Small Great Things (34 page)

I could tell you the exact minute my son relaxed into his new surroundings. I know this detail because it was the moment I did the same.

“See,” Mama said, from somewhere behind me, somewhere outside the circle of just us two. “I told you so.”

K
ENNEDY AND
I
meet every two weeks, even when there's no new information. Sometimes she'll text me, or stop by McDonald's to say hello. At one of these visits she invites me and Edison over for dinner.

Before going to Kennedy's home, I change three times. Finally Edison knocks on the bathroom door. “We going to your lawyer's,” he asks, “or to meet the queen?”

He's right. I don't know why I'm nervous. Except that this feels like crossing a line. It's one thing to have her here to review information about my case, but this invitation didn't have any work attached to it. This invitation was more like…a social call.

Edison is dressed in a button-down shirt and khaki pants and has been told on penalty of death that he will behave like the gentleman I know him to be, or I will whup him when he gets home. When we ring the doorbell, the husband—Micah, that's his name—answers, with a girl tucked under his arm like a rag doll. “You must be Ruth,” he says, taking the bouquet I offer and shaking my hand warmly, then shaking Edison's. He pivots, then turns the other way. “My daughter, Violet, is around here somewhere…I just saw her…I'm sure she'll want to say hello.” As he twists, the little girl whips around, her hair flying, her giggles falling over my feet like bubbles.

She slips out of her dad's arm, and I kneel down. Violet McQuarrie looks like a tiny version of her mama, albeit dressed in a Princess Tiana costume. I hold out a Mason jar that is filled with miniature white lights, and flip the switch so that it illuminates. “This is for you,” I tell her. “It's a fairy jar.”

Her eyes widen. “Wow,” Violet breathes, and she takes it and runs off.

I get to my feet. “It also doubles as an excellent night-light,” I tell Micah, as Kennedy comes out of the kitchen, wearing jeans and a sweater and an apron.

“You made it!” she says, smiling. She has spaghetti sauce on her chin.

“Yes,” I answer. “I must have driven past your place a hundred times. I just didn't know, you know, that you lived here.”

And still wouldn't, had I not been indicted for murder. I know she's thinking it, too, but Micah saves the moment. “Drink? Can I get you something, Ruth? We have wine, beer, gin and tonic…”

“Wine would be nice.”

We sit down in the living room. There is already a cheese plate on the coffee table. “Look at that,” Edison murmurs to me. “A basketful of crackers.”

I shoot him a look that could make a bird fall from the sky.

“It's so nice of you to invite us into your home,” I say politely.

“Well, don't thank me yet,” Kennedy replies. “Dinner with a four-year-old is not exactly a gourmet dining experience.” She smiles at Violet, who is coloring on the other side of the coffee table. “Needless to say we don't entertain much these days.”

“I remember when Edison was that age. I am pretty sure we ate a variation of macaroni and cheese every night for a full year.”

Micah crosses his legs. “Edison, my wife tells me you're quite the student.”

Yes. Because I neglected to mention to Kennedy that of late, he's been suspended.

“Thank you, sir,” Edison replies. “I've been applying to colleges.”

“Oh yeah? That's great. What do you want to study?”

“History, maybe. Or politics.”

Micah nods, interested. “Are you a big fan of Obama?”

Why do white people always assume that?

“I was kind of young when he was running,” Edison says. “But I went around with my mom campaigning for Hillary, when she was running against him. I guess because of my dad I'm sensitive to military issues, and her position on the Iraq War made more sense at the time; she was vocally in favor of invasion and Obama was opposed from the start.”

I puff up with pride. “Well,” Micah says, impressed. “I look forward to seeing your name on a ticket one day.”

Violet, clearly bored by this conversation, steps over my legs to hold out a crayon to Edison. “Wanna color?” she asks.

“Um, yeah, okay,” Edison replies. He sinks down to his knees, shoulder to shoulder with Kennedy's girl, so that he can reach the coloring book. He starts making Cinderella's dress green.

“No,” Violet interrupts, a tiny despot. “That's supposed to be
blue.
” She points to Cinderella's dress in the coloring book, half hidden beneath Edison's broad palm.

“Violet,” Kennedy says, “we let our guests make their own choices, remember?”

“That's okay, Mrs. McQuarrie. I wouldn't want to mess with Cinderella,” Edison answers.

The little girl proudly hands him the right color crayon, a blue one. Edison bends his head and starts to scribble again.

“Next week you start jury selection?” I ask. “Should I be worried about that?”

“No, of course not. It's just—”

“Edison?” Violet asks. “Is that a chain?”

He touches the necklace he's been wearing lately, ever since he started hanging with his cousin. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“So that means you're a slave,” she states matter-of-factly.

“Violet!” Both Micah and Kennedy shout her name simultaneously.

“Oh my God, Edison. Ruth. I'm so sorry,” Kennedy blusters. “I don't know where she would have heard that—”

“In school,” Violet announces. “Josiah told Taisha that people who look like her used to wear chains and their history was that they were slaves.”

“We'll discuss this later,” Micah says. “Okay, Vi? It's not something to talk about now.”

“It's okay,” I say, even though I can feel the unease in the room, as if someone has taken away all the oxygen. “Do you know what a slave is?”

Violet shakes her head.

“It's when someone owns someone else.”

I watch the little girl turn this over in her head. “Like a pet?”

Kennedy puts her hand on my arm. “You don't have to do this,” she says quietly.

“Don't you think I already
had
to, once?” I glance at her daughter again. “Kind of like a pet, but also different. A long time ago, people who looked like you and your mama and daddy found a place in the world where people looked like me, and like Edison, and like Taisha. And we were doing things so fine there—building homes, and cooking food, making something out of nothing—that they wanted it in their country too. So they brought over the people who looked like me, without asking our permission. We didn't have a choice. So a slave—that's just someone who doesn't have a choice in what they do, or what's done to them.”

Violet sets down her crayon. Her face is twisted in thought.

“We weren't the first slaves,” I tell her. “There are stories in a book I like, called the Bible. The Egyptians made Jewish people slaves who would build temples for them that looked like huge triangles, and were made out of bricks. They were able to make the Jewish people slaves because the Egyptians were the ones with the power.”

Then, like any other four-year-old, Violet bounces back to her spot beside my son. “Let's color Rapunzel instead,” she announces—but then she hesitates. “I mean,” she corrects, “do
you
want to color Rapunzel?”

“Okay,” Edison says.

I may be the only person who notices, but while I've been explaining, he has taken off that chain from his neck and slipped it into his pocket.

“Thank you,” Micah says, sincere. “That was a really perfect Black history lesson.”

“Slavery isn't Black history,” I point out. “It's
everyone's
history.”

A timer goes off, and Kennedy stands up. When she goes into the kitchen, I murmur something about wanting to help her and follow her. Immediately, she turns, her cheeks burning. “I am so, so sorry for that, Ruth.”

“Don't be. She's a baby. She doesn't know any better yet.”

“Well, you did a much better job explaining than I ever would have.”

I watch her reach into the oven for a lasagne. “When Edison came home from school and asked if we were slaves, he was about the same age as Violet. And the last thing I wanted was to have that talk and leave him feeling like a victim.”

“Violet told me last week she wished she could be just like Taisha, because she gets to wear beads in her hair.”

“What did you say?”

Kennedy hesitates. “I don't know. I probably bungled it. I said something about how everyone's different and that's what makes the world great. I swear, when she asks me things about race I turn into a freaking Coke commercial.”

I laugh. “In your defense, you probably don't talk about it quite as much as I do. Practice makes perfect.”

“But you know what? When I was her age, I had a Taisha in my class too—except her name was Lesley. And God, I wanted to be her. I used to dream that I'd wake up Black. No joke.”

I raise my brows in mock horror. “And give up your winning lottery ticket? No way.”

She looks at me, and we both laugh, and in that instant we are merely two women, standing over a lasagne, telling the truth. In that instant, with our flaws and confessions trailing like a slip from a dress, we have more in common than we have differences.

I smile, and Kennedy smiles, and for that moment, at least, we really, really see each other. It's a start.

Suddenly Edison comes into the kitchen holding out my cellphone. “What's the matter?” I tease. “Don't tell me you were fired because you made Ariel a brunette?”

“Mama, it's Ms. Mina,” he says. “I think you better take it.”

O
NE
C
HRISTMAS, WHEN
I was ten, I got a Black Barbie. Her name was Christie, and she was just like the dolls Christina had, except for the skin color, and except for the fact that Christina had a whole shoe box full of Barbie clothes and my mama couldn't afford those. Instead, she made Christie a wardrobe out of old socks and dish towels. She glued me a dream house out of shoe boxes. I was over the moon. This was even better than Christina's collection, I told Mama, because I was the only person in the world who had it. My sister, Rachel, who was twelve, made fun of me. “Call them what you want,” she told me. “But they're just knockoffs.”

Rachel's friends were mostly the same age as her, but they acted like they were sixteen. I didn't hang out with them very often, because they went to school in Harlem and I commuted to Dalton. But on weekends, if they came over, they made fun of me because I had wavy hair, instead of kinks like theirs, and because my skin was light. “You think you all that,” they'd say, and then they'd giggle into each other's shoulders as if this were the punch line to a secret joke. When my mother made Rachel babysit me on weekends, and we would take the bus to a shopping center, I sat in the front while they all sat in the back. They called me Afrosaxon, instead of by my name. They sang along to music I didn't know. When I told Rachel that I didn't like her friends making fun of me, she told me to stop being so sensitive. “They just crackin' on you,” she said. “Maybe if you let it slide a little, they'd like you more.”

One day, I ran into her friends when I was on my way home from school. This time, though, Rachel wasn't with them. “Ooh, look what we got here,” said the tallest one, Fantasee. She yanked at my French braid, which was how the girls in my school were wearing their hair those days. “You think you so fancy,” she said, and the three of them surrounded me. “What? Can't you talk for yourself? You need your sister to do it for you?”

“Stop,” I said. “Leave me alone. Please.”

“I think someone needs to remember where she from.” They grabbed at my backpack, unzipping it, throwing my schoolwork into the puddles on the ground, shoving me into the mud. Fantasee grabbed my Christie doll and dismembered her. Suddenly, like an avenging angel, Rachel arrived. She pulled Fantasee away and smacked her across the face. She tripped one of the other girls and pummeled the third. When they were all flattened, she stood over them with her fist. They crawled away, crabs in the gutter, and then scrambled to their feet and ran. I crouched down next to my broken Christie, and Rachel knelt beside me. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But you…you hurt your friends.”

“I got other friends,” Rachel answered. “You're my only sister.” She tugged me to my feet. “C'mon, let's get you clean.”

We walked home in silence. Mama took one look at my hair and my ripped tights and hustled me into a bath. She put ice on Rachel's knuckles.

Mama glued Christie back together, but her arm kept popping out and there was a permanent dent in the back of her head. Later that night, Rachel crawled into my bed. She'd done that when we were little, during thunderstorms. She handed me a chair that was made out of an empty cigarette pack, a yogurt cup, and some newspaper. Trash, that she had glued and taped together. “I thought Christie could use this,” she said.

I nodded, turning it over in my hands. Probably it would break apart when Christie first sat in it, but that wasn't the point. I lifted up the covers and Rachel fitted herself to me, her front to my back. We rode out the night like that, like we were Siamese twins, sharing a heart that beat between us.

M
Y MOTHER SUFFERED
her first stroke while she was vacuuming. Ms. Mina heard the crash of her body falling down, and found her lying on the edge of the Persian rug with her face pressed up against the tassel, as if she was inspecting it. She suffers her second stroke in the ambulance en route to the hospital. She is dead on arrival when we get there. I find Ms. Mina waiting for us, sobbing and overwrought. Edison stays with her, while I go to see Mama.