Jury of One

31

She is not supposed to be here. But isn’t that what makes it fun?

Her parents are not home anyway this weekend, off to some fund-raisers a few hours away. Daddy is “collecting support,” as he likes to say. He is going to try to run for attorney general and it sounds like the people who make such decisions-you would think it was the people of the state but apparently not-seem to want Daddy to be the one.

She is happy for him, but envious as well. She wants adventure, too, and wouldn’t Daddy understand? A train ride into the city, unsupervised, unapproved. She met people on the train from Haley to the city-eighteen stops in between, she counted-and she introduced herself as “Andrea,” she had just moved from out east and had been visiting a sick uncle in Haley and was now heading back to her home in the city, “near the park,” she had said. There was a park but she didn’t know where it was, precisely; she had been fearful that someone would pin her down on specifics but that was the beautiful thing about people in the city, they didn’t ask such questions, they didn’t have to pry into the minute details of one’s life. Andrea-she had not given a last name-will exist in the city in perfect anonymity.

Her watch says that it is half past eight in the evening. She has been to the museums and to the shops on Atlantic Boulevard-she only has a little over a hundred dollars in her pocket so she was only looking, not buying-and now she has taken a taxi to the baseball park. It doesn’t look like they’re playing baseball today but the activity level is still high. People of all ages, all races, all speeds of stride-some busy, some relaxed. A hot dog vendor shouts out. Kids on skateboards, young teenagers like Shelly, jumping the air with their boards, trying to perfect this move or that one. More black people than she has ever seen in one place up close. Different languages spoken. Cars driving recklessly, pedestrians veering with abandon across the street.

The sky is bruising as the sun falls and storm clouds gather. She will probably run out of things to do and will make her way back to the train station. She is a block north of the baseball stadium now, on a residential street. She sees a gathering of people heading up a block of concrete steps. They don’t have housing like this in Haley. They are all freestanding homes with lawns and driveways. The houses here are jammed together with no outdoor space that she can see.

She reaches a cluster of three people who are reaching the stairs. She looks at the first woman-she is probably no older than twenty-one but to Shelly, at age fifteen, she seems so old. She is taller than Shelly and beautiful; her face reveals a certain breeding, her high cheekbones, skin so smooth it seems to glisten, long flowing hair much darker than Shelly’s cinnamon.

She looks at Shelly as she adjusts the purse hanging on her shoulder. She speaks to Shelly, and Shelly wonders if there was something in the way she was looking at this woman that made her feel compelled to do so.

“Going to the party?” she asks.

Shelly nods. Then smiles. She has been so immediately accepted. “I’m Andrea,” says Shelly. She moves into the group as they take the concrete stairs.

“Dina,” says the woman. Such a wonderfully elegant name. “Are you in art school with Steve?”

“Yes,” she says quickly. “I just graduated high school out east and I’m trying to decide what to do.” This much she has already said several times to various uninterested travelers on the train.

“Cool.”

The door at the top of the stairs has been propped open; a sign on the door signals visitors that Steve’s place is on the top floor. Shelly’s heart drums as she hears the angry music blaring down the staircase and the smell of alcohol-beer, she assumes. She has never had a drink but there is a first time for everything. She looks at Dina and she thinks that this is who Shelly Trotter will be some day, a beautiful, graceful, confident woman. Oh, if her father could see her now.