Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“Can’t start them too early,” says an older woman, and everyone laughs.

Then they see me standing there, and the conversation drops like a stone from a cliff. “Turk,” says the older woman. I don’t know her name, but I recognize her face; she’s been here before. “Didn’t see you come in.”

I don’t respond. My eyes are glued to the baby, who is red-faced, waving her fists. She is crying so hard she can’t catch her breath.

My arms are reaching out before I can stop myself. “Can I…?”

The women glance at each other, and then the baby’s mother places her into my arms. I can’t get over how light the baby is, rigid arms and legs kicking as she shrieks. “Shh,” I say, patting her. “Quiet, now.”

I rub my hand on her back. I let her curl like a comma over my shoulder. Her cries become hiccups. “Look at you, the Baby Whisperer,” her mother says, smiling.

This is how it could have been.

This is how it should have been.

Suddenly I realize that the ladies are not looking at the baby anymore. They are staring at something behind me. I turn around, the baby fast asleep, tiny bubbles of spit on the seam of her lips.

“Jesus,” Brit says, an accusation. She turns and runs out of the kitchen. I hear the door to the bedroom slam behind her. “Excuse me,” I say, trying to juggle the baby back to her mother as gently and as quickly as possible. Then I run to Brit.

She’s lying on our bed, facing away from me. “I fucking hate them. I hate them for being in my house.”

“Brit. They’re just trying to be nice.”

“That’s what I hate the most,” she says, her voice a blade. “I hate the way they look at me . ”

“That’s not what-”

“All I wanted was a fucking drink of water from my own sink. Is that too much to ask?”

“I’ll get you water…”

“That’s not the point, Turk.”

“What is the point?” I whisper.

Brit rolls over. Her eyes are swimming with tears. “Exactly,” she says, and she starts to cry, just as hard as that baby was crying, but even after I gather her into my arms and hold her tight and rub her back she doesn’t stop.

It feels just as foreign to be soothing Brit while she sobs as it was for me to cradle an infant. This is not the woman I married. I wonder if I buried that fierce spirit along with the body of my son.

We stay there, in the cocoon of the bedroom, long after the sun sets and the cars drive away and the house is empty again.

–

THE NEXT NIGHT we are all sitting in the living room watching television. My laptop is open; I’m writing a post for Lonewolf.org about something that happened in Cincinnati. Brit brings me a beer and curls up against me, the first contact she’s initiated since, well, I can’t even remember. “What are you working on?” she asks, craning her neck so that she can read what’s on my screen.

“White kid got body-slammed by two niggers at school,” I say. “They broke his back, but they didn’t get charged. You can bet if it were the other way around, the White kids would have been charged with assault.”

Francis points the remote at the television and grunts. “That’s because Cincinnati is in the ninety-ninth percentile of shit schools,” he adds. “It’s an all-black administration. What do we really want for our kids?”

“That’s good,” I say, typing in his words. “I’m gonna end with that.”

Francis flips through the cable stations. “How come there’s Black Entertainment TV but no White Entertainment TV?” he asks. “And people say there’s no reverse racism.” He turns off the television and stands up. “I’m headed to bed.”

He kisses Brit on the forehead and leaves for the night, headed to his side of the duplex. I expect her to get up, too, but she makes no move to leave.

“Doesn’t it kill you?” Brit asks. “The waiting?”

I glance up. “How do you mean?”

“It’s like there’s nothing immediate anymore. You don’t know who’s reading the stuff you post.” She pivots to face me, sitting cross-legged. “Things used to be so much clearer. I learned my colors by looking at the shoelaces of the guys my dad was meeting up with. White Power and neo-Nazis had red or white laces. SHARPs were blue or green.”

I smirk. “I have a hard time imagining your father meeting with SHARPs.” Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice are the biggest race traitors you’ll ever meet; they target those of us who are fighting the good fight by trying to get rid of lesser races. They think they’re fucking Batman, every one of them.

“I didn’t say it was a…friendly meeting,” Brit replies. “But actually, sometimes he did. You did what you had to do-even if it seemed to go against all reason-because you were seeing the big picture.” She glances up at me. “You know Uncle Richard?”

Not personally, but Brit did. He was Richard Butler, the head of Aryan Nations. He died when Brit was about seventeen.

“Uncle Richard was friends with Louis Farrakhan.”

The leader of the Nation of Islam? This was news to me. “But…he’s…”

“Black? Yeah. But he hates Jews and the federal government as much as we do. Daddy always says the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Brit shrugs. “It was kind of an unspoken understanding: after we worked together to bring down the system, then we’d fight each other.”

We’d win, of that I have no doubt.

She looks at me carefully. “What do we really want for our kids?” Brit says, repeating Francis’s earlier comment. “I know what I want for my kid. I want him to be remembered.”

“Baby, you know we won’t forget him.”

“Not us,” Brit says, her words suddenly hard. “Everyone.”

I look at her. I know what she’s saying: that typing a blog may indeed crumble foundations, but it’s far more dramatic-and faster-to blow the building up from the top down.

To some extent I’d been too late for the Skinhead Movement, which had its heyday ten years before I was born. I imagined a world where when people saw me coming, they ran away. I thought about how Francis and I had spent the past two years trying to convince crews that anonymity was more insidious-and terrifying-than overt threats. “Your father won’t go along with this,” I say.

Brit leans down and kisses me, softly, pulling away so I am left wanting more. God, I’ve missed this. I missed her.

“What my father doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” she answers.

–

RAINE IS PUMPED to get my phone call. It’s been two years since I’ve seen him; he didn’t make it to my wedding, because his wife had just had their second baby. When I tell him I’m in Brattleboro for the day, he invites me to his house for lunch. He’s moved, so I jot the address down on a napkin.

At first I’m sure I’m in the wrong place. It’s a little ranch on a cul-de-sac, with a mailbox that is shaped like a cat. There’s a bright red plastic slide on the front lawn and a ticky-tacky wooden snowman hanging near the front door. The welcome mat says HI! WE’RE THE TESCOS!

Then a slow grin spreads over my face. The smart bastard. He’s taking hiding in plain sight to a whole new level. I mean, who would ever expect that the dad living next door who power-washes his porch and lets his kid ride a bike with training wheels up and down the driveway is actually a White Supremacist?

Raine opens the door before I even get a chance to knock. He’s holding a chunky toddler in his arms, and poking out from between the towers of his legs is a shy little girl wearing a tutu and a princess crown. He grins, reaching out to embrace me. I can’t help but notice he is wearing sparkling pink nail polish.