Take My Hand(61)

Mace stared down at the microphone.

“Please take your time, Mr. Williams.”

“Well, see,” Mace began. “I was on my way to work that morning. I work over at the Whitfield Pickle Factory.” He cleared his throat. “And the nurse come from the clinic. Two nurses. They say they need to take the girls. They wasn’t our, not Miss Civil. Civil Townsend, that’s they regular nurse. I ask where was she at and they say she wasn’t working that morning. So I say alright then. They say you just need to sign this here paper and we be on our way.”

“Where did you believe they were taking your daughters?”

“For shots, sir. That’s what she say and I believe.”

“Birth control shots?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you signed the paper?”

“I put my mark on it; yes, sir.”

“Then what happened?”

Mace shifted in his chair and ran a hand over the top of his head. “That afternoon I get a call at work saying they done had an operation. Miss Civil, they nurse, called and told me. And this here news got all over me.”

“I’m sorry, could you speak into the microphone, Mr. Williams?”

“I say this got all over me, sir. Like a fester.”

“You are saying you were upset, Mr. Williams?”

“After the surgery, they said to me . . . ‘Daddy, we ain’t never gone have no babies?’ And it break my heart to have to answer that. They just children. They don’t even know no boys. It ain’t right.”

A lone camera bulb popped. I saw that Erica was closely watching her father. India fingered the sailboat in her hand, turning it over and examining its parts. I wished they didn’t have to be here for this. I should have kept them in the hotel room watching television, but perhaps if they remembered this day it would help them somehow. Somebody had cared about two little Black girls from Alabama. Somebody important.

Mace’s eyes roamed the room behind him. I lifted my hand, but he didn’t see me. It was too crowded in there.

“So you were upset about it?”

“Yes, sir,” Mace said, holding his chin down and looking across at the row of senators. “Wouldn’t you be?”

The senator wisely pivoted to Mace’s mother. “Mrs. Williams, could you tell us about what happened, in your own words? Talk right into the mic so we can all hear you.”

Mrs. Williams told a similar story about that morning, how the nurses had come into the house saying they had to take the girls immediately.

“Did they tell you that they were giving the girls shots?”

“Yes, sir, I believe they did. They said they was going to get shots.”

“And when you talked to your granddaughters for the first time after the surgery, what did they tell you?”

“They say, ‘Grandmama, they done surgery on me. They say I can’t have no babies.’ Mr. Senator, so many people come to my door. Government this and government that. I can’t keep ’em straight sometimes. But this was the first time I done ever felt so betrayed.”

“Would you have permitted it if you had known about it?”

“No, I would not have allowed them to do that. Not to my grandbabies. They just babies theyselves.”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Williams, if my questions seem simple. I just want to get all this down for the record. Would you go back to that clinic?”

Mrs. Williams put her mouth right on the microphone. “Sir, I wouldn’t send a cockroach to that clinic.”

People chuckled, then quieted, as if not sure whether to laugh in so serious a moment.

“Thank you, Mrs. Williams. Mr. Williams. As I mentioned earlier, what we are trying to do in this committee is make sure that this never happens again. You have two wonderful daughters. You are a lovely family. We all owe you a very deep sense of gratitude for coming here all the way from Alabama and sharing your personal experience today. Do either of you have anything else you would like to say? Mrs. Williams? Mr. Williams?”

Mace shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Thank you. Thank you again,” said the senator as he turned to whisper in someone’s ear.





THIRTY-TWO





We returned to Montgomery on a high, but a few days later the evening news reported that Lou Feldman had dropped the case against the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic.

“What’s that all about?” Mama walked into the room, drying her hands on a towel.

“I don’t know.”

I called Lou’s office from the hallway. The telephone just rang and rang.

“Mama, I’ll be back!” I called out as I left the house. When I got to Lou’s office, I knew he was there because the upstairs light was on. A cook from the restaurant stood outside smoking a cigarette.

When Lou opened the door, I could tell that he had not slept. His clothes were wrinkled, face unshaven.

“You didn’t answer your telephone,” I said and followed him inside.

He sat down in a chair and pushed his fingers through his dark hair. “Too much work to do.”

“What work? I just heard on the news that you dropped the case.” I was too wound up to sit, so I gripped the back of the chair in front of me.

“We didn’t drop the case exactly.”