Lies We Tell Ourselves: Shortlisted for the 2016 Carnegie Medal

So I walk as fast as I can, and I make the others do the same, even though Yvonne is groaning from the pain in her knee. She and I are in front, with Ruth and the other girl behind us. I can see Mr. Stern’s car up ahead. Ennis was right—it’s probably the safest of the NAACP cars for us to take. No one will think we’re aiming to get into a car with a white man.

The white people are swarming us from all sides now. It’s as bad as it was this morning.

No. It’s worse. This morning the white people just looked furious. Now they look like killers.

“Get the niggers!” A chant starts up. “Get the niggers! Get the niggers! Get them!”

They’re right up in our faces. After a full day of this their glares and shouts aren’t shocking anymore. I’m used to the feeling of my heart throbbing in my chest, my eyes sharpening, my shoulders quaking with fear.

Police officers line the curb. I don’t expect any more help from them than I did this morning.

I glance over my shoulder to see the other girls and almost trip, catching myself at the very last second.

This won’t work. I can’t walk in front of them and make sure they’re safe at the same time.

Ruth catches my eye and nods. It feels like a terrible mistake, but I move behind the others and let Ruth take the lead.

This is the most frightened I’ve been for her all day, but there’s nothing I can do. Ruth marches through the crowd, her head high, her gaze straight ahead. The white people scream at her but they move aside, like she’s Moses parting the waters.

This time, when someone spits on her hand, she ignores it and keeps on walking.

It makes me want to cry. Instead I keep my eyes dry and fixed, letting Ruth lead us.

They’re still shouting. I sing to myself in my head to drown out their words. An old hymn. The old ones are always the best.

Rock of Ages,

cleft for me,

let me hide

myself in thee.

Something sails over Yvonne’s head. A ball of paper with something heavy wrapped inside.

I don’t say anything. I don’t think she noticed. I can’t tell whether the white boy who threw it was only trying to scare us or if he just has bad aim.

The chant has changed now, back to the familiar “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t wanna integrate.” We’re almost at the curb. Mr. Stern is waiting in the car with his engine on.

It’s over. Soon we’ll be out of this place. We’ve survived. This day is finally at an end.

Ruth opens the back door and climbs inside, moving over so Yvonne and the other girl can slide in. I get in the front seat with Mr. Stern.

With the windows rolled up we can barely hear the chants. It really is over. Mr. Stern steps on the gas.

But just as he’s turning the wheel, the back door on the far side—Ruth’s side—jerks open. A grown white man with a wide chest and huge hands is standing by the side of the car, holding on tight to the door frame and looking right at Ruth.

“Get out of the car, niggers, before we drag you out,” the man’s voice booms. “You, too, you nigger-loving Jew.”

Lie #6

THE MAN’S WORDS slap me in the face, hot and wet and vicious. I slam open my car door. My heart pounds in my ears. I’ll go over to where the man is and—I don’t know what I’ll do. Something. Whatever it takes to get him away from my sister.

Before I can get out of the car Mr. Stern jerks on the wheel and pounds on the gas. The car jolts into the street. The white man loses his grip on Ruth’s door and stumbles backward onto the pavement.

Two of our car doors are open, but we’re already speeding along the street in front of the school. I lean out to pull my door shut, even though I’m sure I’m going to fall out of the car. In the backseat Ruth does the same thing. She slams the lock down on her door. I should lock mine, too, but I’m shaking too hard.

Two more big white men chase our car down the street, shouting. We outpace them at the next block. The police are nowhere to be seen.

I turn around to make sure Ruth’s all right. She’s resting her head on the window, gazing outside. Her hands are clasped in her lap. They’re trembling.

“Is anyone hurt?” Mr. Stern says when it’s quiet enough to hear each other.

“Yvonne is,” I say. “She’ll need a doctor.”

“It’s only a bruise on my knee,” Yvonne says. “No worse than I used to get roughhousing with my brothers.”

I try to meet Yvonne’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She won’t look at me. I know what happened today was nothing like playing with her brothers. She knows it, too.

“Even so,” Mr. Stern says. “We’re going to Mrs. Mullins’s house. She’ll call a doctor if you need one. Ruth, Sarah, your father will be at the Mullins’, too.”

I can’t imagine seeing Daddy now. Not after everything that’s happened today. It’s hard to believe that I still have parents. That there’s a world outside Jefferson High School.

We all know the way to Mrs. Mullins’s house by heart—she’s in charge of our integration case for the NAACP, and we go to her house a lot—so I notice Mr. Stern is taking the long way. We’ve been driving almost an hour when we get there. Trying to keep any white people from following us, probably.

We’re the last ones to reach the house. Daddy is on the front steps when we pull up. Ruth bolts out of the car and runs up to the porch, her saddle shoes leaving dents behind her in the freshly mown grass. She flings her arms around our father the way she used to when she was little.

“Daddy,” Ruth cries, loud enough for the rest of us to hear even though we’re still at the curb. “Daddy, Daddy.”

Daddy looks at me over her shoulder. I nod to tell him we’re both all right. He hugs Ruth back, then unwraps her arms from his waist. He rubs his eye, and I can tell from his bleary look he’s skipping his afternoon nap to be here. Daddy works two jobs—days at the Negro newspaper, the Davisburg Free Press, where he’s a reporter and editor, and nights and weekends at the Davisburg Gazette, where he’s a copy boy. Whenever he has to miss his nap we all know to stay quiet and let him have his peace.

“All right, Ruthie,” he says. “Let’s go in the house and you can tell me all about it.”

I help Yvonne inside. All the people from the NAACP who’ve been working on the court case and teaching in the special school they set up for us last semester are gathered in Mrs. Mullins’s living room. Their eyes bob from one to the other of us as we walk in and sit down on the rug. They’ve been waiting to make sure all ten of us are safe.

Ruth comes in last, with Daddy, and only then do Mrs. Mullins and the others cheer.

“Praise the Lord,” Mrs. Mullins says. “I knew He’d watch over you and keep you safe.”

Oh. Is that what He was doing? Is that what the Lord calls keeping us safe?

That was a sinful thought. I close my eyes to pray for forgiveness.

Praying usually brings warmth and relief. I wait, but I don’t feel any different than I did before. I don’t feel anything at all.

Mrs. Mullins asks how our day went. The younger kids rush to answer her.

I stretch my legs out in front of me and try to hide the stains on my skirt. I wish we could go home. My house is only a few blocks away. Mr. and Mrs. Mullins live in Morningside, like us. Ennis’s family lives here, too. It’s the nicest Negro neighborhood in Davisburg. Too nice for us Dunbars, really. Some nights I hear Mama and Daddy arguing about money in the kitchen. Daddy’s newspaper work doesn’t pay as well as it did when we lived in Chicago, and Mama’s always worried his boss at the white paper will fire him once he checks the state registry and finds out we’re involved with the NAACP. We could move to Davis Heights—that’s where Chuck lives—but Daddy says he wants Ruth and Bobby and me to “associate with the best kind of children,” whatever that means. He’s probably worried we’ll have to move to New Town, where everyone’s so poor the whites and Negroes live side by side, but I don’t think New Town would be so bad. At least it’s not Clayton Mill, the Negro neighborhood way outside of town, where the houses are made of tar paper.

Ennis, Paulie and I reach for the sandwiches Mrs. Mullins has set out for the adults. I barely ate any lunch and now I’m starving.

“You and your sister were leading the pack out there,” Ennis says. He’s talking quietly, so Mrs. Mullins won’t hear us on her side of the room. He pours a cup of coffee and passes it to me. I’ve never had coffee before, but I take a sip. It burns my tongue. “Looks like you got in the car all right.”

“It was awful.” I put the coffee down on the floor. I hate to be wasteful, but if I have to keep drinking that after everything else that’s happened today I think I really will cry.

“I know it was,” he says. “But we all got out safe. That’s what matters.”

Ennis smiles at me. I don’t smile back.

“It’ll settle down after a couple of days,” Paulie says. “The white people will get used to us. Once they see we aren’t going away.”

“No they won’t!” Chuck shouts.

Everyone in the room stops talking and turns to look behind us. Chuck’s standing there with fire in his eyes.

“Did you see what they did today?” Chuck says. He’s the only one of us who didn’t sit on the rug like children at story hour as soon as we came in. He’s standing with his back straight, his fists clenched.

“Did you see what they did to Yvonne?” he shouts. “They aren’t going to get used to us! Or if they do, they’ll just get used to calling us niggers and trying to lynch us in the parking lot!”

“Charles Irving Tapscott!” Daddy is on his feet, pointing his finger. Chuck is just as tall as my father, but he steps back. “You know better than to say something like that in front of these children. I’ll be placing a call to your father tonight.”

Chuck bites his lip and drops his head. “I’m sorry, sir.” He sits down next to Ennis and me on the rug.

Chuck is usually a jokester. The sort of boy everyone likes because he’s funny and nice to everyone. The boy trembling next to me now is somebody else altogether.

Yvonne’s lip quivers. For a minute, we’re all quiet. Then the younger kids start whispering.

“I saw somebody in the hall who said he had a knife.”

“A girl in Gym said she was going to pour gas on us and set us on fire.”

“On TV they said a girl got stabbed in Little Rock.”

“That’s not true,” Mrs. Mullins says. “Anyway, this isn’t Little Rock. Those sorts of things won’t happen here.”

“They were throwing rocks at us,” Ruth says.

“And sticks and pencils,” a sophomore boy says. “One almost stuck me in the eye.”

Mrs. Mullins shakes her head. “It’s because today was the first day. It will die down.”

“I tried to tell a teacher,” the sophomore boy goes on. “She said she couldn’t do anything because no adults saw it happen.”

“Most of the teachers and the administrators won’t be much help, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Mullins says. “But if anything serious happens, if you need a doctor, you should certainly tell your parents right away.”

“Translation,” Chuck mutters so only Ennis, Paulie and I can hear. “Don’t tattle, or the judge will send us all back to our old school. Jim Crow is still alive and well in good old Virginia.”

“Shush,” Ennis tells him.

But I’ve heard Mama and Daddy say that, too. If there’s any sign integration is causing violence, the courts could delay it another year. Then we’d have to go back to Johns High, and the school board lawyers would probably come up with some reason why integration had to be pushed back another year after that. And another, and another. Decades would pass before the next black face showed up at Jefferson High School.

We’ve already been waiting forever. When we filed our lawsuit, two years had passed since the Supreme Court said all the schools in the country had to be integrated.

My family was still living in Chicago when we first heard what the Supreme Court had done. I was only in seventh grade. We moved to Virginia that summer, and I thought when we got here, we’d be going to school with white people.

That was before I understood how hard the white people in the South would fight us. It wasn’t until the next year, when Little Rock integrated its high school and the white people rioted in the streets, that I understood what my family and I had signed on for.

Mama and Daddy signed on to the NAACP’s lawsuit, and for three years, Ruth and I and the other colored children waited. We took tests and went to court and watched white lawyers talk about whether colored children were smart enough to keep up with white children. I sat on a bench in the courtroom and watched the superintendent hold up my file and testify in front of a white-haired judge about how, even though I’d scored in the top 5 percent on the aptitude tests, I wasn’t fit to go to a white school because I’d have “trouble adapting socially.”

Forty Negro kids had applied to transfer to white schools in Davisburg. Some of them changed their minds when they saw what we were up against. Most of the rest got rejected because the school board said they hadn’t passed the tests—even though none of us ever saw a grade book. So now it was down to us ten. We’d done so well on the tests they couldn’t come up with any more excuses. The judge said “trouble adapting socially” wasn’t a good enough reason to keep us at a school where the heaters only worked on the days it wasn’t raining.

The white parents tried to get the decision overturned, and the case went back and forth and back and forth until last summer, when the federal judge ruled Jefferson had to admit us, period.

So the governor shut down all the white schools in Virginia that had been ordered to admit Negroes. He figured if colored people couldn’t go to the white schools, it meant he’d won. He didn’t seem to care that if the white schools were closed, then white people couldn’t go to school, either. The white people called it “Massive Resistance,” because they were doing whatever it took to resist the Supreme Court’s order. When Daddy first saw that newspaper photo of the big locks on the Jefferson High’s front doors he said, “I’ve got to hand it to the governor. I didn’t think he had the nerve.”

Starting last September, the white kids had to find a private school to go to or miss school altogether. But the ten of us did all right. The NAACP tutored us at Mrs. Mullins’s house for free. We studied so much English and History and French and Math and Science no one could accuse us of not keeping up with the white kids.

When Christmas break came and went and the schools were still closed, we’d started to think we might spend the whole year taking classes in Mrs. Mullins’s house. Then, last week, another court said it was illegal for the governor to close the schools just because he felt like it. After five months of sitting empty, Jefferson had to be opened. Even to us.

Daddy says we’re lucky. Down in Prince Edward County, they shut down their entire school system—every single white school and every single colored school, from kindergarten up through twelfth grade—so they wouldn’t have to integrate. The courts can’t do anything about it. So the white parents there used county tax money to set up a private school for their kids to go to, for free. Only the white kids get to go there, though. The Negroes in Prince Edward County don’t have any schools at all. Some of their parents could afford to send them to private schools in other districts, but most of them are sitting at home all day, reading whatever books their parents can scrounge up for them and hoping they’ll wind up with enough education to get a job someday.

“Sarah, honey, do you want me to help you with your hair?” a quiet voice says behind me.

I turn, startled. Miss Freeman, Mrs. Mullins’s younger sister, is smiling at me.

I’d forgotten all about the milk in my hair. After Mama took all that time to wash it last night, too. I must be stinking up the house for Miss Freeman to mention it.

“Thank you, ma’am.” I get up and follow her to the bathroom.

“I’m sure looking forward to seeing you sing at church this Sunday,” Miss Freeman says as she closes the door behind us and pulls pins out of my hair. Her voice is soft and pleasant. I ignore the way she’s yanking at my scalp because it’s so nice to hear someone talk about something that’s not integration. “What’s the anthem this week?”

It takes me a minute to remember. “‘Light Rises in the Darkness.’”

“Oh, that’ll be real pretty. Do you have a solo?”

I wince at another sharp tug. “Not this time.”

“Well, I hope you have one soon. I loved it when you sang on Christmas Eve.” There’s a pause in the yanking. “You know, why don’t I go see if I can find you a clean blouse to wear home. We’ll put this one in the wash.”

She leaves. The milk stain must be bad. I twist around to see it in the bathroom mirror. Sure enough, a broad swath of yellow runs all the way down the back of my blouse. Revolting. Below it are two holes in the fabric where the boy poked me with pencils in the auditorium. I press my fingers against the spot and feel a tender bruise.

A tear pricks at my eye, but I squeeze my lids shut. I can’t give in to tears. If anyone saw, they’d think I was just another weak colored girl. That I couldn’t handle this.

The door opens. I try to put on a smile for Miss Freeman, but it’s just Ruth.

She gazes at my reflection in the mirror. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Somebody accidentally spilled some milk on me.”

Ruth nods, pretending to believe me.

I sit on the toilet seat, facing the wall. Ruth comes up behind me and combs through my hair with her fingers, picking out the flakes of dried milk. Ruth and I are used to fixing each other’s hair. She’s a lot gentler than Miss Freeman.

We’re quiet for a long time. Then, softly, Ruth says, “I didn’t think it would be like that.”

I want to hug her. Instead I say, “What did you think it would be like?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought— No. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. Tell me.”

I turn to face her. Ruth sighs and looks at the window over my head. “I thought when we got there, they’d see they were wrong. I thought they’d let us join their clubs and come to their football games, like everyone else. And maybe later, when the white people thought about it some more, they’d stop trying to tell us we can’t do other things, too.”

“What kind of other things?”

Ruth shrugs and looks down. “You know. Other places. Like at the Sugar Castle.”

The Sugar Castle is the candy store downtown. We always walk past it when Mama takes us to shop for school clothes and Christmas presents. Through the windows you can see dozens of white children filling little bags with Bazooka gum and Red Hots and candy cigarettes. They dig their dirty little hands right down into the candy bins to pick the best pieces and plop them in their bags.

Bobby always begs to go in. He doesn’t read well enough yet to understand the sign on the door that says White Only. So Mama and Ruth and I always tell him we’re running late and can’t go in the store. Then we stop by Food Town on the way home and pick him up a Tootsie Roll.

When we first moved down here Ruth would gaze in the Sugar Castle windows, too. She was big enough by then to know the rules. She could read the sign, and besides, she knew no white parents would want their children putting their hands in candy bins where black children’s fingers had been. But Chick-O-Sticks were always Ruth’s favorites when we lived in Chicago, and the Sugar Castle was the only store in Davisburg where you could get them.

For her eleventh birthday Mama gave Ruth a whole bag of Chick-O-Sticks. I’ve always wondered how she got them. She must have paid someone to go in the store for her.

“I used to think that, too,” I tell Ruth. “When they first started the lawsuit.”

“Did you think it would make the white people be nice to us?”

“No.” I almost laugh. “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

“Well, maybe some of the white people at school could be—”

“No. They won’t.”

I think about the girl who smiled at me this morning before she spit on my good skirt. And the one who shrieked at Ennis in the cafeteria. And Judy, who acted nice at first, then got all her friends to make honking noises whenever I passed by.

“No,” I say again. “We can’t ever trust any of them. We have to stick together, like Mrs. Mullins says.”

Ruth bows her head. “All right.”

I want to say something to make her feel better, but I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to do any of this.

All I really want to do is go to sleep. Lie down in my room at home and stay there, and keep Ruth there, too. Forever.

It feels like there’s a giant hole opening inside me. My future, sliding into a gaping black pit.

I don’t want this to be my life. My sister’s, either.

It’s too late for that now.

The door behind us opens. I swallow and try to smile again. It doesn’t work.

“Sorry, this was all Helen had.” Miss Freeman holds out a hideous pink high-collared blouse. “Let’s see if it fits.”

I take off my stained white blouse.

“Ooh, the milk went all the way through your slip, too,” Ruth says. “Mama’s going to be so upset.”

“No, she won’t,” Miss Freeman says. “She’ll know it wasn’t your fault, Sarah.”

That’s right. Mama will know. Because it’s not my fault.

It’s hers. And Daddy’s. They were the ones who wanted this.

If it hadn’t been for them we could’ve stayed at Johns. I’d be president of the choir and taking college prep classes. I wouldn’t have to worry about Howard revoking my scholarship once they hear I’m in Remedial. I wouldn’t have to worry about Ruth getting her arm broken on her way to Homeroom.

I shouldn’t be thinking this way. It’s disrespectful. Besides, it’s my own fault. I never said I didn’t want this. Our parents asked Ruth and me years ago if we wanted to register at Jefferson—to get the best education we could, and to do our part for the movement. We said yes right away. Why wouldn’t we? Adults had been telling us all our lives that it was up to us to make sure we got a good education. Besides, back then, it seemed impossible that integration would ever really happen here.

But I still said yes.

I have no one to blame but myself. Anything that happens now is my own fault.

I close my eyes and say a quick prayer for God to forgive me for thinking disrespectfully. This time, it does make me feel a little better.

Mrs. Mullins’s blouse comes close enough to fitting me. I do up the buttons on the sleeves while Ruth finishes picking the biggest white flakes out of my hair.

“Remember what I said,” I whisper to her when we’re leaving the house an hour later. “The white people aren’t like us. They’ll turn on you without any warning. You have to be careful, Ruthie. You can’t trust them.”

“I’ll remember.” She huffs, the same way she does when I tell her not to mess with the stuff on my desk at home.

I pray she takes this seriously. I pray she really will remember.

Not one of us can afford to forget.

Lie #7

“THIS IS DUMB.” Ruth yanks a needle through the old brown skirt she’s sewing a patch onto and bites down on a piece of bacon at the same time. “You can’t follow me around all day.”

“I won’t be following you.” I’m hunting through Mama’s sewing box for gray thread. All I can find is garish pinks and blues. “And stop chewing with your mouth open.”

“I’m not a little kid. It’s not your job to tell me what to do.” Ruth puts down her sewing and grabs the biggest piece of bacon on the plate. She takes a huge bite, chewing with her mouth open so wide pieces of bacon fall out.