Lies We Tell Ourselves: Shortlisted for the 2016 Carnegie Medal

Everyone sitting within two desks of mine is gone in seconds, scurrying to find other seats. Soon there aren’t any empty desks left except the ones near me. The extra white students perch on the radiator at the back.

Mrs. Gruber studies a pile of papers on her desk. To look at her, you’d never know students were running around as though the classroom were under siege.

The seat behind mine is the only one near me that’s still occupied. Everyone looks at the frizzy-haired girl.

The girl looks fast from side to side. She meets my eyes for a second. Then she cups her hand over her made-up cheek. The red-haired girl whispers, “Judy, come on.”

The frizzy-haired girl, Judy, jumps out of her seat, dropping her books in her haste. A few boys laugh as she kneels to gather them up. She goes to the back of the room and sits on the radiator with the others.

I keep my chin high. At least this way I won’t have to worry about anyone drilling pencils into my back.

Mrs. Gruber passes out our textbooks as though nothing happened, dropping mine onto my desk with a thud. She’s turning toward the blackboard when the door swings open.

Every head in the room jerks up again, mine included.

I should be glad to see Chuck standing there. Instead I wish he’d turn around and walk right back out. I don’t want to watch it happen all over again.

“What now?” Mrs. Gruber slams a textbook down.

“I’m sorry I’m late, ma’am,” Chuck says in his most polite teacher voice. “I’m Charles Tapscott. I was talking to Mr. Lewis in the office about—”

“Sit down.” Mrs. Gruber sighs and writes out another detention slip.

Chuck takes the empty seat next to me. Two boys sitting near him get up and join the others in the back of the room.

Chuck doesn’t ignore it the way I did, though. He turns to watch them walk away, his mouth open in an O.

One of the boys in the back of the class opens his mouth wide and makes a face just like Chuck’s. Then he squeals like a pig.

Everyone laughs. Mrs. Gruber acts like she didn’t notice that, either.

“Hey, this ain’t fair,” another boy says. “Why we gotta have two of ’em in our class? Like one coon’s not bad enough.”

Some of the others grumble in agreement.

“All right, everyone, settle down,” Mrs. Gruber says. She doesn’t even look at the boy who spoke. “Who doesn’t have a book yet?” Chuck and a few other people raise their hands.

I flip open my new textbook. I’ve always liked school. Adults always tell me I’m a bright girl with a good future ahead of me. If I can concentrate on my classwork maybe the white people’s antics won’t bother me so much.

As soon as I open the book I know something’s wrong.

I leaf through to the last chapter to make sure. There’s no doubt. I raise my hand. Then I put it down again. Mrs. Gruber isn’t going to want to help me.

But she saw. She comes to stand right in front of my desk and sighs again, loudly. “Did you want something?”

“No, I—” I start to falter, but I can’t show any weakness in front of these people. I meet Mrs. Gruber’s eyes. “I was curious as to the name of this course.”

One of the white boys laughs. “Nigger shows up, doesn’t even know what class she’s in!”

Another joins in. “Don’t you see the charts on the wall? Can’t you tell a Math class? Ain’t you ever seen numbers before, nigger?”

“As your schedule clearly states, this is Remedial Math 12,” Mrs. Gruber says. Then she turns her back.

“Remedial?” Oh. That’s what the R’s stood for. They were on almost every class on my schedule. Chuck’s, too. They’ve put us in the remedial track.

All the Negroes who came here were in the college prep courses back at Johns. That’s why they picked us to integrate Jefferson. We were supposed to be the best of the best. The kind of students who could handle the white school’s classes and still have enough smarts left over to put up with the rest of it.

I learned how to do the work in this textbook in ninth grade.

I wonder if they put us in these classes because they think we’re stupid or because they wanted to punish us for coming here in the first place. I wonder if my college will still let me in when they see those remedial classes on my transcript.

But I don’t have time to worry about that now. I have a bigger problem.

Everyone in this room heard what I said.

They know I think I’m too smart for Remedial. Smarter than they are.

I am smarter than they are, but that isn’t going to help me now.

The boys start in right away.

“The nigger thinks she’s a genius,” one says. “Look everybody, we’ve got Einstein in our class!”

“Hey, girl, if you too good for Remedial, how ’bout you put your smarts to use and come clean my house?”

“Hey, nigger, can you count this high? Two, four, six, eight, we don’t wanna integrate!”

Mrs. Gruber keeps her eyes on the chalkboard.

It goes on that way for the rest of the period. The boys leave us alone while Mrs. Gruber is talking, but as soon as she looks away they start in on me, and Chuck, too. Mrs. Gruber hears it, but she doesn’t say anything.

I keep looking straight ahead. At first I think I’ll get used to it. Instead, the longer it goes on, the more it stings.

“Those niggers need to be put in their place.”

“What’d they come here for? Don’t they know we don’t want to look at their ugly black faces?”

“I bet they got their nigger tails tucked in under those clothes. Let’s rip ’em out.”

When the bell rings I want to charge out of the classroom. I want to put as much distance between myself and these people as I can.

There’s no use. The white people in the hall won’t be any better. It’ll be worse, in fact, because there will be more of them.

So Chuck and I gather our things and leave with everyone else, ignoring the pushing and shoving until we’re out in the hallway. There, the white people gather around us in a circle to shout names until we’ve separated and made our way to our next classes. Then they follow us down the hall, shouting at us, pushing us, stepping on our heels, jabbing elbows into our sides.

Not much changes the rest of the morning. In every class the students move away from my desk as soon as I sit down. My Typing and History teachers aren’t as bad as Mrs. Gruber, but neither of them makes any effort to make me feel welcome. I come to recognize the look in each of my teachers’ eyes when I walk through their classroom doors. The look that says they wish I’d turn around and walk right back out. I’m making their jobs harder just by being here.

Fourth-period French is different.

The students look the same as ever. Most of them have been in some of my classes already that day. The red-haired girl and her friend Judy are there, sitting on the far side of the room, scowling at me.

As I come in a boy yells, “Ain’t you heard? We don’t care what no nigger-loving judge has to say. We don’t believe in race mixing in this class. So you best turn around and run back to Africa.” The rest of the class move their seats away from mine.

I sit straight in my seat, blinking at the chalkboard, like always. It’s a lucky thing I’m good at pretending.

The teacher, Miss Whitson, comes in as the final bell rings. She stands in the doorway for a long minute, gazing around the classroom. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.

She comes over to my desk and whispers, so low only I can hear, “What’s your name?”

“Sarah Dunbar,” I whisper back.

She makes a note on her roll and goes to the chalkboard. The room is still quiet. Everyone must already know you don’t mess around in Miss Whitson’s class.

“This is French II.” She gives us all a hard look. “I expect you to have the fundamentals of the language down. We’re getting a late start this year and we have a lot of makeup work to do, but I’m not lowering my expectations of how you’ll perform on your end-of-year exams. So if you want to pass you’ll have to work hard.”

Everyone looks worried. Good. If they’re nervous about passing the class maybe they won’t have time to yell at me.

“We’ll start off with a refresher on conversation,” Miss Whitson goes on. “I’ll pair you off. You and your partner will talk about what you did over Christmas. Then you’ll drill each other on the irregular verbs on pages fourteen through eighteen. I’ll be listening closely and grading you on your participation. If I hear one word of English it’s an automatic failure.”

There’s low grumbling from the back of the class. A girl raises her hand. “Miss Whitson?”

“Oui?” Miss Whitson says.

The girl replies in English. “Miss Whitson, you’re not going to pair anyone with her, are you?”

“That’s enough,” Miss Whitson says in French. She begins to read the pairs off from her roll book. “Abner, Baker.”

I suppose it doesn’t matter who I’m paired with. None of these people want anything to do with me. My partner will probably go sit as far from me as he can get, even if it means we both get a failing grade. Maybe Miss Whitson will let me do a makeup assignment instead.

“Campbell, Dunbar,” Miss Whitson says.

I have no idea who “Campbell” is. No one remembers my last name, either, so there’s no reaction until Miss Whitson finishes the list, claps her hands and tells us all to go sit with our partners.

I don’t move. I expect everyone to ignore me. So it’s a surprise when the frizzy-haired girl from this morning puts her books down on the empty desk next to mine.

“You got the nigger, Judy?” a boy says behind us. He’s part of the gang who tried to charge at Chuck in the hall this morning. “You better watch out if you don’t want to get any of that black on you! You don’t want to wind up even uglier than you already are!”

“You leave Judy alone, Bo!” the red-haired girl says. She looks furious.

“Bo Nash!” Miss Whitson says. “You heard me. One more English word out of anyone in this class and it’s an F.”

I keep my gaze fixed straight ahead. What does this girl Judy think she’s doing, sitting down next to me? She moved away from my desk in Math, so I don’t know why she thinks it’s safe to be near me now. Well, whatever she tries to do to me, I won’t give her the satisfaction of reacting.

“Um,” Judy says. “Bonjour?”

Oh.

I wasn’t expecting that.

No white student has said a single sentence to me today that didn’t include nigger, coon or some other hateful word. Except the girl in the hall who spat on my good skirt.

“Bonjour,” I murmur, waiting to see if this is a trick.

“My name is Judy,” she says in terribly mangled French.

“My name is Sarah.”

We’re quiet after that. I suppose Judy thinks she’s said enough not to fail. I look at the clock over the blackboard, wondering how many minutes will pass before someone yells something new at me.

“Um,” Judy says again. She holds the cover of her French textbook out in front of her, squinting.

Then I see the real problem. “My name is Judy” is the only sentence this girl knows how to say in French.

“How are you?” I ask, hoping a simple sentence like that will be familiar to her.

She stares at me blankly.

This is useless. I turn back to the clock.

“I—” Judy starts to say.

I shake my head to show her she’s still speaking English.

Judy shakes her head, too, and half smiles. She raises her eyebrows and shrugs in what looks like an apology.

Maybe this is an act. Part of an elaborate trick she and her friends are pulling. I bet the cruel red-haired girl is the ringleader.

Or maybe I was right before. Maybe not all the white people in this school hate us.

Miss Whitson is coming our way. Judy peers up at the bulletin board, which lists some common French words. Colors. Parts of the body. Family members.

“Sister!” Judy says. She struggles to say a complete sentence, butchering the French. My mother, who teaches French and English at the colored junior high, would cringe if she heard. “Um. You have sister?”

What?

The only way this girl could know I have a sister is if she’s seen her. Everyone always says Ruth and I look alike.

I haven’t seen Ruth all morning.

“Did you see my sister?” I ask Judy in rapid French. “Where? How was she? Was she safe?”

Judy frowns and shrugs helplessly. She doesn’t understand.

“Have you seen her?” I repeat in English. “Is she safe?”

Miss Whitson is watching us. I’m sure she heard me speaking English, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Oui,” Judy says.

“Was anyone hurting her?”

“No,” Judy says. “I mean, non.”

I close my eyes and breathe in, long and slow. I feel like I haven’t breathed all morning.

Maybe we really can do this. Maybe it will be all right.

I’m so relieved I don’t even mind practicing French with a girl who can’t pronounce bonjour. So we get out our books and take turns conjugating regarder.

When the bell rings I grab my books. I try to move straight for the door, but before I’m even out of my desk the red-haired girl is blocking my way.

I wish she wouldn’t stand so near. I try again to force that feeling down. The strange buzzing in my chest that comes with being so close to a girl who’s this pretty. It doesn’t work.

“It’s a shame you had to work with her, Judy,” the girl says, looking right at me. “I’ll speak to my father tonight. He’ll get us both transferred out of this class. Math, too. We shouldn’t have to suffer just because some Northern interloper judge says so.”

The girl is right in my face. Her bright blue eyes are narrowed and fixed on mine. I can’t let her know she’s getting to me. I try to edge around her but she blocks my way with her purse. It’s just as fashionable as the rest of her—a cloth bag with round wooden handles covered in the same plaid fabric as her skirt.

There’s something about the way this girl talks. Something about the look in her eyes.

She makes me angrier than the others do.

She’s not like the girl who screamed at me in the parking lot or the one who spat on me in the hall. This girl doesn’t do that sort of thing. She works quietly. Efficiently. Ruthlessly.

I just wish she weren’t so pretty. That lovely face sets off a fire inside me that isn’t ever supposed to burn.

She frightens me. But she makes me want to stop being polite.

I shouldn’t say anything to her. It’s against the rules, and the rules are there for a reason.

It only happens because I can’t stop myself.

“It’s a shame you had to have such an awful friend, Judy,” I say, looking straight into the red-haired girl’s eyes. “I suppose we all have to suffer in our own ways.”

The red-haired girl stiffens. Everyone in the classroom is staring at us.

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, my nervousness returns. This girl may be too smart to throw rocks in the parking lot, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t just as dangerous as the rest of them. Smarts can do more damage than strength.

But if this girl is really so smart, why does she believe in segregation? There’s nothing logical about keeping people separated by their skin colors.

She’s as bad as the governor. Everyone says he’s an intelligent man. He’s a lawyer who argued in front of the Supreme Court, saying it would be too dangerous for colored children and white children to go to the same school. Then he got elected to the highest post in the state. Governor Almond has got to be one of the smartest men there is, but he believes in segregation, too.

I should’ve been smart enough not to talk back to this beautiful, dangerous girl.

It scares me, the way she makes me feel. I need to get away from her.

I slip around the red-haired girl while she’s still distracted and leave as quickly as I can. The rest of them spill out behind me. They don’t seem to be following me, though. They’re talking to Judy and her friend.

“It’s true,” one of them says. “Those agitators are just awful. I can’t believe that one had the nerve to talk to you that way, Linda.”

Linda. That must be the red-haired girl’s name. It suits her.

“What was it like speaking French with the nigger?” a boy asks Judy.

“Yeah, did she speak some of that coonjab to ya?” another one says.

“I don’t know,” Judy says. “I couldn’t understand what she said. It was in French.”

“No way,” a boy says. “You know that nigger don’t speak no French. They don’t say no ‘parlez-vous’ in Africa.”

Everyone laughs.

I’ve still got my back to the group. To be safe, I really should speed up to get away from them, but I want to hear what else Judy says. She’s the only white student all day who’s seemed like she might be all right.

“Does she stink even harder up close?” a boy asks her. “Man, I bet sitting next to one of them is worse than being on a pig farm in August.”

“I didn’t smell anything,” Judy says.

There’s a long pause where all I hear are footsteps. Then one of the boys says, “What’s the matter, Judy, you turning into a nigger-lover?”

There’s another long pause.

Then Linda speaks up. I’d recognize her voice anywhere.

“Don’t feel like you have to protect her, Judy,” Linda says. “You don’t owe her anything. They’re the ones who messed up this whole year for all of us, remember?”

There’s another pause. Then Judy’s voice falters. “Well. She talked real fast. Like how people up North sound.”

Some of the boys chuckle.

“I bet she wasn’t really saying anything in French,” Judy says. “I bet she just making a bunch of noises.”

No. No.

Everyone’s laughing now. One of the boys makes a honking sound.

“Yeah, do that again!” another boy says. “That’s what nigger French sounds like.”

Soon all the boys are doing it. Their laughter howls down the hall.

But they’re getting drowned out now by the other shouts. The usual ones. The circle has started to form around me, the way it always does in the halls. There are too many catcalls of “Nigger!” and “Ugly coon!” to distinguish one voice from another.

In a way, I’m relieved.

When it’s this loud it’s hard to hear the voice in my head.

The one that’s saying I was wrong. That Judy isn’t all right.

That every white person in this school is just as bad as every other.

Lie #4

“LOOK AT THAT ugly face.” The white girl behind me in the lunch line is talking to her friend, but she’s gazing straight at me. “I guess there ain’t nothing she can do about it, though. They don’t make no black lipstick.”

Her friend stares at me, too.

I want to tell the white girl she’s uglier than I’ll ever be, with her fat ankles and her rat’s nest hair.

Instead I keep my eyes on the wall.

I’d expected the name-calling. The spitting. The shoving. I wasn’t ready for it, but I’d known it was coming.

What I didn’t plan on was the staring.

Everyone stares at me. Boys, girls. Freshmen, seniors. Teachers, secretaries.

Everyone. All day long. If I so much as move my little finger, fifty people watch me do it.

Maybe they think I can’t see them. That I’m blind as well as black.

“There she is!” a man’s voice booms. “There’s our young Miss Sarah Dunbar!”

I start to panic. Then I remember none of the white people know my name.

Mr. Muse is coming toward me, a bucket swinging from his hand and a wide smile on his face.

“Mr. Muse!” I grin up at him. He’s the tallest man in our church, nearly a foot taller than Daddy. His wife is in the choir with me, but I’d forgotten he worked at Jefferson. He sets his bucket down on the floor, peels off one of his rubber gloves and holds out his big hand to me. I clasp it, ignoring the looks and snickers from the white people. Mr. Muse’s hand is warm in mine.

“Bless you, Sarah,” he says, beaming down at me. “You know we’re all real, real glad to see you here.”

I can’t find words to tell Mr. Muse how glad I am to see him, too. His is the first friendly face I’ve seen in I don’t know how long.

“Now you just remember, we’re all so proud of you.” Mr. Muse drops my hand. He bends down to retrieve his bucket with the mop handle poking out the top. “And you’re surely making your mama and daddy proud, too.”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Muse, sir,” I say.

“Sir?” the girl behind me snickers in a high-pitched voice that she probably thinks sounds Northern. Like me. “Leave it to a doggone dirty nigger to call the doggone dirty janitor ‘sir.’ You get on out of here with your stinking bucket, boy.”

Mr. Muse acts like he didn’t hear the girl. He smiles at me again, then turns to leave the cafeteria, whistling that jazz tune they’ve been playing on the radio all winter.

I wish I could keep clasping Mr. Muse’s big warm hand for the rest of the day.

Usually when I see Negroes working as janitors or cleaning women, I get embarrassed. I understand why they’re doing it—it’s hard enough to find jobs as it is—but I hate to think of any of us mopping up spilled food we wouldn’t be allowed to eat if we were paying customers.

But the food in this cafeteria isn’t only for white people anymore. I’m here now.

I smile as I make my way through the lunch line. I take a double helping of green beans, my favorite, from the lunch ladies who pass me a tray without meeting my eyes. I will eat green beans today. The same green beans the white people get to eat. Because that’s my right. Mr. Muse and the others are counting on me to prove that it’s so.

But when I come out of the line Mr. Muse is long gone. The only black face in the room is mine.

The tables are arranged in long rows. There are almost no empty seats left. I was near the back of the lunch line, since I was late getting to the cafeteria. Groups of boys kept blocking my way in the halls.

One table has a few empty seats at the end. I move toward it, carefully stepping over the feet stuck out in my path, and set my tray on the painted wood surface.

Right away there’s a murmur from the white people nearest me. And then everyone sitting at the long table—there must be thirty of them—stands up.

“I can’t eat with this stench,” one girl says.

“I know. I lost my appetite.”

“They’re going to have to bleach this whole table to get the smell out.”

They leave, squeezing into other tables. Some of the girls are sharing seats. The boys hold their trays in their hands, trying to shove food in their mouths standing up.

I pretend not to notice. I pretend not to hear the laughter all around me. Or the new rounds of taunts that come with it.

I know I don’t really smell, but I still want to take about fifty showers when I get home to make sure.

No. I can’t think that way. I can’t let these white people get to me.

I’m lucky, really. I have a whole table to myself.

But I don’t feel lucky.

I take a bite of my green beans. They taste like rubber.

Just then, a girl shrieks near the end of the line and I forget all about my food. What if it’s Ruth?

I stand up fast, ignoring the boy behind me who calls me a damn nigger when my chair bumps into his, and crane my neck to see what’s going on in the line.

It’s not Ruth. The shrieking girl is white and blonde. She’s standing with a group of friends, covering her face with her hands.

Ten feet behind her Ennis is backing away slowly, gripping his tray, his eyes surveying the room.

No one else seems to have noticed the girl’s shriek. I sit back down. Whatever’s going on, I don’t need to draw more attention to it.

Ennis sees me and makes his way over, casting looks back at the blonde girl. She’s crying. Her friend pats her arm.

Ennis swiftly lifts his tray away from a boy who’s trying to knock it over and puts it down on the table across from me.