by Randi Pink
Last summer, he was the strongest of them. Lifting her into too-tight hugs and twirling her mama into dipped-down kisses. Working from sunup to sundown and still coming home hopeful and happy and eager to help—tired but grinning like he’d rather be doing nothing else in the world. He brought the sunshine then. He only brought gray clouds with him now.
“I’m sorry,” Angel said aloud but really to her selfish self.
“Isaiah,” her mother said simply. “Certainly not my first choice.”
Then Angel repeated a little lower, “I’m sorry.”
“But,” her mother continued, “a worthy cause, nonetheless. What do you think?” she asked Papa.
He could only get out two words. “Worthy … cause.” And then he began breathing with much effort.
She couldn’t believe it, she thought, making her way to Miss Ferris’s house, which was three and a half blocks away. Her first paying job. And helping people. The rest wasn’t important. Not really.
“The rest isn’t important,” she told herself aloud as she pushed through Miss Ferris’s backyard gate to see that Isaiah had already arrived.
ISAIAH
There was no air left in Greenwood. No. There was only Angel coming toward him. A hush came as she approached, slowly, carefully. Curiously? What was that expression on her face? He had to admit he didn’t know her well enough to perfectly place that look. Apprehension, he thought. Of him, surely. Half-witted him, who’d dared to overlook such a girl for so many years. Actually, apprehension and caution. Yes. She moved toward him as she would an unstuck grenade. He was that, but not in the ways she seemed to think.
Pried free from Muggy, he was no longer a terrifying thing. Now he would do whatever she asked of him. Be who she wanted him to be. Behave in ways she longed for a man to behave. With Muggy, he was mean. Uncharacteristically so, and with no real rhyme or reason. With Angel, he assumed, he would be better, kinder, more empathetic. But without either, Isaiah was floating along with no leader to lead him. Secretly terrified to lead his own self.
“Hi,” she said to him, face still frozen with watchfulness.
He said nothing in return. Not even as much as a hi. He wondered when he had become the dumbest of Doras.
“Hi, Miss Ferris,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
“I’m headed to pick up a few supplies from Mr. Odom’s,” she replied before hoisting a bag onto her shoulder. “You two, head on inside and pick the first batch of books. You’ll need ten or so. You choose five,” she told Isaiah. “And you choose five,” she then told Angel.
“What’s our age group?” Angel’s words freed from the bow of her lips with such grace. “How young are we talking here?”
“Good question,” Isaiah said, nodding along like a parroting idiot.
Miss Ferris chuckled knowingly. “Toddler on up. I’ll be back in a bit.”
With one last wink at Isaiah, she whistled away.
“Hope she has a copy of The Souls of Black Folk.” Isaiah smiled as wide as he ever had, anticipating Angel being impressed by his obvious passion and love for the greatest man who ever lived.
He expected her to stop in her tracks, look back at him, and fall into a heap. Instead, she walked ahead into Miss Ferris’s home library as if she hadn’t heard him. Surely, she hadn’t heard him.
The library, organized alphabetically with much care, was small but stunning. The slight room just off the kitchen was likely meant for laundering. Miss Ferris, however, had installed ceiling-high shelving and two overlarge chairs that shared a tiny table and quaint lamp. A poet’s paradise, Isaiah thought.
“Wow,” Angel said.
“Yeah,” Isaiah said. “Oh! There it is.”
He eased an immaculate hardcover copy of The Souls of Black Folk from the shelf and held it in Angel’s sight lines so she had to see. Surely now she’d be rapt.
She shouldered past his raised book and lifted an equally pristine copy of Up from Slavery.
Isaiah felt his eyes double in size. She really was a Washington follower, just like his mother. Like he himself had been prior to Librarian Edith liberating his thinking.
A light went off inside of him, brightening his voice and heart and body. A knowing filled him up—he needed to unshackle this angel. Release her from the passive teachings of a dead man, rest his soul, and introduce her to the unfettered future of their people. Everywhere would be Greenwood. Every Black neighborhood in the world would recycle its own dollar until it went out of print. Every Black man would stand at the front stoop of his own tidy home, arms folded, cigar lit, hat tilted, daring the jealous-hearted white man to try him. Every Black woman would nurse her own baby safely in her own home, stroking its tiny head while rocking in her own rocking chair. That was the way of the future, and Isaiah Wilson was about to introduce this gorgeous, if not naive, angel to the new Negro way.
“I see it now,” he said with a slight, automatic click of the heels. “I’m here to save you.”
ANGEL
“Say that again,” she replied with disgusted shock. “I heard you incorrectly, surely.”
“I’m here,” he repeated with even more excitement than the first time, “to save you from yourself. Can’t you see it? You’re stuck, and I’m going to pull you out.”
Angel could think of absolutely nothing kind to say in response to such insolence. How dare he? This was the twenties, after all. Many women worked outside the home while their husbands were away. All had minds to think for themselves without arrogant, haughty, know-everything boys telling them how to think. Pull her out from what exactly? Save her? He dared.
“You, Isaiah Wilson, will not save me from one thing, you hear me?” she replied with uncontrolled, flailing parts. As a dancer, she could feel her body in ways non-dancers could not. She knew what the lift of an arm meant versus the flick of a neck. Or straightening of stature versus slouching of the same. With that knowledge, she utilized her body to speak on her behalf. But something about Isaiah Wilson made her forget.
“You…,” he started. “You don’t understand.”
“I should save you from your relentless mistreatment of those who don’t deserve it. Your needless meanness. Your … your … your … oppression.”
She felt breathless, her chest rising and falling with anger she rarely let boil to the surface. But there was no holding back with him. Something about this boy made her absolutely loosed.
“I—” he started, palms in the air as if surrendering in battle.
“You, nothing,” she interrupted. “You, Isaiah Wilson, nothing!”
His head bowed forward like a caught dog as he replaced the book he’d been so excited about on the shelf.
“And you know what else?” she asked. “Du Bois is just like you, a tyrant. A strongheaded brute of a man, elbowing his way to the front of the line without taking into account life as it is. I’ve seen how our people live outside of Greenwood. I’ve seen the heavy weight of generations on the backs of our folks. There’s a mentality, Isaiah. One of downness, you understand? One of being pushed so far down that there’s no way up. Greenwood is a rarity, a bright spot in the wide world of darkness.” She folded her arms. “Let me dare guess, you’ve never been outside of this place?”
Head still bowed, he asked, “Can I speak?”
“Well, I asked you a question, didn’t I?”
“No, I have not been outside of Greenwood.”
“Ha!” she said in response. “Well then, you should.”
A few tense moments passed.
“Can I speak again now?” he asked.
Angel nodded.
“I’ve never been outside of this place,” he said with a sadness all over him that suddenly made Angel sad, too. Was she being too harsh on him? “But I devour books about those places. My father used to get the Negro papers sent up. I still have them if you want to ever see. I know our people are in a state of terror. I know and I long for a shifting. Sometimes, when Muggy’s off somewhere with
his parents, I sit and watch the white folks go on about their business on the other side of the tracks. I see them, too. Breezing through as our women do the hard work of their households. Shopping for the lovely things as our women shop for their groceries. Holding only their pocketbooks as our women hold their babies. It’s sickening. It needs to change. I’d like to have a part in that change. And, in my opinion”—he bowed his head deeper before finishing his thought—“Booker T. will only keep us where we were. Maybe, just maybe, a bully like Du Bois is what we need.”
Angel thought for a moment and decided …
“No,” she said sternly before paging through Up from Slavery to find her favorite passage. “Ah, listen to this part. ‘The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending back through many generations, is of—’”
“‘Tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations.’” Isaiah seemingly couldn’t help himself. “I memorized nearly the entire book. Ask me anything.”
“You seem quite proud of this,” she replied, trying her best not to look impressed, though she absolutely was. “Go on, then.”
As if he’d been given permission to take center stage, he dramatically lifted his arms, feigning Booker T. Washington. “‘The fact that the individual has behind and surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success,’” Isaiah said in a single breath. “Is that enough? Or should I go on? I’m more than happy to—”
“What does it mean?” Angel was the one interrupting this time.
“It’s obvious what it means, I’d say,” he started. “Born enslaved and to a white father, he longs for the life of that white boy. An easier road toward his selfish desires. On the surface, Washington was driven by ambition to better his people. I believed that, too, at first. But actually, it’s quite the opposite; he was an Uncle Tom.”
“Don’t you dare say that about him!” Angel hissed as soon as the two words came through his lips. “He was no Uncle Tom, but of course you’d think that of him.” She turned her back to Isaiah.
He softened his voice to respond, realizing he’d overstepped some invisible line. “Could you help me understand what you think, then?”
Angel considered it for a moment and then decided he was right. She couldn’t allow him to drag the name of Booker T. Washington through the mud. Besides, he’d vocalized, passionately so, his zeal for Du Bois. It was due time she’d done the same for her own personal hero.
She sunk into one of the overstuffed armchairs and began to explain her position. Not passionately with wild arms and stomping feet like Isaiah had, but calmly, with much care. She held Up from Slavery in the air.
“This is no book. Not in the same way Du Bois presents a book, it’s not. This is a diary—both extremely personal and woefully terrifying in its raw honesty. Washington presents the world as it existed for a boy born property to a mother likely taken against her will.” She leaned toward Isaiah, who was now sitting across from her, rapt. “No boy should have to know such evil exists so early in life. Or worse, be descended from it.
“As he writes these words, he is a man, yes, but still a boy,” she said, pausing to carefully place her index finger onto Isaiah’s chest. “In here, Washington is still just born. Trapped in a log cabin with a too-small door and no knowledge of the importance of a toothbrush nor bedsheets. He’s an intellectual who cannot read. Working hard labor with his ill-equipped, soft hands. Isaiah, he’s a man willing to admit the frequency of his tears to the world with no holds barred.
“The lines of this book should not be memorized verbatim.” She paused to smile affectionately at the work. “They should not be bragged about in desirable company,” she said, still smiling but no longer with her eyes. “To adequately understand these lines, one must read between them.”
Isaiah took a moment and then raised his hand as if he were in class. When she nodded, he continued, ready for debate. “Why, in your opinion, then, does he so easily forgive the cruelty of the white men? For that matter, his own father, who never staked claim to him. He even went on to discuss the great kindness of so-called masters and mistresses and how those kindnesses are to be revered by all. When these are the same evildoers oppressing our people. Beating us. Ravaging our women. Stealing our children. Burning our homes to the rocky ground.”
Angel leaned in even closer. Fully accepting and appreciating the opportunity to explain what she knew and he only thought he knew. “But don’t you see, Isaiah? He has not forgiven anything at all. Not one iota has he absolved. That’s merely the false bluster of the angriest man that possibly ever lived. In regard to the great kindness of mistresses and masters, as you say, if you read on, you’ll see that he references many men who stayed in bondage even though they were given the freedom they’d long desired. He’s angry at them, too. So angry, in fact, that he walks away from his job in the stable salt mines, penniless and starving, to create a path for himself and, as you call us, our people.
“If you take this text literally,” she said, with compassion toward a boy who clearly did not understand men, “you will undoubtedly believe Booker to be nothing more than an Uncle You-Know-What-I-Dare-Not-Say. But if you instead take into account the life of the man, the whole of his life, you will never again defame him.”
She leaned back, sinking deeper into the softness of the chair.
Isaiah, so eager to debate just a moment ago, could formulate no adequate response.
ISAIAH
Argument turned to banter as Isaiah and Angel attempted to choose the other eight of their book selections. They’d devised a game of sorts where one called out a favorite title and the other dramatically struck it down like a referee would a foul ball.
“The Secret Garden,” Angel said as if she were speaking of a precious newborn puppy dog. “Please don’t strike this one. It’s a beautiful book, I swear this.”
Isaiah rose his arms high up in the air, ready to strike. She looked up at him like a doe would its mother. “Please,” she repeated. “Let me have this one, Isaiah, please.”
He loved the way she said his name. This girl sure could truly look pitiful when she wanted to, Isaiah thought. And entirely beautiful. Too beautiful to be real. He nearly reached out his hand to touch her face just to check. He could’ve sworn tears were welling up in the bottom rims of her large eyes, eyes that shined with yearning. Dear God, if she looked at him with such eyes every day … He couldn’t dream of such fortune.
“Okay,” he gave in. “Though it’s against my very instinct, you may have The Secret Garden.”
“Ha!” she shouted before leaping into the air. “You’re easy to fleece, aren’t you?”
He wanted to throw his arms around her waist and kiss her. She was everything he wanted. More than that. She was, in every sense, a Black angel of his dreams.
“I got you.” She nudged him.
“You got me,” he replied, not nearly angry.
“Ooh.” She leaped again. “Peter and Wendy.” Pushing her luck this time.
High up on her toes, just like when she danced, she reached for the light green copy of Peter and Wendy stuck between a squatty line of Beatrix Potter books and the script for Phaedra on the topmost shelf. She couldn’t quite reach, which Isaiah saw as an opportunity.
He shifted toward her, falling into a move he’d utilized on countless girls before. Then he shook the sly off of himself like he would a buzzing fly. He became himself, or tried to anyway. Calm down, Isaiah, she’s just as human as you are after all, he told himself. Step forward, get the book, bring it down to her, and step back again. So he did.
Calculating, he first looked down at his right foot and stepped it forward long enough to cover the remaining distance between them—one and a half feet approximately. And then he brought the other forward to meet it. Next, careful not to brush against her in any way, he lifted his left arm over her b
raided hair and easily grasped the book. Okay, he thought. So far, so good.
But then she looked over at him with those eyes again. Those dangerous eyes, still filled with shining lights and his own reflection. They were close. Close enough to find a sneaky gray eyelash curling along with the rest of them. Close enough to see that her eyebrows were not nearly the same. Actually, one was wild at the inner corners and the other was slicked down and behaved. Her mismatched eyebrows alone could take up two whole pages in his journal. He was close enough to catch sight of a single curl poking out from one of her braids.
“I’m back.” Miss Ferris burst into the back door with the supplies, startling Isaiah.
His arm jerked forward into the meticulously organized bookshelves, sending the entire top row of Beatrix Potter onto Angel’s perfect head.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, patting at her cheek like the idiot he was. “Are you okay? You got the whole Beatrix Potter collection head-on.” So stupid, stupid, stupid.
She grinned before squatting down to pick them up. “At least they weren’t the full-sized ones, though.”
“No,” he said, cowering next to her. “I’ll get them. I can do this. I’ve got this; I swear I do.”
Isaiah felt droplets of sweat collecting at his chin and armpits. Frazzled was an understatement. He was a mess.
“Isaiah.” He’d forgotten Miss Ferris was even standing there to witness his fumbling. “Come help me with the bag. Angel can join us after she’s gathered the rabbits.”
Miss Ferris had given him a much-needed way out. As soon as he was out of eyeshot, Isaiah’s palms floated to cover his face. Miss Ferris placed her concerned hand on his back and said, “Come on.”
After some hesitation, he followed her through the entire house. Around the pantry, stocked with a floor-to-ceiling wall of home-canned peaches, plums, and apples. Under the wooden staircase and through a far side door he had to duck down to get under. He was thankful for the distance.
“What is wrong with me?” he said before becoming a heap on the sitting room couch. “Something’s terribly wrong with me.”