Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

— Twelve is your maximum, Miss Henderson.

— Long as I can see my babies …

— Excuse me?

— I’ll take anything, she said.

— Very well, for the purpose of this plea, the outstanding charges are reduced to petty larceny. Do you understand that if I accept your plea pursuant to this decision you’ve made, that I have the power, that I could sentence you to up to one year in jail?

She leaned over quickly to her Legal Aid lawyer, who shook his head and put his hand on her wrist and half smiled at her.

— Yeah, I understand.

— And you understand you’re pleading to petty larceny?

— Yeah, babe.

— Excuse me?

Soderberg felt a stab of pain, somewhere between the eyes and the back of the throat. A stunned flick. Had she really called him babe? It couldn’t be. She was standing, staring at him, half smiling. Could he pretend that he didn’t hear? Dismiss it? Call her up in contempt? If he made a fuss, what would happen?

In the silence the room seemed to shrink a moment. The lawyer beside her looked as if he might bite her ear off. She shrugged and smiled and waved back over her shoulder again.

— I’m sure you didn’t mean that, Miss Henderson.

— Mean what, Y’r Honor?

— We will move on.

— Whatever you say, Y’r Honor.

— Keep your language in check.

— Cool, she said.

— Or else.

— You got it.

— You understand that you are giving up your right to trial?

— Yeah.

The Legal Aid lawyer’s lips recoiled as they touched, accidentally, against the woman’s ear.

— I mean, yessir.

— You have discussed pleading guilty with your lawyer and you are satisfied with his services? You are pleading guilty of your own free will?

— Yessir.

— You understand that you’re giving up your right to trial?

— Yessir, you bet.

— Okay, Miss Henderson, how do you plead to petty larceny?

Again, the Legal Aid lawyer leaned across to school her.

— Guilty.

— Okay, so very well, tell me what happened here.

— Huh?

— Tell me what occurred, Miss Henderson.

Soderberg watched as the court officers moved to reduce the yellowback form to a blue-back for the misdemeanor crime. In the spectators’ section the reporters were fidgeting with the spirals on their books. The buzz in the room had died slightly. Soderberg knew that he would have to move quickly if he was going to pull out a good performance for the tightrope walker.

The hooker raised her head. The way she stood, he knew for certain she was guilty. Just by the lean of the body, he knew. He always knew.

— It’s a long time ago. So, I was, like, I didn’t want to go to Hell’s Kitchen, but Jazzlyn and me, well me, I got this date in Hell’s Kitchen, and he was saying shit about me.

— All right, Miss Henderson.

— Shit like I was old and stuff.

— Language, Miss Henderson.

— And his wallet just jumped out in front of me.

— Thank you.

— I weren’t finished.

— That’ll do.

— I ain’t all bad. I know you think I’m all bad.

— That’ll do, young lady.

— Yeah, Pops.

He saw one of the court officers smirk. His cheeks flushed. He lifted his glasses high on his head, pinned her with a stare. Her eyes, suddenly, seemed wide and pleading, and he understood for a moment how she could attract a man, even in the worst of times: some layered beauty and fierceness, some history of love.

— And you understand that by pleading guilty you are not being coerced?

She tottered close to her lawyer and then she turned, heavy-eyed, to the bench.

— Oh, no, she said, I ain’t being coerced.

— Mr. Feathers, do you consent to immediate sentence and waive your right to presentence report?

— Yes, we do.

— And, Miss Henderson, do you wish to make a statement before I give sentence?

— I want to be in Rikers.

— You understand, Miss Henderson, that this court cannot determine which prison you will be in.

— But they said I’d be in Rikers. That’s what they said.

— And why, pray tell, would you like to be in Rikers? Why would anyone like …

— Cuz’a the babies.

— You’ve got babies?

— Jazzlyn’s got.

She was pointing over her shoulder at her daughter, slumped in the spectators’ section.

— Very well, there is no guarantee, but I’ll make a note to the court officers to be so disposed. In the case of the People versus Tillie Henderson, the plea is guilty and I sentence you to no more than eight months in prison.

— Eight months?

— Correct. I can make it twelve, if you like.

She opened her mouth in an unsounded whimper.

— I thought it were gonna be six.

— Eight months, young lady. Do you wish to adjust your plea?

— Shit, she said and she shrugged her shoulders.

He saw the Irishman in the spectators’ section grab the arm of the young hooker. He was trying to make his way forward in the court to say something to Tillie Henderson, but the court officer prodded him in the chest with a billy club.

— Order in the court.

— Can I say a word, Your Honor?

— No. Now. Sit. Down.

Soderberg could feel his teeth grind.

— Tillie, I’ll be back later, okay?

— Sit. Or else.

The pimp stopped in the aisle and looked up at Soderberg. The pupils small, the eyes very blue. Soderberg felt exposed, open, unlayered. A blanket of quiet fell over the court.

— Sit! Or else.

The pimp lowered his head and retreated. Soderberg let out a quick breath of relief, then turned slightly in his chair. He picked up the calendar of cases, put his hand over the microphone, nodded across to the court officer.

— All right, he whispered. Get the tightrope walker up.

Soderberg glanced at Tillie Henderson as she was escorted out the door to his right. She walked with her head low and yet there was a learned bounce in her gait. As if she were already out and doing the track. She was held on each side by a court officer. The jacket she wore was crumpled and dirty. The sleeves were way too long. It looked as if two women could have fit inside it. Her face looked odd and vulnerable, and yet still held a touch of the sensual. Her eyes were dark. Her eyebrows were plucked thin. There was a shine to her, a glisten. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time: upside down, the way the eye first sees, and then must correct. Something tender and carved about the face. The long nose that looked as if it might have been broken a few times. The flare of her nostrils.

She turned at the door and tried to look over her shoulder, but the court officers blocked her.

She mouthed something toward her daughter and the pimp, but it was lost, and she gave a little winded sigh as if she were on the beginning of a long journey. Her face seemed for a second almost beautiful, and then the hooker turned and shuffled and the door was closed behind her, and she vanished into her own namelessness.

— Get the tightrope walker up, he said again to his bridge. Now.

THERE IS, AT LEAST, ALWAYS THIS: It is a Thursday morning. My first-floor apartment. In a clapboard house. In a street of clapboard houses. Through the window, a quick flit of dark against the blue sky. It is a surprise to me that there are birds of any sort in the Bronx. It is summertime so there is no school for Eliana or Jacobo. But they are already awake. I can hear the sound of the television turned high. Our ancient set is stuck on one channel and the only program playing is Sesame Street. I turn in the sheets towards Corrigan. It is the first time that he has ever slept over. We have not planned it: it has just happened this way. He stirs in his sleep. His lips are dry. The white sheets move with his body. A man’s beard is a weather line: an intersperse of light and dark, a flurry of gray at the chin, a dark hollow beneath his lip. It amazes me how it darkens him, this morning beard, how it has grown in such a short time, even the little flecks of gray where there was none the night before.