Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) Read Online Free Page A

making. That might have been the only thing I would ever remember about that man, if it hadn’t been for the other thing. He kept holding me up in his arms even though I was getting uncomfortable and told him I wanted to get down, to go out. The other kids had already left and I wanted to be with them, not him.
    “No, you’re gonna stay in here with me,” he said. Although I was a very naive child, I knew
something
was wrong. And I was right. He finally set me down, but he didn’t let me leave. He began to pull my pants down. Why was he doing this to me? He was a deacon in our church, a man I was taught to respect, but this was not what a good man was supposed to do. This was bad, and I wasn’t quite sure what I should do about it.
    Well, he gave me the answer, by asking the question. “Who you gonna tell?”
    “I’m gonna tell my mama,” I blurted out without any hesitation. I was afraid and I didn’t know what else to say. I figured my mother could fix anything. She always did.
    “Oh, no, you can’t do that,” he said, as if he was really surprised by my threat. What did he think I would do?
    Then he asked me again, and I repeated that I would tell my mother. I held to it because I meant it. This didn’t seem like something he should be doing, and I was going to tell her. If I could get to her. Finally, I guess he decided it wasn’t worth the risk. He let me go, sent me out to play with the other kids. But I couldn’t wait to tell Mama. What happened next was as surprising to me as what had happened in the first place. When I told Mama everything that had gone on, she didn’t have any reaction. I wanted to know what she was going to do. But she just shooed me off somewhere. She never acted like she thought it was anything of consequence. But shedid make me stay around our house from then on. I don’t know to this day whether Mama spoke to that man or not. I can’t help but wonder about it, though.
    There was another incident. I was about fourteen by this time, and I wanted to go to a dance with my dearest friend, Ollie Colbert. I could
never
go to dances. They were just off-limits. But I begged Mama so, and Ollie’s mother told Mama that I would have adequate supervision. Mama reluctantly let me go, but I had to be home by nine o’clock. The dance didn’t start until eight, so I had one hour. As it turned out, I wouldn’t even have that long. I had just gotten there, had one dance, and the music was sounding so good. Oh, it was just glorious. I had never experienced such excitement. I felt like a cat in a fish market. Then, all of a sudden, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and saw that it was the son of one of our church officers. He was very handsome and charming, but he wasn’t asking me for a dance. Mama had sent this young man to pick me up. Oh, I was so upset. But I had to do what she told me to. Now, we were only about five blocks from my house when he and I got in the car and he began driving. But then he started going the wrong way, taking the long way up and down streets in the white neighborhoods. Oh, my goodness, where was he going, what was he doing? Just as I was asking myself these questions, the answer came. He made a proposition. He suggested things I had never even
thought
about, sexual things. How strange, that the one person my mother had trusted to make sure I got home safely was the very person she would have wanted me to avoid that night.
    “No. Absolutely not,” I said, wondering if I could just get out of the car and run home. Then I told him what I had told that demon deacon so many years before. I threatened to tell Mama.
    Unlike the man in that earlier incident, this young man seemed so calm about it all. “She won’t believe you,” he said.
    Well, that scared me more than anything. He seemed so sure about it, I began to really worry. He was such an upstanding, outstanding young man in the neighborhood that he figured he could get away with this.