Father drops his hand, edges away. He’s read my mind, Bobbi thinks. Until she notices Wayne, standing in the doorway.
Wayne steps aside for Father as he creeps toward the door. Bobbi goes back to her photocopying, ignoring the shuffling of Wayne’s papers at her back.
‘You’re working your way up,’ he says coldly. ‘Congratulations.’
With effort, she can keep the photocopies from blurring before her eyes. But she can’t keep the crack from her voice as she shoves past Wayne, storms out of the narrow room.
‘Fuck you. I don’t want up.’
4.
Wayne knows that, now Polly has transformed from a self-conscious sixteen-year-old into the youngest member of the Planning Committee, the main thing keeping Eric in the Temple is Tish, and the main thing keeping Tish in is family. Temple family, and the other kind, which they’re not supposed to think about so much. If he has trouble imagining leaving their little brothers and sisters behind, it’s a given his big sister does, too.
Which is why he takes pains to make it easier for her when she gets the chance to take a job at San Francisco General Hospital while Eric starts his first year of law school. ‘Don’t worry about coming up to the valley this week. Mom says the little shitheads have choir practice,’ or, ‘Got any notes to pass on to the little shitheads? I’m cleaning Mom’s gutters this weekend.’ With all his running around for security, Wayne becomes adept at delivering notes, drawings, home-baked goods, frequently enough that no one feels neglected.
After witnessing Father feeling up Bobbi Luce, getting Tish away from the Temple seems suddenly important to Wayne. Not because he’s scared for her — it’s common knowledge Father doesn’t touch black girls — but because it kills him to think that, no matter how hard Tish works, she’ll never get as far as all those white chicks with daddy issues.
He doesn’t tell her any of this, but when she stops showing up to services in the valley, he’s glad for her, and when she stops helping with healings at the San Francisco services, he’s glad, too, and when anyone asks why they don’t see her around so much, he’s ready with excuses about the hours she’s working. He lets himself believe, unremarked as Tish’s loyalty always was, that her disloyalty will go just as unremarked. He’s wrong.
About six weeks into his go-between routine, Wayne attempts to visit Tish’s one-bedroom rental near the hospital. ‘She’s working overtime,’ Eric says gruffly, peeking through the door. Then, ‘Just leave us alone, okay?’ When he gets back down to the street, Wayne notices a carload of glowering brothers from security parked opposite. He hesitates, before casually striding across to them, leaning through the window.
‘See anything worth seeing?’
‘What’s it to you?’ Terrence retorts, flashing his gun.
‘Hey, man, we’re all in this together,’ Wayne bluffs, making sure his own gun can be glimpsed as he slides into the back seat beside Billy. He considers saying that he’s on a mission, has just bugged Tish and Eric’s apartment, but decides to stick with the strong and silent act. After a few minutes of staring through the window, he pulls out the red velvet cake his mom baked for Tish and starts unwrapping the tinfoil. The guys’ ears prick.
They wait for over an hour, but the hour passes quickly, since Wayne’s thinking of Bobbi Luce. He wouldn’t have thought of Bobbi, maybe, if Danny Luce’s blond head wasn’t in front of him, but there it is, and there she is: swaggering through his brain in her tomboy clothes, short hair, a piercing in her nose like Janet Lakshmi. She’s been looking dykier than ever, and acting it, cozying up to anything with two X chromosomes. She’s also been, like Tish, skipping services, and getting in trouble when she does show up. Getting in trouble at the dorms, too, neglecting chores, ditching class, masterminding every stupid water balloon fight and weeknight dance party. She doesn’t talk to him, and he doesn’t blame her; just misses her.
‘Hey, sister!’ Terrence lets out a low whistle and adjusts the rearview mirror, waking Wayne from his reverie. He glances out to see his sister’s white uniform, seemingly disembodied against the night. Then the sheen of her nylons and black skin. He feels genuinely afraid for her, in a way he hasn’t since she was six and had those tumors on her kidneys. Terrence rolls down the window as Tish levels with the vehicle and repeats, ‘Hey! Sister!’
Tish jerks. Freezes. Stares at the gun Terrence is dangling, just so, out the window.
Terrence motions for Wayne to roll his window down, too. He tries to glare and look apologetic at the same time.
‘Sister … you comin’ to the valley tomorrow night? Members-only meeting?’
Tish nods. ‘Yeah,’ she says blithely. ‘Should be.’
‘Your man, too?’
‘Yeah,’ Tish repeats. ‘Eric’s coming.’
Terrence A-OKs her, grins, and rolls the window back up. They drive slowly alongside her until she’s inside the building; leave with a shriek of tires.
The next night, Tish is there with Eric to listen to Father’s predictions, or threats:
‘There are some young people who think they know better than their Father … who think there’s something out in the world they can’t get here … Young people who don’t believe the revolution’s comin’ fast enough, who choose anarchy over a life of self-sacrifice. I got one thing to say to you, children: the world is agony and you ain’t gonna find nothin’ out there but agony and death. You’ll die out there, children. I know ’cause I seen it, and lemme tell you … If you can’t put our family first, you deserve to die.’
After the service, Wayne watches his mom and siblings swamp Tish. He watches Eric endure a crushing hug from Molly, goo-goo eyes from Polly, who these days looks like a miniature Evelyn Lynden. He watches Father, Reaper-ish in his dark robes, sidle up to Eric, place a hand on the back of his white neck. Eric flinches.
‘You’ll die out there, children.’ Darl’s big-assed redhead, Hedy Gore, mimics Father’s drawl under her breath. ‘I know ’cause I’m Death.’
Darl shushes her, darts his eyes at Wayne. With a barely perceptible smile, Wayne presses an index finger to his lips and mouths: Shh.
A moment later, Evelyn stalks by, skinny and haughty as always.
Wayne looks back at them once Evelyn has passed. To his relief, they’re grinning.
There are only the three of them who talk about leaving that night — Wayne, Darl, and Hedy — but they agree there must be more, agree they need more, safety in numbers. This is during the ride back down in Darl’s Chevy pickup, loaded up with crates from the last harvest.
‘We told ourselves we’d wait it out. Finish school,’ Darl confides. ‘But I dunno how much longer I can take orders from a wackjob.’
‘A junkie wackjob,’ Hedy qualifies.
Trust a white hippie to think everyone’s as high as she is. But Darl must notice Wayne’s skepticism, because he shoots him a solemn glance from behind the wheel. ‘Strictly confidential, okay? I’ve seen his medicine cabinet. He’s got more speed than a racehorse.’
Now that Hedy’s opened her mouth, everything’s coming out. How she was berated for a whole hour for putting a ‘Save the Trees!’ sticker on the truck, in case it offended the valley’s timber workers. How she was forced to eat SPAM despite being a vegetarian, to show she didn’t think she was ‘special’. How she was called a whore for getting pregnant, a selfish bitch for mourning her abortion. How she was forced to write fake confessions to working as a whore, doing drugs, dealing drugs to kids, molesting her kid stepbrothers. How her twelve-year-old stepbrother was beaten black and blue for going to see a kung-fu movie the same week that Hedy, earning some sly cash ushering at an arthouse cinema in the city, saw Father sitting in the dark with an arm around Evelyn Lynden.
‘They were watching this French film about a workers’ strike. I quit that night.’
Wayne’s mind suddenly feels like a forest full of
dead tree stumps. ‘Are you … sure? Father and Evelyn?’
‘Man, I know you don’t got much experience with women, but come on.’ Darl slaps the wheel. ‘You think she’s that devoted to the Cause?’
‘She does a pretty good job of looking like a spinster, I’ll say that.’ Hedy’s bust heaves. ‘And I’m the whore …’
Wayne imagines the dead stumps burning. ‘Have you told anyone else?’
‘About Father’s movie date? No way. I saw how Flora got shredded for even suggesting Father doesn’t hate those long country club lunches with Frank Mueller.’
Flora and her white boyfriend Che were two of the most vocal critics last month, when the Counsellers came around collecting their socialist theory books, claiming the college was getting more conservative and they needed to protect the Temple from scrutiny. ‘You want good socialists, but when we start educating ourselves, it’s a threat!’ Flora had raged as Brother Ike loaded the books in his truck, to be incinerated up in the valley. ‘Nothing more threatening than black folks getting educated!’ Wayne, too, had been enraged, wanted to knock the glasses off Gail’s nose when she argued that everyone’s books were confiscated, not just the blacks’. But he kept his cool, and he’d listened when Alice Bellows with her lovely oblong face stood up and said that what was most important was that they lived socialism, and they didn’t need theory for that, and they were all getting educations that would allow them to build a better society: as teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, architects, engineers. Alice spoke so beautifully, was so beautiful, Wayne had swallowed his objections. Remembering it now, though, all he can think is that he’ll have to get used to living in a world without Alice Bellows’ face.
‘Tell Flora and Che,’ Wayne instructs Hedy. ‘I’ve got a feeling they’ll be receptive.’
The next day, while the others work on Flora and Che, Wayne calls Tish at the hospital, apologizes for his gun-flashing the other night. ‘Yeah, you better be sorry,’ she says, and agrees to meet him in an alley near her apartment, to bring Eric. Waiting in his dark clothes, Wayne feels small; smaller still when Eric shows up, shielding Tish like a bodyguard. When Wayne reaches into his pocket, Eric reaches to disarm him. But it’s just a notepad.
I’m leaving, Wayne scratches. Are you with me?
Tish reads it and starts to cry. Tears plop over her two-letter reply: OK.
There are seven of them, with Flora and Che. Wayne runs into Flora pumping the tires of the communal bicycles and she raises her chin in acknowledgement.
‘I’m asking my girl Eunice, and Lanie Younglove,’ she says, and keeps pumping.
Eunice is a ballsy chick, with a buzzcut and a mouth that can break into the world’s biggest grin or biggest snarl, depending on who you are. Usually it’s a grin, with him. But Lanie, Billy Younglove’s sister? She’s quiet, always hiding her nose in The Upanishads.
‘Don’t worry.’ Flora must notice his uncertainty. ‘I’m not naming names. I’ll just tell ’em I’m moving back east with Che.’
But Eunice has a new boyfriend, Fletcher, and the Temple has offered to pay for his schooling. Lanie wants to stick around for her mom and Billy. They both tell Flora they’ll keep quiet, but Wayne can feel the clock ticking. And he still hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask Bobbi Luce.
He starts finding reasons to visit the girls’ dorm. To sit the next table over from her in the cafeteria. Even to follow her into a nursing lecture. She notices. Turns around pulling ugly faces and, when that doesn’t work, tries to pelt him with a wad of paper. Her aim sucks.
Later, he follows Bobbi to the library, where she’s studying in a group with Janet Lakshmi and some others. They stare as he takes a seat close by; pretend not to as he takes out his books and proceeds to gaze at Bobbi from over the top of them.
This goes on for maybe half an hour, before she shuts her book, storms over, and slams a hand on his unopened cover. ‘What the fuck are you doing? ’
He looks at the ring in her nose. It looks stupid, but kind of interesting, too.
‘Studying.’
‘You piece of shit,’ she hisses. ‘You’re so full of shit.’
The white lady librarian, who resembles a barn owl, gives them a scandalized look. Suddenly, Wayne has an idea to get Bobbi alone.
‘No kissing in the library!’ Barn Owl screeches at the same moment Bobbi spits in Wayne’s face, shoves him away. ‘Get out, right now!’
‘What the fuck, Wayne …You really are a piece of shit,’ Bobbi cusses him out as they’re exiled from the library, the jeers of her study buddies loud at their backs. ‘You know I don’t like guys … and I sure as hell don’t like you.’
‘Alright, alright. I’m sorry.’
He catches her arm. She rips it from his grip. ‘Sorry for what, exactly?’
‘I’m not sorry for kissing you … but I’m sorry for doing it without your permission,’ Wayne answers solemnly. ‘And I’m sorry for what I said at the photocopier.’
Bobbi folds her arms. ‘You’re going to have to be more specific.’
‘I said something that was untrue, and unfair to you. I implied you were using your body to get ahead.’ Bobbi’s face, though still skeptical, softens slightly. ‘Look, I’ve had to stand outside a lot of closed doors. I’ve heard things, and seen things, including how certain white people become more essential to the Cause after an hour on their backs than the rest of us can in a decade. It’s fucked up, and it makes me crazy, and I took that out on you. I’m sorry.’
‘It is fucked up,’ Bobbi agrees. She stares at her sneakers. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you.’
Wayne stares at her sneakers, too. ‘Tell me you’ll come with us.’
‘What?’
‘A bunch of us are leaving. Tell me you’ll come.’
Bobbi scrutinizes him with her pale eyes. ‘Why are you asking me?’
‘You were here when things were good …’ Wayne takes a step closer, thinking of the early-early days, when he truly believed it was Father’s magic that wiped the tumors from Tish’s kidneys, and that there was no limit to what a black boy could achieve, so long as he was smart and loyal. ‘… You understand how bad things have gotten.’
5.
They will go by night, eight bodies split between the Ford and the Chevy. They will go east, then north, then east again, avoiding main highways. They will go with their firearms in their trunks, and a pool of cash from Che’s pawned sax, Hedy’s stepdad’s civil-war medallions, Eric’s dad’s furs from Finland, the camera stolen from Phil Sorensen, the petty cash box from the Publications Office. They will live thriftily, as the Temple has taught them, but the road will meander and funds will run low before they can decide between Canada or New York, and they will settle in the next city that comes along: Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
In Sioux Falls, Bobbi and Eric will pose as a nice white couple, rent a nice three-bedroom house from a nice white lady. Wayne, who hasn’t touched Bobbi since that day in the library, will feel jealous of Eric, as he has felt jealous of the three girls, seeing Bobbi cuddle up to them by campfires, plant sisterly kisses on their cheeks. He will tell himself that he is twenty-one and sex is no longer counterrevolutionary, but out of habit, he won’t believe it.
The three couples will take the three bedrooms. Bobbi and Wayne will take the living room, cringe when they hear the other couples being couples through the walls. They will take jobs: in pizza parlors, supermarkets, department stores. They will earn paychecks and, not knowing what to do with them, spend too much on stuff like cigars and chewing gum.
On the last day of November, Bobbi will turn nineteen, and they will throw a party, inviting new friends from their new jobs. Wayne, though his dad isn’t far from his mind, will drink a beer, just one, and that beer will be enough to make him pull Bobbi away from the record player where she’s playing ‘Willow’s Song’ for th
e thousandth time, put his lips on hers and not remove them for the whole night, and by the first of December, they won’t be virgins.
They will have a good year, just one, in South Dakota. They will say the word ‘love’ and mean it. They will disgust their brothers and sisters with the newness of their affection. Two-by-two, their brothers and sisters will leave for other places: Eric and Tish for Chicago, Che and Flora for New York City, Darl and Hedy for Washington State. They will be forced to move out of the nice three-bedroom house and into an apartment on the bad side of town, the only place that will rent to a couple with skins like theirs, but it will be their own, and it will seem like they have a future.
They will talk of becoming teachers, of inspiring children from neighborhoods like theirs with a love of words and numbers. She will offer to work while he studies and he will reluctantly accept, attending classes where he is the only black person, staying late in the library so he can pick her up from her second job waiting tables at a German restaurant.
One night, a patron will complain about the colored man loitering outside the restaurant, and from then on Bobbi’s manager will ban Wayne from waiting for her, and she will begin walking home alone, and he will worry, and it will occur to him that he wouldn’t worry so much if she wasn’t a blond girl in a black neighborhood.
They will argue about stupid things: how late she is getting home, how short her skirt is, how her lamp keeps him awake when she stays up reading novels by dead white people. There will be a day, coming back from the liquor store, when they will argue about some stupid thing, and she will push him away, and he will grab her arm, and a white cop will be waiting around the corner to shove him against the wall and ask, Miss, is this lowlife bothering you?
That day will be bad, but not as bad as the day she will come home from work with two black eyes, a cut lip, her uniform torn, purse stolen. She will not say anything about the man or men who did it, and he will not press her. He will make her stop working nights, will stop pressing his body against hers at night until she says, It’s okay, let’s just fuck, fuck me Wayne Bud, or what … are you scared or something?
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