Response

by Paul Volponi

  “Like I clearly said in court, my client has no ill feelings towards anyone. He’s just for keeping his neighborhood safe,” he said.

  “I hate that man,” I told Dad on the low. “I’d like to boot his ass down every one of these stairs.”

  “You and me both,” replied Dad.

  It was freezing outside, and the same smoke coming out of Chapman’s mouth was pouring from mine.

  Two days later, on a Saturday night, I got a call from the city’s lawyers telling me not to go to school on Monday morning because the jury had come to a verdict. I’d already missed four days of classes the week before. But I was up on my studying and knew I wouldn’t fall into any deep holes over it.

  “It’s usually good news when they decide so fast,” Mom said.

  “Yeah, but good for who?” Dad asked, without getting an answer.

  On Sunday morning, we took the bus to Centreville.

  It was Grandma’s idea just to go there and walk.

  Most of the stores on Sheffield Street were closed, so we had plenty of sidewalk to ourselves. It was cold and the wind was blowing hard enough that you could hear it. But we were standing in a bright patch of sun.

  “Like I said before, it wasn’t your time,” Grandma told me, looking up at Michael Sheffield’s name on the street sign.

  “It wasn’t your time either, Mama Jackson,” Mom said.

  I watched the sign shaking in the wind and said, “I just wish I knew what this was all for. Why me?”

  “Those are answers we don’t have yet, Noah,” answered Grandma. “And maybe we wouldn’t even understand them if we did.”

  “Just mortal man caught up in God’s plan,” said Dad, with his collar turned up against the wind and his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

  The next day in court, I could see Scat’s right leg shaking underneath the table. I guess he had a lot more to lose than me.

  But I couldn’t figure out what there was to win.

  The judge called the jury inside, and once they were all in their seats he asked, “Madam Forewoman, have the members reached a unanimous verdict?”

  “We have, Your Honor,” said a pale older white lady, with her cheeks painted red.

  “Madame Forewoman, how do you find the defendant, Charles Scaturro, on the charges of robbery and assault as a hate crime?” asked the judge.

  The woman stood up and cleared her throat.

  “Guilty,” she said, clear and strong.

  The lawyers next to me were slapping my back.

  I let out a long breath. But I couldn’t find any real reason to celebrate.

  Scaturro’s sentencing wasn’t for another four weeks—a few days after graduation. The city’s lawyers needed me to speak at the sentencing, to say why Scaturro should get the whole twenty-five years the judge could give him by law.

  So it wasn’t over for me.

  And nearly every free second I had, that speech was turning over in my mind.

  “You got an idea of what it’s gonna sound like?” Dad would ask.

  But I’d just shake him off and say, “I’m still trying to get ahold of it.”

  For more than a month, Deshawna and me had stopped arguing, probably because I started having more respect for how hard it was to raise a baby, even just part-time. That made things go a lot easier between us. And sometimes when her and Destiny Love were smiling at the same time, I felt like I wanted Deshawna to be more than just my girlfriend. So for Christmas I bought her a bracelet with lots of little charms that said things like “Boo” and “Super Mom.”

  On Christmas Day, I watched Destiny Love sitting under the tree at our house, pushing three different kinds of Play-Doh together till it made a brand-new color I’d never seen before.

  Then I came home from work one night, just before New Year’s Eve, and our apartment was empty when it shouldn’t have been. I went to the refrigerator for something to eat and tried to push the idea that anything was wrong out of my head.

  But a streak of cold ran through me, and I couldn’t touch a bite.

  I’d forgot to turn my cell phone back on after work, and when I did, I saw all the missed calls.

  That’s when Mom came through the front door with tears in her eyes.

  She stood straight in front of me, trembling to get out what she had to say.

  “Noah, something terrible—” she said, stopping to take a deep breath.

  And I already knew in my heart that Grandma had died.

  CORDELL’S FUNERAL HOME—EAST FRANKLIN

  The day before Alethea Jackson’s wake. Noah and his father sit alone in a side room, waiting to make some of the final arrangements with the funeral director.

  DAD: I’ll tell you true, it comes in stages, son. (Looks at the dark wood paneling on the wall.)

  NOAH: What does?

  DAD (Turns his eyes back to Noah.): Figuring out what it means to be a man. I’m almost forty-six years old now, and it still keeps changing. First, I thought I was a man when I was old enough to shave. Then once I got married and made a baby, I thought that was it. NOAH: It wasn’t?

  DAD: When my father passed, I thought for sure I knew, because I was the man of the house then. But I’ll tell you what I’ve learned now—it’s not till both your parents are gone and leave you here all alone on this earth that you really know what it is.

  NOAH: Let me hear.

  DAD: They’ve left, and it’s your turn. You need to make sure your children know how to stand on their own two feet. That you’ve taught them something better than what you knew to start out. And that they’re always the most important thing, because this is gonna be their world soon, not yours. That’s what it is, Noah. Don’t let the bullshit that comes flying at you every day get your mind fixed on anything else. NOAH: I’ll keep watch for it. I promise.

  DAD: Keeping watch isn’t enough, ’cause your eyes can fool you. Like they did when that car you went to steal looked more valuable than everything your family ever taught you.

  NOAH: I guess it takes some smarts, too.

  DAD: It’s called maturity, son. Hopefully, from everything you been through, you’re beginning to get some.

  Chapter TWELVE

  AT GRANDMA’S WAKE, DESTINY LOVE WAS saying, “Gam-Gam” and reaching out for her in the casket, like she hadn’t really left us.

  There was a bulletin board up front by where Grandma was resting, with pictures of her and my grandpa, who died the day before I turned two years old. And there was even a big sunflower pinned to it, because that’s where she was born—Sunflower, Mississippi.

  The funeral home was packed with people from all over our neighborhood who’d come to pay their respects. Lots of older people get cranky and spend half their time lecturing everybody, telling them how it should be. But even when I heard Grandma scold folks for playing their music too loud or leaving the covers off the trash cans in front of our building, they didn’t get mad at her. And Grandma usually wound up pulling them in closer.

  “She could spank you hard with one hand and hug with the other at the same time,” Dad said, proud. “This turnout’s a tribute to her character.”

  My parents were both acting strong.

  It was Deshawna who was a wreck, and she couldn’t even look at the casket.

  “That’s ’cause she lost her own mother so young,” Mom told me. “You’re gonna have to put some of your own grief aside and be there for her, Noah.”

  So I tried the best that I could.

  Part of me felt empty, and I wanted to break down bawling right there.

  But the rest of me knew that Grandma didn’t get cheated out of a thing in her life, and lived it to the fullest.

  And I wasn’t sure how, but I wanted to live the same way.

  Then Mr. Dowling walked through the door and my heart jumped up a little.

  As he walked over to my family, I noticed he had an envelope in his hand.

  “I’m sorry for your great loss, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, Noah,”
he said, shaking Mom’s and Dad’s hands first, then mine.

  That’s when I saw Hendricks’s name on the outside of that envelope, and realized it was the letter that Grandma had me deliver to him at school.

  “Mr. Hendricks asked that I return this to your family,” he told us, handing the envelope to Dad. “I can tell you that he was truly saddened to hear the news of your mother’s passing. She must have made a real impression on him. He even debated coming here with me to pay his respects, but I guess he didn’t want to intrude.”

  “So he sent back this letter from her, instead?” Mom asked, puzzled, as Dad took it out of the envelope, and they both read it.

  “Said he felt like he needed to share this with you all,” Mr. Dowling said, lifting his own shoulders. “I haven’t looked at it.”

  I wanted to read that letter bad, but not in a crowd of eyes.

  I wanted a chance at it alone.

  “Yeah, that’s the best of her, right there,” Dad said after he’d finished. “I’m not surprised she could touch a hardened man like that.”

  And Mom agreed.

  I reached my hand out and Dad gave me the letter. Then I walked off to read it, with Grandma resting just a few feet away.

  Mr. Hendricks—

  I praise God for working His will through you.

  No matter how different we are, we were both made by the same hand.

  That makes us all brothers and sisters.

  So brother, I say to you—Thank you.

  Thank you for the gift of a new day with my family.

  You are a teacher as I hope to be.

  Teach me and I will try to teach you.

  With God’s grace we will learn together.

  —Alethea Jackson

  The feeling in Grandma’s letter stayed with me as I studied for my final exams.

  Even with the pressure of everything going on in my life, I passed them all.

  In the end, just nineteen out of forty “super seniors” graduated with me in January. I guess the other twenty-one didn’t have the support I did, and found a way to fail a class.

  The graduation ceremony was small enough to hold in the school’s library.

  I sat there in my purple cap and gown, looking at those thousands of books on the shelves. That got me thinking about all those people from history who had something so important to say they needed to write it down for somebody to read.

  I still didn’t know what I was going to say at Scat’s sentencing.

  Was it really going to mean anything—to me or anybody else?

  Was it my turn to beat up on him, or could I be somebody better?

  The principal called my name. “Noah Jackson.”

  I walked across the floor in front of Mom, Dad, my daughter, and the rest of the parents, to get my diploma. There was an extra cheer for me from everybody, no matter what color they were.

  Lots of the senior teachers were there, including Mr. Dowling.

  The only important teacher I had who was missing was Grandma.

  When the ceremony was over, all of the graduates tossed their caps up to the ceiling.

  Mom was holding Destiny Love, and she put her into my arms for a picture. I wanted Deshawna to be there, too, but she was taking her GED exam that day.

  “Smile, little girl. Your daddy’s an official high-school graduate,” Mom said. “Soon to be college student, and one day—engineer.”

  “We’re not talking about an engineer on a train anymore,” said Dad. “No, sir. There are bigger things waitin’ for my son in college.”

  If it wasn’t for that talk I’d had with Dad before Grandma’s wake, I would have sworn that holding my baby and a diploma made me a man.

  At Scat’s sentencing, I sat in the courtroom listening to the city’s lawyers make their case why the judge should give him the max—twenty-five years in prison. I glanced over at Scat, trying to figure out what he’d look like at forty-something, when he’d be released. But no matter how much I tried in my mind, his face wouldn’t change for me.

  When the city’s lawyers finished, they told the judge that I wanted to speak.

  They’d phoned me twice that week wanting to know what I was going to say, and even offered to help me write it. But it all felt too private, and I wouldn’t let them hear a word in advance. Anyway, I’d kept changing it, right up until the night before.

  I walked to the courtroom’s wooden podium, where the lawyers usually spoke from, and pulled the white sheet of paper from the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Then I unfolded it, smoothing it out on the flat surface in front of me.

  I filled my lungs with air and found my voice.

  “When my friends and myself went into Hillsboro that night, I had the wrong thing on my mind. Wanting to steal a car was a bad idea, and I take responsibility for that. I have nobody to blame for that mistake but me,” I said, turning my eyes towards Scat. “But what you did that night changed my life. At first, it made me start to hate all white people. I felt like every one of them wanted my blood if they ever saw me outside of East Franklin.

  “But I was lucky. I’m not completely ignorant like you. I had people in my life, like my parents and my grandmother, to help me see things clearer and learn that life isn’t about that. So I have overcome those feelings of racial hatred.

  “I was also bitter about why this all happened to me. But now I see everything that I learned from this, and how it helped me to look at my life and appreciate all my blessings.

  “Because of your hatred and ignorance, I could have been killed. Then you would have robbed my baby daughter of her father, hurting two generations of black people with one swing of a baseball bat. You need to study your actions, and ask yourself if you really hate her, too.

  “I don’t know how much time the judge should give you. That’s not my job. That’s not why I was put on this earth.

  “Right now, I’m a son and a father, and one day I hope to look at myself as a man.

  “Part of me understands your hatred, because I’ve felt it, too. I only hope that you can learn from your actions, take responsibility for them, and after you’ve paid for what you did—change.

  “That’s all I want to happen. I’m done.”

  I folded the paper over twice, putting it back into my pocket.

  Then I stepped away from the podium feeling satisfied with my response, like I’d put some huge mountain I never thought I could climb behind me. And as I walked back to my seat, I could see by the proud look on my father’s face that maybe he thought I’d done that, too.

  When the judge called on Charlie Scat to speak, he stood up at the defendant’s table with his hands behind his back, even though he wasn’t cuffed.

  “I’m just like Noah Jackson—only opposite. I can’t trust black people now. They all look at me like I’m a racist, and like they might want to hurt me because of this case. And that’s not who I really am. That’s just the way the district attorney wants people to see me—like I’m some kind of terrible monster,” said Scat, off the top of his head.

  Then he opened a piece of paper and started to read from it.

  “I am responsible for my actions. One hundred percent responsible. I want to apologize to Noah Jackson. I want to apologize to his family, too, because I know how much this incident has hurt my own. My mother couldn’t even be here today because it hurts her so much to see this happening to her son. So from the very bottom of my heart, I’d like to say I’m sorry. But this was not a hate crime. This had nothing to do with Noah Jackson being black. It never did. This was about me trying to protect friends—false friends. This was about me protecting my neighborhood and making a stupid mistake. The jury didn’t see that because the DA told them I was a demon. And they bought it. But I’m hoping that you—Your Honor, with your legal experience—won’t be fooled like that.”

  Then Scat sat back down, and the only sound in the courtroom was from the reporters in the back row writing the last of his words.

  The
judge put on his glasses and studied the papers in front of him for a few seconds, before he took them off again to speak.

  “It’s plain for me to see that this defendant lacks good judgment, moral character, and any true comprehension of remorse. I find the defendant to be both hateful and brutal in his prior actions. He is truly part of the problem, not only in this city, but also in this country. Nothing in our history has caused more grief and suffering than racism, and the defendant, in my opinion, lives it, breathes it, and if not painted into this corner would continue to preach it. The very nature of his crime amplifies the message of racial intolerance and attempts to drag our society down to its lowest depths. I only hope that he may one day learn better,” the judge said, raising his gavel. “With those findings in mind, I hereby sentence Charles Scaturro to eighteen years in the state prison on the charges of robbery and assault as a hate crime.”

  Scat winced as the crack of the judge’s gavel ripped through the courtroom, and a big part of it was over for me.

  I left there surrounded by my family, knowing I’d have to fight hard every day to get where I wanted to go, and stay focused on who I wanted to be.

  I was satisfied that I didn’t sink to Scat’s level, feeding whatever was left of the negative feelings inside of me.

  I didn’t even have to make people see who Charlie Scat and the rest of those racists from Hillsboro really were. Scat and his friends did that themselves, with their own words and everything they did. And now there was no way any of them could ever hide it or pretend it wasn’t the truth.

  Outside, I looked down at the high courthouse steps. I could see how the smooth stones that formed them were laid together side by side, supporting the weight that none of them could hold alone.

  And I wondered, in my whole life, if I’d ever build something like that for people to climb.