“You’re suing the federal government? Lou, you’re twenty-eight years old. What if presidential cabinet members are involved?”
“That’s the only way we’re going to stop this, Civil. We’ve got to go after the agency that oversaw the units.”
There had been two men sitting in a car outside Lou’s office building when I’d walked in a few moments earlier. It was after nine o’clock at night. I recognized the vehicle; those same two men had interviewed nearly every resident in Dixie Court. Now I was thinking it was possible that they weren’t reporters at all but government agents. I feared the agency might find some bogus reason to evict the family.
“What about Mrs. Seager? What about my girls . . .” Young people had been killed before. Those four little girls in that Birmingham church. Students registering people to vote. This case had the potential to bring out the ugly.
“If I get the injunctive relief I’m seeking, it will affect women and girls all over this country. Girls like India and Erica. The poor. The innocent. The exploited. We’ll protect them. This has turned out to be bigger than any of us expected.”
So I was going to have to communicate with the Williamses and help them understand what Lou was asking. He was right—this was big. But it would happen on the backs of my girls. On the backs of Mace and his mother. And I just didn’t know how much more the Williamses would be willing to sacrifice in the name of the common good. Mace wasn’t concerned about women in North Carolina or California. He was just trying to keep his job at the factory so his family could eat without depending on the federal government. The man had never even voted.
Lou picked up a pencil. I knew it was the signal for me to leave, but I wasn’t ready.
“What can I do?”
“Right now, just concentrate on keeping those girls away from reporters.”
He sounded irritated, and that, in turn, irritated me. I walked to the door. He had made this decision without me, and that left me feeling helpless. But who was I? I didn’t even have a job anymore.
“By the way, I heard Mrs. Seager resigned. Or was fired. I’m not sure.”
“You kidding me,” I said, stunned.
“There are a lot of people in this community who need those services. They could use your passion. And I’m sure you could use the job. Go back to the clinic, Civil.”
“I will never go back. I hate it there.” Mace had not been the only one duped by Mrs. Seager. I had believed in that woman, in the mission of the clinic. I had overheard her pressuring women to tie their tubes, and I had not intervened, believing at the time that it was the right thing to do. Babies born into poverty did not have as good a chance as babies born into families with more money. That’s what I believed. What a hypocrite I’d been. I’d had all the resources in the world, and I had still terminated my own pregnancy. Meanwhile, I’d thought I knew what was best for other women.
Lou began to write hastily, as if trying to capture a thought before it escaped him. When I walked out the door, he didn’t even say good-bye, and neither did I.
Outside, the night was clear and warm. I could make out the darkened silhouettes of the two men sitting inside the sedan across the street. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go to Dixie Court. I thought about going inside the restaurant, sitting at the counter, and ordering some fried food. Across the street, I watched a light flicker in an office and then darken. The city had shut down for the night. Reluctant as I was, it was probably time for me to do the same.
* * *
? ? ?
THE FOLLOWING WEEK Ty asked me to meet him at the diner. I arrived before he did, thankful my friend Irene was working, because I did not want to talk to anyone I didn’t know. She seated me in my favorite booth in the back and brought me a Coca-Cola. The bells above the door jingled. Ty came straight to me, a bag slung over his shoulder.
“Hey. How was Washington?”
“Crazy. The Williamses were like celebrities or something. I didn’t know so many people knew who they were. And Lou showed out. He had the whole room fixed. Now he says he’s suing the federal government.”
“Does that mean the clinic gets off scot-free?”
I shrugged. “The clinic is no longer named as defendants. Now it’s the bigwig secretary of HEW, the director of OEO, and so forth. Lou says the sterilizations are happening to women all over the country.”
Ty opened his bag and took out a bunch of folded-up newspapers. “Miss Pope called the librarian over at Alabama State library and saved these for us. They all came out yesterday. I told her I’d bring them back after I showed them to you.”
He spread the newspapers out on the table and I scanned the headlines.
“The New York Times. The Chicago Tribune. The Washington Post. The Chicago Defender. Even Time magazine ran a story. Everyone is talking about the Williams sisters.”
There were pictures of the girls walking into the Capitol building. A picture of Dixie Court. The clinic, on Jefferson Davis Highway. There was even a picture of them standing next to me in front of the hotel. My face was fuzzy, but you could see the girls clearly.
“So they’re the face of a national scandal?”
“Yup. This case is on fire.”
“I heard Mrs. Seager quit,” he said.
“Lou told me that. How’d you hear?”
“Alicia.”
“That ain’t surprising. She stay running her mouth.”
“She’s just trying to do the right thing, Civil. Same as you. Hey, you and I still need to talk. You keep avoiding the conversation about the baby, and I need to talk about it with somebody.”
“Baby?”
“There was a baby, Civil. Our baby.”
“Don’t use that word.” I lowered my voice. “I was barely even pregnant.”
“Ain’t no such thing as barely pregnant.”
“What is there to talk about, Ty? We made a mistake. We avoided disaster. It’s over.”
“You call our baby a disaster?”
“Yes, me being pregnant would have been a disaster.”
He grabbed my hand. “What about us? Would that have been a disaster, too?”
“You’re being ridiculous.” I tried to pull my hand away, but he held on. I did feel sorry for Ty, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I was too wrapped up in my hurt to even articulate my feelings to myself, let alone to him.
THIRTY-THREE
In a town of Black and white, the Singhs moved into a house on the Black side of town. Their only daughter married a Black army officer. I was in high school when the family bought the Regent Cafe, which became one of the first truly integrated diners in the city, a place where Black folks felt safe sitting in a booth on the opposite side of white folks. But we also came for the food. You would have thought it was your own family back there cooking. Mr. Singh understood Southern food. He had worked in the kitchen under the previous owners, and he had surpassed them with his skills. The family’s involvement with civil rights was to simply serve good food to anybody who came in the door.
The old man usually stayed in the kitchen. Mrs. Singh moved back and forth but preferred the office, where she kept the books. A white retired schoolteacher ran the front side of things and called everyone hon. Sometimes Mrs. Singh might come out near closing time wearing her sari, a long braid running simply down her back. She might refill your coffee, ask about your mother, or how things were going since you started your new job. Her daughter now lived out on the base, and Mrs. Singh was known to grouse that she would be too old to enjoy grandchildren if they didn’t come soon.