by Tillie Cole
“You were white power?” Sia gasped, eyes wide, and maybe a little fucking betrayed, as she stared at me.
I shook my head. “No.” But then I looked at Hush and fucking remembered seeing his face that night as he left the diner. The memory sliced me where I stood. I heard my old friends laughing in the tattoo shop. I felt my blood start to boil.
Sia edged closer to Hush. Her hand shook on his cheek. She kissed his head. “Sorry, baby,” she whispered, and I saw my brother’s eyes squeeze shut. His skin was still paling, and I knew he wasn’t doing so good.
“Sympathizers,” I said, drawing Sia’s attention back to me. I knew she was looking at me, but I kept my eyes on Hush. “The town wasn’t all Klan. Only a few were in that deep. But to say we all bought into their ideology is fair. Brought up believing white was best. Never interacted with anyone of color.”
“Christ,” Sia proclaimed. “What the hell kind of backward place was this?”
“Exactly that. An isolated town deep in the bayou.” I slid down the wall, my ass hitting the floor. I tipped my head back against the wall. “Black folk would never settle there, and if they did, they would be run out of town pretty damn quick. Hatred for anyone different was passed down from generation to generation. I know it ain’t a great excuse, but it’s what it was. No one changed their mindset because no one ever challenged it . . . until Hush and his parents moved there.” Hush winced and sucked in a huge breath. “But they were worse, because—”
“My mamma was white,” Hush ended, voice broken and sore. He lifted his head, and my throat thickened at the fucking raw pain I saw on his face.
“Black families were one thing in our town.” I met my best friend’s eyes. “But if a couple came to town and they were mixed, one black and one white, it was the worst fucking thing you could do.”
“Especially when one was the stepdaughter of the most powerful man in the town. The most racist man.”
“Your grandfather.” Sia clutched Hush’s hand tightly. Hush stared down at her hand, and I knew what he was seeing. Brown skin wrapped in white. The exact same crime his world was destroyed for. Hush ran his finger over the back of Sia’s hand, then, on a shaky breath, brought it to his mouth, and said, “Kärlek ser inte färger. Bara genuina hjärta.”
Sia’s eyes widened in surprise as the words left his mouth. Then, when my brother lifted his head, I knew he was going to speak.
Finally. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, feeling the heavy weight of being the only one who knew his secrets begin to lighten.
Chapter Nine
Hush
Sia’s hand trembled under mine. Her skin was white, slightly tanned from time spent outside.
“What language is that?” she said. My heart began to thud big bass beats in my chest.
“Swedish,” I replied and swallowed the lump in my throat. I looked up at Sia’s blue eyes, watching me closely. “My mamma was Swedish.”
She touched my face. “It’s where you get these pretty eyes from.”
I nodded, picturing my mamma in my mind. “She was . . .” My breathing hitched. But I kept it the fuck together. “She was typical in her looks, I suppose.” I smiled. “Long blond hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin. She was small, slim.”
“And your poppa?” Sia leaned down to kiss my hand, which was still in hers. I couldn’t take my eyes away from how they looked. Two shades, two tones that in so many people’s eyes should ever hold on to one another like this. Should never mix, because of some preconceived notion that one skin color was better. More important. Better for this already fucked-up world.
“My papa was black. A musician from Mississippi.” I closed my eyes and immediately heard the sound of a trumpet playing.
“Play it again,” I said, as Papa sat on my bed and played me a song his band would be playing at their gig later that night.
Papa leaned in and checked the doorway. “Your mamma will murder me if I don’t get you to sleep.”
I clutched his arm and said, “Please, just one more. Then I promise I’ll sleep.”
Papa kissed me on the head and then held my chin with his fingers. “Don’t give me them eyes, boy. You know I can’t fight those eyes—your mamma’s eyes.” I knew this. It was how I knew I’d get my way. My papa brought the trumpet’s mouthpiece to his lips and began to play. I lay down in my bed, watching him. I caught movement from the doorway. My mamma stood there, watching my papa play with a smile on her face. She always pretended to be mad at him when he would keep me up longer than my bedtime, but then I would always catch her outside the door, listening in.
Like she did every night when she knew I’d seen her, she put her finger across her lips for me to keep quiet. I nodded, then laid my head on my pillow and listened to Papa play.
It always sent me to sleep.
My vision was blurred as I came back to the present. Soft thumbs wiped at my eyes.
“She loved him,” Sia whispered.
I nodded, and turned my head to see Cowboy slumped against the wall, knees bent, arms draped over his knees, listening in. I saw the devastated look on his face. Because he knew she did . . . and what happened because of that love.
“She did,” I said, voice catching on the two simple words. “More than anything.”
“Except you,” Sia added, trailing her hands down the side of my closely shaven head.
“Except me.”
“What did you say before? In Swedish?”
I felt my mamma’s phantom hand thread in mine. “Love doesn’t see color. Only pure hearts.” My mouth moved and I was telling Sia, but I was hearing my mamma’s voice in my head. “She told me that after . . .” I sighed.
“After me and my friends had chased him two miles in our trucks as he walked down a road, hitting him with rocks for being mixed race.” Sia’s head snapped to Cowboy. Her hand shook in mine. This time it wasn’t sadness; it was rage.
“What?” she whispered.
I could see the way she looked at Cowboy now. Like he wasn’t the person she believed he was. That was bullshit. He was the best person I’d ever known. But it was true that we started off with bad blood.
“Let me tell you,” I found myself saying, even though I was dog tired, feeling that familiar feeling of tumbling down into a place where I knew my seizures would come calling. But in this moment, I didn’t care, because she needed to know. Sia told Ky she was falling for me and Aub. But the truth was, I was pretty sure I was already there.
And this she needed to know. I had to tell her. I was tired. So fucking tired of carrying this burden around for years. And I wouldn’t have her angry at Cowboy when, up until she came barreling into our lives, he was all I had.
I moved back onto the bed. Sia came to lie beside me. I looked over the room and saw Cowboy watching. But he didn’t move. “Aub,” I rasped. “Get over here too.” I saw him war with what to do as he looked at Sia.
Sia stared at him, and then held out her hand. Cowboy slowly got to his feet and came across the room. He lay down on the bed behind Sia and put his arm over her waist, hugging her close. I met his eyes; he nodded.
Sia took my hand, her head on my shoulder. I stared at the ceiling and then, closing my eyes, said, “My grandfather met my grandmother in Sweden. He was there on business. Long story short, he used his Cajun charm and she fell madly in love with him.” I shook my head. “She didn’t know it at the time, of course, but she was his ultimate dream come true. A true Aryan. My grandfather brought her back to Louisiana . . .” Another face popped into my head. “With her daughter in tow. Aia . . . my mother. Her real father died of cancer when she was only one.”
“Aia . . . such a pretty name.” Sia stroked her hand along my chest.
I nodded. “She was pretty too.” I smiled, remembering her telling me children’s stories from her home. A country she would never see again. “She grew up in Louisiana, and the family became the most important family there. Mamma was only three when she moved. She was a Cajun reall
y, but my grandmother always spoke to her in Swedish so she would never forget where she was from. My grandfather is a businessman, successful too. And now he had a wife and a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed stepdaughter to match.” Sia’s eyes were huge; she must have heard the bitterness in my tone. “I don’t not like your coloring, Sia. Color doesn’t mean shit to me.”
“Okay,” she said softly. I needed to feel her lips. I needed her to know that I meant what I said. So I pressed my lips against hers and kissed her. She sighed against my mouth. When I moved back, I spoke again.
“When my mamma was eighteen, she took a trip to New Orleans. She went into a jazz bar . . .” My chest tightened. “And there she met Dominic Durand.”
“Your papa.”
I nodded. “My papa was a jazz musician.” Tears pricked at my eyes when I thought back to our old house, practically falling down and riddled with problems. But I didn’t see that as a kid. I just saw it as my fucking home. My haven where no one said shit to me about my skin or who my parents were. A place where I laughed, and listened to my papa play his music as me and my mamma danced along.
I trudged up the path to my house, aching, my back still sore from what those pricks had done to me last week. They’d clipped me with one of their trucks. Then left me on the side of the road until I could pick myself up and go home. It’d taken me days to shake off the majority of the pain. I was pissed. I was so fucking pissed at the world and everyone in it that I practically pulsed with hatred. Then, when I turned the corner toward my house, I stopped dead. My parents sat on the rickety old porch swing, hand in hand. My mamma’s head was on my papa’s shoulder as they looked out at the marshes that lay in the distance. They were talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It didn’t matter. Because my mamma smiled so big at my papa that I knew whatever it was, it made her happy. Made him happy.
“Coon-lover,” those guys had called my mamma. “Coon slut. Spook bitch.” I clenched my jaw. “Half-breed. Fucking mongrel,” they’d spat at me as they knocked me to the ground.
“They fell in love.” I tried not to fucking crumble at the thought of them on that porch swing. When they were happy . . . unlike the last time I’d seen them. “My mamma would go to New Orleans to see my papa, but my grandfather stopped her from going so much when it was time for her to marry someone else. Someone he’d chosen.” I laughed bitterly. “He had no idea she was running off to meet a black man.”
“He picked someone white for her to marry,” Sia filled in.
I nodded. Then I smiled. “My papa, as pigheaded as he is”—I cleared my throat—“was—found out, after a frantic call from my mamma. He left everything and came to get her. Came to that hick town and walked right up to their door and demanded to see her.” I laughed, imagining that day. “My grandfather nearly had a heart attack. But my mamma saw him . . .” I smiled, remembering all the nights by the fire that they’d told me this story. When I was sick, it would make me feel better. When I was sad, it would cheer me up. Now? It just fucking destroyed me, knowing it was the beginning of the end for them. All because they loved each other.
“They ran away.” I lifted a strand of Sia’s hair and ran it between my fingers. “They eloped and got married. Mamma was only eighteen. My papa was twenty.”
“They did it.” A huge smile pulled on her mouth. “They ignored everyone else and did it.”
I nodded. “We stayed in the bayou—we couldn’t afford to move much farther away.” I sighed. “In hindsight, I think the real reason was that my mamma just couldn’t bring herself to move too far away from her mamma. I think she always hoped that, one day, they’d find her and accept her—us—back into the family. And of course, my papa would have done anything for her, even though, really, we should have moved to New Orleans for his music.” I had to smile a little at that. “My papa got work where he could. He looked after us. Even though we were dirt poor, we made it work. I loved my life. Money meant fuck all to us.” A ball of lead formed in my stomach. “When I was sixteen, word got to my mamma that her mother had had a stroke.” I remembered my mamma’s face that day, and the phone slipping from her hand.
“Then we go back,” my papa said as my mamma cried in his arms.
So we did.
Sia pressed a kiss on my cheek, and I knew she understood that this was where the story no longer spoke of love conquering all. “I’d been having seizures since I was eleven. Just started one day, and never went away. I knew it played heavily on my mamma’s heart, my diagnosis of epilepsy, and she wanted the support of her mother. But when we went back, my grandfather wouldn’t let my mamma see her own mother.” I shook my head and gritted my teeth. “The town was rich, and we weren’t. My papa tried to get a job, but no one would hire him. My grandfather had made that fucking clear. So he had to travel miles every week just to play in dive bars and places that weren’t worth a single note of his talent.”
I breathed, focusing on calming down some. “Our house was a joke, but it was ours. All the way out of town, but close enough that we had to use the town for things like food. Mamma homeschooled me. But there was a group of kids, kids of the richest, most fascist bastards that ever lived . . .”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cowboy shift and grip Sia tighter. He met my eyes, and I could see the fucking pain and regret staring back at me. Sia was breathing fast, and I knew she could tell this was where Cowboy made an appearance.
“Rodeo riders.” I pictured Jase, Stan, Davide, and Pierre in my mind. “Those fuckers had it in for me since the moment we moved to town. ‘Half-breed,’ ‘mongrel,’ and whatever else they could dig up would be thrown my way whenever they saw me.” I felt a hand on my thigh and knew without looking that it was Cowboy. I heard the edge in my voice. Felt the searing-hot blood surging through my veins. I knew he was trying to stop me from losing my shit and working myself up into a seizure.
But I didn’t fucking care.
“They would regularly find me walking to my home from town—”
Sia looked at Cowboy. “Were you there too?”
“Yeah.” Cowboy met her eyes. “Almost all the time.”
“You . . .” She swallowed, then managed to ask, “You called him those names?”
“Sometimes,” he rasped, and I saw the shock on Sia’s face.
“Not as much as the rest,” I said, coming to his defense. And it was true. He hadn’t.
“But I did.” Cowboy ducked his head. “It ain’t an excuse, I know it, but I knew no better. I’d been told my entire life that white was the only color of worth. I’d never been around people of color. My parents . . .” He blew out a quick breath. “I know now they aren’t good people. Not evil. But ignorant and only care about their own, and money. They weren’t the best parents, but they were all I had. I listened to them. Trusted them.” He lifted his head, apology in his stare that I’d seen a million times. “I believed their bullshit. Made friends with their friends’ kids who had the same values. I didn’t realize until later that what I was doing was wrong.” He sighed. “I’d always just gone with the flow. But with Jase and the others, it was way out in the fucking wrong direction.”
Cowboy stopped speaking, so I picked up where I’d left off. “I got a part-time job at a farm out of town, and every night those fuckers taunted me for four miles as I walked home, shouting at me from their fancy-ass trucks. And every night I would have a seizure. They never knew, of course.
“Then one night . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut. “One night . . .”
“It all changed,” Cowboy jumped in. “They went too far.”
And just like that, I was back there . . .
My breath came hard as I ran. Ran through the woods. I could see the headlights chasing me as I tried to get away. But it was no use: there were two trucks, closing in from the side. I ran and ran until I could barely feel my legs. I burst through the trees and found myself at a deserted barn.
I searched around me, trying to find a way out, but I
couldn’t. The trucks came to a stop, and those pricks piled out. I backed away until I couldn’t do anything but stand my ground. Jase came first. “Well, well, lookie what we have here, boys. We just caught us a half-breed coon.”
They were all there. All but Aubin Breaux. My heart hammered in my chest, my legs fucking shaking, but they’d never see it. I would never give these assholes the pleasure.
Davide and Stan ran at me, grabbing my arms. I fought to get away, scrambled, kicking my feet, but they held me tight. Jase walked right up to me, his Stetson sitting on his head like always. Then, smiling, he struck out with his fist and slammed it across my face. My head snapped to the side, and blood pooled in my mouth. I rolled my head back to Jase, who was staring at me, eyes lit. He crossed his arms. “Huh.” He leaned in to study my face. “They bleed red. Who fucking knew?”
Davide and Stan laughed and waited for what their ringleader would do next. Jase’s face became engulfed with hatred, and he said, “Tie him up.”
Pierre, who had been waiting by a truck, took a rope and went to stand by a dying tree. Davide and Stan dragged me to the tree. I fought them again, but it was useless. Jase took the rope from Pierre. He stared at the rope, then at me. “My papa told me about the good old days. Lynchings. You heard of them?”
I felt the blood drain from my face. I knew the fucker must have seen my fear, because he came in closer. And he smiled. He tossed the rope back to Pierre. “Tie him to the tree.”
Davide and Stan slammed my chest against the thin tree and held out my arms. Jase kicked my legs, and I crashed to my knees. The bark of the tree scratched against my face, slicing open my lip. Someone tied my hands so they wrapped around the tree.
I lost focus as I stared into the woods, feeling someone rip open my shirt, baring my back. I heard more than I could see. I heard the sound of metal clanking near the trucks. I heard a whooshing sound that I couldn’t make out . . . then I heard their footsteps coming back toward me. I saw black boots first. Then my head was tilted up by someone behind me. Jase was before me . . . and in his arms was a branding iron. The kind used to brand cattle. I started to pull against the rope when I saw the end was burning orange.