THE MORNING AFTER I AM released from jail I wake up and stare at the same old crack in the ceiling that I always say I’ll patch and never get around to doing. I feel the bar from the pullout couch digging into my back and give thanks for it. I close my eyes and listen to the sweet harmony of the garbage trucks on our street.
In my nightgown (a fresh one; I will donate the one I wore to the arraignment to Goodwill at the first opportunity) I start a pot of coffee and pad down the hall to Edison’s bedroom. My boy rests like the dead; even when I turn the knob and slip inside and sit down on the edge of the mattress, he doesn’t stir.
When Edison was little, my husband and I would watch him sleep. Sometimes Wesley would put his hand on Edison’s back, and we’d measure the rise and fall of his lungs. The science of creating another human is remarkable, and no matter how many times I’ve learned about cells and mitosis and neural tubes and all the rest that goes into forming a baby, I can’t help but think there’s a dash of miracle involved, too.
Edison rumbles deep in his chest, and he rubs his eyes. “Mama?” he says, sitting up, instantly awake. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Everything is right in the world.”
He exhales, then looks at his clock. “I have to get ready for school.”
I know, from our conversation in the car last night on the drive home, that Edison missed a whole day of classes in order to post bail for me, learning more about mortgages and real estate than I probably know myself. “I’ll call the school secretary. To explain about yesterday.”
But we both know there’s a difference between Please excuse Edison for being absent; he had a stomach bug and Please excuse Edison for being absent; he was bailing his mother out of jail. Edison shakes his head. “That’s okay. I’ll just talk to my teachers.”
He doesn’t meet my eye, and I feel a seismic shift between us.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “Again.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Mama,” he murmurs.
“No, I do.” I realize, to my shock, that all the tears I managed to keep inside during the last twenty-four hours are suddenly swimming in my eyes.
“Hey,” Edison says, and he reaches out to hug me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, hiccuping against his shoulder. “I don’t know why I’m falling apart now.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
I feel it again, that movement of the earth beneath my feet, the resettling of my bones against the backdrop of my soul. It takes me a second to realize that for the first time in our lives, Edison is the one comforting me, instead of the other way around.
I used to wonder if a mother could see the shift when her child became an adult. I wondered if it was clinical, like at the onset of puberty; or emotional, like the first time his heart was broken; or temporal, like the moment he said I do. I used to wonder if maybe it was a critical mass of life experiences—graduation, first job, first baby—that tipped the balance; if it was the sort of thing you noticed immediately when you saw it, like a port-wine stain of sudden gravitas, or if it crept up slowly, like age in a mirror.
Now I know: adulthood is a line drawn in the sand. At some point, your child will be standing on the other side.
I thought he’d wander. I thought the line might shift.
I never expected that something I did would be the thing that pushed him over it.
IT TAKES ME a long time to figure out what to wear to the public defender’s office. For twenty-five years I’ve dressed in scrubs; my nice clothing is reserved for church. But somehow a floral dress with a lace collar and kitten heels don’t seem right for a business meeting. In the back of my closet I find a navy skirt I wore to parent-teacher night at Edison’s school, and pair it with a striped blouse my mama bought me for Christmas from Talbots that still has the tags on. I rummage past my collection of Dansko clogs—the saviors of nurses everywhere—and find a pair of flats that are a little worse for the wear, but that match.
When I arrive at the address on the letterhead, I’m sure I’ve got the wrong place. There’s no one at the front desk—in fact, there isn’t a front desk. There are cubicles and towers of boxes that form a maze, as if the employees are mice and this is all part of some grand scientific test. I take a few steps inside and suddenly hear my name.
“Ruth! Hello! Kennedy McQuarrie!”
As if I could possibly have forgotten her. I nod, and shake her hand, because she’s holding out her own. I don’t really understand why she is my lawyer. She told me flat out, at the arraignment, that wouldn’t be the case.
She starts chattering, so much that I can’t get a word in edgewise. But that’s okay, because I’m nervous as all get-out. I don’t have the money for a private lawyer, at least not without liquidating everything I’ve saved for Edison’s education, and I would go to prison for life before I let that happen. Still, just because everyone can have a lawyer in this country doesn’t mean all lawyers are the same. On TV the people who have private attorneys get acquitted, and the ones with public defenders pretend that there isn’t a difference.
Ms. McQuarrie suggests we go somewhere for lunch, even though I’m too anxious to eat. I start to take out my wallet after we order, but she insists on paying. At first, I bristle—ever since I was little, and started wearing Christina’s hand-me-downs, I haven’t wanted to be someone’s charity case. But before I can complain I check myself. What if this is what she does with all her clients, just to build up rapport? What if she’s trying to make me like her as much as I want her to like me?
After we sit down with our trays, out of habit, I say grace. Mind you, I’m used to doing that when other people don’t. Corinne’s an atheist who’s always joking about the Spaghetti Monster in the Sky when she hears me pray or sees me bow my head over my bag lunch. So I’m not surprised when I find Ms. McQuarrie staring at me as I finish. “So you’re a churchgoer,” she says.
“Is that a problem?” Maybe she knows something I don’t, like that juries are more likely to convict people who believe in God.
“Not at all. In fact, it’s good to know, because it’s something that can help a jury like you.”
Hearing her say that, I look into my lap. Am I so naturally unlikable that she needs to find things that will sway people in my favor?
“First,” she says, “do you prefer the term Black or African American or people of color?”
What I prefer, I think, is Ruth. But I swallow my response and say, “People of color.”
Once, at work, an orderly named Dave went off on a rant about that term. “It’s not like I don’t have color,” he’d said, holding out his pasty arms. “I’m not see-through, right? But I guess people of more color hasn’t caught on.” Then he had noticed me in the break room, and had gone red to his hairline. “Sorry, Ruth. But you know, I hardly think of you as Black.”
My lawyer is still talking. “I don’t even see color,” she tells me. “I mean, the only race that matters is the human one, right?”
It’s easy to believe we’re all in this together when you’re not the one who was dragged out of your home by the police. But I know that when white people say things like that, they are doing it because they think it’s the right thing to say, not because they realize how glib they sound. A couple of years ago, Adisa went ballistic when #alllivesmatter took over Twitter as a response to the activists who were holding signs that said BLACK LIVES MATTER. “What they’re really saying is white lives matter,” Adisa told me. “And that Black folks better remember that before we get too bold for our own good.”
Ms. McQuarrie coughs lightly, and I realize my mind’s been wandering. I force my eyes to her face, smile tightly. “Remind me again where you went to school?” she asks.
I feel like this is a test. “SUNY Plattsburgh, and then Yale Nursing School.”
“Impressive.”
What is? That I’m college educated? That I went to Yale? Is this what Edison will face for the rest of his life, too?
Edison.
“Ms. McQuarrie,” I begin.
“Kennedy.”
“Kennedy.” The familiarity sits uncomfortably on my tongue. “I can’t go back to prison.” I think of how, when Edison was a toddler, he’d put on Wesley’s shoes and shuffle around in them. Edison will have a lifetime to see the magic he used to believe in as a child be methodically erased, one confrontation at a time. I don’t want him to have to face that any sooner than necessary. “I’ve got my boy, and there’s no one else who can raise him to be the man I know he’s going to be.”
Ms. McQuarrie—Kennedy—leans forward. “I’m going to do my best. I have a lot of experience in cases with people like you.”
Another label. “People like me?”
“People accused of serious crimes.”
Immediately, I am on the defensive. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“I believe you. However, we still have to convince a jury. So we have to go back to the basics to figure out why you’ve been charged.”
I look at her carefully, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. This is the only case on my radar, but maybe she is juggling hundreds. Maybe she honestly has forgotten the skinhead with the tattoo who spit on me in the courtroom. “I’d think that’s pretty obvious. That baby’s father didn’t want me near his son.”
“The white supremacist? He has nothing to do with your case.”
For a moment, I’m speechless. I was removed from the care of a patient because of the color of my skin, and then penalized for following those directions when the same patient went into distress. How on earth could the two not be related? “But I’m the only nurse of color on the birthing pavilion.”
“To the State, it doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white or blue or green,” Kennedy explains. “To them you had a legal duty to take care of an infant under your charge.” She starts listing all the ways the jury can find a reason to convict me. Each feels like a brick being mortared into place, trapping me in this hole. I realize that I have made a grave mistake: I had assumed that justice was truly just, that jurors would assume I was innocent until proven guilty. But prejudice is exactly the opposite: judging before the evidence exists.
I don’t stand a chance.
“Do you really believe that if I was white,” I say quietly, “I’d be sitting here with you right now?”
She shakes her head. “No. I believe it’s too risky to bring up in court.”
So we are supposed to win a case by pretending the reason it happened doesn’t exist? It seems dishonest, oblivious. Like saying a patient died of an infected hangnail, without mentioning that he had Type 1 diabetes.
“If no one ever talks about race in court,” I say, “how is anything ever supposed to change?”
She folds her hands on the table between us. “You file a civil lawsuit. I can’t do it for you, but I can call around and find you someone who works with employment discrimination.” She explains, in legalese, what that means for me.
The damages she mentions are more than I ever imagined in my wildest dreams.
But there is a catch. There’s always a catch. The lawsuit that might net me this payout, that might help me hire a private lawyer who might actually be willing to admit that race is what landed me in court in the first place, can’t be filed until this lawsuit wraps up. In other words, if I’m found guilty now, I can kiss that future money goodbye.
Suddenly I realize that Kennedy’s refusal to mention race in court may not be ignorant. It’s the very opposite. It’s because she is aware of exactly what I have to do in order to get what I deserve.
I might as well be blind and lost, and Kennedy McQuarrie is the only one with a map. So I look her in the eye. “What do you want to know?” I say.