24 TAMAR

I CLENCH MY EYES AND steel myself for the blow, but it doesn’t come. All I can feel is Daddy’s hot breath billowing out near my face. I take a step back and peel open one eye to look at him, surprised to see Mr. Milton holding tightly to each of his arms.

“In this house, even if the women speak out of turn, we don’t hit them,” he says angrily and with just a hint of surprise. Daddy grunts and snatches his hands away, only to trudge up the stairs. I don’t look at him as he goes. I don’t flinch when Mr. Milton lifts my chin up with his hands, peering down to get a better look at my thinly veiled bruise.

“He do that?” he asks.

I nod quickly, an infinitesimal move he can feel, even if he can’t see it. A tear teases the corner of my eye and I squeeze my eyes shut before it can be fully born.

Mr. Milton sighs loudly. “I had my suspicions.”

He turns to his son. “Norman, pick up that pipe.”

“But…,” Norman protests, and immediately bends down to do as he’s told.

“We’ll get your arrangements settled for your trip to Atlanta the day after tomorrow. We observe the Sabbath quite strictly here.”

“Of course,” I croak, my voice choked with emotion and gratitude. “Thank you.”


I tell myself that guilt will keep me from sleeping and that if I never sleep again that penance will be enough, but I do sleep, the evidence of which is clear when I’m jarred awake by clicks against my window. The taps come sporadically, too far apart to be the hands of a clock, sharp interruptions in the still darkness of my room.

Moonlight from the window pools in the middle of the floor, bright enough that I don’t need a lantern to see the ground below.

I’m shocked, not by Fayard’s presence, dark and unashamed in the bushes, but by my ability to keep breathing as I take him in. It feels like it only takes a breath for him to scale the magnolia just outside the window, and just one more before he’s standing right in front of me, wincing as he sets both feet down. He bends his knee a few times. Instinctively, I reach out to him, to touch him and soothe that pain like it wasn’t me who caused it. I stare at my rebellious arm and snatch it back.

“I want my money,” he says plainly.

“I know.” I don’t ask how he got here or how he found me.

“I. Want. My. Money,” he repeats.

“I—” I start in on my excuse and notice the black eye to mirror mine, the split lip, the blood on his shirt, the dirt at the hems of his pants. “What happened to you?” I reach out a hand again, this time to touch his face. He knocks it away.

“Don’t pretend that you care,” he spits. His voice is low, but these walls may be thin. I can’t be too sure.

“I do care. I just… I am sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I beat Spark for a cool five minutes for stealing from me before I figured out he wasn’t lying. Do you understand how long that is in a real fight?”

I shake my head.

“No, you don’t, ’cause you’re a high post girl and you’re used to bloodless competition. You’re the worst kind of people. High class folks who talk about ‘us’ but are really just out for themselves. I bet you weren’t ever really going to Spelman, just sold me some story so you could make it to Slick downstairs with a little change for yourself. What you think you’re gonna do with the money? Buy a new dress? Some sheet music for that sad instrument you play?”

“It isn’t sad,” I say weakly, glad for the barrage of insults. I deserve it.

“It is! Just as sad as you, so beat-down you can’t tell when somebody sees you. You couldn’t wait a day for me to figure something out? You couldn’t leave me an address so I could write? Come and see you?” he finishes in a rush.

“I don’t want your help!” I cry, trying hard to keep my voice down. “I didn’t have time. I could wait all day, all year, all my life and look up and find it’s passed me by from all the waiting.” I spit, “I might as well be a slave.” I’m rambling about possibilities like I’ve got any idea what comes next. He’s a stranger, but there’s this familiarity that is so scary to me. “I’m not making any sense,” I add, my tongue slow and stupid with guilt.

“So you steal instead?”

“I didn’t mean to do that! I’d lost an earring and I thought that maybe I’d dropped it when I was in the room, your room, and the money was just there. You were gone and I knew there was no way I could say goodbye or ask you and it just seemed like the universe was giving me a chance to get what I really wanted.”

“And you never thought about me?” The pain in his voice is tangible; it rises at the end, accusing me. I know the question is deeper than a thought. He saw what I saw. I’m not just a girl who got greedy and he’s not just a boy on a train. There is something else pulsating between us, real and elemental, like ocean currents.

A part of me wants to give in to it, align myself with him, become we instead of I, take a chance. The other part of me knows that this can’t be right. This time, this place, this moment is off-balance, the wrong boat for us to climb aboard together. We haven’t figured out who we are by ourselves, let alone together.

“I just met you,” I say, and even as the words come out of my mouth, I know it is the biggest lie I’ve ever told. His shoulders fall inward, crumpling from the weight of my betrayal.

He closes the space between us and leans forward, his lips just a finger’s width from mine. Our eyes meet, and my heart stops, waiting for the kiss that doesn’t happen. He backs away, anticipation leaking out like steam from a kettle. Suddenly I ache like I’ve never ached for a kiss, for his arms to wrap around me. I’m desperate to feel the sense of rightness that was there when he kissed me, before the visions, something other than this painful loneliness digging into my body and scooping me out.

This will be the last time I see him. I know this like I know the sun will rise. This is the last time we will be together, and it will be my life’s great tragedy. Not this house with Norman, not Daddy’s superior love for Patience, but tonight in this little room in North Carolina with a porter boy.

I’m surprised at how quickly I give in. I’d hoped that maybe I was stronger than this. I didn’t want to be the kind of girl who folds after a kiss. I was wrong. I find the money bag packed neatly next to my clothes in the chifforobe.

Fayard shakes his head, a slow, pitying movement, and allows himself to collapse onto the windowsill, his bad leg jutting out like a punctuation mark. He opens his mouth once and closes it again, thinking, and then says, “You don’t have to hurt people just because somebody hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

I’m not sure how to answer him. Sometimes I act without thinking, and sometimes I overthink so much that the decision gets made for me, but I know I won’t ever get over hurting him. I hand him the bag just as the first rays of dawn start to light up the sky, inky blue shot through with violet and lavender.

“So where are you headed?” I ask, wanting to tease out just a few more minutes with him.

“I’m a city kid. Chicago, maybe? Baltimore.”

There’s this rising halo of light around him as he’s indulging me. I have no right to keep him here or to subject him to whatever punishment my father would inflict if he found him at my window, but I can’t let him go. Not yet.

“I’m not going to Spelman.”

He blinks hard.

“I don’t have to marry Norman. I messed that up for Daddy. But he’ll never pay for school now.”

“What’s your plan?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Go back home. Maybe I can stay with my sister and teach music until her baby comes.”

He frowns and leans against the windowsill, like he’s tired of the conversation, and my stomach drops because I know this is it.

“I’m gonna keep this quick because there’s no need to drag it out. I’m not saying I forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold a grudge on the road. There’s enough money here to get us set up for a little while with my mother’s cousin in Harlem. We won’t even have to share a room if you don’t want to,” he adds with a slight smile.

“You would do that for me?” I ask, my voice so small I can barely hear it over the subtle roll of thunder outside.

He opens his mouth but the thunder snatches it, and then I realize the sound is in the house. Someone is banging on the front door.

We both turn to the window and see a girl standing in front of the house, huge with child, her hand on her hip like the handle of an angry teapot.

“I guess Norman had his own plans too,” I add.

There’s rumbling inside, and I’m glad I locked my door. It only takes a few minutes for the scene to blow fully out of control as the girl’s father, rifle in hand, gets into a screaming match with Mr. Milton right out there on the front lawn.

“So?” Fay asks, his eyes pinned on me rather than the ungodly scene below. “Will you come with me?”

The sun is up now, the halo on full blast, surrounding Fay with a spotlight that must be coming from God himself.

I don’t need to think about my answer this time. I kiss him and my whole body is a live wire, a plucked string vibrating to the tune of possibility. I pull away and run to the dresser, ready to fill the world with music.