“Sorry,” she said. “I spoke out of turn.”
“But that’s what you think?”
“I said I was sorry, Your Honor.” She turned to walk away.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I said hotly and grabbed her arm. “You’re not getting out of it like that. Forget I’m a judge. When did I ever give you a reason to lay something like that on me?”
“Woman to woman?” She looked me in the eye. “All right then. You show your prejudices almost every court session.”
“Prejudices?” I was stung by the injustice of her accusation. “I bend over backwards to be fair.”
An eyebrow lifted scornfully. “Right. You bend so far backwards when it’s a black defendant that you go looking for mitigating circumstances even where there aren’t any. You never hold black youths to the same high standard you hold whites. Oh, you’re not as blatant about it as Harrison Hobart or Perry Byrd used to be, remember? Remember how they’d give suspended sentences if one black man killed another? Black-on-black crimes never got their attention. For them, it had to be black-on-white to put the law in play and then they came down like an avalanche.”
“Now wait just a damn minute—”
She brushed past my protest. “I
“How can you say that?” I argued. “I treat everybody the same.”
“Ha! Maybe twice a month you’ll hand out the sentences I recommend for a black offender,” she said. “But if the person’s white—”
“If anyone’s condescending here, it’s you,” I said hotly. “I don’t follow your recommendations because they’re consistently tougher than for whites. Go check your records. Look at the crime, not the color. See what you ask when it’s a black kid as opposed to a white for the same offense. I’ll bet you dinner at the Irregardless that I’m a hell of a lot more evenhanded than you are.”
“You’re on,” she said with answering heat.
I was still annoyed enough to slip the needle in. “You ever consider that maybe it’s your Uncle Isaac you’re trying to punish for running out on you?”
She glared at me. “What do you know about Isaac?”
I shrugged. “Just what people have told me. That you loved him, that he got in trouble, and that you were devastated when he left and never kept in touch.”
The belligerence suddenly went out of Cyl and she turned away. But not before I’d seen her eyes glaze with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly. And I really was. But Dwight and my brothers are always accusing me of nosiness and I have to admit that it was curiosity that made me add, “Did Wallace Adderly tell you how to find him?”
“You may not have noticed,” she said acidly, “but Wallace Adderly took advantage of Lashanda’s accident to leave before I could pin him down.”
I looked around blankly, but it was true. I couldn’t see him anywhere in the crowd, although I did spot Reverend Ligon’s tall figure standing in the shade of the tents with Louise Parker and Harvey Underwood, the president and major shareholder in Colleton County’s largest independently owned bank. Harvey had already personally guaranteed a low-interest loan to help rebuild the church. As Mount Olive’s treasurer, Louise had set up a special account at the bank to handle the donations that were coming in from all over the country.
“Let me ask you something,” Cyl said abruptly. “What was it like to grow up with all those brothers worshipping the ground you walked on?”
“Worshipping? My brothers?” I started to laugh and then I remembered the things Maidie had told me about Cyl’s childhood. “They didn’t worship, but I guess they did look out for me,” I said as honestly as I could. “And I guess I always knew I could count on them.”
“And what if you’d had only one brother and then he left and never came back?”
“Yeah,” I said, seeing her point.
“Okay, then.” She nodded and again started to walk away, but I followed.
“Look, Cyl, I don’t know how we got off on the wrong foot, but I meant what I said the other day—if you ever need to talk, I’m here.”
Again the skeptical eyebrow. “I could be your token black friend? As in Some Of My Best Friends Are Black?”
“If that’s what you really want. And I can play Little White Missy From De Big House if it’ll help with that chip on your shoulder.”
“Oh, spare me your do-good liberal tolerance,” she snapped. “I don’t need it.”
“Yes, you do!” I snapped back. “North Carolina may not be a black paradise but without a lot of do-good liberals trying to make things more equitable, you’d have had to take the freedom train north to get an education and you certainly wouldn’t be prosecuting white offenders in a court of law here.”
“And how long do we have to keep thanking you for letting us sit at the table?”
I’d thought—I’d hoped—things were getting better, yet here I was, looking at Cyl across a gulf that seemed to widen with every word.
“It’s a no-win situation for me, isn’t it? If I try to be friends, I’m either patronizing you or assuaging my own conscience; and if I don’t, I’m a bigot. You get to have it both ways? What’s so fair about that?”
