Hide Them from The Devil

Margie was very aware of how selfish she was. It was the character flaw that she had carried around all her life. Well, ever since she had become a teenager. Before then, she had always been given a pass as the spoiled daughter of one of the richest families in town. Margie knew that she had the label, but she did not let it concern her that much. In her mind, most people, were only good and kind and generous because they were trying to curry favors from God for personal gain or because they were poor or because they were colored. The coloreds were always going to church and begging God for something or the other.

She did not need any favors from God. She was already young and beautiful. She was already wealthy and was destined to become even wealthier when she marries Kyle Culpepper, the son of one of the other wealthy families in town.

She was white and twenty-one. It was a term she had heard the older girl use as they left Murry Grove for New York or California. Well, she was not really twenty-one, yet. She was just sixteen and in a few months, she will be seventeen and on her way to col- lege. Her expectations were high. She was destined to glide through life on the wings of a feather. Her mother had always told her.

However, Margie's expectations were shot to hell by the seismic shift in American cul- ture brought on by the Civil Rights Movement. If she stood still long enough and listened carefully, she thought she could actually hear the earth reverberating beneath her feet. She actually expected the very earth to swallow her up. Negroes having the same right as she? This was not supposed to be .The very idea of it brought her to her knees and made her vomit. How was she going to function in the world now?

Adriana, the one friend that knew her character and accepted her, anyways threw her a lifeline-sex ,especially with men that were married and at least ten years her senior.