Apex Magazine Issue 123 by Apex Magazine

Author:Apex Magazine [Magazine, Apex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: apex magazine, Magazine
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Daybreak approached as all scrambled to return to their proper places. The toys did a good job of cleaning Chevella up, though a small speck of paint remained on the palm of her hand that they could not remove. The Missy Anns stayed quiet but their silence radiated an oily, palpable displeasure, making the air feel thick and sticky.

They knew they outnumbered the toys by three to one. As the Original Enchantment crept over her limbs, Chevella could still smell the places where the mouse feces touched her skin. Chevella vowed to turn her outrage into new determination. She would leave the store! The man would save her, she knew it.

When the Negro man came again later that afternoon her heart jumped. She locked him into her gaze; he would not escape this time. The doll seed popped twice behind her knee. She wished she could reach down and rub it, but she concentrated all the harder on him. Putting her in his mind, she saw him surrounded by different types of children—his present, she assumed. This picture stroked anticipation and a feeling new to Chevella—giddiness—washed over her.

After a moment he came in, sauntering through the glass doors. He waited patiently in front of the store.

After finishing with a female customer, Mrs. Lovey looked up and said, “Yes, may I help you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man said with warmth. “Mighty fine store you have here.”

“Thank you, we’ve been here for many years.”

“Uh-huh, my wife has passed by here several times. She loves your displays,” he replied. “I’d like the doll up in the window ... the Negro doll, please.”

When Chevella heard the register ching-ching, and when Mrs. Lovey wrapped her in tissue paper, she was sure that some adorable girl like the man, all sad smiles and breeziness, awaited her.

As they approached the black car, the man began to talk to Chevella. The sun came through the clouds, and Chevella felt as if it smiled for her.

“Oh now, honey, what’s your name? The lady in the store never told me … Well, sit back and enjoy the ride,” he said sliding her in the back seat, removing the paper and bending her so that she could sit up. “There you go.”

He opened the driver’s door, slipped in, and looking in the rearview mirror said, “I’m Benny. You sure are one very lucky lady. We’re going to meet Mr. Kenneth Clarke. You have got to play your part. We all play our parts. Yes, indeed.”

Chevella listened but her attention was drawn to the bustling life on the streets. So many people!

“—I’m just a peon, a graduate student that is, but one day I’m going to do what Dr. Clarke is doing.” Benny looked back at her in the rearview mirror again, laughing.

“Yes, in just a few more years, things are going to be real different. Change is blowing strong through all of us. Indeed.”

Small piles of letters, journals, and magazines addressed to a Benny Harwood at the New York University, Department of Psychology, lay on the seat beside her.

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