IT’S JUST AFTER 2:00 A.M. when my cellphone rings, and I see Ruth’s name flash. Immediately I’m awake. Micah sits up, alert the way doctors always are, and I shake my head at him. I’ve got this.
Fifteen minutes later, I pull up to the East End police department.
I walk up to the desk sergeant as if I have every right to be there. “You brought in a kid named Edison Jefferson?” I ask. “What’s the charge?”
“Who are you?”
“The family lawyer.”
Who was fired hours ago, I think silently. The officer narrows his eyes. “Kid didn’t say anything about a lawyer.”
“He’s seventeen,” I point out. “He’s probably too terrified to remember his own name. Look, let’s not make this any harder than it has to be, okay?”
“We got him on security cameras at the hospital, spray-painting the walls.”
Edison? Vandalizing? “You sure you have the right kid? He’s an honor student. College-bound.”
“Security guards ID’d him. And we tagged him driving a car with out-of-date plates registered to Ruth Jefferson. To his front door.”
Oh. Crap.
“He was painting swastikas, and wrote ‘Die Nigger.’ ”
“What?” I say, stunned.
That means it’s not just vandalism. It’s a hate crime. But it doesn’t make any sense. I open my purse, look at how much cash I have. “Okay, listen. Can you get him a special arraignment? I’ll pay for the magistrate to come, so he can get out of here tonight.”
I am taken back to the holding cell, where Edison is sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, his knees hunched up to his chin. Tears lattice his cheeks. The minute he sees me he stands up and walks toward the bars. “What were you thinking?” I demand.
He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “I wanted to help my mama.”
“What about getting your ass thrown in jail helps your mother right now?”
“I wanted to get Turk Bauer in trouble. If it wasn’t for him, none of this ever would have happened. And after today, everyone was blaming her, and they should have been blaming him…” He looks up at me, his eyes red. “She’s the victim here. How come nobody sees that?”
“I will help you,” I tell him. “But what you and I talk about is privileged information, which means you shouldn’t tell your mother anything about it.” What I’m thinking, though, is that Ruth will find out soon enough. Probably when she reads the front page of the damn paper. It’s just too good: SON OF KILLER NURSE ARRESTED FOR HATE CRIME. “And for the love of God, don’t say a word in front of the magistrate.”
Fifteen minutes later, the magistrate comes to the holding cell. Special arraignments are like magic tricks; all sorts of rules can be bent when you are willing to pay extra. There’s an officer acting as prosecutor, and me, and Edison, and the judge-for-hire. Edison’s charge is read, and his Miranda rights. “What’s going on here?” the magistrate asks.
I jump in. “Your Honor, this is a very unique circumstance, an isolated incident. Edison is a varsity athlete and an honor student who’s never been in trouble before; his mother is on trial right now for negligent homicide, and he’s frustrated. Emotions are running very high right now, and this was a hugely misguided attempt to support his mother.”
The magistrate looks at Edison. “Is that true, young man?”
Edison looks at me, unsure if he should answer. I nod. “Yes, sir,” he says quietly.
“Edison Jefferson,” the magistrate says, “you have been charged with a racially motived hate crime. This is a felony, and you’ll be arraigned in court on Monday. You will not have to answer any questions, and you have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. I see that you have Ms. McQuarrie here on your behalf, and the case will be referred to the public defender’s office formally in superior court. You cannot leave the state of Connecticut, and I have the obligation to advise you that if you are arrested for any other offense while this case is pending, you can be held at the state prison.” He stares down Edison. “Stay out of trouble, boy.”
The whole thing takes an hour. We are both wide awake when we get into my car so that I can drive Edison home. The glow of the rearview mirror brackets my eyes as I steal glances at him in the passenger seat. He’s holding one of Violet’s toys—a little fairy with pink wings. It is impossibly tiny in his large hands. “What the fuck, Edison?” I say quietly. “People like Turk Bauer are horrible. Why are you stooping to that level?”
“Why are you?” he asks, turning toward me. “You’re pretending that what they do doesn’t even matter. I sat through that whole trial; it barely even came up.”
“What barely came up?”
“Racism,” he says.
I suck in my breath. “It may never have been explicitly discussed during the trial, but Turk Bauer was on full display—a museum-quality exhibit.”
He looks at me, one eyebrow cocked. “You really think Turk Bauer is the only person in that courtroom who’s a racist?”
We pull into a spot in front of Ruth’s home. The light is on inside, buttery and warm. She throws open the front door and comes out onto the steps, pulling her cardigan more tightly around her body. “Thank the Lord,” she murmurs, and she folds Edison into her embrace. “What happened?”
Edison glances at me. “She told me not to tell you.”
Ruth snorts. “Yeah, she’s good at that.”
“I spray-painted a swastika on the hospital. And…some other stuff.”
She holds him at arm’s length, waiting.
“I wrote ‘Die Nigger,’ ” Edison murmurs.
Ruth slaps him across the face. He reels back, holding his cheek. “You fool, why would you do that?”
“I thought Turk Bauer would get blamed. I wanted people to stop saying awful things about you.”
Ruth closes her eyes for a moment, like she is fighting for control. “What happens now?”
“He’ll be arraigned in court on Monday. The press will probably be there,” I say.
“What am I going to do?” she asks.
“You,” I tell her, “are going to do nothing. I’ll handle this.”
I see her fighting, struggling to accept this gift. “Okay,” Ruth says.
I notice that this whole time, she keeps contact with her son. Even after swatting him, her hand is on his arm, his shoulder, his back. When I drive away, they are still standing together on the porch, tangled in each other’s regret.
BY THE TIME I get home, it is four in the morning. It seems stupid to crawl into bed, and anyway, I’m wired. I decide to clean up a little, and then to have a pancake breakfast waiting when Violet and Micah wake.
It’s inevitable that over the course of a trial, my home office becomes more and more cluttered. But Ruth’s case, it’s a done deal. So I tiptoe into the extra bedroom I use and begin to pack up the discovery into its boxes. I stack files and folders and notes I made on the evidence. I try to find Ground Zero.
I accidentally bump a pile on the desk and knock it onto the floor. Picking up the pages, I scan the deposition from Brittany Bauer, which of course never came into play, and the photocopied results from the state laboratory that flagged Davis Bauer’s metabolic disorder. It’s a long, aggregate list of disorders. Most read normal, except of course the line for MCADD.
I glance over the rest of the list, which I never really focused on before, because I’d grabbed the brass ring and run with it. Davis Bauer seemed to be a normal infant in all other regards, his testing standard.
Then I turn the page over, and realize there’s print on the back, too.
There, in a sea of ordinary, is the word abnormal again. This one is much farther down the list of aggregated results—less important maybe, less threatening? I cross-reference the result with the lab tests that were included in the subpoena, a mess of lists of proteins I can’t pronounce, and scraggly graphs of spectrometry I do not know how to read.
I pause at a page that looks like a runny tie-dye. Electrophoresis, I read. Hemoglobinopathy. And at the bottom of the page, the results: HbAS/heterozygous.
I sit down at my computer and plug the result into Google. If this is something else that was medically wrong with Davis Bauer, I can introduce it, even now. I can call for a new trial, because of new evidence.
I can start over with a fresh jury.
Generally benign carrier state, I read, my hopes falling. So much for another potential cause of natural death.
Family to be tested/counseled.
The hemoglobins are listed in the order of hemoglobin present (F>A>S). FA = normal. FAS = carrier, sickle-cell trait. FSA = sickle beta-plus thalassemia.
Then I remember something Ivan said.
I sink to the floor, reaching for the stack of deposition transcripts, and begin to read.
Then, although it is only 4:30 A.M., I grab my phone and scroll through the history of incoming calls until I find the one I am looking for. “This is Kennedy McQuarrie,” I say, when Wallace Mercy picks up, his voice thick with dreams. “And I need you.”
ON MONDAY MORNING, the steps are crowded with cameras and reporters, many now from out of state, who have picked up the story of the black kid who wrote a racial slur against his own kind, the son of a nurse on trial just down the hall for killing a white supremacist’s baby. Although I have prepared a song and dance for Howard in case my stay isn’t granted, Judge Thunder shocks me once again by agreeing to delay closing arguments until 10:00 A.M. so I can act as Edison’s attorney before I pick up again as Ruth’s—even if only to be formally fired.
The cameras follow us down the hallway, even though I tuck Ruth under one arm and instruct Howard to shield Edison. The entire arraignment takes less than five minutes. Edison is released on personal recognizance and a pretrial conference date is set. Then we dodge the press the whole way back.
I have never been so delighted to return to Judge Thunder’s courtroom, in which no cameras or press are allowed.
We step inside and walk to the defense table, Edison slipping quietly into the row behind. But no sooner have we reached our spot than Ruth looks at me, frowning. “What are you doing?”
I blink. “What?”
“Just because you’re representing Edison doesn’t mean anything has changed,” she replies.
Before I can respond, the judge takes the bench. He looks from me—clearly in the middle of a charged conversation with my client—to Odette, across the room. “Are the parties ready to proceed?” he asks.
“Your Honor?” Ruth says. “I would like to get rid of my lawyer.”
I am pretty sure Judge Thunder thought nothing else in this trial could surprise him, until this moment. “Ms. Jefferson? Why on earth would you want to discharge your lawyer when the defense has rested? All that’s left is a closing argument.”
Ruth’s jaw works. “It’s personal, Your Honor.”
“I would strongly recommend otherwise, Ms. Jefferson. She knows the case, and contrary to all expectation, she has been very prepared. She has your best interests in mind. It is my job to run this trial, and to make sure it’s no longer delayed. We have a jury sitting in the box that has heard all the evidence; we don’t have time for you to go find another attorney, and you are not equipped to represent yourself.” He faces me. “Unbelievably, I am granting you another half-hour recess, Ms. McQuarrie, so you and your client can make nice.”
I deputize Howard to stay with Edison so that the press can’t get near him. Getting to our usual conference room will require running past the press, too, so instead I take Ruth out a back entrance and into the ladies’ room. “Sorry,” I say to a woman following us, and I lock the door behind us. Ruth leans against the bank of sinks and folds her arms.
“I know you think nothing’s changed, and maybe it hasn’t for you. But for me, it has,” I say. “I hear you, loud and clear. I may not deserve it, but I’m begging you to give me one last chance.”
“Why should I?” Ruth asks, a challenge.
“Because I told you once I don’t see color…and now, it’s all I see.”
She starts for the door. “I don’t need your pity.”
“You’re right.” I nod. “You need equity.”
Ruth stops walking, still facing away from me. “You mean equality,” she corrects.
“No, I mean equity. Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed.” I look at her. “The first one sounds fair. The second one is fair. It’s equal to give a printed test to two kids. But if one’s blind and one’s sighted, that’s not true. You ought to give one a Braille test and one a printed test, which both cover the same material. All this time, I’ve been giving the jury a print test, because I didn’t realize that they’re blind. That I was blind. Please, Ruth. I think you’ll like hearing what I have to say.”
Slowly, Ruth turns around. “One last chance,” she agrees.
WHEN I STAND up, I’m not alone.
Yes, there is a courtroom waiting for my closing argument, but I’m surrounded by the stories that have blazed through the media but have mostly been ignored in courts of law. The stories of Tamir Rice, of Michael Brown, of Trayvon Martin. Of Eric Garner and Walter Scott and Freddie Gray. Of Sandra Bland and John Crawford III. Of the female African American soldiers who wanted to wear their hair natural and the children in the Seattle school district who were told by the Supreme Court that cherry-picking students to maintain racial diversity was unconstitutional. Of minorities in the South, who’ve been left without federal protection while those states put laws into effect that limit their voting rights. Of the millions of African Americans who have been victims of housing discrimination and job discrimination. Of the homeless black boy on Chapel Street whose cup is never going to be as full as that of a white homeless woman.
I turn toward the jury. “What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they’d be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they’d be taken first at the doctor’s office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up—but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you’d be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal?”
I walk toward them, continuing. “I told you when we started this case that it was about Ruth Jefferson being presented with an impossible choice: to do her job as a nurse, or to defy her supervisor’s orders. I told you that evidence would show Davis Bauer had underlying health conditions that led to his death. And that is true, ladies and gentlemen. But this case, it’s about a lot more than I let on to you.
“Out of all the people who interacted with Davis Bauer at Mercy–West Haven Hospital during his short life, only one of them is sitting in this courtroom at the defense table: Ruth Jefferson. Only one person is being charged with a crime: Ruth Jefferson. I spent an entire trial skirting a very important question: Why?
“Ruth is black,” I say flatly. “That rubbed Turk Bauer, a white supremacist, the wrong way. He can’t stand black people, or Asian people, or gay people, or anyone else who isn’t like him. And as a result, he set into motion a chain of events that would lead to Ruth becoming a scapegoat for the tragic death of his son. But we are not supposed to talk about race in the criminal justice system. We’re supposed to pretend it is merely the icing on the cake of whatever charge has been brought to the table—not the substance of it. We are supposed to be the legal guardians of a postracial society. But you know, the word ignorance has an even more important word at its heart: ignore. And I don’t think it’s right to ignore the truth any longer.”
I look right at juror number 12, the teacher. “Finish this sentence,” I say. “I am…?” I pause at the blank. “Maybe you’d answer: shy. Or blond. Friendly. Nervous, intelligent, Irish. But the majority of you wouldn’t say white. Why not? Because it’s a given. It’s identity that is taken for granted. Those of us who were lucky enough to be born white are oblivious to that good fortune. Now, we’re all blissfully unmindful of lots of things. Probably, you did not give thanks for showering this morning, or for having a roof over your head last night. For eating breakfast and having clean underwear. That’s because all those invisible privileges are easy to take in stride.
“Sure, it’s so much easier to see the headwinds of racism, the ways that people of color are discriminated against. We see it now when a black man is accidentally shot by the police and a girl with brown skin is bullied by classmates for wearing a hijab. It’s a little harder to see—and to own up to—the tailwinds of racism, the ways that those of us who aren’t people of color have benefited just because we’re white. We can go to a movie and be pretty certain that most of the main characters will look like us. We can be late for a meeting and not have it blamed on our race. I can go into Judge Thunder’s chambers and raise an objection and not be told I’m playing the race card.” I pause. “The vast majority of us do not come home from work and say, Hooray! I didn’t get stopped and frisked today! The vast majority of us did not get into college and think, I got into the school of my choice because the educational system really works in my favor. We don’t think these things, because we don’t have to.”
By now, the jury is getting uneasy. They shift and shuffle, and from the corner of my eye I see Judge Thunder regarding me narrowly, even though a closing argument is mine alone to give, and theoretically, if I wanted to read Great Expectations out loud, I could.
“I know you’re thinking: I’m not racist. Why, we even had an example of what we think real racism looks like, in the form of Turk Bauer. I doubt there are many of you on the jury who, like Turk, believe that your children are Aryan warriors or that black people are so inferior they should not even be able to touch a white baby. But even if we took every white supremacist on the planet and shipped them off to Mars, there would still be racism. That’s because racism isn’t just about hate. We all have biases, even if we don’t think we do. It’s because racism is also about who has power…and who has access to it.
“When I started working on this case, ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t see myself as a racist. Now I realize I am. Not because I hate people of different races but because—intentionally or unintentionally—I’ve gotten a boost from the color of my skin, just like Ruth Jefferson suffered a setback because of hers.”
Odette is sitting with her head bowed at the prosecution table. I can’t tell if she is delighted that I am building my own coffin out of words or if she is simply stunned that I have the balls to antagonize the jury at this late stage of the game. “There is a difference between active and passive racism. It’s kind of like when you get on the moving walkway at the airport. If you walk down it, you’re going to get to the other end faster than if you just stand still. But you’re ultimately going to wind up in the same spot. Active racism is having a swastika tattoo on your head. Active racism is telling a nurse supervisor that an African American nurse can’t touch your baby. It’s snickering at a black joke. But passive racism? It’s noticing there’s only one person of color in your office and not asking your boss why. It’s reading your kid’s fourth-grade curriculum and seeing that the only black history covered is slavery, and not questioning why. It’s defending a woman in court whose indictment directly resulted from her race…and glossing over that fact, like it hardly matters.
“I bet you feel uncomfortable right now. You know, so do I. It’s hard to talk about this stuff without offending people, or feeling offended. It’s why lawyers like me aren’t supposed to say these things to juries like you. But deep down, if you’ve asked yourself what this trial is really about, you know it’s more than just whether Ruth had anything to do with the death of one of her patients. In fact, it has very little to do with Ruth. It’s about systems that have been in place for about four hundred years, systems meant to make sure that people like Turk can make a heinous request as a patient, and have it granted. Systems meant to make sure that people like Ruth are kept in their place.”
I turn to the jury, beseeching. “If you don’t want to think about this, you don’t have to, and you can still acquit Ruth. I’ve given you enough medical evidence to show that there’s plenty of doubt about what led to that baby’s death. You heard the medical examiner himself say that had the newborn screening results come back in a more timely fashion, Davis Bauer might be alive today. Yes, you also heard Ruth get angry on the stand—that’s because when you wait forty-four years to be given a chance to speak, things don’t always come out the way you want them to. Ruth Jefferson just wanted the chance to do her job. To take care of that infant like she was trained to do.”
I turn, finally, toward Ruth. She breathes in, and I feel it in my own chest. “What if people who were born on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday were never the subjects of extensive credit checks when they applied for loans? What if they could shop without fear of security tailing them?” I pause. “What if their newborn screening test results came back to the pediatrician in a timely manner, allowing medical intervention that could prevent their deaths? Suddenly,” I say, “that type of arbitrary discrimination doesn’t seem quite so silly, does it?”