Take My Hand(77)

“Would you believe I stumbled on it in the used bookstore? And it’s still like new. Some poor soul only owned it long enough to change her mind about medical school. So I thought, the book is still looking for its destiny. I’d better buy it, gift it, and see if it’s another person’s opportunity to change her mind.”

I frowned at her. “Maybe you’re the one who is really thinking about medical school?”

“Naw, girl, if anything I’ll marry me a doctor. But you? You different.”

“Different?”

She touched my hand. “I know you feel rotten about what happened to those sisters. But whether you see it or not, you are gifted, Civil Townsend. Special. You would make an excellent doctor.”

Somebody was blasting Marvin Gaye, and the people in front of us started to move as if there were a dance floor beneath their feet.

“Ooh, if Civil’s daddy could hear you now. Alicia, you might get the good Dr. Townsend to church after all!” Ty said.

“Let’s just enjoy ourselves for now, alright?” Alicia took the book out of my hands and stuck it back in her bag.

“I’m sorry I sound ungrateful,” I told her. “It’s just that I like being a nurse. I think we’re the real caregivers. Alicia, you know doctors couldn’t do their work without nurses. Who is the one who notices when a patient is constantly rubbing her chest? Who is the one who writes down they sweating even though the room is cold? Who do they complain to that the medicine is making them sick to their stomachs?”

Neither of them responded.

“Medical school is for people that want a title. I don’t need a title. I don’t need somebody’s respect.”

Someone cranked up the music. I started to shout to be heard. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

Ty held up a hand. “Civil. It’s just a book. Put it in your closet and don’t even think about it. Now open mine.”

“Y’all really didn’t need to get me anything. I wasn’t expecting this,” I said as I tore off the Christmas paper. It was definitely a recycled box, wrinkled at the edges. He’d Scotch-taped the sides. I ran a fingernail under the edge and pulled off the lid, rummaging through tissue paper.

It was a photograph of me, Erica, and India outside our hotel in Washington, DC. I remembered one of the photographers calling out to us as we descended the steps. I had drawn the girls to me, an arm around their shoulders. I had been taking them for a walk to see the National Mall. My face had creased with irritation, but both of the girls had smiled. It was the only picture I had of the three of us.

“Ty, how in the world did you get this?”

“It was published in the Tri-State Defender in Memphis. They printed the photographer’s name. Man by the name of Ernest Withers. I found his phone number and called him. Turns out he’s a Black man who traveled up to Washington to cover the hearing.”

“But . . .” I rubbed my eye.

“Girl, come here,” he said. He wrapped his arms around my neck and almost knocked my chair over, our clumsiness reminding me of just how young and clueless we all were. We were just stumbling our way through a situation that was the biggest event of our entire lives. But there was no denying that my love for those girls was genuine, inadequate and flawed as it may have been.

I pressed the picture to my chest. My girls. My little girls.





FORTY





On Wednesday of that week, Lou delivered a bombshell in court. “Your Honor, you have before you the pamphlet containing sterilization guidelines.”

A copy of the pamphlet lay open across my lap. Lou had given it to me the night before. Today was the first day he would be able to frame an argument around it. The government lawyers had theirs in binders. All originals. There were enough to go around.

“Your Honor, there were twenty-five thousand copies of this pamphlet printed. Twenty. Five. Thousand,” he repeated slowly. “Yet they remained in a warehouse, and, as a result, federally funded clinics across the country never received them.”

The judge peered at Lou over his glasses. “Were the guidelines replicated in any other material sent from HEW to the clinic?”

“Not to my knowledge, Your Honor. After the national media attention of India and Erica Williams, the twenty-five thousand copies of the printed guidelines were discovered in a federal warehouse on Third Street in Washington, DC.”

Lou emphasized Third Street with a dramatic flourish and waved a hand at the defense table as he said it. There was no doubt about it, at least in my mind: Distributing these guidelines could have prevented some of the sterilizations, though surely trained nurses and doctors did not need written instructions to tell them not to sterilize a minor.

I listened to the scratch of pencils on paper as I watched the judge’s face. The existence of the guidelines proved that the federal government was at least aware of the potential for abuse and understood the clinics’ need for a set of standard practices on the issue. The fact that the clinics never received those pamphlets meant that the government had doled out money and then negligently failed to provide guidance on how the money was to be utilized.

Sometimes it was hard to hear in the courtroom, but other times you could hear someone’s stomach growling. The Washington lawyers likely believed they were at a disadvantage, coming down here to unfamiliar territory where the judge had the same accent as the opposing lawyer.