I sat in the back of the van, my gaze on Win’s profile. I felt different being so close to him after telling him everything the night before. He seemed to be his usual serious self, reserved and unflustered by the change in our plans. He kept his eyes straight ahead on the road as if he were doing the driving himself.
“Y’all have a meeting tonight,” Curry said as we headed to the school. “Greg wants to talk about the protest. How y’all can change it up for next week.”
“He thinks we should have another one?” I asked, surprised.
“Oh yeah.” Curry caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “You ain’t gonna let ’em win, are you?”
“Curry’s right,” Win finally turned to look at me. “He—”
“Truck!” Curry said, and I dropped to the floor behind the front seats. It was second nature now, hiding from white people, and I’d come to understand why it was best for me to ride in the back seat.
I practically held my breath until Win said, “He’s gone,” and I returned to my seat with a sigh.
“So what were you saying about a protest?” I asked.
“If we stop now, we’re just telling them that they can scare us off with violence,” Win said.
Well, maybe they can, I thought. “I don’t want to see anyone else get hurt,” I said.
“Nobody does,” Win said, as Curry pulled into the parking lot of the school.
The guys helped me carry my things inside. Jocelyn looked up from the desk where she was typing.
“My occasional roommate!” she said with a smile. “You back again?”
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Well, toss your stuff in ‘our’ room,” she said, with air quotes around the word “our.”
I was starting toward the little art room when Greg walked in from the cafeteria. He stopped short when he saw me. “You need a new place,” he guessed, and I nodded. “How’s the little girl doing?”
“She was still sleeping when I left. I think she’ll be fine, but I know whoever threw that rock was aiming at me and I don’t want her or anyone else to get hurt because they’re around me. So”—I shrugged—“time to move on.”
Greg looked toward the ceiling, thinking. “I know of a couple of possibilities for you,” he said. “For now, drop your things off and head on back out. It’s Saturday. You can catch some of the men at home. Did Curry tell you we’ll have a meeting tonight before I leave for Turner’s Bend?”
I nodded. “I’ll be here,” I said.
* * *
Curry drove Win and me out to a dirt road lined with small unpainted shacks. Children were everywhere, clustered in the yards and tossing a ball in the road. They rushed Win and me when we got out of the van. For the children in this part of Derby County—any part of Derby County—it was a shock to see a Black man and white woman together, and they knew we were there for something important. We let them tag along with us. They knew everyone on the road and I got a kick out of their sense of self-importance as they introduced us to their parents and aunts and uncles and neighbors. They were a big help, getting us in a lot of doors that would have been closed to us otherwise.
Neither Win nor I mentioned our conversation from the night before. I didn’t know if it had changed his feelings about me, but it had definitely changed mine about him. I could barely take my eyes off him, stealing glances at him when we walked down the rutted road. Trying to make him laugh when we talked to people we hoped to register. By the end of the day, we had fifteen solid commitments, and twenty people said they’d come to the protest on Friday night. Many of the folks we talked to, though, nodded toward their children when they turned us down about the protest. “Who gonna look after them when we in jail, huh?” they asked. A very reasonable argument.
* * *
We returned to the school at four and Jocelyn handed me my mail: two big Kodak envelopes containing my developed pictures and two letters from Round Hill. I went to the art room and sat on my sleeping bag, my back against the wall. I smiled as I looked through the pictures, then put them in a cigar box I’d found in the art room closet for safekeeping.
The first letter was from my mother, telling me that I’d humiliated my father by not coming home with him and that they were both very hurt by my behavior. I believe you intentionally misrepresented what you’re doing and how you’re living, she wrote. Right now when I think of you, it’s not with love. It’s with disgust.
“I don’t care,” I muttered to myself as I folded her letter and stuck it back in the envelope. The twisty feeling in my chest, though, told me otherwise. How could I not care? Who wouldn’t be hurt by such hateful words from her own mother? I tried to shake off the sadness as I opened Brenda’s letter.
Brenda began with her usual happy talk about the baby and Garner, but then she got to the subject of me. I hoped you’d get tired of whatever it is you’re doing in Flint and come home, she wrote. Byron Parks told us he saw you at a KKK rally. I told him he had to be wrong, but he swore up and down he saw you there. Did you go? Are you that crazy? Garner says what you’re doing is ridiculous, that the register’s office or whatever it’s called isn’t even open and you’re wasting your time and trashing your good name by spending the summer with a bunch of Negroes for no good reason. Please come home. I need you and Reed sure as heck needs you. It’s so mean that you haven’t written to him.
It was mean. Why hadn’t I written to him? Of course, he hadn’t written to me either, but I was the one who’d made the decision to go away. I was the one who owed an explanation. But I didn’t know what to say to him. We’d been close for so long. Why was I throwing it all away? I thought of Win in the other room, reading one of his political books. Nothing could ever happen between Win and me, for a million reasons. He could only be my friend. But Reed … Reed could be my husband. The father of my children. If that was what I wanted. Right now, though, it wasn’t. Right now, I wanted to discuss those political books with Win. I wanted to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, fighting for voting rights. For fair and equal treatment of everyone. Right now, I couldn’t see a place in my life for drive-in dates and ice-cream sundaes and long phone calls about nothing of consequence.
I heard the hum of voices coming from the main room and knew that Greg would soon start the meeting. I felt pretty down. The bitter letters from two people I loved had taken a toll on me. But once I walked into the large room filled with my new friends, my spirits lifted. Greg sat on the edge of his desk. He smiled at me. Nodded toward an empty chair. I sat down, and as Greg talked about the protest and what we could do differently next time, I looked around the room. There were twelve of us SCOPE freedom fighters and several local teenagers who were now canvassing with us. My white friends’ skin had grown darker from the sun in the past couple of weeks. Had mine? I looked down at my forearms. Yes, definitely. Walking five or ten miles a day in the North Carolina sun could do that to you. And we were all so grungy! We’d started out looking neat and scrubbed and now everyone’s legs and feet were filthy in their broken sandals or sneakers.