by Robin Talley
How could God let something so wrong feel like this?
Why is it all right for me to kiss Ennis, when that doesn’t feel like anything at all, but not Linda, when kissing Linda feels like this?
Kissing Linda is the only thing all year—except for singing on that stage—that I’ve actually wanted to do. Wanted for me. Not for my family, or for the movement or for anybody else but me.
This is who I am. And I like me this way.
And I think God just might like me this way, too.
Truth #1
Linda
I DON’T WANT to go home.
We hide in the alley for half an hour, and then Sarah has to go. She’s worried for me—she asks if I want to come to her house instead—but I tell her it’s all right. I’ll have to face him sooner or later.
He knows it, too. He’s been waiting for me.
He brought his chair into the hallway and set it up facing the door. He’s already sitting there when I push it open, looking right at me from six feet away, a cigarette in his left hand and a drink in his right.
How long has he been waiting?
It doesn’t matter. Somehow or another I’m going to have to pay him back for every second.
For a while he watches me, not speaking. So I don’t speak, either. I close the door behind me and try to listen for Mom. Is she home yet? Is she in the house somewhere, hiding from Daddy’s mood?
I couldn’t blame her. I’ve been hiding from Daddy’s moods all my life. I just hid in an alley from Daddy’s mood.
But I wasn’t hiding alone. Not anymore.
Daddy takes another puff on his cigarette, his eyes still fixed on me. He hasn’t look at me this hard in years.
I wonder if he can tell what I’ve been doing. That I had a colored girl in my room. That I kissed her. That I liked it.
I’m not ashamed of it. Not when there are so many other things to be ashamed of.
Sarah’s right. We punish ourselves so much in our own imaginations. We convince ourselves everything we do, everything we think, is wrong.
For eighteen years I’ve believed what other people told me about what was right and what was wrong. From now on, I’m deciding.
I trust myself a lot more than I trust Daddy.
I cross my arms and lean back against the door. I’m terrified, but I try to look defiant.
“Did you think you were being clever?” Daddy stubs out his cigarette. “Lying to everyone? Claiming you had permission to write a piece of trash and insert it at the last minute when you had no such thing? When no editor, no teacher, no parent, had so much as seen it?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t take my eyes off him.
He’s different now than he was when we first heard him shouting through the door.
I’m good at picking out the levels of Daddy’s anger. When he first got home today, he was furious. He’d have come straight after me with his belt if he’d found me. He hasn’t done that in years, but this would’ve been enough to set him off.
When he couldn’t find me his rage would’ve simmered, fumed, into righteous indignation. If he’d found me then, he’d have shouted before he did anything else. Shouted what a disgrace I was, how I’d shamed the family, how I didn’t deserve to bear his name.
Now, though, that surge of anger has cooled. And this is as bad as he gets. Because now he’s had time to think it through. To decide exactly how hard I’ve made things for him. He’s thought about what they’ll write about him in the other papers. The jokes the newspapermen will make when they gather for their evening drinks.
The look on his face isn’t anger anymore. It’s disgust.
“I would like you to tell me,” he says, speaking so slowly I can tell he’s already written the lines in his head, already rehearsed them, “why you felt compelled to sign your name to that piece of garbage. To sign my name.”
Oh.
He doesn’t care that I wrote it. That I believe it. He only cares that I put my name on it.
“I knew my byline would draw attention,” I say. His eyebrows leap up. He wasn’t expecting an answer. “I wanted to show people I’d changed my mind. I wanted them to think maybe they could change theirs, too.”
Daddy’s hand tightens around his glass.
“Changed your mind, did you.” His eyes narrow, but his gaze is steady as ever. He half smiles as he stands up, taking the time to set down his drink so it doesn’t spill. Daddy always towers over me, but when we’re standing so close together it’s even more disorienting than usual. “And you thought that was worth sharing with the world, then? That everyone would care what you thought of things? I’m curious—how has that gone for you so far?”
I think of Bo’s face in the cafeteria. And the fear that came with it. Wondering what he would do to me. If anyone would even care enough to help.
No one did. Except Sarah.
I don’t have to listen to Daddy. I don’t have to believe him.
He would never do what I did. He’d never write something that would turn people against him.
I’m stronger than he is.
It’s up to me to decide what I do next.
“I hate you, Daddy,” I say.
I reach behind me for the doorknob. Slow, so he won’t see.
“You’ve always been a useless, ungrateful child.” He steps toward me. His breath smells like liquor and venom. “You’re too spoiled to ever be worth anything to anyone. That was our fault, your mother’s and mine. We worried so much when you were ill that we got carried away. But you’re grown now, and you don’t want to go around saying things you’ll regret.”
“I will never regret this.” I have the doorknob in my grip. “As long as I live.”
“You will take that back.” He’s not smiling anymore. “It’s already going to be bad for you. You’re only making it worse.”
“It’s only as bad for me as I make it.”
I wrench the door open.
I’ve caught him off guard, but he lunges forward anyway. Years ago, he’d have caught me. I’m faster now.
I have been for a long time. I just never noticed.
By the time I’m halfway down the front walk I know I’m safe. He won’t come after me, not where the neighbors could see.
I’m safe.
I’m safe.
I’m safe.
* * *
“I don’t feel right about this, Linda.” Judy’s mother stirs my chocolate milk. Mrs. Campbell always keeps cocoa in the house, even though it’s expensive. It was Judy’s and my favorite when we were little. “I think I should call your mother first.”
“It’s all right, I promise.” I take a drink. I can’t remember the last time something tasted this good. “She’s not home yet anyway.”
I’m not sure if that’s actually true. I never did find out whether Mom was home when all that was happening before. I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
“I know he’s from a nice family, but all the same, people do talk when girls go out driving with older men.” Mrs. Campbell peers out the window, looking for Jack’s car. “Why don’t you wait until Judy gets home from work and then you can all go for a drive together?”
I picture the look on Jack’s face if I showed up at the curb with Judy in tow. It almost makes me smile.
“I promise we won’t be out for long.” I take another sip. “Thanks for this. It’s good.”
Mrs. Campbell smiles. “Judy won’t let me make it for her anymore. She says she wants to reduce. I try to tell her she’s too young for that, but she won’t listen.”
I wonder what Judy will say when she comes home and finds me here, given how “unnatural” and “sinful” she’s always telling me I am. I picture her throwing a tantrum, the way Sarah’s
little sister did when we found out about Chuck being expelled.
But there’s nowhere else I can go.
“Mrs. Campbell? Would it be all right if I stayed here tonight?”
She frowns. “I’m sure your mother wouldn’t allow a sleepover on a school night. Judy isn’t allowed to have them.”
I decide to take a chance.
“I can’t go home,” I say. “I can’t be around him.”
Mrs. Campbell starts to say something, then stops. After a moment, she nods.
She knows about my father. She’s known all along.
Mrs. Campbell has always understood more than she let on. Judy’s the same way.
“Is your mother—” Mrs. Campbell cuts herself off when Jack’s car pulls up out front.
“I’m sure she knows I’d come here,” I say. “She’ll know I’m all right. Please don’t call my house? Please?”
Mrs. Campbell glances out at Jack. Then she nods again.
“Thank you.” I finish the chocolate milk in one gulp. “I promise, I’ll only be out for a few minutes.”
Jack watches me closely as I come down Judy’s front walk. I’ve never done this before. Called him up and asked him to come meet me. That’s not the sort of thing the girl normally does. There’s nothing normal about today, though.
He doesn’t say anything about it when I climb into the car. He only smiles at me and asks, “Where to?”
“Anywhere but Ridgewood.”
He pulls away from the curb, cursing as gravel spews from his tires. Judy’s street isn’t paved yet. Neither are half the roads in New Town. The houses here are tiny, and white and colored people live on the same streets. Sometimes even the same blocks.
People like Jack don’t come to New Town if they can help it. Once I was old enough to understand that, I stopped coming here for visits. I made Judy take the bus to my neighborhood instead.
“So what’s the emergency?” Jack says. “You sounded upset on the phone. Are some of the kids after you because of what you wrote in the paper? Need me to give them a good scare?”
I shake my head, even though his loyalty nearly breaks my heart.
“Can you pull over up here?” I point to a row of trees ahead.
“Sure.” Jack pulls over and cuts the engine. He probably thinks I want to park. I used to like parking with him. It made me feel like we loved each other. Now I know that wasn’t what I felt.
I don’t know what love is, but I know it isn’t what I have with Jack.
I told myself I needed him. That marrying Jack was my one way out.
Now I know there’s never only one way.
Jack is a good man, but he isn’t the man for me.
Maybe no man is. I don’t know. I don’t have to know all the answers yet. I just have to do what’s right.
“I can’t marry you, Jack,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he turns toward the windshield, his face stony. “I knew you’d change your mind.”
“It isn’t like that. I just don’t think I’m ready to get married, not yet.”
He grips the steering wheel. “Is it one of those boys at school? Someone on the team?”
“No. It’s got nothing to do with anyone but me.” I reach for his hand. He swats me away. “I’m too young to get married. I can’t even make a decent soufflé yet.”
That gets him to crack a smile. “You ought to pay more attention in Home Ec.”
“There are only three weeks of school left. It’s too late now.”
He’s still smiling.
That’s how I know he doesn’t really want to marry me, either. He knows I’m just a kid.
He didn’t really understand that, not at first. By the time he realized he’d made a mistake, he’d already promised me. He gave me that ring because he knew how much I wanted it.
Jack is a good man. He didn’t want to let me down. Today I’ve done him a favor.
Then why does this hurt so much?
I scoot into the middle of the seat and lean my head on his shoulder. He loosens his grip on the steering wheel and takes my hand.
I take a good long look at our clasped hands lying on the seat between us. It’s so different from holding Sarah’s hand. Jack’s is big and callused with hair on his knuckles. White skin, of course. A little tanned from playing ball in the sun, but not so different from my own.
I like how Sarah’s hand looks in mine. They’re different colors, but they match. They look like they belong together.
Jack and I talk some more. About my cooking. About the new curtains his mother wants to make him. About who should captain next year’s football team.
We don’t talk about how much we’ll miss each other.
I will miss Jack, but not in the way I used to think I would.
When we pull up in front of Judy’s house, I take his ring out of my pocket, unfasten his pin from my collar and fold them both into his hand. He kisses me on the forehead.
Jack and I will never kiss again.
That’s all right. It’s better than only kissing one person for the rest of my life.
The rest of my life seems so much bigger than it did before.
Judy is in the house when I open the door. I expect her to yell for me to get out, but instead she just nods at me.
“I made up the sofa for you in the living room,” she says. She looks sad and tired. She gives me a wrapped plate of fried chicken left over from the Bailey’s dinner rush and one of her old nightgowns.
I used to stay in Judy’s room when I slept over, but we were kids then. And different people, too.
I lie awake for hours that night on the Campbells’ lumpy couch, watching a spider spin her web in a corner of the ceiling.
I thought my father knew everything about everyone. Especially me. I thought he could see deep inside me, to the darkest place. The sick place.
I thought that was why he hated me.
I didn’t know I thought that until now.
But that’s where it came from. The fear. The years of my life I wasted trying to show him I believed him. Trying to show everyone I was normal and perfect. Trying to fool them all.
I was wrong. My father doesn’t know anything about me.
He doesn’t hate me because of anything I am or anything I did. When he started hitting me, it didn’t have anything to do with me being sick, either the real sickness or the mental kind.
He hit me because he wanted to. Because that’s the sort of person he is. He hates me for the same reason he hates my brothers, and my mother and the Negroes.
He hates us because he’s a hateful man.
He’s the one who’s sick.
He’s the one who did something wrong. Not me.
I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste the salt on my lips.
In two days, I’ve changed everything. I destroyed the girl everyone thought I was.
I lost all my friends. My fiancé.
I walked out on my father.
I can’t keep living the way I have been. Ending things with Jack was only one piece of it. What will happen to me when I go back home? What will I say to Daddy?
I don’t want to go back there.
But what other choice do I have? I can’t live with Judy and her mother forever. Mrs. Campbell’s war widow pension is barely enough to cover their mortgage. She already works full-time at the real estate agency and takes in laundry, too. She’s still hoping Mr. Pinkett, who owns Kiskiack Lake, will marry her one of these days, but in the meantime the money her parents left her is running out fast. And Judy’s tips at Bailey’s only add up to fistfuls of nickels and dimes.
I suppose I’ll have to find work, too, if I don’t want to go back home. Is th
at my only choice? To be lonely and fighting for pennies in Davisburg, like Mrs. Campbell?
As long as I stay in this town, I won’t ever be able to forget Daddy’s here. I won’t ever be able to pick up a newspaper without seeing his name.
I thought marrying Jack, getting out of my house, would make everything better, but it wouldn’t have worked that way. It would’ve been pasting a Band-Aid on top of things and pretending that was enough to turn me into somebody else.
I have to do something more. Something just for me.
I can’t sit back and let everyone else decide. I’ve been doing that long enough.
I have to take care of myself from now on.
And I’ll have to trust myself to do it right.
TRUTH #2
Sarah
OUR PRESIDENT ESSAYS are due today in History. We could write about any president we wanted as long as he was from Virginia. I wrote about Zachary Taylor, because everyone else was writing about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson and I thought Zachary Taylor was an interesting name. It turns out Zachary Taylor was a slave-owning plantation aristocrat. Same as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
At the end of the period Mrs. Johnson asks us to leave our essays on her desk. I reach into the homework folder in my notebook, but my essay isn’t there.
I look everywhere. My purse. My other folders. It’s gone.
“It was here this morning,” I tell Mrs. Johnson. She raises a tired eyebrow. “I wrote about Zachary Taylor. I had it right here.”
“Then where is it now?” Mrs. Johnson says.
“It’s— I don’t know. Someone must’ve taken it when I got up to get a drink of water—”
Mrs. Johnson sighs. “Bring it in tomorrow and I’ll only take off one letter grade.”
All that work, gone. I’ll have to rewrite the essay tonight and get a lower grade for doing twice as much work.
This isn’t the first thing that’s happened today. There was the ink sprayed in my locker this morning. And the wad of spitballs that landed on my skirt in Math.
It’s Bo’s doing. He’s gotten all his friends, and all their friends, to gang up on me. Payback, for yesterday.