Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

I told Brit the carver had been the one to screw up. I didn’t admit it had been my idea all along.

I like the idea that the word on my son’s grave matches the tattoo on the knuckles of my left hand. It’s like I carry him with me.

We stand at the grave until Brit gets too cold. There is a peach fuzz of lawn, seeded after the funeral, already brown. A second death.

–

THE FIRST THINGS I see at the courthouse are the niggers.

It’s like the whole park in the middle of New Haven is covered with them. They’re waving flags and singing hymns.

It’s that asshole from television, Wallace Something. The one who thinks he’s a reverend and probably got ordained online for five bucks. He’s giving some kind of nigger history lesson, talking about Bacon’s Rebellion. “In response, my brothers and sisters,” he says, “Whites and blacks were separated. If they united, it was believed they could do too much damage together. And by 1705, indentured servants who were Christian-and White-were given land, guns, food, money. Those who were not were enslaved. Our land and livestock was taken. Our arms were taken. If we lifted a hand to a White man, our very lives could be taken.” He raises his arms. “History is told by Americans of Anglo descent.”

Damn straight. I look at the size of the crowd listening to him. I think of the Alamo, where a handful of Texans held off an army of spics for twelve days.

I mean, they lost, but still.

Suddenly, out of the sea of black, I see a White fist raised. A symbol.

The crowd shifts as the man walks toward me. A big dude, with a bald head and a long red beard. He stops in front of me and Brit and holds out his hand. “Carl Thorheldson,” he says, introducing himself. “But you know me as Odin45.”

It is the handle of a frequent poster on Lonewolf.org.

His companion shakes my hand, too. “Erich Duval. WhiteDevil.”

They are joined by a woman with twins, little silver-haired toddlers each balanced on a hip. Then a dude in camo. Three girls with heavy black eyeliner. A tall man in combat boots with a toothpick clenched between his teeth. A young guy with thick-framed hipster glasses and a laptop in his arms.

A steady stream closes ranks around me-people I know by a shared interest in Lonewolf.org. They are tailors and accountants and teachers, they are Minutemen patrolling the borders in Arizona and militia in the hills of New Hampshire. They are neo-Nazis who never decredited. They have been anonymous, hiding behind the screens of usernames, until now.

For my son, they’re willing to be outed once again.

ON THE MORNING OF THE trial, I oversleep. I shoot out of bed like a cannonball, throwing water on my face and yanking my hair into a bun at the nape and stuffing myself into my panty hose and my best navy trial suit. Literally three minutes of grooming, and I’m in the kitchen, where Micah is standing at the stove. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I demand.

He smiles and gives me a quick kiss. “I love you too, moon of my life,” he says. “Go sit down next to Violet.”

Our daughter is at the table, looking at me. “Mommy? You’re wearing two different shoes.”

“Oh, God,” I mutter, pivoting to go back to the bedroom, but Micah grabs my shoulder and steers me to a seat.

“You’re going to eat this while it’s hot. You need energy to take down a skinhead and his wife. Otherwise, you’re going to run out of steam, and I know from personal experience that the only option for food in that courthouse is something brown they are trying to pass off as coffee and a vending machine of granola bars from the Jurassic period.” He puts down a plate-two fried eggs, toast with jam, even hash browns. I am so hungry that I’ve already finished the eggs before he can set down the last of my breakfast-a steaming latte in his old Harvard Med School mug. “Look,” he jokes, “I even served you your coffee in the White Privilege cup.”

I burst out laughing. “Then I’ll take it with me in the car for luck. Or guilt. Or something.”

I kiss Violet on the crown of her head and grab my matching shoe from the bedroom closet, along with my phone, charger, computer, and briefcase. Micah’s waiting for me at the door with the mug of coffee. “In all seriousness? I’m proud of you.”

I let myself have this one moment. “Thanks.”

“Go forth and be Marcia Clark.”

I wince. “She’s a prosecutor. Can I be Gloria Allred?”

Micah shrugs. “Just knock ’em dead.”

I am already walking toward the driveway. “Pretty sure that’s the last thing you’re supposed to say to someone who’s about to try her first murder case,” I reply, and I slip into the driver’s seat without spilling a drop of my coffee.

I mean, that’s got to be a sign, right?

–

I DRIVE AROUND the front of the courthouse just to see what’s happening, even though I’ve arranged to meet Ruth somewhere I know she won’t be accosted. A circus, that’s really the only way to describe it. On one end of the green, Wallace Freaking Mercy is broadcasting live, preaching to a crowd through a megaphone. “In 1691 the word white was used in court for the first time. Back then, this nation went by the one-drop rule,” I hear him say. “You needed only one drop of blood to be considered black in this country…”

On the other end of the green is a cluster of white people. At first I think they are watching Wallace’s shenanigans, and then I see one hoisting the picture of the dead baby.

They begin to march through the group that is listening to Wallace. There are curses, shoving, a punch thrown. The police immediately join the fray, pushing the blacks and the whites apart.

It makes me think of a magic trick I did last year to impress Violet. I poured water into a pie pan and dusted the top with pepper. Then I told her the pepper was afraid of Ivory soap, and sure enough, when I dipped the bar of soap into the bowl, the pepper flew to the edges.

To Violet, it was magic. Of course I knew better-what caused the pepper to run from the soap was surface tension.

Which, really, is kind of what’s going on here.

I drive around to the parish house on Wall Street. Immediately, I see Edison, standing lookout-but no Ruth. I get out of my car, feeling my heart sink. “Is she…?”

He points across the lot, to where Ruth is standing on the sidewalk, looking at the foot traffic across the street. So far, nobody has noticed her, but it’s a risk. I go to drag her back, touching her arm, but she shakes me away. “I would like a moment,” she says formally.

I back off.

Students and professors pass, their collars turned up against the wind. A bicycle whizzes by, and then the dinosaur bulk of a bus sighs at the curb, belching out a few passengers before moving away again. “I keep having these…thoughts,” Ruth says. “You know, all weekend long. How many more times will I get to take the bus? Or cook breakfast? Is this the last time I’ll write out a check for my electricity bill? Would I have paid more attention last April when the daffodils first came up, if I’d known I wasn’t going to see them again?”

She takes a step toward a line of adolescent trees planted in a neat row. Her hands wrap around one narrow trunk as if she’s throttling it, and she turns her face to the bare branches overhead.

“Look at that sky,” Ruth says. “It’s the kind of blue you find in tubes of oil paint. Like color, boiled down to its essence.” Then she turns to me. “How long does it take to forget this?”

I put my arm around her shoulders. She’s shaking, and I know it has nothing to do with the temperature. “If I have anything to say about it,” I tell her, “you’ll never find out.”