Small Great Things

by Jodi Picoult

  "Oh, Edison--"

  "I don't want their help," he explodes. "I don't want to be someone who needs their help. I want to be just like everyone else, you know, not a special case. And then I get mad at myself because I'm whining like I'm the only one with problems when you might...when you..." He breaks off, rubbing his palms against his knees.

  "Don't say it," I say, folding him into my arms. "Don't even think it." I pull away and frame his beautiful face. "We don't need their help. We'll get through this. You believe me, right?"

  He looks at me, really looks at me, like a pilgrim searches the night sky for meaning. "I don't know."

  "Well, I do," I say firmly. "Now, eat what's on your plate. Because I am sure as hell not going to McDonald's if it gets cold."

  Edison picks up his fork, grateful for the distraction. And I try not to think about the fact that for the first time in my life, I've lied to my son.

  --

  A WEEK LATER I am rushing around, trying to find my uniform visor, when the doorbell rings. Standing on my porch, to my shock, is Wallace Mercy--wiry white shock of hair, three-piece suit, pocket watch, and all. "Oh, my," I say. The words are puffs of breath, dry in the desert of my disbelief.

  "My sister," he booms. "My name is Wallace Mercy."

  I giggle. I actually giggle. Because, really, who doesn't know that?

  I glance around to see if he is being followed by an entourage, by cameras. But the only sign of his renown is a sleek black town car pulled up to the curb with its flashers on, and a driver in the front seat. "I wonder if I might take a moment of your time?"

  The closest brush with fame I've had is when a late-night-TV-show host's pregnant wife got into a car accident near the hospital and was put on the ward for twenty-four hours of monitoring. Although she turned out to be perfectly fine, my role segued from healthcare provider to publicist, holding back the crowd of reporters who threatened to overrun the ward. It figures that now, the only other time in my life I've met a celebrity, I am wearing a polyester uniform. "Of course." I usher him through the door, silently thanking God that I already made my pullout bed back into a couch. "Can I get you something to drink?"

  "Coffee would be a blessing," he says.

  As I turn on the Keurig, I'm thinking that Adisa would die if she were here. I wonder if it would be rude to take a selfie with Wallace Mercy and send it to her. "You have a lovely home," he tells me, and he looks at the photos on my mantel. "This your boy? I've heard he's something else."

  From whom? I think. "Do you take milk? Sugar?"

  "Both," Wallace Mercy says. He takes the mug and gestures to the couch. "May I?" I nod, and he motions so that I will sit down on the chair beside him. "Miz Jefferson, do you know why I'm here?"

  "Honestly, I can't even quite believe you are here, much less figure out why."

  He smiles. He has the most even white teeth I have ever seen, stark against the darkness of his skin. I realize that up close, he is younger than I expected. "I have come to tell you that you are not alone."

  Confused, I tilt my head. "That's very kind, but I already have a pastor--"

  "But your community is much bigger than just your church. My sister, this is not the first time our people have been targeted. We may not have the power yet, but what we have is each other."

  My mouth rounds as I start to put the pieces together. It's like Adisa said: my case is just another apple box for him to stand on, to get noticed. "It's very kind of you to come here, but I don't think my story is one that would be particularly interesting to you."

  "On the contrary. May I be so bold as to ask you a question? When you were singled out and asked to not interfere with the care of a white baby, did any of your colleagues come to your defense?"

  I think about Corinne, squirming when I complained about Marie's unjust directive, and then defending Carla Luongo. "My friend knew I was upset."

  "Did she go to bat for you? Would she risk her job for you?"

  "I would hardly have asked her to do that," I say, getting annoyed.

  "What color skin does your colleague have?" Wallace asks bluntly.

  "The fact that I'm Black was never an issue in my relationship with my colleagues."

  "Not until they needed a scapegoat. What I am trying to say, Ruth--may I call you that?--is that we stand with you. Your Black brothers and sisters will go to bat for you. They will risk their jobs for you. They will march on your behalf and they will create a roar that cannot be ignored."

  I stand up. "Thank you for your...interest in my case. But this is something that I'd have to discuss with my lawyer, and no matter what--"

  "What color skin does your lawyer have?" Wallace interrupts.

  "What difference does it make?" I challenge. "How can you ever expect to be treated well by white people if you're constantly picking them over for flaws?"

  He smiles, as if he's heard this before. "You've heard of Trayvon Martin, I assume?"

  Of course I have. The boy's death had hit me hard. Not just because he was about Edison's age but because, like my son, he was an honor student who had been doing nothing wrong, except being Black.

  "Do you know that during that trial, the judge--the white judge--banned the term racial profiling from being used in the courtroom?" Wallace says. "She wanted to make sure that the jury knew the case was not about race, but about murder."

  His words punch through me, arrows. They are almost verbatim what Kennedy told me about my own case.

  "Trayvon was a good kid, a smart boy. You are a respected nurse. The reason that judge didn't want to bring up race--the same reason your lawyer is skirting it like it's the plague--is because Black people like you and Trayvon are supposed to be the exceptions. You are the very definition of when bad things happen to good people. Because that is the only way white gatekeepers can make excuses for their behavior." He leans forward, his mug clasped in his hands. "But what if that's not the truth? What if you and Trayvon aren't the exceptions...but the rule? What if injustice is the standard?"

  "All I want is to do my job, live my life, raise my boy. I don't need your help."

  "You may not need it," he says, "but apparently there are a lot of people out there who want to help you, just the same. I mentioned your case last week, briefly, on my show." He shifts, reaching into the inside breast pocket of his suit and pulling out a small manila envelope. Then he stands and passes it to me. "Good luck, sister. I'll be praying for you."

  As soon as the door closes behind him, I open the seal and dump out the contents. Inside are bills: tens, twenties, fifties. There are also dozens of checks, written out to me, from strangers. I read the addresses on them: Tulsa, Oklahoma. Chicago. South Bend. Olympia, Washington. At the bottom of the pile is Wallace Mercy's business card.

  I gather everything into the envelope, tuck it into an empty vase on a shelf in the living room, and then see it: my missing visor, resting on the cable box.

  It feels like a crossroads.

  I settle the visor on my head, grab my wallet and my coat, and head out the door to my shift.

  --

  I KEEP MY favorite picture of Wesley and me on the mantel of my house. We were at our wedding, and his cousin snapped it when we weren't looking. In the photo, we are standing in the lobby of the elegant hotel where we had our reception--the rental of which was Sam Hallowell's wedding gift to me. My arms are looped around Wesley's neck and my head is turned. He is leaning in, his eyes closed, whispering something to me.

  I have tried so, so hard to remember what my handsome husband, breathtaking in his tuxedo, was saying. I'd like to believe it was You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen or I can't wait to start our life together. But that is the stuff of novels and movies, and in reality, I am pretty sure we were planning our escape from a roomful of well-wishers so that I could pee.

  The reason I know this is because although I cannot remember the conversation that Wesley and I had when that photograph was taken, I do remember the one we h
ad afterward. There was a line at the ladies' room off the main lobby, and Wesley gallantly volunteered to stand guard at the men's room so that no one would enter while I was inside. It took me a significant amount of time to maneuver my wedding gown and do my business, and when I finally made it out of the bathroom, a good ten minutes had passed. Wesley was still outside the door, my sentry, but now he was holding a valet claim ticket.

  "What's that?" I asked. We didn't have a car then; we'd taken public transport to our own wedding.

  Wesley shook his head, chuckling. "Some dude just walked up to me and asked me to bring his Mercedes around."

  We laughed and gave the ticket to the bellhop desk. We laughed, because we were in love. Because when life is full of good things, it does not seem important if an old white guy sees a Black man in a fancy hotel and naturally assumes he must work there.

  --

  AFTER A MONTH of working at McDonald's, I begin to see the paradox between service and sanitary food preparation. Although all orders are supposed to be prepared in less than fifty seconds, most items on the menu take longer than that to cook. McNuggets and Filet-O-Fish fry for almost four minutes. Chicken Selects take six minutes, and weighing in longest in the fry vat are crispy chicken breasts. Ten-to-one meat takes thirty-nine seconds to cook; four-to-one meat takes seventy-nine seconds. The grilled chicken is actually steamed while it cooks. Apple pies bake for twelve minutes, cookies for two. And yet in spite of all this, we employees are supposed to have the customer walking out the door in ninety seconds--fifty for food prep, forty for a meaningful interaction.

  The managers love me, because unlike most of the staff, I do not have to juggle class schedules with my shifts. After decades of working nights, I don't mind coming in at 3:45 A.M. to open grill, which takes a while to heat up before we unlock the doors at 5:00. Because of my flexibility, I am usually given my favorite job--cashier. I like talking to the customers. I consider it a personal challenge to make them smile before they walk away from the counter. And after literally having women throw things at my head in the thick of labor, being berated for mayo instead of mustard really doesn't faze me.

  Most of our regulars come in the mornings. There are Marge and Walt, who wear identical yellow sweat suits and walk three miles from their house and then get matching hotcake meals with orange juice. There's Allegria, who's ninety-three and comes once a week in her fur coat, no matter how warm it is outside, and eats an Egg McMuffin, no meat, no cheese, no muffin. There's Consuela, who gets four large iced coffees for all the girls at her salon.

  This morning, one of the homeless folks who pepper the streets of New Haven wanders in. Sometimes my manager will give them food, if it's about to be thrown out--like the fries that go unsold after five minutes. Sometimes they come in to warm up. Once, we had a man pee in the bathroom sink. Today, the man who enters has long, tangled hair, and a beard that reaches his belly. His stained T-shirt reads NAMASTAY IN BED, and there is dirt crusted underneath his fingernails.

  "Hello," I say. "Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order?"

  He stares at me, his eyes rheumy and blue. "I want a song."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "A song." His voice escalates. "I want a song!"

  My manager on duty, a tiny woman named Patsy, steps up to the counter. "Sir," she says, "you need to move along."

  "I want a fucking song!"

  Patsy flushes. "I'm calling the police."

  "No, wait." I meet the man's eye and start crooning Bob Marley. I used to sing "Three Little Birds" to Edison as a lullaby every night; I'll probably remember the words till the day I die.

  The man stops screaming and shuffles out the door. I paste a smile on my face so that I can greet the next customer. "Welcome to McDonald's," I say and find myself looking at Kennedy McQuarrie.

  She is dressed in a shapeless charcoal suit, and she's holding on to a little girl with strawberry-blond curls erupting from her scalp in a crazy tumble. "I want the pancakes with the egg sandwich," the girl chatters.

  "Well, that's not an option," Kennedy says firmly, and then she notices me. "Oh. Wow. Ruth. You're...working here."

  Her words strip me naked. What did she expect me to do while she was trying to build a case? Dip into my endless savings?

  "This is my daughter, Violet," Kennedy says. "Today is a sort of treat. We, uh, don't come to McDonald's very often."

  "Yes we do, Mommy," Violet pipes up, and Kennedy's cheeks redden.

  I realize she doesn't want me to think of her as the kind of mother who would feed her kids our fast food for breakfast, no more than I want her to think of me as someone who would work at this job if I had any other choice. I realize that we both desperately want to be people we really aren't.

  It makes me a little braver.

  "If I were you," I whisper to Violet, "I'd pick the pancakes."

  She clasps her hands and smiles. "Then I want the pancakes."

  "Anything else?"

  "Just a small coffee for me," Kennedy replies. "I have yogurt at the office."

  "Mm-hmm." I punch the screen. "That'll be five dollars and seven cents."

  She unzips her wallet and counts out a few bills.

  "So," I ask casually. "Any news?" I say this in the same tone I might ask about the weather.

  "Not yet. But that's normal."

  Normal. Kennedy takes her daughter's hand and steps back from the counter, in just as much of a hurry to get out of this moment as I am. I force a smile. "Don't forget the change," I say.

  --

  A WEEK INTO my career as a Dalton School student, I developed a stomachache. Although I didn't have a fever, my mama let me skip school, and she took me with her to the Hallowells'. Every time I thought about stepping through the doors of the school, I got a stabbing in my gut or felt like I was going to be sick or both.

  With Ms. Mina's permission, my mother wrapped me in blankets and settled me in Mr. Hallowell's study with saltines and ginger ale and the television to babysit me. She gave me her lucky scarf to wear, which she said was almost as good as having her with me. She checked in on me every half hour, which is why I was surprised when Mr. Hallowell himself entered. He grunted a hello, crossed to his desk, and leafed through a stack of paperwork until he found what he was looking for--a red file folder. Then he turned to me. "You contagious?"

  I shook my head. "No, sir." I mean, I didn't think I was, anyway.

  "Your mother says you're sick to your stomach."

  I nodded.

  "And it came on suddenly after you started school this week..."

  Did he think I was faking? Because I wasn't. Those pains were real.

  "How was school?" he asked. "Do you like your teacher?"

  "Yes, sir." Ms. Thomas was small and pretty and hopped from the desk of one third grader to another like a starling on a summer patio. She always smiled when she said my name. Unlike my school in Harlem last year--the school my sister was still attending--this school had large windows and sunlight that spilled into the hallways; the crayons we used for art weren't broken into nubs; the textbooks weren't scribbled in, and had all their pages. It was like the schools we saw on television, which I had believed to be fiction, until I set foot in one.

  "Hmph." Sam Hallowell sat down next to me on the couch. "Does it feel like you've eaten a bad burrito? Comes and goes in waves?"

  Yes.

  "Mostly when you think about going to school?"

  I looked right at him, wondering if he could read minds.

  "I happen to know exactly what's ailing you, Ruth, because I caught that bug once too. It was just after I took over programming at the network. I had a fancy office and everyone was falling all over each other to try to make me happy, and you know what? I felt sick as a dog." He glanced at me. "I was sure that any minute everyone was going to look at me and realize I didn't belong there."

  I thought of what it felt like to sit down in the beautiful wood-paneled cafeteria and be the only student with
a bag lunch. I remembered how Ms. Thomas had shown us pictures of American heroes, and although everyone knew who George Washington and Elvis Presley were, I was the only person in the class who recognized Rosa Parks and that made me proud and embarrassed all at once.

  "You are not an impostor," Sam Hallowell told me. "You are not there because of luck, or because you happened to be in the right place at the right moment, or because someone like me had connections. You are there because you are you, and that is a remarkable accomplishment in itself."

  That conversation is in my thoughts as I now listen to the principal at Edison's magnet high school tell me that my son, who will not even swat a bug, punched his best friend in the nose during their lunch period today, the first day back after Thanksgiving vacation. "Although we're cognizant of the fact that things at home have been...a challenge, Ms. Jefferson, obviously we don't tolerate this kind of behavior," the principal says.

  "I can assure you it won't happen again." All of a sudden I'm back at Dalton, feeling lesser than, like I should be grateful to be in this principal's office.

  "Believe me, I'm being lenient because I know there are extenuating circumstances. This should technically go on Edison's permanent record, but I'm willing to waive that. Still, he'll be suspended for the rest of the week. We have a zero tolerance policy here, and we can't let our students go around worrying for their own safety."

  "Yes, of course," I murmur, and I duck out of the principal's office, humiliated. I am used to coming to this school wrapped in a virtual cloud of triumph: to watch my son receive an award for his score on a national French exam; to applaud him as he's crowned Scholar-Athlete of the Year. But Edison is not crossing a stage with a wide smile right now, to shake the principal's hand. He is sprawled on a bench just outside the office door, looking for all the world like he doesn't give a damn. I want to box his ears.

  He scowls when he sees me. "Why did you come here like that?"