“What the hell is going on? Where is my son and husband?” Wats didn’t bother answering his mother, as he was told he didn’t have to. “Watson Wilkerson, you had better be thinking about how much punishment you’re going to get when I get out of here. And once I do, you can also bet I’m not going to go easy on either of you. Why the hell aren’t you in here where I can see you?”
“Because I have no desire to see you. Just shut up, and this will be over soon.” He knew as soon as he told her to shut up that it would piss her off. Not that he cared. Not anymore. “Besides, I’m only here so I can testify, then I’m gone.”
“You had better keep your mouth shut on things you think you know. Or I swear to you, Watson, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. Just as much as I wish that daily. Where is your father? Why isn’t he working on getting me out of here?”
Done with her, he watched as the camera spanned the room before it centered on the jury. They were there after the venue had to be changed three times to make sure the women were put in prison.
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen.”
As his mother was told to shut up several times, he was asked questions by the state-appointed attorney for his mother. The man looked like he’d gone a couple of rounds with someone bigger than him. Wats knew that the day before yesterday, he’d been caught unawares, and Christa, Booker’s mother, had knocked him around before the prison guards had gotten their Tasers out and used them on her. No amount of begging to the judge had been able to get the man out of being their attorney after that. No one, he had heard, wanted anything to do with the Bitches Four, as they’d been calling them at home.
“When you were living at home, did your mother provide you with food, money, and any of the essentials one would expect?” Wats had been told to only answer the question with yes or no if he could, but no babbling about things. So he told the man no. “Your mother didn’t make sure you were fed? That you had clothing to wear? I find that hard to believe.”
Since it wasn’t a question, he didn’t answer him. But Wats did begin to unbutton his shirt below the camera’s view. This was something they all were going to do when called to the chair today. Show off how loving their mothers had been to them all.
“Mr. Wilkerson, what sort of relationship did you have with your mother? I’m sure that like all young men, you and your mother were very close. Some of the things that are coming out paint a picture of my client of her being something terrible, which is unlikely. Would you agree with that assessment?” He asked him which assessment he was referring to. “That your mother wasn’t as terrible as the papers and others are making her out to be.”
“Then yes, I would agree that the papers don’t have it right about my mother. She was much worse than any of them can even fathom.” He heard his mother and aunts start screaming how they were going to get him when they were free. It took another ten minutes to get them under control. “As for my relationship with her? I had none. I was there for window dressing, and that’s all.”
“She loved you, correct?” He heard someone snicker, and he smiled at that. It was his aunt that was making noises. He told the attorney he didn’t think his mother loved anything or anyone. “That is a bold statement. Love between a mother and child is something that is cherished.”
Wats wasn’t sure why the attorney was going on about his and his mother’s relationship. He wondered why he wasn’t talking about how his mother had plotted with the rest of them in killing his Aunt Holly. Or how they made it impossible for her and everyone else around them to live without fear. Even to ask about the deaths they’d caused and written about in their daily diaries. When he looked over at North, he told him it was time to bare it all.
“My mother was a manipulative bitch that should never have had children. Actually, she tried not to have them, right up until she needed one. Tina would beat me, yes, beat me or have someone else do it with a whip right up until she was arrested and put in jail.” Standing up, he pulled his shirt off over his head, not bothering with the other buttons, and showed the jury his back. “This is how my mother got what she wanted. Do you see these scars? They’re from a lifetime of being cornered about grades, the women I dated, or my hanging out with my cousin when she disapproved of him. And when I got too big for her to beat on her own, she hired people to do it for her. Ribs, arms, and legs were beaten so badly I can’t stand to have anything touch me there. The last time she had someone beating me was when I, at the age of twenty-nine, decided I’d had enough dancing around her and that my life was just that—my life. She didn’t like that, as you can see.”
“You mother fucker. I should have aborted you right along with all the other creatures I got caught with. But we had to do better than Holly.” He could hear someone telling her to
