Small Great Things (33 page)

“Right now she's just enjoying stuffing her face,” I say, holding out my hand for more nuts. I slip one between my lips and almost immediately spit it out. “Ugh, God, I hate Brazil nuts.”

“Is that what those are?” my mother says. “They taste like feet. They're the poor bastard stepchildren of the mixed nuts tin, the ones nobody likes.”

Suddenly I remember being about Violet's age, and going to my grandmother's home for Thanksgiving dinner. It was packed with my aunts and uncles and cousins. I loved the sweet potato pie she made, and the doilies on her furniture, which were all different, like snowflakes. But I did my absolute best to avoid Uncle Leon, my grandfather's brother, who was the relative that was too loud, too drunk, and who always seemed to kiss you on the lips when he was aiming for your cheek. My grandmother used to put a big bowl of nuts out as an appetizer, and Uncle Leon would man the nutcracker, shelling them and passing them to the kids: walnuts and hazelnuts and pecans, cashews and almonds and Brazil nuts. Except he never called them Brazil nuts. He'd hold up a wrinkled, long brown shell.
Nigger toes for sale,
he'd say.
Who wants a nigger toe?

“Do you remember Uncle Leon?” I ask abruptly, sitting up. “What he used to call them?”

My mother sighs. “Yes. Uncle Leon was a bit of a character.”

I hadn't even known what the N-word meant, back then. I'd laughed, like everyone else. “How come no one ever said something to him? How come you didn't shut him up?”

She looks at me, exasperated. “It wasn't like Leon was ever gonna change.”

“Not if he had an audience,” I point out. I nod toward the sandbox, where Violet is shoulder to shoulder with a little black girl, chipping away at the packed sand with a stick. “What if she repeated what Leon used to say, because she doesn't know better? How do you think that would go over?”

“Back then, North Carolina wasn't like it is here,” my mother says.

“Maybe that wouldn't have been the case if people like you had stopped making excuses.”

I feel bad as soon as the words leave my mouth, because I know I'm berating my mother when I really want to beat up on myself. Legally I still know that the soundest course for Ruth is to avoid any discussion of race, but morally, I'm having a hard time reconciling that. What if the reason I have been so quick to dismiss the racial elements of Ruth's case is not because our legal system can't bear that load, but because I was born into a family where black jokes were as much of the holiday tradition as my grandmother's bone china and sausage stuffing? My own mother, for God's sake, grew up with someone like Ruth's mom in the house—cooking, cleaning, walking her to school, taking her to playgrounds like this one.

My mother is quiet for so long that I know I've offended her. “In 1954, when I was nine years old, a court ruled that five black children could come to my school. I remember one boy in my class who said they had horns, hidden in their fuzzy hair. And my teacher, who warned us that they might try to steal our lunch money.” She turns to me. “The night before they came to school, my daddy held a meeting. Uncle Leon was there. People talked about how white children would be bullied, and how there'd be classroom control issues, because those kids didn't know how to behave. Uncle Leon was so mad his face was red and sweaty. He said he didn't want his daughter to be a guinea pig. They were planning to picket outside the school the next day, even though they knew there would be police there, making sure the kids could get inside. My daddy swore he would never sell Judge Hawthorne another car again.”

She starts collecting the nuts and the apples, packing them up. “Beattie, our maid, she was there that night too. Serving lemonade and cakes she'd made that afternoon. In the middle of the meeting I got bored, and went into the kitchen, and found her crying. I'd never seen Beattie cry before. She said that her little boy was one of those five who'd be bused in.” My mother shakes her head. “I didn't even know she had a little boy. Beattie had been with my family since before I could walk or talk, and I didn't ever consider she might belong with someone other than us.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“Those children came to school. The police walked them inside. Other kids called them horrible names. One boy got spit on. I remember him walking by me, the saliva running down into his white collar, and I wondered if he was Beattie's son.” She shrugs. “Eventually there were more of them. They kept to themselves, eating together at lunch and playing together at recess. And we kept to ourselves. I can't say it was much of a desegregation, really.”

My mother nods toward Violet and her little friend, sprinkling grass over their mud pies. “This has been going on so much longer than either of us, Kennedy. From where you stepped in, in your life, it looks like we've got miles to go. But me?” She smiles in the direction of the girls. “I look at that, and I guess I'm amazed at how far we've come.”

A
FTER
C
HRISTMAS AND
New Year's, I find myself doing the work of two public defenders, literally, because Ed is vacationing with his family in Cozumel. I'm in court representing one of Ed's clients, who violated a restraining order, so I decide to check the docket to see which judge has been assigned to Ruth's case. One typical pastime for lawyers is storing away the details of the personal lives of judges—who they marry, if they're wealthy, if they go to church every weekend or just on high-water-mark holidays, if they're dumber than a bag of hammers, if they like musical theater, if they go out drinking with attorneys when they are off the clock. We store away these facts and rumors like squirrels put away nuts for winter, so that when we see who is assigned to our case, we can pull out the minutiae and figure out if we have a fighting chance of winning.

When I see who it is, my heart sinks.

Judge Thunder lives up to his name. He's a hanging judge, and he prejudges cases, and if you get convicted, you're going away for a long, long time. I know this not from hearsay, however, but from personal experience.

Before I was a public defender, when I was clerking for a federal judge, one of my colleagues became tangled up in an ethical issue involving a conflict of interest from his previous job at a law firm. I was part of the team that represented him, and after years of building the case, we went to trial in front of Judge Thunder. He hated any kind of media circus, and the fact that a federal judge's clerk was caught in an ethical violation had turned our trial into just that. Even though we had an airtight case, Thunder wanted to set a precedent for other attorneys, and my colleague was convicted and sentenced to six years. If that wasn't shocking enough, the judge turned to all of us who had been on the defense team. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Mr. Dennehy has fooled you all,” Judge Thunder scolded. “But he hasn't fooled this court.” For me, it was the last straw. I had been burning the candle at both ends, working for about a week without sleep. I was sick as a dog, on cold medication and heavy doses of prednisone, exhausted and demoralized after losing the case—so perhaps I was not as gracious or lucid as I could have been in that moment.

I might have told Judge Thunder he could suck my dick.

What ensued was a chambers conference where I begged to not be disbarred and assured the judge that I did not have, in fact, any male genitalia and had actually said,
Such magic!
because I was so impressed by his ruling.

I've had two cases in front of Judge Thunder since then. I've lost both.

I resolve not to tell Ruth about my history with the judge. Maybe the third time is a charm.

I button my coat, getting ready to leave the courthouse, giving myself a silent pep talk the whole way. I'm not going to let a tiny setback like this affect the whole case for me, not when we have jury selection next month.

As I walk out of the building, I hear the swell of gospel music.

On the New Haven Green is a sea of black people. Their arms are linked. Their voices harmonize and fill the sky:
We shall overcome.
They carry posters with Ruth's name and likeness on them.

Front and center is Wallace Mercy, singing his heart out. And beside him, her elbow tucked in his, is Ruth's sister, Adisa.

I
'M WORKING THE CASH REGISTER,
getting toward the end of my shift, when my arches ache and my back hurts. Although I took as many extra shifts as I could, it was a bleak and meager Christmas, and Edison spent most of it sullen and moody. He's been back at school for a week, but there's been a seismic shift in him—he barely talks to me, grunting out responses to my questions, riding the knife edge of rudeness until I call him on it; he's stopped doing his homework at the kitchen table and instead vanishes into his room and blares Drake and Kendrick Lamar; his phone buzzes constantly with texts, and when I ask him who needs him so desperately he says it's nobody I know. I have not received any more calls from the principal, or emails from his teachers telling me he's slacking on his work, but that doesn't mean I'm not anticipating them.

And then what will I do? How am I supposed to encourage my son to be better than most people expect him to be? How can I say, with a straight face,
you can be anything you want in this world
—when I struggled and studied and excelled and still wound up on trial for something I did not do? Every time Edison and I get into it these days, I can see that challenge in his eyes:
I dare you. I dare you to say you still believe that lie.

School has let out; I know this because of the influx of teens who explode into the building like a holiday, filling the space with bright ribbons of laughter and teasing. Inevitably they know someone working table and call out, begging for free McNuggets or a sundae. Usually they don't bother me; I prefer to be busy rather than slow. But today, a girl comes up to me, her blond ponytail swinging, holding her phone while her friends crowd around to read an incoming text with her. “Welcome to McDonald's,” I say. “Can I help you?”

There is a line of people behind her, but she looks at her friend. “What should I tell him?”

“That you can't talk because you're meeting up with someone,” one of the girls suggests.

Another girl shakes her head. “No, don't write anything. Keep him waiting.”

Like the customers behind her in line, I am starting to get annoyed. “Excuse me,” I try again, pasting a smile on my face. “Are you ready to order?”

She glances up. She has blush on her cheeks that has glitter in it; it makes her look awfully young, which I'm sure is not what she's going for. “Do you have onion rings?”

“No, that's Burger King. Our menu is up there.” I point overhead. “If you're not ready, maybe you can step aside?”

She looks at her two friends, and her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline as if I've said something offensive. “Don't worry, mama, I was jus' aksin'…”

I freeze. This girl isn't Black. She's about as far from Black as possible. So why is she talking to me like that?

Her friend cuts in front of her and orders a large fries; her other friend has a Diet Coke and a snack wrap. The girl orders a Happy Meal, and as I angrily stuff the items into the box, the irony is not lost on me.

Three customers later, I'm still watching her out of the corner of my eye as she eats her cheeseburger.

I turn to the runner who's working at the register with me. “I'll be right back.”

I walk into the dining area where the girl is still holding court with her friends. “…so I said, right to her face,
Who lit the fuse on your tampon?
—”

“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “I did not appreciate the way you spoke to me at the counter.”

A hot blush burns in her cheeks. “Wow, okay. I'm sorry,” she says, but her lips twitch.

My boss suddenly is standing beside me. Jeff is a former middle manager at a ball bearing plant who got cut when the economy tanked, and he runs the restaurant like we are giving out state secrets and not French fries. “Ruth? Is there a problem?”

There are
so
many problems. From the fact that I am not this girl's
mama
to the fact that she will not remember this conversation an hour from now. But if I choose this particular moment to stand up for myself, I will pay a price. “No, sir,” I tell Jeff, and in silence, I walk back to my register.

M
Y DAY ONLY
gets worse when I leave work and see six missed phone calls from Kennedy. I immediately ring her back. “I thought you agreed that working with Wallace Mercy was a bad idea,” she hammers, without even saying hello.

“What? I did. I
do
.”

“So you had no idea that he was leading a march in your honor today in front of the courthouse?”

I stop walking, letting the foot traffic funnel around me. “You gotta be kidding. Kennedy, I did
not
talk to Wallace.”

“Your sister was shoulder to shoulder with him.”

Well, mystery solved. “Adisa tends to do whatever she wants.”

“Can't you control her?”

“I've been trying for forty-four years but it hasn't worked yet.”

“Try harder,” Kennedy tells me.

Which is how I wind up taking the bus to my sister's apartment, instead of going right home. When Donté lets me in, Adisa is sitting on the couch playing Candy Crush on her phone, even though it is nearly dinnertime. “Well, look what the cat drug in,” she says. “Where you been?”

“It's been crazy since New Year's. Between work, and going over things for trial, I haven't had a free minute.”

“I came by the other day, did Edison tell you?”

I kick her feet off the couch so there's room for me to sit. “Did you come over to tell me your new best friend is Wallace Mercy?”

Adisa's eyes light up. “You see me on the news today? It was just my elbow and up to here on my neck, but you can tell it's me by the coat. I wore the one with the leopard collar—”

“I want you to stop,” I say. “I don't need Wallace Mercy.”

“Your white lawyer tell you that?”

“Adisa,” I sigh. “I never wanted to be someone's poster child.”

“You didn't even give Reverend Mercy a chance. You know how many of our people have had experiences like yours? How many times they been told no because of their skin color? This is bigger than just your story, and if some good can come out of what happened to you, why not let it?” Adisa sits up. “All he wants is a chance to sit down with us, Ruth. On national television.”

Alarm bells ring in my head.
“Us,”
I repeat.

Adisa's gaze slides away. “Well,” she admits, “I indicated that I might be able to change your mind.”

“So this isn't even about helping me move forward. It's about
you
getting recognition. Jesus, Adisa. This is a new low, even for you.”

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” She gets to her feet and stares down at me, her hands balanced on her hips. “You really think I'd use my baby sister like that?”

I challenge her. “You really gonna stand here drenched to the bone and tell me it's not raining?”

Before she can answer there is a loud crash as a door falls back on its hinges and slams into the wall. Tabari swaggers out from one of the bedrooms with a friend. “You rob a trucker fuh that hat, yo?” He laughs. They are amped up, loud, their pants riding so low I don't know why they even bother to wear them. All I can think is that I'd never let Edison out of the house like that, like he was looking to intimidate.

Then Tabari's friend turns around and I realize it's my son.

“Edison?”

“Ain't it nice,” Adisa says, smiling. “The cousins hanging?”

“What are you doing here?” Edison says, in a tone that lets me know this is not a pleasant surprise.

“Don't you have homework to do?”

“Did it.”

“College applications?”

He looks at me, his eyes hooded. “They ain't due for another week.”

Ain't?

“What's the problem?” he asks. “You're always telling me how important
family
is.” He says that word as if it is a swear.

“Where exactly are you and Tabari going?”

Tabari looks up. “The movies, Auntie,” he says.

“The movies.”
Like hell,
I think. “What film are you seeing?”

He and Edison exchange a look and start laughing. “We gonna pick when we get there,” Tabari says.

Adisa steps forward, arms crossed. “You got a problem with that, Ruth?”

“Yes. Yes I do,” I explode. “Because I think it's a lot more likely that your son is going to take Edison down by the basketball court to smoke weed than to see the next Oscar nominee.”

My sister's jaw drops. “You judging my family,” she hisses, “when
you
on trial for murder?”

I grab Edison's arm. “You're coming with me,” I announce, and then I turn to Adisa. “Have fun doing your interview with Wallace Mercy. Just make sure you tell him, and the adoring public, that you and your sister are no longer on speaking terms.”

With that, I drag my son out of her home. I rip the hat off his head when we get downstairs and tell him to pull up his pants. We are halfway to the bus station before he says a word. “I'm sorry,” Edison begins.

“You better be,” I answer, rounding on him. “You lost your damn mind? I didn't raise you to be like this.”

“Tabari's not as bad as his friends.”

I start walking, and I don't look back. “Tabari is not my son,” I say.

W
HEN
I
WAS
pregnant with Edison, all I knew was that I didn't want the experience of giving birth to be anything like Adisa's—who claimed to not even realize she was pregnant for six months when she had her first baby, and who practically had her second on the subway. Me, I wanted the best care I could get, the finest doctors. Since Wesley was on a tour of duty, I enlisted Mama as my birthing coach. When it was time, we took a taxi to Mercy–West Haven because Mama couldn't drive and I was in no state to. I had planned for a natural birth, because as a labor and delivery nurse I'd written this moment in my head a thousand times, but just like any well-laid plan, that wasn't in the cards for me. As I was being wheeled into the OR for a C-section, Mama was singing Baptist hymns, and when I came to after the procedure, she was holding my son.

“Ruth,” she said to me, her eyes so full of pride they were a color I'd never seen before. “Ruth, look at what God made for you.”

She held the baby out to me, and I suddenly realized that although I'd planned my first birth down to the minute, I hadn't organized a single second of what might come afterward. I had no idea how to be a mother. My son was stiff in my arms, and then he opened his mouth and started wailing, like this world was an affront to him.

Panicked, I looked up at my mama. I was a straight-A student; I was an overachiever. I had never imagined that this—the most natural of all relationships—would make me feel so incompetent. I jiggled the baby in my arms, but that only made him cry louder. His feet kicked like he was traveling on an imaginary bicycle; his arms flailed, each tiny finger flexed and rigid. His screams grew tighter and tighter, an uneven seam of anger punctuated by the tiny knots of his hiccups. His cheeks were red with effort, as he tried to tell me something I was not equipped to understand.

“Mama?” I begged. “What do I do?”

I held out my arms to her, hoping she would take him and calm him down. But she just shook her head. “You tell him who you are to him,” she instructed, and she took a step back, as if to remind me I was in this by myself.

So I bent my face close to his. I pressed his spine up under my heart, where it had been for so many months. “Your name is Edison Wesley Jefferson,” I whispered. “I am your mama, and I'm going to give you the best life I can.”

Edison blinked. He stared up at me through his dark eyes, as if I were a shadow he had to distinguish from the rest of this new, strange world. His cries hitched twice, a train headed off its track, and then crashed into silence.