Left for Garbage

dreams and memories.
    They started last week after I watched ‘Oprah’ in the community room. There were all these women talking about incidents as children when they woke up feeling sore, or with upset stomachs. That always used to happen to me when I was little too, like in the first and second grade. Well, most of those women on the show realized years later that they had been sexually abused by their fathers. Some had to be hypnotized to recall what happened to them in detail, and horrible as it is, it’s got me thinking about my own father.
    So, yes, I have issues with both my parents. I guess that’s why Salvatore is becoming someone I look up to more than anyone now. And thank God for Penelope, who is taking such an interest in me, who believe s me, and who cares for me, and well, yes, she is becoming like a mother figure to me.

Penelope Bledsoe
    (Death Appeal Attorney)

    I am sick to death of being judged, and I know a great deal about death and judgment. America calls itself a Christian nation, forgive seventy-times-seven, but there is no forgiveness to be had, not here, not for Denise Brown, and not for me, either.
    My name is Penelope Bledsoe and I am a member of the defense on the Denise Brown murder trial, a disgusting sideshow created for the slavering masses of Americans who, having no life and having done nothing to better the world, prefer to point fingers at a confused young woman, to judge her and ultimately kill her, rather than face up to the unpalatable home truths of their own lives.
    The satisfaction they anticipate deriving from her death will, I fear, prove illusory to them. It’s a sound-bite, it’s a one-day wonder, and then on to the next big thing. Maybe they will get lucky and Charlie Sheen will kill one of his ex-wives , and then they can all slaver over that - anything, anything at all, rather than look at themselves.
    Fifteen years ago I lived in a mansion in Boca Raton and led the empty life of a trophy wife. When I met the man I was born to love, the man I know God sent to me to both test me and reward me, I finally began to look at myself, something that is always difficult but that creates a life of truth and beauty as well.
    Once I let myself learn to listen with my heart and not with the same empty media-directed judgment the rest of the country uses to make their every decision, my life became magical, and because of how I have since dedicated my life to living in truth and love, then how could I have resisted when Salvatore Gutierrez, lead attorney on the Denise Brown case, called and asked me to join the defense?
    I agreed willingly because, unlike those who claim goodness, I know there is no such thing as true goodness if not followed through with action. The Bible tells us faith without acts is dead. I can act, I can help and I can love. And I do each of these things every day.
    I wish to address the last now because this grotesque attention on my personal life, which was started by that slime-slinger Charlotte Hope, is taking focus away from the place it belongs, which is my desir e to help a beautiful, innocent young woman. So I’ll speak of this once and then never again.
    In nineteen-ninety-six I was living a shallow vainglorious life as the wife of a prominent criminal attorney, caring for my husband and loving our five precious daughters. If I was unfulfilled as a woman on the deepest level, I chose not to examine it, and like many, busied myself with minutiae to avoid facing the growing hole in my womanhood.
    I had a law degree from a prominent university and had passed the Florida Bar easily, but at that time I was not practicing, occupied as I was with the tasks my then-husband considered my purview: driving my privileged daughters to their various activities, overseeing our household staff and, of course, making sure his vast selection of Armani suits was picked up and deposited at the dry cleaners.
    I know now I was deeply unhappy but I would have argued against anyone who suggested it to me then. Ironically, it was my husband’s successes as a criminal trial attorney - with a multimillion dollar annual salary - that led me to begin volunteering at the Florida public defender’s office. I reasoned that every defendant prosecuted by the powers that be in our kill-them-first, ask-questions-later, state deserved the kind of representation my then-husband Hector provided his clients. Was a man or a woman less deserving of the best possible defense simply