Waiting

Written by Jia Zhang

Claire’s lips are tight, pressed together firmly as if she were afraid her body would reveal something against her volition. She sits on a blue plastic chair—the type children used in schools—with twelve others in the room, all of them sitting in a strange, oblong circle. None of the others speak. There is only the silence, the sitting and the waiting, and the sound of the wind blowing against the window.

Claire does not talk. She sits and she waits. She counts the number of turns by the minute hand of the clock. She watches the other people in the room; some she recognize, some she doesn’t.

There is an elderly woman sitting across from her—a widow. She is pale, her face a mesh or wrinkles, her eyes of a translucent blue. She is clutching a cross to her chest, mumbling something in coherent as she stairs at a stop of nothing on the ground. She seemed as if she were counting tiles with the utmost determination.

More waiting. More ticking, more tocking.

There is a middle-aged man sitting next to her with his wife. He is cold, completely emotionless. His eyes are glassy, and he stares at nothing as if his body were void of any spirit. His wife sobs silently next to him, her face half-buried behind a soft pink handkerchief. She doesn’t make a sound as large wads of tears fall from her round green eyes. Claire has seen this couple a lot.

Waiting, and ticking and tocking.

She watched the minute hand move—one two three four five six seven eight nine ten, and over over and over, for sixty times. And once more. And more. It’s endless; the silence eats her alive.

A man clears his throat. Everyone in the room turns to look at him. He smiles timidly, pushing his large square glass as he brushed back his mousey brown hair. His wife sits next to time, her hands clutched tightly on her lap, her eyes closed. She was waiting too.

Claire sights and turns back to her clock watching. The waiting game is endless; she hates waiting.

Claire never had to wait as a child; her father spoiled her silly with endless gifts, tending to her every whim. However, Claire always thought it was too much when she was older—by the time she was older, she had little concept of money or material wealth. She was too sheltered, too naïve, and didn’t understand all the dangers of the world. It took her a long time to grow up because of that; though, in the end, she did much of the same thing with her own son.

Maybe, Claire thought, that was where the mistake was.

She coddled Andrew too much—gave in to his every demand. Andrew was a good kid, a good son; he had good grades, didn’t get into fights, but like his mother had no concept of what the real world was. Maybe that was why. There had to be a why.

In the end, Claire concluded that she was simply a bad mother.

She shakes her head, and goes back to watching the clock.

“W-When…” Everyone turned. A woman with bright red hair and freckles stared at the others in the room; she held onto her husband quite hard, but she continues anyways, breaking the thick ice of silence. “When…When do you think they’ll let us…go in?”

“It shouldn’t be long now,” answers one of the men—he’s here along, by himself, obviously a single father. His face is masked with anger and loathing, but he remains quite out of respect. “They said it’d be done by 6:30, if they’re aren’t any complicates. We should be able to go in a little while.”

“A little while!? A little while!?” The crying woman shouts. “We’ve been waiting here long enough! I want to see him. I want to see the damn bastard—”

“Judith!” She turns to her husband, who stares at her emptily. “That’s enough, Judith. You’re not the only one that feels this way.”

“But—”

“Just wait.”

Wait.

It was such a strange word, Claire thought. To wait. To sit, and do nothing as one anticipated the arrival of something—something, something.

She’s done a lot of waiting.

She waited for her son to come home.

She waited to call the police.

She waited for news from the Detective.

She waited to collect her son’s body from the morgue.

She waited for the trial to end.

She waited to see him behind bars.

Now, here she was again—waiting to see him die.

Claire was tired of waiting. She’s waited too much her whole life. She waited for her father to give her things, waited for a degree to be handed to her, waited for something to marry her, waited for her child to come home. Claire was tired of waiting.

She gets up from her chair, her movements slow and laborious. Her husband says something; she doesn’t hear it. She simply states that she needs to used the bathroom, and walks towards the door—suddenly, it opens; a Detective steps into the room. Everybody turns to him. Claire stops and stares at the man in silence.

He nods to Claire, and motions her to stay. He turns to everyone in the room.

“Hello everyone. We apologize to have made you all wait for so long. But, we’re going to begin now. So, if you all can just follow me, please.”

Claire nods, and along with the others, began flooding out of the room. Her husband catches up to her, and gently grasps onto her hand. Claire turns to him as he offers her a smile of assurance. Claire tries to smile back, but her face feels strained and numb, as if shocked by a thousand thunderbolts.

“It’s going to be okay, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

Claire suddenly wants to laugh. She covers her mouth, but continues walking—no one notices.

It wasn’t going okay—that was all a lie. It was never going to be okay again, and even in this moment, after this moment, it was never going to be okay. It reminded her of trial, when her husband, himself shattered into bits, crying during the trial, told her through tears that it would be okay. But Claire knew it was a lie then, and she knew it was a lie now. But he tried; he tried to be strong for her, and that was something.

Claire knew it wasn’t okay—she knew it wasn’t okay when Andrew didn’t come home. She knew it wasn’t okay despite all the assurances of the police. She knew it wasn’t going to be okay when she watched the look on of horror on the jurors faces as they heard what that monster had done to her little boy.

No matter how long she waited, it would never be okay.

The group of twelve filed calmly and carefully down the hall, and into the execution chamber. They sat down in the chairs, facing the large glass window—on the other side was the lethal injection table. A doctor or technician was in the room, making sure everything was going to go smoothly. It was as if they were all there for some grand show.

Then, a door opened, and the guards brought in a man in an orange jumpsuit. They gave him a few instructions; he nodded and sat down on the table. They strapped him tightly; a doctor stuck the needle into his arm. Then, he turned to look at all the grieving parents.

They all waited for his last words.

“I want to say—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that I have done. I don’t deserve any forgiveness from any of you—I know that. I’m an evil man, who took away your children. I stole them from you, and I am eternally sorry for what I did. I hope my death—brings you all some kind of peace. I hope—to hell I will go.”

He stops and takes a deep breath. His body is shuddering, his eyes are closed, but Claire could see that he was petrified. Sweat trickled down his face. Suddenly, the man opened his eyes again, and turned to stare at Claire. There is pleading look on his face, and his eyes speak of a deep sea of sorrow.

“I don’t ask forgiveness—but, Ms. Munroe, I—I hope you will forgive me—me one day. One day. I h-hope.” His lungs gasp for air, but he continued to stare at Claire with a strange intensity. “I am sorry. To you, most of all, I am sorry. B-But…I did—I did love him. I loved him very much, and I still love him. I am an evil, horrible man, Ms. Munroe, but—I did love him.”

The man takes a final breath, and closes his eyes. Claire is an iceberg as she watches the liquid poison seep into the man’s body. She watched as his breathing slowly, and his heart stopped beating. She watched and listened as the room burst into cries of anger and pain.

Waiting, she was waiting again—what for now?

Finally, Claire got up from the chair and approached the window. The sound of shared sorrow and heartbreak reverberated in her ears.

Claire was tiered of waiting.

She banged her hands on the glass, her eyes of full of an unquenchable grief and screamed a petrifying scream.

“You bastard! You bastard! Give me back my son! Give me back my son!”

Her husband rushes to her, tears in his eyes as he watched her crumble to the floor.

He collects his wife into his arms, and rocks her back and forth as sobs. He promises her it would be okay, but he knows—and she knows—that it would never be okay again.

This has been a little different from what I'm used to because of it's strange ambiguity. I like ambiguity, but this was even a little too vague for me. I dunno how it works out, so I guess I'll just wait and see. This was inspired by the film Mysterious Skin, of which I highly suggest one goes to watch.

Jia Zhang