“Objection, Your Honor. This testimony is irrelevant speculation.”
We were all aware of the growing controversy over President Nixon and his administration. The vice president had just resigned after pleading no contest to tax evasion. A Senate committee was leading an investigation into the circumstances surrounding a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The special prosecutor had been fired. By bringing up the president, Paasch lit a fireball inside the courtroom.
“I have no more questions, Your Honor,” Lou said before the judge could respond to the objection.
When Lou walked back to his chair, he made eye contact with me. I could tell from his triumphant expression that he knew he had just had his best day in court so far.
* * *
? ? ?
I HAD NOT seen the girls in over a week, so I decided to take them some groceries and check on them. Daddy had guessed right. I had been buying them food, but I’d also told the truth about their food stamps. The stamps were barely enough to feed a family of four, so I helped out when I could. Mrs. Williams didn’t cook more than they could eat, but she certainly wanted to put two hot meals on the table every day. And there was nothing she liked better than frying up some drumsticks or putting a roast in the oven. Because they had not had a kitchen out in the shanty on Adair’s farm, she delighted in her new one. The woman could work magic with very little. When she was in a creative mood, she might cut up an apple and throw it inside the tinfoil with the ham, or she might roll the chicken in cornflakes before frying it.
Mrs. Williams took the sacks from my hands.
“Where the girls?”
“They outside somewhere. Come on in here and help me wash these greens. I’m making chicken and dumplings tonight. You had some lately?”
“No, ma’am. Fact is, I can’t remember the last time I had chicken and dumplings.”
“Me, neither. That’s why I’m making them. Now wash up.”
There were two seashell soaps in the bathroom dish. There was even a hand towel. I had never seen a hand towel in their bathroom. With every visit, I witnessed one more step in the Williamses’ journey. They had lived the way they had because that was how that shack had made them feel. It was hard to keep things tidy with a dirt floor, hard to maintain dignity in a urine-soaked hovel. On the Adair farm they had shed the best parts of themselves. In this new apartment, with its actual kitchen and indoor bathroom, the family was on the mend.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t know why Alicia had given me that test book. I couldn’t even picture myself as a doctor. To have people place their trust in me and then disappoint them would be devastating. I thought about the parade of health professionals testifying in the trial. How did they live with the gravity of their mistakes?
In the kitchen, Mrs. Williams was running the faucet.
“You can use this sink of water to soak while you pick. I don’t like no tough stems in my greens.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The sour scent of boiling chicken rose from a pot. She shook some flour into a bowl.
“These greens from the neighborhood garden?”
“Sure enough.” She didn’t look up. “We planted greens, turnips, tomatoes, and cabbage. About the onliest thing I miss from being on the back of that land.”
I snapped off the end of the stem.
“How the trial going?”
She surprised me with the question, because she rarely asked about it. “It’s going fine. Lou is still presenting our side.”
“That is some white fellow, I tell you. God don’t make many like him.”
“Yeah, he’s something.”
“I used to hear of young whites coming down here for the protests. Some of them even gave they lives for the cause. Do you remember that young white woman who came down here to march for voting rights? I heard about her, though I never caught her name. That woman disappeared and was never to be found. And she had four children! I imagine her family must still be making sense of why she came in the first place.”
“Mmm.”
“Course I never did go march. India and Erica was young. I was helping they mama with them. She used to go clean houses and I watch the kids while she work.”
“Mmm.”
“When she die, that white family she worked for didn’t send us no flowers, didn’t say sorry for your loss, didn’t say kiss my foot, nothing. She worked for them people for seven years, and I heard they hired a new maid before her body was even cold in the ground.”
“You jiving me.” I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
“Anyway, I been thinking about them because I’m thinking now that the girls in school and I’m near the bus line, I can start working again. Maybe they hire me.”
I dropped a handful of leaves into the sink and swished them in the water. “You would go work for that family after what they did?”
She shrugged. “It’s work.”
“Maybe one of the schools is hiring. I can talk to—”
“Now, there you go again.”
“There I go again what?”
“You done enough, Civil.”
“I’m just saying that if—”
“Civil.”
“You sound like Mace.”
“Hand me that pot. It’s a hock in the icebox.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As I squatted to get the pot, I heard the front door open. The girls came straight to the kitchen, and when they saw me both of them wrapped their arms around my neck.
“Where y’all been?” I kissed India’s forehead.
“Look what I got.” Erica held up a tube of lipstick.
“Where you get that?”
“I found it. It’s been used a lot, but my friend say I can just wipe it off with a tissue and it be like new again.”
“Oh.” The lipstick was dirty and flattened all the way down to the tip. It was just on the edge of my tongue to offer to buy her a new tube from the drugstore, but I stayed quiet. I knew Mrs. Williams was watching me.
That woman could say all she wanted to about me trying to fix things. These girls were my girls, too, and I was going to do for them what I wanted. Tomorrow I would pick up some new lipstick for Erica.
FORTY-ONE
Lou dangled a pen from his fingers.
“Lou, I was thinking about something, how the government is saying that these sterilization policies didn’t intentionally target poor women. About how you got to prove it.”
“Yes?”
We were sitting in an office the courthouse designated for lawyers during trials. Two desks and two chairs faced each other. A small window overlooked the street. The room was cold and drafty and the walls were bare.
“This ain’t that different than what happened at Tuskegee.”
“What we are talking about here is a little different. Eighty-two people have been sterilized in the state of Alabama in the past year, forty of them white. The defense will claim that percentage proves their point. Far as I know weren’t any white men infected in the Tuskegee study.” Lou didn’t talk down to me when we discussed the trial. In fact, I’d say he took me seriously. He used me as a sounding board to think things through.
“But half the people in Alabama aren’t Black. That’s not a proportionate number,” I said.