“Okay.” I smiled in return.
We stood for a moment, our energy warming the air. What was this? Two friends sorting through a misstep or something else? It was better—whatever it was—now that we had said something about it.
Days passed and people across Harlem came together by word of mouth about the horrific fire that had nearly killed our top students. I didn’t even realize so many people knew about the school! But all of Harlem had been quietly rooting for the West Egg crew. Rooting for us keen-minded folk to make it to the big leagues.
At work, I barely had time to grab my apron before Mr. Kirby bounced out of his office.
“How many people you think comin’ to the protest?” he asked.
I did the math on the spot. “Well, there were about sixty boys in the Blue House. Almost all of them lived at school, but about half went home. If the girls of East Egg join in, that could make close to ninety—assuming their numbers match ours. Then you’ve got relatives, word spreading through the press... maybe 150 total?”
Mr. Kirby nodded, thoughtful. “I’ll double the number to be safe.” He pulled out loaves of fresh bread, set them on the counter, and started slicing. Then he stopped, looking me over with something like pride. “I like the courage on you, young man. You a plucky little nigga. Stand up for what you believe—that’s how you get it done.”
He made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tucking each one into a bag and stacking them in the fridge.
A plucky little nigga.Mr. Kirby was plainspoken, and hard-knuckled, and even if he didn’t say it a lot, he wanted to see me make something of myself! Just like Grandpa. They both knew that when times got rough, we had to press forward together or not at all.
Grandpa was the first Nick Carrington. He met my Grandma Ruth by the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana, when she was singing to the ducks. Ruth was the daughter of a slave owned by a man named Mr. Morgan, and Nick the son of a Native mother and a Mulatto man. His complexion allowed him more movement in the world—he didn’t have to work the tenant farms like Ruth. Instead, he traded fur up and down the river, always restless and seeking.
He spotted Ruth while delivering pelts to Morgan’s estate and he knew the moment he saw her he’d risk everything for her love.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said, bold as anything. “You’ve got the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard. This might sound strange, but can I have you as my wife?”
Ruth laughed. “That all it takes?”
“That, and a beautiful soul.”
“I don’t want to marry you, stranger.”
“I’ll give you anything you want.”
At first, she thought it was a trick—a test of her loyalty to Morgan. But Ruth had plans to get off her plantation. If she was ever going to run, she’d need a distraction.
“My freedom,” she said at last. “Give me my freedom.”
So, one evening, Nick dined with Mr. Morgan in the parlor room of the estate—a large space with velvet curtains and a pianist playing softly by the fire. The meal, prepared earlier that afternoon by Ruth and her mother, was served by one of Morgan’s houseboys.
Three bites in, Morgan began pacing, agitated. “Why is this chicken not seasoned?” he barked toward the kitchen.
Nick leaned back, calm. “Ruth’s likely gone to bed. Might want to wash it down.”
Morgan grunted and waved toward the pianist. “Play that piano concerto—it calms me down.”
As the melody rose, Nick slipped a pinch of bromide salt into Morgan’s wine. One long sip, and the man started coughing—then slumped unconscious in his chair.
The pianist looked away, hands still gliding over the keys as Grandpa Nick dragged Morgan by the ankles and tucked him behind a chaise, like a stagehand hiding a prop.
Mrs. Morgan, exhausted from the day, slept soundly. If she noticed an unfamiliar cadence of footsteps crossing the floorboards that night, she took it as a dream sound, not a robber.
Nick took the safe and the keys to the stables. Out in the dark, Ruth was waiting. Together, they freed eight sharecroppers—my great-aunts, cousins, even the pianist—and fled to Langston City, Oklahoma.
Through their shared rebellion, Grandpa Nick and Grandma Ruth built a life. They bought a house. They started a paper. They had my father and Auntie. Except for Auntie Lorraine, those souls were long gone from this world. But I could feel them pumping through me now, driving me forward. Their struggles would not be in vain.
It was cold the morning we gathered to march. The air was crisp after days of rain, as if the skies themselves had wept over this dark turn in West Egg’s story.
But the protest flyers on the streetlamps didn’t wash off. Even the fall winds couldn’t blow them away.
We bunched together and formed a crowd of moving heat. People from all over the city came. Jay, Zihan, Daisy, Auntie, and I were side by side with some folks I didn’t recognize—organizers who kept track of the city’s injustices.
