Lies We Tell Ourselves

by Robin Talley

  Ennis and I have gone out a few other times since then, and we’ve kissed every time. Usually only for a second, to say good-night. That’s fine with me. I think kissing could just be for special occasions, really.

  Ennis walks me to most of my classes now, and carries my books in the halls. He hasn’t asked me to go steady yet. I don’t really mind that, either.

  But I feel terrible for lying to him. If Ennis knew what I was really like he’d want nothing to do with me.

  Some days at school I’ll catch a glimpse of her by accident. That only makes it worse.

  I still listen for the whispers in the hall that would mean she’s told them about me, but so far, there’s been nothing. Just the usual taunts of “nigger” and spittle on my clothes.

  She must be biding her time. Trying to catch me off guard. Whatever she’s got in mind, it won’t work.

  I wish I knew what she was thinking, though. I miss knowing what’s going on in her head.

  When I glance in her direction in the halls, she always turns away. But sometimes she’ll look back again after a minute. As if she’s trying to catch my eye. Trying to say—something. I don’t know what.

  Choir practice is the worst of all. She’s always right in the front row, where I can’t help but look at her.

  During our last practice, Mr. Lewis asked her to sing a solo verse so the other girls could hear it done properly. It was the first time I’d heard her sing. She’s good. As good as I am. Maybe better.

  What’s strange is, even though the other girls in the choir pick on me all through rehearsal, she never says a thing. It’s as though she doesn’t even know I’m there.

  The others try to trip me on my way to the risers. Girls whisper hateful things in my ear when Mr. Lewis isn’t paying attention and stick torn-up bits of paper in my hair. When I climb down after practice, trash falls from my hair like confetti.

  Some of the girls leave me alone. They just stare at me. Their looks range from curiosity to disgust to loathing.

  But she never looks my way at all.

  Sometimes, I wish she’d look.

  Only for a second. Just so I’d know she remembers, too. That I didn’t imagine the whole thing.

  She’ll have to look at me before long, though.

  Mr. Lewis announced the lineup for our spring concert two weeks ago. All three sections of the choir will be performing with the band. There will be three soloists, one from each section. A sophomore girl will solo for the Glee Club, I’ll solo for the Girls’ Ensemble and she will solo for the Balladeers. Then the three of us will lead the full choir in the last song of the show.

  After that announcement the other girls stopped giving me curious looks. Instead all their looks were murderous.

  Except hers. She acted as though she hadn’t even heard.

  Sometimes I think the girl I see at school now can’t possibly be the same one I sat with every afternoon at Bailey’s. That girl wouldn’t have ignored me during the announcement. She’d have been shooting me the angriest look of all. Then she’d have written an editorial calling it the greatest travesty of our time.

  Her editorial that week called for better-quality napkins in the cafeteria.

  I wish there were someone I could talk to about this. Not that part, of course, but the rest of it. The hateful looks from the choir. The way it felt when I got to school the day after the announcement about the solos and saw the word Nigger scrawled across my locker in bright red lipstick. But there’s no one.

  I still talk to Ennis at lunch, but things are different between us now that we’ve been going on dates. He doesn’t tell me what he really thinks about things anymore. He says what he thinks I want to hear. Whenever I manage a smile for him, he gives me a wide grin back, like he’s won a prize at a county fair.

  I can’t talk to Mama, either. Whenever I say anything about school, she looks so worried and upset it makes me worried and upset, too, and I finally give up and go stare at my homework.

  I could talk to Ruth, but Ruth hates talking about school. She’s forbidden us from asking her about it at the dinner table. When she’s on the phone with Yvonne they only talk about which boys they think are nice and who might be at Stud’s Diner that weekend and what dress they liked most in the latest Seventeen.

  And now it’s too late. The concert is tomorrow.

  Our last practice will be after school today, with the full choir and the band. The three soloists will be singing in front of the whole group for the first time.

  I need to be ready. I need to sing better than these people have ever heard anyone sing before, white or Negro.

  But I can’t focus. I can’t think at all. Because I’m in Math class, keeping my head tilted so I won’t see her, and trying to ignore the tiny balls of paper bouncing off my back. Mrs. Gruber is passing back our tests from Tuesday and pretending not to see the trash sailing past her from the boys’ desks.

  “See me after class,” she says when she passes me, not bothering to give me my test. I nod. It hurts to be polite to Mrs. Gruber now that Paulie’s gone.

  I go up to her desk after class. She waits until everyone else is gone before she slams my test paper down on the tabletop.

  “Maybe at your old school this was considered acceptable,” she says. “Here you won’t get away with it.”

  I blink. “Pardon? Ma’am?”

  She stabs the paper with her fingernail. “This is algebra. If you don’t solve the problems you can’t get the answers.”

  Oh. We’re supposed to show our work on these tests. I only wrote the solutions.

  But the test was so easy. I learned all of this two years ago.

  And I was so tired that day. I’d been up half the night, slipping in and out of dreams.

  Besides, the morning of the test we’d had an air raid drill during Homeroom. When we’d filed into the hall and crouched down to duck and cover against the wall, someone shoved me into a locker so hard I slammed my head against the combination lock. For the rest of the morning I saw stars every time I closed my eyes. It left me in no mood to do any more work than I had to.

  I’m about to explain and apologize when Mrs. Gruber says, “Now tell me who you copied.”

  I gape at her.

  She can’t be serious. How could I have copied anyone’s test? Why would I?

  “I didn’t copy anyone,” I say.

  “I’ve been teaching for twenty-five years. I’ve seen dozens of students cheat. Just tell me whose paper you looked at.”

  “I didn’t look at anyone’s!” I take a deep breath. If I lose my temper this will only get worse. “I swear it’s the truth, ma’am.”

  She sniffs. “I saw you looking at Linda Hairston.”

  “I didn’t look at her! I would never!” I swallow. Was this her plan? How? Why? “Did she say something about me?”

  Mrs. Gruber sniffs again. “She didn’t need to. I know what I saw. And the two of you got exactly the same grade on the test.”

  She means we both got a perfect grade.

  Then I remember. On Tuesday morning I did glance back at her seat. She’d been resting her chin on her hand, tugging on a lock of hair, her eyes falling closed as she bent her head over her paper. She looked as if she’d been up half the night, too.

  “I didn’t copy anyone,” I tell Mrs. Gruber. “I knew the solutions to the problems. Anyway, she sits on the other side of the room from me, so I couldn’t have seen her paper in the first place. Please, let me retake the test. I’ll write out all the steps this time.”

  She sighs. Probably planning to send me to the principal again.

  Instead she rolls her eyes. “Fine. You get one chance. Today, after school.”

  I’m so surprised it takes me a minute to realize the problem.

  “Could
I do it at lunch instead?” I ask. “Today after school is our last choir practice before the concert, and—”

  “One chance,” she repeats. “Or you’ll get a zero on the test, and you can tell the principal why you failed.”

  Cheating would get me expelled for sure. A white student might get away with a few days’ suspension, since there’s no proof, but I’m not a white student.

  So I nod and swallow hard before I can say what I’m thinking.

  I find Mr. Lewis at lunch and tell him about the test. He frowns at me, but he nods. He says he’ll move the solo rehearsals until the end of the practice period so I have time to make it. He frowns again as I’m leaving, like he’s about to say something else, but he just turns away.

  I still think Mr. Lewis might be all right, but it’s so hard to tell with anyone at this school.

  After school I race through the test, which is all kids’ stuff anyway, and wait while Mrs. Gruber grades it. She takes her time, comparing each question to the teacher’s manual and complaining that my handwriting isn’t neat enough on the equations. Finally she sighs again and tells me that I passed, and I should leave now.

  I got another perfect score on that test. And she knows it.

  Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love Mrs. Gruber.

  I’m forty minutes late to rehearsal. When I get there the Boys’ Ensemble is finishing the run-through of their last song, “Night and Day.” The room is sweltering and packed with people. The students look tired and annoyed. Mr. Lewis’s hair is frazzled as he conducts the final notes.

  “Lovely, lovely!” he calls as the song ends and the boys step down from their risers. “That’ll do it, except for—” He sees me in the doorway. “Miss Dunbar! Good to see you. All right, everyone, we’ll run through the solos and ‘And Now Another Day Is Gone’ and that’ll be the end.”

  Everyone who didn’t glare at me as soon as I showed up in the doorway is glaring now.

  Mr. Lewis gestures for me to stand next to the piano at the front of the room. I move forward through the crowd, pretending I have blinders on either side of my face, trying not to think about all those eyes on me. Judy is watching from the horn section of the band, shaking her head at me the way she always does now.

  She is already up front, in the spot right next to mine. She’s the only person in the room who isn’t looking at me.

  When I reach the front and turn to face the room, row after row of white faces stares back at me. All I see is a wave of anger. I keep my eyes straight ahead so I can’t see her.

  The sophomore soloist, Patricia Saunders, comes to stand on my other side. I can tell she’s nervous from the way she’s clasping her elbows. I smile at her. She blinks wide in surprise, then smiles back.

  “Tomorrow night we’ll begin with Miss Hairston’s solo, since the Balladeers will still be onstage,” Mr. Lewis says. “Then Miss Dunbar will perform, then Miss Saunders and then we’ll bring all three choirs back out. For today we’ll have the two piano pieces first. Mr. Russell, let’s start with ‘Come Thou Fount,’ please.”

  I gulp when I recognize Gary Russell, the boy playing the piano. He’s in Bo and Eddie’s gang of friends. He’s the one who lost fifty cents when Bo hit Paulie with the baseball.

  Gary starts playing, and Patricia sings her solo. She’s very good, and she sounds even better when she relaxes after the first verse. After she’s done everyone in the room claps, and a few boys whistle in approval. I clap and smile at her again. This time, her smile back looks real.

  “That was marvelous, Patricia,” Mr. Lewis says. “Gary, let’s move straight to ‘Amazing Grace.’”

  Gary checks to make sure Mr. Lewis can’t see his face. Then he crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue at me before he drops his hands to the piano keys.

  He’s so childish. They all are.

  Maybe if I tell myself that enough times, this sort of thing will stop bothering me so much.

  I close my eyes to center myself, then open them and smile as I sing the opening notes.

  I watch the white faces watching me. They’re all staring as hatefully as ever. Except Mr. Lewis. He’s wearing his broadest smile.

  I can feel her standing next to me, but I don’t look at her. I couldn’t stand to see her ignoring me again.

  I finish the song, still smiling. A few seconds pass. Mr. Lewis starts to clap. Everyone else just stands there.

  “All right, everyone!” Mr. Lewis finally says. “Miss Dunbar did a very good job! Let’s hear it for her!”

  He turns to face the rest of the group. The look on his face must be awfully stern because a few people in the front rows clap halfheartedly. I wish Mr. Lewis hadn’t done that.

  “Now for Miss Hairston’s solo,” he says. “Everyone, take your positions.”

  I watch in surprise as the other three girls and four boys in the Balladeers climb back up onto the risers on the other side of the piano. I thought we were all singing solos with only the piano for accompaniment, but the Balladeers have their songbooks out. Some of the other band members are picking up their instruments, too.

  Gary and the band members start to play. The Balladeers start to hum. And she starts to sing “Ave Maria.”

  She’s good. She’s really, really good. She’s not quite as good as the visiting choir who performed this song at our church Christmas service two years ago, but when she sings with the rest of the Balladeers in harmony behind her and the band backing her up, she sounds amazing.

  She’s going to make me look ridiculous at the concert tomorrow. She’ll be out on the stage singing the showiest song of the night with a full band and seven of her friends on backup. Then I’ll have to follow her, alone, with Gary at the piano making faces at me. Singing a song everyone in that audience will have heard sung a thousand times before. I wonder if she planned it this way.

  They finish the song. The room thunders applause. Next to me Patricia has her face in her hands.

  We muddle through the closing song with the full choir, and Mr. Lewis dismisses us. I can’t wait to get away from everyone. Away from her most of all.

  But the band members are closer to the door than I am, shoving past me with their instrument cases. Most of them don’t say anything to me, but I hear them grumbling about how I was allowed to come late to rehearsal. How it’s not fair that first I got a solo and now I’m getting special treatment.

  “Nice song, nigger,” Eddie Lowe whispers to me on his way down from the Boys’ Ensemble risers. Gary is with him, snickering. “I bet they think you sing real good down at the zoo with the other monkeys.”

  I turn to collect my books, pretending not to hear them.

  The room is almost empty when someone taps my shoulder. I jump and start moving fast toward the other side of the room. Every time someone touches my back, I remember lunch on that first day, the milk dripping down my shoulders.

  Then a very familiar voice says, “Wait,” and I can’t help it. I turn around.

  It’s her.

  We’re the only two people left in the room. Mr. Lewis is in his office with the door closed. Everyone else is gone, their laughter echoing down the hall.

  I don’t want to be alone with her. What if it happens again? What if I can’t control it?

  I turn and walk faster. My hand is on the door when she says, “No, wait, please. It’s important, Sarah.”

  It’s so strange to hear her say my name.

  I turn around. There are at least twenty feet between us. Surely it should be safe. No one would see us and think—anything.

  What could she possibly have to say to me? Is she just going to tell me yet again why she hates me? Why I shouldn’t be allowed to go to her school, sit at her lunch counter, breathe the same air she does?

  Or worse—w
hat if she’s here to tell me I’m a freak, and everyone is about to know it?

  I can’t be in this room with her. I’m risking too much. Just seeing her standing there with her cheeks flushed and her books clasped against her chest feels—it feels—

  I want to stay. I want to talk to her.

  “I can’t,” I say, and open the door.

  She shakes her head. “This is important. You should know. I heard some of the others talking about tomorrow night. They’re going to—”

  I shake my head back at her. “I don’t want anything to do with any of them. Or you. You most of all.”

  She bites her lip. “But—”

  I can’t stand this. I can’t stand to hear her voice. “Stop it! Leave me alone!”

  “Sarah, please—”

  I can’t.

  I slam the door behind me.

  Lie #19

  “WILL YOU SIT already?” Ruth says. “You’re making me crazy pacing like that.”

  I sit on my bed. The concert is in an hour. I should be practicing, but I can’t bring myself to leave my bedroom. “I’m not pacing.”

  “You’re pacing.” Ruth glances up from the diary she’s writing in. “And tell me that’s not what you’re wearing?”

  I smooth out my long white dress. We’ll wear our choir robes for most of the concert, but Mr. Lewis said the soloists should wear dresses during our songs. I’ve spent all afternoon starching the dress I wore for last year’s Christmas pageant. “Why?”

  “This isn’t church. No one else is going to be dressed like that. All the other girls will be in high heels and lipstick. You look like you’re going to the junior high dance.”

  I bite my thumb. “How do you know?”

  “Trust me.” Ruth goes to the closet and rustles through the dresses on my side. She shakes her head as she passes each straight skirt, each solid-colored high-necked collar. “Why are all your clothes so boring?”

  “It’s called being mature,” I tell her.