“Yes. She did.”
Esther’s three words punched into Jake’s sternum. Sitting next to him, Mama clutched her throat. She must have felt it too, the calamity of those three true words. Jake had encouraged Esther to accept the plea bargain. It was the right thing to do, for Molly, for their family. For herself, damn it; it was high time Esther stopped doing everything Rosa told her to. Still, when Esther spoke those three words in the courtroom, Jake wondered if he had been terribly wrong.
“That will be all, Mrs. Green. Thank you.” The DA’s voice was cheerful. If he was pleased, it couldn’t be good news for Rosa. Jake barely heard Dwayne’s cross-examination, taking Esther through her years of shared activism with Rosa, in Ann Arbor and Detroit. None of it mattered after those three awful words.
The bailiff helped Esther out of the witness box and down the steps. Jake tried to catch her eye, but Esther studied her feet as if she couldn’t walk without visual assistance.
“One moment, Mrs. Green,” the judge said.
Esther halted. Jake held his breath.
“Have a seat.” The judge pointed to an empty chair at the end of the prosecution table. “You are no longer sequestered.”
Jake wanted to stand up and object. Why does she have to sit with them? That’s not standard procedure; it’s harassment. She’s done, he wanted to yell, so let her sit here with her parents and me where she belongs. But Esther let herself be escorted to the DA’s table.
Next to Jake, Mama took Pop’s hand. Pop lifted her fingers to his lips, briefly. Jake closed his eyes. He had never before observed any physical intimacy between Esther’s parents. Things must be even worse than he thought.
The wire service photographer’s testimony echoed his television interviews. He set the scene with the scorching heat and the shade of the restaurant awning. He had just finished his sandwich and was smoking a cigarette when he heard the commotion on the street. Jake’s attention wandered as the photographer answered questions about angle of vision and camera distances. It had been right to leave Molly with the sitter, but his chest ached for the comfort of her small warm weight.
On cross-examination, Rosa’s lawyer tried to focus on the violent behavior of the cops. “Did you take any photographs of the altercation between the mounted police and the demonstrators?” he asked. “Of the police hitting citizens?”
“A few,” the photographer admitted.
“Where are those photos? Why weren’t they in the newspaper? Why aren’t they enlarged so the jury can see the whole picture?”
“Not my job,” the photographer said. “I take the photos. The wire service decides which ones to distribute and the papers choose what to publish.”
Jake had to admit that the DA was good. He primed the jury with evidence from the injured cop’s commanding officer, the paramedic first responders, the vet who treated the traumatized horse, the fourth-year resident on duty in the Emergency Room. Next came the spinal cord trauma specialist who had been called in from his Upper Peninsula fishing camp to operate late that night. Jake knew the guy from his neurosurgery rotation in med school, and it was bad luck for Rosa’s case. The neurosurgeon spoke to the jury in his husky voice, sharing secrets of the most intimate workings of the human body. On a large diagram, he pointed to the three crushed vertebrae in the officer’s spine. “These things are difficult to predict, but with a complete T11-L1 injury, most likely Officer Steele’s legs will be paralyzed for the rest of his life.”
Finally, an attendant in clean white scrubs pushed a wheelchair into the courtroom. The injured officer sat motionless, wearing his uniform and a neck brace under his bland and sad expression. Neck brace? The trauma was to his lower spine. If Esther were sitting next to him, he could whisper-rant about courtroom theatrics, about having the guy wear a collar when the injury was nowhere near his neck. Theatrics or not, the tactic seemed to work, judging by the sympathy visible on the jurors’ faces.
The judge agreed to the DA’s request that the officer be allowed to give testimony from his wheelchair, due to his significant injuries. “Officer Steele,” the DA said, “could you tell us what you and your squad were doing on Grand River Avenue on August 17, 1968? Take it slow and easy.”
“My squad was assigned periphery duty that afternoon, patrolling a neighborhood adjacent to the demonstration. We came upon an offshoot of the march. These individuals did not have a permit to use the street.” Officer Steele’s mild expression tightened slightly. “We advised them of the situation. We requested several times that they move onto the sidewalk. They refused to comply. They began shouting abusive comments at us.”
“What kind of comments, Officer?”
“Epithets like ‘pig,’ sir.” The police officer seemed comfortable in the courtroom, conversing with the DA as if they were relaxing together with a beer at a bar down the street. Jake envied that kind of ease. He had observed it in some physicians at the hospital, wondered where it came from.
“And then what happened, Officer?”
“More demonstrators joined the group in the street. Despite multiple warnings and the deterrent use of tear gas, they did not disperse. Instead, they attacked us.”
“The perpetrators swarmed into the street, surrounded us. They yelled threats.”
“How did you respond?”
“We defended ourselves with our billy clubs, sir. To secure the street.”
“How were you injured?”
Officer Steele shook his head slightly in the neck brace. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember. The doctors say I might never regain those memories. My buddies tell me that rocks were thrown at us and my horse was hit. They say that when I fell off, I landed so hard they could hear bones break.”
Jake looked at the defense team; why didn’t they challenge that testimony as hearsay? Jake knew it wasn’t likely that bystanders could hear the vertebrae crack, but it made a strong impression on the jury, a damaging impression. Their faces mirrored the DA’s expression of shock. Esther felt it too. Jake knew by the way her shoulders sagged, collapsing into herself.
He studied the sisters’ backs at the twin tables facing the judge. When they were younger, their torsos were almost identical: Rosa a bit taller, Esther slightly rounder. They didn’t resemble each other anymore. Esther slumped at the far end of the DA’s desk. Jake hadn’t noticed before how much pregnancy weight she still carried. Rosa sat erect between Allen and Dwayne at the defense table. She didn’t move, but her body radiated energy. Rosa had always been like that, even as a teenager. Before Allen fell in love with her, he once called her a matchstick, tall and skinny with a flaming head. Not that he ever would, or even really wanted to, but Jake couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to hold that voltage in his arms.
Officer Steele was excused and wheeled out of the courtroom. Jake wondered if he had kids. If he used to hurry home from work in time to read Babar at bedtime, deeply inhaling the scent of shampoo in their damp hair as they sat together on the sofa. He bet that was what Esther was thinking about too.
Jake wanted to take Esther away. Away from the courtroom. Away from Rosa. From danger. Just Esther and Molly and him. Safe.