Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“Are you working?”

He hesitates. “You mean besides selling the Oxy?”

“I didn’t hear that,” I reply immediately.

“Oh, I said-”

“I didn’t hear that.”

He glances up, nods. “Got it. No. No, I don’t work.”

“Who do you live with?”

“My parents.”

I am ticking off a checklist in my mind, peppering him with a barrage of questions. “Do your parents have the means to hire an attorney?” I ask finally.

He glances at my suit, which is from Target, and which has a stain on it from the milk that Violet upended in her cereal bowl this morning. “Yeah.”

“Shut up and let me do the talking,” I coach, and I turn to the bench. “Your Honor,” I say, “young Joseph here is only just eighteen and this is his first offense. He’s a senior in high school who lives with his mom and dad-a nursery school teacher and a bank president. His parents own their own home. We ask for Joseph to be released on his own recognizance.”

The judge turns to my counterpart in this dance, the prosecutor who stands at the mirror image of the defense table. Her name is Odette Lawton, and she is about as jolly as the death penalty. Where most prosecutors and public defenders recognize that we are flip sides of the same shitty-state-pay-grade coin and can leave the animosity in the courtroom and socialize outside it, Odette keeps to herself. “What is the State looking for, Counselor?”

She glances up. Her hair is cropped close to her head and her eyes are so dark you can’t see the pupils. She looks like she is well rested and has just had a facial; her makeup is flawless.

I stare down at my hands. The cuticles are bitten and either I have green finger paint underneath the nails or I am rotting from the inside out.

“This is a serious charge,” Odette says. “Not only was a prescription narcotic found on Mr. Hawkins’s person, but there was intent to sell. To turn him loose into the community would be a threat and a grievous mistake. The State requests that bail be set at ten thousand dollars with surety.”

“Bail is set at ten thousand dollars,” the judge repeats, and Joseph Dawes Hawkins III is lugged out of the courtroom by a bailiff.

Well, you can’t win ’em all. The good news here is that Joseph’s family can afford the bail-even if it means he will have to forfeit Christmas in Barbados. The better news is that I will never see Joseph Dawes Hawkins III again. His father may have wanted to teach him a lesson by not having the family attorney present from the get-go so Joey would have to sit in a cell overnight, but I’m sure it is only a matter of time before that same fancy lawyer calls my office and picks up Joey’s case.

“The State versus Ruth Jefferson,” I hear.

I glance up as a woman is led into the courtroom in chains, still wearing her nightgown, a scarf wrapped around her head. Her eyes scan the gallery wildly, and for the first time I realize that it’s more crowded than usual for Tuesday arraignments. Packed, even.

“Would you please identify yourself for the record?” the judge asks.

“Ruth Jefferson,” she says.

“Murderer,” a woman screams. There is a buzz in the crowd that swells into a roar. Just then Ruth flinches. I see her turn her face into her shoulder and I realize that she is wiping off the saliva that someone has spit on her from over the gallery rail.

The bailiffs are already hauling the guy off-a hulking brute I can see only from the rear. On his scalp is a tattooed swastika, twined with letters.

The judge calls for order. Ruth Jefferson stands tall and keeps looking around for someone-or something-that she can’t seem to find.

“Ruth Jefferson,” the clerk reads, “you are charged with count one, murder; count two, negligent homicide.”

I am so busy trying to figure out what the hell is going on here that I do not realize everyone is looking at me, and that this defendant has apparently told the judge that she needs a public defender.

Odette stands up. “This is a heinous criminal act involving a three-day-old infant, Your Honor. The defendant voiced her animosity and animus toward the parents of this child, and the State will show that she acted intentionally and deliberately, with malice aforethought, in reckless disregard of the newborn’s safety, and that in fact at her hands the baby suffered trauma that led to death.”

This woman killed a newborn? I’m running through scenarios in my head: Is she a nanny? Is this a shaken baby case? A SIDS death?

“This is crazy,” Ruth Jefferson explodes.

I elbow her gently. “This is not the time.”

“Let me talk to the judge,” she insists.

“No,” I tell her. “Let me talk to the judge for you.” I turn to the bench. “Your Honor, may we have a moment?”

I lead her to the defense table, just a few steps from where we are standing. “I’m Kennedy McQuarrie. We’ll talk about the details of your case later, but right now, I need to ask you some questions. How long have you lived here?”

“They put me in chains, ” she says, her voice dark and fierce. “These people came to my house in the middle of the night and handcuffed me. They handcuffed my son -”

“I understand that you’re upset,” I explain. “But we have about ten seconds for me to get to know you, so I can help you through this arraignment.”

“You think you can know me in ten seconds?” she says.

I draw back. If this woman wants to sabotage her own arraignment it’s not my fault.

“Ms. McQuarrie,” the judge says. “Sometime before I get my AARP card, please…”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I say, turning to him.

“The State recognizes the insidious and unpalatable nature of this crime,” Odette says. She is staring right at Ruth. The dichotomy between these two black women is arresting: the prosecutor’s sleek suit and spike heels and crisp tailored shirt standing in counterpoint to Ruth’s rumpled nightgown and head scarf. It feels like more than a snapshot. It feels like a statement, like a case study for a course I don’t remember enrolling in. “Given the magnitude of the charges, the State requests that the defendant be held without bail.”

I can feel all the air rush out of Ruth’s lungs.

“Your Honor,” I say, and then I stop.

I have nothing to work with. I don’t know what Ruth Jefferson does for a living. I don’t know if she owns a house or if she moved to Connecticut yesterday. I don’t know if she held a pillow over that baby’s face until it stopped breathing or if she is rightfully angry about a trumped-up charge.

“Your Honor,” I repeat, “the State has offered no proof for their specious claims. This is a very serious charge with virtually no evidence. In light of this I’d ask the court to set reasonable bail in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars surety.”

It’s the best I can do, given the lack of information she’s provided. My job is to get Ruth Jefferson through her arraignment, as efficiently and as fairly as possible. I glance up at the clock. There are probably about ten more clients after her.

Suddenly there is a tug on my sleeve. “You see that boy?” Ruth murmurs, and she looks at the gallery. Her gaze locks on a young man in the rear of the courtroom, who gets to his feet as if he is being drawn upright by a magnet. “That’s my son,” Ruth says, and then she turns to me. “Do you have kids?”

I think of Violet. I think of what it would be like if the biggest problem in your life was not watching your child getting frustrated but watching your child getting handcuffed.

“Your Honor,” I say, “I’d like to retract what I just said.”

“I beg your pardon, Counselor?”