O turned to him. “What kind of girl?”
“Strawberry.”
“What about strawberries?” There was an edge to O’s voice that made Ian want to smile with satisfaction that his quarry had taken the bait so easily. However, he was careful to keep his face neutral.
“She has a new pencil case, with strawberries on it. Said Casper gave it to her. Wants to play with it rather than join the game.” He shrugged. “Girls.”
“Where?”
Ian pointed. Blanca was still sitting on the pirate ship, and had the case in her lap, zipping and unzipping it. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t notice it—as indeed, Dee didn’t, over on first base. Nor did Mimi, waiting on the bench with the other kickers. But O already knew what he was looking for. And when he saw that flash of pink in Blanca’s lap, he went very still—so still he didn’t watch Duncan kick the ball far past second base and get to first, with Dee on second.
Ian began to think he was not going to have to do much more—the poison was taking hold, and he could simply stand back and watch it spread. He just had to be careful to seem detached, and deny any involvement.
His work done, he was able to step up to the plate for his turn with a lightness he had not felt all day—all week, all year. He gazed out at the field full of a team of players that by rights should have been his rather than Rod’s and thought: I am going to kick a home run now, to show you all just how much I rule this place. He aimed for the farthest corner of the playground, ran to meet the ball rolled at him, and sent it to his target.
Whenever someone managed to kick a home run, any players on the bases made a ritual of walking, dancing, or skipping around them, laughing and shouting on their way to home plate glory and rubbing it in to the other team. Dee skipped, thrilled that Osei’s team was already scoring three runs and was likely to win decisively. His first game as captain and this was the result. An excellent start. He’s gonna be fine at this school, she thought. And he’s my boyfriend.
She skipped up to home plate, jumping on it with both feet, then began slapping fives with her teammates. When Duncan ran up to home plate behind her, he held out a hand. “Gimme five,” he said.
Dee slapped his hand, palm to palm.
“On the black hand side.” They slapped the backs of their hands together.
“In the hole.” Each made a fist and bumped the tops and bottoms.
“You got soul!” They shook hands with thumbs clasped, as they had seen black people do on TV.
Dee was grinning until she caught sight of Osei, who had watched their ritual with his face set to expressionless. Dee blushed. “Oh, Osei, I—” She stopped, embarrassed, not just because, viewed through his eyes, the gimme five ritual now seemed a ludicrous display between two white kids trying to act cool, but because he had turned away from her and walked up to home plate. There he stood, rigid, waiting for the ball to be returned to the pitcher.
Dee stared, startled out of the joy she had just felt at scoring. Surely he couldn’t be mad at her because of some stupid hand-slapping? Was it offensive to say “black hand side” if you were white? Watching his angry back, she was so confused she wanted to cry.
“He’s upset about Casper, that’s all,” she heard behind her. Ian had made the rounds of the bases and was standing nearby, his usually muddy gray eyes bright, his cheeks red. He held out his hand, palm up.
She gave him five, to be polite. Ian curved his fingers slightly and pulled them across her palm. It felt so creepy that Dee jerked her hand back, then worried he might be offended. “That was a great kick,” she said, then wondered why she felt the need to placate him.
“Thanks. I’m sure you can make him feel better about Casper.”
“I…” Is that really what the problem is? Dee thought but did not say, as she did not want to talk to Ian about Osei.
“It’s hard having a black boyfriend,” Ian went on, relentless. “Most girls wouldn’t do that. You need all the help you can get. If Casper and Osei became friends, it would be easier for you. With someone like Casper on your side, you could do whatever you wanted—go with a chimpanzee if you wanted.”
Dee opened her mouth, then stopped. He was giving her a small smile. “I like your hair like that,” he added.
Dee turned from him in confusion. Was he saying Osei was a chimpanzee? No, he wasn’t, she decided as she went to sit on the team bench, but the remark felt wrong, like milk that has gone slightly off but doesn’t smell yet. She wasn’t sure how to counter it, though, as Ian seemed honestly to want to help.
Osei’s kick was desultory after Ian’s home run. He made it to first base, though, and stood there, not looking in her direction, but across the field toward the pirate ship where Blanca sat. Dee frowned. Something wasn’t right and she didn’t know what. She wished Ian would stop staring at her.
“Casper!” Blanca shrieked. Jumping off the pirate ship, she pelted over to the chain-link fence, across from Casper’s house. He had come out onto the front porch. Murmurs arose among the kids playing kickball.
“I’ve never seen Blanca run so fast. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her run at all!”
“So he has been suspended!”
“How long for, do you think?”
“I can’t believe Casper’s gone home and it’s not even the end of the day!”
“He’s gonna miss the grammar test.”
“Is there a test?”
“You idiot, Brabant’s been warning us about it all week!”
“I wish I’d gone home instead of Casper.”
“Wow, with one punch he’s ruined his perfect record.”
“His mom must be so mad.”
“Bet his father will spank him when he gets home.”
“I wonder if he’ll use a belt like Ian’s father does.”
“Ian’s father uses a belt?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Oh God, look what they’re doing!”
“What’s she holding?”
“His dick?”
“Very funny. Oh—she dropped it.”
As they talked, the students watched Blanca and Casper. She had beckoned him to come off his porch and across the street to her. They were now kissing through the chain-link fence.
“Good thing there’s a fence between them or they’d be all over each other,” Jennifer muttered to Dee on the bench. “Casper must be in shock or he’d never let Blanca kiss him in front of everyone like that. She’s such a show-off.”
Dee smirked as she knew Jennifer expected her to, but couldn’t bring herself to watch. It would hurt to see two kids acting so genuinely passionate, when she and Osei seemed already to have moved past that, way too fast.
She wanted to go and sit with Mimi, who was alone at the end of the bench, leaning back with her eyes shut. Her friend was being strange with her: not mean or angry, but distant. When Dee had asked what was wrong she said she had the tail end of a headache. That didn’t feel like the whole truth.
Dee looked around. Apart from Mimi, the sixth graders—Osei, Jennifer, Rod, Duncan, Patty—were still staring at Blanca and Casper. Only Ian was not; he was looking at Osei, and smiling.
Why does everything feel off? she thought. This morning was so happy, but now…
At least the fourth grade girls jumping rope were oblivious. Dee could hear them behind her, while reciting one of her least favorite chants:
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Turn around
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Touch the ground
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Show your shoe
Teddy bear, teddy bear
That will do
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Go upstairs
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Say your prayers
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Turn out the light
Teddy bear, teddy bear
Say good night!
The words were so relentless
and repetitive that Dee had to resist the urge to go over and slap the girls quiet. She shook her head, surprised at herself. Whatever poison was spreading across the playground, it had infected her too.
Osei would never have called himself an angry person. He had come across plenty of angry students in the schools he had gone to: angry at teachers for being unfair, at parents for saying no, at friends for being disloyal. Some even expressed anger at world events such as the Vietnam War or Nixon and his Watergate cronies. And his sister, Sisi, of course, was often angry now. Over the past year she had complained about honkies, about politicians, about black Americans putting down Africans and Africans being too reliant on Western aid. She even complained that Martin Luther King Jr. had been too passive. Sometimes their father debated with her; and he ordered her never to say such a disrespectful thing again about Martin Luther King. Her anger was so wearing, though, that often her parents simply exchanged glances, and once O was surprised to see his mother roll her eyes—a gesture he’d thought was reserved for girls. “Righteous,” his mother called Sisi’s tempers, and did not mean it as a compliment.
But O himself was slow to anger, he thought. As his father liked to remind him, anger was the easy option. It was much harder to keep your temper and sort out a problem with measured words and deeds. That was what a diplomat was trained to do, what his father assumed Osei would do too when he grew up—that or become an engineer. Not surprisingly, he never suggested Sisi should train to be a diplomat.
So O was surprised with himself when the anger began to well up in him like water rising steadily in a river. For a while it was hard to see, then suddenly the water was in places it wasn’t meant to be—fields, roads, houses, schools, playgrounds. It was there and you couldn’t get rid of it or make it change direction.
It had begun with Dee feeding Casper strawberries, had risen as she defended Casper to him. But the tipping point, when the water suddenly broke the banks and overflowed, was seeing the strawberry pencil case in Blanca’s hands. Partly it was the incongruity—that a white stranger could be holding something O so strongly associated with his sister, back when she was younger, happier, more communicative, more sisterly. Now it was being passed around the playground, untethered from its personal history, as if it didn’t matter that it had belonged to Sisi—as if Sisi didn’t matter, when actually she mattered to Osei more than anyone. More than Dee, he realized. Dee had not yet earned her place in his heart. Now he was not sure she ever would.
For she had lied to him. Dee had told him the case was at home when clearly it was not. She had given it away, or thrown it away, and somehow it had ended up with Blanca. Casper’s girlfriend. Of course, Casper was connected somewhere. Osei didn’t know how but he sensed it, and Ian had confirmed it. And Dee’s lying and Casper’s involvement were pushing at him, building up a pressure in his head that was sure to blow.
On first base, he had watched Blanca sitting on the pirate ship with the strawberry case in her lap; she was running her fingers over the strawberries just like every other girl did. Then she’d raced over to Casper and he’d had to witness their public display, rammed up against the fence, the pencil case in her hand as they kissed until she dropped it. That brought his rage right to the surface. It only needed someone to set it free.
That someone was Dee. When the bell rang for the end of recess, Blanca and Casper kept kissing, the pencil case remained abandoned on the ground, and Dee came running over to him.
“Osei, what—” But she did not get a chance to finish. He did not want to have to confront her, to have her get in his face, talking to him, telling more lies, treating him like her boyfriend and then like the black boy on the white playground. The black sheep, with a black mark against his name. Blackballed. Blackmailed. Blacklisted. Blackhearted. It was a black day.
The dam holding back his anger broke. “Leave me alone!” he shouted, and shoved her hard—so hard that Dee flailed her arms, circling them like a cartoon character grabbing at the air, before falling backward. The sickening sound of her head cracking against the asphalt made people at last turn from the compelling Blanca-and-Casper show to a new drama.
“Dee!” Mimi cried, racing over to kneel by her friend. Dee was lying flat, eyes closed. “Dee, are you all right?” When Mimi brushed her hair from her face, her eyelids fluttered, and she opened her eyes.
O hovered over them, suddenly ashamed, sickened and helpless.
Dee looked around, confused, until her eyes met Osei’s, and she flinched. “I’m OK.”
Mimi looked up. “What is the matter with you?” she hissed at Osei. “Are you crazy? Why’d you do that?”
Osei shuddered, full of self-disgust. But his anger had not subsided; it stopped his mouth and feet so that he simply stood, silent, hands at his sides.
Hearing footsteps behind him, he knew it would be the teachers. He shut his eyes, just for a moment, though he knew it wouldn’t get him what he wanted, which was to be spirited far away from this playground and these white people, especially these white adults who would be all over him now—telling him off, sending him to the principal, suspending him and calling his parents. He thought of his mother’s face when she heard what he had done and felt ill.
“What’s happened here?” Miss Lode knelt on the other side of Dee. “Are you hurt, Dee?”
“O pushed Dee!” Rod cried, indignant, from the crowd of students who had gathered. “He knocked her over, the black bastard!”
“Language, Rod,” Miss Lode warned.
“But he did!”
“That’s enough. The color of his skin has nothing to do with this. Dee, can you sit up?” She and Mimi helped Dee into a sitting position. She still seemed dazed.
“All right, now, where does it hurt?”
Dee put her hand to the back of her head. “Here.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
“A little bit.” She did not look at Osei.
Mr. Brabant joined them. “Go to your class lines, everyone,” he commanded, his authority so clear that the spell was broken and students began to move. “Not you,” he added as O made to follow the others heading toward the school entrance. “What did you do, Osei?”
O was silent.
“He didn’t do anything,” Dee answered. “I—I ran up to him and tripped and fell, that’s all.”
Mimi started. “Dee, that’s not—”
“It’s not Osei’s fault. He tried to catch me.”
Mr. Brabant raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Really. I was clumsy. You know how clumsy I am.”
“If you tripped you would have fallen forward, wouldn’t you? Not backward. You’ve learned about momentum in class.”
“I tripped,” Dee insisted, struggling to her feet. “I’m fine. Really.” She still did not look at Osei.
Mr. Brabant and Miss Lode glanced at each other. “All right,” Mr. Brabant said. “Go to the nurse’s office so she can check you over and get you an ice pack for that bump on your head. You go with her, Mimi. Look after her. And do something about her hair. Her mother will complain otherwise, and we’ll never hear the end of it.”
Osei kept his eyes on the ground rather than allowing his gaze to follow the girls as they left. He didn’t dare look up. Dee’s covering for him did not make things better, but worse. His anger had not abated, but solidified into a lump in his gut. It was not so much anger at her, but at himself. He had pushed a girl. You did not do that. His mother would be so horrified, she would not even shout or wail; she would turn away from him. Even Sisi, with all her righteous anger at white people, would not condone what Osei had done.
He could feel both sets of teachers’ eyes on him as he stood, head bowed, awaiting their judgment.
“I’ve seen your kind before. You planning to be a troublemaker at this school, boy?” Mr. Brabant muttered.
“No, sir.” The words came out of him like a reflex.
“Because we don’t take kindly to such behavior here.”
“No, sir.”
“You’re lucky you’ve got a girl who likes you enough to lie for you. God knows why.”
Osei studied the asphalt—scene of many a scraped knee. He wondered why playgrounds weren’t covered with more forgiving grass.
“I didn’t expect much from a bl—” he glanced at Miss Lode. “From you. And I haven’t been surprised today. But if anything else happens and you are anywhere nearby? The principal will expel you, no matter how much a pretty girl defends you. Do you hear me?”
Osei clenched his teeth until he thought they would break, and after a moment nodded.
“All right.” Mr. Brabant raised his voice. “What are you all doing still standing here? Why aren’t you in your lines? I’m counting to ten and you’d better be there or there will be detentions!”
Amid the students scurrying across the playground, the two teachers walked unhurriedly. Osei trudged behind; he couldn’t face the indignity of running ahead of them to get in line, even if he got detention.
“Richard, I…” Miss Lode hesitated.
“What?” Mr. Brabant barked, as if he were talking to a student. “Sorry, Diane. What?”
“Well—I wonder if we’re being a little hard on him.”
“Hard on him? He just knocked a girl over!”
“Yes, but…this can’t be easy for him, being all alone in the school.”
“Life is not easy for anyone. If anything, he has it too easy. He’ll grow up and walk right into a good job, thanks to affirmative action. A good job that someone more qualified should have done.”
“Did that happen to— Never mind.” Miss Lode sighed. “Lord, what is wrong today? First Casper, now this. Did they put something in the lunches?”
“You know why,” Mr. Brabant answered darkly. “This school isn’t ready for a black boy.”
“I guess not.”
“And the day isn’t over yet. You know what they say: trouble always comes in threes.”
All traces of Mimi’s headache had been scoured away, and everything had come back into sharp focus. It was as if she were looking through a pair of binoculars, turning and turning the knobs until they snapped into place and she could see clearly what had been a blur before.
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