The Cave Dwellers, Christina McDowell [ap literature book list .TXT] 📗

to know the why, and each time Meredith brushed it off, Bunny sensed a kind of fragility in her mother—or a denial, an inability to confront any possibility of innocence—a block of ice she couldn’t pick through. Meredith didn’t care to know anything more about Anthony, his alleged crime superseding his private identity, indicating he was nothing more than a public criminal.

Bunny studies Anthony’s photograph again, zooming in on his face so his eyes are life-size and staring into her. She tries to imagine that he did do it—the facial expressions he might have made upon entering the home, upon slicing Audrey up—but she’s having trouble. His mug shot, he looks so somber, so human.

Power feels tilted along Idaho Avenue behind the new Giant Food, Bluemercury, and Barcelona wine bar. Bunny sits in her Volvo waiting to turn in at the old Metropolitan Police Station when a public bus pulls up next to her. She glances over and looks up. Rows of Black and brown and very few white faces gaze out the windows beyond the traffic, beyond their shitty-paying minimum-wage jobs and psychopathic bosses and headaches from the cleaning fluid and the screaming white children and the fancy dog-poop bags thrown on top of public trash cans—a cocoon of fantasy thinking and wishing and dreaming and resentment and injustice and judgment. The engine roars as it goes on to pass her; Bunny coughs from the fumes whipping through her vents. She cracks the window and swats the air with her hand, then turns into the parking lot.

Inside, an American flag hangs on a white brick wall with three random head shots of notable police chiefs. Bunny’s only ever been to the police station once, when she was thrown into the “drunk tank” sophomore year—a holding cell for privileged teenagers with missing stilettos and calls made to family friends who are lawyers.

An overweight female officer with bleached hair and thick glasses sits at the desk behind bulletproof glass. She types something into her computer, ignoring Bunny’s presence. Bunny waits with her hands clasped in front of her, polite, a backpack slung over her shoulder and a pink wool beanie on her head. Bunny looks around to while away the time; a gumball machine to her right is covered in dust and probably hasn’t been touched since 1997. Another minute passes, and Bunny feigns interest in the surrounding government posters and most-wanted photographs and laws to abide by. She exhales and stares down at the officer before she realizes neither damsel-in-distress nor entitlement will get her what she wants. She steps toward the glass window and knocks. “Excuse me.”

The officer looks up. Affectless, she presses the intercom button. “May I help you?”

“Yes. I’m looking for Officer Gomez.”

“Do you have a badge number?”

“Um, no.”

“I need a badge number.”

“Well, can’t you just look it up in your system, or whatever?”

The officer gives Bunny a once-over. “Ma’am, what is this regarding?”

“The Banks murders.… The family that was tortured and burned—”

“Yeah, I remember, that case is with the feds now.”

“The feds?” Bunny doesn’t understand the language.

“The FBI.”

Disappointed that it’s not going to be so easy to get information, Bunny scrunches her nose. “So how do I get the police report, then?”

“You gotta go through the Freedom of Information Act.”

“The Freedom of Information Act?”

“The Freedom of Information Act.”

“What’s the Freedom of Information Act?”

“It’s where you can submit a request to obtain records—provided that it gets approved, then they’ll give it to you.”

“Okay, but—”

“It’s the Freedom of Information Act. You can go online and find it,” the officer says once more, then turns around to give a sheet of paper to an officer behind her.

“Okay, wait, one more question.…” Bunny says, and the woman begrudgingly turns to her again.

“Yes?”

“How do I go visit someone in jail?”

“Which jail, ma’am?” the officer asks with increasing impatience.

“Um…” Bunny thinks, the officer’s tone making her feel like she should already know the answers and ashamed that she doesn’t, because why would she? Look at the coat she’s wearing. Bunny pulls up the link to the story on her phone. “The DC Jail… Central Detention Facility.”

“You gotta go on the website and fill out a form with your ID,” says the officer.

“Oh, like for a background check?”

“Ma’am, check the website, like I said.”

Bunny glares at the officer. “Got it.” She drops her phone in her pocket and heads for the metal detectors and out the front door.

Suffragist Statue

It wasn’t until 1921 that the depiction of a woman surfaced within the United States Capitol Rotunda, a room at the center of the Capitol connecting the House of Representatives and the Senate. The unveiling of the suffragist statue happened six months after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women (white women) the right to vote. The marble statue depicts Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of the women’s bill of rights; Susan B. Anthony, abolitionist and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; and Lucretia Mott, preacher and organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in New York; in addition, an uncarved clump of marble towers behind them. There are different rumors about what that clump of marble symbolizes—for example, are we waiting for the first female president of the United States? Could it be for the next prominent leader of the women’s rights movement? The Me Too movement?I

Sadly, after the statue’s unveiling, it was promptly removed and placed underground in what was supposed to be President Washington’s crypt, but instead was used to house cleaning supplies, brooms, and mops. Congress rejected multiple bills seeking to move the statue into the Rotunda. It was not until the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1995 that women’s groups, including female members of Congress, rallied in an effort to bring it out of the closet. Finally in 1997 the statue was brought back to public light, though only because private funds around the country were donated to move it. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had rejected using any of the $23 million budget