“People accused of serious crimes.”
Immediately, I am on the defensive. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“I believe you. However, we still have to convince a jury. So we have to go back to the basics to figure out why you’ve been charged.”
I look at her carefully, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. This is the only case on my radar, but maybe she is juggling hundreds. Maybe she honestlyhasforgotten the skinhead with the tattoo who spit on me in the courtroom. “I’d think that’s pretty obvious. That baby’s father didn’t want me near his son.”
“The white supremacist? He has nothing to do with your case.”
For a moment, I’m speechless. I was removed from the care of a patient because of the color of my skin, and then penalized for following those directions when the same patient went into distress. How on earth could the two not be related? “But I’m the only nurse of color on the birthing pavilion.”
“To the State, it doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white or blue or green,” Kennedy explains. “To them you had a legal duty to take care of an infant under your charge.” She starts listing all the ways the jury can find a reason to convict me. Each feels like a brick being mortared into place, trapping me in this hole. I realize that I have made a grave mistake: I had assumed that justice was truly just, that jurors would assume I was innocent until proven guilty. But prejudice is exactly the opposite: judging before the evidence exists.
I don’t stand a chance.
“Do you really believe that if I was white,” I say quietly, “I’d be sitting here with you right now?”
She shakes her head. “No. I believe it’s too risky to bring up in court.”
So we are supposed to win a case by pretending the reason it happened doesn’t exist? It seems dishonest, oblivious. Like saying a patient died of an infected hangnail, without mentioning that he had Type 1 diabetes.
“If no one ever talks about race in court,” I say, “how is anything ever supposed to change?”
She folds her hands on the table between us. “You file a civil lawsuit. I can’t do it for you, but I can call around and find you someone who works with employment discrimination.” She explains, in legalese, what that means for me.
The damages she mentions are more than I ever imagined in my wildest dreams.
But there is a catch. There’s always a catch. The lawsuit that might net me this payout, that might help me hire a private lawyer who might actually be willing to admit that race is what landed me in court in the first place, can’t be filed untilthislawsuit wraps up. In other words, if I’m found guilty now, I can kiss that future money goodbye.
Suddenly I realize that Kennedy’s refusal to mention race in court may not be ignorant. It’s the very opposite. It’s because she is aware of exactly what I have to do in order to get what I deserve.
I might as well be blind and lost, and Kennedy McQuarrie is the only one with a map. So I look her in the eye. “What do you want to know?” I say.
WHENICOME HOME THEnight after my first meeting with Ruth, Micah is working late and my mother is watching Violet. The house smells of oregano and freshly baked dough. “Is it my lucky day?” I call out, shuffling off the heaviness of my job as Violet gets up from the table where she’s coloring and makes a beeline for me. “Is there homemade pizza for dinner?”
I swing my daughter up in my arms. She is clutching a violent red crayon in one small fist. “I made you one. Guess what it is.”
My mother comes out of the kitchen holding an amoebic blob on a plate. “Oh, clearly it’s an…alie—” I catch my mother’s eye, and she shakes her head. Behind Violet’s back she puts her hands up and bares her teeth. “Dinosaur,” I correct. “I mean, obviously.”
Violet smiles widely. “But he’s sick.” She points to the oregano spotting the cheese. “That’s why he has a rash.”
“Is it chicken pox?” I ask, as I take a bite.
“No,” she says. “He has a reptile dysfunction.”
I nearly spit out the pizza. Immediately I drop Violet to her feet. As she runs back to the table to continue coloring, I raise a brow. “What were you watching?” I calmly ask my mother.
She knows that the only television we let Violet watch isSesame Streetor Disney Junior. But from the studied wash of innocence on my mother’s face I know she’s hiding something. “Nothing.”
I pivot, staring at the blank TV screen. On a hunch, I pick the remote up from the couch and turn it on.
Wallace Mercy is grandstanding in all his glory, outside City Hall in Manhattan. His wild white hair stands on end, like he’s been electrocuted. His fist is raised in solidarity with whatever apparent injustice he’s currently championing. “My brothers and sisters! I ask you: when did the wordmisunderstandingbecome synonymous withracial profiling? We demand an apology from the New York City police commissioner, for the shame and inconvenience suffered by this celebrated athlete—” The Fox news logo runs beneath the slightly familiar face of a handsome dark-skinned man.
Fox News. A channel that Micah and I do not generally watch. A channel that would easily be the home of multiple ads about erectile dysfunction.
“You let Violet watch this?”
“Of course not,” my mother says. “I just turned it on during her naptime.”
