A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [180]
“What?” He cocked his head so he could hear my complaint.
“They don’t look equal to the job,” I whispered.
“You’d be surprised what people can do,” he said. “Eight times out of ten they rise to the occasion.” I swallowed, believing.
Judge Peterson sat up at his desk reading and biting his nails. He had the thick, dark hair of a youngster, but his face was deeply lined. He looked as if he’d grown old prematurely, as if he’d prefer not to hear another cross word, as if his job no longer taxed him, but instead, only irritated him. My future was in his crabbed hands and I tried to look as if I trusted in goodness, the way Theresa would have if she’d been in my position. Howard was taking unpaid personal days to sit behind me in his handsome suit. That suit, which had proved so useful, was another thing for which I was grateful. Nellie had been right: It was important to have one garment you could count on for certain occasions.
I had dressed according to Rafferty’s specifications. I had taken the last hundred and sixty dollars in my checking account and at the Laura Ashley store in the mall I had purchased, on sale, a light pink angora mock turtle sweater and a Viyella skirt with small pink and blue flowers. My hair had grown out to a point where it could have looked corporate chic, but Rafferty didn’t approve that style for me. “As vulnerable, as feminine, as soft as you can get that butch cut to look,” he said. I combed what there was back from my face and secured it with a pink velvet headband.
I had thought there might be a crowd at the proceedings, but when we came into the courtroom there were only a handful of Blackwell women. Rafferty reminded me that Christmas was coming and that people were busy.
“They’ve gone on to consume other things,” I said.
“Yes, that’s about the size of it.”
Although Howard insisted that the case was over the second day of testimony, that Susan Dirks’s primary witnesses cut their own throats, I knew he was only trying to be helpful, that there was not sound basis for relief. What I had been worrying over in particular was the fact that earlier in the summer Rafferty had lost his motion to suppress the admission I’d made to the investigators. He had argued that I should have been read my rights that night of the school-board meeting, that I was actually a suspect, that I was being interrogated rather than questioned. Mrs. Dirks maintained that I had been free to leave, as in fact I did, that I had not been forcibly detained, and that therefore there had been no legal requirement to read me my rights. When Mrs. Dirks, in her impassioned opening statement at the trial, made reference to my confession, Rafferty objected with his finger, the way a seasoned bidder makes himself known at an auction. “Objection, your honor. Will the word ‘confession’ please be struck from the record?”
In her mauve linen jacket and white wool skirt, black high heels, and a smoky gray silk shirt, she was far more beguiling than Rafferty could ever hope to be, even if he replaced his cheap plaid suit coat with something more fashionable. At the very start she advised the jurors that where there is sexual abuse there is often no physical evidence. “When we are listening to a child testify,” she instructed, “we must listen very carefully. It is not necessary to believe everything a child says. We must take into consideration the details, but in abuse cases we must also listen for the emotional truth in the child’s telling.”
Rafferty objected, and the judge slowly rubbed his mouth from side to side before he declared that Mrs. Dirks should continue. When it was his turn to speak, Rafferty explained to the jury that Mrs. Dirks had as good as advised them to forget certain democratic values, values such as the critical importance of the evidence in a criminal trial. He asked them if they could suspend their belief in the Constitution. He said that historically we were a society