Her Sister's Tattoo

by Ellen Meeropol

“Allen is a great lawyer, Mama, and he’s political. It’ll be all right.”

  “Sometimes you can’t make it right. You shouldn’t have gone to that demonstration. You should have stayed home with Molly.” Mama’s voice was raspy and raw, her words dragged over glass shards. “Your Pop’s right. This is big trouble.”

  Esther knew better than to talk back when Mama was in her dire-predictions-of-doom mood. No matter how innocent her sentence started out, somewhere between a daughter’s lips and Mama’s eardrum the words ignited and blazed. Usually Rosa was the flammable sister.

  This time, maybe Mama was right.

  Halfway down the block from the bus stop, Esther spotted the police car in front of her apartment. She hesitated, briefly considered turning around and—doing what? Running where? Two cops stepped from the cruiser and blocked the sidewalk, holding their billy clubs two-fisted, horizontal across their bodies at holster level. For one wild moment, Esther imagined they might twirl them like batons, toss them into the air like the girls on the high school team and catch them with split-second precision. Get real, she told herself. They’re much more likely to smash your head with the wooden clubs. She swallowed a nervous gulp, circled her arms around Molly, pulling damp warmth against her chest, then walked toward the policemen.

  The taller officer rested his left hand on his holster. “Esther Green?”

  She nodded, pointed to his gun. “You don’t need that.”

  He didn’t move his hand. “You’re coming with us to the station.”

  “I have to nurse my baby.”

  “Should’ve thought of your baby when you attacked that cop.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. “Please?”

  His partner shrugged. “You’ve got ten minutes. And we’re coming in with you.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Jake

  The yellow kitten wove in and out around his ankles. Jake chugged stale coffee, read the instructions on the back of the spaghetti box, and worried. Esther’s backpack was on the table and an uneaten tuna sandwich on the arm of the sofa. She must have already come home from the demonstration and gone out again, in a hurry. She usually left him a note. Something was wrong.

  No doubt that something was connected to the two policemen who were waiting at the curb when he got home. They asked for Esther but wouldn’t say what they wanted. When he looked through the slats of the Venetian blinds a moment before, their cruiser was still double-parked on the street below.

  Should he start the spaghetti now, or wait for her to get back? He was famished; on surgery rotation he never managed lunch. He ate the sandwich, ignoring the places where the kitten had nibbled, and rummaged in the cupboard. Where did she keep the canned clams? When he heard the apartment door open, he tossed the box on the counter. Good, she could take over making dinner.

  Two cops flanked Esther. Molly was fretful, working up to a meltdown. Jake looked from one officer to the other, then at Esther, trying to control his expression and his breathing.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “Ask your wife,” the tall cop answered.

  “Help me with her.” Esther struggled with the infant wrap. Maggie had learned to tie the khanga in the Peace Corps in Togo and insisted it was the best way to calm a fussy baby, but sometimes the fabric twisted with a diabolical mind of its own.

  Jake extricated Molly while Esther settled in the rocking chair. “It’s okay, Monkey,” he whispered. “Dinner’s coming.” He turned to the cops guarding the doorway. “Would you give my wife some privacy while she nurses?”

  The tall cop tapped his watch. “Ten minutes.” He followed his partner into the living room.

  Jake sank back against the counter. Dread found its familiar home in his stomach, where it roiled and soured on the brink of nausea. He opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking. He picked up the spaghetti box, stared at the gibberish instructions and then back at Esther.

  “What happened?”

  “I guess you didn’t see the news.” Esther reached for Jake’s hand and pulled him close. “There was a street fight, mounted cops beating up demonstrators. It was awful. Rosa and I threw apples at them.”

  “Apples?”

  “Little hard ones.” She rested her head against Jake’s hip. “We must’ve hit a horse. A cop was hurt.”

  Jake stared at his wife. That sounded like Rosa, but Esther?

  “How did they know it was you?”

  “A newspaper guy took our picture. It was on the news.”

  “Oh, baby. What’s going to happen?”

  “Don’t know. I told Mama and Pop. They’ll call some lawyer cousin. And Rosie went home to talk to Allen.” Esther paused. “If I’m not back when you have to leave for work, call my mother. Or Mrs. B.”

  “Molly and I’ll be okay. I’m worried about you.” Jake kneeled on the floor next to the rocker and put his arms around her. Together they listened to Molly’s small sounds, the sucks and sighs, until the tall cop appeared in the doorway.

  “Time’s up.”

  “But I only nursed on one side.”

  “Like I said, you should have thought of your kid before assaulting a police officer.” He grabbed Esther’s arm and pulled her up. “Let’s go.”

  Esther kissed Molly’s forehead and handed her to Jake. “She’s probably still hungry. There’s breast milk in the freezer. Then call Allen. He’ll know what to do.”

  After Esther left, escorted by a cop at each elbow, Molly immediately began to fuss. Jake took a bottle of breast milk from the freezer, and put it in a pot of hot water to thaw. He paced with Molly, jiggling her as he circled the kitchen; sometimes that calmed her. This was all Rosa’s fault. She could take risks. She didn’t have a baby depending on her. Dragging Esther into this was reckless. Negligent, really. Just what you’d expect from Rosa.

  Molly cried louder. She didn’t usually need to be burped anymore, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do while the milk thawed. Patting her back, he walked through the living room, kitchen, bedroom, then negotiated a tight turnaround in the little end room where Esther had pushed aside her paintings to make space for the crib they rarely used. The canvases were dusty and abandoned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a work in progress on the easel. Certainly not since Molly was born, maybe not the whole pregnancy. But that wasn’t Molly’s fault; that was Rosa’s influence. “You’ve got talent,” Rosa had urged Esther. “Use it for the movement. Posters and T-shirts and banners change more minds than framed paintings hanging in a fancy museum.”

  Pacing the long hallway, he wondered if he should have insisted that Esther finish her art degree, even though it would have meant her staying in Ann Arbor while he moved to Detroit to start his residency. He had been relieved at her decision to move with him. His brain could master the science of medicine just fine, but his hands needed Esther’s body to study the art of it. His fingers learned anatomy on her flesh. He explored the resistance of the veins inside her elbow for the best IV sites, palpated the bones and tendons of her ankle joints, investigated the valleys between her ribs for imaginary chest tube placement. Still, they could have managed it if Esther stayed in Ann Arbor that extra year; it wasn’t like they had much time together anyway. By then, Rosa was already in Detroit with Allen. Maybe a year apart would have broken Rosa’s spell and avoided this mess.

  Molly’s complaints escalated. Jake found a clean rubber nipple and attached it, then sprinkled a few drops of milk onto the inside of his wrist to test the temperature. He sank into the rocking chair with Molly.

  No, if it hadn’t been for Rosa, none of this mess today would have happened. Esther was usually reasonable and responsible. When she was under Rosa’s influence, she became someone else, someone reckless, unpredictable. And look where that landed her.

  Molly choked, coughed, and spit up onto Jake’s shirt. Poor kid, she’d probably picked up on all the stress of the afternoon even though Esther had
the sense to leave her at home. Babies were intuitive. Molly probably understood that their contented family life was threatened. Jake wiped her face with the kitchen towel, offered her the bottle again. This time she drank slowly, sucking herself to sleep in his arms. He put her in the cradle in their bedroom and rocked her.

  “Don’t worry, Monkey,” he whispered. “Nothing bad will happen. I won’t let it,” he promised.

  Big talker, he scolded himself. A stronger man would have intervened, not just watched the cops take his wife away. Allen would have done something. What right did he have to promise his daughter anything? His promise was worthless. Bad things happened to little kids, all the time.

  No. He stopped himself. In comparison to meningococcemia or malignant brain tumors, how bad could this be, throwing apples at cops? Still, he dreaded telling Esther’s parents that she’d been taken downtown, presumably arrested.

  First he’d figure out that spaghetti. One of these days, after he finished his residency and had a real job, he’d learn to cook. Once he had some food in his stomach, once he could think straight, he’d phone Allen, see what wisdom Rosa’s legal eagle had to offer. Then he’d call Esther’s parents, reassure them that Esther and Rosa would be fine. He’d make arrangements for Molly. It would probably all be settled by tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 5

  Esther

  Rosa was already in the holding cell, pacing back and forth across the cement floor. Esther sank onto the metal bench and let her face fall into her hands.

  “I can’t believe this. What’s going to happen?”

  “They’ll arraign us,” Rosa said. “Probably tomorrow morning, Allen thinks. Then we’ll post bail and go home.” Rosa sat down, tucked one foot under her bottom and swiveled to face Esther. She put her hands on Esther’s shoulders and looked into her face. “Don’t worry. We’ve got some good ideas about our defense.”

  “Not that,” Esther said. “I mean what will happen to us? Will we go to prison? I have Molly, remember?”

  “Lots of women with children go to prison.” Rosa waved her hand at the five other female prisoners, dressed in tight miniskirts and low-cut blouses. “I bet some of these women have kids.” She frowned. “I wonder why they segregated us from the other demonstrators.”

  Esther didn’t care about the other demonstrators or the other women. She slipped her hand under her T-shirt and touched the tight ache in her right breast, hard with milk. “I feel so damned lopsided. If I try to stand up, I’ll tip over sideways.”

  “What?”

  “The cops only let Molly nurse on one side. They said she was taking too long.”

  Rosa finger-combed the snarls in Esther’s hair. “Calm down. Our job now is to develop a strategy. To contrast this one injured cop with thousands of mangled and murdered Vietnamese people.”

  “But what if Jake hadn’t been home? What if he was on call tonight? What would have happened to Molly?” Esther sniffed the stale urine scent and her eyes filled. The cell was no place for a baby.

  Rosa drummed her fists against her thighs in a rapid beat. “I wish Allen would get here so we can start working. He promised to bring one of the senior attorneys in on this. Someone really political, I told him. And not a white male.”

  “I talked to Pop.” Esther stroked Rosa’s arm, feeling the small bumps of gooseflesh. Rosa couldn’t be chilly in this steam bath, and how on earth could she be excited? But skin didn’t lie. Esther pulled back, rubbed her hand on her jeans. “Pop will find a lawyer, someone who can get us out quick.”

  “Allen’s got this. You know his father was in prison for a few years when he was a kid and Allen survived, didn’t he? The important thing now is to bring the war home, make people pay attention.” Rosa pressed her lips into a determined line.

  Whenever Rosa made that face, Esther and her parents would exchange looks, half-warning and half-amused. Esther had no patience now for Rosa’s disappearing lips. She crossed her arms over her chest, pushed against the sore breast. “You don’t understand. I have a baby.”

  “Listen.” Rosa stroked Esther’s cheek. “I want to go home too. I feel like I’m going to barf any second. I promise you we’ll get out of here and you’ll get back to Molly and the four of us will work together, just like we always have.”

  They had been a good team. Esther was the youngest, the last of the four to get to Ann Arbor, but she fit right into the daily routine of handing out flyers to students crossing the Diag between classes, of planning rallies and organizing teach-ins. She loved the intense atmosphere of the Fishbowl, the glassed-in lobby of the social sciences building where competing political factions set up literature tables and argued vigorously. Her art classes were fine, but the real education was the politics, learning to analyze what was happening in the world, talking to students about how to end the war and fight racism. It was Rosa and Esther, always together, and Jake and Allen, right there with them. It would be wonderful to feel that certain again, about how to make things right in the world.

  The sisters dozed on and off all night in the cell, leaning against each other to minimize touching the slimy damp of the cement wall. Esther’s full breast alternately throbbed and dripped.

  In the morning, two cops escorted Rosa and Esther to conference with their lawyers before their arraignment. Allen and Jake met them at the door, Molly in Jake’s arms.

  A guard shook his head at Jake. “No kids.”

  The other guard pursed his lips into a fish-face for Molly. “I’ve got a six-month-old at home,” he told Esther, then turned to his partner. “Ease up. It can’t hurt.”

  “Tell that to Steele. I bet he knows about hurt.” But he turned away and didn’t stop Esther, Molly, and Jake from joining Rosa and Allen at the table with the two lawyers.

  Esther winced at the initial sharp pain of Molly’s suck, followed by waves of relief as her milk let down. She nodded to Dwayne, the lawyer from Allen’s firm. Allen said Dwayne was smart, but he didn’t look impressive. Under his rumpled jacket, his white shirt was coming untucked. At least Joel, the downtown lawyer Pop hired, looked the part in his crisp three-piece suit. Joel was a distant relative, the son of Uncle Max’s cousin. When Esther moved back home to Detroit, Mama had tried to persuade her to take a typing job at his office instead of working at the cooperative bookstore. Mama said Joel was smart, but she trusted him because he was family. Esther hoped he knew more than business law and tax loopholes.

  Esther twisted one of Molly’s wispy red curls around her index finger, while the unfamiliar legal phrases tumbled senselessly in the air. She concentrated on the pull of Molly’s mouth, rhythmic as tides, and on Jake’s hand on her back, his fingers circling the hard knob of each vertebra. Across the scarred wooden table, Rosa and Allen huddled with Dwayne and Joel, arguing about coercive charges. Whatever those were.

  Finally Esther held up her hand. “Slow down, guys. I’m lost.” She turned to Joel. “What happens now?”

  “You’ll hear the full indictments and enter a plea of not guilty. Later, Dwayne and I will meet with the prosecution team and work out a deal.”

  “No deals,” Rosa said. “Allen, tell Esther about the necessity defense.”

  Allen turned to Esther and Jake. “In certain circumstances the court will accept the argument that a person may violate the law in order to prevent injury. Rosa thinks that she can convince a jury that your action was justified by the necessity of drawing attention to the genocide of the Vietnamese people.”

  Dwayne shook his head. “Won’t work. The only way to win with the necessity defense is to prove that your action prevented imminent harm. Not potential damage at some unspecified time to unnamed foreigners halfway across the world. I suppose you might be able to make a case that stopping the mounted police was necessary to prevent harm to the demonstrators. But not to the Vietnamese.”

  “The harm is damn imminent for the Vietnamese,” Rosa said.

  “That’s not what he means.” Allen rested his index fing
er gently across her lips and Rosa didn’t slap him away or yell at him. Amazing how her fiery sister would accept disagreement from Allen that no one else would dare offer.

  Esther reached for Jake’s hand under the table. He hadn’t spoken a word during the meeting, but she could feel his anxiety. Jake’s younger brother died of leukemia when he was five and the family never recovered. Jake rarely talked about it, but sometimes his little boy fears seemed to take over. “The world can be a monstrous place,” he had told Esther once when she called him an old worrywart. Molly wasn’t the only one who needed her at home.

  This situation would make anyone into a worrywart. When they were led into the courtroom, Esther ran the palm of her hand along the curved grain of the railing, imagining all the people who had sat on these benches. The dark oak was sticky and swollen in the humid August air.

  Esther and Rosa stood facing the judge, Allen between them, and flanked by the other lawyers. Esther kept sneaking glances at Jake sitting two rows back, rocking Molly against his chest, back and forth on the wooden bench. The arraignment seemed perfunctory and pale compared to the moment she could hold her daughter again.

  Then the clerk started reading the charges. “Assault, with an enhanced penalty for interfering with a police officer in the performance of his duty. Reckless endangerment in the first degree, creating a grave risk of death.”

  Esther felt slapped. The other times they’d been busted, there had just been one or two charges, like trespassing or criminal mischief.

  “They’re throwing the book at you,” Allen whispered. “It’s all about intimidation, so you’ll plead to lesser charges.”

  It’s working, Esther thought.

  When the charge of conspiracy was read, the lawyers exchanged glances. But Esther couldn’t ask what that meant, because then she heard the charge of attempted murder and she had to grip the railing. Attempted murder? They didn’t try to kill anyone. The courtroom air grew heavy. What could the penalties be for those charges? Reckless endangerment couldn’t be too bad, but conspiracy? Attempted murder? She shivered in the warm room, then leaned slightly forward to see her sister. Rosa stood stalwart facing the judge, dwarfed by the tall witness boxes. Allen’s hand was steady on the tender curve at the small of her back. Rosa’s face was pale under her red hair, her eyes closed, hand covering her mouth.