Small Great Things (32 page)

“Fine.” Ruth's voice sounds stiff. “I was wondering if maybe you had any free time this afternoon.”

I glance at Micah, who's come into the living room.
Ruth,
I mouth.

He scoops up Violet, tickling her, letting me know that I have all the time I need. “Of course,” I say. “Was there something in the discovery you wanted to talk about?”

“Not exactly. I need to go shopping for a birthday gift for my mama. And I thought you might like to come along.”

I recognize an olive branch when I see it. “I'd like that,” I say.

As I drive to Ruth's, I think about all the reasons this is a colossal mistake. When I was starting out as public defender, I spent my salary, which didn't even cover my groceries for the week, on my clients when I could see they needed a clean set of clothes or a hot meal. It took me a while to realize that helping my clients couldn't extend to my bank account. Ruth seems too proud to drag me to a mall and hint that she could really use a new pair of shoes, however. I think maybe she just wants to clear the air between us.

But as we drive to the mall, all we discuss is the weather—when the rain is going to stop, if it might turn to sleet. Then we talk about where we will be spending the upcoming holidays. At Ruth's suggestion, I park near T.J.Maxx. “So,” I say. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

She shakes her head. “I'll know it when I see it. There are items that just scream my mama's name, usually ones covered in sequins.” Ruth smiles. “The way she dresses for church, you'd think she was headed to a black-tie wedding. I always figured it was because she wears a uniform all week long, maybe this was her way of cutting loose.”

“Did you grow up here in Connecticut?” I ask, as we get out of the car.

“No. Harlem. I used to take the bus into Manhattan every day with my mama to work, and then get dropped off at Dalton.”

“You and your sister went to Dalton?” I ask.

“I did. Adisa wasn't quite as…scholarly minded. It was Wesley who made me settle in Connecticut.”

“How did you two meet?”

“At a hospital,” Ruth says. “I was a nursing student, on an L and D ward, and there was a woman having a baby whose husband was in the service. She had tried and tried to contact him. She was delivering twins a month early, and she was scared, and convinced she was gonna have those babies alone. Suddenly when she was in the middle of pushing, a guy comes flying in, wearing camo. He takes one look at her and drops like a stone. Since I was just a student, I was stuck taking care of the fainter.”

“So wait,” I say. “Wesley was married to someone else when you met?”

“That's what I assumed. When he came to, he started hitting on me, turning up the charm. I thought he was the biggest jackass I'd ever met, flirting while his wife was delivering his twins, and I told him so. Turned out they weren't his babies. His best friend was the father, but was out training and couldn't get furlough, so Wesley promised to take his place and help the guy's wife till he got there.” Ruth laughs. “That's about when I started thinking maybe he wasn't the biggest jackass after all. We had some good years, Wesley and me.”

“When did he pass away?”

“When Edison was seven.”

I can't imagine losing Micah; I can't imagine raising Violet by myself. What Ruth has done with her life, I realize, is braver than anything I've ever done. “I'm sorry.”

“Me too,” Ruth sighs. “But you know, you go on, right? Because what other choice have you got?” She turns to me. “Mama taught me that, as a matter of fact. Maybe I'll find it embroidered on a pillow.”

“In glitter,” I say, and we walk through the store doors.

Ruth tells me about Sam Hallowell, whose name rings a faint bell, and how her mother has been working as a domestic in that household for almost fifty years. She talks about Christina, who gave her her first illicit sip of brandy when she was twelve, from her father's liquor cabinet, and who paid her way through trigonometry, buying the answers to tests off an exchange student from Beijing. She tells me, too, how Christina tried to give her money. “She sounds awful,” I admit.

Ruth considers this. “She's not. It's just what she knows. She never learned any other way of being.”

We move through the aisles, trading stories. She confesses that she wanted to be an anthropologist, until she studied Lucy the
Australopithecus
:
How many women from Ethiopia do
you
know named Lucy?
I tell her how my water broke in the middle of a trial, and the dick of a judge wouldn't give me a continuance. She tells me about Adisa, who convinced her when she was five that the reason Ruth was so pale by comparison was because she was turning into a ghost, that she'd been born black as a berry but was fading away little by little. I tell her about the client I hid in my basement for three weeks, because she was so sure her husband was going to kill her. She tells me about a man who, in the middle of labor, told his girlfriend she needed to wax. I confess that I haven't seen my father, who is in an institution for Alzheimer's, in over a year, because the last time I was so sad I couldn't shake the visit for months. Ruth admits that walking through Adisa's neighborhood scares her.

I am starving, so I grab a box of caramel corn from a display and open it as we talk, only to find Ruth staring at me. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“Eating?” I say, my mouth full of popcorn. “Take some. It's my treat.”

“But you haven't paid for it yet.”

I look at her like she's crazy. “I'm
going
to, obviously, when we leave. What's the big deal?”

“I mean—”

But before she can answer, we are interrupted by an employee. “Can I help you find something?” she asks, looking directly at Ruth.

“Just browsing,” Ruth says.

The woman smiles, but she doesn't leave. She trails us at a distance, like a child's toy being dragged on a string. Ruth either doesn't notice or doesn't choose to notice. I suggest gloves or a nice winter scarf, but Ruth says her mother has one lucky scarf she's owned forever, and she'd never trade up. Ruth keeps up a steady patter of conversation until we find a section of bargain basement DVDs. “This might be fun. I could do up a whole bunch of her favorite shows, and package them with microwave popcorn and call it movie night.” She begins sifting through the barrels of DVDs:
Saved by the Bell. Full House. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.

“Dawson's Creek,”
I say. “Man, does that take me back. I was absolutely going to grow up and marry Pacey.”

“Pacey? What kind of name is that?”

“Didn't you ever watch it?”

Ruth shakes her head. “I've got about ten years on you. And if there was ever a white-girl show, this was it.”

I reach deep into the barrel and pull out a season of
The Cosby Show
. I think about showing it to Ruth, but then hide it underneath a box of
The
X-Files,
because what if she thinks that the only reason I'm picking it is the color of their skin? But Ruth plucks it out of my hand. “Did you watch this when it was on TV?”

“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.”

T
HROUGHOUT
D
ECEMBER,
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.”