Yellow Mama, Take Me Home — Split Lip Magazine

They give Darrell Grayson the option of Yellow Mama or lethal injection. There is no real fairness in this decision. In not being strung up in a Michael Donald sort of manner. In not being kidnapped—beaten—strangled—throat slit—left thumping against a camphor tree. Michael’s own perpetrator went out to some 2,000-plus volts cradled in Yellow Mama’s arms.

“I’d really hate to go through the trouble of getting her out,” the governor says. “You don’t really want to embarrass the state like that do you, Darrell? Talk about cruel and unusual.”

Yes, the showdown of dusting Yellow Mama off does have its appeal, although it will not resolve what happened to Michael on a too-quiet morning in 1981. It will not prevent Darrell from being executed without a DNA test to prove he had not murdered that woman. But perhaps luck will strike, as flippant as a match, just as the currents vibrate and Darrell is secure on Yellow Mama’s lap. Catch flames to her back, that always wooden upright posture. And although Darrell’s brain will be as good as combusted in a mere 120 seconds or so, maybe Yellow Mama will be at risk of evaporating from Alabama—from this country—and with her—a splinter of injustice.

It must be the chair then. Let them feign humiliation. Let the Press Register sketch it all out. Shoulders tense. Mouth muzzled. Paddle in hand, stating that Darrell was in fact “ready.”

Cree Pettaway (@cree_pettaway) is a Southern, Black writer from Mobile, Alabama. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Into the Void, Parhelion Literary Magazine, West Texas Literary Review, and Oyster River Pages. Cree’s work can be found on her website, creepettaway.com.