“Dr. Civil is here, India. Dr. Civil!” she calls out over her shoulder.
I touch my sweaty neck. Erica, on the other hand, looks cool and comfortable. The same broad forehead dotted with dark freckles. The generous nose and quick smile. It hits me in the stomach that she looks like Mrs. Williams, her grandmother.
She ushers me into the house and I awkwardly step inside. The air-conditioning unit whirs softly. A brown Chihuahua sniffs my feet and runs in circles, though its yapping has ceased. The curtains are pulled. The room is lit by a large television. A sweet scent hangs in the air.
“Something sure smells good,” I say.
“I can’t cook like my grandmama, but I can bake a cake. It just come out the oven, too.”
“You didn’t have to go through the trouble.”
“Honey, it’s so good to see you. We been waiting for you. Traffic was alright?” She places her hands on my waist, and I quietly stand there, momentarily unable to square the child with this middle-aged lady holding me.
“Sit down, sit down,” she says.
I choose the sofa. There are two recliners, and I assume they belong to the sisters. A crocheted throw hangs over the back of one of the chairs, and I wonder if it is the handwork of Mrs. Williams. I’m filled with ache. I should have come years earlier. I should have called and kept in touch.
“India!”
She tells the dog to sit down as she hurries to go get her sister. The room is small but cozy, the floor covered in wall-to-wall pink carpet. Beside the front door hangs a picture of Barack Obama. It looks like it was cut out of a magazine and framed. Below him there is a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. Above the front door, a cross-stitched sign quotes John F. Kennedy: “Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.”
A console table behind the sofa is covered in framed pictures. I stoop to look and a window into the lives of the Williamses opens up. There is Mace, standing beside his pickup truck. He wears tight jeans that flare at the bottoms and his hair hangs in a shag to his shoulders. He is not smiling in the picture, but the sun has caught the glow of his eyes and he’s relaxed. I look for other pictures of him, but there are none. I know that Mace passed away of heart disease. While I know that he never remarried, I want to know if he found love, healing. But I’m too embarrassed to ask.
Another picture captures Mrs. Williams in her Sunday best. She’s wearing a white suit and hat, as if it is Missionary Day at the church. Swollen fingers clutch a white beaded purse in her lap, and she’s sitting in a wheelchair. I glance toward the hallway and wonder if Erica was also tasked with taking care of her grandmother in her last days. From what I understand, Mrs. Williams married again, but the husband passed away a few years before she did. They pose in one of those Sears studio photographs with a fake forest background. He stands behind her, his hands wrapped around her waist. He has salt-and-pepper hair and thick sideburns. His round face reminds me of Dennis Edwards from the Temptations. Mrs. Williams looks settled, satisfied. One of her teeth glints gold.
Just as I pick up a picture of the sisters, they enter the room. I put it back in its place. Erica leads India slowly by the elbow. India is wearing a housedress and looks much older than her sister even though she’s the younger of the two. It may be because the pin-curled wig she wears is styled for an older woman. She smiles at me.
“India,” I whisper as I go to her. “India.”
She’s a couple of inches taller than I am now, so when she places her head on my shoulder she has to lean down. I hug her to me.
“India? Do you remember me?”
The younger sister smiles at me but does not answer.
FORTY-EIGHT
Montgomery
1973
Mama baked a cake for the Williamses to celebrate the verdict and Erica’s safe return. Like most things creative, she was a magician when it came to piping frosting. And she sang while she was doing it. I remember because I hadn’t heard her sing in a long time. Mama had not been to her studio since she’d returned from Memphis. Daddy and I made faces at each other as we tried to wrap our heads around this change. Every day, Mama and Aunt Ros sat down on the floor, held hands, and did some kind of meditation chant. They made tea and listened to Tantric music. Ros told us not to worry, that Mama was still a Christian. That made Daddy laugh.
Aunt Ros decided to stay through Thanksgiving. Daddy wanted to entertain, and we all agreed. He got Mr. Singh to cook the entire meal, even though Mabel Turner insisted on bringing crackling corn bread, one of India’s favorites. Aunt Ros and I decorated the house with fake pinecones and paper turkeys. Every now and then she would go out back and smoke a cigarette. While I waited, I noticed how quiet it was just for those few minutes. Aunt Ros’s presence lit up the house, and I knew when she left it would change the air.
On Thanksgiving night, Lou showed up with his wife, Jenna, and she was not at all what I expected. Given his habit of nonstop work, I thought she might be soft-spoken. I was wrong. By the way she shook my hand, I could tell she was no wallflower, and I liked her instantly. Her eyes were intensely intelligent, and I had a feeling she knew as much about the case as I did.
She was also pregnant. Very pregnant. She placed a hand on the back of one of the barstools in the den.
“You need to sit down?” I asked her.
“No, I’m fine,” she said.
“Lou, I ain’t believing this,” I said to him. “When is the baby due?”
“You know Civil was my co-counsel,” he said to his wife.
“That’s what I hear,” said Jenna.
“Baby’s due next month,” he said.
“And y’all don’t live in the same city?” Mama asked, also visibly reacting to Jenna’s belly.
“Girl, young people do it different nowadays.” Aunt Ros dropped her cigarette pack in her purse and walked behind the bar. “I can dig it.”
“She’s been driving back and forth, but now she’s about to settle here until the baby’s born,” Lou said.
“Driving back and forth to Selma? In that condition?” Mama said.
Aunt Ros placed two stem glasses on the counter. “Anybody want some wine?”
I pulled Lou aside and whispered. “Lou, you already knew your wife was pregnant when you took the case, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“And it bothered you to hear of the girls being sterilized, what with you becoming a new daddy.”
“Civil, you know me better than that by now. You know I would have taken this case regardless.”
“I guess I’m just piecing it together is all.”
“Once you do, make sure to enlighten me,” he said.
The Ralseys showed up next and brought Alicia with them. I hugged Alicia when I saw her, and she held on to me for a long time. Mrs. Ralsey asked Ty to bring in the pot of greens they’d forgotten in the car. She went straight to Mama, and I could hear her apologizing for being too busy to check up on her. Mama waved her apologies off and asked about the Tuskegee case. That launched a whole new conversation.
In the kitchen, Alicia helped me arrange the food on the table so everyone could serve themselves. “Can you believe Lou didn’t tell us his wife was pregnant? All that time he spent in the office?”