I TRIED TO PRETEND I WAS SOMEWHERE ELSE. The long morning of marching was stretching into an even longer afternoon of standing still. It was a peaceful protest; orderly and insistent, like the ticking of a clock. Just the way Father always wanted. He stood up at the front of the throng, feeding the crowd with his words. The podium shook under the pounding of his fist. Mama stood behind him, where she always stood, hands folded, lashes low, her stillness a mirror for his fervor. On either side of them, Ty and Jerry, Father’s security team, looked like twin linebacker mountains.
The crowd spread away from the courthouse steps and filled two city blocks—but that was nothing. I’d been to marches that filled ten. The crowd was heated as always, but the warmth didn’t reach inside me. The February air had me shivering. I pulled my coat tighter and leaned into my brother.
Above us, the Chicago skyline loomed against gray clouds. Rough concrete pillars stood proud above the courthouse steps, looking weathered and bored, like they were tired of carrying the weight of the law on their shoulders. Just staring at the pillars made me want to rest. With my fingertip in the air and one eye closed, I traced the line of the rooftops. I closed my ears to whatever Father was saying. Chances were, I’d heard it before.
News cameramen pushed past us to the front of the barricades, shouting, “Coming through,” as they tromped on toes and threw elbows. All their cameras pointed at Father. I was glad to be away from the glaring lenses.
People shifted around me. Everyone’s space invaded everyone else’s, and the ripple effect separated me from my brother.
“Stick,” I called, grabbing for his arm. My fingers brushed his sleeve.
Stick turned. “What?”
A couple of people pushed between us. Suddenly I hated the crowds, hated the way everyone pressed up against one another. My heart beat in rhythm with the swaying of shoulders in front of me; out of control.
Stick pushed through to stand beside me. “What is it, Sam?” he asked.
“Nothing, never mind.” I couldn’t explain it. And I couldn’t say I’d gotten scared for no reason. That might have been okay when I was little, but not at thirteen. I’d just rather have been anywhere else than the middle of this street on a cold, wet Saturday afternoon.
Stick stared at me. After a moment, he grinned. “What, you wanna bail?”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Right.” Not even Stick had ever dared leave in the middle of one of Father’s demonstrations.
The crowd pressed in, driving us even farther from the podium.
“Just say the word, my man. They’ll never miss us.”
I shook my head. Tempting, but impossible.
The crowd lurched forward. “That’s right!” they yelled, in answer to something Father said. I tuned in for a second. He was up to the part about how it was 1968, we’d come so far but had so much further to go…and on and on.
So here we all were.
Here we’d all been for as long as I could remember.
I was tired of marching, of protesting. Of leaning my back against a wall and expecting the wall to move. I wanted to rest.
“Stick,” I said. “I want to go home.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.” I shivered and glanced around. Stick smiled and slung his arm across my shoulders. The thick wall of his coat sleeve warmed my ears. “I can take the heat if you can,” he said.
Father would see us leave. He had this uncanny sixth sense—he always knew when we disobeyed him. There’d be hell to pay. But, right then, I didn’t care. Just once, I wanted to do something unexpected.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Stick grinned. “That’s my boy,” he said, thumping my shoulder. Stick liked to shake things up. I always followed the rules and did what I was supposed to. Still, I was so cold, and tired of leaning against this wall. Father would say, you get enough people to lean, and the wall will move. I used to believe it, but I just wasn’t sure anymore.
“C’mon,” Stick said. He plowed through the crowd. I followed, grabbing the back of his coat and stumbling in his wake. The cheers rose above us as we moved farther and farther from Father’s stage.
Then, different sounds surfaced amid the crowd’s claps and cheering. Grunting. The thumping of fist to flesh. Fight sounds. Stick slowed.
“What the hell?” he shouted. He tore out of my grip and rushed forward. A group of white men armed with bats, bottles, and sticks were beating on people at the edge of the crowd. The protesters cried out and shielded themselves with their arms.
Stick burst forward and grabbed one of the white men, pulling him off a gray-haired woman who dropped, crying, to the ground. The man slammed an elbow into Stick’s bony chest. Stick groaned, then grabbed the man by the hair and punched him in the face.
People bumped me from all sides, but I couldn’t move. Several protesters had fallen to the ground, and two came crawling toward me, scrambling to get out of the way.
“We will walk hand in hand,” Father’s voice intoned above the fray. “We will push forward step by step until they see the truth: that all men are created equal, and should be equal under the law.” I turned to look toward Father, but three helmeted cops were pushing their way through the crowd to get to the fight.
“Stick! The cops!” I shouted. His head snapped up. In that split second, the man fighting with him bent down and seized the neck of a broken bottle from the ground. “No!” I cried. The man swung and the bottle connected with Stick’s temple. Stick fell to the ground, and the man stumbled away.
I grabbed Stick’s shoulders. His forehead was bleeding, but he sat up and took my hand.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said as the cops drew closer. The mass of people parted to let them through.
Stick and I glanced at each other, then I pulled him up and we bolted the other way. When the cops came, it wouldn’t matter who had started it. It would always be us up against the bricks.
We ran several blocks, ducking around corners until the sounds of the crowd faded behind us. I was ready to run all the way home, if I had to.
“Wait.” Stick stopped and leaned his arm against the side of a building. He bent over, breathing hard. I circled around. “Far enough,” he huffed. But Stick could run farther and faster than anyone I knew, certainly than me.
The gash on Stick’s forehead dripped blood over his brow and along his cheek. He swiped the thick red stream away from his eye with the back of his wrist.
“I think we have to go to the hospital,” I said, looking closer at his head. “There might be glass in there, or gravel.” One of Chicago’s main hospitals was four or five blocks away, down toward the lakefront.
“It’s fine,” he said, but he swayed and leaned back against the building.
“It’s not fine.” I took his arm and put it over my shoulders. “Come on.”
I walked Stick in through the emergency entrance. The doors slid open for us, and the steady bustle of the city streets gave way to the squeak of gurney wheels and the impatient chattering of waiting people.
People stared as we passed. There was a lot of blood now. On Stick, and on me, where he had leaned his head against me while we walked. Our shirts were stained red at the shoulders.
We approached the main desk. Two blond nurses stood behind the long, curved counter, talking. They looked up at us.
“What happened?” the younger nurse asked.
“He—had an accident,” I said. “A few blocks from here.”
The older nurse studied Stick’s forehead, then looked back at me. Her eyes seemed to hover over the rim of her glasses.
“A few blocks from here?” she asked, her tone skeptical. “You protesting?”
“Yes, ma’am. He fell and hit his head. In the crowd.”
She pressed her lips together and the bun of hair atop her head appeared to tighten. “Well, you’ll just have to wait,” she said, crossing thin arms over her chest. “We’re full right now.” She bent forward and neatened a stack of papers on the desk.
The young nurse fiddled with the edge of her uniform pocket. Then she smoothed her hands over her full hips and spoke timidly. “I could take him to—”
“Have a seat in the chairs. Someone will be with you shortly.”
I started to move back toward the waiting area, but Stick shifted his weight and locked his arm tighter around me, keeping us in place. “Ask how long,” he murmured against my ear.
“How long will it take?” I asked.
She didn’t look up from her charts. “We’ll call you.”
“Is there a waiting list?” I said, addressing the young nurse this time. Her clear blue gaze reassured me somehow. “How many people are ahead of us?” I added. Stick grunted approval.
The young nurse came around the desk and laid her hand against Stick’s cheek. She tilted his head gently to get a better look. “Well,” she said. “We need to get you washed up and stop this bleeding.
“I’ll find a place for you, honey,” she added softly, avoiding the other nurse’s eye. She rolled a wheelchair out from behind the desk and motioned Stick to sit in it. Then she pushed him away down a long hall and into a room. I started to follow.
“You wait right here,” the other nurse said. I turned back. She peered at me over her glasses; her eyes sharpened on me like a bird of prey spying a mouse.
“Where are your parents? You should call them.” She frowned.
“They’re still at the demonstration.”
“Why weren’t you with them?” she asked, eyebrows folding low. I shrugged. No point in trying to explain.
“Come with me.” I followed her down the long hall to another nurses’ station. We passed the room where Stick was. The nurse was wiping the side of his face with a towel.
“Sit down here.” She pointed at a low stool next to the desk. “Can you write?”
“Yes.” I gritted my teeth as I sat down. The nurse pulled out a clipboard and slapped a pen on it.
“Fine. Fill this out.” She thrust the board at me. I took it, but my fingers trembled as I lifted the pen. I tipped it against the page and started to write the date, but it came out a squiggly mess.
“I thought you said you could write.”
I glared up at her. My jaw ached from holding my teeth together so hard. I tried to relax.
“I can. I will.” I didn’t like her breathing down my neck. Maybe I could fill out the form if she’d back off a bit.
“Give me that.” She snatched back the pen and clipboard. I clasped my hands together to stop their trembling.
“Name?”
“Mine or his?”
She sighed. “His.”
I looked toward the door of the room where the nurses had taken Stick. “Steven Tyrone Childs.” No one called him Stick but me.
The nurse wrote it down. “Age and birthday? His.”
“Seventeen. October 8, 1950. Is he going to be all right?”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” she said, without looking up. “Parents’ names?”
I took a deep breath. “Roland and Marjorie Childs.”
The nurse raised her eyes to me as her pen slid through the letters. “Your father is Roland Childs?” I nodded. “Well,” she said, looking back at the clipboard.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, standing up.
The nurse clicked the pen off. “It’s down the hall. Go on, then.” I walked away. Out of her sight, I stopped in the hallway beside the men’s room door and closed my eyes.
“Sam!” Mama’s voice called out. She rushed down the hall toward me, arms open to hug me.
I let her fold me against her. “I’m fine, Mama, I’m fine.” She squished me to her and kissed my head, even though I was much too old to be fussed over. How had she found me so fast? I didn’t even care—at least she was there.
“All right, baby. It’s all right,” she murmured. Father’s heavy footsteps approached. I turned to face him.
“Father,” I said, pulling away from Mama.
Father looked tall in the low-ceilinged hospital corridor. He pulled his hands out of his coat pockets and removed his gloves. “Where’s your brother?” he asked, looking me in the eyes.
I was in trouble.
“They took him in there,” I stammered, and pointed to the room where Stick was.
Father nodded. “Look at me. Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
His gaze was piercing. He was trying to get the truth out of me. After a moment, his eyes softened and he patted me on the shoulder. “All right then. Let me see about your brother.” He strode away and entered Stick’s room.
A moment later, the nurse emerged. “I’ll get the doctor now,” she said. Mama and I followed Father into the room.
Stick lay in the bed, propped up against pillows. He had a thick white gauze pad taped to the side of his head. “I did what I had to do,” he was saying. Father stood at the far side of the bed, near the window, looking out.
“You let your temper go,” Father said. “We’ve talked about this.”
“Father, I—”
“No.” Father turned from the window. “When I went to work with Martin, I took an oath of nonviolence. I’ve upheld it to this day, and I expect you to do the same. No excuses. Is that understood?”
Stick sat up in the bed. “This wasn’t some taunts at a lunch counter! This wasn’t ketchup on their heads! Look at my face! I’m not supposed to fight back to that?”
Father didn’t always need words to make his point. He could have been a preacher—his eyes were like a sermon in and of themselves. Anyway, Stick knew as well as I did that some of the college kids who’d staged sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters in the south had been beaten in addition to having condiments poured over their heads. They’d never fought back.
Today, we had.
Father and Stick stared at each other for a long while. Neither of them spoke.
“I’m going to find the doctor,” Father said finally. His coattails flapped against my shins as he swept past me and out the door.
Stick flopped back against the pillows. Mama stroked his hair. Stick looked past her to me. “What’d you tell him?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“We saw,” Mama said, touching the edge of Stick’s bandage. “From the podium, we saw.”
Stick pushed her fingers away. “I’m not sorry I went after them,” he muttered. “They were beating on innocent people. That old woman.” He closed his eyes and pressed his head deeper into the pillow. “How can he ask me to just stand by and watch it happen?”
“Turn the other cheek,” Mama said softly. She ate up Father’s words like candy, without question.
I had questions, like Stick. I just didn’t know how to ask them.
Father, Mama, and I sat in the waiting room for hours. At some point, Ty and Jerry came and sat with us. I tried not to look at Father, but he was watching me. All my life he’d talked a lot about actions and consequences. I couldn’t even imagine what he thought I deserved for leaving a demonstration without permission. The very fact that he hadn’t said anything to me for several hours was a bad sign.
People came and went from the waiting room. Every once in a while, Father approached the nurses at the desk to ask about Stick. At first, they told him the doctors were busy with other patients and they’d be right with us, but eventually, it got so they saw him coming and got real busy real fast. What was so hard about stitching up someone’s head?
I got up.
“Where are you going?” Mama said.
“Bathroom,” I said, but I didn’t really have a destination in mind.
I walked past the nurses’ desk and down the long hallway. I strolled into the hospital gift shop. The man behind the cash register glanced up from his book and eyed me as I entered. I walked by a wall of get-well cards and a bunch of little baskets with IT’S A BOY and THINKING OF YOU balloons tied to them, then squeezed the foot of a bear with a heart sewn into its chest.
I stopped in front of a basket of fuzzy knit hats and mittens. The mittens made me think of Maxie Brown, the girl I might someday ask to be my girlfriend. If I could ever get her to say more than five words to me at a time. I thought of her standing in the schoolyard, her cold, bare hands balled up in fists at the ends of her sleeves. The sign on the basket read: MITTENS $2.50. HATS $4.00.
I stuck my hand in my pocket. I had a couple dollars on me, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough.
“Put it back.” The voice startled me, and I turned. The old man behind the counter glared at me.
“What?” I said.
“I said, put it back.” He moved out from behind the counter and approached me, shaking his fist.
“Put what back?”
“Don’t give me sass, boy. You think I can’t see?” He came up and grabbed my wrist, yanking my hand out of my pocket. Two dollar bills and some coins dropped onto the floor as he pried open my fingers.
“I don’t understand,” I said. I glanced over his shoulder at the door. “I didn’t take anything.”
“Turn out your pockets, both of them.” I inverted the linings in my other pocket. The man frowned.
“All right, now, get your sticky fingers out of my shop, you little”—he called me a couple of names that would have had Stick tossing fists, or made Father turn cool and stoic as he walked away—“Get out before I call the police.” I stood there and took it.
I stared at my two dollars and change spread on the floor beside me, then at the purple mittens. Father would say, pick up your money, walk out right now, don’t give this man the satisfaction of humiliating you, and take your business elsewhere. Stick would say, if you want the mittens, don’t let this racist jerk stop you from getting what you want.
I bent over and gathered up the spilled cash. I took a deep breath as I straightened out. “I want to buy those mittens. The purple pair.” I pointed.
The man stood there sizing me up. I waited. I’d have to brush past him to get out of the shop, and I didn’t want to get that close. The man picked up the purple mittens and pointed in the direction of the register. He made me walk in front of him until we got to the counter. He moved around behind it, keeping an eye on me all the while. He shoved the mittens into a small paper sack and placed it on the counter.
“Two fifty,” he said. I handed him my two dollars and counted out fifty cents. He recounted it twice, then pointed to the door. “Now get your thieving behind out of my shop, and don’t come back here.”
I reached for the bag and cleared my throat. “Can I have the receipt?” I said. No way I’d let him accuse me when I walked out.
The man ripped the little piece of paper clear of the register without moving his eyes from me and I watched him tuck it into the bag. I swallowed the automatic “thank you” that formed in my throat and left the shop without another word.
In the hallway, I leaned against the wall until my heart stopped racing. I tried to breathe away the tightness in my stomach, but it was stuck there, like someone’s fist. I’d forgotten what happens when you go someplace new. How careful you had to be. Why I wasn’t allowed to go into the white neighborhoods without Father or Mama.
I was still shaking a little as I made my way back to the waiting room. Father leaned forward in his seat when he spotted me. “Sam?” He looked concerned. “You all right?”
“Fine.” I took my seat across from him. He watched as I folded down the top edge of the gift shop bag and placed it in my lap. I was sure he could see my hands trembling, that he could read what had happened by looking at my face. But he didn’t say anything more. He sat back, stroking his cheek with his fingertips and watching me with one of his thinking stares.
It was well after dark before they released Stick and all of us emerged from the hospital. At the curb, Jerry sat behind the wheel of our waiting car. Ty rushed toward us. Why?
A flashbulb exploded in my face. I threw up my arms. Questions burst like fireworks around us.
“Mr. Childs, who do you believe is responsible for your son’s injury?”
“Will you try to find the men who attacked Steven and Sam?”
“Can you comment on your plans to respond to the incident?”
“Sam, Steve, what really happened out there?” One of the reporters leaned in close as he spoke. I could feel his breath on my cheek. My head filled with the sound of his camera snap-snap-snapping. Each flash blazed against my eyelids. Behind my closed eyes, the gift shop man’s blunt fingers pointed, accusing me of being black. The man with the bottle still loomed in my mind, his sneer as sharp as the glass edges that had glinted in the sun.
Ty stepped between the reporter and me, steering me toward the car. I tumbled into the backseat, right after Stick. Mama climbed in next. She slammed the door and held her handbag over the window to block the photographs. Father stood outside, Ty next to him, long enough to make a statement to the hungry newsmen.
Jerry glanced back from the driver’s seat, his expression tense. We didn’t used to have security for the demonstrations—Father didn’t like the way it looked, like maybe he was afraid. But lately, there had been letters. Phone calls. Threats, more of them and harsher than the usual. I scrunched deeper into my seat thinking about the calls, especially. How scary it could be to pick up the phone and just hear someone breathing at the other end. Scarier than if they said something mean, because at least then you knew what they were thinking. Last week, Mama told me I wasn’t allowed to answer the phone anymore, even if I was home alone. Especially then. I shivered. Today, I was glad for Ty and Jerry.
When the media moment ended, Father and Ty piled in and Jerry drove off. Ty checked the rearview mirrors repeatedly, making sure we weren’t being followed. Jerry’s wide shoulders hunched forward to make room for Father, who was sitting between them. We rode in tense silence, unusual for us. Ty was the friendly, chatty sort, even when he was working; not to mention Mama, who could carry on a conversation with the car itself if she felt like it. But she sat quietly, balancing her handbag on her knees. Stick and I were in big-time trouble if not even Mama could think of anything to say.
None of the newspeople followed us. As we rounded the corner onto our street, I let out a huge breath. Home. Just seeing the house drew some tension out of me, though the windows were dark, the curtains drawn as if no one had been around for a while. In the deep evening shadows the siding paint looked gray instead of cream. Our plan to come home early had backfired completely.
We said good night to Ty and Jerry in our driveway. As we walked up the path to the porch, I had an odd urge to climb onto the long slope of the roof and lie there, alone and away from everything.
“Samuel, go to your room,” Father instructed as soon as we got inside. “Steven, couch.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. I shuffled to the bedroom I shared with Stick and closed the door. Ten loose wooden building blocks lay scattered across my desk. I scooped them all up. It was definitely a ten-block kind of day. Breathing deeply, I forced myself to relax and steady my hand. Then I approached our castle.
The block castle towered over the foot of my bed, stretching so tall, it nearly touched the ceiling and so wide, we could only partly open my half of the closet door. I cradled the blocks in my left arm, picking up one at a time to place it. One, at the base by the main entrance annex. Two, at eye level, completing the royal arch. Three, right at the corner by the bed, sticking off like a gargoyle. Four.
I used to build for fun, for the sheer pleasure of crafting a miniature warehouse, office, palace, stable, restaurant out of rubble.
Five.
Lately, it was more like a way to leave the real world for someplace better. Just for a minute, I could focus only on the tower, only on the placement of each block.
Six. Seven.
As I reached above my head to set a block near the apex, I had to take such care not to knock any walls over that there wasn’t room for anything else in my head, no space to even breathe.
Eight. Nine.
From the living room, the sounds alternated between Father’s low rumbling tone and Stick’s occasional grunting response. I could hear Father speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words. He never raised his voice, no matter how mad he got.
Ten. I held the last block, thinking of where to put it. The perfectly edged rectangle felt good in my hand. Familiar and solid, almost big enough to cover my palm. We had some blocks that were cubes, and a few triangles for decoration, but mostly it was this kind. I bounced it on my fingers. Maybe I would save it for Stick.
I flopped onto my bed and closed my eyes, imagining the world inside our castle.
Stick and I used to lie on our beds after lights-out and play the game together, making up elaborate lives and characters, before we got too old to make-believe. My wall was covered with photos of famous buildings—the Wrigley Building, Marina City, the Egyptian pyramids, the Guggenheim Museum, the Taj Mahal, the palace of Versailles. The block tower could be any or all of them, and we had invented stories about the worlds that might exist inside each of their walls.
Stick pretended not to be as into it as I was, but he went along, adding pieces to the tower here and there when he felt like it. Anyway, he was the reason we still had the thing.
We’d started it when I was nine. I wanted to build a really big castle. Stick said okay, and we spent an entire day setting up an elaborate floor plan and building the base and everything. By the time we used every last block we had in the house, we had only built up a few inches from the ground.
“Let’s build something else,” I’d said, ready to tear down the walls and start over on something more manageable.
“No way,” Stick had said.
“But we can’t finish it,” I said.
“Sure we can, we just need more blocks.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know. We’ll get some.”
“That’ll take forever.” I started to break apart the blocks, but Stick dragged me away, pulling me over by his bed.
“It’ll be worth it,” he insisted. I didn’t understand what he meant.
“Come on, let’s go outside,” he’d said. So we went to play in the yard, and later whenever I mentioned tearing it down, Stick would say, “We’re keeping it.”
Stick was always like that—stubborn and patient. A lot of things ended up going his way because I’d get bored with the fight and give in.
I opened my eyes and studied the tower, admiring the way it loomed over my bed. Stick had been right back then. It was the neatest project we’d ever worked on. Definitely worth it.
Stick entered the room, slamming the door behind him. Frames banged against the wall. Stick’s waterfall poster trembled, making it look like the water was actively pounding the rocks. The block tower, too, seemed to leap in surprise.
Stick yanked open the closet door, his elbow jabbing near the tower.
“Watch it!”
“Oh, now he doesn’t want it to fall,” Stick muttered. I slipped the last block under my pillow. Apparently he wasn’t in the mood.
“How bad was it?” I asked. Stick shot me a look that made me want to crawl under the bed. “What did he say?”
Stick shook his head slightly but didn’t answer.
“So, it’s my turn now?” If I’d managed to forget reality for a second, I was fully back now.
Stick threw himself down on his bed. “No. You’re off the hook.”
“Yeah, right.” I dragged myself up and trudged toward the door.
“Sam. You don’t have to go out there.”
I turned around. Stick lay across his bed, eyes closed, arms above his head. The gauze covering his forehead had come a little loose. I could see the stitched black knots underneath, holding his cut together.
“For real?” I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me. I sat back down on the bed.
“Don’t worry about it. He thinks it was all my idea,” Stick said. “You’re still his good little boy.”
I laced my fingers together. “Didn’t you tell him?”
“No reason to. It’s covered. He expects this from me.”
I got up. “I’m going to tell him it was my idea.” Stick always stood up for me, tried to keep things from me, but I could be brave too.
“Sam, don’t be stupid. It won’t stop him from being mad at me. We’d just both be in trouble, is all.”
“I can handle it.” I wasn’t sure I could, but Stick didn’t have to know that.
“He wouldn’t believe you, anyway.”
“Stick—”
“Shut up, already! My head is killing me,” he snapped.
Stick turned over, facing away from me, and lay in his bed without moving. It was too early to sleep, but I threw on some pajamas and climbed into bed. If he didn’t want to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk to him.
I had fallen into a calm and fuzzy place, almost asleep, when I heard muffled sniffing sounds coming from Stick’s side of the room. I woke up instantly, alarmed. Stick never cried.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he whispered.
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure he was even talking to me. So I lay still, in the dark.