Lies We Tell Ourselves: Shortlisted for the 2016 Carnegie Medal

I’m still not used to being called “nigger,” but I’ve stopped keeping track of how many times I hear it. Instead I count the minutes left in the school day. I watch the hands of the classroom clocks wind their way around until I’m free of this place and the people in it.

In Math someone’s brought in extra desks for the back of the room. Now everyone has a seat without having to get anywhere near Chuck and me. Chuck draws a picture in his notebook of Mrs. Gruber standing in front of a classroom full of tanks and soldiers firing on each other. The Mrs. Gruber in the picture, who’s twice as fat and three times as ugly as the real Mrs. Gruber, has her eyes squeezed shut and fingers stuck in her ears. A comic-book speech balloon has her singing, “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!” When Chuck shows it to me I almost smile.

Adults always tell us education is the most important thing in life, but I’m not learning anything at Jefferson. It’s supposed to be the best school for miles around, with the best facilities and the best teachers, but none of that is doing me any good. Our science labs at Johns weren’t as nice as the ones here, but when I was at Johns I could focus on my schoolwork. I didn’t have to spend every moment looking over my shoulder to see what would be thrown at me next.

In History I overhear two girls gossiping about something they heard from their friends. According to their story, one of the Negro girls (only the girl telling the story calls her a “nigger girl,” in the giggly whisper of a child who’s trying out a naughty word for the first time), went up to a white girl in the locker room this morning and told her she smelled like cow shit and looked worse. The white girl told her boyfriend, and he told his friends. Now the boys are saying they’ll “get that nigger back” later today.

The gossip can’t be true. None of the Negro girls in our group would ever do such a thing. None of them would use that kind of foul language. Besides, Mrs. Mullins has told us a thousand times not to talk back to the white students. I can’t stop remembering what Yvonne looked like yesterday, though, huddled in a pile in the hall. When school lets out today, I’ll make sure to keep every single one of these girls someplace I can see them until we get safely home.

When I get to Typing, the teacher points out a typewriter she’s set aside in the far corner for me and the Negro girls who take Typing in other periods. The teacher smiles, like she’s waiting for me to thank her. And I do it. I grit my teeth, but I still say, “Thank you, ma’am,” sweet as sugar.

As I drop my purse on the desk I see something tucked under my typewriter. One of the white girls must have left it there. It’s a clipping from the Davisburg Gazette. I didn’t see the paper this morning—Mama had already put it away somewhere—but this front-page story is headlined Negroes Integrate Jefferson High. Two School Board Members Resign in Protest. Under the headline is a photo of the ten of us. Someone has drawn a circle on the photo in lipstick, right around my face, and put a big red X over it. Scrawled black ink in the margins says “DIE UGLY NIGGER.”

I swallow, glad I have my back to the rest of the room so the girls can’t see my face. I start to crumple up the paper when I see a sidebar with the headline Jefferson Students Speak Out. One of the reporters who blinded me with his flashbulbs yesterday must’ve talked to some of the white students afterward. The first quote in the story is from Linda Hairston.

“‘What about our right to an education?’” Linda’s quote reads. “‘No one talks about that. The colored people aren’t the only ones who should have rights.’”

Yesterday I’d thought Linda Hairston was smart.

I crush the paper in my fist, march to the front of the room and throw it in the trash can. On my way back I fold my arms across my chest so no one will see my hands shaking.

During each class break I walk as fast as I can, following the routes I mapped out at breakfast. I see Ruth every time, and every time, she’s all right. There’s a new ink stain on her blouse that wasn’t there this morning, but she isn’t hurt. She’s just walking down the hall surrounded by a circle of white people, clutching her books and pretending not to hear the chants of “nigger, nigger, nigger” that follow her everywhere.

The white people follow me, too, slowing me down. It doesn’t matter what route I take. They walk behind me and in front of me. Trying to trip me, calling out to me, stepping on my heels, blocking my path. It’s like walking through quicksand.

When I leave third-period History, trying to forget what that awful Mrs. Johnson said in her lecture about the slave trade, there are still two hundred and thirty-five minutes left in the school day. I speed toward the stairs to get to Ruth, uncertain of how I’ll get back to the second floor in time for French.

It isn’t the distance that’s the problem. I could walk there and back easily if the white people would only leave me alone.

But they won’t. In fact, there’s a group of white boys following me as I exit the staircase and start down the first-floor hall.

They’ve been behind me since History. I don’t have to look back to know they’re still there. The feeling of eyes on my back is familiar by now.

But there’s something different about this time. These boys are being quiet. They aren’t chanting, or calling me names or joking with each other. Occasionally one of them will snicker, but the others quickly hush him.

When I’m halfway down the hall, they’re still following, silent except for their thudding footsteps. From the sound of it there are at least ten of them. People coming the other way wave at the boys as they pass, smiling and calling to them.

The boys are getting closer.

I speed up, but their footsteps get faster, too. There’s no way I could outrun them.

They must be planning something. I hope they get it over with soon. I brace myself for the feeling of an object striking my back. A wad of spit, a pencil, a rock they snuck in from outside.

Nothing comes.

Something’s wrong.

The voice in my head is certain. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know it’s something new. Something bad.

I speed up, but the shuffling footsteps are louder now. One of the boys is right behind me.

The pain comes with a jolt. I freeze. My breath stops, and my voice catches in my throat. The shock of it is too strong.

The boy is squeezing my breasts, hard.

He lets go as fast as he grabbed on, and then all the boys are running past me at once. Laughing. Trading high fives.

There’s no way to know which of them did it.

The crowd coming the other way has stopped moving, too. They’re pointing at me, laughing. The girls are covering their mouths to hide their giggles.

I cross my arms over my chest, but that only makes them laugh harder.

That really just happened.

That boy touched me. I didn’t want him to, but he did it anyway. That was why he did it. Because he knew I didn’t want it.

Nothing is mine anymore.

Even my own body isn’t mine. Not if that pack of white boys doesn’t want it to be.

Everyone saw what they did.

It’s exactly like my dream. The pack of monsters, laughing.

I drop my head so they can’t see my face. I would never let someone do that to me. I’m not the sort of girl who would ever do anything like that.

The white people at this school don’t care what sort of girl I am.

I look down at myself. I don’t look any different than I did this morning. What the boy did hadn’t left a mark. But nothing will ever undo it.

My dignity was all I had.

Tears well in my eyes. The pack of boys is all the way at the end of the hall now. One of them, a tall brown-haired boy, is still looking back at me, grinning, but the rest are looking at something up ahead.

“That’s her,” one of them calls. “That’s the nigger who talked back to my girl.”

“Big Sis still back where we left her?” another boy answers. His voice carries all the way down the hall. They don’t care who hears them.

“Yeah,” the other boy says. “We scared her off but good.”

“Let’s go, then.”

I recognize the brown dress. The one she was mending this morning.

It’s Ruth they’re running toward.

She’s the one the story was about. The one who talked trash to a white girl.