“Who’s that other nigger girl, huh?” she yells. “Is that your baby sister? Your tar baby sister?”
The girls screech in laughter. Ruth looks straight ahead, but her chin isn’t quite as high anymore.
I want to take Daddy’s pocketknife and slice the white girl’s tongue in two.
“Keep the niggers out!” A group of boys chants in the doorway. “Stop the niggers! Don’t let the niggers in!”
But they have to let us in. This is Virginia, not Mississippi. They’ll let us in, and they’ll see that having us here doesn’t make any difference. Then things will settle down.
That’s what Daddy said. And Mama. And Mrs. Mullins, and Mr. Stern, and everyone else at the NAACP. It’ll be hard at first, but then things will go back to normal. We’ll just be going to school. A better school, with solid windows and real lab equipment and a choir that travels all over the state.
Everything will be easier when we get inside that big brick building.
I turn toward the police. They’ll make sure we get inside. That’s their job, isn’t it? To enforce the court ruling?
But the police are so far away, and the crowd is so thick. I can’t see them anymore.
We’re together now, all ten of us, surrounded by hundreds of white people who are shouting louder than ever. Chuck and Ennis press forward, and the rest of us follow. We’re so tightly packed I can smell the detergent Ennis’s mother used on his pressed white shirt. It’s the same kind my mother uses. I try to imagine I’m back at home on laundry day, helping Mama hang sheets on the line. My little brother playing by the porch steps. Ruth turning cartwheels in the yard while Mama calls for her to go inside and finish her homework.
“It’s gonna be open season on coons when y’all get inside,” a boy shouts behind me. “Just you wait.”
Ennis pushes past the boys blocking the doors. Ruth and I stumble after him.
We’re inside.
It’s done. We did it. We’re in the school.
But the white people are still staring at us. Shouting at us.
They’re all around me. And they still look hungry.
Someone shoves into my right side. From behind, someone else’s elbow juts into my lower back. Another tall boy with blond hair is right in front of me. All I can see is the thick white wool of his letterman’s sweater.
Someone pushes into me from behind. My face is crushed against the blond boy’s sweater, but he doesn’t move. I can’t breathe.
“Hey!” I hear Ennis shout, but he sounds far away. I don’t know where Ruth is. My chest feels too tight.
Someone is ramming me hard from the left, but I can’t move. There are too many white people. There’s nowhere to go.
I can’t do this. I can’t stay here. I can’t breathe.
A tight grip closes around my right arm above the elbow, cutting off my circulation. Fingers dig into my flesh. They’re going to drag me out of here.
I’ve just made it through, and already it’s all going to be over. But I don’t care, because all I want is to breathe again.
The hand on my arm tugs harder, pulling me through the thick knot of people. This is it. They’re going to take me away. I don’t know what they’ll do to me, and I don’t care, because I just want to breathe. I just want this to be over.
That’s when the screaming starts.