Southern Lady Code: Essays(29)

Meredith gives her opening statements and lays out the facts. The charges are murder and kidnapping.

The defense attorney goes next.

This woman slinks like a cat who can predict death in a nursing home. I half expect her to rub her side against the jury box to mark it with her scent.

“Oh, she killed her,” she says. “She admits that she killed her.” But the defense attorney says the kidnapping charge is bogus. And the burden of proof for murder (intent) instead of manslaughter (she snapped) is on the prosecutor (my friend, Meredith).

This is a case about motherhood, madness, and murder. None of which I understand. I don’t have kids. And I don’t get it: I’ve never wanted a baby badly enough to do what this young woman did.

The first person to arrive at the crime scene was the defendant’s boyfriend. He walked into her apartment and found her sitting by a dead woman with a baby in her arms. He did not want to be there then, and he does not want to be here now. Under the scrutiny of serious women, he swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a T-shirt that reads MAKE IT RAIN. He glares at his ex-girlfriend and spills out of the witness box like an angry beanbag chair.

The defense attorney tries to discredit his testimony by presenting him as a predator who’s been with the defendant since she was fourteen and he was twenty-one. He beat her, he choked her, he sat on her. He denies all of this, but admits that he cheated.

The defense attorney asks him how many women he saw while he was seeing the defendant.

He says, “Too many.”

She asks him why one of these women and his very own mother have orders of protection against him.

He says, “Misunderstandings.”

She asks him how often he had sex with the defendant.

He says, “Once in a blue.”

When I relay all this to my friend Erica, she asks me, “How could he believe he got her pregnant? How could he believe it was their baby? How could he believe she’d been pregnant if she wasn’t getting bigger?”

I say, “Every woman carries differently. And he’s a man.”

Erica asks, “What’s that Southern Lady Code for?”

I admit, “She’s fat and he’s dumb.”

I speak in code. My motto’s always been: if you don’t have something nice to say, say something not so nice in a nice way. The women in the courtroom aren’t concerned with being nice.

In my notepad, I write: I have no idea what my friend does for a living.

When Meredith calls me at home that evening, I vow to be direct.

I say, “Oooh, y’all had a HAH-STILE witness!”

Meredith puts me on speakerphone so her co-counsel can hear me. She says, “Please repeat what you just said.”

I do. HAH-STILE.

I am a New Yorker who has kept her Southern accent. Southern accents are disarming. Meredith laughs, and I’m glad I’ve made her laugh because I don’t think she’s laughed under the weight of this case for a while.

She asks me if I found the boyfriend credible.

I say, “Oh, he’s a son of bitch, but I believe him. She did it.”

I wish I was on her jury, but I’d never be picked to be on her jury because I know the prosecutor (my friend, Meredith) and, besides that, I can’t look at autopsy photos.

When the city medical examiner takes the stand, he is as threatening as a cartoon mouse in a three-piece suit and seems to be perfectly fine with that. The man is wee. There’s just no better word for him. He is also so Irish that he sounds like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. He lilts like he’s talking about pink hearts, green clovers, and yellow moons, but what he’s describing is the uterus, umbilical cord, and placenta, which arrived separately from the victim like a battery pack.

He describes the first photo Meredith enters into evidence as the victim’s palms—or as the Irishman pronounces them, “the PAMs,” like he’s talking about the cooking spray. He says, “There are defensive wounds on the PAMs.”

These wounds—along with the cuts on her face, neck, and chest—are superficial. “Superficial” is Doctor Code for didn’t damage muscle or hit bone. The wounds the jury sees next are dramatic. Here’s how another witness described what he saw: “She looked like she’d exploded. Everything that was supposed to be inside was out.”

The judge says, “We’re going to take a short recess.”

I’ve had my eyes in my lap for hours, now I look up.

The jury files out, but Juror #7 does not. She’s slumped, motionless, and her skin is a waxy gray. The court officer shakes her by the shoulder and says her name. No response. She shakes her harder and says her name three more times. No response.

“Clear the audience!” says the judge.

We stand in the hallway. Family, press, and baby D.A.s (straight-out-of-law-school newbies who clutch their smartphones like pacifiers) don’t intermingle. I stand alone.

Paramedics arrive. We wait for an hour.

Meredith and her co-counsel emerge and are led into a neighboring courtroom. My friend looks distraught. Her face is red and her eyes are raw. Has she been crying? The only time I’ve seen her cry was at her father’s funeral. I want to go to her now, like I went to her then, but I know that’s out of bounds.

A reporter nudges me and asks, “Who are you with?”