Small Great Things Read online

  --

  MY DAY ONLY gets worse when I leave work and see six missed phone calls from Kennedy. I immediately ring her back. "I thought you agreed that working with Wallace Mercy was a bad idea," she hammers, without even saying hello.

  "What? I did. I do."

  "So you had no idea that he was leading a march in your honor today in front of the courthouse?"

  I stop walking, letting the foot traffic funnel around me. "You gotta be kidding. Kennedy, I did not talk to Wallace."

  "Your sister was shoulder to shoulder with him."

  Well, mystery solved. "Adisa tends to do whatever she wants."

  "Can't you control her?"

  "I've been trying for forty-four years but it hasn't worked yet."

  "Try harder," Kennedy tells me.

  Which is how I wind up taking the bus to my sister's apartment, instead of going right home. When Donte lets me in, Adisa is sitting on the couch playing Candy Crush on her phone, even though it is nearly dinnertime. "Well, look what the cat drug in," she says. "Where you been?"

  "It's been crazy since New Year's. Between work, and going over things for trial, I haven't had a free minute."

  "I came by the other day, did Edison tell you?"

  I kick her feet off the couch so there's room for me to sit. "Did you come over to tell me your new best friend is Wallace Mercy?"

  Adisa's eyes light up. "You see me on the news today? It was just my elbow and up to here on my neck, but you can tell it's me by the coat. I wore the one with the leopard collar--"

  "I want you to stop," I say. "I don't need Wallace Mercy."

  "Your white lawyer tell you that?"

  "Adisa," I sigh. "I never wanted to be someone's poster child."

  "You didn't even give Reverend Mercy a chance. You know how many of our people have had experiences like yours? How many times they been told no because of their skin color? This is bigger than just your story, and if some good can come out of what happened to you, why not let it?" Adisa sits up. "All he wants is a chance to sit down with us, Ruth. On national television."

  Alarm bells ring in my head. "Us," I repeat.

  Adisa's gaze slides away. "Well," she admits, "I indicated that I might be able to change your mind."

  "So this isn't even about helping me move forward. It's about you getting recognition. Jesus, Adisa. This is a new low, even for you."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" She gets to her feet and stares down at me, her hands balanced on her hips. "You really think I'd use my baby sister like that?"

  I challenge her. "You really gonna stand here drenched to the bone and tell me it's not raining?"

  Before she can answer there is a loud crash as a door falls back on its hinges and slams into the wall. Tabari swaggers out from one of the bedrooms with a friend. "You rob a trucker fuh that hat, yo?" He laughs. They are amped up, loud, their pants riding so low I don't know why they even bother to wear them. All I can think is that I'd never let Edison out of the house like that, like he was looking to intimidate.

  Then Tabari's friend turns around and I realize it's my son.

  "Edison?"

  "Ain't it nice," Adisa says, smiling. "The cousins hanging?"

  "What are you doing here?" Edison says, in a tone that lets me know this is not a pleasant surprise.

  "Don't you have homework to do?"

  "Did it."

  "College applications?"

  He looks at me, his eyes hooded. "They ain't due for another week."

  Ain't?

  "What's the problem?" he asks. "You're always telling me how important family is." He says that word as if it is a swear.

  "Where exactly are you and Tabari going?"

  Tabari looks up. "The movies, Auntie," he says.

  "The movies." Like hell, I think. "What film are you seeing?"

  He and Edison exchange a look and start laughing. "We gonna pick when we get there," Tabari says.

  Adisa steps forward, arms crossed. "You got a problem with that, Ruth?"

  "Yes. Yes I do," I explode. "Because I think it's a lot more likely that your son is going to take Edison down by the basketball court to smoke weed than to see the next Oscar nominee."

  My sister's jaw drops. "You judging my family," she hisses, "when you on trial for murder?"

  I grab Edison's arm. "You're coming with me," I announce, and then I turn to Adisa. "Have fun doing your interview with Wallace Mercy. Just make sure you tell him, and the adoring public, that you and your sister are no longer on speaking terms."

  With that, I drag my son out of her home. I rip the hat off his head when we get downstairs and tell him to pull up his pants. We are halfway to the bus station before he says a word. "I'm sorry," Edison begins.

  "You better be," I answer, rounding on him. "You lost your damn mind? I didn't raise you to be like this."

  "Tabari's not as bad as his friends."

  I start walking, and I don't look back. "Tabari is not my son," I say.

  --

  WHEN I WAS pregnant with Edison, all I knew was that I didn't want the experience of giving birth to be anything like Adisa's--who claimed to not even realize she was pregnant for six months when she had her first baby, and who practically had her second on the subway. Me, I wanted the best care I could get, the finest doctors. Since Wesley was on a tour of duty, I enlisted Mama as my birthing coach. When it was time, we took a taxi to Mercy-West Haven because Mama couldn't drive and I was in no state to. I had planned for a natural birth, because as a labor and delivery nurse I'd written this moment in my head a thousand times, but just like any well-laid plan, that wasn't in the cards for me. As I was being wheeled into the OR for a C-section, Mama was singing Baptist hymns, and when I came to after the procedure, she was holding my son.

  "Ruth," she said to me, her eyes so full of pride they were a color I'd never seen before. "Ruth, look at what God made for you."

  She held the baby out to me, and I suddenly realized that although I'd planned my first birth down to the minute, I hadn't organized a single second of what might come afterward. I had no idea how to be a mother. My son was stiff in my arms, and then he opened his mouth and started wailing, like this world was an affront to him.

  Panicked, I looked up at my mama. I was a straight-A student; I was an overachiever. I had never imagined that this--the most natural of all relationships--would make me feel so incompetent. I jiggled the baby in my arms, but that only made him cry louder. His feet kicked like he was traveling on an imaginary bicycle; his arms flailed, each tiny finger flexed and rigid. His screams grew tighter and tighter, an uneven seam of anger punctuated by the tiny knots of his hiccups. His cheeks were red with effort, as he tried to tell me something I was not equipped to understand.

  "Mama?" I begged. "What do I do?"

  I held out my arms to her, hoping she would take him and calm him down. But she just shook her head. "You tell him who you are to him," she instructed, and she took a step back, as if to remind me I was in this by myself.

  So I bent my face close to his. I pressed his spine up under my heart, where it had been for so many months. "Your name is Edison Wesley Jefferson," I whispered. "I am your mama, and I'm going to give you the best life I can."

  Edison blinked. He stared up at me through his dark eyes, as if I were a shadow he had to distinguish from the rest of this new, strange world. His cries hitched twice, a train headed off its track, and then crashed into silence.

  I could tell you the exact minute my son relaxed into his new surroundings. I know this detail because it was the moment I did the same.

  "See," Mama said, from somewhere behind me, somewhere outside the circle of just us two. "I told you so."

  --

  KENNEDY AND I meet every two weeks, even when there's no new information. Sometimes she'll text me, or stop by McDonald's to say hello. At one of these visits she invites me and Edison over for dinner.

  Before going to Kennedy's home, I change three times. Finally E