Small Great Things(43)

“I hate to say I told you so…”

“No, you don’t,” I mutter. “You’ve been waiting to tell me that forever.”

She shrugs, agreeing. “You’re the one who kept saying, Adisa, you don’t know what you talking about. My skin color isn’t even a factor. And go figure, you’re not just like one of them, are you?”

“You know, if I wanted to be a punching bag, I could have just stayed at the hospital.” I bury my face in my hands. “What am I supposed to tell Edison?”

“The truth?” Adisa suggests. “There’s no shame in it. It’s not like you did anything wrong. It’s better he learn earlier than his mama that he can run with the white crowd but it don’t make him any less Black.”

When Edison was younger, Adisa used to babysit him after school if I pulled an afternoon shift, until he begged to stay home alone. His cousins ribbed him for not being able to understand their slang, and when he did start to master it, his white friends in school looked at him like he had grown a second head. Even I was having trouble understanding my nephews, elbowing each other on the couch and laughing until Tyana whacked them both with a dish towel so that she could put the baby to sleep. (Oh, we out chea, I heard one of the boys say, and it took me a few minutes to realize that translated to We’re out here, and that Tabari was teasing his brother for thinking he was all that because he won a round of the game.) Edison might not have fit in with the white kids in his school, but that at least he could blame on his skin. He didn’t fit in with his cousins, either, and they looked like him.

Adisa folds her arms. “You need to find a lawyer and sue that damn hospital right back.”

“That costs money,” I groan. “I just want this all to go away.”

My heart starts to hammer. I can’t lose our home. I can’t take my savings—all of which is Edison’s college fund—and liquidate it just so that we can eat and pay the mortgage and buy gas. I can’t ruin my son’s opportunities just because mine blew up in my face.

Adisa must see that I’m on the verge of a total breakdown because she reaches for my hand. “Ruth,” she says softly. “Your friends may have turned on you. But you know what the good thing is about having a sister? It’s forever.”

She locks her eyes on mine—hers are so dark that you can barely see the edge between iris and pupil. But they’re steady, and she doesn’t let go of me, and slowly, slowly, I let myself breathe.

—

WHEN I RETURN to my house at seven o’clock, Edison comes running to the front door. “What are you doing home?” he asks. “Is everything okay?”

I paste a smile onto my face. “I’m fine, baby. There was just a mix-up with the shifts, so Corinne and I went out to dinner at Olive Garden.”

“Are there leftovers?”

God bless the teenage boy, who can’t see past his own hunger pangs. “No,” I tell him. “We shared an entrée.”

“Well, that seems like a missed opportunity,” he grumbles.

“Did you wind up writing about Latimer?”

He shakes his head. “No. I think I’m going to pick Anthony Johnson. First Black landowner,” he says. “Way back in 1651.”

“Wow,” I reply. “That’s impressive.”

“Yeah, but there’s kind of a hitch. See, he was a slave that came over to Virginia from England and worked on a tobacco plantation until it was attacked by Native Americans and everyone but five people there died. He and his wife, Mary, moved and claimed two hundred and fifty acres of land. The thing is, he owned slaves. And I don’t know if I feel like being the one to tell that to the rest of my class, you know? Like it’s something they can use against me someday in an argument.” He shakes his head, lost in thought. “I mean, how could you do that, if you knew what it was like to be a slave yourself once?”

I think about all the things I’ve done to feel like I belong at the top—education, marriage, this home, keeping a barrier between myself and my sister. “I don’t know,” I say slowly. “In his world, the people with power owned other people. Maybe that’s what he thought he needed to do to feel powerful too.”

“That doesn’t mean it was right,” Edison points out.

I wrap my arms around his waist and hold him tight, pressing my face against his shoulder so he cannot see the tears in my eyes.

“What’s that for?”

“Because,” I murmur, “you make this world a better place.”

Edison hugs me back. “Imagine what I could do if you’d brought me chicken parm.”

Once he goes to bed, I sift through the mail. Bills, bills, and more bills, plus one slim envelope from the Department of Public Health, revoking my nursing license. I stare at it for five whole minutes, but the words don’t materialize into anything other than what it is: the proof that this is not a nightmare I will wake up from, wondering at my own crazy imagination. Instead, I sit in the living room, my thoughts racing too fast for me to think about turning in. It’s a mistake, that’s all. I know it, and I just need to make everyone else see it, too. I’m a nurse. I heal people. I bring them comfort. I fix things. I can fix this.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I glance at the number—it’s the union lawyer calling me back. “Ruth,” he says when I answer. “I hope it’s not too late.”