by Robin Talley
Mr. Bailey surveys the group of boys. “All right, you’ve had your fun. Now scram.”
Bo and his friends shuffle away, leaving the colored boy on the ground. Kenneth delivers one last kick to his side, but the boy doesn’t seem to feel it. His shadow is spread out wide under him, even though the sun is directly overhead.
Mr. Bailey glances my way, then turns and goes back inside. It’s obvious he’s not going to call the police. Maybe I should do it myself.
But Eddie might be right. The police might punish the colored boy instead of Bo and the others.
I should ask Sarah. She’ll know what to do.
But Sarah and I haven’t talked since—
Never mind. That doesn’t matter at a time like this.
“Sarah?” I say, embarrassed at how small my voice sounds.
Sarah isn’t looking at me. She’s kneeling on the ground next to the boy.
Oh, no. I hadn’t even thought—what if he’s hurt badly?
What if he dies? Will it be my fault?
I go to the boy’s other side. Sarah glances at me, but her face is blank. She turns back to him. “Can you talk?”
He grunts something I can’t understand. Sarah frowns. “What was that, Chuck?”
This time he doesn’t grunt at all. His shadow is growing longer.
Then I realize it isn’t a shadow. It’s blood. There’s an open wound running down the side of his head. Blood flows out of it in streams.
Oh, God.
“We have to call the hospital!” I cry.
Sarah ignores me. She’s murmuring to Chuck in a voice so low I can’t make out the words.
“I’ll go inside and call them,” I say.
Sarah shakes her head. She doesn’t look at me. “Mr. Bailey won’t let you use the phone for that.”
She’s right, of course.
“Then I’ll—” I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of anything. “I’ll—”
“You stay here with him.” I can’t believe how calm Sarah sounds. “I’ll go across to Mrs. Muse’s and call from there.”
“Yes, all right, yes, I’ll stay here with—”
But Sarah is already running across the street.
I kneel down onto the pavement next to the colored boy.
The blood isn’t just coming from the cut on his head. It’s seeping through his shirt, too. I remember in Health class they said to put pressure on the wound, so I reach for his chest and press down lightly with my fingers. His face seizes up in pain, and I snatch my hand back.
I did this.
I said something stupid, and now a boy is bleeding on the pavement in front of me.
I climb to my feet. My whole body is shaking. I rub my hand on my skirt absently. When I look down my skirt is bloody, too.
He looks so awful. I can’t see how he’ll possibly live.
Footsteps behind me. I turn around. Sarah is approaching us, her eyes on Chuck.
“They’re coming,” she says. She kneels down again. Her skirt is stained with blood, too.
“Will he be all right?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. She doesn’t know.
We sit in silence. Sarah takes a white handkerchief out of her purse and presses it against Chuck’s head gently. Soon the handkerchief is sopping red.
After a few long minutes the ambulance pulls into the parking lot, moving too slowly. Customers spill out of Bailey’s, attracted by the siren. I recognize some of them, and I see them recognize me back, but the siren is too loud to hear what they’re saying to each other. Probably starting a fresh round of gossip about William Hairston’s daughter associating with colored people. By choice, mind you.
The paramedics tell Sarah and me to move away. They lift Chuck onto a stretcher. His face flinches again as they lift him. It’s the only way I can tell he’s alive.
They load him in the ambulance and pull out of the parking lot, the siren still blaring. No one asked us what happened to him. No one seems to care.
“He’ll be at the hospital, right?” I ask Sarah once the sirens have died down and the crowd has drifted away. “Can I go see him?”
Sarah turns to me. It’s strange, being face-to-face with her after all this time avoiding her gaze. Her eyes are as bright as ever. Brighter, maybe. Sharper.
“He won’t want to see you.” She’s speaking slowly, deliberately, the way she used to when I first knew her. She’s being careful around me again.
My heart sinks. “Of course.”
Sarah looks off to the side, as if she’s turning something over in her head. “I won’t be able to see him, either. Mama and Daddy would never let me go.”
“Why not?”
She shakes her head. “They’ll be upset enough I was here when it happened. They won’t want me anywhere else there could be trouble.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t let you come to school, then.”
As soon as I’ve said it, I wish I could take it back.
I wish I could take back everything I’ve ever said to her.
Sarah meets my eyes. It’s the first time we’ve really looked at each other since that day.
“My brother’s sick,” she says. “I don’t want to see that man again. That Mr. Bailey. Will you go in the store and get a pack of cough drops?”
She holds out a dollar bill.
I stare at her.
She’s asking me for help?
Sarah?
“Look, if you don’t want to do it, I’ll find somewhere else—” She starts to snatch the dollar away.
“No, no, no. I mean, of course I’ll do it.” I take the dollar. “Sarah, I—”
She cuts me off. “Mama and Daddy will hear about what happened soon enough, and they’ll spend the rest of the day on the phone with Mrs. Mullins and the others. If you really want to hear how Chuck’s doing, you can come home with me.”
I’m already nodding before I’ve realized what this means.
She asked me to go to her house. To a house where colored people live.
William Hairston’s daughter.
Anyone could see me.
They could tell my father. I can only guess what would happen then.
And I don’t care.
* * *
Sarah’s mother pours me another iced tea. I take a sip. It tastes exactly like the iced tea at home.
I thought you’d be able to tell from looking at a house that colored people lived there, but Sarah’s living room could just as easily be ours, with its matching sofa and love seat, its woven beige rug, its television propped in the corner across from the big soft chair. Sarah’s father must sit there to watch the news. The same way Daddy does.
“Are you sure you don’t want to call your mother, Linda?” Mrs. Dunbar asks me again. She’s stirring her tea too fast. The spoon keeps rattling against the glass. “She must be worried you aren’t home yet.”
“That’s all right, thank you.” I remember to add, “Ma’am.”
Mom won’t be home for hours yet. Daddy was in one of his good moods this morning, working in his garden with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a Winston stuck behind his ear. He even waved at me and wished me a good morning as I left for Bailey’s. Mom goes to the shopping mall in Chesterfield every Saturday, though, and she stays there until it closes. Even if Daddy’s in a good mood in the morning there’s no way to know how long it’ll stay that way.
I don’t tell Sarah’s mother that, of course.
Mrs. Dunbar has been superpolite to me all afternoon. She’s been talking nonstop, asking me about myself and my family, rushing around to fetch more food and telling Sarah to fluff the cushions to make sure I’m comfortable. She even gave me an apron to wear so the bloodstains on my skirt wouldn’t
show. She’s being far more polite than she really ought to be. If Sarah came over to my house, my mother would—
Well, Sarah would never make it through our front door, so it wouldn’t matter.
Sarah’s mother didn’t smile when she first saw Sarah and me coming up the driveway. She looked like she’d have been happier if we’d turned around and left altogether. By the time we’d reached the porch, though, she was smiling up a storm, saying, “Sarah, I’m so glad to finally meet one of your new friends from school.”
As soon as we went into the house, though, Mrs. Dunbar went straight to the living room and drew the curtains closed. Then she turned around and beamed that same big smile at me. I was confused, because it was still bright and sunny out.
Then I realized Mrs. Dunbar was closing the curtains because she didn’t want to risk anyone seeing the family visiting with a white person.
Sarah introduced me as Linda, leaving out my last name. Mr. Dunbar isn’t here—he works another job at a colored paper on the weekends, I heard—but Sarah must not have wanted her mother to know who my father was.
I was glad. I wish Sarah didn’t know, either.
Sarah tried to introduce me to her little brother, but he ran up the stairs as soon as he saw me and hasn’t come down since. Mrs. Dunbar gave him a cough drop from the bag we’d brought and murmured something about him not feeling well. I think he was afraid of me.
Sarah’s sister is here, too. I recognized her from school. She recognized me back. I could tell from the way she tried to trip me when I got up to go to the bathroom. The little brat. I haven’t seen her since then, either.
Mrs. Dunbar has spent most of the day on the phone, trying to find out more about Chuck, just as Sarah predicted. There was no answer at his house or his aunt’s. One of his neighbors heard his family had gone to meet him at the hospital. That’s all we know so far.
Despite her polite smile I can tell Sarah’s mother is anxious for me to leave. That’s why she keeps talking so much. I do the same thing when I’m nervous.
But I need to stay until they find out if Chuck is all right. I need to know how badly I hurt him.
I’ve tried to tell myself that’s the whole reason I’m here, but the truth is, I’m here because I want to be near Sarah.
Since her mother has been with us the whole time, Sarah and I haven’t been able to talk much. It’s just as well. I don’t know what to say.
For a month all I’ve thought about is what I’d say to Sarah if we ever spoke again.
I never thought we would. I never thought she’d want to.
I wish I knew what she was thinking.
The phone rings. Sarah’s mother hurries into the hallway. She says hello, and Sarah and I strain to hear more, but Mrs. Dunbar drops her voice to a murmur.
Sarah stands up. “I’m getting a lemon bar from the kitchen. Want one?”
“Yes,” I say. “Please. Thank you.”
Sarah shakes her head. “Stop acting so polite. It’s not like you. You’re making me nervous.”
I want to tell her I am polite.
It’s just that I was never polite to her. Not before.
Before what, though? Before today?
Or before what happened last month in the back room?
That day, she told me I was worse than Bo. Worse than all the others.
She told me I was as bad as my father.
My father is a brilliant man. Everyone says so. I used to accept everything he told me as the absolute truth.
He used to tell me I wasn’t as smart as the other girls. Wasn’t as pretty. Wasn’t as good.
Then he stopped talking to me altogether.
Except to tell me about the colored people. For years now he’s hardly talked about anything else.
He said colored people weren’t as good as we were. That was why they lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools, worked at easier jobs for less money.
I believed him. Everyone did.
But that doesn’t mean what happened to Chuck is right. Or what happened to that colored boy down in Mississippi a few years back, either. The one that sassed a white woman.
Daddy wrote about that boy after the trial. He said there wasn’t enough evidence to convict those two white men, and the courts had done their job. The day after his editorial was printed I found a letter he’d written to one of his friends. The letter said the colored boy was a fool who should’ve known better than to talk about white women in Mississippi.
Sarah thinks I’m no different from Daddy. I don’t know if she’s wrong or right.
I’m the one who’s responsible for what happened to Chuck, though.
And what did I do when the boys went after him?
Nothing. That’s what I did. Just like I did nothing when Bo threw the ball at Paulie. Or when my friends were talking about Sarah in the hall that day.
But white people and colored people are different. They just are. Everyone knows that. If we were all the same we wouldn’t look different, or act different.
God made the world the way it is for a reason. He chose to separate the races. Who are we to question Him?
The problem is, all of this makes sense when I’m just thinking about the principle of the thing. When I start to think about Sarah, though, everything gets mixed up in my head.
Because I’m white, and she’s colored. I’m supposed to be better.
But she’s smarter than me. She’s prettier than me. She’s a better singer than me. She’s better, period.
And how is that possible? How could God have let that happen?
If Chuck had just stayed in his rightful place—if the colored people hadn’t come to our school—if the NAACP hadn’t filed their lawsuit—he’d be all right now. Paulie, too. No one would spit on Sarah and her sister on their way to class.
If they had just done what they were supposed to do. If they’d just listened to Daddy. Just listened to me.
But who am I to tell someone like Sarah what to do? I’m nothing next to her.
She walks back in carrying a tray of lemon bars and sets them down on the coffee table. I gaze at the brown skin of her outstretched arm as she arranges the napkins on the table. All I can think about is how badly I want to touch her.
I know it means there’s something wrong with me.
Sarah knows it, too. She saw right through me. Right to my worst, most secret sin.
I don’t know why Sarah brought me here. I don’t know how she can stand to be around me.
Sarah’s mother hangs up the phone and comes back to the living room. She sits down and takes a sip of tea.
“No news,” she says. “Mrs. Muse was calling to see if we’d heard anything.”
I nod. All day the Dunbars have talked about Mr. or Mrs. This-or-That as though I know who these people are.
“So, Linda, are you a senior, too?” Mrs. Dunbar asks.
I can’t believe she’s bothering to make small talk. From her politeness and her lilting Gone with the Wind accent, so different from Sarah’s clipped Northern one, I’d have thought Mrs. Dunbar was one of what Mom calls the “gentlewomen of the Deep South” that she and her friends admire so much. Except I don’t think the gentlewomen Mom and her friends are talking about are colored.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
“Have you decided where you’re going to college?” Mrs. Dunbar says.
“I—”
I mean to say I won’t be going to college since I’m getting married after graduation, but that future—moving into a little apartment with Jack and picking out flatware and bedspreads—seems further away than it did at the start of the school year.
I stuff a lemon bar in my mouth so I won’t have to finish my sentence.
“I’ve had e
nough waiting,” Sarah says after a moment. “I want to go see him.”
“You most certainly will not. After all, we have company.” Mrs. Dunbar gestures to me.
Sarah and her mother argue, still in those polite tones.
I watch the fire rising in Sarah’s eyes and remember how she looked that day in the back room. As though she’d have shot me dead on the spot if she could.
Then I think of how she looked last night at the concert. Standing on the center of the stage in her pretty purple dress, her eyes shining and a smile on her face. She looked happier than I’ve ever seen her.
Before last night, I’d never seen her look happy at all.
I wonder what Sarah would ask for if she could have anything she wanted. A better world, probably. One where color didn’t matter.
What else? What would she want for herself? What are the things that make her happy?
After that day, Sarah never looked at me at school. If I caught her eye by accident she always covered her face and turned away.
I knew what that meant. I knew shame when I saw it.
At first I wondered if she’d told anyone, but then I saw how her eyes darted away from mine and I was sure it was a secret. She wouldn’t go around talking about something like that.
A thud on the front door makes all three of us jump.
Is something wrong? Does someone know I’m here?
Is it Daddy?
Sarah’s mother smooths her dress and pats her hair. If I hadn’t seen Sarah do the same thing every morning before she came into class I’d never have known Mrs. Dunbar was nervous.
“You girls stay here.” Mrs. Dunbar goes to the entryway.
Sarah moves to the chair nearest the door. She leans in far enough that when her mother opens it I’m sure whoever’s out there will see her. I want to hiss at her to move, to pull her back myself if that’s what it takes. Before I can, she leaps up and runs to the door.
“Ennis!” she cries. “Have you heard anything?”
It’s the other colored boy. The one who sits with Sarah and Chuck at lunch every day. He was talking to Sarah last night after the concert, too.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Ennis says. “Can I come in?”
Sarah leans in to whisper something to him. That’s awfully familiar of her.