Small Great Things Read online

  "What?"

  "The food, sugar. It's so much better at court than in jail, am I right?"

  I shake my head. "I've never done this before."

  "Me, I should have a punch card. You know, the kind where you get a free coffee or a tiny tube of mascara at your tenth visit." She grins. "What are you in for?"

  "I wish I knew," I say, before I can remember not to.

  "What the fuck, girl? You were in the courtroom, you were arraigned," Liza replies. "You didn't hear what you were charged with?"

  I turn away, focusing on the scenery out the window. "My lawyer told me I shouldn't talk to anyone about that."

  "Well." She sniffs. "Pardon me, Your Majesty."

  In the rearview mirror, the sheriff's eyes appear, sharp and blue. "She's in for murder," he says, and none of us speak for the rest of the ride.

  --

  WHEN I APPLIED to Yale Nursing School, Mama asked her pastor to say an extra prayer for me, in the hope that God could sway the admissions committee if my transcript from college could not. I remember being mortified as I sat in church beside her, as the congregation lifted their spirits and their voices heavenward on my behalf. There were people dying of cancer, infertile couples hoping for a baby, war in third world countries--in other words, so many more important things the Lord had to do with His time. But Mama said I was equally important, at least to our congregation. I was their success story, the college graduate who was going on to Make a Difference.

  On the day before classes were supposed to start, Mama took me out to dinner. "You're destined to do small great things," she told me. "Just like Dr. King said." She was referring to one of her favorite quotes: If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. "But," she continued, "don't forget where you came from." I didn't really understand what she meant. I was one of a dozen kids from our neighborhood who had gone to college, and only a handful of those were destined for graduate school. I knew she was proud of me; I knew she felt like her hard work to set me on a different path had paid off. Given that she'd been pushing me out of the nest since I was little, why would she want me to carry around the twigs that had built it? Couldn't I fly further without them?

  I took classes in anatomy and physiology, in pharmacology and principles of nursing, but I planned my schedule so that I was always home for dinner, to tell my mama about my day. It didn't matter that my commute to and from the city was two hours each way. I knew that if Mama hadn't spent thirty years scrubbing the floors at Ms. Mina's house, I wouldn't be on that train at all.

  "Tell me everything," Mama would say, spooning whatever she'd cooked onto my plate. I passed along the remarkable things I learned--that half the population carries the MRSA germs in their nose; that nitroglycerin can cause you to have a bowel movement if it makes contact with your skin; that you are taller in the morning than the evening, by nearly a half inch, because of the fluid between your spinal discs. But there were things I didn't tell her, too.

  Though I may have been at one of the finest nursing schools in the country, that mattered only on campus. At Yale, other nursing students asked to see my meticulous notes or to have me join their study group. During clinical rotations at the hospital, teachers praised my expertise. But when the day was over, I'd walk into a convenience store to buy a Coke and the owner would follow me around to make sure I didn't shoplift. I'd sit on the train as elderly white women walked by without making eye contact, even though there was an empty seat beside me.

  A month into my tenure at nursing school, I bought a Yale travel mug. My mother assumed it was because I had to leave before dawn in order to catch the train to New Haven every day, and she'd get up and make me a fresh cup of coffee each morning to fill it. But it wasn't caffeine I needed; it was a ticket into a different world. I would settle the mug on my lap every time I got on the train, with the word YALE purposefully turned so other passengers could read it as they boarded. It was a flag, a sign saying: I'm one of you.

  --

  THE WOMEN'S PRISON, it turns out, is a good hour's drive from New Haven. After we arrive, Liza and I are shuttled into a holding cell that looks exactly the same as the one I was in at the courthouse, only more crowded. There are fifteen other women already inside. There are no seats, so I slide down a wall and sit on the floor between two women. One has her hands laced in front of her and is praying under her breath in Spanish. The other is biting her cuticles.

  Liza leans against the bars and begins to weave her long hair into a fishtail braid. "Excuse me," I say quietly. "Do you know if they'll let me make a phone call?"

  She glances up at me. "Oh, now you wanna talk to me."

  "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude. I...I'm new to all of this."

  She snaps a rubber band at the end of her braid. "Sure, you get a phone call. Right after they serve you your caviar and give you a nice massage."

  I am shocked by this. Isn't a phone call a basic right for prisoners? "That's not what it's like in the movies," I murmur.

  Liza places her hands under her breasts and plumps them. "Don't believe everything you see."

  A female guard opens the door to the cell. The praying woman gets up, her eyes full of hope, but the officer motions to Liza instead. "Good God, Liza. You back again?"

  "Don't you know nothing about economics? It's all supply and demand. I ain't in this business by myself, Officer. If there weren't such a demand for my services, the supply would just dry up."

  The guard laughs. "Now there's an image," she says, and she takes Liza by the arm to lead her out.

  One by one we are plucked from the cell. No one who leaves comes back. To distract myself I start making lists of what I must remember to tell Adisa one day when I can look back on this and laugh: that the food we are given, during our multihour wait, is so unidentifiable that I can't tell if it's a vegetable or a meat; that the inmate who was mopping the floor when we were marched inside looked exactly like my second-grade teacher; that although I am embarrassed by my nightgown, there is a woman in the holding cell with me who is wearing the kind of mascot costume you see at high school football games. Then finally the same officer who took Liza away opens the door and calls my name.

  I smile at her, trying to be as obedient as possible. I read her name tag: GATES. "Officer Gates," I say, when we are out of earshot of the other women in the cell, "I know you're just doing your job, but I'm actually being released on bail. The thing is, I need to get in touch with my son--"

  "Save it for your counselor, inmate." She takes another mug shot of me, and rolls my fingerprints again. She fills out a form that asks everything from my name and address and gender to my HIV status and substance abuse history. Then she leads me into a room slightly bigger than a closet that has nothing inside but a chair.

  "Strip," she announces. "Put your clothes on the chair."

  I stare at her.

  "Strip," she repeats.

  She folds her arms and leans against the door. If the first freedom you lose in prison is privacy, the second is dignity. I turn my back and pull my nightgown over my head. I fold it up carefully and set it on the chair. I step out of my panties, and fold them, too. I put my slippers on top of the pile.

  As a nurse you learn how to make a patient comfortable during moments that would otherwise be humiliating--how to drape the spread legs of a woman in labor, or draw a johnny over a bare bottom. When a laboring mother defecates because of the pressure of the baby's head, you clean it up briskly and say it happens to everyone. You take any embarrassing situation and you do what you can to make it less so. As I stand shivering, naked, I wonder if this guard's job is the absolute opposite of mine. If she wants nothing more than to make me feel shame.

  I decide I'm not going to give her the satisfaction.

  "Open your mouth," the officer says, and I stick out my tongue like I would at the doctor's office.

  "Lean forward and show me what's behind your ears."

  I do as I'm told, although I can't