Atlanta, 1983
I was at the dining room table finishing up my homework when I heard the back doorbell ring. Aunt Eve was putting away clean dishes in the kitchen, so I knew she would answer it.
After a moment I heard Aunt Eve exclaim, “What a surprise to see you in the middle of the day!”
And then I heard Mom’s voice, saying that she had taken the day off.
I stood and went to the kitchen, which smelled of rosemary and browning butter from the turkey breast Miss Ada had put in the oven for dinner.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mom said when she saw me. I smiled at her.
“Can you stay for a few minutes?” Aunt Eve asked. “Have a glass of wine? I’ve got lemonade for the girls.”
“Have you finished your homework?” she asked me.
“Most of it,” I answered.
“Hmm,” she said. “We should probably get home so you can get everything finished before dinner.”
“Mom, I go to public school, remember? All I have to do is finish filling out this stupid worksheet and then I’m done.”
Anna had tons of homework every night from Coventry and was practically two grades ahead of me in every subject. It drove Mom crazy when I pointed out how much harder Anna’s school was, because she knew I was a “natural learner” (as my report cards often stated) and would love to go to a place that was really, really challenging. But any time I mentioned the possibility of applying to Coventry, Mom went off on a lecture about how there was a “hidden curriculum” at private school that she didn’t want me exposed to, which meant she thought they taught you how to be a snob. Except Anna wasn’t a snob. Anna was sweet and fun, and if you asked her for something she would just give it to you. Once, a couple of years ago, I asked her for the Pink & Pretty Barbie she had just gotten for her birthday, and she just handed it over. Except Mom made me give it back.
“A glass of wine would be lovely. I actually have some news to share. Good news, I think.”
“Well, let’s make it Champagne then! Sarah, go get Anna. I’ll open a bottle of sparkling Martinelli’s for the two of you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary—”
“I love Martinelli’s! I’ll go get Anna!”
I ran up the back staircase and raced into Anna’s room, with its four-poster bed, pink-and-white floral Laura Ashley bedspread, and pink princess phone, which I was so, so jealous of. “Our moms want to make a toast!” I shouted. “They’ve got Martinelli’s!”
Anna was sitting on her bed, where she always did her homework, working on a set of response poems to the novel Bridge to Terabithia, which she warned me not to read because the girl in it dies and she thought it would make me too sad about my dad. Anna was really good at writing poetry and had even won a contest at school for a poem she wrote about whales.
“Oh, good!” she said.
We raced downstairs just in time to hear the pop of a Champagne cork and then Aunt Eve laughing. “Why can I not do this without spilling it all over myself?”
“Because you’re a spaz?” joked my mom.
Aunt Eve looked up from the foaming Champagne bottle as we walked into the room. “Anna, honey, would you get me a dish towel?”
Anna walked to the cabinet where they kept the towels and fetched one for her mom, who dabbed at the Champagne bottle with it. She had already put out four flutes. She filled two of them with Champagne and the other two with Martinelli’s, which she also opened with a pop.
“So what are we toasting?” Aunt Eve asked once we were all standing by the kitchen table holding our glasses. Just then Miss Ada walked into the kitchen.
“Ada! Will you join us?” asked Aunt Eve. “I know you’re not a drinker, but we’ve got delicious sparkling apple juice!”
“I’m just here to check on the turkey, ma’am.”
Miss Ada didn’t look at Eve when she answered, just headed straight toward the oven, where she punched a button on the panel to turn on the oven light, opened the door, peeked inside, then shut the door again, heading back out of the room carrying herself elegantly as always. If she was aware that Aunt Eve looked crushed, she sure didn’t show it.
Aunt Eve bit her lip.
“Well,” said Mom, after Miss Ada was gone. “Here goes. I quit my job. As of the first of the new year, I will no longer be working for Henritz & Powers.”
“Daniella, that’s wonderful!” cried Aunt Eve. “I’m sure Bob is heartbroken that you’re leaving, but this is a good, good thing! You’ve been so overworked and now you’ll actually have time to relax a little!”
We all clinked glasses and took a sip.
“Honestly, my new job is going to keep me just as busy,” said Mom.
Aunt Eve looked startled. “New job? You’ve already got a new job? I thought you might take a little time off.”
“If only my bills would take a little time off,” Mom said.
“Of course, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
“It’s fine,” said Mom. “And actually, I’m taking a pay cut so it’s almost as if I’m taking time off—ha, ha, ha. I’m going to be working for the Southern Center for Human Rights. I’ll be defending indigent men on death row.”
“Well. I suppose that’s admirable.”
Mom took a seat at the kitchen table. “You ‘suppose’ ”?
Eve walked to the pantry, where she retrieved a tin of cheese straws, which she opened and placed on the kitchen table before sitting down next to Mom. “You don’t get sent to death row for nothing, after all. It’s usually for a pretty grisly crime. My goodness, Daniella, what if they asked you to defend someone like Wayne Williams, someone who . . .”
Aunt Eve glanced nervously at Anna and me. “. . . hurt all those children.”
Just hearing Wayne Williams’s name spoken aloud made my throat tighten, made me feel like I couldn’t breathe, like I was about to have a panic attack. There had been so many young black boys killed in the city over the last few years. Many of them had been strangled to death. They had finally caught Wayne Williams for the murders and sent him to jail for life. Still, it was really scary, even if I didn’t live in the same area where all of the murders were happening, even if it wasn’t white girls like me who were being killed.
“For starters, Williams wasn’t given the death penalty, but a life sentence. So that’s kind of a moot point. Also, he wasn’t actually charged with murdering a child, but rather two adult men—the other murders were just sort of pinned on him so the city could close the case. The point is whether or not a defendant gets the death penalty is almost always based on race and income level. And you know that the state can use the death penalty to intimidate people they view as a threat. Think about Angela Davis back in the day.”
“I’m just thinking about those poor children,” said Aunt Eve. “I’m just thinking about justice for their families.”
“I agree! And I’d say their families haven’t really received proper justice, because while I think it’s likely Wayne Williams is guilty of the murders he was convicted of, it’s highly unlikely he was the child murderer. But that’s just one highly sensationalized, highly publicized case. A lot of the men I’ll be defending are completely anonymous and unknown by the public, and some of them are guilty of nothing more than being black and poor. Seriously, Eve, it’s appalling. Besides, no matter how heinous the crime, the death penalty is barbaric. It just makes no sense for the state to say that murder is illegal, except when they are the ones doing it.”
“But what if it’s a deterrent?”
“Research shows it’s not.”
“I guess all I’m saying is that I feel a lot more sorry for the victims of crime than I do for the people committing them.”
“Jesus, Eve, have you become a Republican, too?”
Mom had told me that Uncle Bob had officially declared himself a Republican back when Ronald Reagan was running against Carter, but Eve and my mom had remained committed Democrats.
“I admit, I had serious concerns about Reagan when he first took office, but don’t you think he’s done a good job? Don’t you think he’s given the American people a much-needed sense of optimism? Honestly, Daniella, just put aside your prejudices long enough to really listen to him. That’s what I did, and I have to say, he makes me feel really hopeful about the state of things.”
“Really? You’ve fallen for his imperialist nostalgia shtick?”
“I haven’t fallen for anything. I just appreciate that he’s returned our country to the moral standards we once had.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” asked my mom, and Anna and I both looked at each other with wide eyes. Mom sometimes cussed, but never in front of Anna. She and I both knew that Uncle Bob and Aunt Eve were really careful about what sort of language Anna was exposed to.
“Daniella! Please. Little girls! Big ears!”
Aunt Eve probably didn’t even think Anna knew the word “damn.”
“Eve, do you remember what you were doing, oh, a little over eleven years ago?”
“Of course I do. That’s my whole point. Because here’s the truth, Daniella: I never would have become that way if I hadn’t gotten brainwashed by Warren and the whole counterculture movement. I regret it. I really do.”
“The cause was good; you just went off the deep end. But that doesn’t negate the injustice of Jim Crow or the fact that our country had no business being in Vietnam. You just got wrapped up with the wrong people.”
“The whole movement was the wrong people! And we weren’t just protesting our involvement in Vietnam—we wanted the Vietcong to win. We acted like they were these scrappy, virtuous heroes. But they were brutal, monstrous! My manicurist, Linh, was telling me all about how the North Vietnamese imprisoned her father after the war for having had ties with the South. They starved the man! They beat him. They kept him in solitary confinement for years. Years! They were breathtakingly cruel, and we adored them.”
“Eve, sweet friend, the majority of us protesting the war didn’t adore the North Vietnamese,” said my mom. “We just wanted the U.S. out. We didn’t want any more of our American soldiers to die for what was a civil war in a country that had nothing to do with us.”
“You say that now.”
“I am absolutely certain I would have said that then. I did say that then. You just weren’t listening.”
Eve and my mom glared at each other.
“Who’s Warren?” Anna asked, and I watched as Aunt Eve’s expression shifted from mad to worried.
“Just an old beau of your mom’s,” Mom answered quickly. “Your pretty mother always had boys chasing after her. It was hard to keep up with them.”