The street lawyer.-

I called in sick Tuesday, At ten I left for the funeral. I twas a very nice church. Beautiful It did not open its doors to the homeless and I could understand why. I sat alone. I could see Morcadei with two people. I did not know.The tv people were in one corner.









I could also see the coffins. The babys coffin was very small. Ontarios coffin and his brother were bigger, but not much bigger. Lontae Burtons parents were dead, but her grandmother was there. She put flowers on the coffins and for a terrible second I thought she was going to open them, I had never been to a black funeral before and I did not what to expect. But I had seen old film of coffins open at funnerals.







After the funeral, there was the march To Capitol Hill. There were big potos of Lontae Burton everywhere, and under her face the words who killed Lontae?









On Capitol Hill Morcadei spoke to the people. He did not talk about the homeless. He talked about the last hours of the Burton family. He talked about the baby last meal, in the church. He talked about the cookies the boys had eaten.







He described how the Little family left the church and went back onto the streets, into the snowstorm where Lontae and her children lived only a few more hours. Morcadei described things he did not actually know had happened, but I did not care and teh crowd did not either. When he described the family trying to get warm before they died, I Heard women crying around me. If this man, Morcadei Green, coul make a crowd like this, he must be a great lawyer.





When Morcadei finished we marched to the Capitol, the government Building, carring the coffins. I had never been on a march like this before.







Rich people dont march, their world is safe and clean and there are laws to keep them happy. But now I too, carried my potograph of a 22 years old black mother who had died for nothing in a car. I was not the same person as I had been before Mister and Ontario came into my life, and I could never be that person again.









So I accepted when Morcadei Green phoned me a few days later and invited me to a restaurant near Dupont Circle.And when he invited me to join the 14 Street Law Center  I accepted his offer of a job too.







We can pay you dirthy thousand dollars a year, smiled Morcadei.



   

-You will be a partner .Lets see Drake beat that.





I smiled too.I nearly told him about the file. I needed from Drake the file that would give us the story of De Von Hardys eviction.But I did not.