Kitabı oku: «My Life as a Rat», sayfa 4
The Little Sister
WAKENED BY—SOMETHING …
Not a flash of headlights on the wall of the darkened room. Not the expansion of headlights on two walls of our room, if a vehicle turned into our driveway.
So that I would think, but only later—They cut the headlights. Not wanting to wake anyone.
Still less would I think, at the age of twelve—This part of it would be premeditated. Leaving nothing to chance.
And so I saw the time: 12:25 A.M. Someone had entered the kitchen downstairs, from the rear of the house, through the garage. I did not yet know that it was Jerr and Lionel.
Though Jerr had his own place to live now often he turned up at our house. He’d brought Lionel home, but wasn’t leaving immediately. He’d dropped the others, our cousin Walt, and Don Brinkhaus, at their houses.
At this time they had not known, they would claim they’d had no idea, that Hadrian Johnson had been beaten so badly he would never regain consciousness.
Though bleeding badly from head wounds, from the blows of Jerr’s baseball bat, they would claim that, when they’d left him, Hadrian Johnson had looked as if he was all right.
This I would learn later. In time I would memorize much. Like lifting small stones, pebbles. Lifting, contemplating. Setting down again taking care to put its pebble in its precise and rightful place.
In the small room at the top of the stairs shared with my sister I lay very still hearing voices that seemed to me lowered and urgent. At first I thought one of the voices was my father’s—but the other voice was not Mom’s.
I went to the door and opened it, just slightly. Eagerly I listened. It was thrilling to me, that Katie remained asleep. That everyone else was asleep—our parents, our older sister, our brothers Les and Rick.
When Daddy was out, or my brothers, I would remain awake waiting for them, if I could keep my eyes from closing. They had no idea how I waited for them. Patiently watching for headlights to flash onto the bedroom wall. That night waiting for Jerr to bring Lionel home and hoping that they’d hang around a while in the kitchen having a beer or two as they often did.
Quietly I left my room and descended the stairs, barefoot. In my pajamas. But no one was in the kitchen.
They’d entered the kitchen, I had thought. There was a draft of cold in the air, a smell of cold, wet leaves. But then they’d gone back out into the garage, leaving the door ajar.
This door was rarely locked. Most doors of our house were rarely locked.
A few inches from the doorway I hesitated, listening. Until now I was not altogether certain that it was Jerr and Lionel who’d come into the house but now I heard their voices which were lowered, urgent. Often I overheard my brothers talking together, their speech was fascinating to me. Yet more, my father’s speech was fascinating to me. The language of men and boys— rarely was it directed toward me, I could be only an eavesdropper. While there was never any ambiguity about whether my mother was addressing me.
My brothers were aroused, excited. I could hear only isolated words. Fuck, shit. Keep it down!
My brothers never caught me eavesdropping, so little notice did they take of me.
Then, I heard the outdoor faucet being turned on. Were my brothers doing something with the hose?—washing the car?
Through the crack in the doorway I saw them squatting close together just outside the garage where the water from the hose would soak into the soil, not accumulate on the garage floor. There was a light—an overhead light in the garage—a bare bulb, harsh and coated in grime—so that I could see, just barely, that they were washing something: a baseball bat.
Had to be Jerr’s bat he carried in his car “for protection.” He and Lionel had rolled up their sleeves to wash the bat, and to wash their hands and forearms, vigorously.
They’d brought out soap from the house. Bar of strong-smelling soap on the kitchen sink that mostly just our father used, wiping his hands on wads of paper towels.
My brothers were laughing, nervously. There was something very wrong but I felt an impulse to laugh too. They were only about ten feet away, for I was seeing them at an angle. Thinking They won’t like this. Being spied on. No.
Still, I remained where I was. Staring. (Maybe) memorizing. Not for a long time would I learn that my brothers were deliberating what to do with the bloodstained bat during these minutes. The murder weapon it would be called one day.
They were sober now, they’d have said. Stone-cold sober.
Fucking totally sober.
Not really thinking clearly but they knew they had to get rid of the bat, fast. Considered throwing it into the river—but what if it floated? Even weighed down, a wooden bat might somehow work loose and the river would be the first place South Niagara cops would look for a weapon. Nor could they burn it—(would a bat burn? The smoke would be detected). Not a great idea to hide it in the trash, even somebody else’s trash can on the street and so finally they decided to bury it on the riverbank, in the underbrush. A few hundred yards from the house. There was litter on the riverbank, some of this was compost from Mom’s garden. This was a better idea, they thought, than driving somewhere. They’d had enough of the car, for the night.
They’d managed to lessen the dents in the fender. Struggling, with bare hands. Panting, cursing. Next day, in daylight, on the curb by his rented place Jerr would take a hammer and un-bend it more, if he remembered.
In fact, the dents and scratches and (even) blood-smears on the front of the Chevrolet still registered in the name of Jerome Kerrigan would be evident when it was closely examined by police investigators. Like the clothes, socks, shoes my brothers would try to launder that night.
Like the bat, that could not be scrubbed clean by my brothers for its minute cracks and indentations would harbor traces of Hadrian Johnson’s blood, unmistakably.
Burying the bat in the underbrush, near Mom’s compost—that seemed like a practical idea. I saw my brothers wrap the wetted bat in a piece of burlap and I saw them leave the garage but I could not observe them after this, only to understand that they weren’t going far, into our backyard it seemed, or a little farther, on foot.
I was mystified. I had no idea what they were doing. I guessed they might be drunk. Maybe it was some kind of joke.
I went upstairs, back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep.
AND THEN ABOUT A HALF HOUR LATER I HEARD THEM RE-ENTER the house. The kitchen. Heard the refrigerator door being (quietly) opened and shut. The sound of beer cans being opened.
Almost, I could hear voices. Soft laughter.
Jes-sus.
Fucking Chri-ist!
I was sleepless, and I was curious. I was thinking—Nothing is different tonight.
Left my room to join them. Their tomboy kid-sister, they favored over Katie and (prissy, bossy) Miriam.
It was so, I adored my big brothers and basked in the glow of even their careless attention. And they loved me, I believed. I’d always believed.
Taking note of me, sometimes. Tousling my hair as you might tousle the hair of a dog. Hey kid. How’re you doing, Vi’let Rue?
In a family there are allies, and there are adversaries. It seemed to me that my brothers and I were on our daddy’s side, and my sisters were on my mother’s side.
Wanting to think this. In my naivete.
Because, really I wasn’t a female just yet. Lean-hipped as a guy, flat-chested, hard little muscles in legs, arms, shoulders—my brothers had to be impressed, I could run as fast as most boys my age, rarely cried or complained, wasn’t fussy or squeamish like other girls. If a spider darted across a wall, or a garter snake slithered across pavement, I didn’t shriek and run like another girl.
Why was I proud of this? I was.
Walking into the kitchen as if I’d only now been wakened. Daringly said, “Hey guys! Where’ve you been so late?”
They stared at me in my pajamas as if for a shivery moment they didn’t know who the hell I was. As if they didn’t know what to do about me.
Both my brothers were drinking beer from cans, thirstily. Breathing through their mouths as if they’d been running. I felt their excitement, I saw the fatigue in their faces and yet something raw, aroused. Unzipped, their jackets were wet in front. They’d been vigorously washing, scrubbing. Their shoes were wet, dark-stained. The cuffs of their trousers. Lionel’s big-jawed face looked puffy; a small cut gleamed beneath his right eye. Jerr was rubbing the knuckles of his right hand as if in pain, but a pleasurable pain. He’d taken time to splash water on his flushed face, dampen his long, lank, sand-colored hair and sweep it back from his forehead. Like Lionel’s skin Jerr’s skin was blemished but he had a brutal handsome face. He had Daddy’s young face.
With a tight smile Jerr said, “Over at the Falls. We ran into some sons of bitches. But we’re okay, see? Don’t tell Mom.”
Lionel said, “Yeah, Vi’let. Don’t tell Mom, or—him.”
Him. We knew what him meant.
No need to warn me against telling Daddy. None of us would ever have ratted on one another to our father. Even if we were furious at one another, or disgusted, we wouldn’t. That would be a betrayal so profound and so cruel as to be unforgivable for Daddy’s punishment would be swift and pitiless and for a certain space of time Daddy would withhold his love from the one he’d punished.
I asked who it was they’d been fighting. How badly I wanted to know their secrets. To be like a brother to them, and not just a sister.
Though I knew it was futile. They would shrug as they always did when I asked pushy questions. Jerr said, lowering his voice, “You got to promise you won’t say anything, Vi’let. Okay?”
I shrugged and laughed. I was feeling wild! Asking, could I have a taste of their beer?
They looked surprised. Had I surprised them?
Lionel handed me his can, which was still cold. It turned out not to be beer but Daddy’s favorite, Dark Horse Black Ale. The taste was repulsive to me, even the smell, but I was determined to persevere in trying to like it, to see why my brothers and my father liked the dark ale so much, until one day (I was sure) I would like it just fine. I swallowed a mouthful. I was choking, liquid stung in my nose, the guys laughed at me, but not meanly. I managed to say, “I promise.”
The Promise
BY MONDAY NEWS OF THE “SAVAGE BEATING” OF HADRIAN Johnson spread through South Niagara. Even in middle school no one was talking about much else. I heard, and I knew.
An African American boy, basketball player and honors student at the high school. Beaten and left unconscious at a roadside. In critical condition in intensive care at South Niagara General Hospital …
Our teachers were looking grim, cautious. You could see them speaking together urgently, in the halls. But not to us.
Better to say nothing. Until all the facts are known.
I was frightened for my brothers, I was in dread of their being arrested. I would tell no one what I knew.
But already South Niagara police were making inquiries about my brothers, my cousin Walt, and Don Brinkhaus who was, like Jerr, no longer in school. Someone had provided them with the first three digits of the Chevrolet’s license plate and a partial description of the car which was traced to our father.
No possible way that Jerome Kerrigan could deny that he’d given the car to his oldest son Jerome Jr., since any number of people knew this; but there was the off chance, Daddy probably told himself, and the police, that the Chevrolet had been stolen and whatever had happened, his sons were not to blame … For police officers had allowed Daddy to think initially that the situation was just an accident, a hit-and-run.
Damn kids lost it and panicked.
Both my brothers were picked up by police officers and brought to headquarters for questioning. Jerr, just as he was arriving late to work, groggy and distracted, in the Chevrolet with the dented front fender; Lionel at school, disheveled and anxious and determined to behave as if nothing was wrong. We would learn later that Daddy met Jerr and Lionel at the police precinct in the company of the very lawyer who’d so successfully defended the boys against charges of assault against Liza Deaver.
At home our mother was preoccupied, nervous. Several times she hurried to answer the phone, taking it into a room where she could speak privately. By suppertime when Lionel and Daddy weren’t back I thought it would be expected of me to ask where they were? Was something wrong?—but my mother turned away as if she hadn’t heard.
Where was Daddy, and where was Lionel?—my sisters, my brothers Les and Rick seemed not to know.
In silence we sat with our mother to watch the local 6:00 P.M. news. The lead story was of a deadly attack on a local teenager by yet-unidentified assailants.
The victim was Hadrian Johnson, seventeen. Popular basketball player and honors student, South Niagara High. Beaten, critical injuries, witness driving along Delahunt Road has allegedly reported “four or five white boys …”
A likeness of Hadrian Johnson filled the screen, the photo that would be published with his obituary: young-looking, boyish, sweet smile, gat-teeth.
Our mother was moaning softly to herself. She’d been in an agitated state since we’d come home from school and even now the telephone was ringing, she didn’t seem to hear.
My sisters Miriam and Katie, my brothers Les and Rick, remained staring numbly at the TV screen though an advertisement had come on. They were quieter than I had ever seen them. Les said he knew Hadrian Johnson—sort of. Katie said she knew his sister Louise. Miriam, who never dared smoke at home, fumbled for cigarettes in a pocket, lit one with trembling hands and our staring blinking benumbed mother paid not the slightest heed.
How much they all knew, or had guessed, I did not know.
I did not understand how this terrible news could be related to my brothers. There was something I was forgetting—the baseball bat? In my confusion it seemed to me that Hadrian Johnson must have been beaten by the same persons who’d fought with my brothers—sons of bitches at the Falls.
Niagara Falls was seven miles away. This beating had been here in South Niagara, on Delahunt Road.
There were long-standing rivalries between the high school sports teams. Sometimes these spilled over into acts of vandalism, threats, fights. Beatings.
That must have been it, I thought. Guys from Niagara Falls, invading South Niagara. Often there were attacks of graffiti on the South Niagara high school walls, obscene words and drawings after a weekend.
From what my brothers had told me it sounded as if they’d been at the Falls and had been fighting there. Was it possible, I’d heard wrong?
I won’t tell Dad. I won’t tell anyone. I promise!
In the aftermath of the TV news our mother stood slowly, pushing herself up from the couch. With the stiff dignity of one in great pain who is resolved not to show it she made her way out of the room. We saw her lips moving wordlessly as if she were praying or arguing with someone. Her eyes had become glazed, as if she were staring at something pressing too close to her face, she could not get into focus.
She would hide away in the house, in this benumbed state. She would hide like a wounded creature. As after what she called the trouble with the Deaver girl for weeks she’d been reluctant to leave the house knowing that she had to encounter friends, acquaintances, neighbors eager to commiserate with her about the terrible injustice to which the Kerrigan boys had been subjected …
For it was not always clear, our mother knew: the distinction between commiseration and gloating.
Eventually, the Deaver girl was forgotten. Or people ceased speaking of her to Lula Kerrigan.
From that time onward, we noticed that Mom was becoming more religious. If that’s what it was—“religious.”
At church she sat stiffly at attention. You would think that her mind was elsewhere, her expression was so vacant. Yet, she would suddenly cover her face with her hands as if overcome with emotion. As the mass was celebrated by slow painstaking degrees, as the priest lifted the small pale wafer in his hands to bless it, to transform it into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the ringing of the little silver bell seemed to prompt our mother to such behavior, mortifying to those of us who had to crowd into the pew with her—in recent years just the younger children, and Miriam.
It was rare that Daddy came to mass with Mom. Rarer still that Jerr or Lionel came. But Les, sometimes. And Katie, and Rick. And Violet Rue who was usually squeezed between Katie and Mom, a fidgety child, easily bored.
Violet Rue hated church. Oh but she feared church—the sharp-eyed God who dwelt inside the church, and who knew her innermost heart.
Sometimes, when Mom lowered her hands from her face her eyes were brimming with tears.
Tears of hurt, or fear?—triumph? Vindication? You could not say, you dared not look at the shining face.
Making her way to the communion rail then, swaying like a drunken woman, oblivious of her children. She was in the presence of God, she had nothing to do with them at this moment.
A mother’s public behavior can be a source of great mortification to her children, especially her daughters. (As our father’s never was.) (Maybe because we saw Mom much more frequently in public places than we saw Dad.) The red-lipstick mouth that stood out like a cutout mouth in her pale, fleshy face, the thin-plucked eyebrows that would never grow back, white vein-raddled bare legs in summer and spreading hips, hair beginning to grow gray in swatches—all these were shameful to sharp pitiless eyes. And the exasperating precision with which Mom parked her car, which required numerous attempts. The muffled exclamations, choked-back sobs.
Oh, God. Help me!
I adored my mother but also, I guess I hated her. More and more, as I grew older and Mom seemed never to change except to become more exasperatingly herself.
After the TV news we went away stunned. It was as if a fire were burning somewhere in the house, no one knew where. I could hear Katie’s bewildered voice and Miriam telling her sharply just be still, not to bother Mom.
I wanted to tell them: I knew much more than they did. Our brothers had entrusted me with a secret as they had not entrusted them.
For seven hours my father remained with Jerr and Lionel at police headquarters as they were being interviewed. (Not “interrogated,” since they had not—yet—been arrested.)
Initially, my brothers denied any involvement with Hadrian Johnson, at any time.
Then, Jerr conceded that just possibly he’d struck something, or someone, driving on Delahunt Road on Saturday night. And he’d been drinking—a few beers. And maybe speeding, a few miles over the forty-five-mile-an-hour limit.
Definitely, he’d heard a thud. He and Lionel both. Looked in the rearview mirror but didn’t see anything, guessed it might’ve been a deer, or a bicycle abandoned at the side of the road.
Had anyone else been with them?—my brothers were asked.
At first, reluctant to give the names of the other boys. For they were not the kind of guys to rat on their friends.
At first, shaking their heads no.
Though soon, after repeated questions, and Daddy’s increasing impatience, they acknowledged yes—there were two other guys with them, in the backseat of the car.
And so, my brothers did “rat” on their friends after all. (Would this be held against them?—it did not seem so.)
I would wonder when our father was told by police officers about Hadrian Johnson—what had been done to him, what condition he was in; when this had happened, and what a witness had reported.
When Daddy had no choice but to realize that the trouble his sons were in wasn’t just a hit-and-run accident.
After seven hours Daddy was allowed to bring my brothers back to the house. They had not (yet) been arrested. They had been warned, and had agreed, not to leave South Niagara but to be available for further questioning as soon as the next day.
It was after 9:00 P.M. They were exhausted, and they were starving. In the kitchen they ate the supper Mom had prepared for them, kept warm in the oven. No one else was welcome in the room though we were all told—by Daddy, for Mom could not bear to speak—that there’d been a “misunderstanding” by the South Niagara police—a “misidentification”—that would be straightened out in the morning, with the lawyer’s help.
Rick asked if it had anything to do with Hadrian Johnson getting beaten and Daddy said angrily no it did not.
What we could see of our older brothers, they were looking fatigued, grim. Their jaws were dark with stubble and their eyes were rimmed with shadow. Lionel didn’t smirk as he usually did if someone was looking at him more intently than he liked and Jerr ignored us altogether.
Katie and I went to bed, later than our usual hour. And in our beds we lay unable to sleep. Katie said, “I guess Jerr and Lionel are in some kind of trouble from the other night. With Jerr’s car? You think—they were drinking?”
Of Hadrian Johnson she did not speak, as if she’d forgotten him.
And I’d forgotten him, too. And the baseball bat.
Strange to be lying beneath a warm comforter, in flannel pajamas, shivering. So hard, my teeth were chattering.
And my head was aching, as it sometimes did when I lay down, my head on a single pillow; too much blood rushed into it. Badly I wanted to just lie there in the dark, not having to see another person, not having to hear another person speak and not having to speak myself. Not having to think about anything that was upsetting, frightening.
What is it? Why?
AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS WIND SCRAPING BRANCHES AGAINST the roof of the house then I understood it was Daddy speaking with my brothers in the kitchen below. His voice was low and urgent, their voices were murmurs. At times it sounded as if he was giving them instructions, and at times it sounded as if he was pleading with them. And then his voice was abrupt, as if he was interrupting them. I could not hear words distinctly, for the pounding of my heart.
I was sick with the knowledge of what Jerome and Lionel had done even as I could not quite understand what they had done for still I was thinking of Niagara Falls … I had no wish to eavesdrop now. Never would I eavesdrop on anyone again.
It was frightening to me, I did not think that I could lie, if I was questioned about my brothers. If police officers questioned me.
I could not lie very convincingly to my brothers and sisters, and I could not lie at all to any adult. I would have to tell the truth. As, in confession, I made an effort to list the “sins” I’d committed, which included sins of omission. If the priest asked me—What are you not telling me, my dear? What is your secret? If one of my teachers asked me—What is it, Violet?—that you should be telling police?
Through the long day at school I’d been thinking of Hadrian Johnson. Hearing his name spoken, seeing his picture. His face on the front page of the South Niagara Union Journal. Your first thought is he’s an athlete, he has brought some sort of acclaim to South Niagara, a championship, a scholarship. But then you see the headline.
LOCAL YOUTH, 17, SAVAGELY BEATEN
Attack on Delahunt Rd., Police Search for Assailants
Jerr had stayed the night, in his old room he’d shared with Lionel. I wondered if the two were awake as I was awake and if they spoke together or had lapsed into silence, exhausted. I wondered what they were thinking. If they were thinking.
Though I knew better I wondered if somehow it was true—true in some way—that there’d been a “misunderstanding”—a “misidentification.”
Already my brothers had a lawyer. So quickly, Daddy had known to, as he’d say sardonically of others, lawyer up.
In Daddy’s world, to lawyer up was to admit guilt. Usually.
But you needed a lawyer, if you were accused of anything. Under the law you were innocent until proven guilty and only a lawyer could guide you through the process of such proof.
As the lawyer had protected my brothers and the other boys from serious consequences, at the time of Liza Deaver.
In a paralysis of dread I lay with my hands pressed over my ears as my father continued to question my brothers almost directly below my bed. I wondered if in my parents’ bedroom at the end of the hall my mother too was lying awake, unable to sleep, listening for sounds—footsteps on the stairs, a softly closing door—that the ordeal was over, for the night.
Whatever Daddy was asking my brothers, they were giving him answers that were not satisfactory. This, I seemed to know.
Daddy must have been humiliated by the ordeal in the police precinct. He knew South Niagara police officers, and they knew him. He’d gone to school with some of them. Possibly, they were embarrassed for him.
Of the four boys brought in for questioning, Jerr, the oldest, would have seemed the most convincing as he was (seemingly) the most intelligent; Walt, a cousin, the son of one of Daddy’s younger brothers, would have seemed the most innocent, and the most easily led. Lionel, uneasy in his body, grown inches within the past year, with the red cut beneath his eye like a lurid wink, would have seemed the least trustworthy. And there was Don Brinkhaus with his Marine-style haircut and broad heifer-face who’d been on the varsity football team at the high school until he’d been expelled from the team for fighting two or three years ago.
Had the guys been driving on Delahunt Road, and had Jerr (unknowingly) struck something or someone on the shoulder of the road?—this was the issue. Lionel wanted to insist that nothing had happened at all. Aggrieving, whining to Daddy—We didn’t do it. We didn’t even see him. They just want to arrest somebody white.
I wondered: Did Daddy believe them?
AND I WONDERED: DID MOM BELIEVE THEM?
On the phone we heard her breathless and disbelieving: “It’s a trap. They aren’t even looking for anyone else. They think it was Jerr’s car—the one Jerome gave him. They think. But Jerr has said if he’d hit something that night, he thinks it was a deer. He’d washed off the bloodstains, he said. He’d thought it was a deer, that was what you would do, if—if it was a deer you’d hit … And they are saying, this Johnson boy, this black boy, he’d been involved in drugs. They all are … I mean, so many of them are, right in the high school. In the middle school. The dealers are in the Falls, black drug dealers in the Falls and in Buffalo, with ties to New York City. They drive expensive cars—sports cars. They wear fur coats, gold chains, diamond fillings in their teeth. They murder one another all the time and nobody cares, the police look the other way because they are on the take. It comes up from Colombia in South America, the drug—heroin, I think it is. Opium.”
And: “It was a personal connection, this ‘Hadrian Johnson’ was killed by a boyfriend of his own mother … He was beaten to death with a tire iron. They left him to die by the side of the road. The police say, the ‘murder weapon’ was thrown in the river. And this isn’t the first time, there have been other times nobody even knew about, that never got in the papers because white boys were not accused. The media has it out for white boys—you know … It’s the way it is. But we have a very good lawyer. He says, the murderer is probably Hadrian Johnson’s own mother’s boyfriend and a major drug dealer, lives in the Falls and the police never touch him, he has gotten away with murder a dozen times.”
And, later: “We just heard—it was a Hells Angels attack. ‘White racists.’ A motorcycle gang, in the Falls. They rode to South Niagara the other night, looking for blacks to kill. You see them sometimes in the daytime in military formation—roaring on their Harley-Davidsons. It could have been anyone they killed. That poor boy—‘Hadrian Johnson.’ Only in high school, and Les says he was a quiet boy, and a good basketball player, everybody liked him. People who have trouble with black kids say they’d never had trouble with him.”
A swirl of rumors, like rotted leaves in the wind. A plague of rumors and a stink of rumors and yet, nothing came of them. After several days our mother’s voice on the phone grew frantic: “… no one is supposed to know, our lawyer says it has to be kept confidential, Hadrian Johnson had gotten in a fight with another black basketball player that weekend, over a girl, and ‘sliced’ him with a knife, and the other boy threatened to kill him, and …”
Jerome Jr. and Lionel were summoned back to the police station. Walt Lemire, Don Brinkhaus were summoned. Now there were three lawyers: one for the Kerrigan brothers, one for Walt Lemire and one for Don Brinkhaus.
Yet, the boys were not arrested. So long as they were not arrested, their names would not appear in local media.
Everyone talked of them: the Kerrigans, especially. Somehow it began to be known, or to be suspected, that Jerome Kerrigan Jr. had struck Hadrian Johnson in a hit-and-run accident.
Not on purpose. Accident.
Blaming the kid more than he deserves, because he is WHITE.
Daddy insisted that Jerr move back into his old room; there’d been “racist” threats against him, and he wasn’t safe in his place downtown, Daddy believed. Lionel was informed by the high school principal that he should stay home for a while, feelings were running high between “whites” and “blacks” at South Niagara High and Lionel’s presence was “distracting.” Mom wanted to keep me home from school too but I was so upset, she relented. I could not bear to miss school—I loved school! And I was sure, I wanted to believe, school loved me.
