left.”

Now that he was married, Jarvis talked about his fears with Pema. “I’m afraid I’ll blow it,” he confided.

They talked for a while before Pema said, “I was thinking about something you told me once, how badly you felt because you didn’t protect your mother from your father and other men. You also felt you should have protected your sisters. You felt that guilt even though you couldn’t have protected them; you were just a child. Regardless of whether it’s logical or not, maybe you feel you don’t deserve a woman’s trust.”

Jarvis said, “This with Marie is different than anything I’ve ever felt. I want it to be different.”

Pema said, “You are different. You aren’t the same person you were.”

As the months went by, the question hung in the air, and meanwhile Jarvis and Marie were challenged in ways other couples aren’t. There are no honeymoons on death row. They saw each other as often as possible, talked on the phone when they could, and wrote countless letters, but they had no privacy; their visits were monitored, and their letters were read. Sometimes they couldn’t speak or see each other for weeks or months because of lockdowns. Marie worried about him when there was violence in the prison, and she couldn’t help him when he was ill. But it was all right, she told herself. It would be all right. It would be all right when he got out.

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