tomorrow and see if he knows what these numbers mean.â
âFred,â Grandma echoed.
We all looked at her, and she was weeping again.
âEnough,â Dad told me in a tone that meant absolutely, positively no arguing. Then he went back to eating, and he didnât look at me, or at Grandma either.
I did what I could to distract Grandma with applesauce, and waited for my parents to tell me not to go see Professor Harper.
But they didnât.
They just stopped talking about the paper I showed them,and discrimination, and civil rights, and Avadelle. They stopped talking to each other, and stopped talking to me, too.
We ate the rest of dinner with just the music in the background, and the pitiful sound of Grandma crying beside us.
8
W ARS S HOULD N EVER B E S ANITIZED
----
Excerpt from Night on Fire (1969), by Avadelle Richardson, page 238
Aunt Jessie sat in the front of the little schoolhouse night class as I held up a battered civics book.
âAny of you remember reading something like this in school?â
Leslie raised her hand, then put it back down in a hurry. Red colored the edges of her cheeks as her eyes darted around the eleven other folks stacked into the kidsâ desks. I was teaching in dim light, so nobody could tell we were here, if they looked from outside.
One of the men raised his hand. âThat looks like higher grades. Most of us was done by fourth, fifth at the latest.â
I nodded. âItâs around sixth grade, maybe seventh, but even if you went that far in Oxford, you wouldnâthave it. In the South, we arenât allowed to teach from books that show the United States Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights.â
This made Leslie shift in her chair, wide-eyed.
âWell, of course not.â Aunt Jessie snorted. âIf you read them things, youâll know that government is supposed to be by the people and for the people. All the people. Youâll know your rights, and how they being stepped on down here.â
After that, Leslie came to my illegal classes every Tuesday night. âââWe must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it,âââ she told me, quoting William Faulkner from an article we read, in Harperâs Magazine four years ago.
Slowly, we worked on teaching a handful of brave folks who wanted to know more about reading and writing and math and civics, men and women who wanted to understand the founding documents of our country, and how they applied to us as Black peopleâand how they didnât, at least in the South.
L AST NIGHT, WHEN I WAS feeding Grandma, I got some green bean milkshake and applesauce milkshake smeared on my shirt. When I took it off, I saw the greenish stain and I treated it just like Mom taught meâstain remover, a little water, and letting it sit.
But when I got up this Tuesday morning, it still wouldnât rub out.Itâs like the color dyed the fabric of my shirtâjust changed it forever, so it canât be the shirt it used to be, and I canât wear it in public anymore.
It made me wonder if ghosts and ghost stories were like stains on a shirt that just wonât come out. Or maybe some things, like wars and hate and discrimination and violence, those things that Indri said were too huge and awful to fix by just saying âIâm sorry,â stain time so nothing can ever be the same again. Did something like that stain the friendship between Grandma and Avadelle, like Mac had stained ours by telling me he couldnât talk to me anymore? Was there any way I could rinse everything out enough to clean it up for both of them? Could I even convince Dad and Mom that I should be allowed to try?
Still way early in the morning, I sat on a bench in our backyard and watched Dad pull weeds out of raised beds full of squash plants and green tomatoes. His hair and beard glistened in the new sunlight, and he was
âFred,â Grandma echoed.
We all looked at her, and she was weeping again.
âEnough,â Dad told me in a tone that meant absolutely, positively no arguing. Then he went back to eating, and he didnât look at me, or at Grandma either.
I did what I could to distract Grandma with applesauce, and waited for my parents to tell me not to go see Professor Harper.
But they didnât.
They just stopped talking about the paper I showed them,and discrimination, and civil rights, and Avadelle. They stopped talking to each other, and stopped talking to me, too.
We ate the rest of dinner with just the music in the background, and the pitiful sound of Grandma crying beside us.
8
W ARS S HOULD N EVER B E S ANITIZED
----
Excerpt from Night on Fire (1969), by Avadelle Richardson, page 238
Aunt Jessie sat in the front of the little schoolhouse night class as I held up a battered civics book.
âAny of you remember reading something like this in school?â
Leslie raised her hand, then put it back down in a hurry. Red colored the edges of her cheeks as her eyes darted around the eleven other folks stacked into the kidsâ desks. I was teaching in dim light, so nobody could tell we were here, if they looked from outside.
One of the men raised his hand. âThat looks like higher grades. Most of us was done by fourth, fifth at the latest.â
I nodded. âItâs around sixth grade, maybe seventh, but even if you went that far in Oxford, you wouldnâthave it. In the South, we arenât allowed to teach from books that show the United States Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights.â
This made Leslie shift in her chair, wide-eyed.
âWell, of course not.â Aunt Jessie snorted. âIf you read them things, youâll know that government is supposed to be by the people and for the people. All the people. Youâll know your rights, and how they being stepped on down here.â
After that, Leslie came to my illegal classes every Tuesday night. âââWe must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it,âââ she told me, quoting William Faulkner from an article we read, in Harperâs Magazine four years ago.
Slowly, we worked on teaching a handful of brave folks who wanted to know more about reading and writing and math and civics, men and women who wanted to understand the founding documents of our country, and how they applied to us as Black peopleâand how they didnât, at least in the South.
L AST NIGHT, WHEN I WAS feeding Grandma, I got some green bean milkshake and applesauce milkshake smeared on my shirt. When I took it off, I saw the greenish stain and I treated it just like Mom taught meâstain remover, a little water, and letting it sit.
But when I got up this Tuesday morning, it still wouldnât rub out.Itâs like the color dyed the fabric of my shirtâjust changed it forever, so it canât be the shirt it used to be, and I canât wear it in public anymore.
It made me wonder if ghosts and ghost stories were like stains on a shirt that just wonât come out. Or maybe some things, like wars and hate and discrimination and violence, those things that Indri said were too huge and awful to fix by just saying âIâm sorry,â stain time so nothing can ever be the same again. Did something like that stain the friendship between Grandma and Avadelle, like Mac had stained ours by telling me he couldnât talk to me anymore? Was there any way I could rinse everything out enough to clean it up for both of them? Could I even convince Dad and Mom that I should be allowed to try?
Still way early in the morning, I sat on a bench in our backyard and watched Dad pull weeds out of raised beds full of squash plants and green tomatoes. His hair and beard glistened in the new sunlight, and he was
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