Tallulah

The rest of the summer flew by after that. I got glasses. Katie started seeing a guy named Trent. (Momma didn't like him and neither did Albert but he seemed pretty okay to me, and since I didn't see her often enough it wasn't like I could really tell if he wasn't good for her or not.) I got my braces taken off. (Adonis took me out for a shake after I came home. Euphemia wasn't around, so she wasn't sullenly glaring at us. It was nice, I guess.)

Adonis and I were different, sort of. I didn't know why. He would pick me up if he saw me on my way home with groceries. He'd come over when I was baby sitting - and it was mostly innocent, I guess. He showed me his film and I got to see parts of his family and friends I hadn't seen before - Agnes putting on her makeup in the morning, Barney singing to records they'd brought from overseas, Euphemia lying on her back in the pool - and I was there too - from the beach. He told me his teacher really did like his film and he passed his exam. We were friends, kind of. (Euphemia was furious, of course.)

My senior year was pretty okay, for the most part anyway. Euphemia won Homecoming Queen. The twins were being themselves - touching and knocking everything down and running about. Albert's soccer team came second in the state championship. Adonis would help Euphemia and me study for our final exams. He was pretty smart in his own way.

Tensions had been high in the city for a while, but I didn't pay it any mind. What did I care? And Peter kept telling me to be careful, but I didn't know what to be careful of. Euphemia and I usually got to school pretty early to study in the library and finish up some homework, and we went to my house after school. The twins stayed with her mother, since she worked from home, and I picked them up on the way. And some days, when it was raining too hard for us to walk, Euphemia would call Adonis from a payphone and make him give us a ride home.

In March, Euphemia started working at a grocery store a few blocks away from school, and since her shift started at quarter after three, she had to go straight to work. I had to walk home by myself, which was fine - I could just ride my bike. But then someone popped a hole in both my tires, so I had to walk. It wasn't too cold and I'd be getting my license soon - as soon as Albert taught me how to drive stickshift - so I'd be fine.

But something was wrong. I didn't know what, but something wasn't right. My parents stopped watching the news. Albert kept offering to drive me to school and pick me up after he finished coaching. Peter kept trying to teach me how to defend myself - against what I didn't really know, but whatever it was must have been pretty terrible. My school hadn't always been the most amazing place, but we all managed to tolerate each other. And yes, there were the daily taunts and tripping and shoving and things, but I dealt with them because that's just how things were and I didn't think they'd change any time soon.

At school, for the last week or so, there'd been lots of debating and arguing about desegregating the pep rallies. Apparently, we were all allowed to be in the same school, but we weren't allowed to sit together during pep rallies for teams of both white and black athletes. I didn't get it. But since I didn't really go to pep rallies anymore (the only athlete I really knew was Percy, and he was in college already) I didn't care.

It was a Friday. My parents were out of town because they were going to spend a weekend all the way in Miami, which was where Albert's sister and his family moved to. I didn't want to go because I had some tests to study for on Monday, so I was staying alone with the twins. I hoped I'd be okay, but if anything happened, I could probably tell Adonis to come over, because he really did like them and they liked him too.

There was a big home game, and like they did every other Friday, they had a pep rallies with whites on one side and blacks - few as we were - on the other. And after the pep rallies, the students were dismissed. Since the library stayed open, I went in to start on my homework, because I knew that with the twins I wouldn't get anything done. I only stayed for about twenty minutes or so, and by then most of the halls were empty. I put my books away and grabbed my bag out of my locker before closing it shut.

When I got outside, there was a group of students standing there on the sidewalk. I walked down the steps cautiously, trying to figure out what to do. I didn't really know any of them well, so I could probably sneak past them unnoticed.

And then the police just showed up with dogs and hoses and I'm trying to explain that I'm just trying to go home and I'm soaking wet and that dog looks like it's about to snap its' leash right in half and tear my throat out (or something, I can't see) and I've never been more humiliated or cold or embarrassed or terrified in my whole life. That water isn't even cold, it's stinging and the police are calling us all sort of terrible things and coming at us with batons and I didn't even do anything and I just want to go home -

And then it's over. It's finally over and I can leave but I can't move. I'm in shock, and I'm cold, and I just want to lay in bed and cry and cry and cry again. But I can't, not yet, so I make my feet move, one by one by one and people are yelling at me - like I haven't gone through enough already - and I don't know what to do. I'm just so confused and tired and cold - so damn cold - and then it starts to rain. As if my day couldn't get any worse.

Someone's beeping at me and since I lost my glasses when the police decided to hose us all down - and I still don't understand why - I can't see who it is. But I can sure hear him, and feel him, and he's taking me with him to the car and asking me what happened and I don't know what to say, so I just put my books on my knees and sniffle.

"Tallulah?"

"I just want to go home."

"Okay." He nods and we speed down the street - he drives like a maniac and I don't know how he still has his license because he really can't drive at all. We're on our street in no time. He pulls into our driveway and opens my door quietly. We walk into my empty house silently. He starts going through the cabinets in the kitchen as I go up the stairs to change into something dry. By the time I've peeled out of my wet clothes and changed into some pants, a sweater - I grabbed it randomly and didn't realize it was his until after I pulled it over my head - and some socks, he's got the kettle on and a bunch of blankets on the couch.

Adonis doesn't say anything, just wraps me all the blankets that I'm guessing he took from the linen closet since the door was still open when I came downstairs, and tells me to sit on the couch. He sits next to me with a cup of tea and a small smile. There's a record playing faintly somewhere and I should recognize it because Momma and Albert are the kind of people who don't go out of their way to buy new records but I don't.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I was just - I was just trying to go home," I say quietly. And I don't want to cry because I shouldn't, because I'm still trying to tell myself that it's not a big deal but it is - it's a huge deal - but I still feel my throat growing thick and tears stinging my eyes. "I wasn't hurting anyone and - and - and then - "

And then I start crying and he's shushing me and telling me it's going to be okay and we both know it isn't - not really - but the simple fact that he says it will be makes me sort of think it's true. And I didn't know I liked being held so much, not really - and I like how we fit together, despite the three or four blankets he's thrown on me - "because you're going to get a cold, don't you know?"

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, kissing my forehead, and somehow that feels a lot more intimate than actually kissing him or anything else, and I'm afraid that the heat on my face isn't from how warm I feel under all these blankets and quilts or from the tea.