Lou called a second doctor. “Your Honor, I call Dr. Barbara Robard.”
A woman who had been sitting in the back row stood. I had assumed she was a local, an onlooker like me. I waited impatiently for her to be sworn in. I had been around enough of my dad’s Meharry friends to have met Black women doctors, but even I had to admit there had not been many.
“Dr. Robard, please state your position and title.”
“I am director of research at the Health Policy Advisory Center in Washington, DC.”
A PhD or a medical doctor? Or both? I wished Lou would clarify. The woman intrigued me.
“What has your research revealed about the rates of sterilization in this country?”
“Mr. Feldman, we have found that sterilization is the rule, not the exception. It is widely endemic in this country. It is a form of reproductive control.”
Lou was nailing it now. This was exactly what he wanted the judge to hear.
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“On what grounds, counsel?”
“Hyperbole.”
“Sustained.”
I shook my head. The defense lawyer hadn’t even offered a real objection, and the judge had let him have it. The woman on the stand did not appear perturbed and neither did Lou.
“Dr. Robard, could you give us some statistics from your research?”
“Last year we did a survey and found that although two-thirds of federally funded clinics’ patients are white and only one third are Black, 43 percent of those sterilized are Black. A report from the US government”—she pointed at the government lawyers—“found that between the summer of 1972 and the summer of 1973, twenty-five thousand adults were sterilized in federally funded clinics. Of these, 153 were under the age of eighteen—”
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“In North Carolina between 1960 and 1968, of the 1,620 sterilizations that occurred, 63 percent were performed on Black women—”
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“And 55 percent of those were teens!” Dr. Robard shouted.
“Objection!”
The judge slammed down his gavel. “Order. Everyone needs to settle down. This is my courtroom, not some circus.”
The numbers! Robard had the numbers.
“Your Honor, the witness is merely answering my question about statistics,” Lou said.
“Those statistics are broader than the scope of this case,” protested the defense.
“Counsel, I will overrule a portion of your objection. Though the numbers from the 1960s are irrelevant to the current legislation, any statistics concerning the previous year or two are directly relevant and will be allowed. In addition, Miss Robard, you will answer only to the question asked. This is not a zoo. Have I made myself clear to everyone?”
I did not like the judge’s reference to a zoo. And he had addressed the doctor as Miss Robard. I supposed we could count ourselves lucky that he had not called her by her first name, as many white folks did with Black women. I wondered if this was the bias Lou had been concerned about. Maybe the judge’s professionalism was all a ruse to pretend impartiality. We were setting ourselves up for heartbreak by believing in his fairness.
“Proceed, Counsel.”
Lou spoke softly. “How large are the recent numbers, Dr. Robard?”
“Our findings show that HEW’s numbers are grossly underestimated. Our research reveals that over the past few years, nearly one hundred fifty thousand low-income women from all over the nation have been sterilized under federally funded programs.”
I put my hand over my mouth. All of this had happened under the government’s watch. I didn’t want to even try to guess the total number of underage sterilization victims. She’d mentioned 55 percent were teens in North Carolina, but now everything melted together in my head and all the numbers merged into one outraged thought: How dare they? Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didn’t matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them. It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didn’t even belong to ourselves.
I needed some air. I had to get out of there, but I didn’t want to disturb the proceedings. Not desiring motherhood had once made me wonder if something was wrong with me. I’d tried to make peace with that after my abortion, believing with all my heart that there was a scientific basis that could explain every facet of human nature. But I had exercised a choice, something that was being denied these women.
“No further questions, Doctor.”
As the doctor walked past me, my insides gurgled as if a volcano might erupt right into her path. I waited for the judge to dismiss court for the day, but when I went to find Dr. Robard in the lobby she was already gone.
FORTY-TWO
Lou rested his case at the end of October, and court temporarily adjourned. He had worked hard, but no one could be certain it was enough. After I left the courthouse, I just wanted to eat a sandwich and go home to bed. The lunch I’d packed that morning was still in the sack on the back seat of my car.
When I arrived home, all the lights were on, the living room and dining room all lit up. I figured Mama was on one of her cleaning binges. Every now and then she would get a bucket and start cleaning the whole house, throwing out stuff and rearranging furniture. Sometimes the cleaning surge ended in her painting the walls. Other times she quit halfway through and Daddy and I had to put everything back. Yet when I stopped to think about it, she hadn’t done that in a long time. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time she’d cleaned the house.
In the kitchen, I could smell the scent of gardenias. Company.
“Daddy?” I called out.
“Back here, baby.”
I took an apple from my lunch sack and walked back to the den. My aunt Ros was sitting in Daddy’s chair. He leaned against the bar.
“Aunt Ros, when did you get here?”
Wrapped in endless layers of fabric, Aunt Ros was the queen of draped clothing. She had once bragged she did not own a belt, and I believed her. She shared Mama’s high cheekbones, thin frame, and long neck, but the likenesses stopped there. Unlike Mama and her trademark red lipstick, Aunt Ros never wore makeup or high heels. And she picked her hair out into one of the biggest Afros I had ever seen.
“Your daddy has been ignoring me for weeks, so I decided to come down here and see what was going on for myself.”
“I didn’t see your car in the driveway.”
“I took the bus.”
I perched on the edge of the barstool next to Daddy. Mama sat on the floor, her legs crossed, picking pink polish off her fingernails. It did not appear she had washed up before coming into the house.
“Civil, you’re a nurse. I’m a psychologist. We both take care of people. You see what’s going on in this house. You know it and I know it.”
“What’s going on?”
“You mother stays out there in that studio all the time. She’s even sleeping out there.”
It was true. Mama was sleeping out there more and more, but it didn’t happen every night. At least, I didn’t think so.
“How do you know?” I asked softly.
“Your next-door neighbor Mabel Turner called me. She was concerned. Said when she tried to talk to your daddy about it, he claimed everything was fine.”