I couldn’t wait for the demonstration to end. Malcolm X was of little help, and students kept playing records of his speeches that echoed through the halls. I moved from window to window, from one empty classroom to another. The reporter was moving too. I watched as he spoke to the picketing students and the worried administrators while jotting notes on his pad. And I watched him follow me as I moved. When we found ourselves staring again, I knew we would meet somehow on the outside. The takeover suddenly became the dullest event of the day. My hands felt empty with nothing to touch.

When at last it was time to leave Clarkson, after hours of negotiations between the administration and leaders of the Black Student Union, after flashing bulbs and whirring television news cameras, we were told to keep quiet about our actions, especially the planning, but what did I know or remember by then? The barricades were lifted. Light and air rushed into the crowded hallway. We formed a line in threes, males on the outside, women in the middle for protection. Then silently, just as night was coming on, we left the building.

Reporters gathered close about us, but we kept marching away from Clarkson and toward the Nkrumah African-American Center. Our silence was really a prayer for safety. None of us wanted to be expelled or disciplined. Besides, most of us were on scholarships. My parents would have killed me if they had found out what I had done. Cameras clicked. Our feet crunched the hard, leftover snow. I tried not to look for the wavy brown hair or the horn-rimmed glasses, but there he was, following along my row. I knew he would ask me something. My eyes begged him to. I wanted to talk, but not about Malcolm X or the demonstration. I wanted to talk about him and me, about what I saw from the second-story window and he from the snow capped street.

He caught up to me, his words as breathless as my stride. “I’m from the Wesman Herald. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I said nothing, but I could feel talk rumbling up from my belly.

“Just one question, please. How did you all get inside?”

No answer from me; my stomach now a tunnel at rush hour.

“How many of you were really in there?”

No comment. Blaring traffic jam inside me.

My feet weighed heavier and the Nkrumah Center seemed miles away. He tried to keep pace. Others marching behind me were gaining upon us and crowding him out. He dropped his note pad. I looked away from him and kept marching, my stomach moving faster than my feet.

“Dammit,” he said. Then his voice slipped back and was suddenly different. “How y’all expect people to listen to you if you don’t communicate?”

Communicate? Y’all?