Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka

Pity is destruction wearing a mask of sympathy. Pity strips you bare. Pity shrinks.

There must have been a time, a reporter said to you once. A time before you were like this. If there ever was a time, you would like to remember it.

This was how it always went, wasn’t it? All those women who’d come before her, in caves and tents and covered wagons. It was a wonder how she’d never given much thought to the ancient, timeless fact. Motherhood was, by nature, a thing you did alone.

No one is all bad. No one is all good. We live as equals in the murky gray between.

Memory, Saffy thought, was unreliable. Memory was a thing to be savored or reviled, never to be trusted.

She glimpsed that same craving in Jenny Fisk—an ask, for suffering. It was the scariest thing about being a woman. It was hardwired, ageless, the part that knew you could have the good without the hurt, but it wouldn’t be nearly as exquisite.

She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside—some just controlled it better than others. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.

Lavender knew, then, that the world was a forgiving place. That every horror she had lived or caused could be balanced with such gutting kindness. It would be a tragedy, she thought—inhumane—if we were defined only by the things we left behind.

There would be no story, for these girls alone. There would be no vigil, no attention at all. They are relevant because of Ansel and the fascination the world has for men like him.

You don’t need to have it all. You only need to figure out how much is enough.

There are millions of men out there who want to hurt women—people seem to think that Ansel Packer is extraordinary, because he actually did.

“I think—well, bad people feel pain, too.”