CHAPTER ONE: First Swoon
The morning after they killed Martin, Cassie fainted.
Fainted.
And she was not a girl given to fainting.
The night before, late, her dad had come to her room to tell her that Martin had been shot. Wide awake, cross legged on her bed, she was pounding out an essay on her little portable Underwood. The subject: US immigration policies of the early 1900’s. Cassie liked her essay, an impassioned argument that US policies of the day were racist and unfair. Her teacher, Mother Immaculata would not agree, she knew. The woman held horrible right wing opinions, unlike most of the other nuns, but Cassie felt confident that she would grade it fairly.
When her father tapped at the door and poked his head inside, Cassie listened, then said, oh, he’ll be all right.
Her dad said, I don’t know, honey, they say on the news he’s pretty bad.
Still she hadn’t worried. She finished her work and went to sleep thinking, come on, he can’t die. They can’t take him from us. Who would do that?
Later, of course, she would rip herself up for being stupid, naïve. How had it not occurred to her that someone might murder Martin? In her lifetime she’d known assassinations, as they called these murders to make them sound –what - more official or historical or something: JFK, Medgar, Malcolm. And all the others, the not famous until murdered, like Viola Liuzzo, the little Sunday school girls, the young guys – Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner. And her mom had told her all about Gandhi all those years ago. Why not Martin too? Why not?
That morning, April 5th, her dad was already in the kitchen when she got up and that was weird in itself because he was never up first. He worked late and her mom worked early so Cassie always got herself up and then him, just when she was ready to leave so he could drive her to school. But on this day, April 4, 1968, he’d been up, dressed, hair combed back. He was not smiling. He had oatmeal and coffee and toast laid out for her on the little round table. She stood in the kitchen doorway with her books and her purse and her father told her, honey, Martin’s dead but they have a suspect, they say he was alone, and they’re hunting him.
Hunting. What you did to animals. She couldn’t eat. She gulped some hot coffee and they left. The drive to school was silent. She didn’t turn on the radio to tease him with all that music he found so appalling. No jokes about that old gray jacket he wore every morning. No catty remarks about the girls gathered outside the school. She got to homeroom without speaking to anyone. Mother Therese led prayers and all the other girls crossed themselves and recited the Hail Mary as Cassie, the only non-catholic, stared out the window at rush hour on Pennsylvania Ave, buses with standing room and ladies hurrying by in high heels and nice skirts, off to the banks and government offices downtown. Cassie felt vaguely dizzy, a bit other worldly, as if she were only partly there and partly someplace else, but where she didn’t know. She didn’t think she’d ever felt like this before.
Homeroom ended. Everyone dashed. Her first period class was on the third floor and she always cut through the auditorium to the back stairs. Just at the bottom of the noisy stairs one of the few girls in the whole school who knew how she felt about things came up to her. This girl considered herself the ultimate in cool because once in a while she took her guitar down to the poor school and led the kindergartners in sing alongs while the nuns all went to the faculty room for coffee. She and Cassie faced each other and the guitar girl leaned in and spoke softly (talking between classes being against the rules) and said, it’s so weird, isn’t it?
At least miss liberal guitar girl had an expression on her face. Even if all it was was sympathy for Cassie who now fought back tears. As they stood there, close, face to face, both clutching their books to their chests, girls rushed around them, unaware, uncaring, everyone still neat and fresh in their pastel shirtwaists, their appropriately discreet lip gloss still intact, their faces straight ahead toward their own little things. Who were these silly girls? Why was she here with them?
Cassie had never fainted before, so at first she didn’t know what was happening. The liberal girl was whispering on about something and like a slow fade in a movie, everything began to go hazy. It was not totally unpleasant, freeing in a way, the sensation that the top of her head took on a life of its own and floated away toward the ceiling as the rest of her simply gave in to the suddenly irresistible pull of gravity. The last thing she would remember was the thunderous sound of her books hitting the floor and someone screeching, possibly liberal girl, though she never found out.
