Small Great Things

by Jodi Picoult

  Harry grunts. Which is better than a no. "Well, it would be good to have another go-to lawyer for the big cases. But since you're a rookie, I'll have Ed second-chair it with you."

  I'd rather have a Neanderthal sitting at the table with me.

  Oh, wait.

  "I can do it myself," I tell Harry. It isn't until he finally nods that I realize I've been holding my breath.

  --

  I COUNT THE hours and the arraignments I have to slog through before I'm free to drive to the women's prison. As I sit in traffic, I run over opening conversations in my mind that will allow Ruth to have confidence in me as her attorney. I may not have tried a murder before, but I've done dozens of drug and assault and domestic jury trials. "This isn't my first rodeo," I say out loud to the rearview mirror, and then roll my eyes.

  "It's an honor to represent you."

  Nope. Sounds like a publicist meeting Meryl Streep.

  I take a deep breath. "Hello," I try. "I'm Kennedy."

  Ten minutes later, I park, shrug on a mantle of false confidence, and stride into the building. A CO with a belly that makes him look ten months pregnant sizes me up. "Visiting hours are over," he says.

  "I'm here to see my client. Ruth Jefferson?"

  The officer scans his computer. "Well, you're out of luck."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "She was released two days ago," he says.

  My cheeks flame. I can only imagine how stupid I look, losing track of my own client. "Yes! Of course!" I pretend that I knew this all along, that I was only testing him.

  I can still hear him snickering as the door of the prison closes behind me.

  --

  A COUPLE OF days after I send a formal letter to Ruth's house--the address of which I have from the bail posting--she comes to the office. I am headed to the copy machine when the door opens and she walks in, nervous and hesitant, as if this cannot possibly be the right place. With the bare bones and the stacks of boxes and paper, we look more like a company that is either setting up shop or closing its doors than a functional legal office.

  "Ruth! Hello!" I hold out my hand. "Kennedy McQuarrie," I say.

  "I remember."

  She is taller than I am, and stands with remarkable posture. I think, absently, that my mother would be impressed.

  "You got my letter," I say, the obvious. "I'm glad you're here, because we've got a lot to talk about." I look around, wondering where I am going to put her. My cubicle is barely big enough for me. The break room is too informal. There's Harry's office, but he's in it. Ed is using the one client meeting room we have to take a deposition. "Would you like to grab a bite? There's a Panera around the corner. Do you eat..."

  "Food?" she finishes. "Yes."

  I pay for her soup and salad, and pick a booth in the back. We talk about the rain, and how we needed it, and when the weather might turn. "Please," I say, gesturing to her food. "Go ahead."

  I pick up my sandwich and take a bite just as Ruth bows her head and says, "Lord, we thank you for our food, furnishing our bodies for Christ's sake."

  My mouth is still full as I say Amen.

  "So you're a churchgoer," I add, after I swallow.

  Ruth looks up at me. "Is that a problem?"

  "Not at all. In fact, it's good to know, because it's something that can help a jury like you."

  For the first time, I really look at Ruth carefully. The last time I saw her, after all, her hair was wrapped and she was wearing a nightgown. Now, she is dressed conservatively in a striped blouse and navy skirt, with shiny patent flats that are rubbed raw in one small spot each at the heels. Her hair is straight, pulled into a knot at the base of her neck. Her skin is lighter than I remember, almost the same color as the coffee milk that my mother used to let me drink when I was little.

  Nerves manifest differently in different people. Me, I get talkative. Micah gets pensive. My mother gets snobbish. And Ruth, apparently, gets stiff. Which is something else I file away, because jurors who see that can misinterpret it as anger or haughtiness.

  "I know it's hard," I say, lowering my voice for privacy, "but I need you to be a hundred percent honest with me. Even though I'm a stranger. I mean, hopefully, I won't be one for long. But it's important to realize that nothing you say to me can be used against you. It's completely client-privileged."

  Ruth puts her fork down carefully, and nods. "All right."

  I take a small notebook out of my purse. "Well, first, do you prefer the term black or African American or people of color?"

  Ruth stares at me. "People of color," she says after a moment.

  I write this down. Underline it. "I just want you to feel comfortable. Frankly, I don't even see color. I mean, the only race that matters is the human one, right?"

  Her lips press together tightly.

  I clear my throat, breaking the knot of silence. "Remind me again where you went to school?"

  "SUNY Plattsburgh, and then Yale Nursing School."

  "Impressive," I murmur, scribbling this down.

  "Ms. McQuarrie," she says.

  "Kennedy."

  "Kennedy...I can't go back to prison." Ruth looks into my eyes, and for a moment, I can see right down into the heart of her. "I've got my boy, and there's no one else who can raise him to be the man I know he's going to be."

  "I know. Listen, I'm going to do my best. I have a lot of experience in cases with people like you."

  That mask freezes her features again. "People like me?"

  "People accused of serious crimes," I explain.

  "But I didn't do anything."

  "I believe you. However, we still have to convince a jury. So we have to go back to the basics to figure out why you've been charged."

  "I'd think that's pretty obvious," Ruth says quietly. "That baby's father didn't want me near his son."

  "The white supremacist? He has nothing to do with your case."

  Ruth blinks. "I don't understand how that's possible."

  "He isn't the one who indicted you. None of that matters."

  She looks at me as if I'm crazy. "But I'm the only nurse of color on the birthing pavilion."

  "To the State, it doesn't matter if you're black or white or blue or green. To them, you had a legal duty to take care of an infant under your charge. Just because your boss said don't touch the baby doesn't mean you get a free pass to stand there and do nothing." I lean forward. "The State doesn't even have to specify what the degree of murder is. They can argue multiple theories--contradictory theories. It's like shooting fish in a bucket--if they hit any of them, you're in trouble. If the State can show implied malice because you were so mad at being taken off the baby's case, and suggest that you premeditated the death, the jury can convict you of murder. Even if we told the jury it was an accident, you'd be admitting to a breach in duty of care and criminal negligence with reckless and wanton disregard for the safety of the baby--you'd basically be giving them negligent homicide on a silver platter. In either of those scenarios, you're going to prison. And in either of those scenarios it doesn't matter what color your skin is."

  She draws in her breath. "Do you really believe that if I was white, I'd be sitting here with you right now?"

  There is no way you can look at a case that has, at its core, a nurse who is the only employee of color in the department, a white supremacist father, and a knee-jerk decision by a hospital administrator...and not assume that race played a factor.

  But.

  Any public defender who tells you justice is blind is telling you a big fat lie. Watch the news coverage of trials that have racial overtones, and what will stick out profoundly is the way attorneys and judges and juries go out of their way to say this isn't about race, even though it clearly is. Any public defender will also tell you that even though the majority of our clients are people of color, you can't play the race card during a trial.

  That's because it's sure suicide in a courtroom to bring up race. You don't know what your jury is thinking.
Or can't be certain of what your judge believes. In fact, the easiest way to lose a case that has a racially motivated incident at its core is to actually call it what it is. Instead, you find something else for the jury to hang their hat on. Some shred of evidence that can clear your client of blame, and allow those twelve men and women to go home still pretending that the world we live in is an equal one.

  "No," I admit. "I believe it's too risky to bring up in court." I lean forward. "I'm not saying you weren't discriminated against, Ruth. I'm saying that this is not the time or place to address it."

  "Then when is?" she asks, her voice hot. "If no one ever talks about race in court, how is anything ever supposed to change?"

  I don't have the answer to that. The wheels of systemic justice are slow; but fortunately, there's a little more oil in the machinery for personal justice, which throws cash at the victims to remove some of the indignity. "You file a civil lawsuit. I can't do it for you, but I can call around and find you someone who works with employment discrimination."

  "But I can't afford a lawyer--"

  "They'll take your case on contingency. They'll get a third of whatever payout you win," I explain. "To be honest, with that Post-it note, I think you'd be able to get compensatory damages for the salary you lost, as well as punitive damages for the idiotic decision your employer made."

  Her jaw drops. "You mean I'd get money?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised if it was a couple million," I admit.

  Ruth Jefferson is speechless.

  "You've got one hundred and eighty days to file an EEOC complaint."

  "And then what?"

  "Then, the EEOC will sit on it until the criminal trial is finished."

  "Why?"

  "Because assigning a guilty verdict against a plaintiff is significant," I say frankly. "It will change how your civil lawyer will draw up the complaint for you. A guilty finding is admissible as evidence, and would hurt your civil case."

  She turns this over in her mind. "Which is why you don't want to talk about discrimination during this trial," Ruth says. "So that guilty verdict won't come to pass." She folds her hands in her lap, silent. She shakes her head once, and then closes her eyes.

  "You were kept from doing your job," I say softly. "Don't keep me from doing mine."

  Ruth takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, and meets my gaze. "All right," she says. "What do you want to know?"

  THE MORNING AFTER I AM released from jail I wake up and stare at the same old crack in the ceiling that I always say I'll patch and never get around to doing. I feel the bar from the pullout couch digging into my back and give thanks for it. I close my eyes and listen to the sweet harmony of the garbage trucks on our street.

  In my nightgown (a fresh one; I will donate the one I wore to the arraignment to Goodwill at the first opportunity) I start a pot of coffee and pad down the hall to Edison's bedroom. My boy rests like the dead; even when I turn the knob and slip inside and sit down on the edge of the mattress, he doesn't stir.

  When Edison was little, my husband and I would watch him sleep. Sometimes Wesley would put his hand on Edison's back, and we'd measure the rise and fall of his lungs. The science of creating another human is remarkable, and no matter how many times I've learned about cells and mitosis and neural tubes and all the rest that goes into forming a baby, I can't help but think there's a dash of miracle involved, too.

  Edison rumbles deep in his chest, and he rubs his eyes. "Mama?" he says, sitting up, instantly awake. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I tell him. "Everything is right in the world."

  He exhales, then looks at his clock. "I have to get ready for school."

  I know, from our conversation in the car last night on the drive home, that Edison missed a whole day of classes in order to post bail for me, learning more about mortgages and real estate than I probably know myself. "I'll call the school secretary. To explain about yesterday."

  But we both know there's a difference between Please excuse Edison for being absent; he had a stomach bug and Please excuse Edison for being absent; he was bailing his mother out of jail. Edison shakes his head. "That's okay. I'll just talk to my teachers."

  He doesn't meet my eye, and I feel a seismic shift between us.

  "Thank you," I say quietly. "Again."

  "You don't have to thank me, Mama," he murmurs.

  "No, I do." I realize, to my shock, that all the tears I managed to keep inside during the last twenty-four hours are suddenly swimming in my eyes.

  "Hey," Edison says, and he reaches out to hug me.

  "I'm sorry," I say, hiccuping against his shoulder. "I don't know why I'm falling apart now."

  "It's going to be okay."

  I feel it again, that movement of the earth beneath my feet, the resettling of my bones against the backdrop of my soul. It takes me a second to realize that for the first time in our lives, Edison is the one comforting me, instead of the other way around.

  I used to wonder if a mother could see the shift when her child became an adult. I wondered if it was clinical, like at the onset of puberty; or emotional, like the first time his heart was broken; or temporal, like the moment he said I do. I used to wonder if maybe it was a critical mass of life experiences--graduation, first job, first baby--that tipped the balance; if it was the sort of thing you noticed immediately when you saw it, like a port-wine stain of sudden gravitas, or if it crept up slowly, like age in a mirror.

  Now I know: adulthood is a line drawn in the sand. At some point, your child will be standing on the other side.

  I thought he'd wander. I thought the line might shift.

  I never expected that something I did would be the thing that pushed him over it.

  --

  IT TAKES ME a long time to figure out what to wear to the public defender's office. For twenty-five years I've dressed in scrubs; my nice clothing is reserved for church. But somehow a floral dress with a lace collar and kitten heels don't seem right for a business meeting. In the back of my closet I find a navy skirt I wore to parent-teacher night at Edison's school, and pair it with a striped blouse my mama bought me for Christmas from Talbots that still has the tags on. I rummage past my collection of Dansko clogs--the saviors of nurses everywhere--and find a pair of flats that are a little worse for the wear, but that match.

  When I arrive at the address on the letterhead, I'm sure I've got the wrong place. There's no one at the front desk--in fact, there isn't a front desk. There are cubicles and towers of boxes that form a maze, as if the employees are mice and this is all part of some grand scientific test. I take a few steps inside and suddenly hear my name.

  "Ruth! Hello! Kennedy McQuarrie!"

  As if I could possibly have forgotten her. I nod, and shake her hand, because she's holding out her own. I don't really understand why she is my lawyer. She told me flat out, at the arraignment, that wouldn't be the case.

  She starts chattering, so much that I can't get a word in edgewise. But that's okay, because I'm nervous as all get-out. I don't have the money for a private lawyer, at least not without liquidating everything I've saved for Edison's education, and I would go to prison for life before I let that happen. Still, just because everyone can have a lawyer in this country doesn't mean all lawyers are the same. On TV the people who have private attorneys get acquitted, and the ones with public defenders pretend that there isn't a difference.

  Ms. McQuarrie suggests we go somewhere for lunch, even though I'm too anxious to eat. I start to take out my wallet after we order, but she insists on paying. At first, I bristle--ever since I was little, and started wearing Christina's hand-me-downs, I haven't wanted to be someone's charity case. But before I can complain I check myself. What if this is what she does with all her clients, just to build up rapport? What if she's trying to make me like her as much as I want her to like me?

  After we sit down with our trays, out of habit, I say grace. Mind you, I'm used to doing that when other people don't. Corinne's an atheist who'
s always joking about the Spaghetti Monster in the Sky when she hears me pray or sees me bow my head over my bag lunch. So I'm not surprised when I find Ms. McQuarrie staring at me as I finish. "So you're a churchgoer," she says.

  "Is that a problem?" Maybe she knows something I don't, like that juries are more likely to convict people who believe in God.

  "Not at all. In fact, it's good to know, because it's something that can help a jury like you."

  Hearing her say that, I look into my lap. Am I so naturally unlikable that she needs to find things that will sway people in my favor?

  "First," she says, "do you prefer the term Black or African American or people of color?"

  What I prefer, I think, is Ruth. But I swallow my response and say, "People of color."

  Once, at work, an orderly named Dave went off on a rant about that term. "It's not like I don't have color," he'd said, holding out his pasty arms. "I'm not see-through, right? But I guess people of more color hasn't caught on." Then he had noticed me in the break room, and had gone red to his hairline. "Sorry, Ruth. But you know, I hardly think of you as Black."

  My lawyer is still talking. "I don't even see color," she tells me. "I mean, the only race that matters is the human one, right?"

  It's easy to believe we're all in this together when you're not the one who was dragged out of your home by the police. But I know that when white people say things like that, they are doing it because they think it's the right thing to say, not because they realize how glib they sound. A couple of years ago, Adisa went ballistic when #alllivesmatter took over Twitter as a response to the activists who were holding signs that said BLACK LIVES MATTER. "What they're really saying is white lives matter," Adisa told me. "And that Black folks better remember that before we get too bold for our own good."

  Ms. McQuarrie coughs lightly, and I realize my mind's been wandering. I force my eyes to her face, smile tightly. "Remind me again where you went to school?" she asks.

  I feel like this is a test. "SUNY Plattsburgh, and then Yale Nursing School."

  "Impressive."

  What is? That I'm college educated? That I went to Yale? Is this what Edison will face for the rest of his life, too?

  Edison.

  "Ms. McQuarrie," I begin.

  "Kennedy."