The White Fence

22. The Anatomy Lesson

I slid a piece of newsprint into my best friend's hand. "What's this?" Patrice wondered, barely glancing at the article.  

"Read it!" I insisted.  

"How about you just tell me-," 

"Thurgood Marshall gets confirmed to the US Supreme Court," I read off excitedly, before she had even finished her sentence. 

She didn't get it. "Okay..." I just looked at her, until... "Wait, is this like lawyer from tha NAACP Thurgood Marshall?" 

"Yes, chief counsel of NAACP, one and the same. First black elected to the United States Supreme Court!" The triumph that ringed my voice was as exuberant as if I were reading my own confirmation.  

Patrice didn't catch my elation. She turned over the paper as if it contained some sort of coded answer. "What's this prove?" she questioned.  

"Nothing, Triece! It proves that nothing is impossible! The Supreme Court! That's the country's highest court!" 

"He's still a man, though," she said, diminishingly.  

"There're female lawyers," I informed her. "It's only a matter of time before one of them makes it to the bench." 

She still looked doubtful. "Maybe, but how many uh those lawyers are Black?" 

I considered. "There's Constance Motley; she's black, and not only is she a U.S. judge, but she was once the borough president of Manhattan, which is almost like being the mayor of one of the world's largest cities. And she's not the only one. I don't know how many of us there are," I declared, deciding to include myself in that category. "I'll count them for you once I pass the bar!" I said, exuberantly. 

"What's the bar?"  

"It's the test that each state gives to prove that you have the legal know how to be a lawyer, sort of like a certification. It gives you the right to practice. I'm telling you, Patrice, nothing is too far out of our reach; even NASA believes that they can send us to the stars!" 

I was overly giddy at the news of Thurgood's appointment, and wanted to know why my friend wasn't as excited about this news as I was. It was big, it was life altering, it meant things really could change. I'd been following Mr. Marshall's, pardon, Justice Marshall's career for a long time; in my opinion there couldn't have been a better choice to fill Justice Clark's vacated seat. With Marshall and Warren on the bench, and Johnson in office for another term, we might just be able to complete the work that JFK started before he was assassinated.  

She merely grinned at my enthusiasm. "I'll take your word for it," she responded. "Is Derek comin' up ta tha school today?" Her question caught me too quickly to try to fight the smile that spread across my lips. "I guess that's a 'yes'," she noted. 

"He might be," I responded, trying to reel in my eagerness a little. I was always a little upset with myself for allowing myself to be so enthused by his presence, but it was almost automatic. I liked Derek. I'd been expecting him to make one or two trips up to the school, before giving up on his lessons with Mrs. Diece, but he seemed like he was dedicated to improving his speech. On top of his course load at AUB, he was at Mason every Tuesday and Thursday during Mrs. Diece's planning period, and while he graded papers for her, the two of them would hold conversations in French. Some days Derek stayed at the school past Mrs. Diece's planning period, and he had lunch with Patrice and me after, though honestly, it seemed that he was really having lunch with Patrice because she was responsible for most of the conversation.  

She had none of the same complications as I did with talking to him: to her he was just a guy. To me, well it was bad enough when I thought that Derek might know what my feelings for him were; it was worse knowing that he knew what I felt. Even though we never brought it up, our last conversation before graduation and the note I'd written were always at the back of my mind. I wondered if he read them, wondered what he thought about them, wondered why we didn't talk about it. But why rock the boat? I was just content with him coming up to the school.