November/December 2000

Art class. The comforting scent of paints and crayons greeted me as I made my way into the room. As if by magic all of my problems seemed to slip away, like I was losing many heavy weights that were tied to my heart. For two hours, those long-awaited two hours on Friday afternoons, I could be as free as an eagle and let my imagination soar. No one called me “teacher’s pet” or shot me mean glances for exactly 120 minutes. I didn’t have to worry about tests, or when we were going to move again, or Mom always being tired. “Samantha!” Barbra, my art teacher, always seemed to have a smile ready for anyone. No doubt I needed her smile after a long week of school. “Have a seat. We’ll start as soon as the new girl arrives.” I pulled out a metal chair from the table and sat down. The new girl, I thought vaguely. Barbra had mentioned her the week before. I paid no real attention, there was no reason to. I had never had many friends, we moved too often due to Dad’s job for me to keep any friends for long. No one at this new school liked me and I made no move to get into one of their groups. I was used to being an outsider. I took some colored pencils from my backpack and began to sketch. I drew the outline of a face, then added eyes and a nose in the correct spots. I took a peach color and shaded in the skin. Then I made the eyes blue and the hair blond with a slight curl at the bottom. The mouth was curved in a pleasant smile. I grinned back at my sketch. If only I had a friend like the girl that I’d drawn. “This is Tammy,” announced Barbra, her arm around the girl’s shoulders “OK, everyone, let’s stop for a second so I can introduce our new student.” At Barbra’s voice, I closed my sketchpad and looked up. The several other students, all high-school age, did the same. For a moment, we all just stared. Then one of the boys whispered something to a girl beside him, and she giggled. The new student was a girl about thirteen — my age. She was black. “This is Tammy,” announced Barbra, her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Tammy smiled at us timidly, then Barbra pointed her to a seat. “You can sit over there by Samantha.” Tammy looked my way, but I pretended to study my sketchpad. I had never spent any time with a person who was a different color than me, and I was unsure how to act. Our neighborhoods had been almost entirely white. Barbra gave us instructions to draw what scared us. I set to work drawing what first came to my mind—a snake. I had always been terrified of snakes. Once I went to the zoo and saw one behind glass. After that I was unable to sleep without nightmares for weeks. I finished my drawing of a copperhead, my worst-feared snake. Tammy was still drawing. I glanced quickly at her sketch. What I saw startled me—a man in black stood pointing a gun at someone. The person was pressed against a wall, looking scared. That night, after I had read a few chapters of my book, I glanced at my sketchpad and saw the snake picture. I held the pad and thought of Tammy’s sketch, how real it was. The copperhead was an imaginary fear, in a way. None lived in my Illinois town, or anywhere else that I’d lived. But guns—the possibility made me shiver. During the next few weeks I had a tendency to sneak a peek at Tammy’s sketches. The one with the gun stayed with me. Every time that I heard of a shooting on television or on the radio, Tammy’s sketch popped into my mind. Her other sketches were good, too. They all showed that feeling that Barbra encouraged us to include in our pictures. She had once said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Then things started happening. At first I thought it was nothing, but I was wrong. After the second art class that Tammy attended was when the happenings began. When she came back the following week, all of her sketches for an upcoming painting were all torn up. Only one sketch remained—one that had a man standing behind a podium. It took a moment for me to realize that it was supposed to be Martin Luther King, Jr. It took a moment because his head had been blotted out with black ink. Scrawled across the paper were the words, “Go home, darkie.” When Tammy saw this, her eyes opened a little wider, but that was all. Barbra, however, turned as red as a beet, and, for the first time that I’d ever seen, she got angry. “I do not accept this behavior in my class,” she said, holding up the sketch. “I expect it never to happen again.” The happenings continued, although they weren’t as visible as the first. They didn’t happen every class, either. Once Tammy’s sculpture was squashed. Then her colored pencils disappeared. After that her painting had shoe marks on it, like someone had stepped on it. Through it all, I remained silent. I hadn’t spoken once to Tammy. The other students occasionally said a few words to her, but they rarely exceeded “Pass the paint.” I did find myself beginning to admire Tammy’s obvious talent for art. Barbra did, too, and began calling her “Picassa” after the artist Picasso. That made Tammy smile. I felt tension in the class, even when I tried to convince myself that it was nothing. I began to notice that two of the boys would casually knock into Tammy, or spill water her way “accidentally.” Their actions made me feel uneasy, yet I had no proof that they were the ones who were