The Love Children by Marylin French Read Free Book Online Page B

that I was dreading what was going to happen when it was over. But then it was over. Time is so strange; events approach so slowly and go by so quickly. After Christmas, Dad went back to Vermont and our lives settled down again.

4
    I don’t know when I realized there was another war going on, right here in our own country. I should have known the year John Kennedy was killed, because Medgar Evers was murdered that same year, and white people bombed a church in Birmingham, killing four little girls at Sunday school. I should have remembered how upset Mom got when Malcolm X was killed in 1965. But I didn’t read newspapers, not even after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. It wasn’t until Steve explained it all to me that I saw it—all of a sudden, in one glimpse. It all made perfect sense to me then. I’d been seeing it without noticing all my life. I was fifteen by then, old enough to know how white people treated black people. I’d often thought that if I were black, I would be mad as hell at white people. I was pretty mad anyway. I just didn’t realize it was a full-fledged war.
    Steve went to public school, but through me he became part of our group—well, sort of. Sandy and Bishop really liked him, but there were kids in my school who didn’t want to hang out with him. I didn’t care about them. Neither did Steve—he had plenty of friends of his own.
    We didn’t do much. We hung out, we smoked weed, we talked a lot. We shared books and music, and we went to parties, all over the place. Steve had friends everywhere. He had to support himself and soon after New Year’s, in 1969, he got a job in
Monaghan’s, a little store on Bow Street that sold cigarettes, newspapers, magazines and, it was rumored, drugs. Maybe because of the drugs, he didn’t want me to visit him there. He said cops watched the place and it wouldn’t be good for me to be associated with it. I worked afternoons myself now, so the only time I could hang out with my friends—unless we cut school—was on weekends. I hardly saw Phoebe anymore. Every time we got together she wanted to shoplift or shop; I didn’t want to steal and I couldn’t afford to shop all the time, and it got tired. I wondered why she had to shop so much. She didn’t need more clothes, I thought; her closets were bursting. So I started to hang out mainly with Steve or with Sandy, Bishop, and Dolores. After we started the gallery, kids showed up there afternoons and weekends, wandering in at odd times. Most of the time, the air mattress in the corner had sheets and blankets folded neatly on it, a sign that Dolores was hiding out there again. Poor Dolores. We just didn’t know what to do to help her. We didn’t even know what was wrong.
    One rainy Saturday Steve and I were alone there. We were sitting against the wall, drinking Coke and smoking and listening to music, when Steve said, “Want to try something weird?”
    â€œSure.”
    He pulled a little plastic bag with something brown in it out of his pocket.
    â€œIt looks like chopped-up mushrooms,” I said.
    â€œThat’s what it is. Magical mushrooms.” He grinned. “Take a handful. Eat them.” He washed them down with Coke. I imitated him, chewing the tasteless things.
    â€œNow just wait.” He fiddled with his big portable radio until he found a station playing the Beatles. You could always find one eventually: the Beatles were constantly on. They were playing “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
    We sat close to each other, our legs jiggling in time to the
music, letting the mushrooms settle in. After a little while, I could see the strawberry fields. I was wandering in sunlight, delighted at the tiny red berries nestled in the deep green leaves all around me. All my pores were open to the sun, and I was a cauldron of fire.
    â€œI am fire and air!” I cried. “I have immortal longings in