Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She gets to her feet and stares down at me, her hands balanced on her hips. “You really think I’d use my baby sister like that?”

I challenge her. “You really gonna stand here drenched to the bone and tell me it’s not raining?”

Before she can answer there is a loud crash as a door falls back on its hinges and slams into the wall. Tabari swaggers out from one of the bedrooms with a friend. “You rob a trucker fuh that hat, yo?” He laughs. They are amped up, loud, their pants riding so low I don’t know why they even bother to wear them. All I can think is that I’d never let Edison out of the house like that, like he was looking to intimidate.

Then Tabari’s friend turns around and I realize it’s my son.

“Edison?”

“Ain’t it nice,” Adisa says, smiling. “The cousins hanging?”

“What are you doing here?” Edison says, in a tone that lets me know this is not a pleasant surprise.

“Don’t you have homework to do?”

“Did it.”

“College applications?”

He looks at me, his eyes hooded. “They ain’t due for another week.”

Ain’t?

“What’s the problem?” he asks. “You’re always telling me how important family is.” He says that word as if it is a swear.

“Where exactly are you and Tabari going?”

Tabari looks up. “The movies, Auntie,” he says.

“The movies.” Like hell, I think. “What film are you seeing?”

He and Edison exchange a look and start laughing. “We gonna pick when we get there,” Tabari says.

Adisa steps forward, arms crossed. “You got a problem with that, Ruth?”

“Yes. Yes I do,” I explode. “Because I think it’s a lot more likely that your son is going to take Edison down by the basketball court to smoke weed than to see the next Oscar nominee.”

My sister’s jaw drops. “You judging my family,” she hisses, “when you on trial for murder?”

I grab Edison’s arm. “You’re coming with me,” I announce, and then I turn to Adisa. “Have fun doing your interview with Wallace Mercy. Just make sure you tell him, and the adoring public, that you and your sister are no longer on speaking terms.”

With that, I drag my son out of her home. I rip the hat off his head when we get downstairs and tell him to pull up his pants. We are halfway to the bus station before he says a word. “I’m sorry,” Edison begins.

“You better be,” I answer, rounding on him. “You lost your damn mind? I didn’t raise you to be like this.”

“Tabari’s not as bad as his friends.”

I start walking, and I don’t look back. “Tabari is not my son,” I say.

–

WHEN I WAS pregnant with Edison, all I knew was that I didn’t want the experience of giving birth to be anything like Adisa’s-who claimed to not even realize she was pregnant for six months when she had her first baby, and who practically had her second on the subway. Me, I wanted the best care I could get, the finest doctors. Since Wesley was on a tour of duty, I enlisted Mama as my birthing coach. When it was time, we took a taxi to Mercy-West Haven because Mama couldn’t drive and I was in no state to. I had planned for a natural birth, because as a labor and delivery nurse I’d written this moment in my head a thousand times, but just like any well-laid plan, that wasn’t in the cards for me. As I was being wheeled into the OR for a C-section, Mama was singing Baptist hymns, and when I came to after the procedure, she was holding my son.

“Ruth,” she said to me, her eyes so full of pride they were a color I’d never seen before. “Ruth, look at what God made for you.”

She held the baby out to me, and I suddenly realized that although I’d planned my first birth down to the minute, I hadn’t organized a single second of what might come afterward. I had no idea how to be a mother. My son was stiff in my arms, and then he opened his mouth and started wailing, like this world was an affront to him.

Panicked, I looked up at my mama. I was a straight-A student; I was an overachiever. I had never imagined that this-the most natural of all relationships-would make me feel so incompetent. I jiggled the baby in my arms, but that only made him cry louder. His feet kicked like he was traveling on an imaginary bicycle; his arms flailed, each tiny finger flexed and rigid. His screams grew tighter and tighter, an uneven seam of anger punctuated by the tiny knots of his hiccups. His cheeks were red with effort, as he tried to tell me something I was not equipped to understand.

“Mama?” I begged. “What do I do?”

I held out my arms to her, hoping she would take him and calm him down. But she just shook her head. “You tell him who you are to him,” she instructed, and she took a step back, as if to remind me I was in this by myself.

So I bent my face close to his. I pressed his spine up under my heart, where it had been for so many months. “Your name is Edison Wesley Jefferson,” I whispered. “I am your mama, and I’m going to give you the best life I can.”

Edison blinked. He stared up at me through his dark eyes, as if I were a shadow he had to distinguish from the rest of this new, strange world. His cries hitched twice, a train headed off its track, and then crashed into silence.

I could tell you the exact minute my son relaxed into his new surroundings. I know this detail because it was the moment I did the same.

“See,” Mama said, from somewhere behind me, somewhere outside the circle of just us two. “I told you so.”

–

KENNEDY AND I meet every two weeks, even when there’s no new information. Sometimes she’ll text me, or stop by McDonald’s to say hello. At one of these visits she invites me and Edison over for dinner.

Before going to Kennedy’s home, I change three times. Finally Edison knocks on the bathroom door. “We going to your lawyer’s,” he asks, “or to meet the queen?”

He’s right. I don’t know why I’m nervous. Except that this feels like crossing a line. It’s one thing to have her here to review information about my case, but this invitation didn’t have any work attached to it. This invitation was more like…a social call.

Edison is dressed in a button-down shirt and khaki pants and has been told on penalty of death that he will behave like the gentleman I know him to be, or I will whup him when he gets home. When we ring the doorbell, the husband-Micah, that’s his name-answers, with a girl tucked under his arm like a rag doll. “You must be Ruth,” he says, taking the bouquet I offer and shaking my hand warmly, then shaking Edison’s. He pivots, then turns the other way. “My daughter, Violet, is around here somewhere…I just saw her…I’m sure she’ll want to say hello.” As he twists, the little girl whips around, her hair flying, her giggles falling over my feet like bubbles.

She slips out of her dad’s arm, and I kneel down. Violet McQuarrie looks like a tiny version of her mama, albeit dressed in a Princess Tiana costume. I hold out a Mason jar that is filled with miniature white lights, and flip the switch so that it illuminates. “This is for you,” I tell her. “It’s a fairy jar.”

Her eyes widen. “Wow,” Violet breathes, and she takes it and runs off.

I get to my feet. “It also doubles as an excellent night-light,” I tell Micah, as Kennedy comes out of the kitchen, wearing jeans and a sweater and an apron.

“You made it!” she says, smiling. She has spaghetti sauce on her chin.

“Yes,” I answer. “I must have driven past your place a hundred times. I just didn’t know, you know, that you lived here.”

And still wouldn’t, had I not been indicted for murder. I know she’s thinking it, too, but Micah saves the moment. “Drink? Can I get you something, Ruth? We have wine, beer, gin and tonic…”