“I can read, Mr. Feldman.”
“Of course, Your Honor.”
The defense lawyer stood. “Your Honor, the use of Depo-Provera was hardly used for investigative purposes. It was authorized for use as a contraceptive.”
“It was not authorized by the Food and Drug Administration,” Lou countered.
“This was not an investigational study. The federal government would never do that, particularly in the case of minors.”
“Gentlemen, please be seated. You will have your opportunity to present your case. Mr. Feldman, are you alleging that the plaintiffs were injured by Depo-Provera?”
“Your Honor, this is a new drug. The long-term effects on human subjects are yet unknown. We do know that it has caused cancer in laboratory animals.”
“Mr. Feldman, the threshold question is whether the plaintiff alleges that the drug has caused an injury in fact.”
“No, Your Honor, we cannot yet make that claim.”
“Thank you, Mr. Feldman.”
I thought of the time I’d injected the needle into India’s arm. The girl could not speak. She could not protest. She had merely trusted. I had given her the shot only once, but the memory of that moment haunted me. I had not known about the drug, but it had been my duty to know. I was the medical professional, the one with the knowledge that was out of reach for a family like the Williamses. I might as well have landed from outer space and told them I was going to feed them a miracle food that would save their lives. And they’d partaken. Because even though I was a Martian, I looked like them. Sitting in that courtroom, I understood for the thousandth time the enormity of my mistake. The utter failure of it. I should have questioned Mrs. Seager about this new drug I knew virtually nothing about before I shot it into the arm of an eleven-year-old girl. Ignorance was not an excuse. I should have known. I had been trained to know and to ask.
“Your Honor, I submit Exhibit C, the Food and Drug Administration’s policies on oral contraceptives. The plaintiffs were never given written material outlining the side effects of the drug.”
The defense lawyer stood again. “Your Honor, the plaintiffs signed consent forms containing the obligatory warnings and notices.”
“Your Honor, three directors at clinics across Alabama have signed affidavits claiming that it was not standard procedure to give written notices to the patients to review. The prosecution contends that this administration of experimental drugs is particularly egregious when the recipients are poor.”
I sat up straighter. The nurses had helped with those affidavits. That was our contribution to the case so far. But we would need more. Three were hardly enough. We had worked in the Montgomery clinic, and we knew firsthand that the warnings about Depo-Provera were given orally, if they were given at all.
The defense lawyer scoffed. “Your Honor, the federal government treats all people the same. These allegations of bias against the poor are unprovable and histrionic. And it doesn’t change the fact that the written notices were always available upon request.”
“Histrionic never, and I disagree that it’s unprovable.”
“Now cut it out before I hold both y’all in contempt of court. I won’t give another warning.”
Available upon request? The man lived in a fantasy world. And he had the nerve to say the federal government treated all people the same. He obviously was in denial about what happened up at Tuskegee.
Lou’s plan became clearer to me. He would first argue that the federal clinics were administering Depo-Provera without informed consent. Then he would move that argument to the issue of sterilization to prove an entire system of abuse.
I liked the strategy. But he had to prove it in this court of law. And I was seeing firsthand that it wasn’t going to be easy.
* * *
? ? ?
THE SCHOOL YEAR had started, and so had football season. I’d always loved Centennial Hill this time of year. When the leaves were changing and peaches were stewing on the stove and the camellia was blooming out back, the city became one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. People sat on their porches and waved at cars. Men in hats walked to the corner store to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola. The Popsicle truck sang out a tune from its bullhorn. Children played stickball in the street. The mailman knew you were waiting to hear from your sick cousin and knocked on the door to make sure he put the letter in your hand. To the world, Montgomery was the Cradle of Dixie. To me, she was home.
Of course, Montgomery had its other side, too. Meeting the Williamses had reminded me of that. On my side, we were protected by our education and jobs and ability to make noise, while poor Black folks went hungry or were humiliated by their employers who exploited the precariousness of their very existence. A lot of Negroes still lived in shotgun houses without indoor plumbing. There were none of us on the city council, and the idea of the city electing a Negro mayor anytime soon was laughable.
It was especially bad in the country. Out there, folks lived in ramshackle houses, eking out a living. Children ran barefoot because their shoes were too small, a lot of them hungry even as their parents cleared crops of perfectly edible food. Erica had told me that last Christmas her daddy had given her and India a bag of clementines. They ate those sweet little fruits until their stomachs hurt, she said.
In fall 1973, folks like the Williamses were never far from my mind. Every time I shopped at the market, I thought of them. Every time I checked a book out of the library, I thought of them. When I put gas in my new car, I thought of them. I tried to hold myself together because the trial was in full swing, and I didn’t want to disappoint anyone by getting in the way, but I was troubled and uneasy in those days.
Lou worked tirelessly. I believe the man slept in his clothes some nights, if he slept at all. He had a wife who worked in Selma, but no one had ever met her. I feared a divorce might slip up on him if he didn’t tend to his personal life, but when I noticed the determined look in his eyes, I dared not get in his business.
On Sundays after church, I went to Mace’s house to teach him to read. We sat in the living room while the girls played outside and Mrs. Williams prepared her Sunday dinner. Mace’s reading was improving. The local librarian helped me find more books. I couldn’t find very many books with Black characters, so I found ones that featured animals, books such as Swimmy by Leo Lionni. Although Mace had not wanted to stumble over words in front of people in a literacy class, he seemed to have no trouble with me correcting him. He would say “Come on now, girl,” to encourage me to teach even faster. He’d sit so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his breath as he sounded out the letters.
One day I heard his mother drop something in grease and the sizzle of the fry start up. Suddenly Mace turned and kissed me. It surprised me, but I was ready for it. After months of something rising up between us, we gave in to our attraction. The man tasted like I had imagined he would, like the outdoors. And kissing him was different than kissing Ty. Mace kissed hard, pressing himself to me, holding me tight like it was the last moment we would ever have together. He was a little rough and, frankly, I found that exciting. Ty had been all soft and inquisitive, more concerned with my comfort.
It wasn’t just that Mace was ten years my senior. He was different than any man I’d ever known. When the whir of the mixer blade started, we moved closer. When his mama opened the window to yell out to a neighbor, he put an arm around me. I kept telling myself Control yourself, Civil. And somehow, I did manage to convince myself that I had everything under control.