“Your lawyer will set her straight, Honey. Don’t you worry.” Pearl glared at her as I slipped into my chair at the assigned counsel table. “Be right back here,” Pearl said and squeezed my shoulder.
I whispered, “If anything happens, can you take care of Junia and Pennie?”
“I promise. But if anything happens, I’m going to claw her eyes out, then march that old apostle girl right in here and let her take care of the rest of her.” She scowled again at the woman, and I hoped the social worker didn’t remember what Junia had done that day over in Thousandsticks.
A woman came in from behind the judge’s bench and took a seat at the table below it.
I stared up at the clock, waiting for Mr. Morgan to arrive, twisting my scarf and pulling at the fingertips on my white gloves. Barely five minutes had passed when I heard the door open behind me. I turned. Carrying a briefcase up to our table, Mr. Morgan greeted me with a slight smile.
“How we doing today, Honey?” He pulled out papers and arranged them on the table.
“A bit scared,” I said quietly, peeking over my shoulder and hoping Sheriff Buckner had gone somewhere else.
He nodded in a way that said he understood. “Now it’ll be just like the last time. If the judge asks you anything, tell the truth. If you don’t know, say so. You’ll stand when the bailiff announces the judge and stand when the judge asks you anything. Don’t interrupt the counselor and his clients over at their table. Don’t speak to the spectators in the public gallery behind us. Stay quiet and just follow my lead,” he repeated from memory what he’d surely told others hundreds of times. “And—”
We both watched as Sheriff Buckner sidled up and sat down beside the social worker and the attorney.
Terrified, I gripped the scarf as I turned and looked at the empty seat beside me, wishing Retta was still here to hold my hand. Stretching my neck around, my eyes fell on Pearl sitting on the bench in the public gallery, fretfully twisting her charm bracelet. Then I saw Alonzo farther back, shoulders squared, solemn and attentive.
I snapped my head around as the hard click of soles sounded on wooden floors. A new bailiff appeared from an entryway by the judge’s bench. “All rise,” he ordered. “In the presence of the flags of the United States of America and the State of Kentucky, this court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Norton presiding.”
My eyes went to the flags atop the poles flanking each side of the judge’s bench, the soft fabrics of the United States and Kentucky state flags slightly ruffling from the whirrs of an overhead fan.
The judge entered and climbed the stairs to his perch.
“Please be seated and come to order,” the bailiff instructed before taking a chair over in the corner.
Judge Norton looked down at his papers and then in my direction. A frown passed briefly over his face before he said, “First on the calendar is the matter of Honey Mary-Angeline Lovett’s application for emancipation. Please state your appearances.”
Mr. Morgan half stood and gave his name and told the judge he was my lawyer. At the other table the man stood and said he was Mr. Vessels and introduced the social worker and sheriff.
The judge peered out into the courtroom, then dropped his eyes back to his papers and said, “I’ve read all the moving and responding papers and don’t need them repeated. I do have one question for Social Services.”
Mrs. Wallace stood and waited.
“The state objects to Miss Lovett’s emancipation and instead demands she be bound to the Kentucky House of Reform to labor until she is twenty-one years of age. Please state your reason in plain words.”
I swallowed hard, rolling and unrolling the scarf in my lap, my gloved hands surely as blue as the square background for the stars on the American flag in front of me. I lifted up a prayer, begging for mercy.