Small Great Things

  "Of course. Didn't everyone?" I say.

  "I guess that was the point. If you make the most functional family on TV a black one, maybe white folks won't be quite as terrified."

  "Don't know that I'd use the words Cosby and functional in the same sentence these days," I muse, as the T.J.Maxx employee walks up to us again.

  "Everything all right?"

  "Yeah," I say, getting annoyed. "We'll let you know if we need help."

  Ruth decides on ER, because her mother has a crush on George Clooney, along with mittens that have real rabbit fur sewed along the edges. I pick up a pair of pajamas for Violet, and a pack of undershirts for Micah. When we walk up to the cash register, the manager follows us. I pay first, handing over my credit card to the cashier, and then wait for Ruth to finish her transaction.

  "Do you have any ID?" the cashier asks. Ruth pulls out her license and Social Security card. The cashier looks at her, then at the picture on the license, and rings up the items.

  As we are leaving the store, a security guard stops us. "Ma'am," he says to Ruth, "can I see your receipt?"

  I start to rummage in my bag so that he can check mine, too, but he waves me away. "You're fine," he says dismissively, and he turns his attention back to Ruth, matching the contents of the bag with what's been rung up.

  That's when I realize that Ruth didn't want me to come here with her because she needed help picking out a present for her mother.

  Ruth wanted me to come here so that I could understand what it was like to be her.

  The manager hovering, in case of shoplifting.

  The wariness of the cashier.

  The fact that out of a dozen people leaving T.J.Maxx at the same time, Ruth was the only one whose bag was checked.

  I can feel my cheeks redden--embarrassed on Ruth's behalf, embarrassed because I didn't realize what was going on even as it was happening. When the security guard gives Ruth back the bag, we leave the store, running through the driving rain to my car.

  Inside, we sit, out of breath and soaked. The rain is a sheet between us and the world. "I get it," I say.

  Ruth looks at me. "You haven't even begun to get it," she replies, not unkindly.

  "But you didn't say anything," I point out. "Do you just get used to it?"

  "I don't imagine you ever get used to it. But you figure out how to let it go."

  I hear her words about Christina, echoing in my mind: She never learned any other way of being.

  Our eyes meet. "True confession? The worst grade I got in college was for a course on black history. I was the only white girl in the seminar. I did fine on exams, but half of the grade was participation, and I never opened my mouth that semester, not once. I figured if I did, I'd say the wrong thing, or something stupid that made me sound prejudiced. But then I worried that all those other kids thought I didn't give a damn about the subject because I never contributed to the discussion."

  Ruth is quiet for a moment. "True confession? The reason we don't talk about race is because we do not speak a common language."

  We sit for a few moments, listening to the rain. "True confession? I never really liked The Cosby Show."

  "True confession?" Ruth grins. "Neither did I."

  --

  THROUGHOUT DECEMBER, I double down on my efforts to keep my nose to the grindstone. I sort through discovery, I write pretrial motions, and I catch up on the other thirty cases vying with Ruth's for a moment of my attention. After lunch, I am supposed to depose a twenty-three-year-old who was beaten up by her boyfriend when he found out she was sleeping with his brother. However, the witness gets into a fender-bender on the way so we have to reschedule, leaving me with two hours free. I look down at the mountains of paperwork surrounding my desk and make a snap decision. I poke my head over the edge of my cubicle, toward where Howard is sitting. "If anyone asks," I tell him, "say I had to go out to buy tampons."

  "Wait. Really?"

  "No. But then they'll be embarrassed, and it serves them right for checking up on me."

  It's unseasonably warm--almost fifty degrees. I know that when the weather is good my mother usually picks Violet up from school and walks her to the playground. They have a snack--apples and nuts--and then Violet plays on the jungle gym before heading home. Sure enough, Violet is hanging upside down from the monkey bars, her skirt tickling her chin, when she sees me. "Mommy!" she cries, and with a grace and athleticism that must have come from Micah's genes, she flips herself to the ground and races toward me.

  As I lift her into my arms, my mother turns around on the bench. "Did you get fired?" she asks.

  I raise a brow. "Is that honestly the first thing that pops into your mind?"

  "Well, the last time you made an impromptu visit in the middle of the day I think it was because Micah's father was dying."

  "Mommy," Violet announces, "I made you a Christmas present at school and it's a necklace and also birds can eat it." She squirms in my embrace, so I set her down, and immediately she runs back to the play structure.

  My mother pats the spot on the bench beside her. She is bundled up in spite of the temperature, has her e-reader on her lap, and beside her is a little Tupperware bento box with apple slices and mixed nuts. "So," she says, "if you still have a job, to what do we owe this very excellent surprise?"

  "A car accident--not mine." I pop a handful of nuts into my mouth. "What are you reading?"

  "Why, sugar, I'd never read while my grandbaby is on a jungle gym. My eyes never leave her."

  I roll my eyes. "What are you reading?"

  "I don't remember the name. Something about a duchess with cancer and the vampire who offers to make her immortal. Apparently it's a genre called sick lit," my mother says. "It's for book club."

  "Who chose it?"

  "Not me. I don't pick the books. I pick the wine."

  "The last book I read was Everyone Poops," I say, "so I guess I can't really pass judgment."

  I lean back, tilting my face to the late afternoon sun. My mother pats her lap, and I stretch out on the bench, lying down. She plays with my hair, the way she used to when I was Violet's age. "You know the hardest thing about being a mom?" I say idly. "That you never get time to be a kid anymore."

  "You never get time, period," my mother replies. "And before you know it, your little girl is off saving the world."

  "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, chi
pping 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."

  --

  AFTER CHRISTMAS 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.