Hush Read Free Page B

press my head against the glass until my face feels like it’s going to freeze. At school today, our teacher asked us who we were. She said, “Describe yourself to someone who’s just meeting you.” When my turn came, I stood up and said, “My name is Toswiah Green. My favorite color is blue. I am tall for my age. My best friend is Lulu. These are the facts,” I said. “The facts speak for themselves.” The class laughed. Some even clapped and cheered. When I sat down again, I felt my whole body get warm. “I am Toswiah Green,” I whispered. “That’s a fact!”
    Daddy’s car moves slowly through our neighborhood. Some people smile and wave. Little kids run along the curb, yelling “Hi, Policeman!” and waving crazily.
    Cameron chants her cheers softly—“We are the mighty, mighty Tigers. You can’t beat the mighty, mighty Tigers. . . .”

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    IN FIFTH GRADE OUR TEACHER ASKED US TO write about the most wonderful thing we’d ever seen. I sat in class tapping my pencil against my head trying to remember the colors of butterflies’ wings and how the deep blue-green water of Glenwood Springs made you think of something that went on forever. But none of the things that came to my mind was the prettiest. When I started writing, it was about my father, the year he won the police department’s Medal for Bravery for rescuing a mother and her baby son from a man who was holding them hostage. He’d been a cop all of my life, and I had never really thought much about what he did or what it meant. On the morning of the ceremony, my father wore his other uniform—a dark jacket with a leather belt, brass buttons and gold epaulets at the shoulders. When he walked into the living room, my sister and I stopped fighting over the TV remote and stared at him. We had never seen him dressed this way, and he looked like the tallest, proudest, most beautiful man that ever lived.
    Why are you copper pennies sitting there with your mouths open? he said, laughing. You act like you’ve never seen me before in your life.
    And we hadn’t—not like that. Not standing there looking like someone who would protect us from the world ending. Someone who could, if he had to, push us behind him then stop an oncoming bullet with his hand.
    Daddy . . . , my sister said, you look awesome.
    That morning, as I sat there between Cameron and Mama in the audience listening to the lieutenant go on about my father’s bravery, I felt like I was someone special. Like all of us were special.

    THINGS FALL APART. I KNOW THIS NOW. Sometimes it happens fast—like the time my sister came down wrong on her ankle and missed a whole season of cheerleading. What I remember is her sitting in her room every night, crying. Or the time my mother cut her finger with a steak knife. While my father rushed her to the hospital, Cameron and I were left to finish dinner, get it on the table and sit there for two hours, staring at our food. Scared that Mama would come back one finger short of the hand she had left with.
    But sometimes things fall apart slowly. When the lieutenant pinned that medal to my father’s chest, it was the beginning of the Greens ending. Months later, my father would say When I saw you all sitting in that front row cheering me on, some little seed started to grow in my brain. He said it was a seed of faith in his family and the Denver Police Department. A seed that made him believe in the possibility of perfection . . . and trust . . . and loyalty. As my father looked out at us from the stage while reporters flashed pictures and other cops shook his hand, he smiled and winked at me. I winked back, not knowing that what was growing in his mind was a seed of justice that would one day lead to the biggest decision he’d ever have to make in his life.
    Mama raised her hand to her lips and blew Dad a kiss. Then we were being called up to the stage, all of us, hugging Daddy and smiling for the press. Perfect, one reporter said. Absolutely