Rosa wasn’t worried about facing Allen. He wouldn’t yell or rant, wouldn’t blame or guilt her. He didn’t need to. In the three days since her arrest in the Emergency Room, she’d done nothing but reproach herself.
Allen stood silhouetted in the visiting room doorway at the city jail. Behind him, the June sunlight blazed in the courtyard. It transformed his Afro and full beard into a soft explosion, melting away the excuses she had rehearsed. When she stood to greet him, the room spun. She grabbed the table edge. Blood loss, she told herself. The hospital wanted to keep her another day, but the DA said she could recuperate in jail. The guard closed the door behind Allen, and they were alone. She opened her arms.
“Rosa,” he whispered.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Shush. It’s okay.”
How could it be okay? She had screwed up big time and he had to pick up the pieces. Not that Emma was a burden, but Allen didn’t exactly choose fatherhood. Esther used to say that Allen would want a kid in a second if Rosa agreed, that he turned into instant mush whenever he saw Molly. Back then, Rosa hadn’t paid much attention to Esther’s claims or Allen’s wishes. Now it was important. She loosened her embrace, leaned back so she could see his face.
“How are you doing with Emma?”
Allen grinned. “I’m learning. She’s a great kid.” He paused. “How are you doing without her?”
Rosa rested her face on his shoulder. She had promised herself not to lose control. She had to stay strong to face the new trial, to fight the new charges. The new lies.
“I miss her terribly.” The waves of dizziness came back, or maybe this was sorrow.
“Listen, Rosa. I’m so sorry about what happened in the hospital.” He paused. “Tell me about the baby.”
Rosa burrowed her face deeper into the cave of his beard. “Later. Not now.” She let herself rest there for another few moments, then pushed away. “Let’s talk about my defense. I want a better lawyer this time. Not Dwayne.”
A pained expression flickered across Allen’s face. Disappointment, maybe, or sadness. Didn’t he want to fight anymore?
The crash of broken glass burst from the corridor outside the visiting room. Shouting followed, then heavy thuds moving from left to right. When the last echo faded, Allen let his arms drop to his side and sat down at the wooden table. Rosa looked at the dark hollows under his eyes, at his untrimmed beard. She wanted to take his left hand, run her finger along the hard writing callus on the index finger. She imagined him touching her breast. She squeezed her eyes closed and sat down across the table from him.
“You know about the new charges, right?” Allen rubbed his hand over his beard. “The Lansing bombing?”
“That’s bullshit. I never bombed anything.”
“I know that, but they claim to have witnesses. It’s a whole new ball game.”
“Their witnesses are lying. I’ve been out of state, except two days in March to visit Mama in the hospital.” Her mind wandered from the stew of lies and charges, truths and deceptions. Mama would be worried, too, and probably really angry. No use dwelling on that. She focused on Allen’s face. “How can they pin a bombing on me?”
“Can you prove where you were on February 12?”
“Even if I could remember, if I gave you names of witnesses, that would get the people who helped me underground in trouble, right?”
“Maybe. But these charges, this trial, they’re different.”
“DA Turner must be salivating.” Rosa grinned. “He lost his election, and now he gets another chance to nail Red Rosa. Maybe this time it will propel him into Congress.”
Allen’s sour look was fleeting, but she noticed it. He disliked the nickname, one the local newspaper coined when she went underground. “Get serious here. We’re talking real prison time. Ten years, fifteen maybe.”
“I am serious.”
Allen looked away.
“What?”
“It is possible Turner is involved in more than just prosecuting this case.”
“What do you mean?”
Allen waved his hand in front of his face. “Forget I said that. They’re just rumors and rumors won’t help us here.” “Tell me the rumors.”
“I’ll explain later. First, tell me how you’re doing.”
“Tell me how we can win this case.” Rosa pushed back from the table, scraping the chair on the floor. “Who’s the best criminal defense attorney in town? Can we get Goodman? We have to fight. The war is still going strong.”
“Maybe that’s not the point. Not the most critical issue right now. What about you? What about Emma?”
Rosa stood up, wobbled, and grabbed the table. A strong wave of dizziness and dread battered her, then dragged her down. What was the point? Putting up a good fight? Even if you knew you couldn’t win? What was that Brecht poem Pop used to recite, about continuing to struggle even when you knew it was futile? About how—if nothing else—you could really put the screws to the rulers. Esther had never liked the poem. Stop being so melodramatic and self-important, she’d say.
And what about Esther? Had anyone heard from her? Mama wouldn’t say a word, of course, but maybe Allen had heard something. The air in the small room thickened and pulsed, a cloud of heavy regret. She fell forward onto her hands, fingers gripping the tabletop.
“What’s wrong?” Allen was steadying her, guiding her back into the chair. “You’re so pale.”
“I’ll be all right. Just help me fight this, Allen. Get Goodman, someone top notch. Hit the books, the law library. You’re good at this.”
“We’re going to lose. You know that?”
“Maybe. But we’ll remind citizens that they don’t have to go along with genocide.”
“Could you please drop the fucking polemic? It’s different now. We have to think about Emma.”
Rosa couldn’t hold it in any longer. The sorrow cloud enveloped her. It stung her eyes and torched her throat. She let the tears come.
On a rainy October morning four months later, Rosa was escorted into the courtroom. She tried to look confident despite the uniformed guard at each elbow. It was a new trial, but loud echoes from the past ricocheted off the wood panel walls. A different courtroom, but it was the mirror image of the first, with the same light wood benches, the same deep red drapes. She rubbed her finger along the curved grain of the oak table, tracing the spiral eddy. Only two years had passed, but Rosa’s limbs felt twenty years heavier as she was escorted to a seat at the defense table.
Time had warped and stretched and folded in on itself. She could barely remember the nightmare last June. Bleeding and almost dying. Losing her little boy. Losing Emma, too, in a way. The memories were ghosts—broken images, dizzying strobe lights, flashes of thundering pain and sirens. The nurse at the hospital said people usually didn’t get those memories back. Not enough blood to the brain. At least she was home now, in Detroit. Even though Pop was gone. Mama was slowly getting her strength back after being so sick; she and Maggie were helping with Emma. Allen came to visit every day. Sitting in the windowless jail conference room, he filled in the missing hours bit by bit.
Allen never talked about Esther, except once to mention that she and Jake had moved east. And that she was staying with Mama during the trial. Mama wouldn’t say anything. “You told me never to mention her name to you,” Mama said, pursing her lips and shaking her head at Rosa’s questions. “I know better than to get between you girls.”
Rosa scratched at a dark splotch on the oak table with her fingernail. It looked like tar. Probably a petrified drop of coffee from the pot in the prisoners’ waiting room. Allen reached over and covered her scraping fingers, quieting them. He couldn’t calm her brain, though, couldn’t soften the waves of panic when she thought about the people determined to send her to prison.
“Don’t give up,” Allen said the day before Esther was scheduled to testify. “You will have to serve time, but I think we can keep it short. Especially if you show some remorse.”
“No remorse,” she insisted. She didn’t feel sorry, not about her reaction to the brutality of the cops, not about trying to make a difference. Mostly she felt angry that the war was still going strong. Furious that Turner was trying to frame her for a bombing she didn’t do. She felt pride, too, that she had to be brought in the back door of the court building because of the warring picket lines out front. Off-duty police officers carried signs: Thirty years for Red Rosa. Anti-war demonstrators chanted, “One injured cop; two million dead Vietnamese civilians.”
She did try harder to hold her tongue in court, saving her indictments of the war for the moments of maximal effect. She had not yet been removed from the courtroom and exiled to the little room for unruly defendants.
The bailiff called the next witness.
“Esther Green.” Rosa watched from the defense table as her sister was sworn in. Allen said she was subpoenaed as an unfriendly witness for the prosecution this time. Maybe she had a change of heart? Esther looked thin. Her voice quivered slightly as she described the injured protester. Why did she go into all that detail about the way the blood bubbled from his scalp wound? What difference did it make if someone bled on a white T- shirt, obliterating the peace sign? Who cared if the tear gas was so thick it turned a sparkling summer afternoon into a hazy green dusk? Esther was thinking like a painter, not an activist. But Esther had always been easily distracted. That’s why she never won the olive game.
“What were you thinking about, Mrs. Green? What did you hope to accomplish?” DA Turner leaned close to Esther, resting his elbow on the edge of the witness box.
Rosa frowned. She hated it when the bad guys acted sympathetic. Hopefully it wouldn’t fool Esther. Rosa leaned forward also, to not miss a word of her sister’s testimony. Esther was staring toward the back of the courtroom.
“Mrs. Green, please answer the question.”
“I’m sorry?” Esther looked at Turner.
“Why did you do it? What did you and Rosa hope to achieve?”
“We wanted to end the war,” Esther said.
Rosa cringed. It sounded so lame. Why didn’t Esther show some spunk?
“You wanted to end the war in Vietnam, so you threw rocks at mounted police trying to enforce the city ordinance requiring permits for street rallies?” The DA looked at the jury and raised his open palms in an I-don’t-get-it gesture.
“Apples,” Esther said.
“Yes. Apples.” The DA sighed loud enough to reach the back of the courtroom. “Mrs. Green, your sister Rosa is a committed activist, a self-proclaimed revolutionary leader. Have you ever been afraid of her?”
“But you usually followed her lead?”
“I admired her. But I can think for myself.”
“On August 17, wasn’t it Rosa Levin who suggested throwing apples at the horses and officers?”
Esther sat motionless, like a heron stalking a fish in shallow water. What did she want? Rosa wondered. What was she thinking?
The DA’s voice was insistent. “If you had been alone on Grand River Avenue that day, Mrs. Green, would you have thrown the apples?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“One last question, Mrs. Green.” Turner leaned even closer. “If your sister Rosa asked you to do something risky, like jump off a bridge, would you do it? Even though you knew it was dangerous?”
“Objection.” Goodman was on his feet. “Irrelevant.”
“I’m trying to establish the defendant’s character, Your Honor. Mrs. Green’s relationship to her sister is crucially relevant to these proceedings.”
“Objection overruled.”
Thirty feet separated the sisters—from defense table to witness box—but Rosa could see right into Esther’s brain. Jump off a bridge, Esther was thinking. How about jumping off a fire escape? How about a late summer day when they were little girls, just old enough to be trusted outside in the backyard without an adult? That day came back so clearly. Heat shimmering on the street. How bored Rosa was. She beat Esther in the olive game, was tired of playing cat’s cradle—that was for babies—and was pissed off that she had to stay in the yard with her little sister. Where did the idea come from? I double dare you, Esther, to climb the fire escape ladder to the second floor and jump. Rosa knew how much it would hurt to land on the hard-packed dirt, their scraggly lawn of weeds crowned with spent dandelions. Esther climbed up and kneeled balanced on the edge of the fire escape railing.
Rosa had watched Esther climb, the metallic taste of fear in her mouth. Then Esther jumped. In the long moment of her falling, Rosa wanted her sister to fly. Would she die? Or be paralyzed, like the boy in her second grade class who was harnessed into a wheelchair and drooled into a bib like a baby, even though he could spell with a communication board and was plenty smart?
DA Turner leaned closer. “Answer the question, Mrs. Green. Would you jump off a bridge if your sister told you to?”
All these years, Esther had never tattled. Waiting for the ambulance, Rosa had raised her index finger to her lips and whispered, “Sister secret. Don’t rat.” And Esther didn’t, not even in the hospital when the morphine made her eyes look funny, when their parents asked her over and over why she did something so stupid. Esther insisted she was clumsy and lost her balance.
Please. Rosa stared at Esther. Don’t rat.
Esther turned then, to finally look at Rosa. Her eyes held a question. Rosa heard it as clearly as if Esther had shouted across the courtroom. Will you forgive me? Esther wanted to know. Give me a sign we’re okay, her eyes implored. If you forgive me, I’ll lie for you. All Rosa had to do was nod or smile, and Esther wouldn’t talk.
For an instant, Rosa was tempted. But that would be giving in, wouldn’t it? Going back on everything she’d said and done. And Rosa wouldn’t—couldn’t—betray her principles. And anyway, maybe she just imagined the meaning of Esther’s glance.
“Mrs. Green.” The judge’s voice was sharp. “Answer the question.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Esther replied, then turned to the jury. “The answer is yes. At that time in my life I would have jumped off a bridge for my sister.”