Small Great Things (45 page)

But it hangs in the space between us, like the glow of a neon sign after the plug has been pulled.

I feel negative pressure on my shoulder and realize Kennedy has released me. She stands in front of the detective. “You had a warrant?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call Ruth to tell her you'd be coming? Ask her to come voluntarily to the station?”

“That's not what we do with murder warrants,” MacDougall says.

“What time was your warrant issued?”

“Five
P.M.
or so.”

“And what time did you actually get to Ruth's house?”

“About three
A.M
.”

Kennedy looks at the jury as if to say,
Can you believe this?
“Any particular reason for the delay?”

“It was fully intentional. One of the tenets of law enforcement is to go when someone is least expecting you. That disarms the suspect and moves the process along.”

“When you knocked on Ruth's door, then, and she didn't immediately welcome you with a coffee cake and a big hug, is it possible that was because she was fast asleep at three in the morning?”

“I can't speak to the defendant's sleep habits.”

“The cursory search you did…in fact didn't you actually empty the drawers and cabinets and knock over furniture and otherwise destroy Ms. Jefferson's home when she was handcuffed and unable to access any weapon?”

“You never know when a weapon might be within someone's reach, ma'am.”

“Isn't it also true that you pushed her son to the ground and pulled his arms behind his back to subdue him?”

“That's standard procedure for officer safety. We didn't know that was Ms. Jefferson's son. We saw a large, angry Black youth who was visibly upset.”

“Really?” Kennedy says. “Was he wearing a hoodie too?”

J
UDGE
T
HUNDER STRIKES
that comment from the record, and when Kennedy sits down, she looks just as surprised by her outburst as I am. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “That just slipped out.” The judge, though, is furious. He calls counsel up for a sidebar. There is a noise machine again that prevents me from hearing what he says, but from the color of his face, and the full-throttle anger as he laces into my lawyer, I know he didn't ask her up there to praise her.

“That,” Kennedy tells me, a little white around the gills when she returns, “is why you don't bring up race in a courtroom.”

Judge Thunder decides that his back spasm merits adjournment for the rest of the day.

Because of the snow, it takes us longer to get home. When Edison and I turn the corner on our block, we are damp and exhausted. A man is trying to dig out his car using only his gloved hands. Two neighborhood boys are in the thick of a snowball fight; one missile smacks against Edison's back.

There is a car sitting in front of our house. It's a black sedan with a driver, which isn't something you see very often around here, at least not once you get off the Yale campus. As I approach, the rear door opens and a woman stands up. She is wearing a ski parka and furry boots and is buried under a layer of wool—a hat, a scarf. It takes me a moment to realize that this is Christina.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, truly surprised. In all the years I've been in East End, Christina has not come to visit. In all the years, I haven't invited her.

It's not that I'm ashamed of my home. I love where I live,
how
I live. It's that I did not think I could handle the excessive way she'd exclaim about how cute the space was, how cozy, how
me.

“I've been in court for the last two days,” she admits, and I'm shocked. I've scanned that gallery. I haven't noticed her there, and Christina is very hard to overlook.

She unzips her coat, revealing a ratty flannel shirt and baggy jeans, as far away from her couture sheaths as possible. “I wore camouflage,” she says, smiling shyly. She looks over my shoulder, to Edison. “Edison! My God, I haven't seen you since you were shorter than your mother…”

He jerks his chin, an awkward hello.

“Edison, why don't you go inside?” I suggest, and when he does, I meet Christina's gaze. “I don't understand. If the press found out that you were here—”

“Then I'd tell them to go screw themselves,” she says firmly. “The hell with Congress. I told Larry I was coming, and that it wasn't negotiable. If anyone from the press asks, I'm just going to tell them the truth: that you and I go way back.”

“Christina,” I ask again, “what are you doing
here
?”

She could have texted. She could have called. She could have simply sat in the courtroom to lend moral support. But instead, she has been waiting in front of my door for God knows how long.

“I'm your
friend,
” she says quietly. “Believe it or not, Ruth, this is what friends do
.
” She looks up at me, and I realize she has tears in her eyes. “What they said happened to you—the police breaking in. The handcuffs. The way they attacked Edison. I never imagined…” She falters, then gathers up the weeds of her thoughts and offers me the saddest, truest bouquet. “I didn't know.”

“Why
would
you?” I reply—not angry, not hurt, just stating a fact. “You'll never have to.”

Christina wipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara. “I don't know if I ever told you this story,” she says. “It's about your mother. It was a long time ago, when I was in college. I was driving back home from Vassar for Thanksgiving break, and there was a hitchhiker on the side of the road on the Taconic Parkway. He was a Black man, and he had a bum leg. He was literally walking on crutches. So I pulled over and asked if he needed a ride. I took him all the way to Penn Station, so that he could get on a train to visit his family in D.C.” She folds her coat more tightly around her. “When I got home, and Lou came into my room to help me unpack, I told her what I'd done. I thought she'd be proud of me, being a Good Samaritan and all. Instead, she got so angry, Ruth! I swear, I'd never seen her like that. She grabbed my arms and shook me; she couldn't even speak at first.
Don't you ever, ever do that again,
she told me, and I was so shocked I promised I wouldn't.” Christina looks at me. “Today I sat in that courtroom and I listened to that detective talk about how he busted in your door in the middle of the night and pushed you down and held back Edison and I kept hearing Lou's voice in my head, after I told her about the Black hitchhiker. I knew your mama reacted that way to me because she was scared. But all these years, I thought she was trying to keep me safe. Now, I know she was trying to keep
him
safe.”

I realize that for years, I've made the assumption that Christina looks at me as someone from her past to be tolerated, an unfortunate to be helped. As children I felt like we were equals. But as we got older, as we became more aware of what was different about us, instead of what was similar, I felt a wedge drive between us. I secretly criticized her for making judgments about me and my life without asking me questions directly. She was the diva and I was the supporting player in her story. But I conveniently forgot to point out to myself that
I
was the one who'd cast her in that role. I'd blamed Christina for building that invisible wall without admitting I'd added a few bricks of my own.

“I left the money under your welcome mat,” I blurt out.

“I know,” Christina says. “I should have superglued it to your palm.”

There's a foot of space, and a world of contrast, between Christina and me. Yet I, too, know how hard it is to peel back the veneer of your life, and to peek at the real. It's like waking up in a room and getting out of bed and realizing the furniture has been completely rearranged. You will eventually find your way out, but it's going to be slow going, and you're bound to get some bruises along the way.

I reach out and squeeze Christina's hand. “Why don't you come inside?” I say.

T
HE NEXT DAY
is frigid and clear. The memory of yesterday's snowstorm has been scraped off the highways and the temperature keeps some of the crowd away from the front steps of the courthouse. Even Judge Thunder seems settled, made complacent by either whatever drugs he got for his sore back or the fact that we are nearing the end of the prosecution's witnesses. Today, the first person called is the state medical examiner, Dr. Bill Binnie, who studied under the famous Henry Lee. He is younger than I would have imagined, with delicate hands that flutter during his responses, like trained birds sitting in his lap; and he has movie-star looks, so the ladies in the jury are hanging on his responses, even when they are simply the boring litany of all the accomplishments on his CV. “When did you first hear about Davis Bauer, Doctor?” the prosecutor asks.

“My office received a phone message from Corinne McAvoy, a nurse at Mercy–West Haven Hospital.”

“Did you respond?”

“Yes. After retrieving the infant's body, we did an autopsy.”

“Can you tell the court what that entails?”

“Sure,” he says, turning to the jury. “I perform both an external and an internal examination. During the external exam, I look over the body for bruises and to see if there are any marks. I take measurements of the body, and the circumference of the head, and photograph the body. I take blood and bile samples. Then, to perform the internal examination, I make a Y incision in the chest, pull back the skin, and examine the lungs and the heart and the liver as well as other organs, checking for rupture, for gross abnormalities. We weigh and measure the organs. We take tissue samples. And then we send the samples to toxicology and await the results, in order to make a reasonable and factual conclusion about the cause of death.”

“What were your findings of note during the autopsy?” Odette asks.

“The liver was slightly enlarged. There was slight cardiomegaly and a minimal grade one patent ductus, but other congenital defects were absent—there were no valvular or plumbing abnormalities.”

“What does that mean?”

“The organ was a little large, and there was a small hole in the heart. However, the vessels weren't hooked up wrong,” he says. “There were no septal defects.”

“Were any of these findings something that suggested the cause of death?”

“Not really,” the medical examiner says. “There was good reason for them. According to the patient's medical records, the mother had gestational diabetes during the pregnancy.”

“What's that?”

“A condition that leads to high blood sugar for a mother during pregnancy. Unfortunately, that high blood sugar in mothers also has an effect on their infants.”

“How so?”

“Infants who are born to mothers with diabetes are often bigger than other babies. Their livers, hearts, and adrenal glands may be enlarged. These infants are also often hypoglycemic after birth because of increased insulin levels in the blood. Again, based on the medical records I studied, the patient's postnatal lab work indicated low blood sugar, as did the femoral stick done during the code. All of the findings of the autopsy, as well as the low blood sugar, would be consistent with an infant born to a diabetic mother.”

“What about the hole in the baby's heart? That sounds serious…”

“It sounds worse than it is. In most cases, the patent ductus closes up by itself,” Dr. Binnie says, and he glances at the jury. The woman who is a teacher, juror number 12, actually starts fanning herself.

“Were you able to determine how the baby died, then?”

“Actually,” the medical examiner says. “That's more complicated than most people think. We medical geeks make a distinction between the way a person died and the actual change in the body that causes the termination of life. For example, let's say there is a gunshot and someone dies. The cause of death is the gunshot wound. But the mechanism of death—the actual physical event that ended his life—would be exsanguination—loss of blood.”

He turns his attention from Odette to the jury. “And then, there's manner of death—how it came about. Was the gunshot wound an accident? A suicide? Was it a deliberate assault? That becomes important—well—when we're sitting in a courtroom like this.”

The prosecutor enters another exhibit. “What you're about to see,” Odette warns the jury, “may be extremely disturbing.”

She sets up on an easel a photograph of the body of Davis Bauer.

I feel my breath catch in my throat. Those tiny fingers, the bow of the legs. The acorn of his penis, still bloodied from the circumcision. If not for the bruises, the blue tint to his skin, he might be asleep.

I had taken this body from the morgue. I had held him in my own arms. I had rocked him toward Heaven.

“Doctor,” Odette begins, “could you tell us—” But before she can finish, there is a crash in the gallery. We all spin around to see Brittany Bauer standing, her eyes wild. Her husband stands in front of her, holding her shoulders. I can't tell if he's trying to keep her subdued or keep her upright.

“Let me go,” she shrieks. “That's my
son
!”

Judge Thunder raps his gavel. “I'll have order,” he demands, and not unkindly, “Ma'am, please sit back down…”

But Brittany points a shaking finger directly at me. It might as well be a Taser for the current that runs through my bones. “You fucking killed my baby.” She stumbles into the aisle, approaching me, while I stand caught in the spell of her hate. “I'll make you pay for this, if it's the last thing I do.”

Kennedy calls out to the judge as he smacks his gavel again and calls the bailiff. Brittany Bauer's father tries to calm her down, too, but to no avail. There is a shudder of shock and gossip as she is escorted from the courtroom. Her husband is frozen, caught between comforting her and staying for the testimony. After a moment he turns and runs out the double doors.