by Renée Watson
Essence says, “No.”
I shake my head. “Not really. I mean, it’s our country’s history.”
Tony keeps doodling.
I try to imagine how it must feel to sit here with two black girls and talk about how the people on this list reported about slavery, lynchings, the civil rights movement. I remember being in middle school and learning about all of this and coming home sad, frustrated. Blacks were always the victims, always having to fight for something. But Dad told me about scientists and inventors, and filled in the gaps that history books leave out. I know how I felt always being portrayed as the victim. I’m sure being seen as the perpetrator feels just as awful. “You should research them all,” I say. “But especially Karl Fleming.”
Essence flips through her notebook and reads from her notes. “He was a white journalist who covered some of the most known moments of the civil rights movement.”
“It seems like he really cared about the stories he covered,” I say. “He didn’t just do it because it was a job. I found an article that talked about how he would vomit sometimes at the sight of dogs being loosed on protesters, how ashamed he was that he was from a place that had so much hate.”
Essence shows Tony her scribbled notes as she reads them out loud. “He reported on the bombing of a church in Alabama, the desegregation of University of Mississippi, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and Freedom Summer of 1964.”
“What is Freedom Summer?” Tony asks.
I shrug. “Something about voting, I think.” I look through my notes and find the section about Freedom Summer. “Yeah, it was a campaign that started in June of ’64 to register black voters in Mississippi.”
Essence closes her notebook and leans back in her chair. “So wait, there’s Freedom Summer and the Freedom Riders. What’s the difference?” she asks.
I tell them the little I know. “The Freedom Riders were black and white activists who rode buses into the South together to protest and bring awareness to the rest of the nation about what was happening in the South.”
Tony asks, “How do you know all this?”
“My parents had me and Nikki watch Eyes on the Prize, a documentary about the civil rights movement,” I tell them. “And we didn’t just watch it—my dad had us discuss it, you know, really understand what we were seeing.”
Essence says, “God, Maya, your dad is like Martin Luther King, Cliff Huxtable, and Barack Obama all in one.”
The three of us laugh.
Mrs. Armstrong walks to the front of the room. “Okay, everyone, let’s hear back from each group.”
We talk about what we’ve learned first, then why we think she wanted us to know.
Hands raise, and as Mrs. Armstrong calls on us, she writes key words on the board.
“Because it’s Black History Month.”
“To have us learn about local people as well as people outside of Oregon.”
“To show us that words have power.”
“Because you wanted us to know that no one can take our stories.”
“Because you wanted to show us that both men and women, blacks and whites, worked for freedom.”
When she is finished, the board is covered with our guesses of why she had us do this research.
Mrs. Armstrong doesn’t even have to tell us the answer.
We’re all right.
Chapter 50
Today, I have two posters. I get to school early. There’s a janitor in the hallway near my locker and a teacher in her classroom next to the spot where I wanted to hang my posters. I walk around the school trying to find the perfect spot. The walls in junior hall are bare, except for two bulletin boards with student work on display. I hang my posters in the middle of the wall.
Karl Fleming, the journalist, and Jim Zwerg, a white freedom rider.
Above their photos and bios, I tape up the word Allies.
Chapter 51
We’ve all come together for an assembly. The one the school has every year to scare us out of drinking and driving. I am sitting next to Nikki, watching a slideshow of cars—and people—who have been damaged by drunk drivers. A mother who lost her son the night of his senior prom takes the microphone. There is a picture of her son that flashes on the screen, then a few slides of the car after the accident, which looks nothing like a car. Just mangled metal.
As she talks, she starts to cry a little. Two students behind me think this is funny. I turn around. It’s Tasha sitting with her friends.
“Shh,” I whisper.
“Oh, let’s be quiet,” Tasha says. “President Oreo can’t hear.”
The girl next to her whispers, “I can’t stand fake people. She be tryin’ to act like she down but really, she black on the outside, white on the inside.”
They laugh.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I didn’t stutter. You ain’t nothin’ but an Oreo!” Tasha says.
“Ladies!” Mrs. Brown, one of the math teachers, whispers a shout and tells us to be quiet.
Tasha’s friend won’t let it go. She says to Tasha, “You should have called her a graham cracker!”
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.
Tasha doesn’t get the joke either. She asks, “Why would I call her that?”
“ ’Cause she’s brown and she’s dating a cracker!”
They laugh.
The woman ends her speech, and Principal Green steps up to the mic and tells us that if any of us think we have a problem with alcohol or have a friend who has a problem to visit the counseling office. “You’re dismissed,” he says.
As Nikki and I walk out of the auditorium, my two new enemies walk past me. Tasha bumps into me on purpose. “Ignore her,” Nikki says.
I stare her down.
“Maya, let’s go.”
Tony is standing a few steps away. Nikki points to him. “Let’s go over there.”
The eye roller sucks her teeth. “Yeah, go over there and be a sellout,” she says.
Tasha looks Tony over. “What a rich white boy doin’ so interested in putting on a black history celebration anyway?” she yells. “Why you trynna be in with us? What do you want?”
Tony stands mute.
I walk away, right past Tony. He follows me. “Maya. Wait up.”
I just keep walking.
Nikki catches up with me. Tony is with her. “Why are you letting them get to you?” she asks.
“What happened?” Tony interjects before I can answer.
She tells him about the girls. About them calling me an Oreo, a sellout. “She thinks you and Maya are a couple or something, I think,” Nikki explains.
Students pass us on their way to class. Nikki opens her locker and says, “Let it go, Maya. No need to get all worked up over a lie.” She closes the locker and walks away, leaving Tony and me alone.
Tony walks across the hall to his locker; I stand next to him. We have journalism next. Might as well go together. Tony won’t even look at me. “Sure you want to be seen standing next to me?” he asks.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
He turns around, slams his locker, and walks away.
The tardy bell rings, and the last few students in the hall run to class. Tony and I walk together, but when we get to Mrs. Armstrong’s class, he keeps walking. I go after him. “Tony.”
He keeps walking.
“Tony!”
He turns left at the end of the hall, leaving me standing alone.
Chapter 52
When school is over I go straight home. By five o’clock it’s already pitch-black outside. I am lying on my bed, listening to music and trying to sing my way out of this funky mood.
It’s not working.
I have to tell Nikki what’s going on. Essence, too. They are usually the people I go to when I have a problem. I keep wondering how I let it get to this, but I guess that doesn’t matter.
I am waiting for Nikki to get home when the doorbell rings.
&
nbsp; It’s Tony. “Can we go somewhere to talk?” He jingles his keys. I leave a note for Mom and Dad and go with him.
I don’t know where we’re going. Tony drives toward Jantzen Beach and then heads north along the dark, narrow road following the length of the Columbia River. White sails sway in the wind against the black sky. If it were daylight, we could see Mount Hood peering over us, but tonight it’s hidden, like it doesn’t even exist. Portland’s airport is on the right. The roar of planes taking off and landing fill the sky. Tony turns into an alcove and parks. He bends down and pulls the lever at the bottom of his seat and slides backward.
I take off my seat belt and pull my seat back. We sit and watch airplanes come and go.
Tony speaks first. “I’m sorry I walked away from you today. I’m just—why are we doing this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are we in a relationship if you don’t want to be?”
“What do you have to be so high and mighty about? It’s not like you’re walking around telling everybody about me,” I say.
“I’ve never lied about my relationship with you. If people ask, I tell the truth.”
“Not to your father,” I say.
Tony doesn’t say anything.
“Does your father know about me?”
“That’s different,” Tony says.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He stares out at the city.
“How is it different?”
“You don’t understand my dad,” he says. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Tony! All this talk about being true to yourself, all this talk about us not living in the fifties, and you can’t tell your father you’re dating a black girl?”
Tony refuses to answer me so we sit and watch planes. I am just about to give in and break the silence, but then Tony says, “I used to think my dad hated teaching, that he picked the wrong career. He always came home complaining about his day, telling me some story of a confrontation with a black student. Every day. And in every story there was this, this tone in his voice. Something like … something like, like disgust,” Tony says. “The older I got and the more I listened, I realized it’s not teaching he hates. He—look, my dad, he says horrible things about black people. And the way he talks about the students my mom advocates for? He says, he—he says horrible things.” Tony stops talking, and I don’t ask him anything, I just sit with him and we watch planes land and take off.
Then he turns to me. “He’s not racist or anything, I mean, he just says, he just doesn’t … Maya, I’m not ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of my dad. And afraid of what he’ll say about you or to you.”
Tony sits back up in his seat. “My mom knows about you. And so do my friends at St. Francis. I just haven’t mentioned it to my dad. I don’t think anything good would come of it, so what’s the point?” Tony turns the car on.
I wonder what Portland looks like from the sky. Up there, rolling hills watch over the City of Roses, and the Fremont Bridge canopies over drivers coming and going from east to west. Up there it is just a normal winter day. In those clouds there are no traces of racial slurs being shouted in school halls, and the dust from the newly constructed buildings hasn’t risen that far.
We leave Marine Drive and go home.
I ask, “So what are we going to do?”
Tony doesn’t answer.
I get an upside-down feeling in my stomach. “You don’t want to be with me anymore?”
“I do. I just, I need time to think.”
As we ride home, I am thinking of Essence and Nikki right now. Thinking how maybe they are right. Maybe I should stick with what I know. What I know is Devin.
Tony pulls into his driveway.
“I guess Tasha has a point.” I barely get the words out. “Blood is thicker than water.”
Tony turns the engine off. “But you can’t survive without either.”
Chapter 53
We decide to go to the dance as girlfriends, instead of with dates. Kate is the one who suggested it. “My dad is more likely to let me go if he thinks I’m just going with friends,” she said.
It’s fine with me, since I don’t have a date. I haven’t talked to Tony for a week. I’m not sure if we’re broken up or not. I guess he’s still thinking. I don’t even know if he’s coming to the dance.
When we arrive at Richmond, I can’t believe how different the gym looks. It has become a palace. The tables in the gym each have centerpieces with flowers floating in water. There is a photo backdrop with white pillars on each side and a fake staircase that looks like you can really walk up it. Music spills onto the dance floor, overflowing from the DJ’s turntables. There are bodies all over bodies dancing and splashing in the sound waves.
Malachi, Ronnie, and Roberto are standing against the wall, looking too cool to dance, so we girls are on the dance floor together. Across the room, I see Devin dancing with Cynthia. I close my eyes and move to the beat.
We dance for three songs straight, but then a song comes on that none of us like, so Nikki and Essence persuade Ronnie and Malachi to get in line for pictures before they sweat out their hair.
Roberto, Kate, and I sit at a table with a few other girls who are giving their feet a break. Two girls I’ve never seen before come up to us. One has short red hair, the other, long gold curls. “Kate?”
They flock around Kate, who screams, “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?” She jumps up and hugs each of them.
The redhead says, “We came with them.” She points over to Vince and Bags.
“Duh!” Kate says. “I forgot you went out with Vince.”
Vince has a girlfriend? I feel sorry for her.
Kate introduces her St. Francis friends. The redhead seems nice. But Goldilocks barely acknowledges the rest of us. She sits down and starts gossiping with Kate. “I have to tell you the new news,” she says. She dishes out all the scoop about St. Francis—which teachers are sleeping with each other, which students are using, who’s had an abortion. She tells us how some sophomore at St. Francis got busted for drugs being in his locker. Apparently he’d been dealing at their school for the past two years.
I wonder why that didn’t make the news.
“Hey, where’s Tony?” Goldilocks asks. She stretches her neck out like an ostrich. The redhead joins her, standing on the tips of her toes like a ballerina.
“I see him! I see him!” Goldilocks yells. She is blushing and starts smiling and fixing her hair. “Oh, my God, Kate. Your brother is so hot.”
Kate stands and waves him over. I turn and look behind me. Tony is walking toward us. Goldilocks is right. Tony looks good. And he’s not even dressed up. He’s in jeans and a T-shirt. Everything inside me trembles.
When Tony gets to the table, he only looks at me, as if no one else is sitting at the table, like he doesn’t even know those other girls. “Will you come outside with me?” Tony asks.
Goldilocks looks completely annoyed that he didn’t speak to her.
Kate smiles and gives me a reassuring look. I smile back at her.
Tony and I walk outside. I can hear the music from inside vibrating the walls. One of my favorite songs. Tony stops just past the front door to the gym and turns to me. “I told my dad.”
I don’t say anything. Not because I don’t want to, I just can’t find the right words.
“Look, I know things are—”
I don’t let Tony finish. I pull him close to me, and we kiss and hold each other. I know this doesn’t mean things will be perfect, but I also know that this is what I want.
I hear the door open and close, then open and close again, and my lips don’t pull away from his. The door opens once more and someone calls my name.
“Maya?”
I know that voice.
“Maya?”
It’s Nikki.
Chapter 54
The next morning, I am up before the sun.
I stay in bed for a while, wishing I could fa
st forward through the explaining I’m going to have to do for the next couple of days. But I know I can’t stay under these covers all day, so I get out of bed, shower, and go downstairs.
Dad is sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee and eating a toasted bagel. He starts his days early and always with caffeine. “How was it last night?” he asks. “Did Tony show up like I told him to?”
“What?” I sit next to Dad. “You talked to Tony?”
“I saw him sitting on his porch looking lovesick and pathetic. I’ve worked with young men for decades now. I know that look.”
I can’t help but smile at that part. I take half of his bagel and smother it with cream cheese.
“I asked him why he didn’t take my beautiful daughter to the winter formal.”
“How did you know about us?”
“I know everything,” Dad says. He smiles and drinks from his mug.
“Dad—”
“I. Know. Everything,” he repeats.
I laugh. And all I can say is, “Thank you.”
“You don’t ever have to hide things from us,” Dad says. “And, you know, you can’t control everything, Maya.”
“Especially not my heart.”
“Or anyone else’s.” Dad looks at me, and I look away because I don’t want to cry. “If Nikki doesn’t want to go to Spelman, you can’t make her feel guilty about that. She has the right to change, Maya. So do you.”
I lay my head on Dad’s shoulder.
Dad hands me the other half of his bagel.
When Nikki comes into the kitchen, Dad gets up from the table and goes to the family room.
Nikki went out with Ronnie and the rest of the crew last night after the dance so we haven’t talked at all yet.
She passes me without saying good morning and goes straight into the kitchen. I can’t see her, but I hear cereal pouring into a bowl, the opening of the fridge, a long pause, the pouring of milk, and the door of the fridge closing. A chair scrapes the kitchen floor, and I can tell that Nikki is sitting at the island.
I just want to get it over with so I start talking, not getting up from the dining room table, thinking maybe talking in separate rooms will ease the tension of a face-to-face conversation. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Nikki.”
