Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“Well, you and I could-”

“Brit, if something goes down, the first place the cops will look is anyone connected to the Movement. And we’re already named in the media, thanks to the lawsuit.” I hesitate. “You know I’d do anything for you. But you’ve only just started to come back to me. If I get sent away to do time, it would be like losing you all over again.” I wrap my arms around her. “I’m sorry, baby. I thought I could make it work.”

She kisses me. “I know. It was worth a try.”

“Come to bed?”

Brit turns off the television, comes into the bedroom with me. Slowly I peel off the sweatshirt she’s wearing; I let her tug my boots and jeans off. When we get under the covers, I press against her. But when I go to move between her legs, I’m soft, slipping out of her.

She looks at me in the dark, her eyes hooded, her arm crossed over her soft belly. “Is it me?” she asks, in a voice so small I have to reach for it.

“No,” I swear. “You’re beautiful. It’s stupid shit in my head.”

She rolls away. Even like that, I can feel her skin heat up, red with shame.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her back.

Brit doesn’t answer.

In the middle of the night I wake up and reach for her. I’m not thinking, which is why I do it. Maybe if I get out of my own way, I can find comfort. My hand snakes over the sheets, searching, but Brit is gone.

–

IN THE BEGINNING there were many of us, and we were all different. You could be Aryan Nations but not a Skinhead, depending on whether or not you bought into Christian Identity theology. White Supremacists were more academic, publishing treatises; Skinheads were more violent, preferring to teach a lesson with their fists. White Separatists were the guys buying land in North Dakota and trying to divide the country so that anyone nonwhite would be kicked over the perimeter they created. Neo-Nazis were a cross between Aryan Nations and the Aryan Brotherhood in prisons-if there was a violent street gang criminal element to the Movement, they were it. There were Odinists and Creationists and disciples of the World Church of the Creator. But in spite of the ideology that split us into factions, we’d all come together one day of the year to celebrate: April 20, the birthday of Adolf Hitler.

There were birthday festivals scattered around the country, kind of like the old KKK rallies that I went to as a teen. They were usually on someone’s back forty, or on a piece of conservation land no one ever monitored, or in whatever passed for an alpine village. Directions were by word of mouth, turns marked off with tiny flags no bigger than those used by electric dog fences, except these weren’t pink plastic but SS red.

I’d probably been to five Aryan festivals since I joined up with the White Power Movement, but this one was special. At this one, I was getting married.

Well, in spirit at least. Technically Brit and I would have to go to city hall next week and fill out the legal forms. But spiritually, it would happen tonight.

I was twenty-two years old, and this was the pinnacle of my life.

Brit didn’t want me around while she was fussed over by the girls, so I wandered the festival. Overall, there were far fewer people here than at the rallies I’d gone to five years ago, mostly because the feds had started cracking down wherever we congregated. But even so, there were the usual groups of drunks, some brawling, some pissing behind the portable tents where vendors sold everything from corn dogs to thongs printed with the words SKINHEAD LOVE. There was a kid zone with coloring books and a bouncy castle that had a big-ass SS flag draped in the back, like in the Sportpalast where Hitler used to give his speeches. At the end of the row of food and merchandise vendors were the tattoo artists, who were in high demand during festivals like this.

I cut in line, which I knew would piss off the guy I cut. We had the necessary scuffle, and I gave him a bloody nose, and then he shut up and let me take his place. When I sat down in front of the tattoo artist, he looked at me. “What’s it going to be?”

Francis and I had been working for six months now to convince squads to stop flaunting sun-wheel tattoos and shaved heads and suspenders and to start looking like ordinary Joes. Part of that meant wearing long sleeves or getting acid treatments to cover up the ink on our faces. But today was a special day. Today, I wanted everyone to know what I stood for.

When I left that tent, there were eight Gothic letters, one inked on each of my finger knuckles. On the right hand, when I made a fist, it read H-A-T-E. On the left, the side closest to my heart, was L-O-V-E.

At sunset, it was time. In the distance was the throaty roar of motorcycles, and everyone who was still at the festival formed two lines. I waited, my hands clasped in front of me, the skin still red and swollen from the new tats.

Then suddenly, the crowd parted, and I could see Brit, backlit in the oranges and yellows of the end of day. She wore a white lace dress that made her look like a cupcake, and her Doc Martens. I started smiling. I smiled so hard that I thought my jaw would crack.

When she was close enough to touch, I tucked her arm into mine. If the world had ended at that moment, I would have been okay with it. We started to walk down the makeshift aisle. As we passed, arms flew up, everyone Sieg Heiling. At the end of the line stood Francis. He smiled at us, his eyes bright and sharp. He had presided over dozens of Aryan weddings, but this one was different. “Ladybug,” he said, husky. “Aren’t you something?” Then he turned to me. “You fuck with her and I will kill you.”

“Yes, sir,” I managed.

“Brittany,” Francis began, “do you promise to obey Turk and continue the heritage of the White race?”

“I do,” she vowed.

“And Turk, will you honor this woman in war as your Aryan bride?”

“I will,” I said.

We turned toward each other. I looked her in the eye, unwavering, as we recited the Fourteen Words, the mantra David Lane created when he was running the Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.

I kissed Brit, while behind us, someone lit a wooden swastika to brand this moment. I swear I felt a shift in me that day. Like I really had handed over half my heart to this woman, and she had given me hers, and the only way we would both continue to survive was with this patchwork.

I was dimly aware of Francis speaking, of people clapping. But I was pulled toward Brit, like we were the last two people on earth.

We might as well have been.

“MY CLIENT HATES ME,” I tell Micah, as we are standing in the kitchen washing dishes.

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.”

I glance at him. “She thinks I’m a racist.”

“She has a point,” Micah says mildly, and I turn to him, my eyebrows shooting up to my hairline. “You’re white and she’s not, and you both happen to live in a world where white people have all the power.”

“I’m not saying that her life hasn’t been harder than mine,” I argue. “I’m not one of those people who thinks that just because we elected a black president we’re magically postracial. I work with minority clients every day who’ve been screwed by the healthcare system and the criminal justice system and the educational system. I mean, prisons are run as a business. Someone’s profiting from keeping a steady stream of people going to jail.”

We had hosted some of Micah’s colleagues for dinner. I’d had high hopes of serving a gourmet meal but wound up making a taco bar and offering a store-bought bakery pie that I passed off as being homemade after I broke off the edges of the crust a little to make it slightly less perfect. Throughout the evening, my mind wandered. Granted, when conversation drifted toward rates of retinal nerve fiber layer loss in contralateral eyes of glaucoma patients with unilateral progression, I couldn’t be blamed. But I already was obsessing over my earlier argument with Ruth. If I was in the right, how come I couldn’t stop rehashing what I’d said?