Small Great Things Read online

  "Of course. Didn't everyone?" I say.

  "I guess that was the point. If you make the most functional family on TV a black one, maybe white folks won't be quite as terrified."

  "Don't know that I'd use the words Cosby and functional in the same sentence these days," I muse, as the T.J.Maxx employee walks up to us again.

  "Everything all right?"

  "Yeah," I say, getting annoyed. "We'll let you know if we need help."

  Ruth decides on ER, because her mother has a crush on George Clooney, along with mittens that have real rabbit fur sewed along the edges. I pick up a pair of pajamas for Violet, and a pack of undershirts for Micah. When we walk up to the cash register, the manager follows us. I pay first, handing over my credit card to the cashier, and then wait for Ruth to finish her transaction.

  "Do you have any ID?" the cashier asks. Ruth pulls out her license and Social Security card. The cashier looks at her, then at the picture on the license, and rings up the items.

  As we are leaving the store, a security guard stops us. "Ma'am," he says to Ruth, "can I see your receipt?"

  I start to rummage in my bag so that he can check mine, too, but he waves me away. "You're fine," he says dismissively, and he turns his attention back to Ruth, matching the contents of the bag with what's been rung up.

  That's when I realize that Ruth didn't want me to come here with her because she needed help picking out a present for her mother.

  Ruth wanted me to come here so that I could understand what it was like to be her.

  The manager hovering, in case of shoplifting.

  The wariness of the cashier.

  The fact that out of a dozen people leaving T.J.Maxx at the same time, Ruth was the only one whose bag was checked.

  I can feel my cheeks redden--embarrassed on Ruth's behalf, embarrassed because I didn't realize what was going on even as it was happening. When the security guard gives Ruth back the bag, we leave the store, running through the driving rain to my car.

  Inside, we sit, out of breath and soaked. The rain is a sheet between us and the world. "I get it," I say.

  Ruth looks at me. "You haven't even begun to get it," she replies, not unkindly.

  "But you didn't say anything," I point out. "Do you just get used to it?"

  "I don't imagine you ever get used to it. But you figure out how to let it go."

  I hear her words about Christina, echoing in my mind: She never learned any other way of being.

  Our eyes meet. "True confession? The worst grade I got in college was for a course on black history. I was the only white girl in the seminar. I did fine on exams, but half of the grade was participation, and I never opened my mouth that semester, not once. I figured if I did, I'd say the wrong thing, or something stupid that made me sound prejudiced. But then I worried that all those other kids thought I didn't give a damn about the subject because I never contributed to the discussion."

  Ruth is quiet for a moment. "True confession? The reason we don't talk about race is because we do not speak a common language."

  We sit for a few moments, listening to the rain. "True confession? I never really liked The Cosby Show."

  "True confession?" Ruth grins. "Neither did I."

  --

  THROUGHOUT DECEMBER, I double down on my efforts to keep my nose to the grindstone. I sort through discovery, I write pretrial motions, and I catch up on the other thirty cases vying with Ruth's for a moment of my attention. After lunch, I am supposed to depose a twenty-three-year-old who was beaten up by her boyfriend when he found out she was sleeping with his brother. However, the witness gets into a fender-bender on the way so we have to reschedule, leaving me with two hours free. I look down at the mountains of paperwork surrounding my desk and make a snap decision. I poke my head over the edge of my cubicle, toward where Howard is sitting. "If anyone asks," I tell him, "say I had to go out to buy tampons."

  "Wait. Really?"

  "No. But then they'll be embarrassed, and it serves them right for checking up on me."

  It's unseasonably warm--almost fifty degrees. I know that when the weather is good my mother usually picks Violet up from school and walks her to the playground. They have a snack--apples and nuts--and then Violet plays on the jungle gym before heading home. Sure enough, Violet is hanging upside down from the monkey bars, her skirt tickling her chin, when she sees me. "Mommy!" she cries, and with a grace and athleticism that must have come from Micah's genes, she flips herself to the ground and races toward me.

  As I lift her into my arms, my mother turns around on the bench. "Did you get fired?" she asks.

  I raise a brow. "Is that honestly the first thing that pops into your mind?"

  "Well, the last time you made an impromptu visit in the middle of the day I think it was because Micah's father was dying."

  "Mommy," Violet announces, "I made you a Christmas present at school and it's a necklace and also birds can eat it." She squirms in my embrace, so I set her down, and immediately she runs back to the play structure.

  My mother pats the spot on the bench beside her. She is bundled up in spite of the temperature, has her e-reader on her lap, and beside her is a little Tupperware bento box with apple slices and mixed nuts. "So," she says, "if you still have a job, to what do we owe this very excellent surprise?"

  "A car accident--not mine." I pop a handful of nuts into my mouth. "What are you reading?"

  "Why, sugar, I'd never read while my grandbaby is on a jungle gym. My eyes never leave her."

  I roll my eyes. "What are you reading?"

  "I don't remember the name. Something about a duchess with cancer and the vampire who offers to make her immortal. Apparently it's a genre called sick lit," my mother says. "It's for book club."

  "Who chose it?"

  "Not me. I don't pick the books. I pick the wine."

  "The last book I read was Everyone Poops," I say, "so I guess I can't really pass judgment."

  I lean back, tilting my face to the late afternoon sun. My mother pats her lap, and I stretch out on the bench, lying down. She plays with my hair, the way she used to when I was Violet's age. "You know the hardest thing about being a mom?" I say idly. "That you never get time to be a kid anymore."

  "You never get time, period," my mother replies. "And before you know it, your little girl is off saving the world."

  "Right now she's just enjoying stuffing her face," I say, holding out my hand for more nuts. I slip one between my lips and almost immediately spit it out. "Ugh, God, I hate Brazil nuts."

  "Is that what those are?" my mother says. "They taste like feet. They're the poor bastard stepchildren of the mixed nuts tin, the ones nobody likes."

  Suddenly I remember being about Violet's age, and going to my grandmother's home for Thanksgiving dinner. It was packed with my aunts and uncles and cousins. I loved the sweet potato pie she made, and the doilies on her furniture, which were all different, like snowflakes. But I did my absolute best to avoid Uncle Leon, my grandfather's brother, who was the relative that was too loud, too drunk, and who always seemed to kiss you on the lips when he was aiming for your cheek. My grandmother used to put a big bowl of nuts out as an appetizer, and Uncle Leon would man the nutcracker, shelling them and passing them to the kids: walnuts and hazelnuts and pecans, cashews and almonds and Brazil nuts. Except he never called them Brazil nuts. He'd hold up a wrinkled, long brown shell. Nigger toes for sale, he'd say. Who wants a nigger toe?

  "Do you remember Uncle Leon?" I ask abruptly, sitting up. "What he used to call them?"

  My mother sighs. "Yes. Uncle Leon was a bit of a character."

  I hadn't even known what the N-word meant, back then. I'd laughed, like everyone else. "How come no one ever said something to him? How come you didn't shut him up?"

  She looks at me, exasperated. "It wasn't like Leon was ever gonna change."

  "Not if he had an audience," I point out. I nod toward the sandbox, where Violet is shoulder to shoulder with a little black girl, chi