Small Great Things(115)
“Oh, God,” I mutter, pivoting to go back to the bedroom, but Micah grabs my shoulder and steers me to a seat.
“You’re going to eat this while it’s hot. You need energy to take down a skinhead and his wife. Otherwise, you’re going to run out of steam, and I know from personal experience that the only option for food in that courthouse is something brown they are trying to pass off as coffee and a vending machine of granola bars from the Jurassic period.” He puts down a plate—two fried eggs, toast with jam, even hash browns. I am so hungry that I’ve already finished the eggs before he can set down the last of my breakfast—a steaming latte in his old Harvard Med School mug. “Look,” he jokes, “I even served you your coffee in the White Privilege cup.”
I burst out laughing. “Then I’ll take it with me in the car for luck. Or guilt. Or something.”
I kiss Violet on the crown of her head and grab my matching shoe from the bedroom closet, along with my phone, charger, computer, and briefcase. Micah’s waiting for me at the door with the mug of coffee. “In all seriousness? I’m proud of you.”
I let myself have this one moment. “Thanks.”
“Go forth and be Marcia Clark.”
I wince. “She’s a prosecutor. Can I be Gloria Allred?”
Micah shrugs. “Just knock ’em dead.”
I am already walking toward the driveway. “Pretty sure that’s the last thing you’re supposed to say to someone who’s about to try her first murder case,” I reply, and I slip into the driver’s seat without spilling a drop of my coffee.
I mean, that’s got to be a sign, right?
—
I DRIVE AROUND the front of the courthouse just to see what’s happening, even though I’ve arranged to meet Ruth somewhere I know she won’t be accosted. A circus, that’s really the only way to describe it. On one end of the green, Wallace Freaking Mercy is broadcasting live, preaching to a crowd through a megaphone. “In 1691 the word white was used in court for the first time. Back then, this nation went by the one-drop rule,” I hear him say. “You needed only one drop of blood to be considered black in this country…”
On the other end of the green is a cluster of white people. At first I think they are watching Wallace’s shenanigans, and then I see one hoisting the picture of the dead baby.
They begin to march through the group that is listening to Wallace. There are curses, shoving, a punch thrown. The police immediately join the fray, pushing the blacks and the whites apart.
It makes me think of a magic trick I did last year to impress Violet. I poured water into a pie pan and dusted the top with pepper. Then I told her the pepper was afraid of Ivory soap, and sure enough, when I dipped the bar of soap into the bowl, the pepper flew to the edges.
To Violet, it was magic. Of course I knew better—what caused the pepper to run from the soap was surface tension.
Which, really, is kind of what’s going on here.
I drive around to the parish house on Wall Street. Immediately, I see Edison, standing lookout—but no Ruth. I get out of my car, feeling my heart sink. “Is she…?”
He points across the lot, to where Ruth is standing on the sidewalk, looking at the foot traffic across the street. So far, nobody has noticed her, but it’s a risk. I go to drag her back, touching her arm, but she shakes me away. “I would like a moment,” she says formally.
I back off.
Students and professors pass, their collars turned up against the wind. A bicycle whizzes by, and then the dinosaur bulk of a bus sighs at the curb, belching out a few passengers before moving away again. “I keep having these…thoughts,” Ruth says. “You know, all weekend long. How many more times will I get to take the bus? Or cook breakfast? Is this the last time I’ll write out a check for my electricity bill? Would I have paid more attention last April when the daffodils first came up, if I’d known I wasn’t going to see them again?”
She takes a step toward a line of adolescent trees planted in a neat row. Her hands wrap around one narrow trunk as if she’s throttling it, and she turns her face to the bare branches overhead.
“Look at that sky,” Ruth says. “It’s the kind of blue you find in tubes of oil paint. Like color, boiled down to its essence.” Then she turns to me. “How long does it take to forget this?”
I put my arm around her shoulders. She’s shaking, and I know it has nothing to do with the temperature. “If I have anything to say about it,” I tell her, “you’ll never find out.”
WHEN EDISON WAS LITTLE, I always knew when he was getting up to no good. I could sense it, even if I couldn’t see it. I’ve got eyes in the back of my head, I would tell him, when he was amazed that even if I turned away, I knew he was trying to steal a snack before dinner.
Maybe that is why, even though I am facing forward like Kennedy told me to, I can feel the stares of everyone sitting behind me in the gallery.
They feel like pinpricks, arrows, tiny bug bites. It takes all my concentration to not slap at the back of my neck, swat them away.
Who am I kidding? It takes all my concentration not to stand up and run down the aisle and out of this courtroom.
Kennedy and Howard are bent together, deep in a strategy session; they don’t have time to talk me down from the ledge. The judge has made it clear that he won’t tolerate disruption from the gallery, and that he has a zero tolerance policy—first strike, you’re out. Certainly that is keeping the white supremacists in check. But they are not the only ones whose eyes are boring into me.