Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“Wine would be nice.”

We sit down in the living room. There is already a cheese plate on the coffee table. “Look at that,” Edison murmurs to me. “A basketful of crackers.”

I shoot him a look that could make a bird fall from the sky.

“It’s so nice of you to invite us into your home,” I say politely.

“Well, don’t thank me yet,” Kennedy replies. “Dinner with a four-year-old is not exactly a gourmet dining experience.” She smiles at Violet, who is coloring on the other side of the coffee table. “Needless to say we don’t entertain much these days.”

“I remember when Edison was that age. I am pretty sure we ate a variation of macaroni and cheese every night for a full year.”

Micah crosses his legs. “Edison, my wife tells me you’re quite the student.”

Yes. Because I neglected to mention to Kennedy that of late, he’s been suspended.

“Thank you, sir,” Edison replies. “I’ve been applying to colleges.”

“Oh yeah? That’s great. What do you want to study?”

“History, maybe. Or politics.”

Micah nods, interested. “Are you a big fan of Obama?”

Why do white people always assume that?

“I was kind of young when he was running,” Edison says. “But I went around with my mom campaigning for Hillary, when she was running against him. I guess because of my dad I’m sensitive to military issues, and her position on the Iraq War made more sense at the time; she was vocally in favor of invasion and Obama was opposed from the start.”

I puff up with pride. “Well,” Micah says, impressed. “I look forward to seeing your name on a ticket one day.”

Violet, clearly bored by this conversation, steps over my legs to hold out a crayon to Edison. “Wanna color?” she asks.

“Um, yeah, okay,” Edison replies. He sinks down to his knees, shoulder to shoulder with Kennedy’s girl, so that he can reach the coloring book. He starts making Cinderella’s dress green.

“No,” Violet interrupts, a tiny despot. “That’s supposed to be blue. ” She points to Cinderella’s dress in the coloring book, half hidden beneath Edison’s broad palm.

“Violet,” Kennedy says, “we let our guests make their own choices, remember?”

“That’s okay, Mrs. McQuarrie. I wouldn’t want to mess with Cinderella,” Edison answers.

The little girl proudly hands him the right color crayon, a blue one. Edison bends his head and starts to scribble again.

“Next week you start jury selection?” I ask. “Should I be worried about that?”

“No, of course not. It’s just-”

“Edison?” Violet asks. “Is that a chain?”

He touches the necklace he’s been wearing lately, ever since he started hanging with his cousin. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“So that means you’re a slave,” she states matter-of-factly.

“Violet!” Both Micah and Kennedy shout her name simultaneously.

“Oh my God, Edison. Ruth. I’m so sorry,” Kennedy blusters. “I don’t know where she would have heard that-”

“In school,” Violet announces. “Josiah told Taisha that people who look like her used to wear chains and their history was that they were slaves.”

“We’ll discuss this later,” Micah says. “Okay, Vi? It’s not something to talk about now.”

“It’s okay,” I say, even though I can feel the unease in the room, as if someone has taken away all the oxygen. “Do you know what a slave is?”

Violet shakes her head.

“It’s when someone owns someone else.”

I watch the little girl turn this over in her head. “Like a pet?”

Kennedy puts her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to do this,” she says quietly.

“Don’t you think I already had to, once?” I glance at her daughter again. “Kind of like a pet, but also different. A long time ago, people who looked like you and your mama and daddy found a place in the world where people looked like me, and like Edison, and like Taisha. And we were doing things so fine there-building homes, and cooking food, making something out of nothing-that they wanted it in their country too. So they brought over the people who looked like me, without asking our permission. We didn’t have a choice. So a slave-that’s just someone who doesn’t have a choice in what they do, or what’s done to them.”

Violet sets down her crayon. Her face is twisted in thought.

“We weren’t the first slaves,” I tell her. “There are stories in a book I like, called the Bible. The Egyptians made Jewish people slaves who would build temples for them that looked like huge triangles, and were made out of bricks. They were able to make the Jewish people slaves because the Egyptians were the ones with the power.”

Then, like any other four-year-old, Violet bounces back to her spot beside my son. “Let’s color Rapunzel instead,” she announces-but then she hesitates. “I mean,” she corrects, “do you want to color Rapunzel?”

“Okay,” Edison says.

I may be the only person who notices, but while I’ve been explaining, he has taken off that chain from his neck and slipped it into his pocket.

“Thank you,” Micah says, sincere. “That was a really perfect Black history lesson.”

“Slavery isn’t Black history,” I point out. “It’s everyone’s history.”

A timer goes off, and Kennedy stands up. When she goes into the kitchen, I murmur something about wanting to help her and follow her. Immediately, she turns, her cheeks burning. “I am so, so sorry for that, Ruth.”

“Don’t be. She’s a baby. She doesn’t know any better yet.”

“Well, you did a much better job explaining than I ever would have.”

I watch her reach into the oven for a lasagne. “When Edison came home from school and asked if we were slaves, he was about the same age as Violet. And the last thing I wanted was to have that talk and leave him feeling like a victim.”

“Violet told me last week she wished she could be just like Taisha, because she gets to wear beads in her hair.”

“What did you say?”

Kennedy hesitates. “I don’t know. I probably bungled it. I said something about how everyone’s different and that’s what makes the world great. I swear, when she asks me things about race I turn into a freaking Coke commercial.”

I laugh. “In your defense, you probably don’t talk about it quite as much as I do. Practice makes perfect.”

“But you know what? When I was her age, I had a Taisha in my class too-except her name was Lesley. And God, I wanted to be her. I used to dream that I’d wake up Black. No joke.”

I raise my brows in mock horror. “And give up your winning lottery ticket? No way.”

She looks at me, and we both laugh, and in that instant we are merely two women, standing over a lasagne, telling the truth. In that instant, with our flaws and confessions trailing like a slip from a dress, we have more in common than we have differences.

I smile, and Kennedy smiles, and for that moment, at least, we really, really see each other. It’s a start.

Suddenly Edison comes into the kitchen holding out my cellphone. “What’s the matter?” I tease. “Don’t tell me you were fired because you made Ariel a brunette?”

“Mama, it’s Ms. Mina,” he says. “I think you better take it.”

–

ONE CHRISTMAS, WHEN I was ten, I got a Black Barbie. Her name was Christie, and she was just like the dolls Christina had, except for the skin color, and except for the fact that Christina had a whole shoe box full of Barbie clothes and my mama couldn’t afford those. Instead, she made Christie a wardrobe out of old socks and dish towels. She glued me a dream house out of shoe boxes. I was over the moon. This was even better than Christina’s collection, I told Mama, because I was the only person in the world who had it. My sister, Rachel, who was twelve, made fun of me. “Call them what you want,” she told me. “But they’re just knockoffs.”