“Go on,” he said.
“The girls … the popular girls wanted to go to one of their houses and they asked me to come. I couldn’t believe they were actually inviting me. But I looked over at Mattie and she was skating toward the thin ice and I called to her to say I was leaving for a little while and to stay on the thicker ice, and she nodded, and then I just left with the girls. We walked toward one of their houses, but I really couldn’t hear a thing they were saying because my mind was back on Mattie. I kept picturing how she must’ve felt, watching me walk off with other friends when I’d come to the lake with her. And I wasn’t sure she understood what I meant about staying off the thin ice. So finally I stopped walking and I told the girls I had to go home. I ran back down the path to the lake and Mattie had fallen in the water. She was struggling to get out. She was already too exhausted to even call to me, and she grabbed on to the ice but it kept breaking. I laid down on the ice to try to pull her out. She was crying … I’d never seen her cry before … and her wet clothes were dragging her deeper. Then the ice gave out under me, too. I fell in. I grabbed on to Mattie and tried to get both of us to the bank. There was this old farmer who lived near the lake and he heard me shouting and came running. He saw me in the water, trying to pull Mattie to safety. He had a hoe and I was able to grab on and he pulled me out, but Mattie was under the water by then. She was gone.” My breath caught in my throat. Win was quiet. Waiting. “And the worst part,” I said, twisting my hands together in my lap, “was that the farmer told everyone how I risked my life trying to save this little colored girl. And it was written up in the paper. My mother still has the article. They called me the ‘heroic Round Hill girl.’”
I looked up at the sky, remembering how my mother cried when they gave Louise the news. “Louise left us soon after,” I said. “She was destroyed. She hugged me and kissed me and thanked me for trying to save her daughter.”
My tears started again and I rubbed them away with my hands. I wished Win would say something. Touch me. Rest a hand on my shoulder. Absolve me. But he was still as stone next to me. I looked over at him, wiping my eyes with my fingers. “It wasn’t really a conscious decision,” I said, “SCOPE. I wasn’t sitting around looking for an opportunity to do something good, but when I heard about it, I … it felt like a way to…”
“Atone.” He finished my sentence for me.
“Yes, though it’s become much more than that to me,” she said. “I see the … injustice. I want to be part of fixing it.”
“Got to be hard to live with that guilt,” he said.
I nodded. I liked that he didn’t try to take that guilt away.
“You’ve never told anyone?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why’re you telling me?” he asked.
Why was I? “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just burdened you with a—”
“No. Hush.” He knocked my shoulder lightly with his. “If I can’t handle that burden then I’m not much of a man. Or a friend.”
I looked at him. He wasn’t going to touch me. He wouldn’t make that move himself. I reached over to lay my hand on his where it rested on his knee.
He lifted my hand and moved it back to my own thigh. I felt my cheeks grow hot.
“Listen, Ellie,” he said with a sigh. “I care about you. And I think … I know … you care about me. But we can’t let it be any more than that.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, locking my hands together in my lap. I felt my cheeks color and was glad the moon was no brighter than it was. “I don’t think of you as more than a friend.” Did I? Was I lying?
“I think you’re really pretty,” he said. “I think you’re beautiful, actually. You’re smart and you have a big heart. I watch you when we canvass, how you’re genuinely interested in the people and their problems. And you don’t give up on SCOPE even when you’re scared or have to sleep in a bed with a dozen little kids or your father tries to drag you away. I admire you.” He looked away as though he might have said too much. After a moment, he turned back to me. “I don’t have a problem with Black and white mixing in general, but it’s not right for me,” he said. “Not how I feel about this … path … this Black path … I have to be on right now. My people have to stick together. Do you understand what I’m saying?”