1965
I woke up in darkness not knowing where I was. My head felt as though it had been cracked open. I heard myself groan, and someone leaned over me. Brushed a hand over my forehead. Made me wince.
“Oh, thank God! She’s waking up, guys!”
“Where are we?” I asked. “Are we moving?”
“We’re looking for the hospital. You fell. Do you remember falling?”
“I tripped.” My body jerked at the memory of flying through the air. I was beginning to make sense of where I was. What was around me. My head rested on Jocelyn’s lap. We were in the back seat of Paul’s car. “Am I bleeding?” I asked.
“No, but you were knocked out.”
I shut my eyes. All I wanted to do was go to sleep.
“Don’t sleep!” she said, pinching my shoulder through my blouse.
“Ouch. Stop it.” I knew there was no energy at all in my voice. I wasn’t even sure Jocelyn heard me. When I shut my eyes again, I saw the giant cross on fire. “I hated the…” I hunted for the right word. Couldn’t find it.
“The rally?” she prompted.
“Yes. I hated it.”
“We all hated it,” Paul said from somewhere to my right. I turned my head and could just make out his profile in the darkness. He was driving, focused on the road.
“I see the hospital,” the other boy said. I couldn’t remember his name. But I saw lights from the hospital through the window above my head. Round Hill Hospital, where I’d had my tonsils out and my hand stitched up after I cut it carving a boat out of balsa wood. I closed my eyes. The hospital would take care of me. I could sleep.
The next thing I knew, Jocelyn was squeezing my shoulder, telling me to wake up. “Open your eyes,” she said. “Don’t sleep.”
Everything was the same. The same jut of her chin above me. The same dark car ceiling. The same stop-and-go motion that was making me nauseous.
“Why are we leaving?” I asked. “Did they … fix me already?”
“No, honey,” Jocelyn said, and I thought, “Honey”? Why is she calling me honey? Why did she bite off the words like she was angry? “Once they found out you’re one of ‘those SCOPE kids’ they said you have to go to the Negro hospital. ‘The colored hospital,’ they called it.”
“I don’t know where that is,” I muttered. That seemed so wrong. “I’m from Round Hill. I had my hand taken out there.”
“Your hand taken out?” Jocelyn asked, then she spoke across me to the boys. “She’s delirious or something,” she said.
“I’m driving as fast as I can,” Paul said.
“It’s in Carlisle,” the other boy said, loudly, so I could hear him. Chip. His name was Chip.
Carlisle? Carlisle was a million miles away. I shut my eyes. I wouldn’t let Jocelyn wake me up again.
At the hospital, they kept me awake when all I wanted to do was sleep. They shined lights in my eyes and put ice on my head and gave me pills to lessen the pain. A nurse sat next to me, smiling and talking. I tried to tune her out and sleep, but gave up after a while. I got my words mixed up when I spoke to her. I wanted to tell her about SCOPE but couldn’t remember the name of it. She knew, though. She said her auntie had been one of the protesters in front of the courthouse. She was proud of her.
I had no way of reaching my SCOPE team, but I assumed they knew where I was, since Paul, Jocelyn, and Chip had brought me here. “Just you don’t worry ’bout it,” the nurse said. So I didn’t.
Sunday was a blur, but when I woke up Monday morning, I felt almost fine. I sat up in the narrow hospital bed and ate eggs and grits and talked to my roommate, who was there for a broken leg. “You white, ain’t ya,” she said. “Why you here?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” I said, and I explained about the white hospital turning me away. The more my head cleared, the angrier I got about that.
The nurse told me someone from SCOPE would pick me up that afternoon. She said she was “truly honored” to have me as her patient and thanked me for the work we were doing. I was suddenly glad the white hospital had turned me away then. Nobody there would be thanking me.
Win walked into my room right after lunch. I lit up, seeing him, but he didn’t smile.
“You’re a fool, girl,” he said, pulling a chair next to my bed and sitting down. He spoke quietly, with a glance at the curtain pulled around my roommate’s bed. “What were y’all thinking, going to a Klan rally? That mob could’ve killed you. You’re lucky you got away with just a lump on your head.”
“Nobody did this to me,” I said. I touched the tender spot on my forehead and tried not to let the pain show in my face. “I did it to myself. I tripped.”
“So I heard. Running to get away from the mob. Greg lit into Paul and the others. He’ll probably go easy on you since you’re hurt, but you’d best have some remorse.”
It all came back to me. The woman collecting money in the pail. How she lost her smile when she saw Jocelyn’s SCOPE button. The angry spectators. The enormous flaming cross. Uncle Byron. I looked at Win. “It was nasty,” I said.
“Mm. Not surprised to hear it.”
“The sheriff from Round Hill was there. Byron Parks. He’s my father’s lifelong best friend. He’s my godfather!” I shook my head, still distressed at seeing Uncle Byron in that ugly crowd. I thought I should write to Daddy to tell him Uncle Byron had been there, but then I’d have to admit that I’d been there and he’d come to get me. Assuming he could find me.
“Maybe your father was there, too,” Win suggested.
I rolled my eyes in annoyance. The movement made my head throb. “My father would never be a part of the Klan,” I said.
“You’re naïve.”
“You’re jaded,” I countered. “My father’s not like that.”
“You told me he didn’t want you in SCOPE,” he said.
“He didn’t want me in SCOPE because he was afraid I’d get hurt, not because he’s a racist.”
“If you say so.”
I frowned at him. “You’re so—” I struggled for a word. “—distrustful,” I said. “Of whites, I mean.”
He smiled. “It’s just been my experience that white folk can put on a nice, happy-to-meet-you mask, but underneath it they’re the same as the worst racist on the block.”
“Is that what you think about me?”
He studied me from behind his glasses, then shook his head. “No, Ellie. Uh-uh. I believe you’re the real deal. You and the other freedom fighters … nobody stays in a house with a damn outhouse unless they’re serious about this work.”
I felt relieved that he believed in me. I respected him and wanted his approval.
“How’d you get here?” I asked.
“Borrowed Paul’s car. I’m taking you back to the school as soon as they say you can go. Greg’s got a new house for you to stay at, but he wants you to move around every couple of days, like he said. You’re a target. Those Derby County honkies thought you were a true North Carolina girl, but you turned out to be a rebel and now they’re out to get you.”
I wondered if I should just stay at the school, like Jocelyn. I thought of the four little girls in my room at the Dawes house, how they’d slept in their innocence while the cross burned outside the bedroom window. “I’m putting my host families in danger,” I said quietly.
“Greg’ll move you so fast from one house to another that no one’ll know where you are,” he said. He looked toward the window. Chewed his lower lip. “Another subject,” he said. “We decided we’re going to have one of those courthouse protests every week. Every Friday. The one we had was pretty good. At least it brought people together. We’ll have more folks next time, and more the time after that.”
“I love that idea,” I said, though I’d thought the protest had been better than just “pretty good.” I thought of the singing and how people really got into it. How Greg told me I had a good voice. “They’re still not going to open registration before the bill gets signed,” I said. “They won’t open up no matter what we do.”
“You’re right, they won’t. But we’ll make a point and we’ll get folks excited about it. Get them jazzed. So when the time comes to actually register, they’re ready.”
“It’s so frustrating, encouraging them when they can’t register.”
“And we’ll need more than just songs,” he said, looking toward the window again. His mind wasn’t here in my room. He was already at that protest in his head. “We need signs,” he said. “And a little self-righteous anger.”
“But peaceful anger,” I said, and he laughed. I loved it when he laughed. It was so rare.
And then he quickly sobered, as I expected he would. “What good did we do, Ellie? Nice colored people singing freedom songs while white people walk all over them?”
“Dr. King would say we did some good,” I said.
Win looked away from me again, his gaze toward the window. I couldn’t read his face. “I’m not sure his way is the best way anymore,” he said.
Even to me, that sounded blasphemous, but we had no time to debate, as the nurse came back in my room with a bottle of painkillers and a bag with my clothes. Win got to his feet. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” he said, and the nurse looked at him, then me, then him again. She shook her head.
“You two be careful out there,” she said.