Take My Hand(44)

The pastor ended his prayer with a flourish, and Mama leaned over to whisper, “How long has he been here now?”

“Three years, I believe.”

“I’ll give him another two,” Mama said. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, a lace-trimmed handkerchief tucked in her palm. In church, Mama found stability, calm. Like her artistic pursuits, church was grounding for her.

The pastor’s wife sat on the other end of the row, flanked by two fidgeting children. Mama nodded at her and the woman nodded back. One of the church’s oldest members, Mrs. Cooper, walked to the podium next to the piano to make the announcements. “I see June Townsend and her daughter here this morning. It’s so good to see you. Could y’all please stand?”

Mrs. Cooper had been old ever since I’d known her. She always sat on the row of Mothers, wearing a white cap and rocking when the spirit moved her. Once, when Ty and I were kids, we’d giggled when she acknowledged the college gladulates. She’d stopped midsentence and looked up into the balcony, straight at us. Her expression held the promise of a whipping in it even though she wasn’t any more related to us than Adam and Eve. A look like that was always enough to quiet the restless kids.

I wondered if Ty had been to church lately, if he had struggled to make peace with these events the way I had. Inside that church, among my church family, I got the feeling that this struggle belonged to all of us. I could persevere if I stayed in that place and folded myself in the love of old church Mothers like Mrs. Cooper.

Sitting in church with Mama, I could forget that the girls were at home with their grandmother, recovering from a surgery that never should have happened in the first place. I could listen to the music and hum along with the hymn, find solace in the notion that God knew how much burden we could bear. That first Sunday Mama and I started going back to church, I was overcome by a moment of peace. And I wanted it to last forever.



* * *



? ? ?

THE RALSEYS INSISTED I go back to work. Alicia and I were advised to keep up the pretense of normalcy until they filed the suit and it went public. All of the nurses knew the girls had been sterilized, but they didn’t know about the pending lawsuit. We had confided in a few of them weeks earlier about our suspicions around the drug, and we hoped they were making the right decisions on their own. I worried our actions could result in more sterilizations, but I also knew it was a risk we had to take. Alicia and I tried to keep a close eye on the files before they went back in the cabinets. The Ralseys had asked us to keep quiet, so we understood the precariousness of the situation. But we also knew it was only a matter of time before Mrs. Seager sterilized someone else. When she called me into her office that Friday, I prepared myself for the worst. We were screwed six ways from Sunday.

She leaned back in her chair. “Now that you’ve been here a few months, do you still think this is the job for you?”

I knew how I wanted to answer that question. I wanted to yell at her and tell her she was merciless for what she had done to those girls, and hell no, this wasn’t a job for me. I had not wanted to come back to work. I was only there at the urging of the Ralseys. They believed Alicia and I might be able to intervene if we saw something suspicious.

But instead of shouting at her, I took a deep breath and summoned all my strength. “Mrs. Seager, I graduated in the top 5 percent of my class at Tuskegee. I aced my exams, and I was president of our student nursing association. I spent weeks preparing for the interview with your clinic. Why would you even ask me that question?”

“Civil.”

“I was raised to be humble, so this isn’t something you will hear me say in the presence of the women who work in this clinic, but I strongly believe I am one of the best nurses on your staff.”

“Your attitude is lousy.”

“My patients seem to like me. Aren’t they the only ones who matter?”

“I’m your supervisor, so the answer to that question is no.” She made a noise in the back of her throat.

“The women who come into this clinic are in need of these services, and they deserve our respect. I give them that because that is the oath that I took.” I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. The words looped through my head.

She tapped her fingertips on the desk. I waited for the other shoe to drop. “You know by now that the Williams girls were surgically sterilized,” she said.

“I do.” I tried to keep my voice steady and even.

“Their legal guardians gave consent.”

“Those girls have never been pregnant. They not even having sex yet.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I asked them. Did you ever ask them?”

“There are boys in those apartments where they stay now. You only have yourself to blame for that when you took it upon yourself to move them clear across town.”

I blinked rapidly. Somehow she had discovered that I had been involved in getting them moved to Dixie Court.

“Oh Civil, do you think I don’t see things going on right under my nose?”

I sat in stunned silence. Did she also know some of us had stopped giving the shots? Was a formal reprimand coming? “I moved them because they were living in filth.”