“Can’t give her what’s always been hers.” Retta shot me a crooked smile and dusted lint off her coat.
He lightly squeezed her arm before turning back to me.
“How are my folk, Mr. Morgan?”
“They’re doing just fine and send their love. Now today there will be a short hearing. Judge Norton will be presiding. He’s a fair man.”
“I know’d Buddy Norton well,” Retta said, pressing a fussing palm to the side of her white bun, carefully tucking loose strands under it.
“The judge will decide whether to grant our application for guardianship. Ready?” He held open the courthouse door for me and Retta.
I hesitated. “And if he won’t?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Until then, if he asks you anything, just tell the truth. And if you don’t know, say so. We’ll sit together at the counsel table. You’ll stand when the bailiff announces the judge and stand when the judge asks you anything. Just follow my lead.” He swept out an arm for us to enter.
Retta grabbed for my hand, and we walked together down the hall, slipping past two men chatting on the pay telephones and a few others milling around waiting to use them next, the smoke ghost-tailing into their wired conversations.
Inside the courtroom, Mr. Morgan led us to the long wooden table in front of the judge’s bench and seated us in the chairs. Across from us, a small man in a drab business suit sat at the other counsel table with a large brown folder in front of him, writing in a notebook.
Mr. Morgan went over and greeted the man. “Hello, Dan, it’s been a while. How’re Marie and the boys?”
Smiling, Dan stood up and shook Mr. Morgan’s hand. Then they dropped their voices. Several times the men glanced over at me.
When Mr. Morgan came back, he said, “That’s Dan Greene, he’s the Knott County social worker here today. Like me and Judge Norton, he’ll be looking out for your welfare, deciding what’s in your best interest as well.”
I looked at him nervously, wondering how the men even knew my best interest.
Retta commented, “Humph. Sure takes a lot of men to decide one li’l girl’s best interest.”
“Sure does,” I worried. And there was something scary about it all but I didn’t quite know why. The room was stuffy, the walls littered with large pictures of even stuffier old men. Light-headed, I helped Retta out of her coat, then took off mine and laid them both across the back of my chair. I plucked at my bodice, my armpits sticky and uncomfortable.
Retta had insisted on sewing me a new dress, using a dark-blue-checked homespun fabric. I worried about the color matching my hands, and asked for pink fabric instead, but Retta shushed me, insisting the dark color was more respectable. She fussed a week over the pattern, measuring and making the long-sleeved dress perfect, adding two inches more than the length called for, making me strip down to my undergarments to check the fit all over again, and then several more times, all the while saying, “We have to make a good ’pression on the judge.”
She had inspected the dress again this morning, making sure everything was perfect, studying every inch of me. By the time I’d escaped her nervous chatter and critical eye, I realized halfway to the courthouse I’d left behind the matching gloves she’d sewn.
I fiddled with the Peter Pan collar and smoothed down my long skirts. Stealing peeks around the courtroom, I quickly crossed my arms over my chest and tucked my hands under to hide the color.
Mr. Morgan pulled out papers from his briefcase and placed them neatly in front of him. A woman came in from behind the judge’s bench and took a seat at the table below it, inspecting her papers.
A few minutes later, a bailiff entered the courtroom and said, “Everyone stand. The Honorable Judge Norton presiding.”