Everyday People by Stewart O’Nan Page B

curly, the
e
’s nearly circles. Some revolutionary sister, she thought, and wondered how long ago she’d written it.
    There was a name inside the front cover—Mary Durham—but no date. It could have been this spring or 1969. Maybe there were clues.
    The introduction said the book was an argument against segregation, against Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist position. Black men needed to assert their rights as citizens and demand the government honor the constitution. The very best men would form the Talented Tenth of the population and lead the rest of the people forward.
    It was all underlined and highlighted, the yellow going dingy with age.
No women in the struggle?
Mary Durham had written.
Forward into what?
    Good questions, Vanessa thought.
    The book itself was actually pretty boring, Du Bois going on and on in this stiff official voice, but Mary kept things interesting.
White patriarchal / Black matriarchal stereotypes,
she wrote.
Reality a combination.
    Rashaan scratched at her ankles, trying to climb her shin. Ten-thirty and she’d only read twenty pages. She wanted to watch TV. She remembered Professor Muller’s question. Was Du Bois
of
this country or just
in
it? She thought she should choose a side and start collecting evidence, but with every new idea he seemed to switch. He wanted the people to
become
part of the nation, to be respected and accepted as men. So were his dreams
of
the country even if
he
wasn’t? But didn’t he know that?
    She quit around midnight, getting Rashaan down, then going through the apartment, shutting the lights. Her mother’s light was on, and the TV, but her mother was asleepon top of the covers, the clicker in her hand. Vanessa slid it out of her fingers and turned off David Letterman.
    â€œBedtime, Mama.”
    â€œWhat?” her mother grunted, “I’m watching,” and sank back again. Vanessa helped her get under the covers, then went to the dresser to make sure her alarm was set. Beside it leaned the picture of her father in his dress blues, the Marine flag in the background. He looked older than twenty-three, but only because she knew he really wasn’t. She used to stare at his picture after school when her mother wasn’t around, as if by concentrating harder she might get to know him better. She tilted the frame to the light, hoping she’d find some hint of her own face in his, but she never could. High cheeks, even teeth. He’d come from Youngstown, his father a shop foreman for U.S. Steel until the Southside closed down. Good, solid people. She knew his birthday and the day he was killed. She knew her mother was ashamed they’d never married, which Vanessa thought was sad. Now she set the picture down again, the white-gloved young man smiling grimly back at her, a warrior. In five years she’d be twenty-three.
    Rashaan was already asleep, and she slipped her cold pajamas on and got in, then lay there listening to him breathe.
Of this country or just in it.
In her cedar chest her mother had a flag neatly folded in a triangle, a box of medals lined with red crushed velvet. She turned on her side and looked out at the streetlight, starlike behind the gauzy curtains, and wondered if Chris was awake. Probably watching his little TV, smoking up some of Nene’s weed. He loved the Sci Fi Channel, and MonsterVision on TNT. Their oneyear together they must have seen every horror movie that came out, every trip to the theater a test of her nerves. When she jumped or sucked in her breath, he just laughed and held her closer. He and Bean knew all the directors and their movies, the history behind everything.
    It would be easier if he was straight shiftless, she thought. She knew him better. He was so proud of his art—his writing, he called it. You could see it in everything he put up, in the colors and all the details, the way it jumped off a wall. He was the one who should be going to college. So