According to YES

by Dawn French

  He enters sheepishly, moves further into the room a few paces at a time. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  It’s an uneasy pause that follows. Teddy is blushing, much to his mortification. He inspects his jumper closely and then grins at Rosie, ‘Bub-bubba-bub-bub …’

  No hooter. Rosie laughs politely to make it easier for him. Teddy so wishes he could shut the door. He wants to gather her up … now now now. He reaches out his arm and tags his finger around her little finger.

  Rosie smiles, but wriggles her finger free, and summoning her best courage, hopes she will find the right words. ‘Teds, look, I’m the first woman … the only woman …’ she speaks in hushed tones, ‘that you’ve seen in the buff after ten o’clock, just keep that in mind …’

  ‘No Rosie, you don’t get it, I love you.’

  ‘No, you don’t!’ she shuts the door. ‘You’re grateful, hon, it’s completely different. Seriously.’

  ‘But, no kidding, I feel, like, so … all over different today. I can say stuff I couldn’t before. It’s you, you’ve given me something … strength.’

  ‘I haven’t, darlin’. You already had that strength. You were due to find it any day now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. Listen. I’m not saying it was wrong, or horrible, Teds, it wasn’t, it was bloody lovely, you’re such a dreamboat. And it wasn’t a mistake. But I AM saying that it won’t happen again, OK?’

  Teddy slowly nods like he understands, but then he looks her in the eye, and Rosie realizes he is trying to start the seduction technique again. He even licks his lips, ‘No, Teds, it’s no good doing “the thing” again, it won’t work … really.’ She is amused though, and he sees this, so he starts to move towards her.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on …’ he sings quietly.

  ‘No.’ she says firmly.

  ‘We could still practice …?’ he suggests cheekily, ‘after all, I want to get it right.’

  ‘You do get it right, Teddy, you really do. You’ve done the practice, it’s time for the real thing – with a girl your own age.’ He stares at her. She touches his cheek.

  This really is it.

  ‘C’mon now, get lost, we don’t want your type round these parts and I need to go and rescue your brothers from the guillotine …’

  As Rosie approaches the library, she can hear the muffled end of the telling-off happening inside. Glenn is admonishing the twins in her best Judge Judy tones,

  ‘So, to be clear, and listen well both of you, I shan’t be repeating this … if I ever hear another whisper from anyone that questions the moral fibre of any member of this family, there will be serious consequences. I kid you not. Look at this face, and remember the anger …’

  Rosie knocks on the door and goes straight in, ‘Hello, just wondering how long you might be?’

  ‘Ah, Miss Kitto,’ Glenn keeps it formal. ‘You might as well know that it has come to my attention via a source at the school that one of these boys …’

  ‘Your grandsons,’ Rosie interjects,

  Glenn stalls, annoyed, but then continues as if stung by a bee, ‘… my grandsons, yes, precisely, members of the Wilder-Bingham family … has been involved in a theft. Understandably this has sent shock waves through the school and now, through this house …’

  ‘Apartment …’ Rosie corrects, as she once was corrected.

  ‘Through this house.’ Glenn stands firm, and continues, ‘Neither of these two boys …’

  ‘Your grandsons …’

  ‘… These two boys has had the honour to step up and admit to it, they are rather pathetically covering for each other, so I’m afraid the punishment will have to fit the crime.’

  ‘I see,’ says Rosie, turning to Red and Three, both of whom appear shell-shocked and have trembling lips where they are fighting back tears. ‘Might I ask what has actually been stolen?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what, it’s a disgrace, and consequences will follow, especially since neither one has the spine to own up. So, no more garden today. They must sit and think about what they have done. No TV, no games, and there will be no treats for a week.’

  ‘Understood. Yes. This is very serious, I can see that. I can only assume the crime is major? What did you steal, boys? Gold bullion or perhaps precious jewellery or a car?’

  Glenn flashes a furious face at her.

  Red snuffles and mumbles, ‘It’s a pen, and it’s a mistake.’

  Glenn is ruffled by the clear effort on Rosie’s behalf to diminish the crime, ‘It is not simply a pen. It is a theft. It is a felony. Now, you are free to go and I look forward to hearing the truth at some point, when the two of you have mustered the courage to tell me. I will be informing your grandfather of this. Thank you.’

  Rosie and the boys silently file out of the library, tails firmly between legs.

  Within half an hour, Rosie and the twins emerge from the Canal Street subway and walk uptown on Centre Street. She has a plan. This is purposeful walking. Rosie strides along with a twin holding each hand. The mood is sombre, the boys are still bruised from the ear-bashing they’ve had from their grandmother.

  They go up the steps of a large imposing civic building. Once inside they remove their coats and hats, their bags go through an x-ray machine and they are patted down by a guard in a bulletproof jacket as if they are at an airport. The central foyer of the building is high-ceilinged, with massive municipal lights hanging down in front of long windows which don’t ever appear to have been washed. The grime is sticky on the windows, the ledges, the chains the lights dangle from, and on the very air itself. This grand sad echoey hall is gloomy and forbidding.

  Rosie collects the wide-eyed twins to her. ‘Right, gather in, m’lads, and listen up. You are standing in the heart of New York City’s criminal courts. This is where something called ‘arraignments’ happen. After a person is arrested for, say, stealing … this is where they are brought. The judge listens to what the crime is, and tells them if and when they will go on to a bigger court to decide if they have to go to jail. While they are waiting to find out, the judge can give a person something called bail, which means that the family will have to pay proper money to promise that person will definitely turn up, and if they don’t the money is lost, gone forever. We are going to go and sit in a courtroom down there, and believe me, the judge won’t look kindly on any pesky kid disturbing their court, so keep it schtum, look and listen, OK? Follow me …’ and she sets off toward Arraignment Court No. 1, with the silent twins in tow.

  They rush to keep up with her, striding up a long passage with mustard walls and wooden benches along each side. The benches are full of people waiting to go in to court. It’s like a tunnel of damnation, one Dante would have been inspired to paint. Here and there are whole families, supporting their mum or dad or brother or sister. Many of the clusters of people have a policeman or woman accompanying them, or a lawyer in a worn, ill-fitting suit on the phone desperately calling someone, trying to fix this mess at the eleventh hour. Some people are alone, some are handcuffed, all appear haunted and tired. One man sits with his hands cuffed behind him, whilst he hangs his head, guarded by a solitary policeman who is chewing and checking his texts.

  Somehow, here, this is normal. People on the edge of their lives, at the limit of their pain and at the finish of their hope are assembled here to face their consequences. It saddens Rosie to the pit of her stomach that such a high proportion of these lost souls are black. How has this happened? What is going on in New York City that this can be so? Why should the baffled, the corrupt, the fallen, the raging and the vilified be predominantly one particular colour? The imbalance is stark and shocking, and she wonders if she has misjudged this decision. Perhaps Tom-peeping at the wreck of social order that’s here is a graceless and rude thing to do.

  Or maybe not. Maybe Red or Three will one day be part of a new generation who forge a different system that goes some way to changing this, if it offends or touches them enough. M
aybe they can learn not to stand apart and judge, but instead to get involved and change. Maybe some of the young people here, at the centre of it all, learning how it works the hard way, will be the ones to stop the rot and make a difference. With each step, Rosie clings to these hopes for ballast, until at last they come to the huge wooden doors of Court No. 1, where a guard instructs them to turn off their phones and to keep quiet. In they go.

  Rosie and the boys slide into seats three rows back from the front. Only one other family are sitting nearby. Rosie assumes these are the relatives of the next defendant, since they are in a scrum, speaking in hushed and hurried tones with an interesting-looking man who is clearly their attorney. He is a short chunky dapper chap in a subtly striped suit with a purple shirt and matching tie. He has long neat grey dreadlocks hanging down his back to his waist and wears two sets of spectacles, one on his head and one on his intelligent face. He apparently has a hell of a lot of things to see. He has his hand on the arm of the weeping mother and seems to be reassuring her.

  As they settle into their seats, the junior Wilder-Binghams and Rosie look about and take in everything in this unfamiliar daunting new environment. There is a barrier separating the observers in the gallery from the real court action which takes place in the front half of the lofty wood-panelled room, which clearly hasn’t changed since it was built in the forties. The judge, a surprisingly attractive polished woman who looks to be in her early fifties, with a sharp flicky auburn bob and good tortoiseshell designer glasses, sits at the highest point in the room, behind a large wooden desk on a podium. Either side of her are two tall, drooped flags; one is the stars and stripes, the other is the flag of the State of New York, blue with fancy gold edging. Above her head, on the wall behind her is a large crest with an angry standing eagle and the words, ‘In God We Trust’ emblazoned across it.

  Everything about this room tells you not to mess with anyone in it. Rosie looks at the boys who are sitting bolt upright with their hands in their laps, eyes as wide as saucepan lids, taking it all in like sonic radar.

  Above them hang two giant upturned-dish-like opaque glass chandeliers. In the lowest part of the hanging dish, but still very high up, Rosie notices lots of elastic bands. How did they get there? Rosie looks around the room at all the official people; policemen and guards in blue shirts and badges, clerks in drab suits, sitting at computers, various random self-important people in grey flicking through box-files, assistants and their assistants. Who, out of all these, chooses to wait until the room is empty to have an elastic-band-pinging competition? Perhaps that’s the kind of levity which makes working here more bearable?

  A tall bullet-headed man with a deep voice announces that ‘Court is back in session.’ There is a bit of fussing around the door at the rear of the court and eventually, two court marshalls escort a young black man in. He is in his own baggy clothes and attempts to swagger with attitude. He is small in comparison to the large guards either side of him. Mr Purple Shirt goes to be at his side in front of the judge, who immediately instructs him firmly to ‘Take your hands out of your pockets please, Mr West.’ Mr West does as he is told, and in an instant, all swagger is vanquished. Mr West, who would love everyone to believe he is a powerful and scary gangsta man, is in fact a naughty boy who can’t fake it in front of the judge before him, and even worse, his momma behind.

  The prosecutor reads out the accusation. It would appear that his warrant relates to a firearm found in his possession, which he has stolen.

  His mother’s soft gasps can be heard as she cries, ‘No, Keiron, not a gun. Not you. With a gun, Keiron? You coulda hurt y’sself, son.’ The rest of the family try to mollify the distraught Mom, who can see nothing but the fact that her baby boy has put himself in harm’s way.

  The attorney attempts to mitigate the accusation, with snatches of background information about the boy, which he hopes will help his defence. ‘He works at a coffee shop … eighteen years old … no previous criminal record … in with the wrong crowd … his father just passed away last month …’ As he references each point about Keiron West, the boy hangs his head further, unable to look anyone in the eye.

  The judge is matter of fact, ‘I am going to adjourn, the court date is pending, and the bail is set at three thousand dollars. Thank you.’

  Keiron West looks back over his shoulder at his mother as he is led off by the marshals, and with tear-filled eyes he mouths ‘I’m sorry.’ To which his mother mouths ‘I love you,’ which she so clearly does.

  Rosie, Red and Three have watched the whole interaction between them. In such a public place, they have been privy to an intensely private moment. Three has tears on his face, and his brother comforts him, ‘It’s OK dude, he’s gonna be OK’, to which Three replies, ‘It’s not him, it’s the mom I feel sorry for. She’s so … disappointed.’

  All of them shuffle out of the seats and out of the courtroom, and home.

  Job done.

  Roof Food

  Glenn sits alone in her usual place at the table in the dining room for supper. The places are set but the people are not here, and she appears to be the Queen of no kingdom. She is on the verge of letting her feelings be known, when she hears the sound of sneakers running up the corridor outside. She sits still and listens out. A door opens. And shuts. More footsteps pass the dining room. Glenn is growing increasingly uneasy.

  Suddenly Thomas pokes his head around the door, ‘Barbeque on the roof. My surprise.’

  Glenn smiles a weak smile. ‘Oh, Tommy, I’m just not that hungry.’

  ‘Please try, Glenn. C’mon, it’ll be fun …?’ Thomas winks at her and leaves.

  She stares at her table setting. She hears laughter in the distance … exactly what she didn’t need while she’s hunkered down into a nicely familiar irritable mood. She doesn’t want to have to adjust herself in any way. Especially not if it involves ‘fun’. She pauses, takes a deep breath, slowly stands up, and smoothes herself down.

  When Glenn opens the door to the roof, she sees the garden for the first time. It’s half finished, but it’s already pretty impressive. Rosie has slung up more fairy lights, and strings of multi-coloured bulbs around the seating area, and in the dwindling light, it’s very cheerful.

  There is a barbeque well underway and Thomas is in charge, with Iva flitting around as his sous chef, ably assisted by waiters Red and Three. Thomas’s long fingers are covered with gooey red barbeque sauce from all the meat he’s presiding over. Teddy bites into some succulent ribs and drips sauce down his chin and on to his t-shirt. Rosie attempts to wipe it off with a paper napkin and only succeeds in making even more mess. She herself has a red blob of ketchup on her cheek which he in turn tries to remove, with both of them sniggering.

  Glenn clocks that all these people are comfortable in each other’s company and she wonders how they can have gotten to know each other so well in such a short time. She isn’t this relaxed with folk she has known for fifty years.

  Red and Three are having a corn-on-the-cob nibbling competition, and have the butteryest faces in Butterville, USA. They are laughing loudly, until they catch sight of Glenn watching them. They still sting from the earlier telling-off, so they quieten down. Rosie notices the awkwardness for both the boys and for Glenn, whose first time it is on the roof after all, seeing the new garden. She quickly spears a frankfurter with the barbeque fork, places it in the bun, and offers it to Glenn. ‘Sausage for you, Mrs W. B. ’

  Glenn stares at the greasy meat being proffered, and at Rosie. They are both equally repulsive to her, so she shakes her head and she glides off to where Kemble is sitting, scoffing some ribs. Glenn first wipes the surface of the garden chair with her handkerchief, then sits herself down.

  Kemble stops eating with his fingers and immediately starts to use his knife and fork.

  Glenn surveys the scene, and somewhere deep inside her grudging self there is the whisper of a wish that she would love to take part, but she can’t possibly do that, because
she lives inside the invisible fence of her deep-rooted anxiety. She has come to respect its boundaries and dutifully remains within, held tight by its familiar restraint. She won’t be shifting anytime soon, thank you, and she certainly won’t be giving over any time to contemplating when exactly the moment was that her life became terrifying.

  Red and Three approach her.

  ‘Granma,’ Three says, ‘I want you to have this.’ He reaches into his pocket, and brings out a complicated-looking piece of plastic. He hands it to her gingerly.

  She takes it reluctantly, ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s the pen,’ he explains, ‘it’s a Transformer pen. No-one stole it, it was given as a gift by Sammy Klein. He got a Transformer watch back for it, but he’s forgotten to tell that bit. So here’s his pen, you can give it to Principal Taylor. We don’t want it anymore anyway.’

  ‘I see. Thank you, Thomas, I respect your honesty for owning up and taking the correct responsibility.’ And with this, she shakes his hand formally, as if she has just done business with a mini insurance man.

  As the boys retreat, Red pats Three on the back and whispers to him, ‘Thanks bro, I owe you, OK?’

  ‘No prob,’ replies the heroic little chap, and they return to the infinitely preferable Rosie, and the barbeque, and their grandfather, and the lovely fragrant sweet fried onions.

  Thomas senior has delegated meat duty to Teddy, and he directs the rookie from the sidelines as he sits in his apron and plucks away at his guitar, still no better at ‘Johnny B Goode’ but loving the sound of the strings in the open air. Rosie claps along with Thomas’s faltering attempts, which only serves to put him under further pressure and so he plays even worse, which renders him helpless with laughter. As it does her.

  Glenn sees this shared delight, and although she can’t possibly know the truthful depth of it, it bothers her. Her face sets in its old, cold mask. Kemble clocks his mother’s attitude and to court her approval, snorts his derision at the happy scene. For a brief moment, the tribes are clearly marked, which gives Glenn and Kemble a fleeting sense of shared loyalty in their grumpy clan. Then Teddy starts to strut his stuff across the roof to Thomas’s chords, throwing down some of his best Mick Jagger moves.