Those Bones Are Not My Child (94 page)

“Looks like they’re eating well, though,” the first person out the door was saying over his shoulder.

Zala got up and slid along the wall, hoping to see someone trying to hail her—a member of Inquiry, the stalwarts of STOP, Teo and Sue Ellen, the mortician’s assistant who’d sworn last fall he’d demand to take the stand and testify about the state of some of the bodies: hypodermic needle marks in the genital area, ritually carved, castrated.

“The trucker, you mean,” the man’s companion said, brushing by Zala, her heels on the baseboard.

“Guess dinner is the highlight of the evening for them,” someone sighed sympathetically.

Nine men, three women; eight Black, four white; two Black
women, six Black men, one white woman, three white men. The jury was indexed, cross-indexed, described, and analyzed, but mostly felt sorry for. When they weren’t penned up in the box, they were being escorted out under armed guard to be locked in the jury room. Back at the hotel out by the airport, they were locked up in a common room for a game of cards and some small talk about anything but the case. Escorted to the bathroom or to the hall for a smoke. After dinner, locked alone in a hotel room with no radio, TV, newspaper, magazine, or phone, until the knock on the door in the morning to be escorted back to the courthouse.

Several more people went by discussing which jurors had gained weight and guessing how much weight the defendant had lost. Weight wasn’t all Wayne Williams had lost, Zala was thinking, craning her neck to see whom she might talk to. After months of playing musical chairs with his attorneys, Williams hiring and firing Mary Welcome and Tony Axum, the two in turn dismissing each other, Williams had lost his seat, leaving Binder and Welcome to battle the state’s five attorneys and their well-oiled, moneyed machinery. No more press conferences, no more showboat statements for his lawyer to feed to the public: Wayne Williams was no longer even a consultant in the thrust-and-parry that determined his life. He was captive in what Leah called the Slaton-Binder-Cooper troika. By the time he took the stand in his own defense, the parameters for disclosure would be as hard as cement.

Of the three men of the troika, Judge Clarence Cooper was the least discussed in the press and the least mentioned in the corridor. A specter, an icon; the facts about him were few. Zala knew that he’d been responsible for the use of the airport-type detectors. That he’d worked for District Attorney Lewis Slaton his first eight years out of law school. First Black assistant prosecutor in Atlanta, thanks to the urging of the Urban League’s Vernon Jordan. For five years a judge in municipal court, thanks to Maynard Jackson’s appointment. Then he ran for and won a superior court seat as prosecutor in 1980. Word was, he maintained close ties with his first boss, DA Slaton.

No, things didn’t look good for Williams, Zala heard over and over going down to the lobby. And she thought, spotting two young attorneys from the shuttle group, annoyed that court had recessed for snow, that whatever information Williams might have could be easily kept
under wraps. People might never know the means and motives and identities of the killers who’d wiped out over a hundred Black children, women, and men. Killers free to strike again while attention was fixed on one man being used to close the books on the officially Missing and Murdered twenty-nine.

“They’re bound to carry the recess over a few days,” one of the law students was saying on the courthouse steps. “It’s supposed to be a big snow.”

“Big snow
job
you mean,” the professor said, following Zala down to the sidewalk.

Zala looked at the clock up front in the West End Mall A&P. She’d lost twenty minutes somewhere. At 3:07 the snow had begun to come down hard. By the time she’d gotten off the bus, it was sticking. Traveling up and down the aisles, she’d heard someone remark the time and predict that by 4:00 it would really be blowing. She’d looked at the clock then. She stared at it now as people grabbing up whole fryers on sale jostled her. The old men were leaving, she heard, the old men who carried shoppers to and from the mall for a dollar or so. The line in front of the telephone outside by the shopping cart depot was long, running all the way past the front windows and doors to the new soda machine that talked back when a coin was dropped in. Zala loaded three whole fryers and two hamburger packs in her cart and shoved on.

In produce a young worker was hosing down the greens while another mopped. People were losing their footing reaching over each other to snatch up mustards, collards, and turnip greens without the usual finicky inspection of leaves. Her cart skidded and she rammed into a stack of grapefruits, toppling the fruit. A little girl playing open-sesame with the front door was yanked off the mat by an older brother. The door continued to whoosh open, wheeze closed, then spring open again, snow swirling in on the black rubber mat. Near the door, women with babies on their hips were asking each other how they planned to get home. Zala put three grapefruit into her cart and replaced the rest on the stack, then started up another aisle, to the frozen section.

People were leaning way over into the cold box stacking TV dinners up to their chins. Boxes of frozen chitterlings were traded for frozen pizzas
as carts jammed with white parcels from seafood-deli on top and dog-food sacks below stalled, the bent lower racks blocking the wheels.

“Take it easy.” The security guard was trotting, with one hand holding his holster steady. He urged people up and down the aisle to calm down. Every few feet he was stopped by an elder who required something from a high shelf—coconut cream, bottled guava, Jamaican hot pepper sauce. The guard was called back to the front, the store manager on the mike. Arguments had broken out on both express lines. Someone was holding things up clipping coupons at the register; another was trying to buy space heaters with food stamps. “Take it easy … take it easy,” the guard kept saying as he trotted along.

The man in front of Zala on line turned around and Zala jumped. “Bet they get the snowplow out this time,” he chuckled. “And if we’re lucky, somebody actually knows how to operate the damn thing.”

“Assuming it ain’t rusted out altogether,” the woman in front of the man said.

“Leastways they’ll take a pause in evictions,” said a woman in the line next to them. “I never heard of throwing people outdoors in a storm such as this. But then you never know.”

The man in front of Zala stepped out of line to empty a box of Baby Ruths into his basket, and she saw Murray up front by the window shelf that in summer held sacks of charcoal briquets, in winter held manufactured fireplace logs. He was biting off his gloves and looking at her.

“Let a little air out of your tires, that’ll help,” he said to two men loading their arms with the logs. “And if you’re heading Northside way, get you some sawdust from the lumberyard. Strew that around in your driveway. As good as cinders and better than salt,” he told them, still looking at Zala.

“Guess so,” one of the men said, grunting loudly when his friend piled on two logs at once. “Salt will eat up a car.”

“Attention!” The store manager leaned up over the partition of his booth, then kicked something back there into place to stand on. “Please remain calm!” he said, his voice tinged with hysteria. “Let’s be neighborly! There are plenty of cars and trucks outside, enough to get everyone home in time for supper. If we’re neighborly—” he was adding when whatever he was standing on caved in and he disappeared with a crash. People laughed more heartily than they might have had it only been raining.

“I can get you home, Miz Spencer.” Murray had materialized by her side and startled her. He pointed to his truck blinking in the parking lot beyond the telephone queue. A sliver of ice slid from his hat brim into her basket. “A bus skidded onto the median out there by I-20. No telling when they’ll get that straightened out.”

“Thank you,” was all she could think of to say.

“All right. All right then.”

When she walked into the house and dropped the bags, they didn’t give her time to get her coat off.

“Look at this, Mama!” Kenti was pulling her toward the TV, where she turned from one snowstorm to another.

Kofi swung her around to get her attention. “Guess what all that noise was on the roof? Guess what the landlord and them found up there?”

“The landlord? The landlord was here?” Zala looked around for Spence. Sonny was stretched out on the couch with a book, his feet on the cushions, his shoes on. “Who let him in? Where’s your daddy?”

“The big bald-headed guy came and got Dad. They went somewhere and Gloria had to go home. But Dad called back and said it was all right for Glo to leave. But come look. Lemme show you. They were raccoons on the roof them times making all that noise. The leak was on account of them. They roofers are gonna fix it.” He was pulling her toward the hall closet.

“Wait a minute. Hold it. What was the landlord doing here?”

“Look at this, Mama. Guess which snow is Atlanta, Channel 11 or—8?”

“Hold it a second.”

“He brought the roofers by to see the leak.”

“How’d he know? Who talked to Gittens about the leak? I only noticed it this morning looking for my boots.” She turned to Sonny. He plopped the open book down on his face. “Who let them in? I told you not to let anybody in this house.”

“He’s the landlord, Ma.”

“I don’t care if Jesus comes—we’ve told you! Did he use a key or did he ring the bell?”

Kofi looked toward the sofa, then down at the puddles around Zala’s
boots. “Sonny let him in.” Kofi moved to the groceries, but Sonny got up and got between.

“One minute,” she said, but Sonny went past her and into the bathroom.

“You better take your boots off, Mama. You messing up the rug.”

“I beg your pardon, miss.” Zala sat down in the chair and looked from the bathroom to the TV.

Kenti swung herself around and went back to the knob. People were slipping and sliding out of view between snowbanks. On another channel, a bus was up to its eyes in the snow. The weatherman in New York, calm and friendly, pointed to the weather map. Then New Yorkers climbing over dirty white mountains waved at the cameras.

“Now watch this,” Kenti said, turning channels. In Chicago, people holding their coats and hats ducked down past the camera; the screen went opaque. The weatherman, neatly groomed and chatty, pointed to the weather map with a schoolteacher pointer.

“Now this is Atlanta!” Kofi chimed in.

The weatherman in Atlanta was out of his jacket, sleeves rolled up, tie loose, hair wild. “He’s going to pop a vessel!” Kofi laughed, throwing his body around the living room as the weatherman gestured crazily. Kenti was lowering, then turning up, the volume.

“Please turn that thing down, I can’t think.”

Motorists along Peachtree got out of their cars; cars were skidding around them and stopping at odd angles in the street. Drivers walked off looking helpless and left their cars where they were. Elderly people with rugs and blankets across their shoulders waved to the camera from the warmth of an emergency shelter. People wrapped in newspapers huddled under the highway ramp. Buses, patrol cars, and tow trucks blinked red, amber, white, blue, their lights in sync with the yellow blinkers of the highway barriers. In a hotel lobby people crowded around a grinning man standing on an end table. He waved a room key, auctioning it off.

“I asked you to turn it off. I want to hear how the landlord got here.”

“He just came, Ma. Him and the roofers. They said they wanted to see the problem. But guess what? All them noises? It was a family of raccoons raiding all the garbage cans and taking it up on our roof to eat.
There were chicken bones and potatoes and steak bones and orange peels. The stuff up there was rotting right through the roof. That’s how come we got that leak in the closet. They patched it after they saw what it was.”

“Who was inside doing what and who was outside and where were you all? And where was your father?”

Kofi plopped down on the floor and crossed his legs in his lap and took it slowly. “We were washing the dishes, me and Kenti.”

“Like you told us to,” Kenti added, then turned to Florida. Huge stakes had been stuck in the ground of the groves and lit. They glared an ugly, smoky orange.

“And Sonny went to the door.”

“You heard the bell or the knock or he just went?”

“Whatcha mean?” Kofi shrugged and looked up at Kenti. “I guess he heard the knock. I was washing the dishes.”

“Me also. I don’t like how the landlord told us to stay out of the way. But he got the closet fixed.” She talked over her shoulder and began raising and lowering the volume again.

“So then what?”

“The landlord came in and said he wanted the roof men to see the problem.”

“I’m trying to get the sequence straight. Your father and Gloria got you from school. Your father left with Lafayette. Gloria went home. It’s snowing hard, and Gittens shows up with some men who say they want to check out the house. You three are here alone and let them in. But who called them?”

Kofi rolled over on the floor and pulled two of the bags toward him by their plastic handles. “Don’t look at me.”

“Well,” Kenti said, twisting a braid around her finger. “I told you yesterday there was a hole in the closet. But you didn’t listen. I told Mrs. Grier this morning when I saw her. She probably called the landlord.”

“I see.”

“Sonny brung them the stool.”

“Did what, Kenti?”

“The step stool from the kitchen. Sonny got it so the landlord could climb up into the spooky space in the hall ceiling.

“Where were the roofers?”

“First they were standing around in here, then he sent them outside.”

“Did they have a ladder?”

Kofi rolled up onto his knees and looked at her. “I see what you mean, Ma. No, they didn’t have a ladder. They just climbed up. But they did clear out all that garbage. And when they came back in, they asked for some water to mix the plaster and stuff. Then they fixed it in the closet. At least I think they did.”

“Go see, Kofi. Go and see.”