by Randi Pink
“No, baby,” she said. “You had it when you came in.”
He knew he’d had it. That’s what made it so odd. Isaiah always knew where his journal was. It was a treasure trove of anger and frustration and love. He’d written multiple poems about how much he deeply despised Muggy and the Greenwood hierarchy. And then there was the new, raw love in there. He’d never live that down. Moreover, his personal statements for Howard and Morehouse were in there, and not yet transcribed onto full-length parchment. Those letters were perfect and whole, impossible to duplicate.
“I can’t find it!” he shouted into the ether. Not necessarily to his mother.
“You need me to help you look?”
“No,” he said to her, flailing his hands.
“Retrace your steps.”
She was right. He sat on the now-mussed bed, closed his eyes, and visualized himself through the afternoon.
He saw himself walking in, longing to talk to his father and settling for his mother. He recalled her excitement over Angel Hill and smiled. He couldn’t blame her. If he had a son one day who’d expressed interest in a girl like that, he’d be excited, too. She was a universe of a girl, overlooked like a daily sunset. His finger itched to write, reminding him to concentrate on his lost journal.
After talking to his mom, he went into his room. With closed eyes, he saw himself writing on his bed with his journal resting on his bent knees. He couldn’t remember how much time had passed before Dorothy Mae had traced that heart on his window, but he’d absolutely had his journal in his room. They fooled around awhile, like always, and that’s when the journal left his memories. He felt a stick to his upper thigh—the tip of the ink pen he’d held when writing in it.
“Dammit, Dorothy,” he said.
TUESDAY, MAY 24, 1921; 7 DAYS BEFORE
ISAIAH
The sun rose the following morning, but Isaiah hadn’t slept a single wink. He’d barely blinked since realizing Dorothy Mae had stolen the only thing that shouldn’t be stolen. His mind was woolly with worry and questions. What could she possibly want with it? Why would she steal something so personal? Who had she shown it to?
He’d spent the night answering his own questions with the worst, and most plausible, conclusion—Muggy was behind this. Then Isaiah had to spend more hours talking himself out of it and do a roundabout right back to the same outcome—Muggy, of course. It was, after all, his style. They’d done horrible things like this together thousands of times. No one in Greenwood was safe from their mischief, but Isaiah thought his friendship was his shield. Armor from the embarrassment and pain inflicted by his best friend.
In the very journal he’d likely stolen, Isaiah wrote a poem about Muggy entitled “The Shield.” It was a short burst of a poem, and if Muggy ever got his hands on it, there would be no place to hide from the wrath. Isaiah would be a lightning rod, drawing all fire from every other poor victim in Greenwood. Muggy would be relentless. Isaiah couldn’t remember the poem verbatim, but he knew the circumstances in which he’d written it.
Muggy had taken a sanitary pad from a small freshman girl named Mary’s open pocketbook, dipped it in ketchup, and slyly stuck it to the outside of her skirt. When she rose, he loudly, no, obnoxiously pointed and screamed, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary!”
It was her nickname from that moment on, and Isaiah, weakly, sadly, ashamedly, laughed along. Afterward, Isaiah peeled off to the bathroom, disappearing into a stall for privacy. That’s when he took out the felt-tipped ink pen that was poking him in the thigh all night long and wrote “The Shield.”
Could he have left his journal at school in his locker? That whole remembering-writing-in-it thing could’ve easily been yesterday or the day before. His mother was surely mistaken—no way she saw him holding it that afternoon. The days were bleeding into one another anyway. What was it? May? He was certainly mistaken.
The sun peeked over the trees in the distance, and he told himself he was worried for no reason at all. He pulled on a pair of cuffed pants and a crisp white T-shirt to wait at the curb for his best friend. The sun brightened more and more as the moments passed.
Isaiah glanced at his watch—7:36 A.M. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes longer than usual, but surely Muggy had just overslept again, silly boy. That’s all. Isaiah chuckled to himself faintly.
7:47 A.M.
7:56 A.M.
8:00 A.M.
Already late, he began walking alone.
Back and forth went his mind between overreaction and trouble. Between worst cases and best. Belonging and cast out. The what-ifs were the worst of it, he knew. The lead-up was always more dreadful than the actual event. Wasn’t it?
It reminded him of the one time he entered the school-wide talent show. It wasn’t worth it after all—that lack of sleep, upheaval of guts, twisting of mind. All for some measly applause and a trophy. He’d won actually. Against jugglers and sopranos and toe dancers. He’d won the whole thing with a poem about history. A poem that he’d written on a wrinkled, stained napkin moments before walking onstage. A poem that had since attached itself to his memory and never released.
To pass the time and forget his current predicament, he began to recite it to himself. Walking the smooth walkways, past Mrs. Tate’s prizewinning juniper, unintentionally flailing his arms as he spoke.
“The past is the past,” he started in a low, growly voice he’d practiced for years. “But it’s not the past just because time has passed. The past is right here in our faces. Breathing sour breath of captors on us. Enslaving the brave. Braving the shame. Shaming us away from our real African names…”
“I remember when you did that,” someone said from behind him. “You beat me that year.”
Isaiah was genuinely shocked by Angel’s voice interrupting his thoughts. His mind was now empty. Void of words or thoughts. There was only Angel in the flesh. Keeping pace with his quick, tardy walk to school. He looked down at her slightly dirty white shoes. Though they were dingy and cheap, her stride in them held beauty. The worn indenture at the tip of her shoes pointed like she was floating, not walking.
He could hear himself breathing through their silence. He sounded like a raging bull, in and out and out and in. She must’ve been disgusted by it. Any girl would be. He held his breath for a few seconds, then choked dusty Oklahoma air into his lungs.
She laughed.
Cut by her laughter, he felt the instinct to speak in a lounge-lizard drawl he’d used on other girls. His body began to lean into a performance walk, every stride long with a catch at the end. Girls liked that, he thought. He curled his upper lip as if it were holding on to a thick cigar.
She laughed again.
Huh, he thought.
He cut his act and began walking normal again. For the first time in a while, he had no idea how to walk or talk or think. He had to lift a foot, one at a time, as if she’d made him forget the simple things about life. Every few steps, he glimpsed over at her pointed toes.
“I’m taking the job,” she said.
He tripped on his feet a little as she spoke, but recovered. But his nerves kept his lips from parting to respond.
“I think it’s a good opportunity,” she added, clearly waiting for him to say something (anything) in response, but he couldn’t. He’d just say something wrong or awkward or dumb.
“I never knew books were really your thing,” she continued through the natural pause she’d given him to say something. “I suppose I should’ve. Your poetry is beautiful.”
“How do you know my poetry?” His words came out a bit too forcefully, like caged birds breaking free one at a time.
Taken aback, she didn’t reply this time.
They turned the corner toward school. He had less than a block to say something that meant something. To charm the angel he’d pushed around since they were small. To tell her how much he loved the way she danced or walked or spoke about things that mattered. Approaching the gate, he grabbed at her hand but missed. She�
��d walked ahead a bit and didn’t notice the attempt. When he tried again, the back of his hand brushed her backside. And that she felt. Heat rose in his ears, and his stomach became instantly upset. He was such an idiot.
“I didn’t…,” he started. “I was trying to … never mind that. I swear I didn’t mean to.” He kicked at a stray rock sitting atop the dusty earth at his feet. “You like politics?”
He really was such an idiot. A one-trick pony. A wurp. A wet blanket. Of course she didn’t care about politics. She was a good Christian girl whose single dance could shift the mood of Greenwood’s largest church. Such! An! Idiot!
“I do like politics, actually,” she replied, kicking the rock back at his foot, challenging him to an impromptu game of rock soccer. “In the world we live in, it would be irresponsible not to.”
His muddled mind didn’t register her response. “Wait, what?” he asked before too-forcefully kicking the rock into her shin.
“Ouch!” She bent forward to rub at the reddening welt.
“My God,” he said. “I’m so sorry … I didn’t—” He truly, no joke, was such an idiot.
“It’s okay. No break in the skin or anything,” she said before rolling her skirt back down. “I like Booker T. Washington’s philosophies. Smart as a whip, that one.”
Isaiah’s exuberance and cautiousness left his body. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “He most definitely is not.”
He knew he shouldn’t challenge her so quickly, but he couldn’t help it. Passion overtook him.
“Du Bois is the smart one,” he told her in a lecturing tone. “Washington is weak. Have you studied Du Bois’s theory of triple paradox?” Isaiah knew he should stop talking, but he couldn’t seem to figure out how. “In direct response to Washington’s approach, Du Bois asked which is more effective toward racial progress: submissiveness, educational advancement, or suffrage. The question is intellectually sound and perfect, very much unlike Washington’s simplistic view on slow, generational progress.”
A pause hung in the air between them, and Isaiah looked at his feet.
“I…,” Angel began. “Well, I thoughtfully and respectfully disagree with your and Du Bois’s assessment.”
“Which part exactly?” Isaiah itched to argue.
“That discussion is for another time,” she said with a tilt of the head. “But in your short speech, I can already see that you may well believe every word from Du Bois’s lips was placed there by God himself, and to that, I caution you. He is just a man. Which means he will disappoint you.”
Shocked by her measured response, he felt his shoulders deflate, so he hitched them back up, forcing his spine straight and chin higher than they naturally sat. Familiar performance overtook his body, changing his posture into something closer to Muggy’s than his own.
Angel quickly closed the space between them like she was about to kiss him square on the lips. He stood his ground, ready. But she didn’t kiss him. She grabbed both of his hands and locked eyes with him. He saw the universe in her eyes, the sparkling universe. He itched to write that down—sparkling universe in her eyes. He could write pages about only her eyes, verb-filled run-on sentences about every eyelash.
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Isaiah,” she said, pulling his ace card with such honesty and rawness that he couldn’t deny it. “Be you. That’s enough for me.”
She squeezed his hands once and walked through the school gates, leaving him standing there, alone and dazed.
Her breath smelled clean, like honeysuckle or maybe huckleberry. The smell lingered on the wind for a while, and Isaiah was sad when an especially hasty gust took it away. He knew right then that he was madly, truly, singularly in love with Angel Hill.
“You’re a fool to like her,” Muggy said as he jumped down from the nearby tree limb. The same kind of perch he’d been spying on her in the day before. “And an even bigger fool to leave this on your bed with a floozy nearby.”
Muggy tossed the leather-bound journal high. Isaiah watched it flip through the air as if it were moving in slow motion. He caught it and saw a page was aggressively folded down. He opened the journal to that particular place—it was the poem he’d written about Muggy.
The Shield
I hate him he’s my shield,
His filthy, rotting guts,
He’s cruel but he’s my shield,
He’s built me from the bottom up.
I’ll use him,
I swear,
And leave him when I’m good enough,
To stand alone,
Without him, Dear God, that day can’t come soon enough.
I’ll be, one day.
Shieldless,
Muggyless,
One day.
A Proud.
Poet.
“That one’s my favorite,” Muggy said before leaning against the tree’s thick trunk. “Even though the end doesn’t rhyme, which, what rhymes with ‘Muggyless’?” Isaiah caught quick eyes with Dorothy Mae, who was waiting in the nearby bushes with her head bent with shame, her face in her hands.
ANGEL
“I’ll do it!” Angel burst into Miss Ferris’s classroom. “When do we get started?”
“Now,” Miss Ferris replied with her hands raised, “this is a quick turn of events. What’s changed?”
Angel didn’t want to admit it. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what she’d be admitting to in the first place. Isaiah had written the most beautiful poem about her, that was true, but that wasn’t the whole reason she’d changed her mind. There was also her father. She wanted to ease the stress of their small home. Her mother’s wrists were in constant pain from too much hair braiding, and he’d voluntarily skipped a few medications to make the monthlies.
On top of all of this, though, was a selfish longing to get away from it all, and she hated herself for thinking it. She was put on this earth to help people—from her colicky infant neighbor to her ailing father. It was her purpose. When she was very small, Angel dreamed only of taking care of others. For the first time, she wanted a few hours per day to do only the thing she wanted to do.
“I could use the money.” She told the half-truth to a skeptical-looking Miss Ferris. “I could use the money,” she echoed herself before kicking an invisible ball at her feet.
“O-kay,” Miss Ferris replied in huffing disbelief. She then looked at her watch. “We have a few minutes to go out back and tour the bicycle. Let me show you. I’ve named her Blue.”
Blue leaned on the shed near the large trash dump in the back of the school, but it looked like it belonged inside. Rusty and dented with a dangling chain, there was no rehabilitation that Angel could see. Blue wasn’t blue at all, either; instead, the bike was the color of dry moss in a drought. All in all, Blue was a giant mess of an eyesore. Its three redeeming qualities were the third wheel, large basket on the rear, and sidecar for pulling a second passenger.
“Here she is!” said Miss Ferris as if Blue were a shiny new buggy. “Gorgeous, isn’t it? I picked it off the side of the road last year. Who would simply abandon something like this? She could use a tiny bit of work, but imagine the possibilities, Angel. The books.”
Angel bent forward to inspect the bicycle, and upon a closer look, she saw a tiny procession of spiders emerging from an intricate web on the rear basket. Angel leaped back in disgust; she loathed spiders with a terrified passion.
Miss Ferris noticed Angel’s disgust and seemed cut by it. “She needs a bit of elbow grease, but between the three of us, we can have her shipshape in no time.”
“So Isaiah’s officially involved?”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “He was involved, as you say, from the moment I explained it. Would you sacrifice the next few days to help get Blue in order? Sabbath off, of course.”
“Miss Ferris,” Angel said, attempting to sound calm. “This bike needs a lot of work.”
“We can do it,” she replied. “I swear we can.”<
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Angel walked home that afternoon with a spring in her step. While she hadn’t seen Isaiah after their morning talk, they’d be together a fair amount that summer. It’d be interesting to see him in that light—using his hands and mind and creativity to bring Blue back to life in order to hand out books.
It was exciting to think about—the three of them huddled together in such a small space, tackling a singular, and maybe insurmountable, goal as a team. It could only bring them closer. Also, Miss Ferris was a magnet to be around. Her student’s lives improved when she was nearby.
Everybody knew everybody in Greenwood, but Miss Ferris was particularly popular. Daughter of the head deacon, and former college beauty queen. She could’ve gone anywhere, been anything, but instead, she moved back to inject love of culture and books into the youth of their district.
“Hey, Angel!” Deacon Yancey sat alone on his porch waving. It crossed Angel’s mind that he may have been waiting for her to walk by all day just so he could have someone to talk to. She pushed in his gate to join him on the porch. “Can I get you another cup of tea?”
“Oh, no!” she replied too eagerly. “I mean, no thank you. I can’t drink caffeine this late in the afternoon. It’ll just keep me awake.”
He jumped up from his porch swing anyway. “I’ve got herbal.”
Before she could stop him, he disappeared back into his small home and began running the tap. Dreading that first sip, she slumped in her rocking chair. But then she saw him—Isaiah—walking quickly past the deacon’s house. She felt her mouth turn up into a smile.
“Hey there!” she said, softly so Deacon Yancey wouldn’t hear, but Isaiah only lowered his head in response.
She slowly let down her waving hand. She was no fool; he was ignoring her. As he walked onward, she decided not to care. There were too many wonderful things to come—a lucrative job being surrounded by books, and not to mention the Memorial Day parade on Monday. Isaiah was just a boy. A finicky one who’d been sucked into the delusions of W.E.B. Du Bois. Such foolishness, that! The test of time would show that Booker T. Washington’s strategy was the superior one. Sure, there were undoubtedly flaws in Washington’s argument, but it was the closest they had to real change in the entire community. Simple and easy to go down, it was.