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  • Black Wings against the Blue Sky
  • Deyonne Bryant (bio)

When the morning recess bell rings I put away my notebook and get in line. Behind me Nicky whispers, “Don’t forget.” I sit in front of him in class and throughout the day, he inches his desk up to mine. I nod to let him know I have heard him, but I do not turn around. It is the second week of school, and I want to play. When the line starts to move, the sea of faces spilling from the classrooms carries me away.

Although it is mid-September, the sun burns white in a cloudless sky. Yet the heat does not stop the kids who are running all around me. They shriek and call to each other from the swings, slide, and merry-go-round.

My heart beats like a drum in my chest, and I bring my knees together to stop them from knocking. Swallowing the knot in my throat, I go over to the monkey bars. Roy, the smartest kid in the class, has just walked hand over hand from one end of the monkey bars to the other twice. Now he hangs upside down. “Can I play?” I say in a squeaky voice.

Roy reaches up and grabs hold of the bar. Small for his age, like me, he is very strong. He will become my friend, but not on this day. He looks at me as if seeing me for the first time and says I am a girl. Then he goes limp again, like a bat fast asleep in a tree.

He might as well have slapped my face, and I gasp. For a moment, I cannot think. Then I pretend not to have heard him as I look around for a way to get on the monkey bars. [End Page 206]

Luckily, I have worn my favorite skort. The fabric, heavy and deeply pleated, is perfect for climbing. Although my loafers slip a couple of times on the rungs, I make it to the top of the monkey bars where I perch, proudly. I stick my tongue out at Roy, who is not looking at me, and call to Nicky. New at the school too, Nicky clings to me like a vine. He has tried to make me sit with him on the sidewalk every day at recess, but I am not used to being bossed, and resist. He waves halfheartedly and then turns away. Shrugging, I look out on the playground. Everyone has gathered in a section of the field to play Chase. The boys are catching the girls and chucking them into a dungeon, a corner of the fence where several girls bounce on the balls of their feet, waving to kids still in the game. I swing down to the ground to join them.

“Run!” A girl I do not know pushes me out of the way as she dashes by. She is the first person to address me directly, excluding Nicky and the teacher.

I am on top of the world, and the grin on my face shows it. I zigzag and run in circles in the middle of the playground, feign fending off my captors, and dash back and forth along the periphery until I’m out of breath. I run like the wind, just like Jesse Owens, all my friends say. We have heard of Jesse Owens, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige because our grandparents speak of them as if they lived next door to us, in Bay Village. My grandfather especially admires Satchel Paige. “Don’t look back,” he had said just that morning, walking with me to the classroom. “Something might be gaining on you.” He has filled my head with sayings such as these, some of which I understand—“Try and try again”—most I do not.

I am pretending I am at my old school. I would go back, but my parents will not let me go. Only months earlier, in May, the National Guard had seized our school, as it had done across the state at schools whose teachers refused to integrate their students into predominantly white schools, believing that...

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