Black, White, Other

by Joan Steinau Lester

  As shock took over her body, Sarah heard the screech of the large wooden wheels and her mother’s alto voice, choked with furious tears, singing—almost screaming—”Hold on a little while longer.”

  Sarah stood, bent with grief and fury, holding wailing Albert’s hand on one side, silent Esther’s on the other, until the wagon and her mother’s precious voice were completely out of range. Later, all the driver could tell her was “Girl, she’s gone south. Don’t know where. Don’t think about her anymore.”

  Yasmine, she learned later, was twenty-nine years old.

  CHAPTER 9

  In the morning I wake with the words Run, girl rattling in my head. And all of a sudden that’s what I’m tempted to do: run away to Fran’s house in San Luis Obispo, like she did after her dad took her away from Canyon Valley. She ran back here for a couple of days to “figure everything out,” she said, and landed at Jessica’s house. The first night Jessica’s mom didn’t tell Fran’s dad she was there, after Fran threatened to go out on the street if her dad discovered where she was. They made a twenty-four-hour deal: Fran had to call her dad at the end of the time. Which she did, and then he let her stay on over the weekend before he drove up to get her.

  That’s what I need to do: get away to sort everything out. I need time when I’m not looking over my shoulder for Tyrone, worrying about Jimi every minute, dealing with Jessica and her idiot friends, and wondering if Lavonn’s friends think I’m really black. And last but not least, Dad. When he gets home he’ll come by here first thing to pick up Jimi, I know he will, and unless I’m ten counties away I’ll catch every kind of hell he can unleash on me. That man doesn’t mess around, either. Old-school dad; he doesn’t have any patience at all with kids who talk back, which is how he still views me, even though I’m fifteen.

  I have six days to make a plan before he gets home, to get out of here and save my sanity. Crawling out of bed, shivering, I open the pink jewelry box Grandma Bettye made and check the secret compartment. Unfolding the bills, I count them and sort them into piles, all the crumpled ones and fives and tens and twenties I’ve collected over the last couple of years from babysitting and birthdays. Same as last time.

  “What’s wrong?” I’m walking next to Lavonne, with kids pushing and squeezing past us. Since it’s drizzling outside—our first fall rain—the million kids in this school are packed into the cafeteria, a big rotunda where every sound echoes. What stupid architect came up with this design: an echo chamber for a high school cafeteria? I can hardly hear what Lavonn is saying, but I know by the way she’s looking at me quizzically, with her eyes big, that she’s asking me something. Finally I make it out: “Hey, I asked you to check out my new sneakers. I got them yesterday.”

  Yeah. Cool. Silver leather, rhinestones.

  “Did your dad make you apologize?” Now she’s shouting.

  “What did he do?”

  “No, he’s gone. To Oakland to help clean up the fires and stuff.” We push through a crowd of screaming kids ‘til we find a corner of a table over by the windows. I unwrap my avocado and sprouts sandwich—same old thing—while Lavonn snakes over to the line at the burrito stand to buy lunch. As I settle in to eat, my Hershey bar falls out. As soon as I get a whiff of the candy, the smell is so sweet I have to unwrap it and start chewing. I can’t stop. Chocolate seems to be my only real pleasure lately; well, that and reading about Sarah. Every day I buy one chocolate bar, and there’s a certain way I eat it. First I bite off one corner, slowly, and taste the sweetness on my tongue as it dissolves. Then I bite off another corner, and another. I nibble my way around the edges until there’s only a sticky center. Hersheys melt too fast, that’s the only trouble. Once I tried a chewy bar, like Snickers, that would last longer, but unfortunately I hated it. The melting’s actually part of the enjoyment, even if it’s quick. I could eat candy bars all day. How many could I buy with all the money I’ve saved?

  “Dad’s away for six days,” I start, when Lavonn comes back with her tray, carrying a chicken wrap and a juice box.

  “Girl, you better have your apology ready when he gets back.” She picks up the dripping wrap. “He’s gonna kill you.”

  What can I say?

  “Eeeew, this is terrible.” She squishes up her face. Red and blue paint is smudged on her fingers.

  “Art?”

  “Yeah, it’s messy.”

  “I hate that class with Miss Williams. The art projects we have to do are so ugly they make dirt look good.” We crack ourselves up. I’m about to tell her more when Demetre comes over. The three of us joke around until Jessica and Claudette stroll past, gliding by with their faces turned away.

  “What’s up with that?” Lavonn asks. “You used to eat with them every day.”

  “Used to.” I wish I had another Hershey bar.

  “Aren’t they, like, your best friends?” Demetre says.

  “You mean were.”

  “White girls. You can’t trust ‘em.” She squints her eyes until her small, usually pretty face looks mean. Her nose gets even thinner; suddenly everything about her is pointy, sharp, like Snoop Dogg. She looks like she could slice me if she leaned forward.

  “I’m part white!”

  “I know.” Demetre laughs. “I’m gonna keep my eye on you! You might turn all white. We got to watch out.” She cracks up.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, ‘white’s all right, but I’m down with brown.’“ She wiggles her neck and shoulders to a rap beat. “Yeah, I’m down with brown.”

  Funny how now I feel like defending the white part of me, the white part of my family. My mom, my grandparents. Even the white part of Jimi. Before I can think of a quick comeback, something that will calm my pounding heart, the bell clangs and we rush off to class. Then it happens. While a million kids push their way behind me, I hear a whisper behind my neck: “Thief.” I whip around, but nobody’s looking my way. A shudder ripples through me. How can I answer an anonymous insult? Or is it a threat?

  In class, while the words ring in my ears, I watch the time on the clock tick slowly by and fantasize about living someplace else, even for a little while. I’ve never been to San Luis Obispo, but I know it’s halfway to LA, because my family camped at Montaña de Oro State Park a couple summers ago. And Hearst Castle is near there too, I think.

  At last, school ends and I’m out in the fresh air, jogging home alone, my pack slapping against my back. The sky is a clear china blue, and the sun is out now, warming the back of my neck. I’m soaking it up, and dawdle next to a wall of jasmine just as a hummingbird buzzes me, zooming inches from my head. When I hear the sudden whoosh, I leap. Wow, I didn’t know I was so jumpy. Ever since lunch, when Jessica dissed me again, I’ve been on edge.

  “Nina!” I turn and see Amy running awkwardly, holding her glasses on with one hand while her pack thumps against her back.

  “Hi,” she says, out of breath. She bends her head down when she talks. I never realized she was so shy.

  “Hola. Buenas tardes.” I respond. “¿Qué pasa?”

  “Buenas tardes. Nada.” She smiles, keeping her face tucked down.

  “Donde está...” I hesitate, then smile back and try,“¿Donde hay un …” I pause and try to think of the word.“un … persona que habla ingles?”

  She giggles. “Right here!”

  “Gracias. Habla solo un poquito espanol.”

  “No.” She laughs again and asks, “¿Donde está el baño?” We all know that one.

  Now that we’ve exhausted my knowledge of Spanish, I don’t know what to talk about. Amy wears hecka cute clothes, but I can’t think of anything to say about that. “Are you still hanging out with Jessica and Claudette and everyone else in their little group?” I try.

  She looks more embarrassed than ever.

  “Sí.”

  “I don’t see them that much.” I immediately want to undo the words. “Well, sometimes,” I lie, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach
.

  We fall into step. “You know they’re saying bad things about you.”

  I nod, not wanting to hear the details, and we walk in silence until we get to the corner; she turns left and I head right.

  At home I drop my pack, gulp milk from the container like I’m not supposed to, and feeling out of place in my own home, I run back to school where I race around the track fifteen times, leaving me soaked. When I’m about to leave, I catch sight of him: Tyrone, swaggering with that tough, slow walk. His unnerving eyes, with their terrifyingly blank expression, rove from side to side, as if he’s looking for something. Or someone. His hands are in his pockets, where I wonder if he’s clutching a knife. He glances toward the track. Does he see me?

  His pace picks up, and I spin back, race halfway around the track again, and sneak out the back entrance. Is he mixing me up with Jimi somehow, or is there another reason he’s after me? But he’s too scary to talk to, and I’m too upset about everything else to try to reason with him. I’ve gotta get away to Fran’s so I can calm down. But first, if I return the bike, I won’t have to worry about Jimi so much when I’m gone.

  Once I make it safely home, panting and shaking, I count my money—same as before—and open my green suitcase, staring into its emptiness as if it’s going to give me the answer. Should I go or not? Fran texted me, apologizing for not getting back sooner and saying it would be perfect to come now, since her dad won’t even be home for the weekend because he’s going to a conference. A next-door neighbor will watch them from her house, and seeing as the neighbor doesn’t have kids, we could pretend I’m a local friend. My parents would never have to know where I was for at least a couple of days. Let them worry—that would serve them right after all the grief they’re causing me.

  That night I talk to Lavonn on the phone, but it’s hard to concentrate on anything else except my runaway plan, and I don’t dare tell her. She might let her mom know, and that would be that. Instead, I’m so nervous I spill out, “Jessica and Claudette are saying I’m ghetto. I know they are.”

  “I think you need to set them straight, if they’ve been talking smack about you. Don’t let your best friend talk about you behind your back.”

  Now how am I going do that? And is she my best friend anymore?

  “White people will turn on you, if you let them. Girls especially. They’re backstabbers. It’s ingrained in them from their mothers. You better stick with your own kind, girl.”

  “What’s my kind?” Does she mean my mother ingrained something in me?

  Lavonn keeps going as if I hadn’t said a word. She sounds angrier than I’ve ever heard her. Usually she’s the most laid-back girl I know. “And what’s wrong with ghetto? You don’t want your snotty little preppy girlfriends calling you black. Is that it?”

  “That’s not it!”

  “For real?” She’s furious. “I don’t think you want dark skin. You wish you were all white like your precious Jessica. Or your mom.”

  “What?”

  “Demetre’s right. No wonder you don’t want to be in Black Nativity!”

  “Why do I have to be in Black Nativity to prove I’m black?” I stop. “I’m thinking about it, though.”

  “Thinking about it, thinking about it, forever, and never doing it. That’s white!”

  “What? Why can’t I be both? Your mom is both.”

  “And look who she married! Look who her friends are! She lives black, she’s not ashamed of black.”

  “Neither am—”

  She hangs up with a sharp click and I hear that eerie dead-line sound.

  “That is so wrong!” I say into the dial tone, and for a moment almost forget my plan to escape. A few minutes later I open Sarah’s story, wishing I could lose myself in the whole rest of the book. At least I have one more chapter.

  Aftershocks

  Fall on the plantation came and went, and the cold rains of winter fell. It was all a blur in Sarah’s mind. After an eternity the buds of spring burst out, though she hardly noticed. Miraculously, a full turn of the seasons cycled. How could the world have gone on spinning, with Mama taken away?

  Sarah stung with longing and red-hot anger. Why did Mama let this happen? Why hadn’t they all run away together, Mama and Papa and she and Esther and Albert, when they were still together? Mama had always said, “This is your place. This is where you are. Make the best of it here.” Well, she’d been wrong, hadn’t she? And left Sarah to care for her siblings. Albert cried every night in his sleep, and so, she imagined, did she. Esther had stopping speaking altogether; rigid, she moved through the days like a ghost. Sarah’s heart ached as if it carried stones, weighing her body down. Even her arms felt sore.

  Some days her anger spit itself out at the foreman and Ol’ Master Armstrong. She glared and threatened them with axes and shovels behind their backs, brave when they couldn’t see her. Day and night she raged, incredulous, at the man who had ruined her world.

  Like Mama, she swatted Albert if he didn’t jump to her commands quickly enough, and lashed out at Esther: “Speak!” Fury blanketed her world, until she couldn’t see anything but meanness and badness all around.

  Ruth, Old Hannah, even Tom, her mother’s childhood friend—all bore the brunt of her anger. People tried to stay out of her way, as her hot temper seemed to burn even the grass where she walked.

  Then, spring flowers poked up. Daffodils opened and closed, white roses and lilacs budded. It was a glorious spring. Ample sunshine, the smell of jasmine and blue skies that could burst open most any heart. Ruth had tried to get Sarah to chase her ever since Sarah’s leg healed, and the change in the air caused her to redouble her efforts. “Come here, slowpoke,” Ruth called out, attempting to get a rise out of her friend as she took off in the mornings. “Catch me if you can.” She tagged Sarah, who stared angrily ahead.

  On Sundays Ruth swatted at her friend’s matted hair, giving a tug for good measure. But Sarah waved her away.

  Old Hannah, who’d moved into the cabin with Sarah and Esther and Albert, regularly cooked up special broths, tempting Sarah to eat. But she refused all enticements. Sarah had always been thin, but now she heard murmurs of “down to a bone” whenever she passed, often paired with the shaking of heads.

  All that tethered her to this world were her brother and sister. Though only thirteen now, Sarah—when she wasn’t cross—cared tenderly for her forlorn baby brother and mute sister, bundling them into bed on the floor at night, looking out for them in the field. What Sarah couldn’t do others did, passing on a piece of maple candy that made its way from the Big House, or offering a rough caress.

  But increasingly, familiar faces on the plantation fell away. Aunt Rachel was sold along with one of her two young children. Tamra and her baby. Wilbert. Gone. Sales were at the courthouse, Sarah heard, when they didn’t happen right outside the Big House. The more the auctioneer’s hammer rang, the more people on all the plantations stole away. They ran from the Winston place, from Armstrong’s, from as far away as Jackson’s. The whole area fell under a twenty-four-hour watch, women who worked in the Big House reported. Pattyrollers guarded the roads and searched every northbound boat. Rumors of runaways dominated every conversation. Most were captured, but a few, everyone believed, made it north.

  One June day Sarah, through her haze, saw a notice fluttering, its corner blown up from the ground. The paper, which must have fallen from a wagon and lodged on the ragged prong of a root, beckoned. She snatched the circular and read the heading: RUNAWAY.

  Her interest aroused, Sarah glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one saw her, and slipped the notice into the deep pocket of her skirt. Back in the cabin she held the paper near the fire and put her fingers on the words. Still she couldn’t see well enough. She walked over to a tin cup filled with grease, lit a wick of wool, and slowly made out the words: “Runaway, young NEGRO fellow, Robert, middling tall, thirteen or fourteen years old, has one finger cut off at the middle joint, black complexion, wore a
negro cloth jacket and took an axe. He may be gone toward the river. $200 REWARD if he is given to me, or lodged in jail.”

  Her breath catching, Sarah sank to her knees and begged whatever God existed for Robert’s safety; she knew him from the Winston place, her father’s old plantation. Don’t let the dogs get him, she prayed, her heart skipping a beat. Carry him safely to the North. Please. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Keep him safe. Keep my mama safe too.

  As times got tougher, more fled. Every time traders came, Sarah tried to keep Albert and Esther out of sight. When she saw horses raising dust one Saturday afternoon before they were unhitched at the Big House clearing, she rushed her brother and sister back to the cabins and pushed them behind a building. Anything to keep them hidden. Often she remembered Mama’s words, “Pray for guidance,” and tried to follow the injunction.

  But not long after Robert ran away, the entire world tipped sideways. Sarah was out late one Saturday afternoon gathering firewood when Ruth came running with terror jumping from her pores.

  “Auction …” she gasped.

  “What?” Sarah’s heart froze.

  “Little Albert … “

  Sarah flew to the yard around the Big House and positioned herself behind a hedge. Her breath hitched: a short white man, dressed in a suit, had stripped Albert and thrown him onto a scale.

  Sarah watched, horrified, as the man poked out his chest and called, “Forty pounds! The bidding begins!” The auctioneer lifted Albert up onto a box in the yard as a small crowd of men gathered around.

  “Boy, can you count?” the white man asked in a booming voice. The man tapped his fingers together, waiting.

  “Yes, sir,” said Albert, whimpering.

  “Let’s hear you, boy.”

  “One …” Albert’s lip trembled. “Two … three …”

  The man laughed. “Let me see you jump!”