This Side of Home (15 page)

I look at the poster he's made. It's a work of art. The name IDA B. WELLS is written at the top in a fancy font, and there's a photo of her on the left side. On the right side, there's a timeline of her life. “This is kind of amazing, Charles.” Of course it would be. Charles wouldn't put out anything less.

Charles looks at his poster. “This woman was a journalist, an activist—she was, well, yeah, amazing. Her articles and pamphlets documented the unjust lynchings of the South and forced people to see what was going on. She was one of the founders of the
NAACP, and she fought for women's voting rights, as well as the rights for blacks to vote. I mean, what didn't she do?” Charles is talking fast and has his preacher man voice on.

I calm him down. “We better get out of here. You can't stand and admire your work. You have to hang fast and leave. Star and I almost got caught.”

“Star?”

I start walking. “She's been helping me.”

Charles and I walk together, slow and normal, like we didn't just defy Principal Green's rule. Charles says, “I have more made. I think we should put one up a day. I started researching and found some good ones—people that I think most of us don't know about.”

Before we go our separate ways, Charles asks, “What about Tony?” And he looks at me like he's asking to know everything about Tony.

“He doesn't know about this,” I say. And then I whisper really soft, as low as I can, “And no one knows about us.”

Charles nods and walks to class.

Mrs. Armstrong asks us to get into groups of three and tells us to discuss what we've learned about the people she assigned us. “I want you to focus your discussion on why you think I wanted you to know these people.” I am with Essence and Tony. Mrs. Armstrong walks around the room listening in on our group for a moment before heading to the next group.

Tony starts the conversation off. “I didn't get to everyone on the list. But by the third person, I realized they were all black journalists, so I guess Mrs. Armstrong wanted to teach us this because it's Black History Month.”

Essence looks through her notes. “But I think it's more than that. I think she wanted us to see how people fought to keep their stories being told. Every
person on the list took a risk to tell the stories they felt needed to be shared.”

I nod. “And not everyone on the list is black. Why didn't you look up everyone?” I try to ask the question without any judgment, but I can feel myself getting defensive. Tony always does his assignments. Why not this one?

“I don't know, I guess I felt like I got the point, so there was no need to look everyone up. I-I didn't think there was anyone white on the list.”

Essence crosses her legs. “So you only want to learn about white journalists?”

“No, that's not what I'm saying. I just, I thought the point of the assignment was to learn about black writers because of Black History Month. So once I figured that out, I just moved on to my other homework. But, yes, I think it's important, and I get why we need to learn about people who fought to tell the stories of people who couldn't get their voices heard.” Tony won't look at me. He is drawing on his paper, making random lines and shapes. Then Tony sighs. Long. Deep. “Reading this stuff over and over doesn't depress you?”

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.

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
.

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.

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.

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.