“I don’t think Violet is making a statement about equality as much as she is about frogs. She told me she’s going to ask for one as a pet for Christmas and kiss it and see what happens.”
“She’s not getting a frog for Christmas. But if she wants to be Tiana for Halloween I’ll buy her the costume.”
“I willsewher the costume,” my mother corrects. “No grandbaby of mine is going trick-or-treating in a store-bought piece of trash that would probably go up in flames if she walked past a jack-o’-lantern.” I don’t fight her on this. I can’t even sew a seam. I have a pair of work trousers in my closet that are hemmed with superglue.
“Terrific. I’m glad you can overcome your resistance in order to make Violet’s dream come true.”
My mother lifts her chin a notch. “I did not tell you this so you could scold me, Kennedy. Just because I grew up in the South doesn’t make me prejudiced.”
“Mom,” I point out. “You had a blacknanny.”
“And I adored Beattie like she was family,” my mother says.
“Except…she wasn’t.”
My mother pours more wine into her glass. “Kennedy,” she sighs. “It’s just a silly costume. Not a cause.”
Suddenly I’m so incredibly tired. It’s not just the pace of my job or the overwhelming number of cases I have that wears me down. It’s wondering if anything I do actually makes a difference.
“Once,” my mother says, her voice soft, “when I was about Violet’s age, and Beattie wasn’t looking, I tried to drink out of the colored water fountain at the park. I stepped up on the cement block and turned the knob. I was expecting something extraordinary. I was expectingrainbows. But you know—it was just like everyone else’s water.” She meets my gaze. “Violet would make the most beautiful little Cinderella.”
“Mom…”
“I’m just saying. It took how many years for Disney to give all those little black girls their own princess? You think it’s right for Violet to want something they’ve been waiting on forever?”
“Mom!”
She lifts her hands in concession. “Fine. Tiana. Done.”
I lift the bottle of wine, tilt it up, and drink down every last drop.
—
AFTER MY MOTHERleaves, I fall asleep on the couch with Violet, and when I wake up,The Lion Kingis being aired on Disney Junior. I blink just in time to see the death of Mufasa playing out on-screen. He is being trampled by the water buffalo just as Micah walks in, pulling off the garrote of his tie with one hand. “Hey,” I say. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”
“Because I am a ninja ingeniously masquerading as an ophthalmological surgeon.” He leans down and kisses me, smiles at Violet, who is softly snoring. “My day was full of glaucoma and vitreous fluid. How was yours?”
“Considerably less gross,” I say.
“Did Crazy Sharon come back?”
Crazy Sharon is a repeat offender, a stalker who has a thing for Peter Salovey, the president of Yale University. She leaves him flowers, love notes, and once, underwear. I’ve done six arraignments with her, and Salovey has been president only since 2013.
“No,” I say, and I tell him about Ruth, and Edison, and the skinheads in the gallery.
“Really?” Micah is most interested in the last. “Like, with suspenders and flight jackets and the boots and everything?”
“Number one, no, and number two, should I be scared that you know all that?” I move my feet on the coffee table so he can sit down opposite me. “In fact, they looked just like us. It’s pretty terrifying. I mean, what if your next-door neighbor was a white supremacist and you didn’t know it?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mrs. Greenblatt is not a skinhead,” Micah says. As he talks, he gently lifts Violet into his arms.
“It’s all a moot point anyway. It’s too big a case for me to be assigned,” I tell him, climbing the stairs to our daughter’s bedroom. And then I add, “Ruth Jefferson lives in East End.”
“Hunh,” Micah replies. He settles Vi into her bed and pulls up her covers, dropping a kiss on her forehead.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, combative, even though I had the same sort of reaction.
“It’s not supposed to meananything,” Micah says. “It was just a response.”
