“My boy taught your boy how to play chess a few weeks ago, on a free day in health class. He says Austin’s a natural.”
“That was very nice of him.”
“Edison’s a nice boy.”
“Well, we’d love to have Edison over sometime.”
Tamika Harris beamed. “He would love that too.”
* * *
She was late picking up Darius. First thanks to the meeting with Jen and then thanks to her chat with the school librarian—an elderly woman named Mrs. Finch who looked like she should have retired years ago. Anaya asked if she could help her find books about racism.
“Racism?” Mrs. Finch had said.
“Yes,” Anaya said back, a massive headache working its way from the base of her skull to her forehead. She was eager to put this rotten day to bed.
“We have a section on African American history. Is that what you mean?”
Not exactly. But she let Mrs. Finch lead her there anyway.
O’Hare was one of the top elementary schools in the entire state of Missouri, and somehow this was what Anaya had to choose from—an African American history section that condensed that history into two topics: slavery and the civil rights movement. There were also some short biographies on people including Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King.
Maybe Anaya would have felt disappointed if she’d been at all surprised.
In all honesty, South Fork had condensed black history to the same four people, the same two eras—except South Fork schools hardly had any library. They certainly didn’t have bright and shiny hardcover picture books that looked fresh off the press.
Anaya selected a stack and checked them all out. Then she filled out an order form for several more, and when she handed it over, Mrs. Finch didn’t look excited so much as mildly uncomfortable. It was the same way Principal Kelly looked earlier today when Anaya came into his office and told him what happened.
“We will have to get these approved,” Mrs. Finch said. “I hate having that persnickety budget. If it were up to me, I’d order them all.”
Would she?
Anaya couldn’t help but wonder, and it was the wondering that made the pain in her head throb harder. Some days she got so sick and tired of all the wondering. Did Mrs. Finch say that to all the teachers about every order form, or did she say it to Anaya about these particular books?
This was the thing about wondering: there was no way to know one way or the other. She only knew that something was always happening to make the wondering start. It was like phantom pain in a limb no longer there. You couldn’t treat it. The wondering was there, forever lurking in the background.
Anaya pulled into the parking lot of the high school, up to the roundabout in front of the gymnasium doors. Her brother was waiting outside, but he wasn’t alone.
He sat on a bench in front of a small flower garden—shoulder to shoulder with a vaguely familiar white girl in expensive running shoes.
They were sharing earbuds.
Something inside Anaya sparked with heat. She tapped the horn. “Get in the car,” she called out the window.
Darius removed his earbud and quirked one of his eyebrows at her. “Hello to you too.”
“I’m not playin’, Dare,” she said. “Get in the car.”
Darius and the girl exchanged a look that made the spark of heat in Anaya burst into flame. The two gave each other a fist bump, like a couple of good friends, and then he grabbed his football bag and his backpack and walked over with a swagger in his step.
Anaya didn’t want to see the white girl looking. She didn’t want to see her ogling Darius with equal parts desire and fascination, like he was some mysterious, beautiful alien. With her teeth clenched and her eyes trained forward, she waited for him to climb in, and then she drove away so fast her tires nearly squealed against the blacktop.
“What’s your deal?” Darius asked, clipping his seat belt into place.
“Who was that?”
“Just some girl from French class.”
“What’s her name?”
“Taylor.”
That’s when it clicked. She was vaguely familiar because Anaya had seen her in the news before, whenever high school sports came on. Taylor was Crystal Ridge’s running star. A junior who was breaking all kinds of cross-country records. One of the girls Anaya would coach come springtime because she ran track too. The oldest daughter of Camille Gray.
Anaya started shaking her head.
“Do you have a problem with her?”
“Other than the fact that she’s a white girl.”
Her brother let out a low whistle. “Dang, Nay. I didn’t know you were such a racist.”
The car screeched to a stop, tires skidding against pavement.
Darius lurched forward, held back by the seat belt across his chest. Thankfully, nobody was driving behind them. The road was empty, and they idled in the middle of it.
“Are you trippin’?” Darius yelled.
“Am I trippin’?”
“Seems like a fair question right now.”
“That white girl you were flirting with? Her little sister—her eight-year-old little sister—called one of my students the N-word today. So yeah, maybe your big sis is trippin’ just a little.”
Darius didn’t say anything. He stared back at her with an obnoxiously passive expression on his face like he didn’t get it.
“Boy, do you even know what her mama was saying at that town meeting?”
“I wasn’t flirting with her mama.”
“She thinks you’re a thug,” Anaya said.
“I don’t care what she thinks. I don’t care what her little sister thinks either.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“We’re friends, aight? She’s going through a rough time right now.”
“A rough time?” Anaya let loose a huff of unamused laughter. Poor little rich girl. Anaya could cry a river of tears over how hard her life must be.
“And for your information, she hates what her mama said at that town meeting. She ain’t like that. She’s glad I’m at Crystal Ridge.”
“I’ll bet she is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“C’mon, Darius. You know what it means.”
“Nah. I wanna hear you say it.”
“A girl like her is just scratching an itch.”
A girl like her.
A girl like her.
A girl like her.
The phrase echoed from somewhere deep, deep down, stirring up a hot shame she didn’t want to stir.
Darius stared at her mutinously. His full lips pursed. His nostrils flared. Then he yanked on the handle and swung the door open.
“Where you going?”
“I think I’ll walk home.”
Anaya should call out to him. Apologize for the things she was saying. But her hands were shaking, and the phrase kept on echoing.
A girl like her.
A girl like her.
A girl like her.
She needed to get away. She needed to breathe. So she shifted into drive and let her brother walk.
Thirty-Four
Tamika Harris was a talker, and Camille was not about to be rude. In fact, she went out of her way—boisterously out of her way—to make a good impression. Maybe then, once Edison’s mother realized who Camille was, she would be more inclined to give Camille the benefit of the doubt.
All the effort had made her late, and Taylor wasn’t answering her phone or responding to any of Camille’s text messages. And Camille still needed to have a serious talk with Paige.
A racial slur, actually.
Mr. Kelly’s shocking words kept blaring in her ears—over and over again—until she pulled up in front of the gymnasium entrance
and saw Taylor sitting sullenly on a bench.
“Late much?” Taylor muttered.
Answer your phone much?
Camille swallowed the snotty reply and apologized through the open window. “I tried calling to let you know, but you weren’t answering.”
“My battery died.” Taylor tossed her backpack into the backseat.
It landed on top of Paige.
“Hey!”
“Can I drive?” Taylor asked.
“No. Not right now.” Taylor’s driving was the last thing Camille could handle right now. Her nerves were too frayed.
“Of course not.” Taylor threw open the passenger-side door. She climbed in and buckled her seat belt, her chin jutting in an unattractive underbite.
Her attitude made Camille want to scream.
A racial slur, actually.
Taylor turned on the music as they drove toward the parking lot exit. She found her favorite station and turned up the volume. They were playing a pop song with provocative lyrics.
Camille turned it off.
“I can’t even listen to music now?”
“Not that kind.”
Taylor shook her head, crossed her arms. Sank down in the seat. “You’re unbelievable.”
Camille made a sharp turn and pulled to an abrupt stop in one of the parking lot’s farthest stalls. She took a deep breath—an inhale through her nostrils, an exhale through her lips. Then she shifted into park and turned to face her children.
“I think we’re due for a family meeting.”
Taylor groaned.
Taylor hated family meetings. She hadn’t always hated them. Once upon a time, before the joys of puberty set in, she used to enjoy them. But then she turned fourteen and went into high school and became this glowering, eye-rolling stranger Camille didn’t recognize.
“Taylor, if you don’t start treating me with more respect, I’m going to take your phone away.”
“Maybe I would show you more respect if you didn’t treat me like I was eight.”
“Stop acting like you’re eight and I will.”
“What’s wrong with being eight?” Paige asked.
Camille took another deep breath and turned around farther to address her youngest. “You aren’t telling the truth about what happened today.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Paige.” Camille stared at her. She stared at her like they were having a staring contest. She stared without blinking until her eyes began to sting and Paige looked down into her lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it was such a mean word.”
Taylor narrowed her eyes, her attention darting back and forth between her little sister and her mother.
“Where did you hear it?” Camille asked.
Paige fiddled with the zipper of her backpack.
Camille waited. She waited with righteous indignation for Paige to tell her what Miss Jones probably would never believe. Paige heard it from Gavin Royce, who heard it from his father. Or Paige heard it from the speakers of that lowrider that pulled up at the stoplight beside them the day a burglar broke into the Robersons’ house across the street. Never mind that the driver was a black man. They weren’t allowed to talk about the hypocrisy of that.
But when Paige finally spoke, that wasn’t what she said.
“I heard it from Uncle Ray.”
“What?”
“Oh my gosh,” Taylor said, her voice filled with nauseating disgust. She turned around in her seat, away from her sister.
Camille wanted to hold tightly to her righteous indignation. She wanted to demand, When in the world did you ever hear your Uncle Ray use that word? But Camille couldn’t. Because Camille knew.
Uncle Ray did use that word. He used it every Thanksgiving, when they flew to California to celebrate the holiday with Camille’s family. Her Uncle Ray was passionate about his football team. So much so that he would jump out of his seat to yell at a running back or a receiver. More than once he used that word. Camille didn’t like it. She didn’t like it any more than she liked Leif Royce’s derogatory comment at the town meeting. Camille wanted to tell Uncle Ray to stop, but he wasn’t a little kid. Uncle Ray was from a different era. And besides, her kids were always in another room. She didn’t think they ever heard.
“Listen to me, Paige. We do not ever, under any circumstances, use that word. Do you understand?”
“But, Uncle Ray—”
“Should not be using that word, either.”
“Do you even know what it means?” Taylor asked, turning back around in her seat, staring at her sister with as much contempt as she stared at Camille.
“It’s a word for people with brown skin,” Paige said.
Austin was starting to catch on. His mouth was slowly opening, wider and wider, until it hung like that horrified emoji with hands on its cheeks.
“It’s a very mean word for people with brown skin,” Camille said. “And people use it when they don’t like someone just because their skin is brown.”
“So Uncle Ray hates people with brown skin?”
“Of course not.” Uncle Ray didn’t hate African Americans. Uncle Ray had been having coffee with his buddy Carl every Saturday morning for the past twenty years, and Carl was African American. Both were retired truckers.
Paige frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Uncle Ray is from a time when people used that word. It didn’t make it right back then, either. But it was more common. I guess it’s a habit.”
Taylor huffed. “Some habit.”
“Like Pop-pop’s smoking?”
“Yes, like Pop-pop’s smoking.”
Paige nodded, but a small, persistent divot remained between her eyebrows. “Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Do you like people with brown skin?”
“Of course I do, Paige. I don’t care about skin color. It’s what’s in a person’s heart that matters.”
“But you didn’t want them to come here.”
“Where?”
“To my elementary school.”
“Paige Amelia Gray, that situation had absolutely nothing to do with the color of anyone’s skin.”
“But—”
“But what?”
“But all of them have brown skin.”
To that, Camille didn’t have an answer.
* * *
Darius: I need a ride.
Anaya: Boy, you ignore my phone calls for the past hour and now you need a ride? I COULD TAN YOUR HIDE.
Darius: Don’t call me boy. And you ain’t my mama.
Anaya: Where you at?
Darius: 1246 Ashbury Court
Anaya: ??
Darius: It’s in Crystal Ridge. Just come get me. Please.
Anaya: I’m on my way.
Thirty-Five
The closer Siri brought Anaya to 1246 Ashbury Court, the bigger the houses grew and the more manicured the lawns.
Anaya was riled.
No, she wasn’t Darius’s mother. But she’d been pretending since she was six, when Mama came home from the hospital with her swaddled baby brother. She let Anaya sit on the couch and placed him gently in her arms. He looked up at her with his big, brown eyes, and she fell hopelessly, instantaneously in love. It was a love that never wavered, not even when he made her so mad she wanted to take Daddy’s belt and give him a whupping of her own. Like right now, after driving around in a sheer panic for the last hour, calling his phone every two minutes, imagining all the horrible things that could happen to a boy like Darius. Not to mention—his real mama wasn’t above tanning her hide if Anaya came home without her son.
“In two hundred feet, turn left on Ashbury Court,” Siri said in her pleasant, mechanical tone.
Anaya slowed down.
<
br /> She turned onto the cul-de-sac to the alarming sight of flashing red and blue.
Her heart stopped dead in her chest.
A police car was parked outside 1246 Ashbury Court, and her brother Darius—the bundled baby placed in her arms sixteen years ago—was standing on a fancy lawn with his hands slightly raised in the air, just like Daddy had taught them.
Like the defibrillator the paramedics used on her father’s chest, the sight made her heart jerk back to life—so violently she could feel the electric shock in each one of her fingertips.
Anaya jerked her car to a stop at the side of the road. She needed to get outside. She needed to get to her brother.
Her Darius.
Her sunshine.
She tore off her seat belt, clawed for the door handle, and stumbled out into the late-afternoon sun. “Excuse me, sir,” she shouted—frantic—at the officer, her hands up in the air too. “That’s my brother, sir. Is there a problem?”
The officer turned around.
He was a middle-aged man with a short red beard. His hand was on the holster of his gun. “There was a complaint in the area about a prowler.”
Anaya stepped between him and Darius, her entire body flushed with fear. “A prowler?”
“Yes ma’am. There’s been some break-ins in the neighborhood recently. So you can understand why people are concerned.”
“Yes sir. But this is my brother, sir. He’s not a prowler.” He was a good boy. The best boy. The boy with a thousand-watt smile and an arm like a rocket and a ready joke and hugs that could take the worst of Anaya’s grief away.
“What are you doing hanging around this house, young man?” the officer asked.
“I was just coming by to say hi to a friend, sir,” Darius said, his voice trembling in the same way it did when he was four and the thunder would come and he’d crawl into Anaya’s bed at night and ask, “Why’s the sky gotta sound so mad?”
“It’s not mad,” she’d say back. “It’s just excited.” Then she’d tuck his warm little body against hers, breathing in the scent of the coconut oil Mama rubbed into his hair every night after bath time.
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