Small Great Things (24 page)

I pick up my sandwich and take a bite just as Ruth bows her head and says, “Lord, we thank you for our food, furnishing our bodies for Christ's sake.”

My mouth is still full as I say
Amen
.

“So you're a churchgoer,” I add, after I swallow.

Ruth looks up at me. “Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. In fact, it's good to know, because it's something that can help a jury like you.”

For the first time, I really look at Ruth carefully. The last time I saw her, after all, her hair was wrapped and she was wearing a nightgown. Now, she is dressed conservatively in a striped blouse and navy skirt, with shiny patent flats that are rubbed raw in one small spot each at the heels. Her hair is straight, pulled into a knot at the base of her neck. Her skin is lighter than I remember, almost the same color as the coffee milk that my mother used to let me drink when I was little.

Nerves manifest differently in different people. Me, I get talkative. Micah gets pensive. My mother gets snobbish. And Ruth, apparently, gets stiff. Which is something else I file away, because jurors who see that can misinterpret it as anger or haughtiness.

“I know it's hard,” I say, lowering my voice for privacy, “but I need you to be a hundred percent honest with me. Even though I'm a stranger. I mean, hopefully, I won't be one for long. But it's important to realize that nothing you say to me can be used against you. It's completely client-privileged.”

Ruth puts her fork down carefully, and nods. “All right.”

I take a small notebook out of my purse. “Well, first, do you prefer the term
black
or
African American
or
people of color
?”

Ruth stares at me. “People of color,” she says after a moment.

I write this down. Underline it. “I just want you to feel comfortable. Frankly, I don't even
see
color. I mean, the only race that matters is the
human
one, right?”

Her lips press together tightly.

I clear my throat, breaking the knot of silence. “Remind me again where you went to school?”

“SUNY Plattsburgh, and then Yale Nursing School.”

“Impressive,” I murmur, scribbling this down.

“Ms. McQuarrie,” she says.

“Kennedy.”

“Kennedy…I can't go back to prison.” Ruth looks into my eyes, and for a moment, I can see right down into the heart of her. “I've got my boy, and there's no one else who can raise him to be the man I know he's going to be.”

“I know. Listen, I'm going to do my best. I have a lot of experience in cases with people like you.”

That mask freezes her features again. “People like me?”

“People accused of serious crimes,” I explain.

“But I didn't do anything.”

“I believe you. However, we still have to convince a jury. So we have to go back to the basics to figure out why you've been charged.”

“I'd think that's pretty obvious,” Ruth says quietly. “That baby's father didn't want me near his son.”

“The white supremacist? He has nothing to do with your case.”

Ruth blinks. “I don't understand how that's possible.”

“He isn't the one who indicted you. None of that matters.”

She looks at me as if I'm crazy. “But I'm the only nurse of color on the birthing pavilion.”

“To the State, it doesn't matter if you're black or white or blue or green. To them, you had a legal duty to take care of an infant under your charge. Just because your boss said don't touch the baby doesn't mean you get a free pass to stand there and do nothing.” I lean forward. “The State doesn't even have to specify what the degree of murder is. They can argue multiple theories—contradictory theories. It's like shooting fish in a bucket—if they hit any of them, you're in trouble. If the State can show implied malice because you were so mad at being taken off the baby's case, and suggest that you premeditated the death, the jury can convict you of murder. Even if we told the jury it was an accident, you'd be admitting to a breach in duty of care and criminal negligence with reckless and wanton disregard for the safety of the baby—you'd basically be giving them negligent homicide on a silver platter. In either of those scenarios, you're going to prison. And in either of those scenarios it doesn't matter what color your skin is.”

She draws in her breath. “Do you really believe that if I was white, I'd be sitting here with you right now?”

There is no way you can look at a case that has, at its core, a nurse who is the only employee of color in the department, a white supremacist father, and a knee-jerk decision by a hospital administrator…and not assume that race played a factor.

But.

Any public defender who tells you justice is blind is telling you a big fat lie. Watch the news coverage of trials that have racial overtones, and what will stick out profoundly is the way attorneys and judges and juries go out of their way to say this
isn't
about race, even though it clearly is. Any public defender will also tell you that even though the majority of our clients are people of color, you can't play the race card during a trial.

That's because it's sure suicide in a courtroom to bring up race. You don't know what your jury is thinking. Or can't be certain of what your judge believes. In fact, the easiest way to lose a case that has a racially motivated incident at its core is to actually call it what it is. Instead, you find something else for the jury to hang their hat on. Some shred of evidence that can clear your client of blame, and allow those twelve men and women to go home still pretending that the world we live in is an equal one.

“No,” I admit. “I believe it's too risky to bring up in court.” I lean forward. “I'm not saying you weren't discriminated against, Ruth. I'm saying that this is not the time or place to address it.”

“Then when
is
?” she asks, her voice hot. “If no one ever talks about race in court, how is anything ever supposed to change?”

I don't have the answer to that. The wheels of systemic justice are slow; but fortunately, there's a little more oil in the machinery for personal justice, which throws cash at the victims to remove some of the indignity. “You file a civil lawsuit. I can't do it for you, but I can call around and find you someone who works with employment discrimination.”

“But I can't afford a lawyer—”

“They'll take your case on contingency. They'll get a third of whatever payout you win,” I explain. “To be honest, with that Post-it note, I think you'd be able to get compensatory damages for the salary you lost, as well as punitive damages for the idiotic decision your employer made.”

Her jaw drops. “You mean I'd get money?”

“I wouldn't be surprised if it was a couple million,” I admit.

Ruth Jefferson is speechless.

“You've got one hundred and eighty days to file an EEOC complaint.”

“And then what?”

“Then, the EEOC will sit on it until the criminal trial is finished.”

“Why?”

“Because assigning a guilty verdict against a plaintiff is significant,” I say frankly. “It will change how your civil lawyer will draw up the complaint for you. A guilty finding is admissible as evidence, and would hurt your civil case.”

She turns this over in her mind. “Which is why you don't want to talk about discrimination during
this
trial,” Ruth says. “So that guilty verdict won't come to pass.” She folds her hands in her lap, silent. She shakes her head once, and then closes her eyes.

“You were kept from doing your job,” I say softly. “Don't keep me from doing mine.”

Ruth takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, and meets my gaze. “All right,” she says. “What do you want to know?”

T
HE MORNING AFTER
I
AM
released from jail I wake up and stare at the same old crack in the ceiling that I always say I'll patch and never get around to doing. I feel the bar from the pullout couch digging into my back and give thanks for it. I close my eyes and listen to the sweet harmony of the garbage trucks on our street.

In my nightgown (a fresh one; I will donate the one I wore to the arraignment to Goodwill at the first opportunity) I start a pot of coffee and pad down the hall to Edison's bedroom. My boy rests like the dead; even when I turn the knob and slip inside and sit down on the edge of the mattress, he doesn't stir.

When Edison was little, my husband and I would watch him sleep. Sometimes Wesley would put his hand on Edison's back, and we'd measure the rise and fall of his lungs. The science of creating another human is remarkable, and no matter how many times I've learned about cells and mitosis and neural tubes and all the rest that goes into forming a baby, I can't help but think there's a dash of miracle involved, too.

Edison rumbles deep in his chest, and he rubs his eyes. “Mama?” he says, sitting up, instantly awake. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” I tell him. “Everything is right in the world.”

He exhales, then looks at his clock. “I have to get ready for school.”

I know, from our conversation in the car last night on the drive home, that Edison missed a whole day of classes in order to post bail for me, learning more about mortgages and real estate than I probably know myself. “I'll call the school secretary. To explain about yesterday.”

But we both know there's a difference between
Please excuse Edison for being absent; he had a stomach bug
and
Please excuse Edison for being absent; he was bailing his mother out of jail.
Edison shakes his head. “That's okay. I'll just talk to my teachers.”

He doesn't meet my eye, and I feel a seismic shift between us.

“Thank you,” I say quietly. “Again.”

“You don't have to thank me, Mama,” he murmurs.

“No, I do.” I realize, to my shock, that all the tears I managed to keep inside during the last twenty-four hours are suddenly swimming in my eyes.

“Hey,” Edison says, and he reaches out to hug me.

“I'm sorry,” I say, hiccuping against his shoulder. “I don't know why I'm falling apart
now
.”

“It's going to be okay.”

I feel it again, that movement of the earth beneath my feet, the resettling of my bones against the backdrop of my soul. It takes me a second to realize that for the first time in our lives, Edison is the one comforting me, instead of the other way around.

I used to wonder if a mother could see the shift when her child became an adult. I wondered if it was clinical, like at the onset of puberty; or emotional, like the first time his heart was broken; or temporal, like the moment he said
I do.
I used to wonder if maybe it was a critical mass of life experiences—graduation, first job, first baby—that tipped the balance; if it was the sort of thing you noticed immediately when you saw it, like a port-wine stain of sudden gravitas, or if it crept up slowly, like age in a mirror.

Now I know: adulthood is a line drawn in the sand. At some point, your child will be standing on the other side.

I thought he'd wander. I thought the line might shift.

I never expected that something I did would be the thing that pushed him over it.

I
T TAKES ME
a long time to figure out what to wear to the public defender's office. For twenty-five years I've dressed in scrubs; my nice clothing is reserved for church. But somehow a floral dress with a lace collar and kitten heels don't seem right for a business meeting. In the back of my closet I find a navy skirt I wore to parent-teacher night at Edison's school, and pair it with a striped blouse my mama bought me for Christmas from Talbots that still has the tags on. I rummage past my collection of Dansko clogs—the saviors of nurses everywhere—and find a pair of flats that are a little worse for the wear, but that match.

When I arrive at the address on the letterhead, I'm sure I've got the wrong place. There's no one at the front desk—in fact, there isn't a front desk. There are cubicles and towers of boxes that form a maze, as if the employees are mice and this is all part of some grand scientific test. I take a few steps inside and suddenly hear my name.

“Ruth! Hello! Kennedy McQuarrie!”

As if I could possibly have forgotten her. I nod, and shake her hand, because she's holding out her own. I don't really understand why she
is
my lawyer. She told me flat out, at the arraignment, that wouldn't be the case.

She starts chattering, so much that I can't get a word in edgewise. But that's okay, because I'm nervous as all get-out. I don't have the money for a private lawyer, at least not without liquidating everything I've saved for Edison's education, and I would go to prison for life before I let that happen. Still, just because everyone
can
have a lawyer in this country doesn't mean all lawyers are the
same
. On TV the people who have private attorneys get acquitted, and the ones with public defenders pretend that there isn't a difference.

Ms. McQuarrie suggests we go somewhere for lunch, even though I'm too anxious to eat. I start to take out my wallet after we order, but she insists on paying. At first, I bristle—ever since I was little, and started wearing Christina's hand-me-downs, I haven't wanted to be someone's charity case. But before I can complain I check myself. What if this is what she does with all her clients, just to build up rapport? What if she's trying to make me like her as much as I want her to like me?

After we sit down with our trays, out of habit, I say grace. Mind you, I'm used to doing that when other people don't. Corinne's an atheist who's always joking about the Spaghetti Monster in the Sky when she hears me pray or sees me bow my head over my bag lunch. So I'm not surprised when I find Ms. McQuarrie staring at me as I finish. “So you're a churchgoer,” she says.

“Is that a problem?” Maybe she knows something I don't, like that juries are more likely to convict people who believe in God.

“Not at all. In fact, it's good to know, because it's something that can help a jury like you.”

Hearing her say that, I look into my lap. Am I so naturally unlikable that she needs to find things that will sway people in my favor?

“First,” she says, “do you prefer the term
Black
or
African American
or
people of color
?”

What I prefer, I think, is
Ruth
. But I swallow my response and say, “People of color.”

Once, at work, an orderly named Dave went off on a rant about that term. “It's not like I don't have color,” he'd said, holding out his pasty arms. “I'm not see-through, right? But I guess
people of
more
color
hasn't caught on.” Then he had noticed me in the break room, and had gone red to his hairline. “Sorry, Ruth. But you know, I hardly think of you as Black.”

My lawyer is still talking. “I don't even
see
color,” she tells me. “I mean, the only race that matters is the
human
one, right?”

It's easy to believe
we're all in this together
when you're not the one who was dragged out of your home by the police. But I know that when white people say things like that, they are doing it because they think it's the right thing to say, not because they realize how glib they sound. A couple of years ago, Adisa went ballistic when
#alllivesmatter
took over Twitter as a response to the activists who were holding signs that said
BLACK LIVES MATTER
. “What they're really saying is
white
lives matter,” Adisa told me. “And that Black folks better remember that before we get too bold for our own good.”

Ms. McQuarrie coughs lightly, and I realize my mind's been wandering. I force my eyes to her face, smile tightly. “Remind me again where you went to school?” she asks.

I feel like this is a test. “SUNY Plattsburgh, and then Yale Nursing School.”

“Impressive.”

What is? That I'm college educated? That I went to Yale? Is this what Edison will face for the rest of his life, too?

Edison.

“Ms. McQuarrie,” I begin.

“Kennedy.”

“Kennedy.” The familiarity sits uncomfortably on my tongue. “I can't go back to prison.” I think of how, when Edison was a toddler, he'd put on Wesley's shoes and shuffle around in them. Edison will have a lifetime to see the magic he used to believe in as a child be methodically erased, one confrontation at a time. I don't want him to have to face that any sooner than necessary. “I've got my boy, and there's no one else who can raise him to be the man I know he's going to be.”

Ms. McQuarrie—
Kennedy
—leans forward. “I'm going to do my best. I have a lot of experience in cases with people like you.”

Another label. “People like me?”

“People accused of serious crimes.”

Immediately, I am on the defensive. “But I didn't do anything.”

“I believe you. However, we still have to convince a jury. So we have to go back to the basics to figure out why you've been charged.”

I look at her carefully, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. This is the only case on my radar, but maybe she is juggling hundreds. Maybe she honestly
has
forgotten the skinhead with the tattoo who spit on me in the courtroom. “I'd think that's pretty obvious. That baby's father didn't want me near his son.”

“The white supremacist? He has nothing to do with your case.”

For a moment, I'm speechless. I was removed from the care of a patient because of the color of my skin, and then penalized for following those directions when the same patient went into distress. How on earth could the two not be related? “But I'm the only nurse of color on the birthing pavilion.”

“To the State, it doesn't matter if you're Black or white or blue or green,” Kennedy explains. “To them you had a legal duty to take care of an infant under your charge.” She starts listing all the ways the jury can find a reason to convict me. Each feels like a brick being mortared into place, trapping me in this hole. I realize that I have made a grave mistake: I had assumed that justice was truly just, that jurors would assume I was innocent until proven guilty. But prejudice is exactly the opposite: judging before the evidence exists.

I don't stand a chance.

“Do you really believe that if I was white,” I say quietly, “I'd be sitting here with you right now?”

She shakes her head. “No. I believe it's too risky to bring up in court.”

So we are supposed to win a case by pretending the reason it happened doesn't exist? It seems dishonest, oblivious. Like saying a patient died of an infected hangnail, without mentioning that he had Type 1 diabetes.

“If no one ever talks about race in court,” I say, “how is anything ever supposed to change?”

She folds her hands on the table between us. “You file a civil lawsuit. I can't do it for you, but I can call around and find you someone who works with employment discrimination.” She explains, in legalese, what that means for me.

The damages she mentions are more than I ever imagined in my wildest dreams.

But there is a catch. There's always a catch. The lawsuit that might net me this payout, that might help me hire a private lawyer who might actually be willing to admit that race is what landed me in court in the first place, can't be filed until
this
lawsuit wraps up. In other words, if I'm found guilty now, I can kiss that future money goodbye.