June fifteenth, 1981
Vibrant red hair adorns the pale face whose nose is pressed against the window. The girl, no more than seventeen, is watching her hometown disappear. Not just her hometown – her world, all that she has ever known and loathed and sometimes loved.
Iowa hurtles by, greens and browns and blues all whooshing together into the vibrant yellow of the blazing sun. Well, Maureen thinks sardonically to herself, that's one thing I'll miss. She has learned to count on her Midwestern world for perpetual color and summertime, both of which she has always taken for granted. Now, despite all the things she hates about Iowa, she is saying goodbye to this colorful world in exchange for the suburbs of New York state.
Teenagers long for New York. They thrive on the city, longing to see it, just once, and maybe even live there one day. They savor the name, mouths watering at mention of the hot dogs and pretzels and some rare delicacy called Chinese food. They pray to the gods of Manhattan, "Just one more day." Counting down to their eighteenth birthdays or high school graduations, waiting, waiting. New York is the destination.
But that's New York City. The state of New York means nothing to Maureen, nor to any teenager.
Still, she watches as the pastures roll by, fully prepared for a world of grays and steel blues and blacks. Her siblings shrieking beside her on the crisp beige leather seat, Maureen draws up something from her wild imagination, yearning to hear the whipping of the wind but not quite willing to open the window.
She wants to say goodbye to the world she knows so well, but isn't sure that the farewell would be at all deserved.
Closing her eyes, she remembers…
---
September fourth, 1980
Amidst the sea of reds, pinks and yellows – thousands of different shades of blond and red, from peach blond to strawberry blond – there is very little that stands out. Maureen sees white, white and blond to match the yellow of the sun as it beats down on her and her classmates for the first time this school year. There isn't anything that catches her eye in particular.
Then a car pulls up to the side of the school, and a boy exits. The boy is short and probably skinny to match it, but has layer upon layer of clothing on to disguise his frame. Pulled over his head is the hood of his heavy gray sweatshirt. All that Maureen can see of him is his backpack, a camouflage of greens and browns.
Everybody else around is wearing some sort of backpack stamped as a product of Jansport.
A nonconformist, then, she observes. She wonders how long it will take to stomp out this one. Last year, when a girl wore a skirt that was an inch too short and wore a shirt that was just a bit too tight, she was shunned.
To the extent that her family moved to New Jersey.
Maureen winces. Someone ought to warn this kid.
Before she fully comprehends what she is doing, Maureen runs her fingers through her hair and begins the short walk over to where the kid is standing. "Hey," she chirps. "I'm Maureen."
The boy slowly raises his head to meet her eyes. As he does, Maureen's eyes widen.
Wow.
It isn't that she's never seen a black person before. She has. Just… not in person. They don't tend to be very common in Iowa, and especially in the suburbs. Still, there are pictures of black people in history textbooks and those boring movies they make her watch in class.
They've never been in her town, though.
This is exciting.
"I'm Benny," he says quietly. "I'm new. And, um, different."
What made him say that? she wonders in bewilderment. It's true, of course, but it's so odd a thing to say that one could almost disregard that entirely. Yes, he is different. But she's never known anyone to broadcast that fact before. Different is bad, according to the ways of life Maureen knows. Different is… different.
"That's okay," she says. But is it? Her classmates can be vicious even to the other white kids. They're not racist or anything – how could they be? They've never seen blacks before. They're brutal. To anyone. It doesn't matter – different, the same, but mostly different. Because what is there to attack in someone with the same eyes, same face, same hair, same mindset?
No, there's no denying it. Benny will be the target.
"Good luck," Maureen says, patting Benny on the shoulder.
He winces. "That's what my mom said," he mutters, "before we left Chicago."
---
At lunch, something compels her. She will never be able to identify the something, nor will she be able to understand why she felt it, but feel it she does.
"Benny!" she calls across the crowded cafeteria, placing her tray delicately on a fold-up table. "Over here!"
And in the process, of course, she inadvertently ruins her new acquaintance's attempt at hiding. All eyes turn to him, starting with those of the kids who sat close enough to him in his classes to see the color of his skin.
Benny's eyes widen. Like a deer in the headlights, he glances around. Shit.
"Over here!" Maureen calls again, standing on her chair.
The boy scampers over to her, probably afraid that if he chose to ignore her, she would respond by calling his name while mooning the entire cafeteria. (She's done it before.) "Hi," he mumbles sheepishly as he takes a seat across from her. All eyes are on their table.
"I should give them something to stare about," Maureen remarks idly. "Do you think I should flash them?"
Again, Benny's eyes enlarge to the size of golf balls. "I wasn't aware that we were close enough friends for me to be making those kinds of judgements," he replies nonchalantly.
Across the table, she slips him the extra vanilla pudding she stole from the lunch line, having hidden it in her shirt.
He takes it, clearly bewildered.
"Now we are," she says with a smile, and takes a bite out of her sandwich. "So, you're from Chicago? What's it like there?"
And gradually, the students and teachers slowly, skeptically find something else to look at.
---
Ordinarily, it would take the students of Milton High School no more than a month or two to adjust to having a "stranger in their midst," which here means "a black kid." It's happened once or twice in past decades – Maureen's parents even hint at having graduated with two black kids in their class. But when Benny befriends Maureen, it isn't an ordinary city-kid-moves-to-the-suburbs issue.
It becomes an issue of "Is she sleeping with him?"
Or as a wide-eyed, hyper-religious freshman demands, "Is she pregnant?"
From there, the questions and accusations begin to tumble out.
Maureen is accused of everything from being a slut to being pregnant to having married Benny in Los Vegas. ("How," she protests, "could I possibly go to Vegas? Neither of us can drive, and plus, most of us don't even know our way out of Milton.")
On the other side of the issue, Maureen is practically a martyr compared to Benny. He is a pimp, a drug dealer, a grown man masquerading as a teenager, a terrorist, a rapist, violent, a polygamist, an athiest, sexually retarded, one of those men "from the city" who masturbate in grocery stores. (Benny assures Maureen that he has never seen anyone like that. She seems oddly disappointed.)
"Hey!" yells a boy from Milton Junior High School, brandishing a stick at Benny. "Keep your hands off that girl, you pervert, or I'll kill you. You have no right to go around making girls like you. You're different."
The worst of it comes when Benny's family, finally settled in, goes to church. The three dark-skinned individuals file into the building silently, exactly on time.
Somehow, their presence interrupts the chatter of the others.
Within moments, there is silence.
As Benny, his mother, and his father file into a pew, thirty or forty people rise from their own pews and make their disgruntled exits.
Benny's mother shifts in her seat, looking at her husband and son, and firmly gazes up in front of her.
It is not until they get home that she cries.
---
The average Iowan, according to Maureen one night as she and Benny socialize in the latter's bedroom, only has the intelligence quotient of the average rodent. They are small-minded, discriminatory, and rude – not to mention prejudiced. Plus, so staunch are they in their religious beliefs that they seem to have something against the friendship of two people with different skin colors.
It just doesn't make sense.
"It just doesn't make sense," Maureen gushes, lying flat on Benny's bed. "Last time I checked, religion was about love and acceptance and community and all that. They're making it into all these borders and stupid rules that don't even make sense. God told me to. Well, big deal. Next?"
Benny grimaces. "It's not like that. Religion's never been about love," he promises her. "It's like M&Ms. They have those colorful shells, but they're all the same. And if you really think about it, they're not even that sweet. And they make you fat."
With Maureen's grin, the freckles on her nose stand out more.
"It's moderation, really," Benny continues. "Maybe religion is good at first. I don't know. But after a while, it just becomes – "
For the first time, Maureen interrupts him.
By kissing him.
It is puzzling, really. One moment, Benny's jaws are flapping like an alligator's as he babbles and drones on, and the next, glossy pink lips are pressed against his, with Maureen's hands tightly gripping his at his sides.
He tries to wrestle away, and for a moment, Maureen lets him. "Don't," she says, swallowing a breath of air like a sleek white pill said to eliminate cramps.
Benny's eyes flutter down to stare at the bedspread. It is a navy blue, with orange dragonflies running up the side. "Why?" he mumbles.
She places a hand on his shoulder. "Because."
"Because…?"
"It isn't right."
His eyes are wide, his tone wavering.
With one hand, Maureen pushes him down on the bed so that he is lying on his back.
"Bullshit."
She swoops in for another kiss.
---
At sixteen, when the average boy is worrying about sex and his girlfriend (in that order), Benny is worrying about hazing.
It started off pretty mild, or so he says. It started out with threats and occasional punches to the ribs. Now, in November, when he meets Maureen in abandoned hallways to make out between classes, the beatings are getting worse. The football team, a dozen religious mothers' boys with crew cuts and plans to join the military come their eighteenth birthdays, has made it their personal mission to humiliate and terrorize Benjamin Coffin as much as possible.
They begin by taking his clothes in the locker room.
It is a dirty trick, but one that every new kid in school has suffered at one point or another. Benny copes by wearing his towel directly to his next class, acting perfectly casually. When called out by an obnoxious biology teacher, Benny calmly informs him that his clothing was stolen in the locker room.
A slim girl with jet-black hair encourages her boyfriend to "pound him into a pulp" for the somehow invisible erection that she claims to see through the towel.
Benny is sent to the dean's office.
From there, it gets worse and worse. Threatening phone calls are made to not only his house, but to Maureen's as well, and he is encouraged regularly to "go back to Chicago with the whores and pimps like your parents."
He is accused of staring at classmates in the locker rooms. He is accused of stealing. He is accused of having sex with Maureen on school property.
When that last rumor gets out, his leg is broken by the end of his encounter with the quarterback.
---
Truth be told, it is February before Benny even sees Maureen… like that. She invites him to a casual dinner party with her parents, who have heard that she is "friendly with the colored boy" and wish to meet him.
When he arrives at the Johnson household, Maureen meets him on the doorstep. He has never been to her house before. Realizing that, Maureen takes his hand. "Come on," she says, smiling broadly. "The most important part of this house is my bedroom."
Benny thanks the lord that her parents do not hear a word of that, because as platonic as she means it to sound, it still comes across as highly sexual. To him, at least, which may have something to do with the fact that he is sixteen.
In her room, Maureen slips her sweatshirt over her shoulders, tossing it over her head and onto the floor. "Sundress or business casual?" she asks playfully, stepping out of her jeans.
Benny makes more than his fair share of effort to keep his eyes on her face. "It's February," he mutters.
"Sundress it is."
She tucks her fingers into the waistband of her underwear.
Benny's eyes slip downward.
"Maureen!" comes a shout at the door, followed by quick tapping of somebody's knuckles.
The door opens. Maureen, in her underwear, gestures for Benny to hide.
He dives behind the door as it opens. "Hello, darling," says Maureen's mother to her daughter's back.
"I'm changing, Mother," Maureen informs her. "I'll be downstairs soon."
Once the door has been closed and Mrs. Johnson's footsteps have echoed down the stairs, Benny sheepishly emerges from behind the door.
"Just get changed," he tells her tiredly.
Maureen does.
---
"Benny?" Maureen asks one morning outside the school building, lurking behind a tree. "Did you ever think about maybe… taking a break?"
He looks resigned. "Is he white?" he asks boredly.
"Who?"
"The guy you're thinking about."
Maureen closes her eyes for a long moment. "I'm not," she says slowly.
"Not what?"
"Not thinking about anyone else. It's just… I heard this kid talking about beating you up today."
Shaking his head, Benny remarks, "I get beaten up every day. That doesn't mean I want to break up."
Maureen shrugs a thin shoulder. "I just thought it might be safer for you."
"They'll come after me anyway," he insists. "In case you haven't noticed, dating you is only half the reason they don't like me. The other half, I can't change."
Maureen sighs. "If you change your mind…"
"Will it hurt you?" he asks sharply.
She shakes her head. "I don't know."
---
When Maureen arrives at home one day, she is greeted by her mother, who is on the telephone in the kitchen. "Yes, Bruce," she is saying, her face alight with a smile.
When Mrs. Johnson hangs up, Maureen looks at her expectantly, waiting for the traditional "How was your day?"
It doesn't come.
"Well," says Maureen's mother, twirling her hands idly, "I have some great news for you, sweetheart."
"Yes?" Maureen asks acidly.
I am such a teenager, she thinks to herself, not without remorse.
"We're… well, darling, we're moving. We're going to New York. I know you've always loved New York, and – "
With a stomp and a bang, Maureen ascends the stairs to her bedroom and slams the door.
But the phone has been disconnected.
Nancy Johnson rapps on her daughter's bedroom door. "I really think this is for the best, Maureen," she persists. "Besides, you'll have the opportunity to meet so many boys, and not that colored boy either, it'll be – "
"Mom," says Maureen loudly. "It's 1981. Say black or don't say anything at all." And in a choked voice, she announces, "I love him."
"I know you think that, sweetie," her mother says swiftly. "But don't worry, you'll rethink it."
Maureen throws the nearest object at the door. It so happens to be her diary, which in great detail describes her and Benny's last sexual encounter.
---
"I love you."
"I love you."
"Will I see you in New York one day?"
He brushes the hair out of her eyes. "Don't be dramatic," he says, and kisses her.
"Look who's talking," she murmurs.
---
"Is everyone in the car?" Maureen's mother calls, overly cheerfully.
"What do you think?" Maureen mutters.
"Watch your tongue, young lady. Eddie, are you here?"
Maureen's father exhales loudly.
"Gareth? Lia?"
Maureen's two siblings shriek in agreement.
"And… Maureen."
"We all wish I weren't," Maureen mutters, and presses her nose decisively against the window. "Just drive, Nancy."
The car speeds off, metallic blue paint and beige leather seats and all.