Small Great Things

Kennedy comes home after her meeting with Ruth to relieve her mother, Ava, from her childcare duties. As they talk, Violet says something that makes Kennedy think something other than the pre-approved TV watching list has been on. She turns on the TV to find her mother had been watching Fox News, “[a] channel Micah and I do not generally watch” (206). On the screen, a man named Wallace Mercy is grandstanding about a racially-charged situation, in which a black tennis player had been tackled by police who had mistaken him for another black man. Ava says, “If they weren’t so angry all the time, maybe more people would listen to them,” and Kennedy thinks to herself that she doesn’t “have to ask who they are” (207). Later, she thinks about the comparison between the tennis player and her daughter: “the odds of my child being a victim of mistaken identity are considerably smaller than, say, Ruth’s” (208).

Ruth meets her sister for a dinner out, and they see Wallace Mercy on the TV while sitting at the bar. Adisa says Ruth needs someone like Mercy to speak for her and rally support, but Ruth thinks this is a bad idea, saying, “Does he have to be so mad all the time?” (211). Adisa talks about how necessary people like Mercy are, for “get[ting] to be angry for us” (212), and implies that a white woman like Kennedy cannot know what Ruth is going through in the same way, and so will be less effective.

Ruth then visits Christina at her house, something she has only done once before. She quickly realizes that she was invited because Christina has found out about her troubles. Christina says she’d tried to get her husband to get a lawyer from his firm to represent Ruth, but because of his political ambitions, he had refused, saying it isn’t a “good time to be connected to something scandalous” (214). Ruth feels the gulf between them widen, wondering, “Had we drifted apart, or had our closeness been the ruse?” (215). Christina offers Ruth money, and Ruth demurs, thinking, “If I take this money, I can’t go on fooling myself” (215). She leaves the money under the mat as she leaves.

Ruth then goes to apply for government assistance with her sister, who is helpful but then also “transform[s] into full-on gangsta” (218). Adisa says this is the best way to get the money. We then pick up with Ruth at McDonald’s, getting trained on the job, learning how to make fries and how long things can sit before they need to be sold or tossed out, and when she gets the hang of things, she thinks, “It’s not delivering a baby, but I feel the same flush of a job well done” (221). Eventually, as kids start coming in after school, she hears Edison’s voice. He sees her and looks horrified; Ruth turns away before his friend, Bryce, can see her. That night, Edison tries to give her money, but she refuses, telling him she needs to feel like she can still take care of him.

The next week, as she’s getting ready for work, the doorbell rings and Ruth finds Wallace Mercy there, offering his help. He asks if her white colleagues had stood up for her, and asserts that Ruth’s “Black brothers and sister will go to bat for you” (226), and compares her to Trayvon Martin, saying white people want to believe they are the exceptions, but that the injustices African-Americans endure is actually the rule. He gives her contributions and notes of support from his viewers, as well as his business card. She thinks about the night she got married to her husband, Wesley, and because he was black and at a nice hotel, a white man had mistaken him for a valet.

On another occasion at McDonald’s, Kennedy comes in with Violet and is surprised to see Ruth there. Ruth thinks of when she first started at Dalton and felt like an imposter, but Mr. Hallowell took her aside and told her she belonged. She is thinking this as she goes to the principal’s office at Edison’s school, after Edison punched Bryce for mocking Ruth. She is conflicted, knowing what he did wasn’t all wrong or all right.

When they get home, Kennedy is waiting there for a meeting Ruth had forgotten. They go over the medical records, with Kennedy looking for any abnormalities that might suggest other causes of death besides anything Ruth could have done or not done. At first, Ruth is worried about lying, and this leads to another conversation about bringing up race in the courtroom, with Ruth saying, “[W]hen you say race doesn’t matter all I hear is you dismissing what I’ve felt, what I’ve lived” (238). Kennedy again says they can win without that, and Ruth thinks “How [...] is that winning?” (239). Then she finds Wallace Mercy’s business card.

Turk’s father-in-law, Francis, decides enough time has passed since Davis’s funeral and resumes the regular Sunday gathering of white nationalists, which had started once their community had mostly moved online and underground, and functioned as a way to still feel connected. Brit had declined to be social, but Turk mingles a little and asks to hold the baby of one of the guests, thinking, “This is how it should have been” (242). Brit walks in and sees him holding the child and blows up at him.

Later, Turk is writing a post for the Lonewolf blog. Brit asks him if the delayed gratification bothers him, with “nothing [being] immediate anymore” (244). They decide they need to take a more immediate action in honor of Davis, and decide not to let Francis know, since he and Turk “had spent the last two years trying to convince crews that anonymity was more insidious—and terrifying—than overt threats” (245).

Turk calls his old friend Raine first and goes to meet him. At first he thinks the normal suburban life he sees Raine leading is just really good camouflage, but then Raine tells him he’s no longer in the white supremacist movement, having seen himself and his daughter shamed in public after his daughter had used the n-word, and eventually thought, “Maybe all [Raine] was doing was setting [his daughter] up for a life where everyone would hate her” (248). Turk leaves, knowing he “will never see them again” (248).

After meeting with a bunch of other squad members to discuss more overt action, Turk finds that none of them wants to take the risk, so he reports back to Brit. She says they could do something, but Turk says he can’t lose her again. They try to sleep together, but Turk cannot perform. Then Turk thinks back to when he “was twenty-two years old” and at “the pinnacle of [his] life” (251), when he and Brit were getting married at an Aryan festival. He had gotten knuckle tattoos reading HATE on his right fist and LOVE on his left fist, prior to the ceremony.