Lies We Tell Ourselves

by Robin Talley

When I was Bobby’s age, during the war, there used to be blackouts. I’m too little to really remember it, but Mama told me stories. I used to get so scared I’d cry for hours, walking around the dark house, bumping into things, thinking I saw monsters lurking in every corner. But I’m not a little girl anymore. The monsters that lurk now are real. And I can’t let them see that I’m afraid.

It just feels...good. But how can it? Isn’t this supposed to feel the opposite of good? How could God let something so wrong feel like this? Why is it all right for me to kiss Ennis, when that doesn’t feel like anything at all, but not Linda, when kissing Linda feels like this? Kissing Linda is the only thing all year—except for singing on that stage—that I’ve actually wanted to do. Wanted for me. Not for my family, or for the movement or for anybody else but me. This is who I am. And I like me this way. And I think God just might like me this way, too.

Jack and I will never kiss again. That’s all right. It’s better than only kissing one person for the rest of my life. The rest of my life seems so much bigger than it did before.

I thought marrying Jack, getting out of my house, would make everything better, but it wouldn’t have worked that way. It would’ve been pasting a Band-Aid on top of things and pretending that was enough to turn me into somebody else. I have to do something more. Something just for me. I can’t sit back and let everyone else decide. I’ve been doing that long enough. I have to take care of myself from now on. And I’ll have to trust myself to do it right.

Urine. On my chair. And they say the white people are supposed to be the civilized ones.

“Don’t you see, Sarah?” Ruth says. “Someone has to do this. If we give up, nothing will ever change.”

“Other people will always try to decide things for you,” she says. “They’ll try to tell you who you are. Remember, no matter what they say, you’re the one who really decides.”

They’re not looking at us anymore. They’re talking with their heads bent close together. Closer than a colored girl and a white girl really should if they know what’s good for them. Unless they know more about what’s good for them than everybody else is supposed to.

Those histories were painful to read, and this book was painful to write. But none of it compares to the pain, and the heroism, of the people who lived it.