REBEL

-2-

Fourteen days earlier.

There was something about turning thirty that could make a woman depressed. It was like a reminder that she should be where she had dreamed of when she was in grade school; like be married, have kids, a lovely house with a vegetable garden or a picket fence and a wonderful job that gives her time to pick up her kids from school.

Jody Allen had none of the above.

Granted, she had emphatically wanted all of that – and then some, but life had its own plans, as did she. Going to law school had been a struggle because it had cost an arm and a leg and her mother had only two of those, but Jody had been determined to be a lawyer. Not that she had some undying passion for it or something, it was just that being black in the society she lived in was so tough that she so wanted to prove that she could do it, that she could be a lawyer and earn good pay and live happily ever after without having to grovel on the knees to beg for food. Besides, she felt that the justice system was especially unfair to colored people so, she wanted to be a part of that system so as to be able to balance the scale in any little way that she could.

Well, that was when she had been twenty-four. Now, she was twenty-nine – thirty tomorrow, and she hadn't fulfilled half of what she had set to do, despite the fact that she had graduated cum laude from law school. But, she was somewhere and it was something to be thankful for; at least she had half bread – most of her peers didn't have dough to make bread, or even an oven.

A spluttering sound emanated from below her.

"Darn it," She cursed softly as her convertible spluttered and came to a halt. She hit the gear and turned the key in the ignition, and all her dear old grey tortoise car did was to splutter and die.

Great. It had to happen to her today of all days.

Her boss at Bethel and Co. law firm had called her home telephone very early this morning to tell her that he needed her in his office by 8am. That was a huge thing for her because Mr. Jones talks to her once in a blue moon. The truth was that he had never even spoken more than two words to her in a row, not to talk of calling her. The first time he had spoken to her was when he had very reluctantly gritted out the words 'you're hired' after checking and investigating if her grades in law school had indeed been real, and the last time they had spoken was, well, the first time. Oh well.

So one can imagine why Jody felt like an asteroid was heading for earth. She was very worried about his spur-of-the-moment call. Was he going to fire her? Had she done something wrong? Ever since she was hired as a criminal lawyer three years ago, she'd been given menial jobs like – you won't believe it – fetching coffee for her superiors who were unfairly all whites and all males. If she got lucky she could be assigned the case of a kid who shoplifted CDs from a store, or that of a man who was too frightened to sleep with his wife and had to drug her to do the deed – if she got lucky. She sighed. She was the only female and the only black lawyer in Bethel and they made sure she was trampled on to show her that the place of women was in the kitchen or with the mop and broom. Just how unfair is life?

She depressed the handle that would open the door to the car but it refused to give way until she elbowed it. The door creaked in protest. She really needed a new car, she thought, as she stepped out, probably one with an automatic door. This was the one she'd been able to afford off of her pay and now, it really needed to be changed. She walked around the car and opened the hood, hoping with all her might that her car wouldn't be towed by towing cops. She gaped at the various twists and turns of metallic engines, at loss on what to do. Was it the carburetor? Does she need to pour water? Or should she just kick the tires and see if it would magically start rolling? She glanced at her wrist watch and groaned. 7:15 – nope, make that 7:16.