Endangered (6 page)

“I still don't see it. I still don't see why you have to use the ESA. As the law stands right now, it doesn't even apply to humans.”

“That doesn't mean it shouldn't.”

“That's not the point. It will be a case of first impression that would probably be tossed out shortly after a judge's law clerk has a chance to read it. You would do better with an equal-protection argument.”

Roger waved the idea off with his hand. “I'm not seeking equal protection. I want
greater
protection. Besides, the courts are increasingly unwilling to apply the equal-protection clause to claims of prosecutorial bias on the basis of race. They refused in California and Georgia. The way they're applying that law now, at least with regard to race, a prosecutor would have to damn near stand up in court and say ‘I'm prosecuting this kid because he's black' before they'll allow a claim.”

Calvin shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, then a moratorium. Why not seek a moratorium on trying black boys as adults until the system is fixed. At least there's some precedence you could argue there.”

“I've considered that, too,” Roger admitted. “It won't fully accomplish what I'm trying to do here. A moratorium could bring everything to a screeching halt, at least for a while. In the best-case scenario, they'll set up a review panel to see if the justice system is unjustifiably harsher on black boys. And of course the result of that review would have to be a resounding yes. The statistics are what they are, and they are undeniable. The problem comes in when they get to the
why
. Why are black boys treated differently in the justice system? There's only one answer. But no white judge, police officer, district attorney, or anyone else in the chain of justice is just going to fess up to bigotry. Who wants to say that when a black juvenile defendant is in front of me, I cannot see my son or grandson in him? Instead, I see a guy who can barely speak English, whose demeanor is thuggish and totally out of step with everything I believe in. No one wants to do that. And that puts us right back to where we started with an equal-protection argument. But an ESA argument would take the focus off the men and women whose duty it is to be just and put it on the life-threatening conditions these boys are living in. I think it's an easier pill to swallow.”

Calvin laughed. “For whom? Clearly you haven't run this by any black people, have you?”

Roger ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Actually I have, and their responses have been very similar to yours. They think I'm equating black boys with animals. But that's the farthest thing from the truth.”

Calvin gave a slight nod of understanding. He sighed while processing Roger's words. “Well, your claim is not a completely novel idea. Back in the early nineties, the NAACP labeled black males an endangered species. They just didn't follow it up with a suit.”

Roger nodded greedily in response. “Look, I am not trying to disrespect anyone. What I am saying—no, what I acknowledge—is that we live within a certain framework, and we have to work within it in order to accomplish anything. Think about the Civil Rights Movement. Just imagine what the outcome might have been if blacks sought justice
by any means necessary
, including violence. Do you think Dr. King would be revered now? Don't you think more people would have died? Back then there was a certain framework we lived in, and only nonviolence would have worked.”

Calvin rubbed his temples vigorously. “No, I think having Malcolm X in the background, as an alternative, gave the nonviolence route special consideration.”

Both men chuckled with a certain knowing.

With a pained look Calvin asked, “What's in this for you? Why are you doing this?”

“
Why?”
Roger echoed. “This is too important to not do something.”

“But why you?”

Roger shrugged his shoulders. “Why do people do anything? It needs to be done. And I don't see anyone else doing it.”

Calvin ignored the slight. He slowly shook his head. “That's not good enough. They are going to eat you up and spit you out.”

“Calvin, what is the point of living if you don't stand up for what you know is right? Everyone who is remembered in history has stood up for something—Muhammad Ali for refusing to fight in Vietnam; Gandhi for his nonviolent protest against British imperialism in India. Nelson Mandela. I could go on all day.”

“I just don't know if this is right. I get it that black boys are in trouble. I lived it. I still live it. But I would like to believe that a lot of the trouble, at least now, is self-inflicted.”

“This is not a whim. I didn't just concoct this theory. I have real and solid arguments. I have the research to support every argument, every detail of my claim.” He swirled his finger over the stacks of files on the conference table. “We haven't even skimmed the surface here. All I need to hear from you is that you are willing to take this ride with me. I promise you won't regret it.”

Calvin steadily rubbed his brow, trying to find the right words.

“I think I am going to have to pass on this. Unlike you, I don't have the bulk of my career behind me. No offense, but this could screw up my career plans, and on top of that I'm just not convinced.”

“Okay, do me a favor,” Roger said as he combed through a few of the bulky files. He pulled the one that had STATS written in bold red letters on it and shoved it into Calvin's hands. “Just take this and read it. And this, too.” He reached for a copy of the complaint and put it on the top of the other file. “After you've read all this, then tell me what you think.”

“I'll take it,” Calvin said halfheartedly, “but I doubt it's going to change my mind.”

Chapter Nine

CALVIN HEADED TO HIS CHILDHOOD HOME IN THE KINGSESSING SECTION OF the city. He looked forward to a home-cooked meal and catching up with Grandma Pearl.

He pulled onto Baltimore Avenue. He was intimately familiar with every street and corner of the neighborhood. He'd been in several of the homes, hanging out with childhood friends. He shopped at the corner stores, and had his favorite fried rice every weekend from the House of Hunan Chinese Restaurant.

The area had changed. There were few homeowners left. The neighbors were mostly renters who crowded into single-family homes that had been turned into low-income apartments. Two doors down was a drug rehab for women that the city opened without consulting the community. Calvin had geared up for a fight with the city, and he was sure he would win, but Grandma Pearl insisted that he stop because “recovering drug addicts need a place to live too.”

He just shook his head, frustrated, and asked her for the umpteenth time to move closer to him in the Philadelphia suburbs.

“And what am I supposed to do there?” she said, looking up at him with her hand on her hip.

To Calvin it was obvious. “Live in peace, surrounded by some beauty—you deserve that.”

She gave him that look, the one that could cut through everything—to his very soul. “That's you, not me. You're the one on the hunt—
always
searching for something better. I have everything I need right here. I raised my family here and I'll die here. And, if you want to see me, you'll see me right here.”

“I know, Grandma, I know.”

“Good.”

Calvin always rang the doorbell before he pulled out his keys. He didn't want to startle Grandma Pearl. Usually, when he arrived during the day, she would make it just about to the living room by the time the front door was fully opened. Today was no different.

“Boy, is that you?”

“Yes, it's me,” he said, a sense of calm sweeping over him. He could smell the aromas of his childhood—baked chicken, possibly a bean casserole, and the usual freshly baked bread.

“If it's you, then why are you all the way over there?” she said with a wide grin.

Calvin hurried over, fully embracing her small frame, lifting her slightly off the floor. She feigned protest but not before planting a kiss on his cheek.

“Grandma Pearl, who are you cooking for? Are you expecting company?”

She bobbed her neck like a turkey. “I'm cooking for you. Something told me I was going to see that face today. And sure nuff here you are.”

His eyebrows bunched. “For real, Grandma?”

“Well, I cooked, didn't I? I could've had me a can of tuna and some toast. Come on in here and eat with me.”

Calvin followed her into the small kitchen. She moved fast for her seventy-six years, and that eased his heart. He didn't like her living here alone. Her husband and all three children, including his mother, died before he was even thirteen years old, leaving the two of them all alone. It was enough, though. Grandma Pearl loved him out of the grasp of local gangs, and all the distractions of girls and sports and into the top universities in the nation.

Calvin sat at his regular seat at the small wooden table. With a side of the square table flush against the wall, only three chairs could fit comfortably around it. His chair was between the right side of the refrigerator and the table. As a child, he liked leaning his back against it because the gentle vibration of the refrigerator's motor comforted him. He would sit that way for hours with his eyes closed, daydreaming, Grandma Pearl cooking in the far-off distance for church, a funeral repast, or some other community function.

There was a faded plastic placemat with cherries on it in front of him, and another directly across the table at Grandma Pearl's spot.

“So what is it?” she said, her back to him. She was doling out perfectly golden drumsticks on two plates that already had a small pile of green bean casserole on them.

“Huh?” Calvin said.

“What's bothering you?” She turned to face him.

He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “It's nothing.”

“Nothing didn't get you to the house.”

He walked over to her and took the two plates off the counter. He set them on the placemats. “You're right, food did.” Before he even sat back down, he took a big bite of chicken. His eyes widened with satisfaction.

“Um-hm,” she said, unconvinced.

After he polished off his second helping, she took Calvin's plate away, washed both in the sink, and then settled back into her seat. With her arms folded across her chest and her eyes fixed on his, she waited.

“Okay.” He sighed. “They want me to work a case,” he said through tight lips.

The lines on Grandma Pearl's brow deepened. “Okay. Well, that's why you went to law school, right?”

“It's not that simple, Grandma. They are trying to use me to make an argument I don't believe in. And I'm just not going to let them do it.”

“Who's they?”

“My boss and his best friend who heads up an organization called the Center for the Protection of Human Rights.”

“The protection of human rights?” she echoed. She leaned in to the table toward him. “That sounds promising.”

“They're going to represent some black boy from West Philly who's been accused of murder.”

“Is that the boy they keep showing on the news? The one they say killed another boy, after all those murders already this year? He's innocent?” Grandma Pearl ran her palm across the table, smoothing out the wrinkles in the tablecloth. “People are tired and angry about all the murders. They've been rallying and carrying on. Seems like they want to hang that boy.”

Calvin nodded.

“Hmm,” said Grandma Pearl in deep thought. “I can only imagine what that boy's mama is going through. When you were that age and Grandpop was already gone, I stayed on my knees, asking God to protect you and keep you safe.” She shook her head. “It's worse now. These young mothers today, they're all alone raising these babies. They don't know what to do. They need help. You can help that boy.”

“But you know I'm not interested in criminal law. You know my plan. I've been talking about it for years,” Calvin said, agitated.

“I know, honey. You want your own law firm. You want to make a lot of money, and you want to use it to get me out of this dump.” She grinned playfully, then turned her body to take in the full view of the kitchen.

“And what's wrong with that?”

“You already are successful. The only thing missing is a wife for you and great-grandbabies for me,” she teased.

Calvin's eyes strayed upward to the kitchen's low ceiling. He shook his head slightly from left to right. “Not that again.”

Grandma Pearl's face straightened, and she patted Calvin's hand. “Baby, don't you know that no one else around here has done what you have done? No one.”

He tried to think of a childhood friend who made it; just one name of one friend who was living better now than how they were raised. A decent wage, an intact family, something to show that Roger and Grandma Pearl were wrong. But he came up short. Every single one of his childhood friends was either dead, strung out, or working jobs Calvin wouldn't have wanted even as a college student desperate for money.

Calvin shook his head. “The point is, I don't want to do it.”

“Why not? What's the worst thing that could happen if you help a boy not go to jail? That's the most honorable thing you could do with your law degree, is help your own community. You've gotta help him.”

“You don't understand, Grandma.”

“Then help me get it. I can see this is eating you up. What is it?”

Calvin rubbed at his brow. “Here, wait a second.” He walked to the living room, where he'd left his briefcase on the floor, leaning against the sofa. He returned to the kitchen with Roger's files and spread them out on the kitchen table. “Grandma, he wants to compare black boys to animals. He wants
me
to say that they need to be protected because they are like animals that can't help themselves. He has all kinds of statistics to support his argument. Most black children are born to unwed mothers.” He pointed to the statistic and shook his head. “Seventy-four percent of them. That's crazy. And if the fathers are absent, they're poor. All of these factors contribute to the high prison rate, which is compounded by the inherent racial bias in the criminal justice system.”

“They?
Them?”
She questioned him with a face of steel. “You mean
we, us
.” Grandma Pearl put on her reading glasses, which hung from a silver chain around her neck. She walked over to him and looked over his shoulder at the papers in the file. She picked up reading where Calvin left off.

“ ‘Black children are more likely than white children to be abused, have a parent in prison, end up in foster care.' ” She stopped reading. Her voice became thick with emotion. “Baby, that's where I found
you
, remember?” She shook her head, forcing back tears. “Your mother left you in filth, without decent food to eat, just so she could go on a drug binge. It was so cold that winter. I'm just glad I found you when I did.”

She walked back to her seat, holding on to the table as she went.

“Grandma, I'm not saying he doesn't have a point. It's all here. Black children—boys in particular—are in serious trouble. I get it. But comparing them to
animals
?” He shook his head. “I don't believe that bull—”

“Watch that mouth.”

“I was going to say
crap
, Grandma. Bullcrap.”

Her eyes narrowed a bit. “I guess that's slightly better.” They sat in a familiar silence for a few moments. “Do you know how many names I've been called by white people?” She shook her head remembering. “A woman I worked for called me a whore once. She walked in her kitchen and saw her husband grabbing on me. Fired me on the spot. She couldn't wrap her brain around the fact that her upstanding husband would desire and force himself on a woman who looked like me. I've been called nigger and dumb more times than I'd like to remember. And I had it easy compared to black folks down south. They were hung, raped, beaten—for just being. That's why your grandfather and I left the South as soon as we could. We didn't have any money or family here. We left because deep down we knew it had to be better. Our people have been treated worse than animals, you ask me.”

After moving to Philadelphia, Grandma Pearl had worked over thirty-five years as domestic help. She had to use back entrances, separate toilets, answer every beck and call of her employers, even when it took her away from her own family in the middle of the night. She worked for women half her age. Right here in Pennsylvania in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and early nineties.

“You know what I did to get through? I smiled, took my paycheck, and provided for my family with it.”

“Things are different now.”

She chuckled. “Sacrifice is sacrifice, whether it's now or then. Do you think Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers wanted to go to jail or die so that blacks could have better lives? It was necessary, absolutely necessary. Shoot”—she rolled her eyes—“do you think I wanted to be called Pearl by five- and six-year-olds? Where I'm from, that earns you a spanking—calling grown folk by their first name. I don't play that. You know I don't play that. But . . .” She shrugged her shoulders. “It's what I had to do for my family.” She pointed straight at him. “And now you have to help that boy. It's your turn to make the difference.”

With his eyes fixed on the placemat's fading cherries, Calvin pursed his lips. His head shook slightly from left to right.

“I hope you know that you didn't make it out of here just for yourself. That's not how it works. It never works like that.”