The Brightest Day: A Juneteenth Historical Romance Anthology

by Alexander, Kianna

  Mrs. Pierce snorted in a most unladylike way. “Awful young? How about awful fast?”

  “Oh, come on now, Sister Pierce,” Leonia Grant said, with a hand on her hip. “Tread lightly.”

  “You know these fast-tailed girls are always getting themselves into trouble,” Mrs. Pierce said with an elegant shrug as if that explained everything.

  Usually, Sofie would have just listened to the women gossip and ignored the urge to give her own opinion, but the new anger in her was a grease fire that wouldn’t be doused. It bubbled and popped, pushing angry words out of her mouth like they were too hot to be contained in the caldron of her chest. “If she’s fast, what would you call the man twice her age who put the baby in her? A speed demon?”

  She almost laughed when all of the women’s heads whipped in her direction. “Sofronia Wallis! Hush, now,” Melba said, her eyes wide. Sofie glanced across the room, where the man in question was showering his attentions on yet another girl young enough to be his daughter. They were only worried he would hear, she realized, not that he’d offered Patty help with her singing and gotten her with child instead. Melba looked at Sofie again. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Not Jim Danielson, and thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I’d be the one you all were showing such kind Christian compassion for.” Somewhere inside of her, the old Sofie was already cowering and begging forgiveness. That Sofie was worrying about what her father would say when, not if, word of her rudeness got to him. But the grease fire in her chest was still going, fueled by thoughts of Patty and the little baby who would never get to grow up. By the pictures in the papers of white folk beating people who looked just like her as the police looked on with smiles. Sofie felt like she would combust from the unfairness of it all.

  Mrs. Pierce pulled her shoulders back. “How is it that you can’t get out more than a squeak at choir practice, yet here you are now trying to get involved in grown folks’ business?”

  It seemed Mrs. Pierce, who also served as choir director, would never forgive Sofie for the fact that the young woman’s promising voice had gone silent right around the time when it should have been coming into its own, as if it had been a tributary of the river that was her mother’s powerful contralto and had dried up when the woman passed on.

  Heat streaked up Sofie’s neck and warmed her face, and she shoved the spoon into the pan of macaroni. “I don’t feel well. Please excuse me.” With that, she turned and walked across the basement of the church, sure that a tsunami of gossip was building behind her and would soon arrive at her shores, courtesy of a scolding from her father. She trotted up the stairs, her long pleated skirt swishing around her calves.

  When she stepped outside into the warm spring afternoon, she felt she could finally breathe again. The fringe tree flowers scenting the breeze seemed to clear the troublesome thoughts from her mind.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling utterly alone. She hadn’t ever felt like this when Mama was alive. Even though Delia Wallis had died years and years ago, and everyone told her that God didn’t make mistakes, Sofie still resented her absence. Mama would know what to do. She always knew. If only—

  Sofie cringed at the thought that assailed her then, shoved it away into that hot place inside her; maybe her anger could burn it up and make it so she never thought about that horrible day again. But even if she forgot, her father never would.

  After her mother’s death, Mr. Wallis had embarked on a mission: to raise a respectable black woman. Not just a good, God-fearing woman, but the kind her mama used to roll her eyes at in the supermarket and department stores. Thus, each Christmas from the age of twelve on, Sofie received prim new dress patterns and a new etiquette book. Sofie loved making her own clothing, but the books were worse than anything her teachers could dole out. The first had been The Practical Self-Educator. On her eighteenth birthday, she’d unwrapped Golden Thoughts on Chastity and Procreation and nearly died of embarrassment. That had been the last one, two years ago, as if everything she needed to know stopped with tips on how to keep herself chaste for marriage.

  It was like Daddy had forgotten how Mama always pushed Sofie to speak out, to take guff from no one. The last time Sofie had tried to make her mama proud had been the day her mother died. Sofie had felt the anger grow in her chest, the same that she felt now, and she’d done something a little black girl was never supposed to do: stand up for herself. The screaming, red-faced boys who’d been attacking Ivan, her mother’s charge, had turned on her, too. When her mother ran out to stop the melee, she’d collapsed in the middle of them; her mama’s last moment had been loud, frightening, and humiliating.

  The doctors said it was an aneurysm, but Sofie had thought of something her Sunday school teacher often said: “God don’t like ugly.” So she accepted her etiquette books gladly, and read them until the pages were worn thin. She sewed her dresses with skirts well below the knee and made sure to wear her gloves and hat. Her hair was always pressed straight, or pin-curled just so. She nodded along when the women at her church told her the rules she would have to follow forever. But now the anger was back for some reason, and she knew that the solution to her particular problem wasn’t covered in any of her rule books.

  “Lord, please tell me what to do,” she whispered, crossing her arms over the starched fabric of her dress. The buttons pressed into her arms as she waited, but as in every other instance, she got no reply. She opened her eyes and shook her head, and was about to laugh at herself when a sign pinned to the center of the community message board caught her eye.

  MEETING:

  TONIGHT, MAY 12, AT 7:30

  COMMUNITY CENTER, ROOM 203

  STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE

  TAKE A STAND AGAINST INJUSTICE

  Sofie knew what those kinds of meetings entailed. Her friend Henrietta was involved, and her friend David, Henrietta’s boyfriend, was a coordinator. Sofie always wanted to say “yes” when Henrietta invited her to come out, but things were different for her. Henrietta’s parents were involved in the movement. Sofie’s father railed about protestors causing trouble for good black folk who kept their heads down and worked hard. She would gently remind him that there was plenty of trouble before folk started protesting, but he was stubborn as a mule.

  Sofie glanced at the sign again. Protesting was something that wasn’t covered in any of her etiquette books, and if it were it would definitely fall under the “detrimental to the race” category, but just thinking of going to the meeting filled her with a sense of excitement and purpose that she hadn’t felt since…ever.

  What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him, she thought as she returned to the church gathering to make amends for her outburst. That was what a good girl would do, after all.

  Chapter 2

  “Sof!” Henrietta whispered fiercely, throwing out an elbow that caught Sofie in the ribs. “What are you looking at, girl? If you want to volunteer, you have to listen.” She looked suspiciously at the crowd, as if trying to spot who’d caught her friend’s eye.

  Sofie winced, rubbing at her side. Her friend was soft and curvy in all the right places, with the exclusion of her razor-sharp elbows.

  “I’m listening,” she whispered back. And she had been. The little notebook she always carried with her for making lists was open in her lap, and notes covered the page. But she’d also been unable to tear her eyes away from the man across the room, the tall one with dark hair and dolorous eyes who leaned against the wall, listening intently to whoever had the floor at a given moment. There was a quiet intensity to his attention, as if he was turning over what each speaker said and carefully fitting it into some bigger picture.

  She didn’t know why her gaze sought him out—she told herself it was only because he was one of the few white men in the room, and thus he stood out as an anomaly. But she knew that wasn’t true. A simple anomaly wouldn’t make her breath catch and her palms sweat in her gloves. There was something about him, but she couldn
’t pinpoint it.

  Most of the young people in the room were dressed in suits that screamed respectability, but he wore dark denim pants and a simple white t-shirt. Sofie had a feeling that was his idea of dressing up. He brought a hand up to rub at his eye, and Sofie saw they were large, with bruises fading away at the knuckles. There was a bump on the bridge of his nose that hinted it’d been broken, and probably more than once. Paired with the dark half-moon under his right eye, she could draw one conclusion: he was a fighter. Even that intense gaze of his showed that he brooked no resistance. What was a man like him doing at a meeting for nonviolent protestors?

  His head turned slowly, but with such precise motion that it seemed sudden, and his gaze connected with hers. Heat rose to Sofie’s cheeks, but she held their stare-down for a moment longer. The etiquette books said staring was impolite, but she’d been impolite all day and was rather liking it. The stranger’s lips pulled up at the corners, but not in a friendly way. His smile made her think of sucking honey straight from the comb, of the sweetness spreading on your tongue and how it could make you smile like that; like you’d just tasted something real good and wanted more.

  A low, sultry sound rose up in her throat, the kind a woman made to let you know she was about to belt out a tune that would make you blush. It was an uncharacteristic sound for Sofie, who was the bane of every choirmaster due to her stubborn refusal to project her voice. Luckily, it blended with the sounds of the students who were giving David their full attention, supporting him with cries of “Yes, brother!” and “Preach!”

  Sofie turned back to pay attention to David, who was working the crowd with that gentle but powerful voice of his. David, with his reddish-brown skin, nearly the color of the brick building where they’d shared their first—and last—kiss. They’d been children then, though, only fourteen. She’d gotten over her childhood crush, and David had recently found happiness with Henrietta. She was elated for her friends, if not a little bit envious. She ignored the loneliness that enveloped her like the darkness of her bedroom when she woke in the night, the kind she wasn’t sure came from a lack of light or from something dark and undeserving of God’s grace inside her.

  “Now, ya’ll believe you know what you’re getting into, but I ask that you think long and hard.” David’s father was a preacher, and he’d inherited the man’s booming voice and magnetic personality. “Have you seen the pictures in the paper of what’s happening at the sit-ins across the South? Someone might call you a nigger, or pour ketchup on you, and maybe you can handle that.” He looked around encouragingly before quickly drawing his brows into an accusatory expression. “But if you want to participate, you need to be sure that you can deal with a white man calling your mother a whore as he punches you in the head. With a mob pulling you to the ground and stomping you into unconsciousness. With someone punching your girl or grabbing her breast and calling her a jezebel. Can you deal with that and not fight back?” He cast a long look over the crowd. Some of the men grumbled and shook their heads. Sofie risked a glance at the fighter and caught his gaze sliding away from her; he was watching her, too. She plucked at the pleats in her skirt and shifted in her seat.

  Her thoughts were a muddle. When she’d decided to go to the meeting, she hadn’t understood exactly what she was getting into; this was a dangerous thing the students were planning to do. To sit where they weren’t allowed or wanted, to be still no matter what was unleashed upon them. Henrietta had mentioned that the group needed help with administrative tasks and fundraising, and even though just attending had been an act of defiance, Sofie thought maybe she could help with that. Daddy couldn’t get mad about shuffling papers, could he? But as she listened to speaker after speaker recount the latest acts of resistance, the confusion that’d been twisting her inside out transformed into excitement. Could she ever be brave enough to do such a thing? Maybe she could.

  “That’s all for tonight,” David said from the front of the room. “For those interested in the sit-in and other activities, please come to the training session two days from now. You can get the details from Henny. I can’t say it’ll be fun, but you’ll learn right quick whether you’re cut out for this or not.” He rubbed his jaw, perhaps thinking of a training session that had ended in a scuffle. Sofie glanced at her fighter—not mine, she corrected—but he simply looked amused.

  Henrietta was pulled into the crowd, her formidable organizational skills obvious in the way she deftly handled the dozens of questions being hurled at her without mussing her curls. Sofie thought she might faint to have that much attention on her all at once, to be the one people turned to for guidance. But still…David’s words tumbled around in her mind, ricocheting around like the pinball game she sometimes played at the Student Union.

  She sat in her seat and looked at her gloved hands as she waited for the meeting to die down. When a set of bruised knuckles came into her peripheral vision, she willed herself not to look up. For one thrilling moment, she thought he would stop beside her. Hoped he would stop, really. Maybe she was going crazy. He kept walking, saving her the trouble of finding out how she would’ve reacted.

  “You okay, Sof?” When she looked up David was there, concern evident in the crease of his brow. Most of the other people had milled out while she’d been deep in thought.

  “That was a lot of information to absorb. I just need some air, I think,” she said, standing to join them as they climbed the stairs.

  “I was surprised to see you here, to be honest,” he said. “But I’m glad you came. We can use all the administrative help we can get.” It annoyed her that he assumed she wouldn’t do any more than filing papers. But then she remembered the last eight years of her life—David was only acting on the information she’d provided to him. When they reached his car, the metallic monster that ferried people to and from the meeting, there was already a crowd surrounding it. Sofie couldn’t stand the thought of being pressed against anyone while she felt so ready to jump out of her skin.

  “You all go ahead. I’ll just walk. I only live a few minutes from here, you know.”

  “Walk?” Henrietta asked. “Haven’t you heard what happened to that woman on Ryan Road last week? A car full of white boys pulled over and snatched her, attacked her right in the woods over there. The cops don’t care either, even though she knows the ones who did it.”

  Sofie reflexively clutched her hand to her heart. Not out of shock—this type of thing happened too often for her to be shocked—but out of pity. Still, she was feeling rebellious. Let someone try to snatch her. With all this anger pent up inside her, she’d kill them.

  “There’s no room for me,” she said.

  “You can ride with me, if you want.”

  It didn’t take every set of eyes widening in disbelief for Sofie to know who the rough voice belonged to. She turned and found herself face to face with the man she’d been studying all evening long. She knew it was wrong, but she felt another type of warmth now, one that had nothing to do with anger and settled somewhere in the vicinity of an area proper women never discussed.

  She felt an arm go around her. “Sofie doesn’t take rides from strangers.” Henrietta’s tone was crisp enough that she didn’t have to add the words especially white ones for everyone to get her point.

  “Strangers?” The man never took his eyes off her. He grinned, revealing a chipped tooth, and a memory flashed through Sofie’s mind. A skinny young boy flying over the handlebars of his bike, her mother running over and cradling him in her arms.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  She allowed herself to feel a little bit of relief, right next to the anxiety and nostalgia this suddenly familiar man drew from her. Now she understood why her gaze had been drawn to him. Well, in part.

  “You really don’t remember me, Sofronia?” He laughed, a sound that was familiar and not at the same time, just like the rest of him. He was too tall now, and too muscular, and too handsome to be who she thought he was. He flashed that chipped tooth
again, and she looked past the bruised face and stubbled cheeks and knew where she had seen those eyes that bored right into her. “I guess I have changed a bit,” he said. “You look the same.” The way he said “the same” should have been an insult considering that she’d been twelve when he last saw her, but there was a lift of the brow that showed appreciation.

  “Black girls can’t be princesses, Ivan.” They’d been playing in the woods behind his parents’ house, despite her mother’s warning. He had looked over at her, teeth too big and eyes too wide. “Well, Jews can’t be Nazi hunters, but I’m the best there is!” He’d run ahead a few steps, spraying down a line of imaginary SS men with his imaginary gun, then looked back at her. “Besides, every beautiful girl can be a princess. I read it in a book.”

  Sofie pulled herself back to the present. Murmurs passed through the students getting ready to leave, and some hung out of their car windows to get a better view. Oh God, they were creating a scene. A good young lady never allowed herself to be the center of attention, but Sofie couldn’t help the way she gawped at the man.

  She felt like a frayed rope threateningly close to unraveling as the realization hit her. She thought maybe she should just fall apart; then people could finally see all the hurt that hid away beneath her precisely sewn dresses, perfectly curled hair, and hats that tilted just so.

  “You know this guy?” David asked, obviously wary.

  Sofie nodded. Her head felt strangely heavy on her neck, like it might tumble off if she kept bobbing like a fool instead of speaking.

  “Ivan?” Her voice shook, drawing the name out to four syllables instead of two.

  He smiled again, but it was a soft one this time, tinged with pity. In that moment, she remembered that she hadn’t been the only one to mourn Delia Wallis’s loss.

  Sofie thought she would faint. Instead she pasted on the smile that had gotten her through adolescence and into adulthood. “My mother worked for his family, the Friedmans, and we used to play together when we were younger,” she explained to everyone in a tone that she hoped indicated finality.