Ain't No Sunshine (9 page)

Dinner with my parents lasted a lifetime that night. The normal silence and clattering of cutlery was almost unbearable. I tried to make the time pass more quickly by thinking about the fact that in just a few short hours I would be sharing a bed with my Ruthie, but the anticipation made it worse.

Father never made any attempt at conversation during dinner. Sometimes I wondered if he even liked us. It would have been such a blessing if my father one day decided to just up and leave. He wouldn't be missed.

The torment of a family meal finally ended when my father scooted his chair away from the table. That was the cue that we were released from our obligation of spending time together.

I think I cleared my dishes and was halfway to my room before my father even stood up all the way.

"Are you alright, Stephen?" my mother called after me.

"I'm fine.
Just going to bed early.
I have an early start at work tomorrow." At least one of them should have picked up on this obvious lie. I had worked at a Leonard's Pizza Palace all summer. Not exactly the type of establishment that opened early and served breakfast. Apparently neither of my parents cared enough about me to even question it.

An hour later, I heard my parents go into their room. It was after midnight when I felt they were in a deep enough sleep for me to sneak out of the house unnoticed.

I didn't have to crawl through Ruthie's bedroom window that night. She left the front door open for me. I followed the glow of candlelight and the sound of
These Arms of Mine
by Otis Redding. When I got to her room, Ruthie lay on top of the sheets in a yellow nightgown, sleeping peacefully. She must have drifted off while she was waiting for me.

I took off my shirt and my shoes, crawled in the bed and wrapped my arms around her waist. When I kissed her neck, her eyes fluttered open.

She turned toward me and said, "I thought you weren't coming. I thought maybe your father –"

"
Shh
," I said placing my fingers over her lips. "Let's not think about him. Not tonight."

My hand slid under her nightgown. I felt her melt under my caress. She raised her arms so I could undress her. My heartbeat accelerated at the sight of her naked body.

"I'm so scared, Stephen," she said while kissing my bare chest.

"Do you want to stop?" I asked, praying she wouldn't say yes.

"No. I'm afraid this isn't real. It feels so good to be with you. It feels too good to be true. Just kiss me and prove to me I'm not dreaming."

I kissed her so powerfully then that she couldn't help but know that this was real, that
we
were real.

When we finished making love, Ruthie started crying. I held her tightly against me as her tears rained on my chest.

"What's wrong?" I whispered, after kissing the top of her head. "Did I hurt you? Do you regret being with me?"

She shook her head. "No, it's not that. It's just... I love you so much, Stephen."

"I love you, too." I lifted her head so I could look into her eyes and said, "Marry me."

"Okay."

***

The next two weeks were the best of my life. Most nights we would make love and then fall asleep in each other's arms. Sometimes though, we just held each other while making plans for the future.

We made sure to stay away from each other during the day. We both thought that if my father got one glimpse of us, he'd know what we were doing just by the looks on our faces. Instead, we met at the local library where Ruthie worked in the afternoon.

We had our time together there down to a science.  At 4:15, the librarian would go to the bathroom.  I don't know what she did in there, but it gave us a good twenty minutes of alone time.  Ruthie would only have to give me a look and I knew the time was getting close. She'd grab a few books and walk toward the reference section as if she was going to restack them.  I would walk in the other direction and meet her there.

"School starts tomorrow," she said while I kissed her neck. I had set her on top of a low bookcase and stood between her legs.

"Uh huh," I grunted, not removing my lips from her body. I didn't feel like talking.

"So are things going to change?"

I pulled away from her and looked in her eyes.
"No, of course not.
How could you think that?"

She looked down. "It's not going to be easy for you, Stephen. Do you know what names you're going to be called if people find out you're in love with me?"

"I don't care. They can call me whatever they want. It's not going to change what I feel for you."

Ruthie shook her head. "What if someone at school tells your father?"

She had a good point. I didn't care if people at school knew about us, but my father was a different story. There's no telling what he would do.

Ruthie misinterpreted my silence. "You're not ready for this, Stephen. If you want to keep our relationship a secret for a little while longer, I understand."

I didn't know what to say, so I just hugged her. I didn't want her to think I was ashamed of her, but I also didn't want my father to find out. I felt trapped.

It was probably best if we kept our love a secret, but what happened the next day at school changed everything.

I planned on playing it cool in school the next day. Nothing really had changed. I had always loved Ruthie and I knew she loved me. The only difference was that we shared a bed. Technically that was a big change, but just for us. No one else needed to know.

School should have proceeded as normal. Ruthie and I always got by with the same secret smiles and nods of acknowledgement during the day. If we needed to speak, we'd sneak off to the woods during lunch. We never spoke at school.
Never.
We didn't want to arouse suspicion.

It wasn't that whites and Negros didn't talk or anything at school. It was just that interracial dating was a bit taboo. No one did it - not publicly, anyway. If there were interracial couples, I didn't know about it.

After first period I headed toward Ruthie's locker just so I could get a glimpse of her. I thought maybe I could accidently bump into her, as well, just so I could touch her.

When I turned the corner, I saw Bruce Connelly leaning on the locker next to Ruthie's. He was smiling and rubbing the patch of blond hair poking out of his plaid shirt that was unbuttoned nearly to his navel. I didn't like Bruce, and not just because he was currently leering at my girlfriend, but because I'd heard him in the locker room on several occasions saying that colored girls were only good for one thing.

My hands balled into fists. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I couldn't tolerate him looking at Ruthie like that for much longer. I tried to take a deep breath and calm down. They were just talking. It was no big deal. But then he reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. He was doing more than talking. I recognized that look in his eyes. He wanted my Ruthie.

What in the world was going on? I thought whites and Negros together was too taboo for our school. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe that was just in my imagination. Had I just been too scared all this time? If Bruce was brave enough to hit on Ruthie in public, why wasn't I brave enough to... do something? I didn't know what, but I knew I had to somehow show what I felt for Ruthie.

Before I knew what was happening, my feet carried me over to them. I stood there with my fists tightened and my jaw clenched, too conflicted to know what to actually say. I couldn't really kick Bruce's ass for touching my girl. No one knew she was my girl. I think it was time I changed that.

"Hey, man," Bruce said after a few minutes of me just standing there awkwardly. "What's up?" He held his hand out for me to give him "five" but I just stared at it.

"Um, Stephen," Ruthie said, trying to snap me out of my trance. "Bruce was just inviting me to a party this weekend." She tried to sound cheery but I think she knew how angry I was.

"You can come, too, man. I just didn't think you were the partying type,
ya
' know. I mean, there won't be any microscopes or anything there." Bruce chuckled. I didn't crack a smile as I stared at him. He straightened his posture and poked out his chest, suddenly aware that he might be in danger.

"Come on, Ruthie. I'll walk you to class." I grabbed her hand and entwined our fingers together, not breaking my eye contact with Bruce.

Ruthie didn't move at first. I looked at her and saw how she stared down at our hands with her mouth open. Then she raised her head and looked into my eyes in complete shock. Slowly, her lips curved into a smile. I knew she was happy.

I pulled her away from her locker and a stunned Bruce Connelly toward her next class.

Ruthie squeezed my hand as we walked, ignoring the stares and whispers.  "Today 'little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers,'" she said when we reached her art class. She thought the day we dreamed about when we were five years old and listening to Dr. Martin Luther King had finally come. Feeling the tension in the pit of my stomach, I wasn't so sure.

Maybe it was too soon for me to profess my feelings for Ruthie like this. It might seem like a simple thing, but holding hands like that in the hallway was the equivalent of asking for a marriage license.

Ruthie sensed my apprehension. She grabbed my other hand and said, "I love you, Stephen. We're going to be okay."

"I love you, too," I said, staring down at her. But something inside me screamed that we
weren't
going to be okay.

That night while I was sleeping, my father came into my room and beat me with a broomstick.  I was so disorientated that I couldn't defend myself.  I tried to get up, but I was too weak after the first few blows.  He kept yelling things like "stay away from her" and "never disobey me".  Right before I passed out I thought I heard him call her a nigger. 

By the time I woke up the next day it was too late for me to go to school.  At first, I didn't remember what happened.  Then I tried to move.  Every inch of me was in pain.  It hurt to even breathe.

Thankfully, nothing was broken.  I didn't want to have to go to the hospital again.  My mother and I had been there so many times I had lost count. I was tired of the looks.  It was too far away, as well - we never went to the one in town.  We always drove two hours away and went to an emergency room in a town that was even smaller than ours.  We gave fake names and paid with cash.  It was only in the direst situations that we made the effort to go, like right after my father murdered Matthew and my mother was vomiting blood.  I didn't understand what the word miscarriage meant back then.  When I found out, I was more than a little terrified.  That meant that my father had killed two of my siblings and it was only a matter of time before he got to me.  I thought that time had come last night, but I had survived once again. 

I lay in bed and tried to make sense of it all.  But I couldn't.  There was no logic to it.  All we had done was hold hands in the hallway at school. It was something any two teenagers in love should have been allowed to do, but because of our skin color it was unacceptable.

Around three o'clock I stumbled out of bed.  I was weak and light-headed, but I had to get out of that house.  I had to see Ruthie.  My mother made me eat something so that I wouldn't pass out while I was driving.