Take My Hand(84)

“How long is not long?”

“I don’t know. Hey, what are you doing at home in the middle of the day? Want to go get something to eat? I’m about to go down to the Ben Moore Hotel.”

“No, I’ve got something else I need to do today.”

“Okay, well, I’ll give you a call if I hear anything.”

“Thanks, Lou. I’m serious. Thanks for everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

It was afternoon, but I was still in my pajamas. I put on slippers and walked out to our backyard. The white plastic chair creaked as I sat in it. That crazy rooster started to crow and I called right back to him. He stopped short, as if confused by my response. I slid my fingers through my shirt between the buttons and felt the round softness of my belly, trying to imagine what it would feel like to swell with the rising firmness of a growing fetus.

The wind rushed my ears. I had so many questions, but I knew most of them were questions for God. Was Mama really sick? What was I doing with Mace? Should I go back to the clinic and work? Was it my fault those girls had been sterilized?

There was a time when we’d talked about things. I’d talked to Daddy. Daddy had talked to Mama. We carried no secrets, thoughts circulating through our family with the neatness of a simple triangle, intimacy working its natural path until the answer was reached.

I had never really understood my mama, so the notion of dealing with her depression any differently than usual mystified me. The paintings seemed to hold a key, how they meant different things to different people. I could comprehend that interpretive freedom was an important creed of civil rights for her. Black art, she’d always said, did not have to be representational or realistic to be political. The power of art to speak to you sometimes lay in its unwillingness to be penned into one thing. It was the kind of argument that had always made me look at Mama and think: She cannot be penned into one thing, either. As for me, I craved order and rationality. I needed to understand. Not understanding was knocking me clear off my feet.

My belly warmed beneath my fingers. I breathed in and out; it rose and fell. How on earth would I make sense of it all if that verdict came back against the girls, if the judge did absolutely nothing to change things?

The rooster started to make another sound, something that didn’t sound birdlike at all.





FORTY-THREE





On November 3, the judge sent word that he was ready to deliver his verdict. On the way to the courthouse, I explained the possible outcomes to Mace and Mrs. Williams. “Today the judge is going to make a ruling that could end all sterilizations at federally funded clinics. He might order this temporarily until the clinics prove they are compliant with regulations regarding informed consent. Or he could dismiss the case altogether. We just don’t know.”

“Dismiss?” Mrs. Williams said from the back seat.

“Well, you know what we’re really trying to do, Mrs. Williams. We talked about it. We got to make sure that what happened to Erica and India never happens to anybody else. Nobody should be pressured to get their tubes tied. Nobody.”

“Ain’t that the God’s honest truth.”

“Hopefully, the judge will tell the government that what happened was illegal and that they need to fix the problem.”

Mace had been quiet the entire ride. A terrible kind of quiet. “How many has it happened to?” he finally asked.

“In the past few years, thousands of poor women have been sterilized around the country.”

“The devil is busy,” Mrs. Williams murmured.

“Well, nothing that judge say today can change what happened,” Mace said.

“No, it can’t,” I said carefully. “But it can give what they went through some purpose. If the judge rules in our favor, it will be because of your bravery, your testimony before Congress, your willingness to let the girls stand for what was right.”

“Mace, son, that’s why we went to Washington. Remember we talked about it? And that nice Kennedy man listened to us. He wrote it down. He told the other white men what they needed to hear.”

Mace didn’t say anything. I was glad we had decided not to bring the girls. They were at school, and the three of us had agreed this was the right decision. If the verdict turned out bad, we did not want them to see that.

We arrived to a sea of television cameras. Police cordoned off the area around the courthouse. Lou had sent an escort to meet us, but as we made our way through the crowd a journalist recognized the Williamses.

“What do you hope is the outcome today, Mrs. Williams?”

“The out what?”

“What do you hope the judge will say?”

“Naturally, we just hoping he do what’s right. What happened to my grandbabies was a sin against God and the whole world know it.”

“Come on.” I ushered them inside.

Mrs. Williams followed the escort up the stairs, ahead of me and Mace. “Y’all walking too slow,” she called back to us.

Mace took my elbow. I dreaded going into that courtroom. I did not know if I could look the girls in the face again if things didn’t go our way. When we shared with them the verdict was coming, India had just stared and Erica had asked, “Do everybody know it’s today?”

The escort handed us off to a woman in a brown and white suit at the courtroom door. “Civil Townsend? Mr. and Mrs. Williams?”