Free Sources of Light by Margaret McMullan Page B

different and it was still uncomfortable, but I kept it on anyway, and I paid her the money. I had to have a bra. I just had to.
    It was hot. And Willa Mae and I still had the walk back home.
    "Come on," I said. Wearing the bra made my back feel straighter, and I held my head higher. "I still have enough money to get us some sodas. The drugstore is just up the street."
    I liked going into the drugstore, where the bottles and boxes stood in neat rows, organized by varying heights, the prices clearly marked so you wouldn't even have to touch a thing, just look.
    When we got inside and at the counter, I turned to Willa Mae. "What would you like?"
    "A Mr. Coca-Cola, please," she said to me. Willa Mae didn't even feel she could say,
A Coca-Cola, please.
She thought she had to put a Mr. or a Mrs. in front of everything. That wasn't like her at all. It was like she was acting while we were downtown, and she knew I knew.
    "Please what?" the woman behind the counter said.
    "We'll have two Coca-Colas, please," I said.
    "Please what?" The woman behind the counter wasn't looking at me. She was looking at Willa Mae.
    Willa Mae stared at her shoes.
    "I'm talking to you, girl."
    It occurred to me only then that this woman wanted Willa Mae to call me Miss. She wanted Willa Mae to redo her sentence. She wanted Willa Mae to say,
A Mr. Coca-Cola, please, Miss Samantha.
If Willa Mae were to do that right then, well, that would have been impossible, not for her maybe, but for me. In our house, Willa Mae was boss. Here in town, it was hard enough to pretend otherwise, but to go that far, to have Willa Mae say to me,
please, Miss Samantha,
we both would have bust a gut laughing.
    I looked at the woman behind the counter. I had on my new bra and it felt to me like a bulletproof vest pinching me to do something. "Of all the people in here, I'm the girl, and I asked for two Coca-Colas. Please."
    The woman stared at me for a beat, then got two bottles out of the cooler. She opened them on the counter, all the while keeping an eye on Willa Mae, who never looked up. I got two straws.
    "She needs to take hers outside," the woman said. For a brief instant, I saw Willa Mae glance up at her. It was an expression I recognized.
    Once not long before, when we first moved into town, Willa Mae and I were walking back from the park when we stopped at a gas station at the corner for water. There was a drinking fountain there that was part of the soda machine. There were no signs, but it was understood, white people drank from the fountain, and because there was only the one water fountain, black people had to get a used soda bottle from the empties stacked there, fill the bottle with water, then drink from the used bottle. But after I drank from the fountain, Willa Mae drank right after me, just as I had done. We weren't thinking.
    Another boy not much older than me saw Willa Mae do this and said, "You better get you a bottle next time, girl, or else there won't be a next time."
    Willa Mae looked at that white boy and then quickly looked down at her feet. But I saw what was in her eyes and I felt the sting of her shame then, not for herself, not even for me, but for that little white boy. She knew what he would likely become.
    Willa Mae had that same look in her eyes then, when she looked back up at the woman behind the counter.
    I put my camera on my hip and tried snapping a picture of the woman without her noticing. She noticed and called for her supervisor.
    I looked out the window. Outside, across the street, a group of black people were gathered. I did a double-take. They weren't just gathering to talk. This group of black people wore posterboards around their necks: YOUR CONSIDERATION CAN HELP US END RACIAL SEGREGATION , one posterboard said. Another read JOIN US IN OUR FIGHT FOR FREEDOM . They walked past the movie theater where
The Day Mars Invaded Earth
was showing.
    I walked closer to the window to watch white men begin to gather in the street. They were