Fast Girls Read online

“But why didn’t you say something?”

  “I have to be careful . . .” Louise’s voice trailed off. How was she supposed to explain to this girl that accusations could be dangerous? How Olive’s white skin made it safer for her to say something? “I . . . I didn’t know what to say.”

  Olive gave her a long look. “How about the truth? Next time, be ready to defend yourself. No one else is going to do it.”

  Louise gritted her teeth together and walked away, not looking back, but she could feel the girl watching her. Sometimes standing up for the truth could be complicated. Louise seethed with resentment toward Olive, but also felt a wave of shame for how she envied the simplicity of the girl’s opinions and the confidence with which she defended them.

  The other girls called goodbyes and dispersed while the team from Needham returned to their coach’s car and drove away. Coach Quain remained standing next to his car and waved Louise over. Louise looked around, but couldn’t pretend she hadn’t seen him. She walked over to where he waited.

  “What happened during that race?”

  A knot formed in her throat.

  “Was Olive telling the truth?”

  Louise nodded.

  Coach Quain let out a gusty sigh and leaned against the door of his car. “Today’s runs were nothing to get upset about.”

  “Yes, sir.” She kept her gaze on the buttons of his jacket.

  “Next time, I’ll keep an eye out for any funny business, you hear me? I know that kind of thing is frustrating. Unsportsmanlike conduct will not be tolerated in the future. Got it?”

  “You mean cheating.”

  He looked taken aback, but Louise wanted to say the word aloud, feel the weight of it lift from her chest.

  He adjusted the brim of his cap, but looked her straight in the eye. “Yes, no more cheating.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She turned toward home and set off running. The knot inside her chest loosened with each step. When she cut through Craddock Park, she slowed and headed toward a monument in the corner of the park. She neared the marker and stopped to read the plaque.

  Eight years earlier, her uncle Freddie had brought Emily and her to this very spot, swept along by the throngs of Fourth of July parade-goers, jubilant marching-band music swelling around them. Red, white, and blue bunting decorated a makeshift raised stage where the town’s officials prepared to speak. Louise could still taste the achingly sweet cherry sucker Uncle Freddie had handed her as they waited for the ceremony to honor the town’s veterans from the Great War to begin. Even as their neighbors wilted in the July heat, Uncle Freddie looked so handsome in his khaki uniform with its sharp pleats running along the trousers and badge with a red fist glowing on his chest. Louise looked around, expecting to see others admiring her handsome uncle, but the eyes of the parade-goers passed right over him and settled on the white veterans. From what she could see, they were the only black people in the crowd.

  Finally the mayor had cleared his throat into the microphone. After he led the crowd through the Pledge of Allegiance, he spoke about the sacrifice Malden’s men had made and read a list of men who had been killed during the war. With each name, Uncle Freddie’s proud grin lost its vigor. Emily fidgeted and tugged at her knee socks. Louise’s head began to ache from too much sugar and she wished she hadn’t drunk the tall glass of lemonade back at the house. Her bladder felt fixing to burst, but she kept quiet, knowing Uncle Freddie was waiting for something.

  After the speeches ended, the crowd began to break apart as everyone headed back to their respective homes and holiday celebrations. Uncle Freddie took Louise and Emily by their hands and led them from the park, making no complaint of how sticky they were. In fact, he said nothing at all. Halfway down the block, as the crowd thinned and they were no longer in danger of disappearing into its jostling mass, Emily slipped from his grip and skipped ahead, her pigtails bobbing up and down. After a minute or so, she stopped and turned. “Hey, Uncle Freddie, did you know some of those men who died during the war?”

  “I did.”

  “Which ones?”

  A vein pulsed in his neck. “Their names aren’t on that memorial.”

  Emily wrinkled her nose in confusion. “But didn’t the mayor read the names of the men who died? Aren’t all of the names on that old rock?”

  “It’s a memorial plaque,” Louise corrected.

  Emily rolled her eyes and then refocused her attention back on Uncle Freddie. “Why didn’t the mayor read all the names?”

  He plucked a handkerchief from his back pocket. As he mopped his face, it seemed that a flash of anger crossed his expression, but it happened so quickly that Louise couldn’t be sure. He lowered his handkerchief and looked around, and with no one close enough to overhear them, he said, “Girls, when you got dark skin, your sacrifices aren’t counted in the same way they would be if you had white skin.”

  “So the names of your friends aren’t on that plaque?”

  Uncle Freddie shook his head. “No, they’re not.”

  Emily considered this and made a tutting sound before spinning around to recommence her skipping.

  Uncle Freddie still held Louise’s hand and his grip had tightened to the point where it felt like the bones in her fingers might crack under the pressure, but she figured he needed something to hold on to so she stayed steady and held her breath. After a minute, his grip slackened. Louise exhaled and asked, “Why did you go to the war? Couldn’t you have died?”

  “Yes, I could have.” He tented his hand over his eyes to watch Emily’s antics. Just when Louise thought the conversation was over, he said, “Sometimes you have to do things because they’re the right things. If we Negroes continue to participate in this country, someday our white countrymen will have to start seeing us as people who deserve every bit of respect that they expect for themselves.”

  “But what if you had died?”

  “I would have died in hopes that my sacrifice would help others, like you and your sisters, Junior, all of you.”

  “How would it have helped us?”

  Uncle Freddie fished his wallet from his back pocket and thumbed through its contents until he extracted a photograph and handed it to Louise. In it, Uncle Freddie and another black man sat at a café with a bottle and two fancy glasses set in front of them. Their legs were crossed and they appeared relaxed, yet they sat with the dignified bearing of military posture.

  Louise studied the photo. “This was the war? It doesn’t look too bad.”

  “It was plenty bad, but this picture was taken after it had ended. We had a weekend in Paris. My friend and I went to cafés, to the theater. No matter where we went, we were treated with respect. The French were grateful for our service no matter the color of our skin.”

  “Huh. Did you consider staying there?”

  Uncle Freddie laughed. “Your grandma wouldn’t have stood for that. This is my home. I needed to come back, but going there made me realize that we’ve got to do risky things because they remind us that we’re worth more than we’re led to believe.”

  Louise pondered this, but she couldn’t shake the way the white people had seemed to dismiss Uncle Freddie when they were in the park. It didn’t seem right that he had gone and risked his life but no one seemed to pay him any respect. “Are you going to do something about those names being left off the plaque?”

  “No,” he said, looking straight ahead. His tone indicated the discussion was over.

  Eight years later, the memorial was unchanged except for a bright green scrim of pollen that covered it. Louise brushed it off the plaque and traced the engraved names with her index finger. Since that afternoon, they had never again discussed the fact that the names of the black veterans were missing from the plaque. Still, every morning Uncle Freddie hung an American flag outside the main window of his garage apartment and every evening, he took it inside; and every Fourth of July, he donned his uniform and joined the town’s festivities. It never appeared to occur to him to not honor his
country, even though that honor wasn’t reciprocated by his countrymen, and that was that.

  Now Louise had a faint understanding of what Uncle Freddie had been thinking that afternoon. Maybe sometimes you had to keep your head down and know that what you were doing was important even if no one seemed to acknowledge it. Just like Uncle Freddie’s patriotism remained unshaken, she had to keep running and doing her best, no matter what happened. Despite the coaches saying that the results of the day meant nothing, they meant something to her. She would remember today and hold her coach to his word. Everyone needed to follow the rules.

  And as for Mary and her silence? That was still confusing to her. But then she thought about those striped scars on the backs of the girl’s freckled legs. A cold pit hardened in Louise’s stomach. Once she had caught a glimpse of the lower half of her grandmother’s back and seen a similar pattern. Grandma never said anything about her youth in Mississippi and Louise knew better than to ask. Sometimes silence meant survival.

  Often it seemed as though the color of Louise’s skin provided code for how she needed to act, what she needed to say. Or not say. Back in the park, all kinds of forces pressed upon her to prevent her from being as decisive as Olive. But what kept Mary from speaking her mind? Maybe Mary’s silence indicated more than weakness. Maybe it had something to do with survival. Sadness overcame Louise, and she drifted away from the plaque a few steps before starting to run again. Her earlier energy had faded and she was left with a headache and legs that weighed enough to be made of concrete.

  Rosie got away with winning that day, but cheating would take her only so far. But Mary? Olive? They were fast and followed the rules. The stopwatch would tell the truth.

  Louise couldn’t wait to race them again.

  8.

  October 1928

  Fulton, Missouri

  BY FALL, HELEN WAS BACK AT SCHOOL. DESPITE DR. McCUBBIN’S assurances that her throat had healed, her voice was different. Deeper, huskier. Sometimes it was more of a rasp. It certainly did not sound feminine, and it gave the other girls in her fifth-grade class one more reason to avoid her. As a result, she played with the boys during recesses and before and after school.

  “Hey, bet you can’t hurdle that fence,” Tom Egglethorpe said to Helen, pointing toward the edge of the schoolyard. The group of boys surrounding them crowed in delight at the challenge. Tom was the only boy in school who even came close to Helen’s athleticism. Like her, he was a head taller than everyone else.

  “Bet I can,” she said, rolling her eyes to get a rise out of him. She needed to get home to muck out the henhouse, but there was no chance she’d leave a dare unmet. Helen never said no to a challenge.

  “Fine, you go first.” Tom stuck one hand on his hip in a defiant gesture.

  “Why? Need me to show you the way? You a sissy?”

  Tom’s face, already pink from perpetual sunburn, flushed a darker shade of crimson. Even his scalp flushed through the thin layer of the almost-white blond hair of his buzz cut. Everyone could see it. “Nah, I ain’t a sissy. Take that back.”

  At this rate, their parlaying would take all day. Helen snorted in disgust, turned, and took off in a sprint toward the split-rail fence. She balled her hands and punched up at the sky with each stride. Faster and faster. She neared the fence. It was higher than she’d expected, but there was no turning back. She sucked in a breath and held it, launching herself into the air. Up, up, and over. Her heel caught the top plank of the fence and she wobbled, straining to keep her feet underneath her, to keep her balance. She landed with a thump, stumbling slightly on her landing, but kept upright and exhaled before gulping down some desperate breaths, glad to be facing away from the boys so they couldn’t see the relief she knew to be stamped all over her face. She slowed to a stop, turned, and raised her arms over her head. “Ha! See if you can do that!”

  At that moment, Miss Thurston emerged from the schoolhouse. From where Helen stood, she couldn’t hear exactly what her teacher said to the boys, but from the way their chins dropped to their chests, there was little doubt it was a good tongue-lashing.

  Miss Thurston turned to scan the schoolyard, but stopped when she caught sight of Helen. “Miss Stephens, you come here right now.”

  With heavy legs, Helen headed back toward the school, slipping between the middle portion of the split-rail fence. By the time she sidled in front of her teacher, Tom and the other boys had edged away, eyes averted and sniggering, but they dawdled, anticipating the scolding everyone knew was coming.

  “You’re far too old for these shenanigans, Miss Stephens. Start acting like a lady. Tomorrow I expect to see you walk home with the girls.”

  The girls? Helen almost choked. The girls wanted nothing to do with her. The boys didn’t care much for her company either, but at least they valued her abilities. Racing, ditch jumping, and games of ball had won her a good dose of respect from them, respect that she sorely missed from the girls. Helen looked up to Miss Thurston’s face in time to see a flash of pity in the woman’s dark eyes.

  “I mean it, Helen,” Miss Thurston murmured. “If you keep up with the boys, you’re going to find yourself in trouble. Nothing good will come from this. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Helen angled her head down, but annoyance surged through her ten-year-old brain. What did Miss Thurston know anyway? She had straight teeth, wore pretty dresses, knew how to wear her hair in a fashionable style. How was it that someone purported to be smart about books could be so ignorant about people? Did adults forget the battlefield that was childhood when they left it behind?

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, while everyone else dawdled, gathering their things and gossiping, Helen took off out the front door at a sprint and cleared out of the schoolyard, eager to avoid Miss Thurston’s wrath. It wasn’t until she passed the school’s outbuilding by the front gate that she slowed, her lunch pail banging into her thigh with the change of pace.

  “Hey, Hellie!” a voice called.

  She turned to search the shadows of the outbuilding, her vision spotty with the sudden shift toward the afternoon’s brightness. There, standing in the doorway, her sixteen-year-old cousin Jimmy shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone had come out of the schoolhouse but no one appeared to have left. Silently, she congratulated herself on getting out of school without any trouble.

  “C’mere,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  Helen had seen him doing odd jobs around the school, but they never spoke. Like many of the kids from the surrounding farms, his attendance at the local high school had become more and more infrequent with every passing year. Curious, she picked her way through the scrubby grass toward him. He waved his hand at her to follow him and disappeared into the building.

  Helen entered the outbuilding and blinked a few times for her eyes to readjust in the low light. Streaks of sunshine edged through the cracks of the building walls, creating veils of dust motes in the air. Jimmy stood at the far wall and pointed at a pile of hay bales next to him. She neared him, wondering what he had found. Perhaps a dead snake? One neighboring farmer had even found an unbroken bottle of moonshine in one of his hay bales. When she reached Jimmy’s side, she examined the bales but saw nothing out of place. She glanced at him. His narrow, tanned face studied her. Grubby hands held on to the snaps of his overalls, revealing bare arms, ropy with lean muscle. He wore no shirt under his overalls.

  “Wanna see my pecker?”

  Helen considered this. Farm life necessitated a certain familiarity with all things pertaining to reproduction. The animals on their farm revealed their various anatomical features without shame and even engaged in the business, often violent, of procreation in public spaces, but aside from the little worm on her younger brother, visible when he bathed and dressed, she hadn’t seen anyone else’s. A small pulse of warning began at the base of her neck, but before she could say a word, he had unfastened his dungarees and the dirty cl
othes fell to the floor with a sigh. She took a long look, unimpressed.

  That was it?

  She had seen the thing on her neighbor’s stallion Nero. Now that gave her pause. But Jimmy’s pecker was exactly that—a strange, chicken-necked thing poking out from his dirty fist. She moved her gaze up his body to his narrow chest, usually covered by the bib of his overalls. There, his tanned skin paled into a milky white. Blue veins ran underneath his chest in a crackle pattern that reminded her of her grandma’s china tea set.

  “Now let’s see what you got,” he said, and without waiting for her reaction, he tugged at the snap on her overalls and, like his, the straps gave way. He then bobbed his chin at her once-white underpants, now more of a gray color from frequent laundering. “Pull those down.” She did as instructed and when she straightened back to standing, he frowned at the unremarkable cleft between her legs. Without any warning, he stepped toward her, pushed her into the rough-hewn wall, and thrust himself into her. The back of her skull banged into the wooden board behind her with such force that stars danced across her vision. She gasped.

  Her chin was held in place by pressure from his shoulder, and the earthy combination of his sweat, grass cuttings, and wood shavings pressed upon her with sickening intensity. Rendered silent with shock, she hung limp as he pumped himself against her and a white flash of pain shot through her. Good God, how could that measly pecker create such a godawful feeling? It felt like time had stopped, but then, he grunted and stepped away, reaching down to pull his overalls up over his narrow hips. The skin along her spine burned from being pressed against the splintery surface behind her. Dazed, she shifted her hips from side to side in search of some way to ease the raw ache pulsing deep inside her. He reached forward and brushed some dust off her temple in a way that struck her as both awkward and tender at the same time.

  “Let’s do that again tomorrow,” he said, looking pleased.

  She stared at him, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

  He took her silence as agreement. “Go on, better get dressed ’fore you leave.”