Valentine(63)

Ranch road, Clemens says. Okay. Mrs. Whitehead, on the morning this little Mexican gal—he looks at his legal pad—Gloria Ramírez, knocked on your front door, what did she say?

Say?

Yes, ma’am. What did she say to you?

Well, she didn’t say anything, I tell him.

Not even one word? Mr. Clemens glances again toward the jury, and I do the same. I recognize three of the twelve men from around town. They look kindly and bemused, as if they feel sorry for me.

She asked for a glass of water, I tell him, and she said she wanted her mama.

Had she been drinking the night before? Was she hung over?

I doubt it, Mr. Clemens. She is a child.

Well, she’s fourteen—

Yes, I interrupt him, and that makes her a child.

Clemens smiles. Well, one girl’s fourteen is another girl’s seventeen, least that’s what my old daddy always said.

I want to leap off the stand, grab a chair, and break it across his face. But I sit and listen and twist my hands into complicated knots.

Did she tell you she had been molested?

Excuse me?

I’m trying to be delicate, Mrs. Whitehead. Did Gloria Ramírez say she had been raped?

I saw her. I saw what he did to her.

But did the young lady tell you she’d been raped, Mrs. Whitehead? Did she use that word?

That child did not even have her shoes. She walked three miles in her bare feet, just to get away from him. Jesus Christ, he hit her so hard he ruptured her spleen.

Judge Rice leans forward and speaks quietly to me. Ma’am, please do not take the name of the Lord in vain in my courtroom.

Are you shitting me? I want to ask him. Are you shitting me right now? But I look down and try not to tug at my pantyhose. Yes sir, I say.

It says right here—Scooter consults his goddamn legal pad again—that Miss Ramírez had puncture wounds and abrasions on her hands and feet that were consistent with falling. Could she have damaged her spleen when she fell?

Instead of waiting for my answer, he reminds me that I have sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, etcetera, and because he wants to make sure we’re all clear on this, he speaks slowly, as if I’m a child. Mrs. Whitehead, I am asking you a simple yes or no question. Did she say he raped her?

Yes, I say. She said that.

She used that word?

Yes, she did.

Keith Taylor grabs his bottom lip between his thumb and index finger and starts pulling at it. He looks like he’s about to cry. I look to the back of the courtroom where Mr. Ramírez is sitting, but he is looking down at his lap.

Well, pardon me, Mary Rose, Clemens says, but that’s not what you said in any interview up until this minute. You telling us a little story now?

No, I say. I forgot until just this minute.

I see.

At this point, Keith stands up and asks to speak with me privately. Judge Rice denies the request—it’s getting late and he needs to go to the little boys’ room—but he says Keith can come up to the stand if he wants to. Keith crosses the room in about four long strides and stands in front of me. Mary Rose, he whispers, you have to tell the truth.

She did not use those exact words, I tell the court. But she didn’t have to. It was obvious to anybody with two eyes to see.

Clemens smiles like he’s just won the office football pool. So you did tell us a little story. How about this gentleman sitting over here? Mr. Strickland. Did you see him that morning?

Yes, he came to my front door, too.

What did he want?

He was looking for her.

He was worried about his girlfriend?

She was not his girlfriend. She is a child and he is a grown man.

Hmm, Scooter says. I don’t think Miss Ramírez ever told him her age. He stretches her last name out, all while looking at the jury, making sure everybody hears it.

So he was looking for this young lady who had gone out with him the night before?

She was scared to death when she turned up at my door. He would have killed her.

How do you know? Did she tell you these things?

She didn’t have to. I saw her.

Did Mr. Strickland threaten you? Clemens asks.

He yelled at me to go inside and get her. He called me a bitch.

Mrs. Whitehead, Judge Rice says, please don’t use that language in here.

So he was hung over—Clemens looks again at the jury, like every one of them is a fraternity brother—as I imagine quite a few of us were, the morning after Valentine’s. And he was a little short-tempered because they had a squabble and his girlfriend wandered off?

Objection, Keith Taylor says, and Judge Rice says, Naw, Keith. Come on, now, you know better than that.

Objection, Judge! He’s trying to create a different story.

That’s your objection, Keith? Clemens’s smile doesn’t even come close to reaching his eyes. He’s a snake. If you turned the air conditioner up high enough, his heart rate would plummet.

Is this not what we do? he says. Do we not consider whether there’s enough evidence to make a decision beyond reasonable doubt before we ruin a young man’s life?

But I have had enough. I say, She is a child, you piece of shit.

Clemens walks over, sits down at his table, and puts his head in his hands. Judge Rice knocks his desk with the butt of his pistol and speaks so quietly that everyone in the room has to lean forward. Mrs. Whitehead, it’s clear to me how hard this has been on you and your family, but I promise you, if you cuss in my courtroom one more time, you will spend tonight in a jail cell. Do you understand me?