pissant Joe-dirt white-trash redneck, right?
My word don’t mean diddly
Cuz you know that’s just how they do.
PETE PRIDE (Automotive Design Engineer)
Mr. Pride is forty-five. He is of medium height; his brown hair is thinning. He has kind eyes. This interview takes place a month after the shooting. We’re in the family room. He’s sitting in his favorite chair, a Barcalounger, with the leg rest raised. He grew up in New Jersey and sounds like it. He’s my father.
I REMEMBER
Your mom and I
had gone to see a French film
in Nashville that night.
Things were kind of crazy at home.
I remember
you were having a really rough time, Kit-Kat.
Someone had written a vile play
and stuck your name on it
and people believed you had written it.
I remember you got
death threats.
I wanted to—
I felt like I should—
A dad is supposed
to protect his daughter.
Daughters.
So your mom and I talked and
we decided you could go home
to Englecliff to finish your junior year.
So that was the plan.
I remember
your little sister—
A friend’s mom was shlepping these kids
to the football game, and
I remember
before Porsche left we were talking—
She didn’t want you to leave
because she’d miss you too much.
But she didn’t want you to stay
and suffer either, which is just so …
(he stops and rubs his face)
Thank God I forgot to turn off my cell in the movie.
You called and I walked outside and
you told me that Portia had been—
That something terrible had happened
at the football game.
And I had to tell your mom
and we had to get to the hospital.
I don’t remember driving.
I mean I must have,
but I don’t remember.
You and Jack
were in the waiting room.
Someone came out to tell us—
to say Portia was in surgery and
it was serious and
the bullet had shattered.
I remember
the hospital—
They were really good about
keeping the media and everyone away from us,
but they let in Sally Redford.
She came with the best of intentions—
that was clear to me—
to ask what she could do to help.
And your mom got right in her face
and said—
I remember this exactly—
she said: “Your town did this. Your town.”
(he stops, looks off, sighs)
The night before,
Porsche had a nightmare.
She asked me to check her room for monsters.
She still did that sometimes.
So I checked—you know—
under her bed and in her closet
just like when she was a little girl.
And I remember
sitting at the hospital thinking that
she’d never again believe that her daddy
could keep away the monsters.
DR. KARLA EPSTEIN (Trauma Surgeon)
Dr. Epstein is a trauma surgeon at Williamson-Redford County Medical Center. We meet in the noisy hospital cafeteria. Dr. Epstein is forty-eight, with a full face free of cosmetics, surrounded by curly dark hair tied at the nape of her neck. She wears hospital scrubs, drinks black coffee, and speaks matter-of-factly. Her beeper goes off many times during our talk.
WOUND BALLISTICS
I specialize in wound ballistics,
which is the science
of the motion of projectiles.
Your sister was struck by a nine-millimeter round
fired from a Smith & Wesson
standard-issue law-enforcement sidearm.
How badly you are hurt by a gunshot
has to do with the mathematics
of wound ballistics.
Um. For example.
Low-velocity bullets,
like those from handguns,
do their damage by
crushing tissue.
Your sister was shot at a distance of approximately fifty yards—
we’re able to ascertain that by
examination of the scene, the bullet’s trajectory,
and the wound itself—
which allowed much of the kinetic
energy of the bullet to dissipate.
She was fortunate
in that her body was
turned toward the boy next to her
(she illustrates by sliding sideways in the chair)
at the moment of the bullet’s impact,
so the bullet entered this way,
(she uses her right hand to gesture to her right side, then swivels back to me)
which is what probably saved her life.
When the round fragmented
inside her body,
a fairly large piece
lodged against upper lumbar disc L-3,
causing it to bruise,
putting pressure on her spinal cord,
and resulting in significant
spinal cord injury.
I was able to fix the internal damage
from the passage of the bullet.
But where the fragment had lodged,
cutting could do more harm than good.
So that’s why I didn’t remove it.
Which is why we didn’t know
if your sister would ever walk again.
PORTIA PRIDE (Sixth-Grade Student)
Portia is twelve, a sixth grader at Redford West Middle School. She has long brown hair, enormous brown eyes, and dimples and is extremely articulate. She is my sister. It is three months after the shooting. We’re in a small room on the first floor of our house. It was probably once a maid’s room, but now it’s hers, so that she doesn’t have to climb stairs. She walks in with the aid of two metal canes with supports that wrap around her wrists. She has an apple in her mouth that she just got from the kitchen. She settles on her bed, the canes next to her, and chomps on the apple as we talk.
THIS MAGIC 8 BALL
A long time ago Lillith told me—
Wait.
Are they going to know who Lillith is?
You should say
she’s your best friend from Englecliff
so it’ll make sense.
Okay—anyway—so.
Lillith had this Magic 8 Ball—
like a fortune-telling thingie?
You shake it up and your fortune appears.
So she told me
every person’s fortune was in there.
Which isn’t even logical.
For one thing,
what language would the fortunes be in?
I was only—really little—because I kind of believed her.
Not really, but kind of?
I asked when I would get my first boyfriend.
So she shook it up
but she didn’t let me see what it said.
But she said it said:
“You will get your first boyfriend when you are twenty-seven.”
That didn’t seem right.
Twenty-seven is old. So I asked you
and you said she was definitely wrong
and you were absolutely certain
I’d have boyfriends sooner than twenty-seven.
Like probably around fourteen.
Then it turned out
I didn’t have to wait that long
because I was only twelve
when I started liking Barney
>
and he started liking me back.
Wait.
You need to say that I’m twelve and a half now.
Am I messing this up?
Could you say that
even though Barney has a stupid name
he’s nice and cute and smart and
looks like a boy who would have a cool name
like Trevor or something?
Okay. So.
Me and Cassidy and
Alan and Barney
were going to the football game.
Last time I sat between Cassidy and her mom?
But I didn’t know what to do this time.
I wanted to ask you
how we should sit.
Like
should we sit girl-girl-boy-boy,
or boy-girl-boy-girl?
But you weren’t home
so I couldn’t ask you.
So then we got to the game.
I sat between Barney and Cassidy,
so it turned out we were boy-girl-girl-boy.
And all I was thinking about was
if we were sitting right.
I don’t remember after that.
Like
the getting shot part.
And I don’t remember
the first few days at the hospital, either.
Everyone there was nice.
I liked all the flowers and presents.
At first I didn’t like physical therapy
because it hurt
but then it got better.
Sometimes it still hurts but not too much.
What else?
Being in a wheelchair was bad.
Not being able to walk—that was bad.
But then after my other surgery
I tried and tried and
then I could kind of walk with these canes,
which is much better.
Um … not being upstairs
in my real bedroom is bad, too.
Also it was very difficult
trying to catch back up
with my class at school,
but I did it.
None of my friends stopped being my friends.
That was a good thing.
Oh, wait, the best thing is
Barney already invited me
to the spring dance
even though it’s still
a month and a half away.
I am soooo excited
because it’ll be my first dance.
The doctors say if I work
really really hard
I could be down to one cane by then,
which is excellent!
You’ll take me dress shopping, right?
Because
when you’re not wearing jeans
you have excellent taste in clothes.
And um … did I say enough
or do you need more?
JACK REDFORD (R.H.S. Student)
(as before)
THE FAMILY BIBLE
Once, Nikki said to me:
“In this town, the name Redford
is almost as powerful as that flag.”
Meaning—from her point of view—
that I needed to step up to the plate.
That I had a certain responsibility
which I had been unwilling to accept.
At the hospital—
when your sister was in surgery—
I was thinking about that and
I felt—
I wondered if things
might’ve been different
if I’d tried to find a solution.
Instead of just,
you know,
rationalizing why
I was above the fray
or whatever.
When my mother
came to the hospital—
that took guts.
She had to know
your mom
wouldn’t want to see her.
But she came anyway
because it was
the right thing to do.
You know how sometimes
in a crisis
you pick up on something completely irrelevant?
Well, for some reason
I noticed
the emergency room nurse’s little plastic—
(he touches his chest near his heart)
you know, name plate.
Brenda Partridge.
And the trauma unit social worker’s
little name plate.
Samantha Evans.
Everyone who worked there wore them.
But this maintenance worker—
janitor—
I went to the vending machines
and he was emptying the trash and
he had one of those little name plates
but his just said
Roland.
And this orderly pushing a laundry cart—
his just said
Marvin.
I don’t know why it struck me.
But it did.
Hours later, Portia got out of surgery
but they wouldn’t let us into intensive care.
You and I decided to go to my house
to shower and eat.
Our family Bible
was on the kitchen counter,
which was odd.
It was open to Matthew, chapter five—
“Blessed are the peacemakers,”
which I later found out
was because my mother
had been praying for your sister.
But it was almost like it was meant to be.
On some level
I was—I guess I was thinking about—
you know—
those hospital name plates.
Because I opened to the back of the Bible,
where we keep the family genealogy.
And there were all these
old bills of purchase.
1855.
Amanda. Age 38. Black in complexion.
Samuel. Her son. Age 4.
1856.
Ginny.
1857.
Frankie.
Big Joe.
Louis. Of a hearty constitution.
Amanda. Excellent for breeding.
And what struck me—
what took my breath away was:
None of them had a last name.
But it wasn’t like the—
the low-level hospital workers
because
at least their full names were known.
These people that my family owned—
their Africans names
had been ripped from them.
Their freedom
and their heritage stolen.
And we talk about
how people trample on our heritage
and look what we do—what we did—
to theirs.
We even took away their names.
So you know what happened next.
But if you want a chronology—
I guess I better
or this will make no damn sense.
So. I called Nikki.
It was—what—
four in the morning?
Her father answered.
I had to assure him
it wasn’t bad news about Portia.
And he said:
“Then why in the Sam Hill
are you calling my home
at four in the morning?”
We—I think it was you—
asked Nikki to come over.
Said it was important.
When she showed up it reminded me that
when we were kids she came over a lot
and
I really couldn’t recall
when she’d stopped.
So I showed Nikki my family Bible.
The bills of sale.
The single names.
And I told her my idea—
what I wanted to do.
/>
NIKKI ROBERTS (R.H.S. Student)
(As before)
AS IF GOD WAS HOLDING HIS BREATH
Jackson’s big idea?
I was standing there with
the two of you and
I remembered thinking how
Jackson’s house used to be
“my friend’s house”
instead of
“Redford House,”
and how the only black feet
that had stepped through the front door
in years
probably belonged to the help,
and here it was,
four-whatever in the morning,
and the only reason I was there
was because
this boy
was so thick-headed
and self-involved
that he thought
I should get my ass out of bed
and run over to his damn house
in the middle of the night because
he’d finally had an epiphany about the evils of slavery?
Please.
Honestly, Kate.
If it hadn’t been for you
I would have said—
I just would have gone off on him.
But there was so much pain
in your eyes,
and you two had been at the hospital
all night.
Plus, I knew he was well-intentioned.
So that’s why I went along
with what Jack wanted to do.
The three of us wrote down
the names
of every slave
owned by Major General Redford
at the time of the Civil War.
Thick black letters on
big white file cards.
Then we went to the monument
in the courthouse square.
And we taped
all those slave names to it.
Fifty-seven of them.
(she has a faraway look, as if seeing this in her mind’s eye)
A Heart Divided Page 18