Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

I could tell him what happened. I could tell him the Horrible Thing I see every time I close my eyes: that black bitch beating on my son’s chest.

She was alone with Davis. I overheard the other nurses talking about it, in the hallway. She was alone, when she wasn’t supposed to be. Who knows what happened, when no one was looking?

I glance back at Brit. When I look in her eyes, they’re empty.

What if the worst thing isn’t that I’ve lost my child? What if it’s that I’ve also lost my wife?

–

AFTER HIGH SCHOOL, I moved to Hartford and got a job at Colt’s Manufacturing. I took a few classes at the community college there, but the liberal shit those professors dished out made me so sick I quit. I didn’t stop hanging around the college, though. My first recruit was a skateboarder, a skinny kid with long hair who cut in front of a black dude in line at the student café. The nigger shoved him, and Yorkey shoved him back and said, “If you hate it here so much, go back to Africa.” The food fight that ensued was epic, and it ended with me reaching out a hand to Yorkey and pulling him from the fray. “You know,” I told him as we stood outside smoking, “you don’t have to be the victim.”

Then I handed him a copy of The Final Call, the Nation of Islam newsletter that I’d planted on bulletin boards all over the campus. “You see this?” I said, starting to walk, knowing he’d follow. “You want to tell me why no one’s marching into the black student union and arresting them for hate speech? For that matter, how come there’s not a White student union?”

Yorkey snorted. “Because,” he said, “ that would be discrimination .”

I looked at him as if he was Einstein. “Exactly.”

After that, it was easy. We’d find the kids who were bullied by jocks and interfere, so that they knew they had protectors. We invited them to hang out with us after classes, and as we drove, I’d plug in a playlist of Skrewdriver, No Remorse, Berzerker, Centurion. White Power bands that sounded like a demon growling, that made you want to mess with the world.

I made them believe they had worth, simply because of the color they were born. When they complained about anything on campus, from the registration process to the food, I reminded them that the president of the school was a Jew, and that it was all part of a bigger plan by the Zionist Occupation Government to suppress us. I taught them “Us” meant “White.”

I took their weed and molly and tossed it in the dumpster, because addicts snitched. I made them over in my image. “I’ve got a great pair of Doc Martens,” I told Yorkey. “They’re just your size. But there’s no way I’m passing them on to a guy with greasy hair in a man bun.” The next day, he showed up with his hair neatly trimmed, his scruff shaved. Before long, I’d created my own wilding squad: the newly minted Hartford division of NADS.

I wager I taught the students at that school more than any hotshot professor. I showed them the elemental differences between the races. I proved that if you’re not the predator, you’re the prey.

–

I WAKE IN a pool of sweat, fighting my way out of a bad dream. Immediately, I feel across the covers for Brit, but there’s no one there.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and start moving, fighting through the dark like it’s a crowd. I might as well be sleepwalking, the way I’m drawn to the room that Francis and I worked so hard to repaint before Brit was released from the hospital.

She is standing in the doorway, her hands bracing her, like she needs help staying upright. The moon’s coming through the window, so she’s trapped in her own shadow. As my eyes adjust to the night, I try to see what she sees: the old armchair with a doily over its top; the iron frame of the twin guest bed. The walls, white again. I can still smell the fresh paint.

I clear my throat. “We thought it would help,” I say, my voice small.

She pivots, but only halfway, so that for a second it looks like she’s made out of light. “What if it never happened?” Brit whispers. “What if it was just a nightmare?”

She’s wearing one of my flannel shirts-that’s what she likes to sleep in-and her hands are splayed over her belly.

“Brit,” I say, taking a step toward her.

“What if no one remembers him?”

I pull her into my arms, feel the hot circle of her breath on my chest. It’s like fire. “Baby,” I vow, “I’m not going to let anyone forget.”

–

I HAVE ONE suit. Actually, Francis and I have one suit that we share. There’s just not much of a need for fancy clothing when you work drywall during the day and run a White Power website at night. But the next afternoon, I put on the suit-black, pinstripes, the kind of thing I imagine Al Capone would have looked really sharp in-and a white shirt and a tie, and Brit and I drive back to the hospital to meet with Carla Luongo, the lawyer in Risk Management who has agreed to see us.

But when I come out of the bathroom freshly shaved, the tattoo on the back of my head stark and unmistakable, I am surprised to find Brit curled on the bed in my flannel shirt and sweatpants. “Baby,” I say. “We have a meeting with the lawyer, remember?” I’ve told her this a half hour ago. There’s no way she forgot.

Her eyes roll toward me like they are ball bearings, loose in her head. Her tongue pushes words around her mouth like they’re food. “Don’t…wanna…go…back.”

She turns away from me, pulling up the covers, and that’s when I see the bottle on the nightstand: the sleeping pills that the doctor gave her to help her transition. I take a deep breath and then haul my wife upright. She feels like a sandbag, heavy and immobile. Shower, I think, but that would require me to get in with her, and we don’t have time. Instead, I take the glass of water on the bedside table and throw it in her face. She sputters, but it gets her to sit up on her own. I pull off her pajamas and grab the first things I can find in her drawer that look decent-a pair of black pants and a sweater that buttons up the front. As I am dressing her, I have a sudden flash of myself doing this same thing to my baby, and I wind up yanking so hard on Brit’s arm that she yelps and I kiss her on the wrist. “Sorry, baby,” I murmur, and more gently, I pull a comb through her hair and do my best to bunch it together into a ponytail. I stuff her feet into a pair of little black shoes that might actually be bedroom slippers and then haul her into my arms, and out to the car.

By the time we reach the hospital, she is near catatonic. “Just stay awake,” I beg her, anchoring her to my side as we walk in. “For Davis.”

Maybe that gets through to her, because as we are ushered into the lawyer’s office, her eyes open a fraction wider.

Carla Luongo is a spic, just like I guessed from her name. She sits down on a chair and offers us a couch. I watch her nearly swallow her tongue when I take off my wool hat. Good. Let her know who she’s dealing with, right up front.

Brit leans against me. “My wife,” I explain, “is still not feeling well.”

The lawyer nods sympathetically. “Mr. and Mrs. Bauer, let me first just say how sorry I am for your loss.”

I don’t respond.

“I’m sure you have questions,” she says.

I lean forward. “I don’t have questions. I know what happened. That black nurse killed my son. I saw her with my own eyes, beating at his chest. I told her supervisor I didn’t want her touching my baby, and what happened? My worst fear came true.”

“I’m sure you realize that Ms. Jefferson was only doing her job…”

“Oh, yeah? Was it also her job to go against what her boss ordered? It was all in Davis’s file.”