My Monticello(23)

I was up on my feet before Knox reached me. He bowed to press his forehead to mine. Da’Naisha, he said.

I understood then that Knox was apologizing for all of it. For the failing world that we’d both inherited, but a world that he’d been assured, in winks and nods, was his birthright and endless domain. For those men with skin the same color as his, who had terrorized people with skin like mine. I looked down at my sneakers, at the angled mosaic of bricks beneath our feet.

My whole life, it seems, there’s been a revival of hatred and violence toward people who look like me. Waves of men have surged into our town from all over the state, the country. As girls, we all heard about the young white woman killed by an outraged white man who sped his car into a crowd of marchers raising signs in our defense. Even though my momma’d warned me not to look, I snuck the video so I could see with my own eyes. The white man’s dark car screeches in, sending up a flock of broken bodies. I watched a second time, in wonder, as if by careful study the damage might be undone. Weeks later, waiting at a bus stop with Momma, I overheard two white ladies going back and forth about it. The lady with the rain scarf knotted at her chin claimed that the recently dead girl had not, in truth, been killed by any car. The photo on the news was dated, she said, and the dead girl had gotten fat since it was taken. The other lady, who was heavyset herself, with a face like bread dough, bobbed her head. She’d heard the fat dead girl had died of a heart attack, in the middle of the protest, right there on that road not far from where we were sitting. I tugged the weary skin of Momma’s arm, willing her to set them straight. But Momma just kept looking down Main for a bus that wasn’t coming. I took all this to mean the slain girl’s lush body was a ticking time bomb. I took it to mean that young women could die of wanting too much.

In the years that followed, the men came again and again.

As I got older, whenever the men came, MaViolet said, Hold your head up, in a way that sounded like Be careful. My girlfriends groaned softly or flipped on their phones, reminding me of how Momma used to do. Folks on First snatched their kids back in before dark and murmured from plastic lawn chairs on their stoops some version or another of Here we go again.

I made it to the University of Virginia, and the men kept coming, wielding bright new rage. Floodwaters rose along Virginia’s coasts, but their frenzy remained focused on something about me, something involuntary and inescapable and mine. It was not unusual to see their shiny procession on the strip next to campus—dark SUVs awash with flags, driving at a crawl—still it startled me every time. Once, walking back from the ATM to check my balance, I noticed that the sidewalk was newly littered with clear plastic baggies. Bank receipt in one hand, I used the other to lift a bag, weighted with pebbles, and unsheathe the flier in it. EXPEL THEM FOR THEY CANNOT MAKE WHITE BABIES, it read, and there was a drawing of an impregnated Black woman, all belly and booty and titties and lips.

YOU ARE WORTHY, it read, on the other side.



YOU ARE NOBLE!



YOU ARE UNDER THREAT!



YOU MUST NOT RETREAT!



EMBRACE YOUR HERITAGE!



And there was a drawing of a white woman swaddled in an American flag.



Some people saw the fliers and said, It’s nothing. Some said, Ignore it, and they will go away. Some people said, Fuck you for feeling safe enough to ignore it. Ignore it and it will grow. I folded the flier to thickness, pressed it deep into my pocket.

The night we arrived at the welcome pavilion, Ms. Edith perched in a café chair, running her crooked finger along stanzas of Scripture. LaToya cast off her foamy flip-flops, her toenails a chipped platinum and shining like tiny shells. KJ skulked near the Jaunt, dragging his suitcase, a thin scar on his forehead arching like a second brow, giving his young face a look of near-constant wonder. Later I learned he’d been sleeping inside the abandoned Jaunt, back on First Street. His mother was incarcerated; he’d run away from foster care.

Devin, Ezra, and Elijah set up café chairs along the loop and sat peering down at the entrance road—their own handgun vigil, separate from the old guards’ patrol. Only Georgie, with his high voice, protested: No one but us had come here, he warned. How could we be guards, when we ourselves were the trespassers? His critique did not stop Devin or the twins, though I wanted to echo my own misshapen version of it. Aren’t we safe enough all the way out here? I wanted to say. I’d figured that we’d drive back that night, but as folks began to sprawl onto benches, I had to face the truth. I asked Knox to help me make MaViolet more comfortable. We found a sheltered place under the covered lip of the patio and sat her up in a wooden chair padded with spare clothes, propping her stockinged feet up in a second chair. We lay down too, not far from her, but in the open, out on shade-stunted grass. We did not have a sheet below us. Our heads lolled on Knox’s messenger bag. It was still spring but that night, like those before it, felt fevered. We hoped, in that small clearing, to catch some sort of breeze.

What are we s’pose to do, I heard myself say.

Knox wove his long fingers in between mine. What can I do for you?

I turned onto my side, facing away from him and down the slope, where smaller trees huddled. The moon that night was full, the ground pearly with its reflection. Our hands still bound, I tugged Knox’s arm around me, trying to temper the separation between our bodies. I thought of the candle burning into a puddle in the windowsill of MaViolet’s bathroom. The night before, I’d stood in its flickering light, checking for blood. The clasp of Knox’s messenger bag bored into my cheek.