People of Means by Nancy Johnson

Author:Nancy Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2025-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part Seven

Nashville, 1960

20

Freda

When the doctor told Freda she had suffered a mild traumatic brain injury, it sounded like an oxymoron, or perhaps the neurons in her brain were simply misfiring. Dr. Shaw had assured her she would fully recover. They only kept her in the hospital for two days in spite of Gerald’s protests that she might need to be monitored longer. He had become her protector, and she knew she was as safe as she had been growing up in her parents’ home. The morning she was discharged, he took her back to his place and picked up the phone to call her folks.

“No, please don’t do that,” she said, almost begging. “They’ll just worry, and I don’t want them to.” Her normal day to call that week hadn’t come around yet, so they wouldn’t have been suspicious. But they must have followed the news about Big Saturday and would likely be anxious about her safety. They’d have had good reason. Unlike the first one on Valentine’s Day weekend, this sit-in had turned violent with a white mob attacking Negro protesters.

“You have a concussion,” Gerald said, raising his voice as if talking louder would penetrate the good sense sealed off somewhere in her brain. “They’re your parents and they would want to know. I don’t want them to think I’m not looking after you.”

“I had a concussion, and it was mild, remember? It’s not your job to take care of me, even though I appreciate that you are.”

He shook his head, exasperated, but didn’t reach for the phone again. He made her tomato soup and fluffed her pillows and asked her lots of questions she didn’t have easy answers for. Like why had she been outside that sit-in, in the first place? What made her challenge that police officer and put herself in danger? She couldn’t explain even to herself why seeing Darius hauled off in handcuffs made her desperate to do something.

When she had pressed Cora and Evaline for information about what ever happened to Darius, she must not have been subtle because they immediately accused her of having a crush on him. Did she? No, that was impossible. Her heart belonged to Gerald now. But one thing was certain. She would never admit to her friends how much Darius intrigued her because they wouldn’t understand. Even she didn’t.

It wasn’t just that Darius was the wrong kind of guy, but he made her question everything she’d been taught, everything she believed to be true. He reminded her of a hangnail that irritated, yet you still favored it, rubbing your finger over its jagged edge because it refused to be ignored.

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