Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

The prosecutor pauses. “Ruth Jefferson and her attorney can throw up a dog and pony show about tardy lab results, or the state of race relations in this country, or anything else,” she says. “But it doesn’t change the facts of this case. And it’s never going to bring that baby back to life.”

–

ONCE THE JUDGE has given instructions to the jury, they are led from the courtroom. Judge Thunder leaves, too. Howard jumps up. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”

“Yeah, and you probably never will again,” Kennedy mutters.

“I mean, it was like watching Tom Cruise- You can’t handle the truth! Like…”

“Like shooting myself in the foot,” Kennedy finished. “On purpose.”

I put my hand on her arm. “I know what you said back there cost you,” I say.

Kennedy stares at me soberly. “Ruth, it’s most likely going to cost you more.”

She has explained to me that because the murder charge was thrown out before I testified, the jury has only the negligent homicide charge to decide. Although our medical evidence definitely creates reasonable doubt, an outburst of anger is like a poker burned into a juror’s mind. Even if they’re not deciding on a premeditated murder charge now, they might still feel like I didn’t care for that baby as well as I possibly could. And whether that was even possible, under the circumstances, I don’t know anymore.

I think about the night I spent in jail. I imagine spinning it out to many nights. Weeks. Months. I think about Liza Lott and how the conversation I have with her now would be very different than the one I had back then. I would start by saying that I’m not naïve anymore. I have been forged in a crucible, like steel. And the miracle about steel is that you can hammer it so thin it’s stretched to its limit, but that doesn’t mean it will break. “It was still worth hearing,” I tell Kennedy.

She smiles a little. “It was worth saying.”

Suddenly Odette Lawton is standing in front of us. I panic slightly. Kennedy also said that there was one other alternative the prosecutor might choose-to throw out all charges and start over with a grand jury, using my testimony to show malice in the heat of the moment, and with a new charge of second-degree murder.

“I’m getting the case against Edison Jefferson dismissed,” Odette says briskly. “I thought you’d want to know.”

My jaw drops. Of everything I thought she might say, that was not it.

She faces me and for the first time in this trial, meets my gaze. Except for our bathroom run-in, she has not made direct eye contact with me the entire time I was sitting at the defense table, glancing just past me or over my head. Kennedy says that’s standard; it’s the way prosecutors remind defendants they’re not human.

It works.

“I have a fifteen-year-old daughter,” Odette says, a fact and an explanation. Then she turns to Kennedy. “Nice closing, Counselor,” she says, and she walks away.

“Now what?” I ask.

Kennedy takes a deep breath. “Now,” she says, “we wait.”

–

BUT FIRST, WE have the press to deal with. Howard and Kennedy formulate a plan to get me out of the courthouse with no media contact. “If we aren’t able to avoid them completely,” she explains, “the correct answer is no comment. We are waiting for the jury’s decision. Period.”

I nod at her.

“I don’t think you get it, Ruth. They’re going to be out for blood; they are going to pick at you and goad you into exploding so that they can get it on tape. For the next five minutes, until you leave this building, you are blind, deaf, dumb. You understand?”

“Yes,” I tell her.

My heart is a drum as we push through the double doors of the courtroom. Immediately there are flashes of lights, and microphones thrust in my face. Howard runs interference, shoving them away, as Kennedy barrels us through this circus: acrobat reporters, trying to reach over the heads of others to get a statement; clowns doing their act-the Bauers in a heated interview with one conservative news station-and me, trying to navigate my tightrope without falling.

Approaching us from the opposite direction is Wallace Mercy. He and his supporters form a human blockade, elbows locked, which means we will have to engage. Wallace and a woman stand in the middle; as I watch, they step forward to lead the rest. The woman wears a pink wool suit. Her close-cropped hair is dyed a hot red. She stands straight as an arrow, her arm tightly tucked through Wallace’s.

I look to Kennedy, a silent question: What do we do?

But my question is answered for me. Wallace and the woman do not come toward us. Instead, they veer to the far side of the hallway, where Turk Bauer is still in conversation with a reporter, his wife and his father-in-law standing by his side.

“Brittany,” the woman says, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Lord. Look at how beautiful you are.”

She reaches toward Brittany Bauer as the cameras roll. But we are not in Judge Thunder’s court, and she can say or do anything she pleases. So I see the woman’s hand coming toward her as if in slow motion, and I know even before it happens that Brittany Bauer will push her away. “Get the hell away from me.”

Wallace Mercy steps forward. “I think this is someone you want to meet, Ms. Bauer.”

“She doesn’t need to, Wallace,” the woman murmurs. “We met twenty-six years ago, when I gave birth to her. Brit, honey, you remember me, don’t you?”

Brittany Bauer’s face blooms with color-shame, or anger, or both. “ Liar . You disgusting liar!” She lunges for the older woman, who goes down too easily.

People scramble to pull Brittany away, to lift the woman to safety. I hear shouts: Help her! And Are you getting this on tape?

Then I hear someone cry, “Stop!” The voice is deep and powerful and commanding, and just like that, Brit falls back.

She turns around, feral, glaring at her father. “You’re just going to let that nigger say those things about me? About us ?”

But her father is no longer looking at his daughter. He is ashen, staring at the woman who now stands with Wallace Mercy’s contingent, Wallace’s handkerchief pressed to her bleeding lip. “Hello, Adele,” he says.

“I did not see this coming,” I whisper, glancing at Kennedy.

And that’s how I realize she did .

THE CAMERAS ARE ROLLING WHEN all hell breaks loose. One minute, Brit and Francis are standing next to me, listening to me tell some right-wing radio personality that we have only just begun to fight, and then it becomes a literal declaration. A black woman marches up to Brit and touches her arm. Naturally, Brit recoils, and then the woman lobs a blatant lie: that Brittany Bauer, the princess of the White Power Movement, is actually half black.

I look to Francis, the way I have, well, for years. He taught me everything I know about hate; I would go to war beside him; in fact I have. I step back, waiting for Francis to let loose with his famous rhetoric, to cut this bitch down to size as an opportunist who wants her fifteen minutes of fame-except he doesn’t.

He says the name of Brittany’s mother.

I do not know much about Adele, because Brit doesn’t, either. Just her name, and the fact that she cheated on Francis with a black dude and he was so furious that he gave her an ultimatum: leave him the baby and disappear from their lives forever, or die in your sleep. Wisely, she chose the former, and that was all Brit needed to know about her.

But I look at Brit’s long dark hair.

We see what we’re told to see.