Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) (4 page)

“I’m ready.”

“Remember. You’re among friends here. Take your time with answers. You just need to be sure of your positions.”

“I know.”

“If we need to help you with research, we’re all ready to do that.”

“I know that, too, Paul. And I appreciate it.”

“The main rule in this kind of thing is, don’t pretend to know something if you don’t. It’s better just to say, ‘I don’t know.’”

“I understand.”

“Ok.”

He turned and looked at the group of people seated behind him, then asked:

“Who wants to ask the first question?”

Alanna Delafosse rose.

“Nina, darling.”

“Yes?”

“What are your thoughts on the situation in the Middle East?”

She answered immediately:

“I think it’s very bad there.”

Silence for a time.

Alanna again:

“I suppose what we really want to know, Nina, is, how should the United States proceed in the Middle East? What should be our policy?”
    

Again, an immediate answer.

She had expected this question. And Jackson had told her precisely how it should be answered:

“I think we should do everything in our power to make the situation better.”

General nods in the audience.

A buzzing of contented whispers.

Jackson said:

“That’s the perfect answer. Never change a word of it.”

But now Paul Cox was standing.

“How do you feel about prayer in schools?”

She thought about every morning, the bell between first and second period having just rung, a thousand teenagers disgorged into the hall, football players hurling themselves into lockers, the whole crowd stampeding toward her.

“I pray constantly in school. Every day. Every minute actually.”

Jackson:

“Do you think the military is ready for women in combat?”

She thought of Penelope Royale and immediately answered:

“No.”

Edie Towler:

“How do you feel about the legalization of marijuana?”

She began to answer.

“I don’t think that…”

Then she saw Margot.

Margot was staring at her.

Margot’s fingers were wrapped over the back of the chair just in front of her.

Then Margot half stood up and hissed out into the room—

“Nina!”

But Nina could only pause for a time and say, quietly:

“I think I better come back to that one.”

Margot said:

“We’ll talk.”

And then sat down.

Edie:

“What do you think about gay marriage?”

She thought about Meg Brennan, one time women’s basketball coach at Bay St. Lucy, and about Meg’s companion Jennifer Warren.

How thrilled they had been when gay marriage had been legalized in New Mexico, and the joy in their eyes after they had returned from there, a married couple at last.

And she thought about the spousal abuse cases she read about daily, cases in which men beat and often killed their wives.

Finally she said:

“It is so hard to stop people from hating each other, that we have no business regulating the various ways they may find to love each other.”

Silence for a time after that.

Then Edie again:

“Nina, how do you feel about abortion rights? Are you pro-choice or pro-life?”

Again, it was a question she had expected.

Indeed, she had answered it over and over to herself during the last few days.

And again, the images flooded back.

That day in the doctor’s office when he had said, in the same way doctors earlier in her life had said, “Your tonsils are fine,” or “You may have the measles.”

“Nina, Frank, it pains me to say that you will not be able to have children.”

And that was that.

So now to think that a woman could have a child in her womb, a growing child, the child that she and Frank would have given so much, so very much to have and raise…

…that that woman would wish to have an abortion…

But all women were not Nina; she knew that.

And horrible things sometimes happened to women.

Things that she, being blessed with Frank, would never be able to dream of.

So that finally she said, simply:

“I believe our job is not to tell women that they cannot have abortions, but to create a world in which they will not want to.”

That ended the mock press conference.

There was nothing else to say.

Except there
was
one more thing to say.

And she said it the next afternoon.

Jackson had managed to set up an interview for her with the
Vicksburg Star
daily newspaper. Accordingly, a very professional woman—the reporter—had arrived at her shack, along with a photographer.

She was asked to sit on her deck, the ocean behind her, and she had prepared herself to answer what she had assumed would be standard questions.

When there was a knock at the door.

She answered it to find Olivia Ramirez, mother of Edgar.

Edgar had been one of Nina’s best students.

He had also been killed in a tragedy that still haunted Bay St. Lucy.

“Come in, Olivia!”

The two women entered the shack.

“Oh! You have guests!”

“It’s all right. This is a reporter from
The Vicksburg Star
. Come out on the deck, Olivia. Sit down in one of these chairs.”

“I am so sorry to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding. Here. Sit.”

She did so, with Nina taking the other chair.

The reporter and the photographer watched from the kitchen doorway.

“How may I help you, Olivia?”
    

The woman’s hair and eyes were as black as her dress.

She leaned forward and said, softly:

“You will go to Washington?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to try.”

“If you try, Ms. Bannister, our teacher, you will succeed. Always, you succeed.”

“I will try my best.”

“Yes. Then, when you go there, I have something that I must beg you to do.”

“All right. What is it, Olivia?”

The woman took a deep breath, folded her hands in her lap, and said, quietly:

“The children.”

“I’m sorry?”

“From south of Mexico. They come. They are coming, to stay here.”

“Refugee children, yes, I know. Many of them are coming up from Honduras.”

“They are no different than my children. No different than Hector, and Edgar, and Sonia. And they are all alone. Hundreds of miles. They walk. Some of them die in the desert.”

Nina could only nod.

“I know, Olivia.”

“The people in Washington, they do nothing. Nothing! What is wrong with these people?”

“I don’t know what is wrong with them.”

“You will talk to them?”

“Yes. Yes, I will do that. I promise that I will do that.”

There were tears shimmering in Olivia Ramirez’ eyes, and her voice had begun to crack.

“There are children at our borders! Are we going to let these children die? What kind of people are we?”

And with that, Nina leaned forward, took Olivia’s hands in her own, and said:

“I solemnly promise you. I will take care of these children. Whatever else I do, I will find a million mothers to help me. And if we have to
walk
down there, and
walk
back—we will take care of these children.”

After that, silence for a time.

Only the growling of the waves and the gentle whirring of the camera.

Finally, Olivia Ramirez rose, apologized for interrupting the interview, and, still holding Nina’s hand, made her way out of the shack and down the stairs.

When Nina got back to the deck, she found the photographer folding up his camera.

“What,” she asked, “is he doing?”

The reporter was looking out over the deck.

“Getting ready to go back to Vicksburg.”

“Why? What about the interview?”

“Useless. Useless.”

“Why?”

“We just got the story of the decade. There’s a Pulitzer, right there in the camera. Now all you and I and Jackson Bennett have to do is go back to work and be sure the country sees it.”

And they did.

The tape of Nina’s promise to Olivia Ramirez—along with the tape she had made in the Auberge des Arts—was shown hundreds of times in the following weeks.

No debates were necessary for Nina, and she did not participate in them.

She had stated her views eloquently, simply, and passionately.

Now it was the voters’ decision.

And so it became midnight .

Then one A.M. on the day after the Special Election to choose Jarrod Thornbloom’s replacement.

Nina had gone to sleep with her head lying on one of the tables in The Bay St. Lucy Town Hall.

She was awakened by the firm hand of Edie Towler shaking her by the shoulder.

It was Edie’s face she saw when she first opened her eyes, and Edie’s voice, solemn and quiet, that seeped into her consciousness:

“I’m sorry, Nina.”

“What?”