Small Great Things (36 page)

Kennedy glances down at the open book in my hands. “What's that?”

“A recipe book. It's only half finished. Mama kept telling me she was going to write down all her best ones for me, but she was always too busy cooking for someone else.” I realize how bitter I sound. “She wasted her
life,
slaving away for someone else. Polishing silver and cooking three meals a day and scrubbing toilets so her skin was always raw. Taking care of someone else's baby.”

My voice breaks on that last bit. Falls off the cliff.

Kennedy's mother, Ava, reaches into her purse. “I asked to come here today, with Kennedy,” she says. “I didn't know your mom, but I knew someone like her. Someone I cared for very much.”

She holds out an old photo, the kind with scalloped edges. It is a picture of a Black woman wearing a maid's uniform, holding a little girl in her arms. The girl has hair as light as snow, and her hand is pressed against her caregiver's cheek in shocking contrast. There's more than just duty between them. There's pride. There's love. “I didn't know your mother. But, Ruth—she didn't waste her life.”

Tears fill my eyes. I hand the photo back to Ava, and Kennedy pulls me into an embrace. Unlike the stiff hugs I remember from white women like Ms. Mina or my high school principal, this one does not feel forced, smug, inauthentic.

She lets go of me, so that we are eye to eye. “I'm sorry for your loss,” Kennedy says, and something crackles between us: a promise, a hope that when we go to trial, those same words will not cross her lips.

O
N MY SIXTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY,
Micah gives me the stomach flu.

It started last week with Violet, like most transmittable viruses that enter our household. Then Micah began throwing up. I told myself I did not have time to get sick, and thought I was safe until I bolted upright in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat, and made a beeline for the bathroom.

I wake up with my cheek pressed against the tile floor, and Micah standing over me. “Don't look at me like that,” I say. “All smug because you've already been through this.”

“It gets better,” Micah promises.

I moan. “Wonderful.”

“I was going to make you breakfast in bed, but instead I opted for ginger ale.”

“You're a prince.” I push myself upright. The room spins.

“Whoa. Steady, girl.” Micah crouches beside me, helping me to my feet. Then he sweeps me into his arms and carries me into the bedroom.

“In any other circumstance,” I say, “this would be very romantic.”

Micah laughs. “Rain check.”

“I'm trying really hard not to vomit on you.”

“I can't tell you how much I appreciate that,” he says gravely, and he crosses his arms. “Would you like to have a fight now about how you're not going into the office? Or do you want to finish your ginger ale first?”

“You're using my tactics against me. That's the kind of either-or I offer Violet—”

“See, and
you
think I never listen.”

“I'm going to work,” I say, and I try to get on my feet, but I black out. When I blink a moment later, Micah's face is inches from mine. “I'm not going to work,” I whisper.

“Good answer. I already called Ava. She's going to come over and play nurse.”

I groan. “Can't you just kill me instead? I don't think I can handle my mother. She thinks a shot of bourbon cures everything.”

“I'll lock the liquor cabinet. You need anything else?”

“My briefcase?” I beg.

Micah knows better than to say no to that. As he goes downstairs to retrieve it, I prop myself up on pillows. I have too much to do to
not
be working, but my body doesn't seem to be cooperating.

I drift off in the few minutes it takes Micah to come back into the bedroom. He's trying to gently put the briefcase on the floor so he doesn't disturb me, but I reach for it, overestimating my strength. The contents of the leather folio spill all over the bed and onto the floor, and Micah crouches to pick them up. “Huh,” he says, holding up a piece of paper. “What are you doing with a lab report?”

It's wrinkled, having slipped between files to get wedged at the bottom of my bag. I have to squint, and then a run of graphs comes into focus. It's the newborn screening results that I subpoenaed from the Mercy–West Haven Hospital, the ones that had been missing from Davis Bauer's file. They came in this week, and given my lack of understanding of chemistry, I barely glanced at the charts, figuring I'd show them to Ruth sometime after her mother's funeral. “It's just some routine test,” I say.

“Apparently not,” Micah replies. “There's abnormality in the blood work.”

I grab it out of his hand. “How do you know that?”

“Because,” Micah says, pointing to the cover letter I didn't bother to read, “it says here there's
abnormality in the blood work
.”

I scour the letter, addressed to Dr. Marlise Atkins. “Could it be fatal?”

“I have no idea.”

“You're a doctor.”

“I study eyes, not enzymes.”

I look up at him. “What did you get me for our anniversary?”

“I was going to take you out to dinner,” Micah admits.

“Well,” I suggest, “take me to see a neonatologist instead.”

W
HEN WE SAY,
in America, that you have a right to be tried by a jury of your peers, we're not exactly telling the truth. The pool of jurors is not as random as you'd think, thanks to careful scrutiny by the defense and the prosecution to eliminate both ends of the bell curve—the people most likely to vote against our clients' best interests. We weed out the folks who believe that people are guilty until proven innocent, or who tell us they see dead people, or who hold grudges against the legal system because they were once arrested. But we also prune on a case-by-case basis. If my client is a draft dodger, I try to limit jurors who have proudly served. If my client is a drug addict, I don't want a juror who lost a family member to an overdose. Everyone has prejudices. It's my job to make sure that they work in favor of the person I'm representing.

So although I would never play the race card once the trial starts—as I've spent months explaining to Ruth—I'm damn well going to stack the odds before it begins.

Which is why, before we begin voir dire to choose jurors, I march into my boss's office and tell him I was wrong. “I'm feeling a little overwhelmed after all,” I say to Harry. “I was thinking I might need a cochair.”

He takes a lollipop out of a jar he keeps on his desk. “Ed's got a shaken-baby trial starting this week—”

“I wasn't talking about Ed. I was thinking of Howard.”

“Howard.” He looks at me, baffled. “The kid who still brings his meals in a lunchbox?”

It's true that Howard is fresh out of law school and that so far, in the few months he's been at the office, has only done misdemeanors—domestics and a few disorderlies. I offer my smoothest grin. “Yeah. You know, he'll just be an extra pair of hands for me. A runner. And in the meantime, it would be good for him to get trial experience.”

Harry unwraps the lollipop and sticks it in his mouth. “Whatever,” he says, his teeth gripped on the stem.

With his blessing, or the closest I'm going to get to one, I head back to my cubicle and poke my head over the divider that separates me from Howard. “Guess what,” I tell him. “You're going to second-chair the Jefferson case. Voir dire's this week.”

He glances up. “Wait. What? Really?”

It's a big deal for a rookie who is still doing scut work in the office. “We're leaving,” I announce, and I grab my coat, knowing he will follow.

I do need an extra pair of hands.

I also need them to be black.

H
OWARD SCRAMBLES AT
my side as we walk through the halls of the courthouse. “You don't speak to the judge unless I've told you to,” I instruct. “Don't show any emotions, no matter what theatrical display Odette Lawton puts on—prosecutors do that to make themselves feel like they're Gregory Peck in
Mockingbird
.”

“Who?”

“God. Never mind.” I glance at him. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

“I have sweaters older than you,” I mutter. “I'll give you the discovery to read over tonight. This afternoon I'm going to need you to do some fieldwork.”

“Fieldwork?”

“Yeah, you have a car, right?”

He nods.

“And then, once we actually get the jurors inside, you're going to be my human video camera. You're going to record every tic and twitch and comment that each potential juror makes in response to my questions, so that we can go over it and figure out which candidates are going to fuck us over. It's not about who's
on
the jury…it's about who's
not
on it. Do you have any questions?”

Howard hesitates. “Is it true that you once offered Judge Thunder a blow job?”

I stop walking and face him, my hands on my hips. “You don't even know how to clean out the coffee machine yet, but you know
that
?”

Howard pushes his glasses up his nose. “I plead the Fifth.”

“Well, whatever you heard, it was taken out of context and it was prednisone-induced. Now shut up and look older than twelve, for God's sake.” I push open the door to Judge Thunder's chambers to find him sitting behind his desk, with the prosecutor already in the room. “Your Honor. Hello.”

He glances at Howard. “Who's this?”

“My co-counsel,” I reply.

Odette folds her arms. “As of when?”

“About a half hour ago.”

We all stare at Howard, waiting for him to introduce himself. He looks at me, his lips pressed firmly together.
You don't speak to the judge unless I've told you to.
“Speak,” I mutter.

He holds out a hand. “Howard Moore. It's an honor, Your…um…Honor.”

I roll my eyes.

Judge Thunder produces a huge stack of completed questionnaires, which are sent out to people who are called for jury duty. They are full of practical information, like where the recipient lives and where he or she works. But they also include pointed questions:
Do you have any problems with the presumption of innocence? If a defendant doesn't testify, do you assume he is hiding something? Do you understand that the Constitution gives the defendant the right to not say anything? If the State proves this case beyond reasonable doubt, would you have any moral qualms about convicting the defendant?

He splits the pile in half. “Ms. Lawton, you take this bunch for four hours; and Ms. McQuarrie, you take these. We'll reconvene at one
P.M.
, switch piles, and then voir dire begins in two days.”

As I drive Howard back to our office, I explain what we are looking for. “A solid defense juror is an older woman. They have the most empathy, the most experience, and they're less judgmental, and they're really hard on young punks like Turk Bauer. And beware of Millennials.”

“Why?” Howard asks, surprised. “Aren't young people less likely to be racist?”

“You mean like Turk?” I point out. “The Millennials are the
me
generation. They usually think everything revolves around them, and make decisions based on what's going on in their lives and how it will affect their lives. In other words, they're minefields of egocentrism.”

“Got it.”

“Ideally we want a juror who has a high social status, because those people tend to influence other jurors when it comes to deliberations.”

“So we're looking for a unicorn,” Howard says. “A supersensitive, racially conscious, straight white male.”

“He could be gay,” I reply, serious. “Gay, Jewish, female—anything that can help them identify with discrimination in any form is going to be a bonus for Ruth.”

“But we don't know any of these candidates. How do we become psychic overnight?”

“We don't become psychic. We become detectives,” I say. “You're going to take half the surveys and drive to the addresses that are listed on them. You want to find out whatever you can. Are they religious? Are they rich? Poor? Do they have political campaign signs on the lawn? Do they live above where they work? Do they have a flagpole in the front yard?”

“What does
that
have to do with anything?”

“More often than not that's someone who's extremely conservative,” I explain.

“Where are you going to be?” he asks.

“Doing the same thing.”

I watch Howard leave, plugging the first address into his phone GPS. Then I wander the halls of the office asking other public defenders if they've had any of these folks on their panels—a lot of the jurors get recycled. Ed is about to head out the door to court, but he glances at the sheaf of papers. “I remember this guy,” he says, pulling one survey free. “He was part of my jury on Monday—grand larceny case. He raised his hand during my opening statement and asked if I had a business card.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Sadly,” Ed says, “no. Good luck, kiddo.”

Ten minutes later, I've plugged an address into my GPS and find myself driving through Newhallville. I lock the doors for safety's sake. Presidential Gardens, the apartment building between Shelton and Dixwell Avenues, is a lower-income pocket of the city, with a quarter of the residents living below the poverty line, and the streets that bracket the residences are rife with drug traffic. Nevaeh Jones lives in this building, somewhere. I watch a little boy run out the door of one building, not wearing a coat, and start jogging when the cold hits him. He wipes his nose on his sleeve in midstride.