Micah crosses his legs. “Edison, my wife tells me you’re quite the student.”
Yes. Because I neglected to mention to Kennedy that of late, he’s been suspended.
“Thank you, sir,” Edison replies. “I’ve been applying to colleges.”
“Oh yeah? That’s great. What do you want to study?”
“History, maybe. Or politics.”
Micah nods, interested. “Are you a big fan of Obama?”
Why do white people always assume that?
“I was kind of young when he was running,” Edison says. “But I went around with my mom campaigning for Hillary, when she was running against him. I guess because of my dad I’m sensitive to military issues, and her position on the Iraq War made more sense at the time; she was vocally in favor of invasion and Obama was opposed from the start.”
I puff up with pride. “Well,” Micah says, impressed. “I look forward to seeing your name on a ticket one day.”
Violet, clearly bored by this conversation, steps over my legs to hold out a crayon to Edison. “Wanna color?” she asks.
“Um, yeah, okay,” Edison replies. He sinks down to his knees, shoulder to shoulder with Kennedy’s girl, so that he can reach the coloring book. He starts making Cinderella’s dress green.
“No,” Violet interrupts, a tiny despot. “That’s supposed to beblue.” She points to Cinderella’s dress in the coloring book, half hidden beneath Edison’s broad palm.
“Violet,” Kennedy says, “we let our guests make their own choices, remember?”
“That’s okay, Mrs. McQuarrie. I wouldn’t want to mess with Cinderella,” Edison answers.
The little girl proudly hands him the right color crayon, a blue one. Edison bends his head and starts to scribble again.
“Next week you start jury selection?” I ask. “Should I be worried about that?”
“No, of course not. It’s just—”
“Edison?” Violet asks. “Is that a chain?”
He touches the necklace he’s been wearing lately, ever since he started hanging with his cousin. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So that means you’re a slave,” she states matter-of-factly.
“Violet!” Both Micah and Kennedy shout her name simultaneously.
“Oh my God, Edison. Ruth. I’m so sorry,” Kennedy blusters. “I don’t know where she would have heard that—”
“In school,” Violet announces. “Josiah told Taisha that people who look like her used to wear chains and their history was that they were slaves.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Micah says. “Okay, Vi? It’s not something to talk about now.”
“It’s okay,” I say, even though I can feel the unease in the room, as if someone has taken away all the oxygen. “Do you know what a slave is?”
Violet shakes her head.
“It’s when someone owns someone else.”
I watch the little girl turn this over in her head. “Like a pet?”
Kennedy puts her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to do this,” she says quietly.
“Don’t you think I alreadyhadto, once?” I glance at her daughter again. “Kind of like a pet, but also different. A long time ago, people who looked like you and your mama and daddy found a place in the world where people looked like me, and like Edison, and like Taisha. And we were doing things so fine there—building homes, and cooking food, making something out of nothing—that they wanted it in their country too. So they brought over the people who looked like me, without asking our permission. We didn’t have a choice. So a slave—that’s just someone who doesn’t have a choice in what they do, or what’s done to them.”
