“Dada!”
Allen groaned quietly and rubbed both hands over the roughness of his beard, although honestly he loved this nocturnal ritual. He picked Emma up from the crib in the darkened bedroom. She didn’t need a nighttime bottle anymore but often woke at about midnight for a cuddle, just as Maggie had predicted.
With one hand, he dumped the ragged stack of files and books from the seat of the rocking chair and retrieved the corduroy pillow hanging by one tie. He switched on the lavender nightlight made from a sea urchin shell, another offering from Maggie.
“It’s okay, little woman,” he murmured, settling into the rocker with Emma sprawled over his chest and shoulder. Her blanket sleeper was twisted around one leg, and Allen straightened it without disturbing his daughter. After four months, he felt pretty competent at this father stuff. He could feed her and dress her and get her to the babysitter in the morning. He could comfort her and read her favorite books in the right order at bedtime. His right foot kept the motion of the rocker while his left hand rubbed Emma’s back, fingering the perfect row of bumps along her spine through the fabric. Even in the muted light, Emma’s skin was a rich mix of her parents’ hues, her brown curls untamed and fierce like her mother’s.
He didn’t mind the interruption. There was no way he could sleep, not with Rosa’s sentencing the next morning. This time around, the prosecution had been unstoppable. There was the original testimony from the cop and the neurosurgeon, plus the damning evidence of Rosa skipping town and disappearing. There was Esther’s bizarre but somehow damning admission about jumping off a bridge if her sister told her to. And then there were the false charges, the bombing of a military research facility in Lansing. Three agents from the Lansing FBI office testified that Rosa was at the scene. No physical evidence, just their say-so, but they didn’t budge on cross-examination. The vague rumors that Turner was crooked, that he was somehow involved with their testimony, were unconfirmed and inadmissible. And Rosa had no alibi for the night the building blew up. She refused to utter a single word about her time underground, unwilling to endanger the people who helped her. Nobody had been surprised when the jury found her guilty on all counts.
Emma fidgeted on Allen’s chest, half-woke with a whimper, and then quieted. Allen felt the warmth spread through his flannel shirt to his skin. He shifted Emma in his arms and unfastened the diagonal zipper on the blanket sleeper. Damn. Forgot the rubber pants again. He repositioned her damp weight over his heart.
Maybe he should have tried harder to persuade Rosa to plea bargain. What if he had dug deeper during those late nights at the law library, with Emma sleeping on a blanket under the table? Why hadn’t he been able to unearth an obscure precedent, imagine a brilliant defense, anything to help Goodman save Rosa? Why hadn’t he been smarter?
Allen tried to rub the sting from his eyes. He knew it would have taken a miracle to change the outcome. Even the best team of defense lawyers in the country couldn’t beat the case DA Turner and his federal buddies manufactured against Rosa. No one could have gotten a different verdict given the way the cards were stacked. Not now, with the Charles Manson trial making headlines in Los Angeles, and Turner referencing Manson in his closing statement.
His Rosa was going to prison.
He buried his nose in the warm crevasse of Emma’s neck and inhaled the lingering scent of baby shampoo mixed with the tangy fragrance all her own. Eau de Emma, he liked to call it, wondering if Rosa had taken as much pleasure in the aroma of their daughter’s skin as he did.
His face burned to remember how during Rosa’s first trial, before he had any clue what he was talking about, he had minimized the power of Esther’s attachment to her baby, had seen it as a mere excuse, an impediment that interfered with her commitment to activism. That was before Emma. He could probably never admit it to Rosa, but snuggling his daughter on his chest, he understood Esther’s decision. That didn’t mean he agreed with it or would make the same decision, but he got it.
Stop thinking like that, he scolded himself. What’s the big deal about going to prison? Doing time is a real possibility for anyone who wants to change the world. Kids survive. Emma has her father. She’ll see her mother every week, even if it has to be in a prison visiting room. Allen knew that drill. He’d visited his dad at Angola Prison every Sunday for three plus years. His dad was innocent of breaking and entering, but he did organize his union and he was good at it, so a trumped-up charge and railroaded conviction must have seemed like the simplest way to stop him. Allen always felt a little embarrassed that the only jail he knew from inside was in Mississippi, and that was just overnight to throw a scare into the northern college kids doing voter registration on spring break.
Allen stood up carefully and managed to change Emma’s diaper and put her, still sleeping, back into her crib. Trying to relax his shoulders, he rolled his head 360 degrees like Rosa taught him years ago at camp. The taut muscles screamed on the first circle, whimpered on the second, and finally gave up and stretched a little on the third. Rosa always said he was too wound up, too tense. Look who’s talking. That woman was coiled so tight that even he got nervous when the spring inside her threatened to let loose.
He looked down at their daughter. “Your mama’s going to prison,” he whispered.
But what was he supposed to do with the feelings that crept into his head in the dark, when he cuddled Emma before putting her to bed? What about the despair, when he thought about Rosa locked away for the next decade? Or the jealousy, when he imagined Rosa with another guy, conceiving that dead infant boy? And how could he keep himself steadfast for the movement, when he picked Emma up at the babysitter’s apartment after work and delight cracked the girl’s face and his own heart, and he’d do anything for her?