by Kia Corthron
While there must have been a few, Andi can’t recall offhand a single other significant disagreement with her mother. It has only been since she died two years ago that Andi had begun these annual church visitations as a small tribute to the woman who had given her life and nurtured it, and who had never missed a Sunday service throughout the year.
It was a gift. These sensitive insights into her history Andi does not freely impart, and Eliot is unspeakably grateful to be the recipient of such a bestowal, the astonishing privilege of intimacy. Those states where schools were integrated at the time of his own upbringing (in the case of Andi’s Iowa, since 1868 after a Negro man took his struggle to enroll his daughter in the white public school, the only school, to the Iowa Supreme Court)—it all felt like a foreign country to him. In Indianapolis, the fluctuations seemed schizoid. Once elementary schools were segregated but high schools integrated; then in 1922 Crispus Attucks High was built to segregate secondary Negro students (coinciding chronologically with a number of Klan members influential in local politics); then the 1949 desegregation on paper, which changed little in fact (in part because the discrimination practices keeping Negro teachers out of white schools meant that the Attucks faculty was phenomenal—master’s degrees, doctorates, attorneys—so why would a parent want their child to be transferred to the less impressive white institutions?); then in 1955 Attucks became the first Indianapolis basketball team to take the state championship, and by then its persistent crushing of other city schools led many whites to complain that Negroes were segregating themselves—that it wasn’t fair that black students (meaning talented athletes) were abandoning the schools in their own neighborhoods to attend Attucks—while other whites still had, and have, their hand in redistricting toward the continuance of racial separation. This twentieth-century history of his adopted city, coupled with the stories Andi has shared over these months regarding her own integrated educational experience, has only made him feel exceedingly fortunate to have graduated from his own all-Negro school. A few weeks ago, she’d mentioned being harshly admonished by a teacher for suggesting that George Washington Carver ranked with Edison, Whitney, and Bell.
Her generosity is especially notable in the presence of one so stingy in a like regard. Though he has never exactly lied on the matter, Eliot is certain she assumes he is an only child since none of the few family stories he has shared have included Dwight, which took some doing on his part.
“Did you call your mother?”
He nods. “I’ll pay you back the long-distance. Just let me know—”
“Don’t worry about it. So who’s cooking today? Her or your dad?”
He smiles. “When I was little and my father was off from the porters one Mother’s Day, he tried to cook and I tried to help him. They were the toughest pork chops we ever had in our lives.”
They laugh, then Eliot’s stomach growls.
“Uh-oh! Sounds like libido was the wrong choice.” She tugs on his ear, then gets out of bed and goes to the dresser, humming as she slips on her pants. He doesn’t quite understand where the sound came from. He’s not really hungry since breakfast wasn’t more than three hours ago. But lunch would be an excuse to stay.
“Aren’t you cooking anyway?”
“Not for you.”
“Isn’t it just as easy to cook for two as for one?”
She gives him a crooked smile. “My mama used to say, ‘Nothin beats a fail but a try.’” She shrugs. “Probably just make a peanut butter sandwich. I’ve gotta study.”
“I like peanut butter. What’s the song?”
She stops humming, thinks. Then laughs.
“‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.’ Swear it was subconscious, I wasn’t begging for sympathy.”
“Sounds pretty.”
“Thanks. You’re still evicted, buster.” She walks out of the room, resuming her humming. Buster.
Eliot, dressed, walks into the living room and sits on the couch, putting on his socks. Andi stands in the kitchen holding a carrot in her mouth as she spreads peanut butter across a slice.
“I can make you a sandwich to take with you.”
He snorts. “To go.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He stands and walks to the kitchen doorway. “So what about Gary?”
She looks at him, talking around the carrot as if it were a cigar. “What about it?”
He stares.
“How? With you going South every other week.”
He nods as if this explains everything, goes back to the couch and rapidly starts putting on a shoe.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Eliot.”
“Maybe I just hate walking by that damn dog downstairs.”
She laughs gently, carefully. “I guess I’ve gotten used to it. Hardly even notice it anymore.” She bites the carrot.
“You know it’s a racist dog.”
She stops chewing. “What?”
“That mongrel. It only barks at colored people.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Have you ever seen it around white people?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
She frowns. “Well I can’t think of a specific instance, but—”
“I saw your landlord walk by that thing today. Not a peep.”
“So? I’m sure Kyle’s been in the apartment now and then, the dog knows him. I’ve only walked past the door.”
“Did you know the big guy upstairs is moving out?”
“Pete? No. Really?”
“And this girl comes to look at the apartment today, says she thinks he’s getting evicted. Stranger, never been here before, this white girl walks right by the third floor. Nothin.”
Andi agape.
“Do you even know the owner of that monster?”
“Yes. I see him at the mail sometimes. And the crazy dog. The two of them moved here from Boston, the guy was born there. He apologized, soon after he adopted the dog five years ago he got the job here, moved here, it always goes nuts with strangers he said, he apologized—”
Eliot stares at Andi, then begins throwing his papers back into his briefcase. She looks up toward her ceiling.
“Pete’s been here forever. Before me.”
Eliot, stooping at the coffee table, looks up at her.
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What?”
“I said your neighbor has a racist dog.”
“I heard you, Eliot, I don’t care about the damn dog! I just hope Pete isn’t getting evicted.”
“You don’t even like him!”
“Doesn’t mean I wanna see him tossed out into the street! He just. He never appears to have a job.”
“Well he seemed just fine today showing his apartment to young girls, I wouldn’t worry too much about Pete. What do you mean, you don’t care if your neighbor trained a dog to attack Negroes?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You said—”
“He’s my neighbor! I’m not gonna just make a big presumption like that, turn this building into a race riot on a maybe!”
His pupils fixed on her.
“You have no proof!” She had not meant to screech.
“No.” Snapping shut the briefcase. “Some white woman, some stranger off the street it lets walk by, fine. You, some Negress it’s known most of its life, ready to tear you limb from limb. All circumstantial.”
The term infuriates her, as he knew it would, but she takes a breath, bites hard on the vegetable, chews slowly. “Alright, you’ve proven your case. You have successfully made me feel completely depressed about my own home.”
Their eyes like knives.
“You might understand my hesitation in jumping to conclu
sions based on your assessment, since you think all white people are out to get us. The enemy.”
The dog starts going wild. Eliot races out Andi’s door, flying down the stairs. He returns smirking in triumph. “Huh, I didn’t know the couple across the hall from Rin Tin Tin were also colored.”
She sits, her back to him, taking a harsh bite of her sandwich.
“I can’t believe you’re defending him.”
She swerves harshly around. “I’m not defending him! I said you’re right. Okay? You’re right!”
He allows a moment to pass, then speaks quietly. “I don’t believe all white people are the enemy.”
Now she smirks.
“I don’t believe Diana Rubin is the enemy.”
A momentary fear flashing in her eyes. It had not been his intention to put it there. Her constant reminders of their age difference. Buster. Her deflection of Gary. He had never known for certain she would care enough to be jealous.
“I’m considering dropping the case.”
She nearly falls off her chair.
“Of course I’ll find a replacement first, I’m not just gonna.” His breaths coming deep. “Well she’s barely out of school! Competent, she’s very competent but. And him! Cracker and a lush, I just think. The little boys, I just think—”
“You were granted the habeas only a week ago and now you’re going to drop everything?”
“Yes, now, before it’s too late. I just need to—”
“All you’ve talked about is wanting a civil rights case.”
“Yes! but not. I think maybe I needed a little more practice before being thrown into something like. They’re babies! We’re babies, none of us is thirty yet! I wouldn’t want us. If I was the client, I wouldn’t want—”
“So you’re just gonna walk out on those little boys.”
“Are you listening? I’m trying not to! I’m trying to think of them, not myself. If it was about my damn ego, sure I’d keep it. The publicity? Nice little entry on my CV!”
“Who’re you gonna replace yourself with.”
He looks away. “Whoever takes it, I’ll.” He swallows. “I’ll brief them, we’ve put a lot of work in, I’ll make sure they—”
“Who, Eliot?”
“I don’t know! Winston! He has the experience.”
“Oh after begging him all these months for something besides divorce, something important—”
“You act like I don’t take the divorce work seriously! I take the divorce work seriously!”
“I’m not talking about the divorce work, Eliot, I’m talking about Winston entrusting you with a very delicate case, Winston having the faith that you are ready and now you’re gonna tell him, ‘No thanks, do it yourself.’”
“Beau could! Or Will!”
“You know they’re overbooked.”
“Why would Winston give me a case like this? Why would he make those little boys my training, my learning experience?”
“Every case is different, you know that. Every case is a learning experience.”
“Oh which of your esteemed professors are you quoting now.”
“Think about why he gave this to you, Eliot. It’s a juvenile case, civil law, he wants you to cut your teeth on a court case, an important court case, but one where the consequences are less dire than in a Superior Court.”
“Please tell those little boys set to spend the next decade and a half in the reformatory with embittered big boys and vicious guards that this case is less dire.”
“Well if you can’t handle this, what do you think the likelihood is of Winston assigning you to a jury trial anytime soon.”
“I know. I know, I can’t think about that. I’ve gotta. I’ve just gotta think about those little boys, I need to—”
“Would you rather Winston gave you a capital case? You wouldn’t be the first lawyer fresh out of school holding a man’s life in his hands before some cracker judge and jury.”
His eyes narrow. “Wait till it happens to you.”
“If you think I’m saying it’s easy, you misunderstand me.” Lost appetite, she stands and throws out the remaining sandwich, then leans against the sink to face him. “What I’m saying is unfortunately you can only gain experience through experience.”
“I feel like an impostor, Andi! Every time I talk to their parents, every time I talk to the boys—”
“Eliot, it’s okay to be scared.”
“No. It’s okay for Max’s mother and Jordan’s mother to be scared, for those children to be scared, because in the end it’s all gonna boil down to the formidable team of a boozer bigot, a college girl, and a divorce lawyer with barely nineteen months’ experience terrified out of his mind.”
His heart thumping. He’d made a terrible mistake. Law school. On better days he imagines the future, when this is all behind him. But in those fantasies he doesn’t dare look back on the outcome for Jordan and Max. “Optimism,” he remembers Diana saying.
“Okay, Eliot. But then really be honest with yourself. Are you afraid for the children? Or are you afraid for your own failure?”
“It’s the same thing, Andi!”
“Not quite.”
He swings open the outside door, slamming it behind himself. Races down the steps, deliberately stomping on the third floor. To his surprise, there is no response. He goes right up to the door, stooping to stick his pupil into the eyehole. A blur.
How could she ask such a question? And how could he separate his feelings about his own limitations from how these would play out in Max’s and Jordan’s fate? On the drive back from Georgia two days ago, he had stopped outside Memphis to fill his tank. Then a police car pulled into the station. An officer and a German shepherd got out, and the pooch seemed to take no notice of the white service attendant, nor the white family in the station wagon, but had gone wild at the sight of Eliot. He had stood frozen. He’d heard rumors of such things, dogs trained to attack Negroes, but he had never seen it before, and given the recent changes that were threatening the Great White Dixie Way, he wondered just how these animals might be utilized in the very near future. After a month of stepping off sidewalks for white women and trying to avoid looking whites in the eye and holding his bladder long past comfort level till he found a colored bathroom, his own Jim Crow upbringing multiplied exponentially, after all that it took a confrontation at a service station with a white supremacist canine to finally bring home to him Deep South reality, and how two small children became tangled in its enigmatic web.
As he hits the second-floor landing, the outside door now visible below, he stops short. Just inside by the entrance stands a middle-aged white man Eliot has never seen before, sporting a healthy gray head of hair and beard. His mailbox door is open, and he peruses the envelopes in his left hand. In his right he holds a leash connected to a German shepherd. Eliot takes in the tableau a second before the dog looks up to see him and goes insane, its spine-tingling gnarl all too familiar, teeth gnashing, a desperate frenzied attempt to snap the cord and fly to Eliot’s jugular. But it is almost as if Eliot had seen this coming, and he regards this part of the picture with a strange calm. It is rather the next moment that causes his legs to buckle, falling to sit on the steps, his hands trembling. The eyes of the beast’s master—the Boston Yankee glowering up at Eliot, a violent loathing of the stranger before him, the black trespasser—which eclipses any malevolence on the part of his dog by light-years.
10
Diana sits on a braided throw rug covering a section of the mercifully cool cement floor. Behind her is the coffee table and couch, a living area situated in the middle of the Rubin basement, dubbed the “rec room” by virtue of the ping-pong table off to the side. This space, two floors separating it from the bedrooms so as not to disturb her sleeping parents, the curtains drawn against nosy neighbors, had become the de facto office of Max
and Jordan’s legal team.
She wears a long white shirt and black stretch pants, her legs spread in a V and between them the index cards she meticulously arranges and a large pink mug of coffee. She jots notes on a new card regarding a recent incident involving little Ginny Dodgson, one of the two alleged victims. Last Wednesday, the first day of the new school year, one of Ginny’s classmates sat too close to her and she screamed rape. She appeared to be angry rather than frightened, the event having everything to do with an ongoing feud from the previous year between herself and the culprit, a boy who considered Ginny bossy and, to take her down a peg, occasionally pulled her pigtails. Apparently he had decided to let her know on Day One that this year would be no different than the last, and the frustration of it, undoubtedly coupled with the scrutiny she had been under since the spring, caused her fuse to be short. The teacher was at a loss, called upon not only to quell the confrontation but then to face twenty-three second graders all wanting to know the definition of rape. Ginny the expert jumped in to explain that kissing was rape, which resulted in her nemesis making it clear that he in no way raped her, that he raped no one but his mother. As the teacher desperately worked on damage control, the dismissal bell rang. The next day, the boy’s parents walked into the classroom wanting to know what the hell went on the day before and what their son was being accused of. Diana had relayed the anecdote to her partners, and they had all held their stomachs, the ache of laughter, a welcome release after their long hot mostly humorless summer. The episode had not been raised among them since, but it had come back to her at this very late hour, wondering how these misunderstandings by all the children might be capitalized upon tomorrow: The Hearing. She looks up at Eliot.
