Meridian Read Online Free Page A

think of you as so strong, but look at you!”
    “I am strong, actually,” said Meridian, cockily, for someone who looked near death and had to do exercises before her body allowed her to crawl or stand. “I’m just not Superwoman.”
    “And why can’t Anne-Marion leave you alone?” asked Truman, nodding at the letters on the wall. “Anyone who could write such hateful things is a real bitch.”
    “To tell the truth,” said Meridian. “I keep the letters because they contain the bitch’s handwriting.”
    “You’re kidding?” asked Truman.
    “No, I’m not,” said Meridian.
    MEDGAR EVERS/JOHN F. KENNEDY/MALCOLM X/MARTIN LUTHER KING/ROBERT KENNEDY/CHE GUEVARA/PATRICE LAMUMBA/GEORGE JACKSON/CYNTHIA WESLEY/ADDIE MAE COLLINS/DENISE MCNAIR/CAROLE ROBERTSON/ VIOLA LIUZZO
    It was a decade marked by death. Violent and inevitable. Funerals became engraved on the brain, intensifying the ephemeral nature of life. For many in the South it was a decade reminiscent of earlier times, when oak trees sighed over their burdens in the wind; Spanish moss draggled bloody to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall. They shared rituals for the dead to be remembered.
    But now television became the repository of memory, and each onlooker grieved alone.
    It was during the first televised Kennedy funeral that Anne-Marion Coles became quite conscious of Meridian Hill. She had seen her around the campus before, but never really to speak to. Meridian appeared so aloof she could sit at a table for four in the dining room and never be asked to share it; or, if she were asked, the question would be put timidly, with deference. This barrier she erected seemed to astonish her, and when finally approached—whether in the dining room, the chapel, or under the campus trees—she was likely to seem too eager in her response, too generous, too friendly, her dark face whipped quickly into liveliness, and dark, rather sad eyes crinkled brightly into gladness.
    Anne-Marion had the audacity of the self-confident person who, against whatever odds, intends to succeed. Hers was an exploitative rather than an altruistic nature, and she would never have attempted penetrating Meridian’s reserve if she had not sensed behind it an intriguing and valuable inner life—an exploration of which would enrich her own existence. That she would learn to care for Meridian she did not foresee.
    She sat across from Meridian as she and the other honor students watched the Kennedy family stride off toward Arlington National Cemetery behind the shattered body of their dead John. Jackie Kennedy, it was suggested by a newsman, had been given something that helped her not to cry. The students had been given nothing, and so they cried small floods. Meridian’s face, grayish-blue from the television light, glistened with tears that dripped off her chin onto her blue cotton shirt. Slumped forward with grief, she did not bother to raise her hands from her lap, where they lay palms up, empty. She shivered as if she were cold.
    Earlier that same year, when Medgar Evers was assassinated, Meridian had planted a wild sweet shrub bush among the plants in the formal garden in front of the honors house. Each day the jealous gardener had pulled a bit more of its delicate roots to the surface, so that it too soon died. Remembering this, seeing her shiver, Anne-Marion held out her sweater to Meridian. Scarcely looking at her, Meridian took it and wrapped herself up tight.

The Wild Child
    T HE WILD CHILD was a young girl who had managed to live without parents, relatives or friends for all of her thirteen years. It was assumed she was thirteen, though no one knew for sure. She did not know herself, and even if she