I’m not sure if I ever believed in God, but right now I was praying that Wayne Cooley would answer the door. It had already been a couple of minutes without any response. I pressed the buzzer a third time for good measure. Finally, I saw him running down the stairs in shorts and socks. He pulled open the glass door to the building. He stood on the inside, I on the outside when no immediate invitation was forthcoming.
“Sarah? Is that you?” He looked at his wrist, then realized it was bare. “What time is it?”
“It’s late. I know. I’m sorry,” I blurted. I didn’t want to answer the time question because it wasn’t a decent hour for company by any polite standard. And if there was one thing I knew about the Cooleys, it was that they followed all the rules of etiquette spoken and unspoken. “I just didn’t know where else to go.”
Wayne’s face was a squint of confusion. “Go?”
I hoisted my duffle so he could see it. “Dad kicked me out.”
“What?” Realization dawned. He stepped back and motioned me inside. “Come on upstairs.”
I followed him up the steps all the while looking around. It was a new brick apartment building in Brooklyn. I wondered if there were other Negroes here. Or why he was living on the westside. I didn’t ask anything about any of that, just watched him fiddle with a key and the door. After I dropped my duffle, I walked into the living room. There was a woman sitting on the plaid couch. She had a glass in her hand. Probably had beer in it. She looked very comfortable. In an instant I understood why he’d taken so long to come down, why he had no shoes, why he had no watch. Oh, God. This was a very bad time to have come.
“You have company,” I sputtered as I tried to back out of the apartment, but Wayne grabbed my arm. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered for his ears only as he steered me back inside and closed the door behind us.
“Mary, this is Sarah. She’s my sister’s best friend.”
“Hi. Um. You have the same name as his mom?” It was probably the stupidest question I could have asked.
This much younger Mary put her glass down on the table. “Wayne, I’ll go. This doesn’t appear to be a good time.”
“You don’t have to—” Wayne protested.
She waved a hand. Interrupted before he could say more. “Call me later. I’ll get a bus. Don’t worry.”
Before I could object or Wayne could get words out convincing her otherwise, Mary put on a rain jacket and slipped rubber galoshes over her shoes. She picked up an umbrella I hadn’t seen and let herself out. After his door closed a second time, I spun on my heel at a loss for what to do.
“I didn’t mean—”
His wave was as nonchalant as Mary’s had been.
“She’s just a girl. We’ve been dating a couple of months. She’s not as important to me as you are. Don’t worry about Mary. She can take care of herself. Answer my question. What do you mean your dad kicked you out?”
All the hurt and humiliation I’d felt over the last hours landed on my shoulders like the kind of yoke you saw on those historic black-and-white pictures of oxen trying to tame the Midwest soil. I wanted to tell Wayne everything. Like no one else I could think of, he wouldn’t judge me. He’d probably even make me feel better. But first, I needed just a little more space and time from the situation. Time to absorb what had actually happened.
Maybe even something to make me feel…less. I’d never told anyone, but over the last few months, I’d snuck a beer here and there from the fridge. I’m sure Momma and Daddy suspected Rainey. Neither one of them would say anything to her, though. I think they were a little afraid of her, too.
“Can I have one of those beers?” I gestured to the leftovers on the coffee table.
Wayne eyed me. “You’re not eighteen.”
“I feel like I’m forty.”
He looked me up and down again. Decided something. Then went and got me a beer and a second one for himself. Without saying a word, he went back to the kitchen for a bottle opener and pried the caps off. I picked up the small circle of gold colored metal, then ran the pads of my fingers along the grooved edges. Looking around, I really took in the apartment. There was the couch I was sitting on. A brown La-Z-Boy was near the living room window. It was dark, but I could see the street lights filtered through the trees.
“Are you going to put something up over the window?”
“You sound like Ma. It’s the third floor. No one can see in.”
His third floor apartment in this new brick building was located not more than a few miles from my parents’ house. It was convenient considering what had happened with my father kicking me out and all, but it was kind of weird.
“I can’t believe you live here,” I said. It was really a question, but a rude one wrapped in a statement.
“In this apartment?”
“No, you know. On the westside. There aren’t many…Negroes out here.” With the Cooleys, it was mostly okay to say the quiet part out loud. Even when what I asked or what I said was…insensitive or impolite, they mostly answered matter-of-factly. Usually that was accompanied by a mini history lesson from Mr. Cooley. It was amazing what school teachers in Rocky River left out.
“Maybe I’m the trailblazer.” My mind flashed on those news clips of those Negroes desegregating schools in the south with the National Guard preventing them from going in and the Army guys on the other side making sure they could. If everything was like that for them, I had to applaud him. I wasn’t that brave. Maybe Wayne was.
“Seriously?” I probed. The westside didn’t have the national guard. But I was starting to learn there were other ways to keep people from where they weren’t wanted.
“No. Sarah. I was joking, really.” I didn’t want to feel relief, but I did. He continued, “I moved here because it’s close to my new job.”
“Do you like it? Engineering?”
Wayne shrugged. We both knew his choice of job was more his father’s than his.
“It’s no better or worse than any other job, I expect. Pays well.”
I didn’t want any old job, going to an office every day, being bored out of my mind typing and filing. I wanted to be a novelist, holed up in a dusty apartment writing out the stories in my head. I took a swallow of the bitter pale liquid. Looked like Daddy and Rainey had pulled the liberal arts rug out from under me and my path was no longer assured.
“That your girlfriend? Mary?” I asked. The more questions I asked of Wayne, the fewer he’d ask of me.
Wayne pointed the neck of his bottle at me then him. His smile was big. “Once I realized you and I were never going to be a couple, I had to look elsewhere.”
Something about his words took all the fight out of me. I kicked off my sneakers, pulled my legs up on his couch and took a long drag from the green bottle.
I’d loved that he had a crush on me. For a few long weeks, I even thought about going out with him. It would have been so easy, choosing Wayne. Maybe we could have gotten married. Then I would have been safe in the bosom of the Cooley family. Free from Rainey. I couldn’t imagine her trying to get at me there.
For the first time in a long time, I indulged in the fantasy again. Mary and Nelson would have been my parents. Tyisha would have been my sister. I could have read all the books I wanted without anyone making fun of me. I’d have learned how to make all of the good food they ate. The Cooleys would have been my children’s grandparents.
For all those reasons, I’d almost done it. Pretended to be something I’m not just to get that promised future. But I’d been hiding and pretending and covering up for as long as I could remember and I just couldn’t do it to Wayne. Lie to the Cooleys. So instead of a Sarah, there was a Mary.
Wayne put his beer on the glass-topped coffee table, then turned toward me. I took another long drink, emptying my bottle, then I put mine next to his. It was time to talk about why I’d barged in on his date.
“What’s in the duffel?” He kicked his socked foot toward the front door where my bag had landed.
“Everything I could fit.”
“What in the heck happened, Sarah Rose? Did you have some kind of fight with Rainey?”
For once I wished it had been as simple as one of Rainey’s pranks.
“I had a friend over,” I started. Wayne was no dummy. After seven years, he could read me almost as well as Tyisha could.
“Friend?” His left eyebrow rose just a little.
“Gwen Simpson.” I said her name like a prayer. “She’s my…I…” I couldn’t begin to find the right words for Gwen. Wayne waved a hand at me letting me know I could skip that part of the story, at least for now.
“What happened?”
Skipping part of the story had gotten me where I was right now. I was done keeping secrets. I closed my eyes, reliving the scene. “It started out good,” I said.
“Do your parents know about me?” Gwen Simpson had asked as we walked up the stairs to my room six hours ago. We’d been next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. I was holding tight to her hand, as if she could disappear at any moment. I sort of knew what she was getting at, but there was no way I wanted to talk about it then or any time ever, really.
“There’s nothing to tell them.” There would never be anything to tell them. I was trying to be as invisible as possible. It was only four and a half months before I was safely a first-year student at Bryn Mawr. Once I escaped to Pennsylvania, I wasn’t planning on ever coming back.
“Then why are we hiding out in your room?” Gwen asked after I’d pushed my door nearly closed.
“We’re not hiding out exactly,” I lied. “My sister is a pain and I don’t want to deal with her.” That part was the absolute truth.
“You’re seventeen.” Gwen kicked off her shoes and scooted onto my bed, propping up my pillows against the wall. She looked comfortable. I liked the look of her against the orange and brown shams I’d crocheted. “How old is your sister?” she asked.
“Rainey? Twenty-three.”
“Then why are you worried what she thinks? I haven’t really fought with my brothers or sisters since I was twelve. Everyone outgrows that phase.”
“Rainey’s different.” I didn’t want to go into it. That’s not the reason I’d asked her to come over. One hundred percent not the reason.
“Oh, you’re just paranoid,” she scoffed as she played with the yarn fringe.
I had to ignore that. Gwen had said what everyone said. They were always wrong. I didn’t want to think about how misguided all the unhelpful advice was. Instead, I firmly shut my bedroom door. Gwen may have gotten along with her brothers and sisters, but there were far too many of them in her house. There wasn’t any quiet or even anywhere private to spend time. I only had Rainey, and if she weren’t around, then we had nothing but uninterrupted time together. I wanted to make the most of it.
I walked to the edge of my twin bed. Took her hand. Intertwined our fingers—the thing I always wanted to do outside but couldn’t. Cleveland wasn’t New York or Los Angeles. It wasn’t one of those cities where girls could hold each other’s hands. But in here, in my little corner of Rocky River, behind my own closed wood door, I could.
“I’ve been thinking about you, you know.” I swallowed hard. Saying things like this to her was super hard for me.
“Thinking?” Gwen’s blink was slow. “I’m right here.”
“And we’re here. All alone, for once.” I squeezed her hands.
“That’s why we’re here all closed up in your bedroom? You want me alone?” Her smile was small, but was getting bigger by the moment as understanding finally dawned.
“I love your family. There are a lot of them, though.”
“You didn’t invite me here to talk about your sister or my family, did you?” Her smile was bigger, her eyes clouding over with the same desire that was rushing through my own body.
“No.” I wanted so much more than kissing in dark movie theaters and holding hands in the shadows. I didn’t have the guts to say any of that. But at least I had the guts to get her here alone.
I squeezed her hand again, pulled her where I wanted her—closer to me. I didn’t have to say anything more, because before I knew it, she was kissing me. It was the most amazing sensation. Sometimes I never thought I’d get over my feelings for Tyisha, but when my brain went fuzzy a moment later, I was starting to think I could.
Gwen’s plaid bell bottoms only had one button and a short zipper. My minidress was over my head in a matter of seconds. I kissed my way up from her belly button to her halter top. It took two hands to untie the yellow cotton knot. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I couldn’t keep my hands away from her breasts. My right one covered her flesh.
When I felt her nipple against my palm, I could scarcely breathe. I didn’t think I’d ever get air in my lungs again. I didn’t care if two girls weren’t right, it was what I wanted. My desire overcame my usual caution because it was too late by the time I heard the door open. Wood banged against the doorstop so hard it nearly closed again. My father’s palm slammed against it.
“Rainey said—”
“Daddy!”
I watched his eyes scan all four corners of my room, take in everything. There was nowhere to run. No way to hide.
“What in the hell are you doing? Who is this?”
I reached for the blanket at the end of my bed and threw it over my girlfriend.
“This is Gwen, Daddy. She’s a…friend…from school.” I wanted to kill myself for that hesitation, although I didn’t think there was any right word that would have pleased my father.
“She looks like a lot more than a friend.” His voice was whisper soft. In his full uniform, gun strapped to his side, it was just a little bit scary. I’d never before been afraid of him.
“Daddy, I can explain—”
“Gwen I-don’t-know-your-last-name,” he interrupted. “Can you make your way home? I need to speak with my daughter here—alone.”
Under the blanket, Gwen had already pulled on most of her clothes by the time Daddy finished speaking.
“Yes, sir. Of course.” She threw off the covering, picked up her shoes and ran down the stairs. I heard the front door open and slam closed. Again, I was alone.
“Daddy. I’m sorry,” I started when I noticed he was looking at me with an odd expression. Oh God, I was still half dressed. I scrambled to get my dress back on. Daddy at least had the good manners to look away.
“What were you doing?” he asked after I turned back to him. I couldn’t meet his eyes, but the way he looked at my legs made me pull the hem as far down as I could.
“Gwen is my friend,” I offered.
“Looks like a lot more than your friend.”
“I can explain.”
“What’s there to explain?” That question came from Rainey. I don’t know when she’d appeared, but my older sister was standing in the doorway, her back against the jamb. Of course I knew she’d been the one to send Daddy in here. Lord knows what she’d said to him before he’d stormed through the door.
I looked from her to him, and got really scared. Daddy had always taken Rainey’s side, but he still had a soft spot for me. I was his daughter from Mommy. The woman he claimed to love more than anyone else in the world. She wasn’t a druggie. She cooked and cleaned and kept our lives on track. He had to love my momma more than he loved Rainey’s mother. He had to love me at least as much as Rainey, even if he liked her better.
“Gwen. I…” I tried to think of a lie. An explanation that could work. My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
“Spit it out!” he demanded, leaving me no time to think up something.
“I love her, Daddy,” I blurted. “She’s my girlfriend. Like if she were my boyfriend, only she’s a girl.”
“Rainey here had said as much, but I didn’t think it could be true. Not from you, my little Sarah Rose. I’ve been more open-minded than most parents. After all, I let you spend time with that Negro family. But this…this is one step too far.”
“Why, Daddy? I really like her. We’re not hurting anybody.”
“It’s not right. This isn’t what God had in mind.”
“Since when do we believe in God?” I could count the number of times we’d been to church on one hand. Two weddings. One baptism. A funeral.
I didn’t see the slap coming. But I felt the sting. My hand flew to my cheek. It would swell.
“God is everything!” Daddy yelled. “Who are you? I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I didn’t have any idea what I was sorry for.
“So, then you’ll have no problem.” I turned toward the door. Rainey had put a bug in Daddy’s ear.
“Doing what?”
“Giving her up. You’re not to see that girl again. Or any girl in that way, for that matter.”
“We’re not hurting anyone.” I was too old to whine, but I heard it in my voice anyway.
“Are you saying you’re going to disobey me?” Daddy was getting very red in the face. It was the angriest I’d ever seen him.
“No, Daddy, I won’t do it. I’m so tired of having to do what everyone wants. Tiptoeing around Rainey. I’m your daughter same as her. I have a right to be here and live my life. I don’t hurt anybody. I won’t be in your hair much longer anyway. Graduation is next month. I’ll be in school in Pennsylvania—”
“What’s it called again? That out of state school you want to go to.”
“Bryn Mawr, Daddy,” Rainey drawled. “Bowling Green or Ohio State weren’t good enough for her, remember.” That took me back to the discussion last fall when I’d been filling out my applications and I’d had to explain casting a wide net beyond Ohio. “It’s an all-girls school. She’s been fooling you all along with this liberal arts stuff and classical education nonsense. She could have gone to Oberlin if any of those was important. This is about being able to be around nothing but women.”
“Is that true?” Daddy’s head whipped back to me. He’d taken in every word Rainey had said like he was mesmerized.
I wanted to deny it. I did. It hadn’t been my first reason for going. Tyisha had suggested the Seven Sisters. She was going to an all-Negro girls’ school in Atlanta. Obviously I couldn’t go there, but after some research, I’d decided Bryn Mawr was the next best thing. I could even take creative writing classes. Tyisha didn’t want to be a writer anymore. Her parents had talked her into eventually doing something more practical. But I still wanted to be a writer. I thought I could move to New York. Live in a tiny apartment. Write a novel. Fall in love. Be safe.
“IS THAT TRUE?” Daddy was yelling. His face was turning a darker shade of red. I didn’t know why he was so angry. I hadn’t really done anything that could hurt anyone, let alone our family.
“No…Daddy. It’s a really good school.”
“Bowling Green not good enough for you?” He’d never said it out loud like this. I knew he thought it was weird, me wanting to go farther away than my sister. But I’d convinced him and Momma it would be best. I had thought that me being far from Rainey had been part of the reason they’d gone for it. They wouldn’t have to take sides in our fights any more.
“It’s just a different kind of school,” I tried. When he didn’t look convinced, I went a different way. I’d probably already lost Gwen. I didn’t want to lose my escape route as well. “Our school guidance counselor said that each person should choose the right school for them.”
“Right school for them.” He nodded. I waited. At least his face was returning to its regular color. “You’ve been around all these people too long. The Cooleys with their uppity nature. This Gwen. They’re all making you into someone different.”
“That’s not—”
He swiped his hand at me. I’d clammed up.
“You need to give them all up.” The wave of his hand had, just like that, swept away my future plans. “Let Rainey here guide you. She’s doing life like it should be done. Not shooting too high for people like us.”
“I’m seventeen years old. I don’t need Rainey’s help,” I’d said, but by then it was obvious he wasn’t listening.
Back in the apartment with Wayne, after that monologue, I looked at him. Tried not to cry at all the sympathy and kindness there.
“It’s like my sister has him under some kind of spell sometimes. When he’s like this, there’s no reasoning with him. I tried for another, I don’t know, ten or fifteen minutes. After all my begging and pleading and explaining, he gave me an ultimatum. Give up Gwen. Give up that school or get out. Maybe he’d have been better in the morning. I’m not sure. But I didn’t want to stay. Not with Rainey there. Not anymore.”
I got up and went to the kitchen. Took out another two beers. Found the opener and popped the tops. Added them to the collection on the table.
“You thought you were in danger?” He left out the word “again.” “Can you ever be safe there, Sarah?”
“Maybe not tomorrow. But I was hoping I could stay here for a few days. I know Daddy will calm down. He’s never angry for too long.”
I took a big swig of the beer, trying not to spit out the bitter brew. The way it would make me feel in twenty minutes would be worth it.
“Like it?” He could tell that I didn’t much.
“Bitter. I don’t know why people like this.”
“They like the effect. Give it a few minutes to hit you.” I didn’t tell him I already knew, which is why I’d asked for it. Staying at his place for a week was a lot. I backtracked. He hadn’t exactly said yes. Maybe I needed more to convince him.
“Rainey came in. Daddy was right behind her. He said I was an abomination.” I’d left out that part because it was embarrassing.
“I thought you said he was on your side. That you had someone there who could keep Rainey in check. That your mom was that person. Where was she today? How is it you think you can ever go back there, Sarah? I don’t think it’s safe.”
“I just said that so you and Mr. Cooley wouldn’t do anything. They always believed her over me. I’m not sure they even believed her. I think that they mostly felt sorry for her. Her mom is a junkie—”
“If you’ve said that once, you’ve said it one hundred times. That’s no excuse for anything that she’s done to you. If I learned anything living in Hough, it was that. People are quick to put blame on others, the welfare system, the cops, the ‘man.’ They’re right. Those things aren’t fair. An explanation is not an excuse. People are responsible for their actions. There’s no one to blame for anything here but Rainey.”
“Even if you’re right, Wayne, what do I do now?”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That he wasn’t paying for me to get a fancy degree at Bryn Mawr. Rainey was standing right there egging him on. Saying I wanted to go to an all-girls college because…not because it’s a good school.”
“It’s not just good, it’s a Seven Sisters school. It’s a topflight education,” Wayne argued, incensed on my behalf.
“If Bowling Green was good enough for Rainey—”
“You told me all that. Here’s my question. Is this about the school or the other thing?”
I didn’t have to think before answering. I wasn’t blind to the truth of my father’s biases.
“It’s mostly about me liking girls. I think they all long suspected it because of how close I was with Tyisha. But we didn’t talk about it, ever, because there was the plausible excuse of just being really close girlfriends. I was just planning to go to college and it wouldn’t have ever come up. I only had to make it three or four more months. But I kissed Gwen at this party a few weeks ago and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She invited me to her house, and I thought that would be perfect, except she has a big family in a tiny bungalow in Parma.”
“You wanted to be alone.” He reached over, grabbed my hand. Patted it. “It’s a natural impulse.”
“I should have been able to control that, right? I feel like a pervert. It was only a few months more.”
“Desire doesn’t make you a pervert. It makes you human.”
His compassion made me want to cry. I sniffed back the tears.
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“You can stay here.”
I’d been hoping against hope he’d say that. The only other alternative I had was his parents’ house. But they’d ask too many questions I didn’t want to answer. Everything in me relaxed. I slouched against the couch, suddenly exhausted. All the fight gone from me.
“For real? It’ll only be a couple of nights. I’m sure once Momma is back, Daddy won’t be mad anymore and I can go back.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go back.”
“What? Why not? How?”
“Because your parents let Rainey get away with hurting you.” I nearly dropped the beer. It was a miracle that I caught it. Wayne didn’t even blink at my clumsiness. His stare at me remained unblinking. “There. I said it out loud.”
“It’s not—”
Wayne’s hand made a swift violent motion in the air, cutting off my explanation.
“Don’t you dare say it’s not that bad. She burned you. She broke your arm and leg. She killed your dog. And now she may have pulled the college rug from up under your feet. I don’t want you dead.”
“She’s not going to kill me.”
“She already tried.”
I’m pretty sure we were thinking the same thing. The night Rainey had left me in Hough. The night I’d met all the other Cooleys. The first time his family had saved me.