My Name

A Case Number, A News Story, A Headline

This is the most exciting moment I have ever known. I am sparkling. I ripple and glow. These people are here for me. Strangers, all. They have gathered in this courtroom for me. My mother holds my hand as we pass the marble columns and polished wood paneling, her high heels echoing through the halls, click, click, click, click, click, click, the only sound in the silent corridor. Brass handled doors open onto a packed audience waiting my arrival. How should I play this? I am a child of three, a wiggly child akin to a fluttering baby bird, clumsy and adventurous. I do not comprehend the immense pressure, the weight of what surrounds me, the scorn and ridicule my mother has endured. Not yet, but I will come to know through court transcripts and newspaper clippings the lying tongues and the twitching faces who bore false testimony. Men, so many men in suits and ties. In black and white. Black and white figures of men who stare at me now. Women in pearls and stilettos, with red lips and nails the color of blood slowly unfurl themselves and take their seats. They are separate from the men. They are in color. My single birth lined with so much gossip. Strangers have gathered to determine who I am, which name belongs to me, whether my blood is his blood, or if I was distilled from a different brew, a yellowing bile collected in some other jar. This is my story. I will never see anyone in this room again. I will never see my father again. Yet he wears a suit to mask his cruelty and his indifference to me. The women come towards me in shame. My life is on trial for being born. So much formality and ceremony. Uniforms and black robes. People rise and sit and are silenced. I am not allowed to be seated next to my mother. She sits next to the kind man I’ve come to know, Mr. Zirner, at a long wooden table facing the judge. She is poised and beautiful, her simple black straight skirt and crisp white blouse the perfect choice. I sit in the back twirling my babysitter’s hair. None of this is normal. Too many eyes are on me, and too many photographers take my photo. I’d rather be collecting magnolia blossoms in my front yard and dancing under the shade of her waxy green leaves. I don’t want to be here. There are more welcoming places like the little patch of green grass behind our house with two giant sunflowers and a fig tree oozing with sweet, fat figs anytime I want one. Jimmy and Margaret, our landlords who live in front, will be waiting with cookies and milk in their darkened sitting room, musty with the smell of time. Jimmy will be in his overalls having just fixed something in his garage filled with coffee cans of old screws and nails. Here, in this court room, I feel like a case number, a news story, a headline. I am also a child, here in this room.