by Noel Obiora
“A few years later, Reverend Brown was conscripted and left for Vietnam. The way my mother learned of it, she thought it was convenient to just let me go on believing he went missing in action in Vietnam.”
“How did she learn of it?” Amy asked.
“Apparently Reverend Brown had listed me or acknowledged that I was his son in military papers and listed my mother as the other parent. When he and some members of his company went missing in action, the military felt obliged to inform my mother of it and advise of other rights she may have in the event the status changed. My mom showed everyone who cared the paper to say my dad was missing in action. Well, very soon, with the war ended, MIAs became the big thing in the news, and my mom’s little boy was talking of going to find his daddy when he grew up. That’s about when my mother sat me down for a heart-to-heart. I met my dad eventually, but by then it was obvious to him I was carrying a very angry chip on my shoulder. My mom was as good as two dads, and there also was my late grandfather.”
They were sitting on a concrete bench next to the large fountain at the top of the landmark steps when he finished telling her the story.
“Did you make up with your dad?” she asked.
“Forgiveness is a gift your enemies leave you but hide it deep inside you. It’s like a thief broke into your house and stole your most precious items, but before they could make their getaway, you or the police almost walked in on them. So, they found a perfect spot in the house to hide the gems, and walked away without them, hoping to return another day. When you forgive, it’s like you discovered where they hid them and put the items back where they belong, but when you don’t forgive, it’s like you found where they hid them and decided to leave them there and try to forget you ever found them.”
“I still don’t know which you did. Judging from the chip on your shoulder, I’m guessing the latter,” she said.
He laughed.
“I don’t have that chip on my shoulder anymore. I think.”
She smiled and ran her hand up and down the back of his suit, like she was soothing him.
“Someone really pissed me off recently. Are you saying I must forgive them?” she asked playfully.
“What do you have to lose?”
“Nothing, but you on the other hand…you might regret it.”
“Better me regretting something I have no idea about than you carrying that grudge in you.”
“I can understand how you felt about your dad, but I would have taken it out on my mother, too. You were probably too young to learn the truth, but I hate lies.”
“I took it out on her a bit, too. But I don’t think she was lying when she said she conveniently decided not to find out if he ever made it back from Vietnam.”
“Talking of lies…I never planned to come to happy hour with Neda today. I wanted her to come, and nine out of ten times she says yes. But I hadn’t asked her before I told you she was coming, and when I did, she had other plans.”
“So technically, it wasn’t a lie,” he said.
“Well, just so you know, if you said that to me it would be a lie.”
They sat quietly looking down the Bunker Hill Steps without saying anything. Something else she remembered about him—eaningful silences no one felt the urge to fill with words. His story, though, reminded her of the things that were most elusive about him, like the way he made people feel around him.
“Come on,” she said, standing up and walking down the steps. He followed her and soon fell into step with her. “I can’t see you like this all the time, you know.” He nodded, then looked at her as she was looking at him, and they both grinned. “It’s true. You seem to still have ideas about me from college.”
“I’m agreeing with you,” he said.
He sounded resigned in his response, and she was moved that he did. She would have liked him to resist her proposition more, to give them more reason to walk the night before going home. Their night seemed at an end rather quickly, she thought, but she wanted to be around him some more. There was nothing for her to do at home anyway.
“Do you still want to get something to eat?” she asked him, and when he said he would, she told him to go ahead and purchase something to bring to her house.
“What would you like?”
“I’m not hungry” she said, “but I’ll have some of whatever you’re having.”
She took a taxi home while Kenneth returned to his rental car, which was parked at the building opposite Steps.
He arrived carrying a large brown bag.
“You bought Chinese food, didn’t you?”
“Why? You wanted something else?”
“No, I figured that when a man says he’s bringing takeout in LA, he usually means Chinese food.”
“Good, because you are wrong. This is Korean food,” he said and opened the brown bag to show her.
She smiled and nodded. “Good job,” she said and led the way to the kitchen where she had already set plates on her table.
“Would you mind if I drink some wine while you eat? You’ve reached your drink maximum and I could use half a glass to relax.”
He wouldn’t mind he said, and she poured herself half a glass of wine, but brought out an empty glass for him and placed it with the bottom up. He looked curiously at her. “I feel bad,” she said, “but I would feel better if you just let the glass sit empty.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
“Can I ask you something I’ve been turning over and over in my mind?” she asked, and he said she could.
“You’ve been out of law school about as long as I have. You said you started at the public defender’s office, which means they start you with misdemeanors like me and work you up. And you’ve been on your own barely one and half years now, maybe two, I guess. Why would the defendant’s family search you out for a murder trial and pay you all that money on three years of criminal law experience?”
Kenneth looked at Amy as though he was unsure how to respond to her dissection of his employment history. He turned to his food and ate.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“No offense,” Amy added.
“None taken,” Kenneth said and continued to eat.
“Why didn’t they pick any of the high-profile hot-shot attorneys?”
“They couldn’t afford those guys,” Kenneth explained.
“They could afford Mr. Jones,” Amy said. Kenneth shook his head.
Amy had barely touched her drink, but then she did, wiping her lips with the back of her hand after she was done.
“Paul’s father has a racially complex view of everything; Paul doesn’t. A woman Paul met in college converted him to Christianity. His father is a faithful Muslim. The old man disowned his only son for marrying somebody of which he didn’t approve. They only reunited after that marriage ended in a divorce. Now the old man is the leader of the ACB, which has taken a very hard line on African-American issues, and this case is a permanent blot on his life and his legacy. Obviously, there are aspects of my case that I cannot disclose to you, but an attorney they trust is more important to them than celebrity attorneys. And contrary to your assessment, they also think I’m good.”
“What does ACB stand for again?”
“American Congress of Black Muslims… You don’t want to mess with them.”
“Are you doing this pro-bono?”
“Amy, come on, you don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?”
“Why not? We all know the going rate for a murder trial, if they can’t afford the hot shots, how can they afford you?”
“Still, all the more reason why I can’t disclose that information, let alone to my adversary.”
“I didn’t know we were talking as adversaries,” Amy said and got up to go to the living room, leaving her glass on the table.
“We have a
n arrangement,” Kenneth said as Amy got to the door separating the kitchen from the living room. She stopped briefly to listen. “They don’t come up with all the money, but as the case goes on, they’ll pay the rest, whatever they can,” Kenneth said. She continued to the living room, suddenly wondering what on Earth she was doing revisiting this subject.
He poured some wine into the empty glass but did not drink it, and just ate quietly. The only other reason Kenneth would take the case was for experience, and he did not want to admit it, Amy concluded. She returned to the kitchen and looked disappointed to see wine in the glass she gave him. Kenneth shrugged. She ignored him.
“You are not getting any more money from them. You should have just left them with the public defender’s office. They’re better funded.”
“I know,” Kenneth said.
“I don’t doubt that you’re good, but you could be making a big mistake,” Amy said bluntly. Kenneth did not say anything. He did not want her to know he was having doubts about this representation after what happened to his car, and he could not tell her about Mallam Jackson’s thugs, except what he had already told her.
“What if they insist that you see the case their way—are you really going to argue that biracial relationships make African American men more susceptible to false murder raps in Los Angeles County?”
“Doesn’t it?”
“I was afraid that you’d say something like that.”
“And you don’t see it that way?”
“Considering you’ve expressed an interest in a biracial relationship yourself, at least in the past—”
“And in the present—” he interrupted. She managed to keep from smiling.
“It’s a fair question then, and you’re deflating it?”
“It is fair, but every relationship is different.”
“How would our relationship be different from Paul and Goldie’s?”
“Race defined their relationship as much as anything else. They were old enough at a time and place, post-LA riots, when race was the elephant in the room they met in.”
“And ours—in Texas.”
“Austin, we were growing up, discovering ourselves and through that lens our racial differences, those came first—pubescence, innocence, self-awareness before racism.”
“You will play the race card in the case, then.”
“If it’s the only card on the table to save a man from conviction, yes.”
“You make it sound like a lawyer is a mercenary for the client,” she said.
“With all due respect, your office has the monopoly on mercenaries in the legal profession,” Kenneth replied.
“Really? How is that?”
“They apply prosecutorial discretion to suit the prevailing public sentiments of the time, rather than rely on the facts of the case to guide the discretion. Amy, a guilty verdict does not confirm or negate the fact that the accused committed a crime, that’s why we have the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, hell, even the First Amendment.”
She felt naive for being so honest with him and expecting him to be objective about it. She took another drink of her wine and was surprised at the ease with which it went down. As she lifted her glass to drink again, their eyes met.
“I’m sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with you.”
“We aren’t arguing,” she said.
“Can I ask you a question of my own?”
“Sure. Ask.”
“Whatever happens…whether we get to explore a deeper relationship or not, can you promise me that we can still be friends after this case? We will seek out each other, at least on birthdays, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and say ‘hey’?”
“I can promise you that, but the truth is that I can’t keep that promise,” she said and finally smiled. “I ran into the person I was engaged to recently. Seeing him again after about a year and half, I could not believe I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. Something in me snaps when I’m disappointed, and goodbyes for me are forever.”
“I don’t plan on ever disappointing you.”
“Except professionally, you mean.”
“Are you disappointed that I’m taking the case?”
She considered him for a while before she shook her head and poured herself more wine. As she raised her glass, he raised his as well and drank. She got up and led the way to the living room.
“You know, I can afford a taxi to take you all the way back to Philly and a truck to tow your car along with it.”
“Of course, you are a Wilson after all.”
“That’s right, and don’t you forget it. Or get any funny ideas that getting drunk will get you to spend the night here.”
“I didn’t know that was an option.”
“Shut up!”
He laughed, but she tried to hide her amusement.
He raised his glass, and the rest of his drink disappeared.
“Goldie had just signed a contract with the record company. When she agreed to leave Paul for the agent who got her the deal.”
Kenneth froze on hearing this, holding his glass mid-air.
“I only told you that because…” Amy paused as if wondering how to proceed. She stood up to put her glass in the sink. “I only told you because there is an insurance policy that may pay your attorney’s fees better than they are.” Having divulged another piece of crucial information, she became irritated with herself and walked to the living room. Kenneth followed her. She had turned the television on to a country channel and was sitting on the couch with her hands on her knees. On seeing him walk into the living room, she buried her face in her knees.
Kenneth stood at the entrance to the kitchen.
“I’m not sure I heard exactly what you said.”
“I’m sure you did, and I won’t repeat it.”
“Are you mad at me?” he asked. She raised her head to face him.
“You are hopeless,” she said, a smile forming in her.
“I know,” he replied.
A short bust of laughter escaped her involuntarily. She made a futile attempt to cover her face with her hand as though to stop the laughter.
“Did you give the insurance policy you were talking about to the public defender as part of discovery?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Why?” Kenneth asked.
“I don’t have it. I have the music contract that refers to and mentions it. I just told you as a friend. Frankly, between us, Mr. Jackson isn’t entitled to it because I can prove he was already fired as manager before she died. The music company attorney said the policy provides that it will cover the defense of the artist or her manager for any criminal offense.”
“But you will still give me the music contract?”
Amy went into her bedroom and came out with the contract she had kept. She handed it to him, and folded her hands across her breast, looking at him. He quickly looked through the pages of the contract in silence.
“You know I could get in trouble for giving you that, right?”
He looked up at her for a moment, not knowing what to say, then he ran his eyes gleefully over more pages of the document and rested them on a page that Amy had folded in for him, stunned.
“You’ll let me have this?” Kenneth asked.
“You didn’t get that from me. So, you better find a way to get the record company to deliver a copy to you,” Amy said.
“I don’t know what to say,” Kenneth said.
“Say nothing. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Nothing about People v. Jackson again, please.”
“Okay,” he said.
“And make sure you give that back to me if I ever ask for it.”
“Understood.” He walked over to her and she got up. “Thanks,” he said and hugged her.
When he stepped away and looked at her, there were tears in her eyes. She tried to wipe them, but he held her hand and leaned over to kiss her cheeks, but she turned her face away. He let go of her hand and hugged her again. This time she held on tightly and appeared to be sobbing softly. When he stepped back again, she was smiling and wiping her face, then she giggled at the expression of either concern or confusion on his face and held his head and kissed him. The music contract fell from his hand as they kept kissing.
He lifted her and straddled her sideways and lowered himself to one knee, placing her carefully on the floor. He rolled around on the floor, and she was on top of him. She pulled away from him and clapped her hands once. Darkness fell upon the living room. She giggled again at his expression just before the lights went out. The only light in the room came from the television. His right hand traced the edge of her T-shirt and went under it, and she kissed him more passionately with each invasive exploration of his fingers over and through places that took her breath away. Their bodies moving rhythmically, his breathing heavy, they panted as though they were sharing a limited supply of air and giving each other the little they had in them. Suddenly, country music filled the room as they rolled on top of the remote control; moments later, she stopped him because it was more than she could take. They did not realize how loud the television was until then and they were lying beside each other. Kenneth picked up the remote control and lowered the volume, but Amy turned the television off, and curled into his embrace. They fell asleep on the living room floor.