White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation

I Surrender!

115 I began spending the time between classes at the Richmond Public Library, just across the street from Open High. I started out sitting in the cushioned yellow chairs of the carpeted reading room, but I was often interrupted by snoring homeless men. I then began sitting at a table near the stacks of nonfiction. I spent hours there, doing my homework or reading books by Nathaniel Benchley, Sylvia Plath, and Vladimir Nabokov. The books were safe, didn’t require anything of me. I might have become a total recluse had I not started talking to Andrew Gordon, a boy who also spent a lot of time in the library. I met him the first week of school when I went to Capitol Square with Zippo. He was on the grass, his long legs sprawled in front of him, eating lunch with a group of other students. As he listened to the conversation, he bent his head to one side, his light brown curls brushing the top of his T-shirt, his brown eyes intent. I was so attracted to him, I gulped before I introduced myself and giggled after I said my name. I found out that he was also a freshman. In the spring we took a history class together, taught by an earnest VCU graduate student who assigned us a college-level research paper , complete with footnotes and bibliography. One day, I unloaded my knapsack in my usual spot in the library, a table near the reading lounge, and started writing notes on an index card. A few minutes later, Andrew came over and sat down. “Hi,” Andrew whispered, clearing his throat. “What are you working on?” “Hi,” I whispered back, so we wouldn’t make too much noise and be shushed. “I’m doing the student revolts in Paris in the 1960s.” We talked about our papers for a while. I watched the minute hand of the wall clock advancing from 3:10 to 3:25. It was time for me to pedal off to my French conversation class, but I decided to skip it. I thought this conversation was more valuable than one in French. The librarians began to glare at us, so we walked outside. Andrew I Surrender! 116 propped himself up on the rack where I had chained my bike. We kept talking, mostly about school. I wanted to keep talking forever, but I was starting to shiver. It was April, and the air cooled as soon as the sun cast long shadows across Franklin Street. Soon, it would be rush hour, a time I hated riding home. I would be squeezed to the margins of the street. “I have to get going,” I finally said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” The next day, he sat with me in the library instead of at his usual table. After that, we started making plans to meet each other. Like me, Andrew had attended predominantly black middle schools. He told me how one day in gym class some black kids had ganged up on a white boy and thrown him into a dumpster. I was simultaneously amused and horrified by this story. Andrew seemed to get through his years in middle school the same way I did—by keeping to himself and reading as much as possible. One warm afternoon in May, Andrew and I both decided to skip our classes. He needed to shoot a roll of film for his photography class. We headed south to the Robert E. Lee Bridge across the James River. We stopped at the War Memorial, but the setting was too somber for our exuberance. We continued to a construction site for the city’s downtown expressway. He took photos of the bulldozer and the river, and one of me leaning against the bridge railing. On the walk back, he grabbed me and pretended to throw me in the water. At first I struggled, and then I simply leaned back into his arms and said, “I surrender!” He didn’t push me away. We stood like that for a minute, the traffic rushing north and south and the muddy James roaring underneath the bridge. I could feel the heat of his chest through his T-shirt, smell the soap on his skin. His chin tickled the top of my head. Slowly, I turned around and looked up at him. His face stood out against the downtown skyline—the gridded sides of City Hall, the cluster of towers at the...