by Robin Talley
Ennis comes into the living room. His eyes narrow when he sees me, but there’s no surprise on his face. I must have been what Sarah was whispering about.
“Of course, come in, Ennis,” Mrs. Dunbar says. “You know Linda from school, I’m sure? She’s paying us a call. Please, come in and tell us how Chuck is doing.”
There’s a thundering sound on the stairs. Sarah’s little sister runs down. “Did someone say something about Chuck? Is he all right?”
Ennis’s eyes soften. “He’s hurt pretty bad, Ruthie.”
I close my eyes. For the second time today I want to make everything vanish. Undo all the damage I’ve done and wipe it back to a blank slate.
All five of us sit in the living room. Ennis positions himself close to Sarah on the sofa. Mrs. Dunbar makes Ennis take a lemon bar. I wring my hands in my lap. It’s as if the Dunbars and Ennis are used to talking about things like this.
“They let me see him in the hospital,” Ennis finally says. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and he has some broken bones, but the real problem is, he took a blow to the head. They’re not sure when he’ll wake up.”
When? Or if?
I can tell Ennis is watching what he says in front of Sarah’s little sister, and probably me, too. So I try to look in between his words.
Chuck is alive. But maybe not for long.
“He’ll wake up soon, I know it,” Ruth says. “He’s too tough for anybody.”
Ennis smiles at her. “Of course he is.”
Sarah and her mother are both clasping their hands in their laps so hard their knuckles are turning pale.
“Did you learn anything else?” Mrs. Dunbar asks after a minute.
Ennis glances at Ruth, then at me. His eyes narrow again.
“It’s all right,” Sarah says. “Tell us.”
Ennis frowns, then shrugs. “Well, it’ll be in the paper tomorrow anyway. Jefferson expelled him.”
At first I think I heard him wrong.
People don’t get expelled for—
He isn’t even conscious—
He didn’t do anything—
Ruth is on her feet before I can find the words.
“They can’t!” She swings her head with the force of her words. “They can’t expel him. It’s not his fault what happened. He’s hurt! They wouldn’t expel a boy who’s in the hospital! It’s not right!”
“They said he broke the no-fighting rule,” Ennis says. “Hugh Bailey called the principal and told him what happened. He said he didn’t catch any of the white boys’ faces, but he could identify Chuck for sure. The rule is it doesn’t matter who started the fight. Anyone involved is automatically expelled.”
I shake my head. This is absurd. Not a single one of those boys will be punished for what they did—but Chuck will? Chuck who very well might die?
“I was there,” I say. “I can tell them who the other boys were. It was Bo and Eddie and Kenneth and—”
“It won’t matter,” Sarah says softly. She looks just like Ennis. Resigned. “It only counts if there’s an adult witness.”
Ruth shakes her head, her face crumpling. Mrs. Dunbar holds out her hand.
“It’s not right,” Ruth says. She takes her mother’s hand and squeezes it hard.
I look back and forth between the four of them.
I don’t belong here.
Ennis is sitting on the Dunbars’ couch as if he’s sat there a million times before, his knees apart, his shirt rumpled, his eyes on Sarah.
I’m in a stiff chair with my back straight, my ankles crossed and my hands folded in my lap. The way they taught us to sit at cotillion when calling on our neighbors.
They all knew this would happen. Even Ruth doesn’t look surprised. Just desperate.
This isn’t my world. It’s theirs.
I stand up. “I should be getting home. Thank you for the—”
How do I thank them for telling me their friend is in the hospital, and that he’s being punished for it? What are the words for that? What’s the etiquette?
“For the tea,” I say instead, wishing again I could disappear.
“It was very nice to meet you, Linda,” Mrs. Dunbar says over Ruth’s head. “Sarah will show you out.”
I don’t want Sarah to show me out. I don’t want to see that look on her face again. The one that says she never expected anything better from me than this.
But when she moves toward the door, I follow. Sarah leads me out onto the porch and closes the door behind us.
“If he wakes up, will he still get to graduate?” I ask. There are only four weeks of school left.
She shrugs. “Mrs. Mullins will figure something out. Maybe he’ll go back to Johns for the rest of the year.”
“How are you so calm? This is awful.”
Then Sarah gives me the worst look of all. Her head is tilted, her lips pursed in a half frown.
She pities me.
“You really think I’m calm?” she says.
“Oh. I don’t know. You seemed so—” I’m stumbling over the words.
Something is different now. I want Sarah to understand that. I want her to see how I feel about all of it. About her. I want—
“I don’t want to see anything like this happen again,” she says. “Not to anyone else I care about.”
I nod. “Of course not. How will you—”
“I’m getting out of here,” she says. “I’m getting out of your school. And I’m getting my sister out, too. So none of us will have to go through this ever again.”
Lie #24
Sarah
I DON’T GO to sleep until after three that night. There’s too much to do.
First I have to wait until everyone else has gone to bed, so I can write the letter to Mr. Deskins. The writing takes two hours by itself. I have to find the right words. The ones that make it sound like I have permission from Mama and Daddy, but that aren’t outright lies. The ones that ask for a favor without sounding as though I really need help.
After I finish, I find an envelope and a stamp in Daddy’s desk and the address in Mama’s notebook, and I seal everything up. Then I stare at the envelope for the next thirty minutes, arguing with myself over whether to mail it.
I should. Of course I should. I even told Linda I should.
But what will Mama and Daddy say? And what about Ruth and Bobby?
Finally I change out of my nightgown into a pair of jeans, let myself out of the house without making a sound and start the eight-block walk to the post office.
No one else is out this late around here. Over in Davis Heights, Stud’s Diner is still open. So are a few other places. Rough places someone like me wouldn’t go. Here in Morningside everyone is tucked in, asleep, well behaved.
If he wakes up, Chuck and his family will have to move. Mama said they might try to find a school in Richmond where he can finish out his senior year. It’s too dangerous for him to stay in Davisburg.
It doesn’t matter that the rumors weren’t true. The idiot white girl told the police Chuck didn’t do anything, but the paper won’t write about that, of course. Not as long as William Hairston has anything to say about it.
Daddy’s been working all afternoon on a story about it for the Davisburg Free Press. Mama hasn’t said anything, but I can tell it makes her nervous. The white people don’t read the Free Press yet, but there’s no way to know they won’t start tomorrow.
I reach the post office and stare at the mailbox for five full minutes before I open the tray and drop my letter in.
There. It’s done.
If I ever doubt this decision, I only have to remember the look on Bo Nash’s face this morning. And what I said to Linda this afternoon.
She acted so strange today
. I couldn’t believe she actually said yes when I called her bluff and invited her over. Then she sat in my living room as prim and proper as if she were having tea with the Queen of England. After she left, Mama said she wished all my friends were such quiet, well-behaved girls. Then she took me aside and asked if Linda wasn’t a little slow. Another day, that would’ve made me laugh.
I’ve put off thinking about Linda since she left. There was too much going on. Ennis visiting. The news about Chuck. Deciding to write the letter.
But I’m thinking about her now.
Maybe this isn’t just about something being wrong with me. Maybe there’s more to think about than that.
The Linda I met on the first day of school would never have come to my house. She wouldn’t have yelled for the boys beating Chuck to stop.
She wouldn’t have clapped for me at the concert. Certainly not in front of her father.
Maybe I was right about her all along.
Or maybe she’s changed. Maybe we both have.
Thinking about Linda always makes me look over my shoulder, in case someone’s watching, but I’m all alone on my deserted street.
And even if I wasn’t, no one can see inside my head except me and God.
I used to think you could spot a sinner a mile away. People like Bo Nash and William Hairston and Nikita Khrushchev were bad. People like my parents and Mrs. Mullins and Reverend King were good. It was easy to tell the difference.
But now I don’t think that’s how it works. Whatever I think, whatever I feel—it isn’t spelled out on my face.
No one is going to judge me for what I’m thinking and feeling except me and God. And I’m not sure I understand how God judges people anymore, either.
I don’t understand why He would punish someone like Chuck. Or the boy in Mississippi. Or all of us Negroes. Being told we can’t sit at a lunch counter isn’t the same as being beaten, but it’s a punishment, too.
I don’t understand why He allows all of that to happen, but still hasn’t punished me for what I did that day with Linda.
I searched through the Bible, trying to understand. There was something in Leviticus about men lying with men being an abomination, but nothing about women. All I could find was Paul’s letter to the Romans, where it said, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”
Where’s the recompense for my error?
I must’ve read those verses a hundred times over the past few weeks. I still don’t understand what it was those women Paul knew did that was so wrong. Or how Paul knew so much about what those women were up to.
I don’t know what the men’s “natural use of the woman” means, either, but it doesn’t sound like something any respectable woman ought to be used for.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he said, “Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”
The slaves who were my great-great-great-grandparents probably had fear and trembling to spare.
Daddy says since we’re just lowly humans we can’t expect to understand everything that’s in the Bible, but we have to follow it anyway because it’s the Word of God. But Daddy also says the white people interpret the Bible for their own ends when they want to. They use the curse of Ham in Genesis to say colored people are less than whites.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe anymore. I want to follow the teachings of the Lord, but I don’t know how. It’s so complicated. Why would God give me these feelings if they’re wrong?
How do I know if I’m living according to His plan if I don’t know what His plan is?
When I used to talk to Linda I felt more alive than I ever had before.
I was better with her. Stronger. I knew what I was supposed to do.
Now I can’t tell up from down or right from wrong.
If something—someone—makes me feel that way, how can that be against God’s will?
It wasn’t God who decided to make my great-great-great-grandparents slaves. It was white men who wanted to make money. They made up the rules everyone else had to follow.
What if this—this rule that says what I did in the back room that day is a terrible sin—what if that’s just a rule some old white man made up, too?
Isn’t it blasphemous to even think that?
I don’t know. I don’t understand how any of this works anymore.
I feel lost. Like my head is spinning around on my shoulders.
I can’t shake the feeling someone’s been lying to me all along. Because they don’t think I’m smart enough to understand the truth.
I’ve had enough.
It’s time I figured out the truth for myself.
* * *
“I don’t want it.” Ruth shoves the bag across the breakfast table Monday morning. “I’ll tell the teacher it’s still dirty.”
“I ran it through the wash twice.” The look on Mama’s face means she’s fresh out of patience. I bet she wishes I were still on my laundry punishment so she wouldn’t be the one dealing with Ruth’s Gym suit. “It’s clean. Take it with you or you’ll get another detention.”
“I don’t care,” Ruth says. “They can give me as many detentions as they want.”
“You get many more of those and you’ll fail,” I tell her. “You really want to repeat freshman phys ed?”
“I don’t care,” she repeats.
“Stop being so immature,” I say.
“Leave me alone!” Ruth throws her fork down with a clatter, leaps out of her seat and thunders upstairs.
We all stare after her.
“Well,” Mama says. “I suppose she’s still upset about Chuck. Though that’s no excuse to be rude at the table.”
But she left two pieces of bacon untouched on her plate. That’s not the Ruth I know.
“I’ll bring her back down,” I tell Mama. She nods distractedly. She’s already moved on to clearing the plates.
“The carpool will be here any minute,” I tell Ruth when I find her sulking on her bed. “We don’t have time for temper tantrums.”
She doesn’t look up. “I’m not having a temper tantrum. I’m not a little kid, remember?”
“All right.” I sit down on the bed next to her. “Look, it’s only Gym class. Everyone hates it. You have to take it anyway. I did.”
“You didn’t take Gym at Jefferson.”
Oh.
I’d been so busy thinking about how much I hated my own classes I hadn’t given a thought to Ruth’s.
Only the freshmen and sophomores take Gym. And Gym is the only class that requires taking your clothes off.
“Is it that bad?” I ask softly.
Ruth picks at a loose thread on her pillowcase. “Last week they turned the showers up on Yvonne as hot as they’d go. She got burned so bad she was crying.”
“Did the teacher see?”
Ruth shakes her head. “The week before that they stole Delores’s bra and hung it from the bulletin board in the boys’ locker room.”
I’d heard about that. I meant to check on Delores afterward, but I’d been busy getting ready for the concert.
“Do you think he’ll wake up?” Ruth murmurs.
So this is about Chuck after all.
“Yes,” I say, hoping I sound more certain than I feel.
“Will we ever get to see him again?”
“After he moves, you mean? Of course. Richmond isn’t all that far away. He can
come back for visits.”
I don’t think he would come back, though. Once I get out of here, I’m never coming back to Davisburg.
“He was my favorite,” Ruth says. “He was always smiling, or saying something funny.”
Ruth is talking about Chuck as if he’s already dead.
“I know,” I say. “When he moves, I’m going to miss him, too.”
“You don’t have to worry. You have Ennis.”
I sit back on the bed and eye Ruth carefully.
“Did you have a crush on Chuck?” I say. She covers her face with her hand. I smile. “Was he the one you were thinking of that day we talked about kissing? Ruthie, you know he’s way too old for you.”
“Oh, what do you know.” Ruth doesn’t look sad anymore. Just tired. “Daddy’s five years older than Mama.”
“Yes, but neither of them is fifteen.”
“Don’t you even talk. That white girl you had over here the other day is going with Coach Pollard. Do you know how old he is?”
“You shouldn’t listen to idle gossip,” I say to cover up how alarmed I am. I’d forgotten all about Linda and Mr. Pollard.
Ruth stands up and grabs her books off her dresser. She’s back to her normal self. Annoyed at her big sister. “Let’s go. I’ve had enough of you telling me what to do for one morning.”
I roll my eyes and follow her downstairs.
Mama is waiting for us at the door just as Mrs. Mullins pulls up. Ruth takes her Gym suit from Mama, who whispers a quick “Thank you” to me low enough that Ruth can’t hear.
But when we slide into the backseat of the car Ruth throws her Gym suit to the floor in a ball, then stabs it with her loafers until it’s squashed down flat. Then she kicks it again. And again.
If I had any doubts left, they’re gone.
I need to get us out of this. Ruth most of all.
* * *
By dinnertime, I’m even more determined.
School today was a nightmare. We were supposed to be reviewing for our end-of-year exams, but no one even pretended to pay any attention to their schoolwork.
Word about Chuck’s expulsion had gotten around before we got there. Signs were posted all over the school written in thick pencil saying Two Down, Eight to Go. The teachers took them down when they saw them, but the white students must have made dozens, because whenever one vanished another went up in its place. Everywhere I went the white people jostled me more than ever, knocking my books out of my arms, throwing balls of paper at my back. Shouting, “The big nigger got what was coming to him” and “Ain’t you learned your lesson yet, girl? Don’t none of y’all belong at this school.”