Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

All three of them stare at me, frozen. The men glance up, and one puts a hand on the waistband of his jeans, from which I think I see the hilt of a gun protruding. My legs are jelly. Before I can back away, the old woman says, “No hablo inglés,” and climbs the steps double time.

I had wanted to live like Ruth did, just for an afternoon, but not if it meant I’d be in danger. Yet danger, it’s relative. I have a husband with a good job and a house that’s paid off, and I don’t have to worry that something I say or do is going to threaten my ability to put food on the table or pay my bills. For me, danger looks different: it’s whatever can separate me from Violet, from Micah. But no matter what face you put on your own personal bogeyman, it gives you nightmares. It has the power to terrify, and to make you do things you wouldn’t normally think you’d do, all in an effort to stay safe.

For me, that means running through a night that’s tunneling tighter around me, until I can be sure I’m not being followed. Several blocks away, I slow down at an intersection. By now, my pulse isn’t racing, the sweat has cooled beneath my arms. A man about my age approaches, pushing the same pedestrian walk button, waiting. His dark skin is pocked on the cheeks, a road map of his life. His hands hold a thick book, but I cannot make out the title.

I decide to try one more time. I nod down toward the book. “Is it good? I’m looking for something to read.”

He glances at me, and lets his gaze slide away. He doesn’t respond.

I feel my cheeks burning as the walk signal illuminates. We cross the street side by side in silence, and then he turns away, ducking down a street.

I wonder if he was really intending to go down that street, or if he just wanted to put distance between us. My feet hurt, my whole body is shaking with the cold, and I’m feeling utterly defeated. I realize it was a short-lived experiment, but at least I tried to understand what Ruth was saying. I tried.

I.

As I trudge up to the hospital where Micah works, I think about that pronoun. I consider the hundreds of years that a black man could have gotten into trouble for talking to a white woman. In some places in this country, it’s still the case, and the repercussions are vigilante justice. For me, the dire consequence of that stoplight conversation was feeling snubbed. For him, it was something else entirely. It was two centuries of history.

Micah’s office is on the third floor. It’s remarkable how, the minute I walk through the doors of that hospital, I am in my element again. I know the healthcare system; I know how I will be treated; I know the rituals and the responses. I can stride past the information desk without anyone questioning where I’m going or why I am there. I can wave to the staff in Micah’s department and let myself into his office.

Today is a surgery day for him. I sit in his desk chair, my coat unbuttoned, my shoes off. I stare at the model of the human eye on his desk, a three-dimensional puzzle, as my thoughts speed like a cyclone. Every time I close my eyes, I see the old woman at Church Street South, shrinking away from my offer of help. I hear Ruth’s voice, telling me I am fired.

Maybe I deserve to be.

Maybe I’m wrong.

I’ve spent months so focused on getting an acquittal for Ruth, but if I’m really going to be honest, the acquittal was for me . For my first murder trial.

I’ve spent months telling Ruth that a criminal lawsuit is no place to bring up race. If you do, you can’t win. But if you don’t, there are still costs-because you are perpetuating a flawed system, instead of trying to change it.

That’s what Ruth has been trying to say, but I haven’t listened. She’s brave enough to risk losing her job, her livelihood, her freedom to tell the truth, and I’m the liar. I’d told her race isn’t welcome in the courtroom, when deep down I know it’s already there. It always has been. And just because I close my eyes doesn’t mean it’s gone away.

Witnesses swear on Bibles in court to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But lies of omission are just as damning as any other falsehood. And to finish out Ruth Jefferson’s case without stating, overtly, that what happened to her happened because of the color of her skin might be an even bigger loss than a conviction.

Maybe if there were lawyers more courageous than I am, we wouldn’t be so scared to talk about race in places where it matters the most.

Maybe if there were lawyers more courageous than I am, there would not be another Ruth somewhere down the line, being indicted as the result of another racially motivated incident that no one wants to admit is a racially motivated incident.

Maybe if there were lawyers more courageous than I am, fixing the system would be as important as acquitting the client.

Maybe I should be more courageous.

Ruth accused me of wanting to save her, and perhaps that was a fair assessment. But she doesn’t need saving. She doesn’t need my advice, because really, who am I to give it, when I haven’t lived her life? She just needs a chance to speak. To be heard.

I am really not sure how much time passes before Micah enters. He is wearing scrubs, which I’ve always thought were sexy, and Crocs, which totally aren’t . His face lights up when he sees me. “This is a nice surprise.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” I tell him. “Can you give me a ride home?”

“Where’s your car?”

I shake my head. “Long story.”

He gathers up some files and checks a stack of messages, then reaches for his coat. “Everything all right? You were a million miles away when I walked in.”

I lift the eye model and turn it over in my hands. “I feel like I’ve been standing underneath an open window, just as a baby gets tossed out. I grab the baby, right, because who wouldn’t? But then another baby gets tossed out, so I pass the baby to someone else, and I make the catch. This keeps happening. And before you know it there are a whole bunch of people who are getting really good at passing along babies, just like I’m good at catching them, but no one ever asks who the fuck is throwing the babies out the window in the first place.”

“Um.” Micah tilts his head. “What baby are we talking about?”

“It’s not a baby, it’s a metaphor,” I say, irritated. “I’ve been doing my job, but who cares, if the system keeps on creating situations where my job is necessary? Shouldn’t we focus on the big picture, instead of just catching whatever falls out the window at any given moment?”

Micah’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. Behind his shoulder a poster hangs on the wall: the anatomy of the human eye. There is the optic nerve, the aqueous humor, the conjunctiva. The ciliary body, the retina, the choroid. “For a living,” I murmur, “you make people see.”

“Well,” he says. “Yeah.”

I look directly at him. “That’s what I need to do too.”

EDISON ISN’T AT HOME, AND my car is gone.

I wait for him, text him, call him, pray, but there is no response. I imagine him walking the streets, hearing my voice ring out in his ears. He is wondering if he has it in him, too, the capacity for rage. If nature or nurture matters more; if he is doubly damned.

Yes, I hated that racist father for belittling me. Yes, I hated the hospital for sticking by his side. I don’t know if that bled over into my ability to care for a patient. I can’t tell you that for a moment, it didn’t cross my mind. That I didn’t look down at that innocent baby and think of the monster he would grow up to be.

Does that make me the villain here? Or does that just make me human?