“Don’t mess up,” Joel Mattson told Esther in the witness waiting area. “Your suspended sentence is contingent on your cooperation today.”
She tried to listen, but a black speck was lodged between the lawyer’s front teeth. A poppy seed, or a fragment of pepper from a polished brass pepper mill twisted over a white tablecloth at some ritzy restaurant? Lunch paid for by her legal fees, by Mama and Pop. Esther tried not to dislike him. After all, he was family. It wasn’t his fault that she was about to testify against Rosa.
“Why can’t I sit inside?” she asked him. “Listen to the trial?”
“You’re sequestered until after your testimony. So that you aren’t influenced by what other witnesses say.”
“I’m going to tell the truth no matter what anyone else says.”
Joel seemed clueless about how much she dreaded this day. “Everyone’s nervous,” he told her, but Esther knew differently. Her feelings went way beyond nervous. What did Joel know anyway? His legal practice was mostly real estate closings and wills.
Concentrate, Esther told herself.
Rosa always accused her of daydreaming. She didn’t understand that when an artist daydreamed, it wasn’t the same as goofing off. When Esther daydreamed, her imagination shifted into sixth gear and carried her into a zone where textures and shapes and colors shimmered. In that place, with her senses open wide and ultra-sharp, ordinary life was transformed into contours that became images and drawings.
Of course, Rosa had an answer for that too.
“You’re not even doing art anymore,” she had accused Esther on the day she accepted the District Attorney’s deal. “You’re not an artist or an activist. You’re just a cow.”
Esther knew that Rosa didn’t really mean that; she was just angry. Everyone knew that breastfeeding was best for the baby and for the ecology of the world, plus it was way cheaper than formula. But she had to admit that Rosa had a point. Esther still cared about the war, and justice, but these days she thought about changing the world so that babies wouldn’t have to grow up and go halfway around the world to kill other children. She would probably become one of those women who joined Another Mother for Peace, or even the League of Women Voters, instead of being a revolutionary like Rosa.
“DA Turner is calling for you, Esther.” Joel touched her arm. “You’re on.”
The room spun when she stood up and she grabbed the table. Joel took her arm. “I know this is hard for you,” he said. “And you might be thinking about changing your testimony. So I should mention one new thing, just a rumor, really, but I heard that if you back out, Turner plans to claim that it was your apple that actually hit Officer Steele’s horse. He has some witness who’ll say that. I heard it might be Rosa, but like I said, just a rumor.”
Esther shook her head. “I’m screwed whatever I do. Don’t worry. I won’t change my mind. I’m telling the truth about what we did.”
Courtroom 404 was in the new wing of the courthouse. The amphitheater-style room had a modern, airy feel. It could have been a classroom, an Intro to Sociology lecture. Esther had expected mahogany paneling and heavy drapes the color of dried blood.
From her seat in the witness box, the jurors looked somber. Their faces were closed up tight with lips pinched and eyes blank or looking away. Esther searched the rows. What did these citizens think about the war? Could they imagine being in a crowd marching down a hot street, fighting to change the world? One juror looked like a friend from her eleventh grade gym class, a girl who barely opened her mouth to smile or speak because her teeth were so crooked. Even her friend-lookalike wouldn’t meet Esther’s gaze.
Rosa sat at the defense table between Allen and Dwayne, refusing to look in the direction of the witness box. Good thing, because Esther didn’t think she could hold her gaze if their eyes met. Rosa’s lawyer must have given her the same speech Joel recited, about how dressing conventionally in court made a good impression on the jury. Rosa wore a white blouse under a loose blue cotton jumper. Her hair was gathered in a matching grosgrain ribbon and she had attached a gold circle pin to the rounded Peter Pan collar.
Aunt Miriam and Uncle Max gave Rosa that pin for her thirteenth birthday, wrapped in pink flowered paper. Uncle Max had raised his eyebrows and announced that if she had a Bat Mitzvah, her gift would have been a fat check. For once, Rosa managed to ignore the taunt. She thanked them for the gift, rolling her eyes when Aunt Miriam said Rosa should try to be a real lady like her cousin Deborah. “Nothing looks as sweet and innocent as a circle pin,” Aunt Miriam had said. That evening, Rosa tossed the pin into the tumble of discarded comic books in her top bureau drawer, along with the panty girdle from Aunt Miriam the year before, still in its cellophane wrapper.
Esther stifled a smile. If the jury had X-ray vision, if they could see beyond the gold-plated circle, through the blue jumper and cotton blouse, they would be shocked. Because tattooed on Rosa’s left breast was a small red star, a quarter-inch in diameter. Esther knew that tattoo well; it was the twin of hers. Getting matching tattoos had been Rosa’s idea, two summers before when they hitchhiked to San Francisco with Maggie.
At first Esther had been appalled. “Tattoos are for sailors and gang members.”
“That’s going to change,” Rosa said. “You’ll see. These tattoos will identify us as revolutionaries, will prove our commitment to the whole world.”
Esther had giggled. “To whatever subset of the world we show our tits.”
Maggie had tried to reason with them about dirty instruments and infection and self-mutilation, but Esther didn’t worry about pain or disease. She just wanted to capture the delicious moment and make it last.
A tattoo is forever, she had thought. Like a sister.
After Esther was sworn in, the DA stood in front of her for several seconds without speaking. Close-up, Esther could see the violet veins snaking under the skin of his nose, the kind of complexion that would have evoked a nudge in the ribs from Mama, with a whispered reference to excessive drinking. She searched the gallery for Mama and Pop and Jake but couldn’t find them.
“Mrs. Green, please describe to the jury the events of August 17, 1968,” the DA said. “Take your time, and tell us everything that happened.”
How could she explain to these strangers how alive she felt marching down Woodward Ave. with thousands of demonstrators, how simultaneously exhausted and flooded with energy? Each time she tried to lock eyes with one of her peers on the jury, they looked away, toward the lawyers or the judge or Exhibit A, an enlargement of the photograph placed on the easel at the front of the courtroom. Esther had never seen it so large, easily four feet square, so that every detail was blown-up out of normal context. It was a little grainy, but there was no doubt about the identity of the two young women standing with arms outstretched, hands open, fingers extended. There was no doubt that they had just thrown something. In the smaller photograph, the one that had been shown on television and printed in the newspapers, Esther had never noticed the sheen of wetness that gleamed on her cheeks. She had not seen that her eyes were squeezed tight, but Rosa’s were wide open and luminous, ignited by the afternoon sunlight.
Esther tore her gaze from the photograph. “Rosa and I could smell tear gas during the march. So when we got to Kennedy Square, we went with our friend Maggie to the first aid tent, to see if they needed help.”
“That would be Margaret Sternberg?” the DA asked.
“Yes. She was trained as a medic.”
“What did you find at the first aid tent?”
“A young man bleeding from his head.”
“What happened next?”
“The injured guy said that mounted police were beating protesters on Grand River.”
“Please simply describe what you saw, Mrs. Green, without hearsay or opinions.”
“I saw him bleeding. I heard him ask the medics to go help his friends on Grand River. Maggie said she’d go, and my sister and I went along to help.”
“That’s Rosa Levin, the defendant?”
“Yes.” Esther glanced at Rosa. Rosa wouldn’t look at her.
“What did you see when you got to Grand River?”
Esther remembered the scene frozen into a painting. It had been an afternoon of strong colors—the blue and white city cruiser with spinning roof lights barely detectable in the bright sunlight, the striped green and black awning across the street, the sleek tan rumps of the horses, the brown blur of the wooden batons swinging arcs in the air, pea-soup air that was thick with clouds of tear gas, the bloody T-shirt and the sewn-together Vietcong flags.
“I saw mounted police, about six or seven of them, facing a crowd of demonstrators. I saw the police hitting people. The whole area stank of tear gas, you know? A woman was on the ground, unconscious and bleeding.” Esther remembered the boy too, rubbing his eyes.
“What did you do?”
“Maggie asked us to go back to the square and get help, because her walkie-talkie was jammed.”
“Objection.” The DA turned to the judge. “Mrs. Green is making an assumption.”
“Sustained.”
Esther nodded. “The walkie-talkie wouldn’t work. The injured woman needed an ambulance.”
“So you left?”
“We started to. Then the cops began beating people harder, and Rosa said we had to try to stop them.”
“Stop them how?”
Esther hesitated before speaking. “By throwing apples, small green apples.”
“Where did the apples come from?”
“Our backpack. We also had sandwiches and juice.”
“Did you pack the contents of the backpack, Mrs. Green?”
“Yes. All except the apples.”
“So how did these apples get into your backpack?”
“Rosa said she brought them.”
“Why?”
“As a snack.”
“So, you claim that this was just two girls tossing a snack at some police officers, is that it? Tossing apples to try to stop half a squad of mounted officers in their work protecting the citizens of Detroit?” The DA’s voice was incredulous.
Esther shook her head. “I don’t know. Rosa said we should try. It was horrible, what the policemen were doing.”
Rosa in the street had been shiny like steel. Help me, Rosa had said. Throw now.
The DA lowered his voice to a soft whisper, but it still filled the courtroom. “Can you explain to the jury why you threw those apples, Mrs. Green?”
“I wanted to stop the cops from hitting people, cracking their heads. I never meant to hurt a horse, or an officer.”
Esther wanted to sob. There was no right way to tell this story. No way to explain that she didn’t want to do what Rosa said, and she did want to, both at the same time. No way to stop remembering every diamond-sharp word Rosa said. We have to stop them. Help me.
“You never meant to hurt anyone.” The DA sighed loudly. “What did you and your sister do next?
“We ran back to the first aid tent, told them about the unconscious woman. The medics called for an ambulance and asked us to stay in the tent while they went to help Maggie on Grand River.”
“Then what?”
“When the medics returned, we caught the bus home.” Esther’s voice drifted off and she looked down at her lap. She remembered how her milk let down on the bus, thinking about Molly. The idea of her milk feeding the Vietnamese baby on her T-shirt had tickled her fancy, and for a few seconds, she forgot what they did in the street.
“Just a few more questions, Mrs. Green.” The DA’s voice had a listen-up-here edge. “Are you medically trained? A doctor, or a nurse?”
“No.”
“So when you went to Grand River with the medic, it wasn’t really to offer first aid to injured demonstrators, was it? Did you go because you knew there was fighting there, and you wanted to throw rocks?”
“No, that’s not true. I went to help. And I never threw a rock.”
“Excuse me,” the DA said, smirking at the jury, “a very hard green apple, the size, shape, and solidity of a rock.” He shook his head before continuing. “How do you feel about your older sister, Mrs. Green? Are you afraid of Rosa?”
“Of course not. Why should I be afraid of her?”
“Your sister Rosa is a committed activist, a self-proclaimed revolutionary leader. Are you ever frightened of her zeal?”
“I admire her commitment.”
“Do you always follow her lead?”
“Is your sister the leader in political matters?”
Esther shrugged. “I guess so. She’s older.”
“Did you follow her lead last August 17 on Grand River?”
Esther looked down at her hands. They were strangers folded in her lap. She couldn’t feel them at the ends of her arms. Her neck wouldn’t work either, so she could not turn and look at Rosa at the defense table. She didn’t need to look; she knew how tall and straight her sister was sitting.
“Mrs. Green. Please answer the question. Did you follow Rosa’s lead on August 17?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it Rosa’s suggestion to throw rock-hard apples at the mounted police?”
“I guess so.”
“Did Rosa bring the apples to the demonstration and put them in your backpack?”
“Yes. But we never meant to hurt anyone.”
The DA’s voice boomed. “You might not have meant to hurt anyone, but you cannot know what your sister planned.”
Oh, but she did know. She had always known. All their lives, until the last few months, people joked that Rosa and Esther could have been twins, even with the dramatic difference in their hair color. Rosa made fun of those comments, but Esther had always loved the idea.
People probably wouldn’t be saying that anymore.
“Did your sister Rosa bring the apples, hand them to you, tell you to throw them, and then herself start aiming them at the officers and their horses?”
Esther tried to imagine what Rosa was thinking. She didn’t trust herself to look at her, but she didn’t have to. Esther had spent her whole life studying her older sister, trying to avoid disappointing her. Rosa would be ferocious with rage, blazing with it, just like on Grand River on that awful afternoon. She could feel Rosa’s gaze on her chest. Rosa’s eyes burned twin holes through Esther’s clothes, sizzled her tattoo, charred her flesh.
“Please answer the question, Mrs. Green. Did your sister Rosa Levin do those things?”
“Yes,” Esther said. “She did.”