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Authors: Paul Volponi

BOOK: Response
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I guess she saw my shoulders shrinking under that weight.
“All you need to do is tell the truth,” Mom answered.
“Then nothing can touch you. No matter what kind of mud the lawyers for the other side think they're gonna throw.”
I didn't know if I believed that or not. I just knew I was tired of getting trapped in lies, like the ones I'd fed my family and Deshawna the night I went into Hillsboro.
“And part of that
truth
is you need to do a lot of self-reflection, Noah,” Mom said, the anger building up in her voice. “Outside of these walls, I won't give those racists a thing to hold against you. But your father and grandmother, and me—we don't understand how it was you couldn't tell right from wrong the night this all happened.”
I knew it was coming. That I'd gotten off light for a while because of my skull. But when Mom finally let loose what she'd been holding back, I felt two inches tall standing in front of her.
“I know it,” I said.
“Is that what you want to teach your daughter?” she asked.
“No,” I answered, feeling even smaller.
“Because if it is, you didn't learn a thing from us. Maybe we should have let the streets raise you up. That's what people will think anyway by your actions. I should have saved myself the trouble,” Mom kept on. “The shame of it, a common car thief.”
 
The DA's office set up meeting times around my school schedule, but they didn't give a shit about me missing hours at Mickey D's. I never figured that pointing a finger at those racist bastards was going to put me in the poor-house and make me half a deadbeat with Deshawna and her dad.
I complained about it. But one of the city's lawyers told me over the phone, “We can't worry over your work hours, Noah. It's insignificant compared to this. You need to see what you're going to face in court.”
He could say what he wanted, but I knew he was collecting a paycheck much fatter than mine for just being there.
My father used his vacations days with the transit authority and came along with me to every meeting.
“I don't trust anybody. Period,” Dad said. “You don't know enough about life yet to challenge what they tell you as true. I wanna make sure you don't become their
boy
, 'cause you was
mine
first.”
The meetings were held at a downtown office building, with five city lawyers playing different roles to get me used to the feel of a real courtroom.
They had a black woman lawyer, wearing sheer stockings and a skirt just over her knees, playing the part of Scaturro's mouthpiece. She hooked my eye, smiling easy, and then she ripped off a bunch of stinging questions.
“How many times have you been arrested?”
“What were the charges?”
“Had you ever stolen a car before and sold it to a chop shop?”
“When did you decide to take up that illegal business?”
I looked down at the floor and could hear the same snap in her voice as Mom's.
“Eyes up, Noah,” another lawyer coached me. “You look like
you're
on trial here, and that's what the opposition wants.”
I was sweating up a storm trying to answer everything right, and they told me not to drink any water the next time before we practiced.
“Excuse me. But the other side's gonna have a pretty lady lawyer like this one knocking me down?” I asked.
“Aaron Chapman's the opposing counsel, Noah,” said one of the lawyers. “He's an overweight white man with an appetite for chewing up witnesses and spitting them across the courtroom.”
“See, Noah, I grew up in East Franklin with a mother and grandmother, too,” said the lady lawyer. “I know what kind of heat you're probably used to catching from
them
. That's a good start in standing up to a grilling in court. You just need to become better prepared.”
There were four practice sessions altogether. And by the end of the second one, I was speaking slow and steady without using any street slang, and I was looking the lawyers, who were sitting off to the side playing the part of the jury, in their eyes at the end of every answer that mattered.
Dad didn't say much in those meetings, but when he did he made sure the lawyers heard him.
He said things like, “Calling my son a victim makes him sound weak. Don't tell him not to stare too much at Scaturro. He's got every right. Noah was the one who got beat, not any of you.”
I was just starting to trust those lawyers a little.
Then after our last session, we were waiting in the hall for the elevator. The doors opened wide and that Rao kid and his detective father stepped out. The lawyer who was bringing them upstairs knew right away he'd fucked up, and he got in between us all fast.
“Nice to see your son when him and his racist friends aren't trying to beat the black off one of us,” Dad said loud and strong for Rao's father and everybody else to hear. “He learn that from the stories you told him about policing this city?”
Rao and his father both dropped their heads, and Dad's words were still echoing in that hallway after the two of them were hustled into an office.
I could feel a fire starting in my belly at having to see those bastards. But my father seemed to just shake off whatever he was feeling.
“Not a word about this to your mother,” he told me on the elevator ride down. “She don't need to lose another night's sleep out of frustration.”
I agreed with him and wished it could be like that for me.
We always took the subway home from the DA's office together. My father would flash his conductor's badge and ride for free. Anytime I ever rode the trains with him before that, he'd pull me through the iron gates right behind him, without paying. But he wouldn't do it now.
“You
sure
?” I'd asked, looking to save money.
“We don't need for some cop to stop us and have the newspapers call us crooks over two dollars,” he'd tell me. “So just reach your hand into your pocket and pay the fare.”
After that last meeting, Dad saw one of his conductor friends working the doors from a little compartment on the train we were riding.
“I thought you was on vacation?” said the man, turning up both his palms.
“This
is
my vacation, brother,” Dad said, getting up and walking over to him. “Trouble is, it's the same as work.”
Then he pointed back at me. I couldn't hear what he was telling that conductor over the noise of the train. But the man nodded his head to me, and I nodded back.
I didn't know what my father could have said about me besides,
That's my son sitting there.
I didn't know if my father was proud of me or not.
All I'd really ever done with my life is get a girl pregnant, and made the news for thinking about swiping a car and getting my ass whipped with a baseball bat.
The train made its two stops in Hillsboro, barreling out of the black tunnel into the lighted station both times. And Dad never took his eyes off me as it did, from where he was standing by his friend.
Mostly everybody who was white in our car had got off.
There was a black woman sitting across from me, about the same age as Grandma. She had two big shopping bags at her feet, and I was thinking how maybe she didn't have any family to help her. Then my eyes hooked up with hers and she put a death grip on her pocketbook.
That felt like getting kicked in the teeth by my own kind.
The train started slowing down for the first East Franklin station. I stood up, grabbing on to the handrail and getting my legs steady. Only my father didn't need to hold on to anything. He bounced along with that train, shifting his weight like he'd grown up balancing on a high wire.
“You ride enough years, you get a sense of what's coming down the line,” he said after I asked him about it.
We got to our apartment door, and Destiny Love's baby stroller was folded up in the hall.
I could hear Deshawna's voice laughing from inside.
Pops counted out seventy-something dollars quick, pushing it at me.
“Here, you take care of your
business
and then some with that,” he said, before turning the brass knob. “Keep your baby's mother happy.”
Mom, Grandma, and Deshawna were almost having a party in there, calling out Destiny Love's name. It was the first day she'd started crawling for real. They were all trying to get her to come to them. But as soon as I stepped inside, my daughter scooted straight over to me.
DA'S OFFICE
In a windowless office, the lead lawyer sits behind a desk, stabbing his blotter with the point of a pen. The subordinate is standing with his head bowed and heels together. Directly behind the subordinate is a smoky glass door with the backward lettering of lead lawyer's name stenciled on it.
 
LEAD LAWYER: Honestly, do you have your head up your ass, Pierce, or what? (
Irately
.) You schedule a session with a cooperating witness who took part in the alleged attack five minutes after the victim's meeting ends! Did you think what could have happened if they met in the men's restroom and not in the hallway? You could have caused serious headlines and put a major dent in this thing by being sloppy and stupid. Screw up like that again and all you'll be prosecuting in this city are jaywalking cases. Understand me?
 
SUBORDINATE (
Eyes on the floor
.): Yes, sir.
 
LEAD LAWYER (
Still seething
.): You control your surroundings! They don't control you! And that goes for your witnesses. You'll tell them who to be, how to be, and when to be! Do you understand me, Mr. Pierce?
 
SUBORDINATE: I do, sir. (
His voice cracks
.)
 
LEAD LAWYER: It's like I've taught you almost nothing.
Chapter
SIX
MUNCH HAD BEEN ALL OVER MY CASE ABOUT missing shifts at Mickey D's. So when I showed up for work two minutes late one Saturday, there was already another kid standing at my station, on the deep fryer.
“Jackson, see me in my office!” hollered Munch.
It wasn't anything close to being an office. It was just a big walk-in supply closet stacked to the ceiling with cartons of paper napkins and floor cleaner.
“Get into this,” he said with a straight face, handing me a clown suit.
“Do what?” I said, shocked.
“I need you to put this on and give out balloons to kids,” he came back. “The guy I hired to do it called in sick.”
There was a curly red wig, baggy yellow pants, and floppy shoes that were five times bigger than my feet.
I stared into the whites of his eyes, like he'd lost his mind.
“Listen up, Jackson,” he snapped. “Either put this outfit on or go home.”
“Out of all these kids workin' here, how come me?” I asked, ready to blow.
“'Cause I'm the boss and you're the horse,” he answered, snide. “That simple.”
I should have walked out of there cold. But I thought about what my father would say to me if I had to borrow another day's pay, or worse, got my ass fired. Then I thought about all the things my baby daughter needed, and how Deshawna would give me grief, too.
On the flip side, I'd be embarrassed as shit for Dad or Deshawna to even see me dressed up that way. I guessed only Destiny Love would have smiled over it.
Finally, Munch just shoved that clown suit into my arms, putting a tube of white makeup on top of it. Then he walked off grinning from ear to ear. That bastard wanted me to paint my face white, like the clown in Mickey D's commercials.
I stood there steaming.
Inside the bathroom, I put that suit on over my clothes, grilling myself hard in the mirror. Then I squeezed the white makeup onto the tips of two fingers. But I couldn't rub it in, and washed my hand in the sink till the water got so hot it almost burned.
I hid my face from Munch behind a bunch of balloons, and stood outside the store for nearly four hours, trying my best to laugh and joke with every little kid who came past. No matter what color.
And I learned that as long as I was dressed as a clown and was there to
amuse
them, even white folks from Hillsboro would send their kids up to me for a free balloon.
But towards the end of my shift, Munch marched outside all pissed off.
“People are complainin', Jackson,” he said. “They want to know when our clown turned
black
. What happened to the makeup I gave you?”
“What people?” I asked, staring him in the face. “Who do
they
all look like?
You?
”
Munch didn't answer. He just stormed back inside the store.
When my shift was over, I folded that clown suit up neat, making the corners sharp like it had just come out of the box. Then I left it sitting on a tabletop by the time clock. I'd sent that tube of makeup to where nobody would reach for it, burying it at the bottom of the bathroom trash beneath the sole of my shoe.
If Munch ever wanted to press me on it, he could take whatever that makeup cost out of my pay, and I wouldn't argue a lick.
The DA's office had been prepping Asa and Bonds, too. Only they never had us all down there at the same time, probably so Scat's lawyer couldn't say we worked up a story together. But we'd talk things over plenty in the cafeteria at school, like how Asa wanted to climb up into that black lady lawyer's skirt.
“A brother needs a sexy sister with a job like that,” crowed Asa. “Think of all the trouble she could spring you out of.”

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