Chapter 1 #2
Three weeks ago, we’d finished the school term, likely our last, and now our futures were the main focus of our lives. Isaiah
thought about where he was going more often than I did, and anyone could tell from our clothes that he was destined for greatness
and me, for less.
“The point is,” Isaiah went on. “We gon’ be eighteen soon and you still letting life control you, like you some kind of tumbleweed.
I ought to call you Tumbleweed Carrington.”
“Tumbleweed is a nice name,” I said, turning away to put the final pair of shoes in its box. “Maybe it would suit me better. I’m named
after my grandfather, after all.”
All I could do was joke in the face of Isaiah’s criticism. He talked opportunity all day! Never music, family, romance—the
stuff we used to discuss. Just what I should’ve been doing to move up.
What if I didn’t wish to climb as fast as he did in the first place? The world he’d gotten into scared me—its pristine polish,
its strange emptiness underneath. It was as if the main purpose of being rich was to impress people rather than to be happy.
I didn’t say anything about it. I preferred not to touch a sore conversation, and to keep the remnants of our friendship intact.
I finished up my final duties and called, “Bye, Mr. Wallace!” as I grabbed my satchel off the coatrack.
I curled out the window, slid down the little gap between the bricks and grass, and fetched my bike from its post outside. Isaiah followed close behind.
We rolled into the streets, where golden sun stretched across the cobbled road. We biked through the channel of brick and
wooden storefronts as the shopkeepers reversed their signs from Open to Closed. The radio operators hung their headphones on the wall and the mail trucks returned to the post office parking lot.
We were headed past the city and toward the big oil derricks at the end of town. The big, latticed triangles, shaped like
Christmas tree angels, manned a strip of country road that separated Greenwood (the Colored district) from the rest of Tulsa,
which was white. It was best to travel the road by car and to keep a look out for white people hunting down Negroes. I’d never
travel it by myself, but with Isaiah, I could make it through without feeling scared.
The rustling of crickets and cicadas grew louder as the noise of people faded and darkness set in. Here, with no one around
us, I nearly remembered that moment—the moment I messed up our friendship. But then, his voice took me out of it.
“You’ll love it, Nick,” Isaiah panted, slightly out of breath. “I promise.”
Soon enough, a glowing streetlamp showed us to the first sign of white Tulsa. It was a little train post at the bottom of
a hill. I followed Isaiah up the street that flattened out to a private property. A stern guard in black uniform stood by
an iron gate protecting a grand house.
“Hi, Edward!” Isaiah sang as we approached. “I left something in the courtyard, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, Isaiah.” Edward gave a friendly smile and twisted a key through the gate and pushed it open.
It gave a groggy squeak, and the courtyard expanded before us. A short walk brought us to the heart of the space: a huge pool
of light blue water, with palm trees forming columns beside it. These trees, which threw shade everywhere, took me to a tropical
place. The house was three stories, with arched windows, a big balcony, and pillars connecting the floors.
I spied a woman at a third-floor window watching us enter, and a familiar discomfort set in my bones. The discomfort that
led me to find work in Greenwood rather than Tulsa.
“It’s getting so dark already,” I noted, feeling anxious.
“No offense, Nick, but your pop needs to lighten up on the curfews,” Isaiah said, as he sat on the edge of a fountain and
crossed his legs like he owned the place.
“None taken,” I replied. “Maybe he’d listen to you if you told him.”
Isaiah laughed. “No way I’m listening to a lecture on the dangers of the white man. The white man pays me well here. I say
if I stick it out for a year, smile, and trim hedges good, I can work my way up to a Touring.”
My friend thought having a nice car would solve all his problems.
“That’s no good,” I said, sitting beside him. “Because then you’ll leave Greenwood, and I’ll have no friends.”
“Well, you might have more if you put yourself out there!”
“Out where? I don’t want to put myself anywhere. I want to be a turtle.”
Isaiah ran off to a white veranda between the fountain and pool, perhaps to get a better look at my pathetic self. “You ought
to learn to be a hare!” he said, folding his arms, leaning against the wood. “That brings me to what I wanted to talk to you
about. If you’re interested, I’m sure the Vanderbilts can find you a nice job that would level up your money.”
I looked up at the woman in the window again. “I don’t think that lady wants me here.”
Isaiah looked up too. “I know Mr. Vanderbilt better than the missus, but I would hazard that staring back makes it worse.”
I took my eyes off the woman, but she continued to watch me. I could feel it.
I found a wobbly version of myself in the clear water of the fountain as I pondered Isaiah’s offer. Deep down I may have been
tired of being such a dewdropper. “Perhaps I should get a better job,” I said. “Say I leave Greenwood to write for some paper
outside this town. What could Pa say about that?” I met Isaiah’s eyes and felt a boldness creep into my bones. “What law is
there says you have to work in the town you grew up in?”
“Not one.” Isaiah shrugged. “You could potentially take the first train up North tomorrow morning. But where would you go?”
“Chicago,” I answered.
He raised his eyebrows. “Not New York?”
“New York is too far,” I said. “And possibly too big. And too close to the water. I’d hate to drown.”
“So, you want to be somewhere better,” Isaiah said, his tone softly asking for assurance.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Not here, in Oklahoma, but if I could see more of the world, I think I would find my place in it. To become
charming and adaptable, like you.”
Isaiah laughed lightly, accepting the compliment with a muted grace.
A low noise—a hiss—came from the grass, and then sprinklers around the property turned on, spraying us with water. I looked
up to the window again and the woman was gone. Had she done that?
“Probably a sign it’s time to go,” Isaiah said, holding up his arms to shield himself from the spraying mist.
He broke into a jog down the pathway toward the gate, and I followed.
Once home, I waited on my front porch in the dark for a moment, watching lightning bugs glow every few seconds around me.
At last, the air was cool outside, but I hated this part of the day.
I unlocked and opened the door, stepping over the threshold as quietly as possible.
“Nick?” Pa called from his study, before I’d even closed the door. “That you?”
I found him in his room—a cave of the fixations that fueled his writing. His walls were covered with newspaper clippings from
The Tulsa Star. They told of politicians trying to take our rights away and the rising heroes who would save them. On his desk, a burning
candle sat beside a big globe, and behind the desk, a three-dimensional sailboat jumped out of its frame.
He gave me a glance, in between clacks on his typewriter. “Where have you been out so late?” His tone was direct. But his
focus? On anything but me.
“Isaiah was showing me the fancy estate he works at now,” I said.
Pa paused his typing and faced me gravely. “You went to that side this late?”
“Yeah, he invited me after work. It was the only time I could go. But Isaiah got all kinds of connections over there and they
all know him.”
Pa crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, a mixture of disappointment and quiet anger on his face. “But they don’t know you. They don’t know you from a wild hog, and they damn sure won’t treat you any better.”
I knew this already. Every other day it was some dismissive lecture about how little I knew of the world. How I’d only understand
things when I was older. I was sick of it!
“I don’t think I should have a curfew anymore,” I said. It came out almost against my will. My words drenched the room in
uncomfortable silence, and I regretted them right away.
Pa looked very confused. Then he started to laugh—something he rarely did. “That’s an odd statement because you’ve never had
a strict curfew.”
“I mean I don’t think I should have to be home before dark. I don’t think . . . well, I think I’m old enough to come home when I please.”
“When you please.” Pa raised an eyebrow at me. “Nick, what are you talking about? What do you have to do at seventeen, besides go to work and
come home? Are you looking to be traumatized by the world?”
I couldn’t quite explain to him what I wanted . . . a chance to explore life without worrying about trauma at all. The confidence
to move through the world like I belonged in it. Like Isaiah. He was effortless. He didn’t waver. The only way I’d get like
him was by breaking free from my father’s rules.
Pa looked from my eyes to my feet. “Your weight is down,” he said. “There are boys far more strapping than you being taken
down every day. White folks are trying to take a young man down as we speak, over a rumor he’s attacked a white woman in an
elevator, for which there is no evidence. Do you know what that means?”
I shrugged. I knew he’d tell me anyway.
He leaned forward in his chair. “It means a white man needs no true motivation to want to kill a Negro. Don’t ever tell me
you should do what you please, Nick, until you’re really out there on your own. Understood?”
“Yes, Pa.”
I had to resign. He exited the conversation as if it were a story he had finished printing, already forgotten in favor of
his next lead, and placed his full attention back on his work.
I stormed to my own room, heart in my chest. Maybe if I didn’t have to go somewhere else for work in the first place, I’d have no reason to be out late, sir!
I closed the door to my room and plopped down at my desk. I kept a little Chinese fan my mother had brought back from New
York when she went to help Uncle Beet, Auntie Lorraine, and my cousin Daisy move seven years ago. Mama was in heaven now.
A fire at her hospital took her away, but the fan helped keep her nearby. Next to it was this rolled-up map that Daisy gifted
me before she left. She found this map at the train station; someone had left it behind.
In my annoyance, I unraveled the map. It showed the world in perfect detail, and it was labeled by color, which showed colonial
possessions. So many places in the world were owned by people who weren’t from there originally. The colonizers tried to control
them but they still found joy. Their spirits were invincible!
I traced my finger over the printed image, mapping exactly where I wanted to go. French West Africa and Brazil were at the
top of my list. There were Negro boys there too, fighting back against control, but the boys there had different customs of
living entirely.
Perhaps their fathers didn’t doubt their ability to brave the world on their own. Perhaps they were in control of their own
destinies.