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“Wait here. We’ll be right with you,” the nurse said.
Theta took a seat beside a family of four. The mother bounced a baby gently on her knee.
“Can I look around, Theta?” Isaiah asked.
“Sure. Just be careful.”
A moment later, a nurse handed Theta a form.
“Oh, it’s not for me,” Theta said.
“It won’t take a minute. What is your name?”
“Theta. Theta Knight.”
The nurse’s head shot up. “Say, aren’t you with the Follies?
“Was,” Theta said sadly.
“Why, I remember now—you’re friends with Evie O’Neill and those Diviners. Oh, I’m sure Dr. Simpson would like to talk to you personally. He’s in the back. Now, you wait right here. I won’t be a moment.”
The nurse walked briskly toward the curtained-off area. At the desk next to her, Theta overheard a nurse interviewing a girl about Theta’s age. “And have you ever experienced any unusual gifts, like premonitions or feeling awake inside a dream?”
“Gee, sometimes I know when the telephone’s about to ring.”
The nurse smiled. “And have you ever seen in your mind or dreams a vision of a man in a tall hat?”
The question made Theta’s stomach tighten. At the back of the tent, the nurse was speaking with a bespectacled doctor and nodding toward Theta. Theta’s fingers began to tingle, a warning. They needed to leave. Now.
But where was Isaiah?
In the middle of the long tent was a roped-off area with a big sign with a picture of Uncle Sam. The sign read, AMERICAN EUGENICS SOCIETY: THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN BETTERMENT. Underneath, there were all sorts of exhibits. One drew Isaiah’s attention. It was a board called INHERITANCE OF COLOR, and it had a bunch of dead mice pinned to it by their tails. There were formulas, like in math: PURE WHITE + PURE WHITE = PURE WHITE. Apparently, the worst thing was mixing white and black or normal with abnormal. Then you got what the board called “tainted.” It said that tainted was very bad. Tainted and abnormal were what the eugenics people wanted to breed out. People who were feebleminded or prom-i-scuous, whatever that meant, or who were like Conor Flynn. People who had fits, like Isaiah had.
Isaiah began to sweat.
That was why they were passing laws to keep white and black from mixing, the board explained, why they wanted to ster-i-lize “tainted” people. Isaiah didn’t know what sterilize meant, but it didn’t sound good.
The exhibits said America needed to fix this problem. They called fixing it “selection.” “Selected” and “pure” people were the goal of eugenics. “Selected” people made civilization. “Tainted” people ruined it. The board said that if people were careful about breeding for their pigs and cows, why wouldn’t they be careful about breeding in Americans?
Isaiah thought of Memphis in love with Theta and Theta in love with Memphis, and he understood for the first time just how dangerous their love was for them. Even though they were supposed to be free, they weren’t.
His stomach hurt all of a sudden like he’d eaten too much candy, and he wished he could throw it up. Isaiah glanced furtively at all the people in the tent: white mothers, white fathers, white nurses, white doctors. When they looked his way, he saw the hare-quick downturn of their mouths before they corrected it. He felt it before he saw it. The way you could smell rain before the first drop hit your skin. He shoved his own deep, dark brown hands into his pockets, as if by hiding some part of his body, he could hide all of himself.
In the next second, he felt Theta’s hands on his shoulders, turning him away from the exhibit. He could sense her feelings.
She was angry and sad, but she was also scared. Really scared.
“Hey, Isaiah, let’s get outta here. These people are all chumps.”
Isaiah was angry and hurt. These people were mean. They would never give him one of those pretty medals. He’d just have to give himself one, then. Isaiah swiped a brass medal and shoved it into his pocket. He tightened his fingers around the edges, and the future jolted through Isaiah like a fast fever. His body shook with horrors. Camps and barbed wire and golden stars on striped pajamas, bones and shoes and teeth. He didn’t know where this future was, how long from now, only that it was more horror than he could imagine. Foam bubbled up at the corners of his mouth.
“Isaiah!” Theta shouted. “Isaiah!”
As Henry and Ling approached the ticket booth, he smiled at her.
“What?” Ling asked, suspicious.
“Miss Chan, why, I do believe you are the belle of this ball.”
