“Y’all see the news today?”
In the back of the house, the high-pitched voices of the children drowned out the din of a TV set. Only the adults were still seated at the table. I leaned back in my chair, focusing my eyes on the dusty light fixture overhead.
“Which channel?” asked Nellie. “We don’t get all the channels out here.”
“All of ’em,” Tim said.
Mace touched a finger to his temple. I took another swallow of coffee, and the movement drew Tim’s eye. He looked at me as he removed a section of the paper from his back pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the table. I wiped at some crumbs on the table where my plate had been and sneaked a peek at the paper headline.
Lawsuit Filed in Federal Court Against Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. Everyone looked down at it. Nobody had to read to know what it was about. There was a picture of the girls someone had taken of them outside their apartment.
“Y’all going get some money?” Tim asked.
“We going get justice for my granddaughters. That’s what we after. The man say—”
“Justice?” Tim’s voice rose. “My sister is rolling over in her grave, and you talk about justice? Justice was this thing never happening in the first place.”
“Don’t you speak about my wife,” Mace said.
“She was my sister before she was your wife. And what you done, huh? Messing up the only thing she ever loved more than herself.”
“And where was you?” Mrs. Williams interjected. “Where was you when we was living in that doghouse out on old man Adair’s farm and the rain was coming through the roof? Did you ever come see about your nieces?”
Nellie stood. “Let’s not talk about this, y’all. Ruin a good dinner. I’m going to go get the rest of the pie.”
I wanted to read the article so I could see if it mentioned Mrs. Seager. I also wanted to know what Lou’s complaint alleged. I had brought the Williamses out here to see their family, but the devil’s mess had followed.
It had been almost two months since the surgery, and it had been hard to gauge how much word of it had spread beyond Montgomery. Now that the lawsuit was filed, it would be beauty-shop gossip, church basement tittle-tattle. The clinic wasn’t well known, but it would be now.
“Stop playing!” I heard Erica yell. I wanted to go see what they were doing. I hoped the boys weren’t terrorizing India, but I knew Erica would defend her sister.
“What you got to say, Mace? Huh? How this happen, man?”
Tim wasn’t trying to stir trouble. The man was hurting over it. Everyone at that table had to be hurting over it. It occurred to me that I didn’t belong here. This was a private family moment, but I couldn’t figure out how to get up from the table and excuse myself.
Mace’s voice sounded strained and high. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it myself. Them white folks come to the place near about every day. Always asking questions, leaving me papers I can’t understand. We wasn’t starving, but getting that bit of assistance helped, man. I work hard as a mule, but it ain’t never enough. Mr. Adair give me just enough to scrape by.”
“That’s how they do it,” Patsy said. “I was on food stamps and they made me tell them everything but the color of my panties to get them.”
“My boys get free lunch. They sit all the free lunch kids on one side of the room together like a bunch of rejects. Ain’t right,” said Dina.
“I ain’t been to the doctor in I don’t know how long. Poking and asking me private questions. They don’t care nothing about me.” Nellie stabbed the pie with a knife.
“They tried to take this house. Told me something wrong with the deed. I got my shotgun and they ain’t been back since,” said her husband.
Take take take.
The ends of my fingers itched, and I did not trust myself to open my mouth. Who knew what might come tumbling out. The children must have settled down to something, because I could no longer hear their voices or the complaints of the floor.
“But I hear you got a new job now out at the pickle factory,” Tim whispered.
“Yeah, this one here helped with that.” Mace tilted his head in my direction without looking at me. “She got Erica back in school. We finally start to see some sunshine and then this happen. What I do, God?”
“Don’t bring God into this,” said Mrs. Williams. “This ain’t got nothing to do with Him.”
“Sure ain’t.” Nellie pushed the plate of pie down the center of the table. “Them white folks give you that assistance and then act like they own you.”
Everyone got quiet again.
“Can I see it?” I said quietly. Tim slid the paper over to me, and I began to read. Lou Feldman had done it. Not only did the suit name Mrs. Seager and the clinic, but it also named the doctor who performed the surgery. The article outlined the details in Feldman’s statement: how the girls were taken from their home, how the father and grandmother, due to their illiteracy, were not fully capable of understanding what they were consenting to.
The article named me as their nurse. Good Lord, I said under my breath. Folks might think I had something to do with this, that I was the one instead of Val.
“So is there money or what?” Tim asked again. He was staring straight at me. So was everyone else.
“I don’t know,” I answered, my voice shaking. “I think right now they’re just trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“What good is that when it’s already happened to my nieces? Somebody need to pay!”
“Tim, that’s enough.” Nellie’s husband Leotis was the only person in the family who didn’t talk constantly. When he spoke, it had a settling effect on the room. “That lawsuit ain’t got nothing to do with us. That’s just more of the white folks’ meddling.”
I shook my head, but everyone ignored me.
“What we got to do,” Leotis said, “is step up as a family. Them girls been through enough. Pat, I want you to send them out here whenever you feel the need. It’s just me and Nellie now. All we got is this roof and our social security. Lord knows we too old to raise ’em. But we can feed ’em. And we can love on ’em. We should have done it long ago after Constance passed. But we here now.”
“Leotis, don’t be so hard on yourself. None of us could have seen this coming,” his wife said.
“I’m the one what signed the papers,” Mrs. Williams said.
“I signed them, too, Mama.”
“I’m the nurse,” I said quietly.
“Maybe . . . maybe,” Doe began.
“Maybe we just got to wait this out and see what happens.” Patsy finished her sentence.
I thought of Lou and his youthful face and innocent enthusiasm. He could not possibly understand that he held the hopes of not just this family but our entire people in his hands. I truly hoped he was not just another meddler, as the family put it. If he didn’t win this case, then I was putting them through all of this for nothing. And even if he did win it, it might be for nothing anyway. They might never get money. It was possible nothing would ever change for them.