1965
The doctor in the emergency room was the same man who’d been on duty when I came to the ER after the Klan rally. He remembered me. Mr. Hunt and little Benny stayed in the waiting room, while Miss Georgia and I each held one of DeeDee’s hands as the doctor stitched her cheek. She was a little trouper, holding still, eyes squeezed shut. She would have a scar on her pretty face. That broke my heart and when I looked up at Miss Georgia’s tear-filled eyes, I knew it broke hers as well.
We rode home in the Hunts’ truck, DeeDee and her parents in the cab, Benny and me cuddled together between bales of hay in the bed. We stared up at the full silver moon and the blanket of stars above us. Benny fell asleep against me, wiped out from the events of the night.
The doctor had given DeeDee something to help her sleep, and she was already conked out by the time Miss Georgia tucked her into bed, while I read to Benny in his room. I left him asleep and was about to go to bed myself when I heard the light tap on the screen door and found Win on the front porch.
“How is she?” he whispered.
I stepped onto the porch, shutting the screen door behind me. “She’s going to have a reminder of tonight for the rest of her life, I’m afraid,” I said, running my finger down my own cheek.
He looked at me grimly. “In more ways than one, most likely.” He nodded toward the steps. “Wanna sit?” he asked. “You can see the moon from here.”
I sat down near him on the top step. “Have you ever been through anything like this?” I asked. “What happened tonight?”
He shrugged. “A few times. This was just a skirmish in comparison to some others I’ve been through,” he said. “This was nothing really. Poor DeeDee got the brunt of it.”
“I think they were aiming at me.”
He nodded. “They don’t like seeing white and Black together, uh-uh. That taps into something primal in them. Sets them off.”
I sighed. Looked over at him. “Are we … the white students … are we just making things worse?”
“What do you think?”
I looked down the road toward the raggedy little house where he was staying. The way the moonlight settled on the roof made it look almost pretty, like old silver. “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe in some ways. But … I think Black people need to know that a lot of us are on their side.”
For the longest time, he said nothing. The sound of the cicadas rose and fell in the fields and trees.
“Why are you doing this, Ellie?” he asked finally. “It’s got to be costing you. Your father last night…” He shook his head. “That was one angry man. I mean, he was holding it all in, I could tell, but I could still see the sparks flying off him.”
“He’s a really good person,” I said. “He’s just worried about me, that’s all.”
“So why?” he pressed. “Why are you here?”
I thought of Aunt Carol and how she influenced me with her passion and commitment, but I knew my love and admiration for her was not the complete answer to Win’s question, and tears started running down my cheeks before I even knew they were coming. I turned my head away from Win, but he knew. The moonlight wouldn’t let me hide anything tonight.
He let me cry for a while before he asked, “You going to tell me what’s got you like this?”
I’d never told a soul the truth about Mattie, but suddenly I knew I had to. I couldn’t carry it around with me any longer, and I trusted Win. I swallowed hard. Brushed the tears away, then smoothed my hands over the hem of my skirt, my fingers trembling.
“When I was little, we had a maid,” I said, glancing at him before focusing on the way the moonlight played on the cornfield across the road. “Her name was Louise. I didn’t have many friends back then. I was extremely shy and we lived—still live—on this country road not close to the other kids in my school. I wanted to fit in with the popular girls, but I just didn’t. So, whenever school was closed for a holiday, Louise would bring her daughter, Mattie, with her to our house. I knew Mattie was … well, I was old enough to understand she was slow. Later I realized she was mildly mentally retarded, but all I knew then was that I loved playing with her. She was fun. So inventive—she didn’t seem to see limitations, you know?” I looked at him and he nodded as if he understood. “And she was always so positive. It was like she didn’t know she was different.” My throat tightened, but I smiled at the memory of Mattie trying to learn to ride my bike on our dirt road. Mattie trying to run through the kudzu. “I really loved her.” I glanced at Win again. His face was unreadable. “There was a lake by our house,” I said. “Little Heaven Lake. Mattie and I would fish in it and catch absolutely nothing.” I chuckled to myself. “I don’t think there was anything in that lake to catch. But it was just fun, being with her. She didn’t care that I was shy.” I knotted my hands together in my lap until they hurt. “So, sometimes in winter, the lake would freeze. Not often. I haven’t seen it frozen in years, but that year—I was eleven—it froze, and some kids would skate on it. Just on their shoes. Nobody had skates in Round Hill. This was during the Christmas holiday, so Mattie came to our house with Louise, and she and I went to the lake to play, and these two very popular girls from my school were there. They looked down their noses at Mattie and me but then they called me over to skate with them. To hold hands and spin around, that sort of thing. I was so thrilled they asked me. I wanted to ask Mattie to join us, but one of them said flat out, ‘Don’t call that … colored retard over here.’” Of course, she hadn’t said “colored” and I was sure Win knew I was cleaning up the language for his sake. “I hate myself for this, Win,” I said. “I hate myself for every part of it. And I’ve never told anyone before and I don’t know why I’m telling you. I just—”
“Go on,” he said.
“The girls … the popular girls wanted to go to one of their houses and they asked me to come. I couldn’t believe they were actually inviting me. But I looked over at Mattie and she was skating toward the thin ice and I called to her to say I was leaving for a little while and to stay on the thicker ice, and she nodded, and then I just left with the girls. We walked toward one of their houses, but I really couldn’t hear a thing they were saying because my mind was back on Mattie. I kept picturing how she must’ve felt, watching me walk off with other friends when I’d come to the lake with her. And I wasn’t sure she understood what I meant about staying off the thin ice. So finally I stopped walking and I told the girls I had to go home. I ran back down the path to the lake and Mattie had fallen in the water. She was struggling to get out. She was already too exhausted to even call to me, and she grabbed on to the ice but it kept breaking. I laid down on the ice to try to pull her out. She was crying … I’d never seen her cry before … and her wet clothes were dragging her deeper. Then the ice gave out under me, too. I fell in. I grabbed on to Mattie and tried to get both of us to the bank. There was this old farmer who lived near the lake and he heard me shouting and came running. He saw me in the water, trying to pull Mattie to safety. He had a hoe and I was able to grab on and he pulled me out, but Mattie was under the water by then. She was gone.” My breath caught in my throat. Win was quiet. Waiting. “And the worst part,” I said, twisting my hands together in my lap, “was that the farmer told everyone how I risked my life trying to save this little colored girl. And it was written up in the paper. My mother still has the article. They called me the ‘heroic Round Hill girl.’”
I looked up at the sky, remembering how my mother cried when they gave Louise the news. “Louise left us soon after,” I said. “She was destroyed. She hugged me and kissed me and thanked me for trying to save her daughter.”
My tears started again and I rubbed them away with my hands. I wished Win would say something. Touch me. Rest a hand on my shoulder. Absolve me. But he was still as stone next to me. I looked over at him, wiping my eyes with my fingers. “It wasn’t really a conscious decision,” I said, “SCOPE. I wasn’t sitting around looking for an opportunity to do something good, but when I heard about it, I … it felt like a way to…”
“Atone.” He finished my sentence for me.
“Yes, though it’s become much more than that to me,” she said. “I see the … injustice. I want to be part of fixing it.”
“Got to be hard to live with that guilt,” he said.
I nodded. I liked that he didn’t try to take that guilt away.
“You’ve never told anyone?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why’re you telling me?” he asked.
Why was I? “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just burdened you with a—”
“No. Hush.” He knocked my shoulder lightly with his. “If I can’t handle that burden then I’m not much of a man. Or a friend.”
I looked at him. He wasn’t going to touch me. He wouldn’t make that move himself. I reached over to lay my hand on his where it rested on his knee.
He lifted my hand and moved it back to my own thigh. I felt my cheeks grow hot.
“Listen, Ellie,” he said with a sigh. “I care about you. And I think … I know … you care about me. But we can’t let it be any more than that.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, locking my hands together in my lap. I felt my cheeks color and was glad the moon was no brighter than it was. “I don’t think of you as more than a friend.” Did I? Was I lying?
“I think you’re really pretty,” he said. “I think you’re beautiful, actually. You’re smart and you have a big heart. I watch you when we canvass, how you’re genuinely interested in the people and their problems. And you don’t give up on SCOPE even when you’re scared or have to sleep in a bed with a dozen little kids or your father tries to drag you away. I admire you.” He looked away as though he might have said too much. After a moment, he turned back to me. “I don’t have a problem with Black and white mixing in general, but it’s not right for me,” he said. “Not how I feel about this … path … this Black path … I have to be on right now. My people have to stick together. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Honestly, he was overwhelming me with so many words. I could barely sort one word from another. He thought I was beautiful? He admired me? I did understand, though. What he said fit who he was. I realized in that moment that I’d been hoping, deep down where I didn’t understand my own feelings, for something more from him. I should have known better.
“Yes, I understand,” I said.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. We sat facing the cornfield. The man in the moon seemed like a benevolent third person, sprinkling the tops of the cornstalks with light.
“I’m glad you told me about Mattie,” Win said finally. “Glad you felt like you could. It helps me understand that … darkness I see in you sometimes.”
“I didn’t know I had a darkness,” I said.
He smiled. “Yes, you do. It’s a mile wide and a mile long.” He got to his feet, readying to leave. “What happened with your friend Mattie might have been your first reason for joining SCOPE,” he said, “but you’ve done enough work now. You’ve repaid that debt. Now you’re staying because you’re a good person. Give yourself some credit, Ellie, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I sat on the steps, watching him walk down the road to the small, run-down cabin where I could see a kerosene lantern flickering in the window, maybe to guide him home. Then I got to my feet and tiptoed my way through the dark house to DeeDee’s bedroom, where the little girl remained in her deep, drugged, sleep.
I didn’t realize I was still wearing Win’s shirt until I began to undress for bed. It was green and short-sleeved. Soft. It smelled of soap and sweat. I decided to sleep in it. I slipped off my skirt. My loafers. I made sure the wooden dowels were in place at the windows. Then I lay down on the mattress in the closet and the evening came back to me in a rush. I’d felt such joy at the beginning of the protest. So many people showed up. So much enthusiasm. Such passion. The song circle was wonderful. When the heckling started, it had seemed so mild at first … until it wasn’t.
But what I would remember best about the night was talking to Win on the porch. Telling him everything I’d carried around with me for the past nine years.
Two hours later, I was still awake. I barely knew what I was doing when I got up. I put my skirt back on. My shoes. I left the house half in a daze. The full moon lit up the rutted road. The cornstalks on my left, the whiskery weeds on my right. I walked like I knew the path well, like I’d made this walk a dozen times before. I arrived at the little unpainted house, the old wood silver in the moonlight. I knew which window was his, but I had no intention of knocking on the glass. No intention of waking him. I lowered myself into the spiky weeds beneath his window, my back pressed against the side of the house, my arms wrapped around my shins. I leaned my head against the old wood and felt his nearness. When I shut my eyes, a sense of longing filled my chest. I let it come, let it go. This was enough, I thought. This closeness. I didn’t dare want anything more.