Free The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris Page B

conversations. When I was a kid, he’d had an outsized reputation for telling it like it was. If your legs were ashen, he’d be the first to say you forgot to use lotion, loud enough for everyone in church to hear. If an adult got up without taking his plate to the sink, well, they’d hear about that, too. If we were going to the movies on a Saturday afternoon and there were six cousins on hand and only four seats in the sedan, Joe Norris would just cut to the chase: “Two of y’all won’t be seeing a movie today. I don’t know which two, but whoever it is I don’t want to see any tears. You kids got too much to be crying about anything.”
    But Uncle Joe had ceased being the family hard-ass long ago, and his weary grin indicated that he took no pleasure in bearing bad news. “Mickey,” he said, reverting to my childhood nickname, “here’s what I know.” His anger about the juvies had melted, and though his voice could usually rattle the fish in Lake Michigan, his words were now slow and gentle. I had to lean in to hear his rasp. He didn’t so much tell a story as deliver a series of statements. “They were down somewhere near Fourth Avenue trying to get onto an elevator.… Woody was pushed.… Belvin intervened.… A cop pulled out his gun.… Woody swatted at the cop’s arm and the gun deflected downward.… In the end, Belvin was shot in the leg.… That’s what I know.” There was a lot to digest that morning in the restaurant, and none of it went down easily. Shot in the leg. By a cop. And in Jim Crow Alabama, to boot.
    I was furious. Confused. My head hurt, and I wanted to scream. I needed details. Why did the cop push Uncle Woody? Where were they going? How serious was the injury? I peppered Uncle Joe with questions, careful not to show the anger welling up inside me. It felt like the room was starting to spin. Acid rose in my throat, and the Tex-Mex egg dish felt like aterrible choice. I swallowed hard, trying to repress the one question I really wanted to ask: “Why am I only hearing about this now?”
    I was intent on gathering as many facts as I could before the waitress dropped the check, fearful that a window of opportunity might close. What if Uncle Joe’s revelation had been only a moment of senior disinhibition? I knew not to seem too shocked or upset because then he might hold back, sensitive to my emotional fragility. As the youngest of six brothers, he’d been the last to enter the military and the last to return to Birmingham after the war. So he hadn’t been there when the incident with my dad occurred. Perhaps for that reason, or because so many years had intervened, his facts were fuzzy, his story sparse. He had always been the most confident among the Norris clan, but this morning he appeared outside his comfort zone. As we talked about Alabama policemen, I spied a vestige of fear on the face of a man who worked with convicts every day, and who earned their respect by showing that he could do more than just talk about putting a foot up their behinds.
    Yet, this normally confident man was clearly disturbed by a hazy memory from more than sixty years ago. “The only reason they were not killed on the spot is because of the crowd,” he said. “If they were on a road or in an alley, they’d be gone.” With that he stretched his neck, looked away, and sighed. “We can talk more later,” he offered in closing. I couldn’t ignore what he’d told me. I phoned him time and again over the next few weeks, and in each conversation he seemed to regret having said the little he had; the details he offered were few, if not speculative.
    Apparently, it had happened in Birmingham somewhere around Fourth Avenue—the black business corridor. My father was still in his twenties and had just returned from service in the navy during World War II. He was not alone. My uncle Woody was with him and maybe one or two other friends.There was a charge of resisting arrest, and the family had