I sat in the backseat of the car, crammed between the heat of the traveling bags and the bulk of our bedding, with my cast sticking out at an awkward angle over pillows and blankets. In the front seat, Mama held a crate of kitchen supplies in her lap, with other dishes and toiletries rattling around her ankles. After cranking the engine to a start, Uncle Clyde wedged himself in, beside a pile of winter coats, in front of the steering wheel. He drove us down the driveway, past leaves the shade of banned Paulissen wine.
Over my shoulder, the house’s canary-colored siding and my bedroom window disappeared behind the trees. I no longer saw the porch where I had lounged on the swing and the rails and sipped lemonade with Laurence and Fleur in the afterglow of our adventures. My throat thickened.
“Can we please hurry to Fleur’s?” I asked Uncle Clyde before he turned onto the highway. “Just to see for sure?”
“I telephoned her mother once more last night,” said Mama over the hum of the engine. “Polly still wasn’t sure she wanted Fleur heading up there.”
“I don’t want her stuck in this place if Elston doesn’t get any better. Please”—I grabbed hold of the seat in front of me—“let’s at least stop by to check. I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye.”
Uncle Clyde steered us up the drive to Fleur’s house, and this time we didn’t see any gangs of armed and glowering boys huddled around the old Ford truck. My stepfather pulled the sedan beside the parked and empty vehicle, and we all turned our faces toward the house.
“I’ll get out and talk to Polly,” said Mama, shifting toward her door.
“No”—Uncle Clyde grabbed her arm—“wait.”
A second later, Laurence pushed open the screen door and blew out to the porch with the metal thwacking shut behind him. He leaned his elbows against the porch rail and rubbed his chin against his left shoulder, as though his face itched. He didn’t look any one of us in the eye.
I shook my head, confused. Fear shot though my gut. Paranoia of another Klan ambush turned my breathing shallow.
A moment later, the screen door whisked open again, and Fleur traipsed outside, lugging two canvas suitcases and a bouquet of flowers the pale pink of spun sugar. I sat up straight and watched her skip down the steps of the porch with a cherry-red cloche covering her yellow hair.
Her mama came out behind her and called out, “Just through August, and then you’re to come back home.”
“Yes, Mama, of course.” Fleur smiled and hustled up to the car door on the opposite side of the seat from me. “Is there room for me in here?”
“We’ll make room,” said Uncle Clyde, and he and Mama got out to rearrange our belongings, while Fleur squeezed into the backseat beside me.
She scooted over and tucked herself right next to me, minding my cast, and my parents crammed her bags and our bags between her and the door. She smelled of lilacs again, and she slipped one of her hands into one of my hands.
“I brought flowering almonds for you,” she said, and she handed me the flowers, which she had wrapped in a white handkerchief and secured with a ribbon the same pink as the petals.
“Are these for luck, too,” I asked, “like the alfalfa?”
“No, for hope.” She squeezed my hand. “An entire bouquet full of hope.”
My parents climbed back into the winter coats and the pots and the pans up front, and Uncle Clyde maneuvered the car around in the opposite direction and steered us out of the Paulissens’ driveway. Just as I had watched our house disappear from view behind me, I peeked over my shoulder and observed the trees swallowing up Laurence’s blond hair, his blue eyes, his lanky figure—his sorrow—until all that I saw were leaves and branches and sparrows flitting across the boughs.
Yet Fleur remained, sitting right there beside me, with her fingers laced through mine and the pink bouquet spread across both of our laps.
Uncle Clyde drove us past the sweet-smelling fields and rolling hills of northwestern Oregon, and we traveled through the growing metropolis of Portland until the bridge crossing the Columbia River to Washington rose into view. We left the state of my birth behind and entered a new world, with different laws, different adventures and challenges; a state in which I’d taste even more of love and heartbreak, hate and triumphs; where I’d dance with Joe in jazz clubs, grow into a woman with Fleur, sharpen my brain, start a career, and meet people with skin colors similar to mine. A state in which I would eventually marry and give birth to children with their own beautiful colors.
For me, the rest was not silence.
It was loud and powerful and melodic.
PORTLAND CHAPTER OF THE NAACP, 50TH ANNIVERSARY, 1964.
POST-1923 CHANGES TO OREGON LAWS
1925: The Supreme Court overturned the Ku Klux Klan–sponsored 1922 Compulsory Education Act, which would have required children in Oregon between the ages of eight and sixteen to attend public schools—and only public schools. The KKK had pushed for the law in an attempt to close down private Catholic schools. The overturning of the act came at a time when internal struggles and public opinion against the organization ended the KKK’s brief control over Oregon and its politics.