Small Great Things

At her McDonald’s job, Ruth is called “Mama” by a disrespectful high-school-aged girl, and later tells her she didn’t appreciate it, but is shut down by her boss. Then Kennedy calls about Wallace Mercy and Adisa. Ruth says she had no idea and will take care of it. Ruth goes to Adisa’s apartment to confront her, and they get into an argument. Apparently Adisa had made promises to Mercy that he could interview both of them on his show. Then Ruth finds that Edison is there, dressed in unfamiliar clothes and talking more like Adisa’s kids than himself. He and his cousin Tabari say they’re on their way to the movies. Ruth stops them and says, “I think it’s more likely your son is going to take Edison down by the basketball court to smoke weed than to see the next Oscar nominee” (276). Ruth tells Adisa they are no longer on speaking terms. She drags Edison out to the car and he apologizes. Ruth thinks about when Edison was born and how clueless she had been, thinking of the birth but not what came after. Her own mother had helped her through everything.

After meeting regularly with Kennedy, Ruth and Edison are then invited to Kennedy’s house for dinner, which feels like “crossing a line” and more like “a social call” (278). At dinner, there are a few awkward moments. Micah asks Edison if he’s a big fan of Obama. Ruth wonders, “Why do white people always assume that?”; Edison responds with a well-thought-out explanation on his feelings about Hillary versus Obama (280). Then, Kennedy’s daughter, Violet, asks if Edison’s necklace is a “chain,” and when he says, “Yeah, I guess so,” Violet says, “So that means you’re a slave” (281). Kennedy and Micah are horrified, but Ruth takes it in stride, giving a quick explanation of what slavery means. Micah then thanks Ruth for the impromptu “Black history lesson” and Ruth corrects him: “Slavery isn’t Black history [...] It’s everyone’s history” (282). They have more frank conversation about race and Ruth thinks, “for that moment, at least, we really see each other. It’s a start” (283). Then Edison comes back into the room with Ruth’s cell phone and says Ms. Mina is on the phone.

Ruth then thinks back to a black doll her mother got her as a child and the way she made clothing and accessories for it, rather than buying them. Rachel, who had yet to change her name, still went to school in Harlem, and her friends would mock Ruth, calling her “Afrosaxon” because of her lighter skin tone and the way she spoke. Eventually, they caught her alone and roughed her up, breaking her doll, but Rachel beat them off, saying, “You’re my only sister” (284).

Ms. Mina calls to tell Ruth that her mother, Lou, has suffered a stroke and died, and so Ruth goes to the hospital and bathes the body. Adisa meets her there and they put their fight behind them, with Adisa again saying, “You’re my only sister” (286). Later, at the funeral, both Adisa and Ruth tells stories about Lou, and Ruth is proud of the way Adisa is “the brave one” and nervous to speak herself (289). While speaking, Ruth breaks down, worried that maybe with the indictment, her mother had not been proud of Ruth as she had once been. After the service, Kennedy, who is there with her mother, Ava, introduces the two to each other. Ruth again breaks down, saying that her mother had “wasted her life slaving away for someone else” (292). Ava comforts her, saying that she grew up with someone like Lou and had loved her deeply, so Lou hadn’t wasted her life, and they embrace.

Kennedy, on her wedding anniversary, falls ill. As Micah is taking care of her, he notices the blood work for Davis Bauer that she’s subpoenaed shows “abnormality” (295). As they move to the jury-selection stage of the trial process, Kennedy asks to have the new guy, Howard, assigned to help her out, thinking, “I do need an extra pair of hands. I also need them to be black” (296). Kennedy briefs him on her expectations (that Howard will help with “fieldwork” and will watch every juror for potentially important gestures and tics [296]), and then they go to Judge Thunder’s chambers to collect the questionnaires filled out by the jury pool. Afterward, she tells Howard they’re looking for older women (“They have the most empathy”) and want to avoid Millennials (“a minefield of egocentrism”), and any form of minority status is a bonus (298). They then split up and drive to the addresses listed on the forms to see what else they can glean. Eventually, Kennedy gets a call from Howard, saying he’s stuck because it’s a gated community and he’s a black man snooping around. They then go through their findings at Kennedy’s house, also looking at social media until they have a list of their favorites. Howard then stumbles across what looks to be Turk Bauer’s Twitter account.

The next day, Howard tells Kennedy about a study he’d read about how people overcompensate when they are worried that they might come off as prejudiced, which means “[the jury pool] might be a lot more implicitly racist than they show on the outside” (305). That night, Micah tells Kennedy he found her a neonatologist who can go over Davis’s test results. The following day, Kennedy, Howard, and Ruth go to the courthouse for in-person questioning of the jury pool, ranking them again. One of the women, a school teacher who claims no bias, reacts differently when questioned by Howard, and raises red flags as far more implicitly biased than she’s letting on. They then go through the list without the jurors present, with Odette Lawton and Kennedy striking people from consideration. After trying to get the female teacher dismissed, Kennedy decides it’s a risk they have to take and approves her, but then goes to bat for a black juror, claiming Odette is trying to dismiss him because of his race, and wins, eliciting a “Thank you” from Ruth (315). That night, Kennedy tells Ruth jury selection went well, and they have a discussion about colorism, and the ways in which black people of lighter and darker skin tones are pitted against one another. Kennedy thinks, “With Ruth, I know I can ask a stupid white girl question, and that she will answer me without judging my ignorance” (316). Ruth again reiterates that she’ll be able to speak for herself on the stand.

After a few more days, the jury is finalized, including the woman Kennedy and Howard are worried about. Kennedy meets with Micah’s neonatologist friend and finds that Davis had a medical condition called MCADD, which “[could cause death] if it’s not diagnosed early” (319). He notes that because Davis was born on a Thursday, then the results would take until after the weekend to come back, but “if this kid had been born on a Monday instead, he would have had a fighting chance” (320). Kennedy begins getting her hopes up that this will establish reasonable doubt.