Let It Shine (4 page)

“Daddy, I can explain—”

“Sister Pierce told me she saw you in front of the community center, and that you were fraternizing with a white boy to boot. She said he looked quite familiar with you.” He shook his head. “You’re the first Wallis to go to college, and I was so proud of that. Now I have to wonder what it is you’re really doing when you say you’re in class or studying with friends.”

Sofie hadn’t eaten yet, and she was glad of it because her stomach gave a vicious twist. Nausea rolled through her at the anger in his words. She’d been caught in a lie, but he was also implying something about her that no father should imply about his daughter. His ideas about how an unmarried woman should and shouldn’t interact with a man were old-fashioned, to put it kindly, but for him to treat her like a brazen hussy without giving her the benefit of the doubt…

All of her etiquette lessons and decorum fled her as disbelief hightailed it out of there to make room for anger. Sofie suddenly found she was standing, looking down at her father as he glared at her, waiting for his answer.

“All of these years I’ve been nothing but a good daught—” She choked on the word and swiped at a hot tear that slipped down her cheek. “A good daughter. I’ve done everything you asked of me, been your perfect little princess. And all it takes is one report from Mrs. Pierce and you’re ready to call me a jezebel? Just like that?”

Her father picked up his fork and stabbed it into his meatloaf. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Sofie had thought she’d known loneliness before, but she’d been wrong. Loneliness was the one man who was supposed to protect and love you no matter what looking at you as if you were a mistake that needed fixing. Sofie had spent ten years suppressing so much of herself, just to please him; she’d thought one day she’d get it right, but the truth came to her like an icy deluge, shocking the warmth out of her. She could never be the daughter he wanted, not unless she found some way to make it so that Mama never died. Her hands were trembling fists at her side as she shook her head. “I was with Henrietta,
and
I was at the meeting.”

“You admit you lied to me, then?”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you the whole truth. And that’s because I knew that you’d overreact like this instead of asking me why I wanted to volunteer or what I hoped to achieve.” The anger was building in her; her voice shook from trying to contain her betrayal. “I was planning to ask your permission to participate, but I was a fool to think you’d care about what I want or need. All you’ve been after since Mama died was a perfect little girl who looked and talked and walked exactly as you liked. You should have just gotten yourself a porcelain doll because that’s what you need more than a daughter.”

“How dare you backtalk me?” His fist slammed on the table, making the silverware jump. “I’ve given you everything a girl could want, and all I’ve asked for in return was respect.”

“What do I want, Daddy? Tell me. Because all you’ve given me is a list of ways in which I shouldn’t embarrass you, and that’s a poor excuse for a gift.” She stared at him, fists balled at her sides.

Her father didn’t answer, he simply pushed his plate away and left the room, as if she weren’t significant enough to argue with. Sofie stood staring after him for a moment, but the creaking of the floorboards above her meant he was in his room, gone to bed for the night.

Her body moved on autopilot—she wrapped up their uneaten food, washed the dishes, cleaned up the crumbs. The same things she did every night. Only she had never argued with her father like this before—not out loud, at least. When he would explain the things she did wrong and how she should fix them, she’d always nodded and apologized. That was her burden to bear for dragging Mama into that fatal melee; submission was her penance, and she’d always paid it gladly. Tonight had been different in so many ways, though. She didn’t want to apologize; in fact, she was surer than ever that joining the nonviolent movement was the right choice. She hated the lingering discord, but she hated more that her father could so easily find a reason to doubt her.

Sofie thought of the way Ivan had said, “You look the same.” He was talking about the little girl that her father had called unkempt and unruly, but he said it like it was something good. She had the oddest urge to talk to him, to ask if his parents made him feel like he was only worthwhile if he did exactly as they said. But that was foolish. Ivan wasn’t a friend she could call for support; he was nothing but a memory. And if she were smart, things would stay that way.

She was courting enough trouble as it were, Sofie thought as she carried her weary body to bed. Thinking of calling Ivan Friedman, or doing anything else with him, simply wasn’t an option.

Chapter 5

Ivan had severely miscalculated how suddenly having Sofie in his life would affect him. He’d thought that being a grown man would’ve cured him of the ridiculous tightness in his stomach that used to strike whenever he thought of her. He’d thought he could keep his fantasies of how her curves would feel under his palms confined to his dreams.

But even now, as he sat squeezed into a too-small desk at the front of the room while fellow committee members berated him on everything from his looks to his heritage, all of his focus was on her. She was at the back of the room filing papers, making lists and putting things in order. That wasn’t surprising—he remembered how she was always so careful to keep the kosher utensils from the non-kosher when she helped Miss Delia with the dishes like it was a challenge instead of a chore. Her gaze often wandered to the fracas at the front of the room. She’d caught him watching her more than once, looking away immediately every time. But he saw the way her hands clutched a pile of papers extra tightly, how she awkwardly knocked a box of pencils off the edge of the desk. He almost groaned when she went to her hands and knees, her dress tightening around her bosom and her full skirt revealing the delicate skin at the back of her knees. He wanted to run his tongue over that spot, but apparently Sofie was a good girl now, and good girls didn’t do those kinds of things.

“This guy seems pretty immovable,” David said to the man helping him run the training, speaking as if Ivan weren’t sitting right there. “But can we risk someone who beats people up for the joy of it?”

Two skeptical faces looked down at him.

“Hey, cool it with that kind of talk. Boxing is a beautiful sport; it’s more than beating people up. That’s not to say it doesn’t require a certain affinity for violence,” Ivan said. He cracked his knuckles and then flashed a smile at David. He wanted to look at Sofie but wasn’t quite ready to see the disapproving expression that likely marred her face. “But the ability to dole out pain is also the ability to accept it. How many of you have ever taken a hit? Do you know how to block—not attack—how to contort your body to lessen the pain of a blow? How to take the violence that’s being done to you and accept it as an inevitability? I can show you those things if you want.”

Ivan didn’t know what David was thinking. He might not like the idea of a random guy, and a white one at that, strolling in and presuming to exert any kind of authority. It would be the same as the Christians who sometimes showed up at his father’s temple to tell the congregation about the New Testament and how gee-golly great it was, as if his people just hadn’t thought to read past Deuteronomy.

David’s eyes were narrowed in contemplation. “That could be useful to us. We’ll see how the rest of the training goes. Sofie, come here. Switch with Lemuel. Lem, you’re good for the sit-in. Remember to practice the meditation, deep breathing, and to reread from the selected texts beforehand.”

Ivan tensed in his seat. He didn’t know what David was up to or why he was calling Sofie to take part in this ugliness, but he didn’t like it.

Breathe in, breathe out.
He drew on his years of training and didn’t let the way Sofie’s hips swayed as she approached the desk, or the sweet vanilla scent of her as she passed in front of him, distract him.

Their gazes clashed again as she sat down, and Ivan felt a disconcerting sensation, similar to when an opponent had him against the ropes with no defenses. Everything about her was perfect—too perfect. Her pastel green dress, handmade so that it hugged every curve just right but didn’t offer up everything on a platter. There was a series of tiny buttons down the sides of her dress; he doubted she knew what an enticement something so prim could be.

She was stiff in the seat beside him, and now that she was next to him she wouldn’t look his way. Her back was straight, shoulders pushed back, and every strand of her hair was pomaded down and pulled into a tight bun. He wanted to reach over, undo those damned buttons, and maybe see what was keeping those stockings up beneath her skirt if not magic. He wanted all of that, but more, he wanted her to ask him to do it.

Sofie glanced at him warily, and Ivan hoped his face didn’t project the lecherous path his thoughts were taking. There was a flushed look about her, same as the other night. She hadn’t known who he was, but she had stared at him all night just the same. She wasn’t the first woman who’d looked at him that way, but she was the only one who made it seem like she was breaking some rule by doing so. Ivan wasn’t one for following the rules, and if she needed some guidance in that department, he’d be happy to help.

Henrietta rushed over. “This might be too much for her, David. I can do it if you want.”

“Honey, you know Sofie isn’t the kind of person to fight back. She’ll be fine.” David’s words were hugely insulting, but for some reason he seemed to think he was being complimentary.

“You sure you talking about the same person, David? The Sofronia I knew had the quickest temper this side of the Mississippi,” Ivan said. He was just joking, but she glared at him.

“The Sofronia you knew doesn’t exist any more,” she said. Her voice was sweet, but only to cover the tartness of her words, like the candies he used to get by the bag from the five and dime. “And it’s Sofie now. Sofie is nice, kind, quiet, and the last person to go around stirring up trouble.”

Funnily enough, the bitterness underlying Sofie’s words sounded a lot like Sofronia to him.

“I’ve been taking a physics class at college,” Ivan said, leaning closer to her because his body didn’t seem to want to do anything else. “My professor says that nothing can just stop existing. Energy can only change form. Maybe old Sofronia isn’t down for the count just yet.”

She crossed her arms and looked up at David. “Can we get on with this? My father is expecting me home soon.” Ivan wondered why the mention of her father made her frown deepen. But training was back in session, and as much as he wished it were otherwise, he wasn’t someone she would confide in.

David pressed up close behind them so that his thighs were touching both of them. “What do we got here? A nigger lover, boys.”

The words scalded through Ivan. He knew this was fake. He knew there was no way that David was being malicious, but his jaw still clenched hard.

“Seems like this fool don’t know that black pussy is only for getting your dick wet, not gallivanting around the streets with. You from up north? Yeah, that’s it. Maybe you’re a Yankee kike who thinks he’s gonna change things down here.”

Anger was coursing through him, but he didn’t turn and pop David in the face like his instincts spurred him to. There was a lot of waiting in boxing if you were fighting someone good, and he’d wait out this barrage like he always did, except David wouldn’t be sprawled on the floor afterward.

He glanced at Sofie, expecting to see her teary-eyed or hunched over, but when her dark eyes turned up to his they were rich with suppressed emotions. She didn’t tremble, or acknowledge how everyone was hovering, waiting to pull her out of the scene in case it got too much for her. “Did you know that a teenage girl lost her baby last week?” she said calmly to Ivan, ignoring their fellow volunteers, who had now begun shoving them. Ivan shook his head. “She lived in my neighborhood and went to my church. The last time I saw her she was telling me how the sickness hit her at any time, not just morning, and could get so bad she couldn’t stand. One day last week, she took a seat at the front of the bus.”

Ivan didn’t want to hear the rest of this, but Sofie seemed to be steeling herself with the story.

“I went and visited her today. She wasn’t trying to be an activist—she just didn’t want to vomit and she couldn’t hardly move once she sat down. A police officer shoved her off the bus, beat her, and then said she was resisting. They didn’t take her to the hospital when she said she couldn’t feel her baby kicking anymore.”

There was a silence as Sofie’s hard gaze left Ivan’s face and she looked at the other volunteers. “Now all I can think about is how a black baby can be killed just to ensure that a white person gets a seat. And it makes me angry. It makes me wish I had the power to set this world ablaze, but, lucky for some people, I don’t. So nothing anyone screams at me is worse than the knowledge that Patty’s baby was alive and now it’s dead. A beating won’t make me forget that every day of my life I have to defer to someone else just because I have more melanin. I can go to a sit-in and take whatever these people dish out, but don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ll do it because I’m nice.”

There was something about the way the word
nice
scraped out of her throat that made the hairs on Ivan’s neck stand on end. She had obviously shocked the people around her, the people who were supposed to know her best, but the only thing that surprised him was that she’d waited this long to let it all hang out.

“Wait, are you saying you want to do the sit-in, Sofie?” Henrietta clasped her hands together as if she was speaking to a child. “What will your father say?”

“And what if you get hurt?” David asked.

“What if I do?” Sofie asked. “It’s the chance we all take. You just sent me up here because you thought it would be funny. Because I’m so
sweet
.” She laughed bitterly then, and if anyone had been under that impression, they were surely changing their minds now. “The bottom line is I’m one of the best-qualified people to do this sit-in. I’m young, photogenic, and I’ve been quietly suffering fools for most of my life. I can do this.”