Evelyn Juniper Cove
Evelyn
Juniper Cove
2012
Blue sky filled the horizon; cottontail clouds popped across the expanse. The air was warm, the promise of summer not too far away. And Evelyn, for the first time in a long time, felt hope. Felt as if she’d made the right choice. She crossed the lot to her car. Almost nine months now, she’d been in this job, in this town—that was at once so different and so similar to the one she grew up in. Almost nine months since she’d torn her daughter from the only life she knew and thrust her into this unfamiliar and alarming one. But last weekend, Kareela had spent the night at a friend’s house, one of ten girls invited for a sweet sixteen sleepover party. And this morning, she smiled, her eyes lit with excitement as she told Evelyn and Violet about the upcoming Model UN trip, how out of the twelve people on the team, she was one of two to be chosen to take the trip to Halifax next month.
Evelyn shifted the car into drive and pulled out of the lot. She rolled the windows down, the air increasingly chilly as she picked up speed. She bore the cold, for the freshness it brought, the feeling that so much of what had held her down, made her feel like she was struggling through the mire, was finally, slowly, drifting away.
At the high school, she drove past the nearly empty lot to the small walkway at the back of the school. Normally, parents weren’t supposed to wait there, but this late, it wouldn’t matter. Evelyn hoped the meeting had gone well, that the teacher had approved Kareela’s speech for the Model UN, that her girl would be glowing.
Evelyn looked at the dash before turning off the engine, then angled her gaze down the long path, which curved behind a copse of trees before leading to the school doors. She was ten minutes late, her boss delaying her with final notes for tomorrow’s assembly. Kareela should be here by now, and Evelyn wanted to step out of the car and check, thoughts of Antony, of how quickly a life could be derailed, flooding her mind. But Kareela had made it clear, parents coming to the door looking for their children, entering the school and roaming the halls, was not cool.
Evelyn took a long slow breath, leaned her head back, and focused on the cleansing breeze. She glanced up. Kareela stood just past the tree line, arms tight against her side, head down. Evelyn straightened in her seat. Kareela lifted one foot, then the other, and the other, faster, until she ran. Evelyn thrust open the car door and rushed around just in time to catch her daughter in her arms. “What? What is it?” She pushed Kareela away enough to scan her face, her shoulders, her arms for injury. Kareela threw herself against Evelyn again. Silent but clinging. Evelyn held on, her heart racing, her mind whipping through all the possibilities.
Kareela stepped back. She wiped her sleeve under her eyes.
“They…”
“What?”
Kareela closed her eyes, shook her head. “A bunch of them. Seven. Ten. They saw me. One yelled. Then another. They told me to go back where I came from. They called me a—” She stopped. Lowered her gaze, clenched her jaw. “You know.” She raised her head—fire and fear and raw terror in her eyes. “Over and over. They kept saying it, saying, go back where you came from. They called me an African flea. They said, Go back to Africa you —” Her lip trembled as she clearly fought with whether to repeat the word. “You know what.” Confusion mixed with the emotions in her eyes. “But I come from here, Mom. I come from here.”
Kareela looked to the side, as if staring at something Evelyn couldn’t see. “I wanted to tell them, but I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. One spit at me. He missed, but…”
Evelyn gripped Kareela once more, pressing her body against her own, wishing she could take her back inside of her. Protect her. Always. She let go. “Stay here.”
“What?”
“Get in the car and lock the door.”
“Mom!”
“Now.”
Kareela opened the door and Evelyn strode, each footfall propelled by the image of her daughter surrounded by a bunch of brainless yokels, by the thought of her son, at the same age, shoved by officers, witnessing his friend being assaulted for walking in their own neighborhood. Propelled, by the officers who raised their guns because her boy refused to cower. Propelled, by anger at her own ignorance. For thinking they’d be safe here.
She turned the corner and took in the boys. Nine of them. All their heads shaved or closely buzzed. The ones who weren’t looking her way turned when they noticed the silence, the stiffened postures, the dropped cigarettes of the others. Evelyn’s lip curled. Her chin lifted. “You.”
The boys watched her, silent, on edge. A tingle of fear sprung up her spine, but rage dampened it. “You. Spineless. Pathetic. Ignorant children.”
One boy shifted. He took his hand out of his pocket.
“You think you’re better than her?” Evelyn shook her head, looked at them like the swine they were. She quelled her shaking as she sensed their disgust, their hate, the tense energy that she knew could snap at any moment—send them hurtling toward her. But she also sensed their fear. She laughed, to throw them off, to remind herself she was a grown woman, and they were pitiful boys. “You’re nothing. A pack of losers who were born in this town and will probably die in this town.” She was sure she recognized at least three of the boys, not specifically, but the features of their parents living on in their offspring. She cast her gaze on one whose father must be the same boy who’d called her trash—the daughter of a drunk—when his own parents were second cousins. The words coming out of her mouth were vile, but she said them anyway. “You. I know you, or your father, at least. Your inbred father.” Her lip curled. “And you think you’re better than her?”
They all stood, unmoving, except for the clenched fists of that tow-headed prick, his eyes burning with hate.
“My daughter was born in this country. She belongs in this country. Just as much as any of you. And she’ll go further than you could dream. She’ll leave you in the dust, like the sad half-wits you are.” She stepped forward, no longer speaking only to these red-necked hicks, but to the officers who’d shoved Antony and beaten Malik, who’d killed her son, to the one who’d showed up at her door—all of them thinking they were better, that their lives were worth more than her children’s. “And if you ever accost her again, if you so much as look at her in a way that makes her uncomfortable, you will pay.”
Evelyn turned on her heel, fear making her breath come quick, disbelief at the words that had come out of her mouth catapulting her back down the path toward Kareela. Terror rushed through her, terror that she’d made it worse, that she’d been just as stupid and rash as they had, and that her daughter would pay for her foolhardiness.
She wrenched open the car door, fell into the seat, secured the buckle.
“Mom?”
She gripped the wheel, turned the ignition.
“Mom?”
Evelyn turned to Kareela. “They won’t bother you again.” She prayed her words were true. “It’s over now.”
She pulled away from the curb, the glare of the sun amidst that bright blue sky making her cringe, and reminded herself to breathe.