Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“So what happens now?”

I stop walking and turn to him. “Your guess is as good as mine,” I say.

–

TOWARD THE END of a case, a defense attorney will raise a motion for judgment of acquittal. But this time, when I step before Judge Thunder with Odette, he looks at me like I have some nerve to even be raising this issue. “There’s no proof that Davis Bauer’s death resulted from Ruth’s actions. Or inactions,” I add feebly, because at this point, even I’m not sure what to believe.

“Your Honor,” Odette says. “It’s clear that this is a last-ditch effort of desperation for the defense, given what we all just heard during that testimony. In fact I would humbly ask the court to reverse the decision on your previous motion to throw out the charge of murder. Clearly, Ruth Jefferson just gave proof of malice.”

My blood freezes. I knew Odette would come out swinging, but I hadn’t anticipated this. “Your Honor, the ruling has to stand. You already dismissed the murder charge. Double jeopardy applies; Ruth can’t be charged twice with the same crime.”

“In this one instance,” Judge Thunder says grudgingly, “Ms. McQuarrie is correct. You’ve already had your bite at the apple, Ms. Lawton, and I already rejected the murder charge. I will, however, reserve my right to rule on the defense’s renewed motion for judgment of acquittal.” He looks at us each in turn. “Closing arguments start Monday morning, Counselors. Let’s try not to make this any more of a shit show than it’s already been, all right?”

I tell Howard to take the rest of the day off, and I drive home. My head feels cluttered, my mind too tight in my skull, as if I’m fighting a cold. When I get to my house, it smells of vanilla. I step into the kitchen to find my mother wearing a Wonder Woman apron while Violet kneels on one of the kitchen stools, her hand in a bowl of cookie dough. “Mommy!” she cries, raising sticky fists. “We’re making you a surprise so pretend you can’t see.”

There’s something about her phrase that sticks in my throat. Pretend you can’t see.

Out of the mouths of babes.

My mother takes one look at me and frowns over Violet’s head. “You okay?” she mouths silently.

In response, I sit down next to Violet and take a scoop of the cookie dough with my fingers and start eating.

My daughter is a lefty, in spite of the fact that Micah and I are not. We even have an ultrasound picture of her sucking her left thumb in utero. “What if it’s that simple?” I murmur.

“What if what’s that simple?”

I look at my mom. “Do you think the world is biased toward righties?”

“Um, I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

“That’s because,” I point out, “ you’re a righty. But think about it. Can openers, scissors, even desks at college that fold out from the side-they’re all meant for right-handed people.”

Violet lifts up the hand that is holding her spoon, frowning at it. “Baby girl,” my mother says, “why don’t you go wash up so you can taste the first batch that comes out of the oven?”

She slithers off the stool, her hands held up like Micah’s before he enters an operating room.

“Do you want to give the child nightmares?” my mother scolds. “Honestly, Kennedy! Where is this even coming from? Does this have to do with your case?”

“I’ve read that lefties die young because they’re more accident prone. When you were growing up, didn’t nuns slap the kids who wrote with their left hands?”

My mother puts a hand on her hip. “One man’s curse is another’s boon, you know. Lefties are supposed to be more creative. Weren’t Michelangelo and da Vinci and Bach all left-handed? And back in medieval times you were lucky to be a lefty, because the majority of men fought with a sword in their right hand and a shield in their left, which meant you could pull off a sneak attack”-she reaches toward me with a spatula, poking me on the right side of my chest-“like this.”

I laugh. “Why do you even know that?”

“I read romance novels, sugar,” she says. “Don’t worry about Violet. If she really wants to, you know, she can always teach herself to be ambidextrous. Your father, he was just as good with his right hand as with his left one-writing, hammering, even getting to second base.” She grins. “And I am not talking about batting practice.”

“Ew,” I say. “Stop.” But meanwhile, my brain is spinning: What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn’t fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit?

How come we haven’t been able to change the puzzle instead?

“Mom?” I ask. “Can you stay with Vi for a few more hours?”

–

I REMEMBER READING a novel once that said the native Alaskans who came in contact with white missionaries thought, at first, they were ghosts. And why shouldn’t they have thought that? Like ghosts, white people move effortlessly through boundaries and borders. Like ghosts, we can be anywhere we want to be.

I decide it’s time to feel the walls around me.

The first thing I do is leave my car in the driveway and walk a mile to a bus stop. Chilled to the bone, I duck into a CVS to warm up. I stop in front of a display I’ve never paused at before and take down a purple box. Dark and Lovely Healthy-Gloss relaxer. I look at the pretty woman in the picture. For medium hair textures, I read. Straight, sleek, and shiny hair. I scan the instructions, the multiple-step process needed to get hair that looks like mine after I blow it dry.

Next I reach for a bottle, Luster’s Pink oil moisturizer hair lotion. A black tub of Ampro Pro Styl. A satin bonnet that claims to minimize frizz and breakage at night.

These products are foreign to me. I have no idea what they do, why they’re necessary for black people, or how to use them. But I bet Ruth could name five shampoos white people use, just off the top of her head, thanks to ubiquitous television commercials.

I walk downtown, where for a little while I sit on a bench for another bus and watch two homeless people soliciting strangers on the street. They target mostly well-dressed white people in business suits, or college students plugged into their headphones, and maybe one in six or seven reaches into his or her pocket for change. Of the two homeless people, one routinely gets a donation more often than the other. She’s elderly, and white. The other one-a young black man-is given a wider berth.

The Hill neighborhood of New Haven is among the most notorious in the city. I’ve had dozens of clients from there-mostly involved in selling drugs near the Church Street South low-income housing. That’s also where Adisa, Ruth’s sister, lives.

I wander the streets. There are kids running, chasing each other. Girls huddled together, speaking a flurry of Spanish. Men stand on street corners, arms folded, silent sentries. I am the only white face in the vicinity. It is already starting to get dark out when I duck into a bodega. The cashier at the counter stares at me as I walk through the aisles. I can feel her gaze like lightning between my shoulder blades. “Can I help you?” she asks finally, and I shake my head and walk out.

It’s unsettling, not seeing someone who looks like me. People I pass don’t make eye contact. I am the stranger in their midst, the sore thumb, the one that is not like the others. And yet, at the very same instant, I have become invisible.

When I get to Church Street South, I walk around the buildings. Some of the apartments, I know, have been condemned for mold, for structural damage. It is like a ghost town: curtains pulled tight, residents holed up inside. Beneath a stairwell, I see two young men, passing cash. An old lady tries to haul her oxygen tank up the stairs above them. “Excuse me,” I call out. “Can I give you a hand?”