He gathers up some files and checks a stack of messages, then reaches for his coat. “Everything all right? You were a million miles away when I walked in.”
I lift the eye model and turn it over in my hands. “I feel like I’ve been standing underneath an open window, just as a baby gets tossed out. I grab the baby, right, because who wouldn’t? But then another baby gets tossed out, so I pass the baby to someone else, and I make the catch. This keeps happening. And before you know it there are a whole bunch of people who are getting really good at passing along babies, just like I’m good at catching them, but no one ever asks who the fuck is throwing the babies out the window in the first place.”
“Um.” Micah tilts his head. “What baby are we talking about?”
“It’s not a baby, it’s a metaphor,” I say, irritated. “I’ve been doing my job, but who cares, if the system keeps on creating situations where my job is necessary? Shouldn’t we focus on the big picture, instead of just catching whatever falls out the window at any given moment?”
Micah’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. Behind his shoulder a poster hangs on the wall: the anatomy of the human eye. There is the optic nerve, the aqueous humor, the conjunctiva. The ciliary body, the retina, the choroid. “For a living,” I murmur, “you make people see.”
“Well,” he says. “Yeah.”
I look directly at him. “That’s what I need to do too.”
EDISON ISN’T AT HOME, ANDmy car is gone.
I wait for him, text him, call him, pray, but there is no response. I imagine him walking the streets, hearing my voice ring out in his ears. He is wondering if he has it in him, too, the capacity for rage. If nature or nurture matters more; if he is doubly damned.
Yes, I hated that racist father for belittling me. Yes, I hated the hospital for sticking by his side. I don’t know if that bled over into my ability to care for a patient. I can’t tell you that for a moment, it didn’t cross my mind. That I didn’t look down at that innocent baby and think of the monster he would grow up to be.
Does that make me the villain here? Or does that just make me human?
And Kennedy. What I said wasn’t in my mind, it was in my heart. I do not regret a syllable. Every time I think about what it felt like to be the one who walked out of that room—who had thatprivilege,for once—I feel dizzy, like I’m flying.
When I hear steps outside, I fly to the door and open it, but it is not my son—just my sister. Adisa stands with her arms crossed. “Figured you’d be home,” she says, pushing her way into my living room. “After that, I didn’t imagine you’d be sticking around the courthouse.”
She makes herself comfortable, draping her coat over a kitchen chair, sitting down on the couch, putting her feet up on the coffee table.
“Have you seen Edison? Is he with Tabari?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Tabari’s home babysitting.”
“I’m worried, A.”
“About Edison?”
“Among other things.”
Adisa pats the couch beside her. I sit down, and she reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “Edison’s a smart boy. He’ll wind up on his feet.”
I swallow. “Will you…watch him for me? Make sure that he doesn’t just, you know, give up?”
“If you making out your will, I always liked those black leather boots of yours.” She shakes her head. “Ruth, relax.”
“I can’t relax. I can’t sit here and think that my son is going to throw away his whole future and it’s my fault.”
She looks me in the eye. “Then you’re just gonna have to make sure you’re here to monitor him.”
But we both know that’s not in my hands. Before I know it, I am bent at the waist, punched in the gut by a truth so raw and so frightening that I can’t breathe: I have lost control of my future. And it’s my own damn fault.
I didn’t play by the rules. I did what Kennedy told me not to. And now I’m paying the price for using my voice.
Adisa’s arm goes around me, pressing my face against her shoulder. It isn’t until she does that that I realize I’m sobbing. “I’m scared,” I gasp.
“I know. But you always got me,” Adisa vows. “I will bake you a cake with a file in it.”
That makes me hiccup on a laugh. “No you won’t.”
“You’re right,” she says, reconsidering. “I can’t bake for shit.” Suddenly she pushes off the couch and reaches into the pocket of her coat. “I thought you should have this.”
