by Evan Balkan
“You okay?” Mrs. Panksi placed her hand on Caroline’s forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”
“Just not hungry is all.”
Caroline excused herself and left early for school, choosing to walk alone. A few houses down from hers, two men sat on the stoop in heavy coats and gloves. Caroline waved and they waved back.
As she walked past, she heard one of the men say, “Sweet kid.”
“Father’s in Korea.” the other said.
“Yeah. What a mess …”
Caroline hurried on down the street.
IT WAS STILL A BIT EARLY for the first bell and the school building had an expectant air about it. Caroline milled around out front, thinking briefly of heading over to the frozen pond—for what reason she wasn’t sure. Perhaps she could study the smooth surface and glean some advantage for the next time she’d be out there. For there would be a next time, she resolved. But she knew she couldn’t get there and back before the first bell.
Then she saw Joseph, the new kid. He looked like he was freezing, teeth chattering and shivering in a jacket far too skimpy for the cold December morning.
“Hi,” Caroline said as he approached.
“Hi,” Joseph muttered shyly, looking down at his feet as if Caroline’s eyes contained something radioactive.
For a long time, this was all that passed between them. The silence hung heavily, interrupted only by the whoosh of a passing truck. It became obvious that Joseph was not going to say anything else. Something more than just shyness defined his presence, defined his whole persona. He would not look at her. But it was different from the way those jerks at the pond wouldn’t look at her. Those guys wouldn’t look because they didn’t think she was worth the effort. But with Joseph, it was different. He clutched his arms around himself, as if he was afraid of taking up too much space. Like he was scared of getting too close, or something. But why should he be scared of a girl, Caroline wondered.
Just standing there, just the two of them, not talking to one another—it was unnerving. Caroline hated it. She hated being ignored.
“Do you always get here so early?” she blurted.
Joseph looked around, took his time in responding, and finally addressed Caroline’s shoes. “My granny’s crazy. Makes me leave an hour early so I won’t be late.”
“So where are you coming from anyway?” she asked.
“Over near East Preston way.”
“You walk from up there?”
Joseph kicked at the cement. He frowned as if he’d been hoping his last sentence would be the end of it. He looked around and Caroline wondered if he was waiting for someone. But finally he responded, “How else?”
“I dunno,” Caroline shrugged. “I live on South Clinton. Highlandtown.”
Joseph didn’t acknowledge this.
Caroline gave up and turned away, her back to him. Clearly this boy didn’t want to talk. She couldn’t figure it out. Maybe they were all the same—her brother, the jerks on the pond, now Joseph. None of them would even talk to a girl unless to say something nasty. Only her dad was different. Maybe boys needed to become men before they became human beings. But then Joseph spoke up again, so suddenly Caroline nearly jumped out of her skin.
“They say soon enough all the schools will be integrated. But I don’t know why I can’t just go to school with people like me. I don’t want to be here. No one wants me here.”
“That’s not true.”
He looked straight at her.
“Granny told me back in the day, colored boys couldn’t come down this way at all. Toward the park south of Eager was off limits. Get chased out. Now I gotta walk through there all by myself to get to a school where no one wants me.”
She straightened her shoulders. “I’m sure there’s plenty of people who think it’s just fine that you go here.”
Caroline knew what it felt like to not be seen, to be dismissed like you weren’t worth anything, and she decided right then and there it would be her job to make Joseph feel welcome, to fill him in on the peculiarities of the place she called home, even though she wasn’t particularly fond of it herself. There were some good things about the area, she figured. Why else would her grandparents have come here from Europe, processed through Broadway Pier, and then stayed in Baltimore?
“Those days are over,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about that anymore. For the most part, kids are pretty nice in this school.” She wasn’t sure she believed that, but she felt it her duty to say it.
“My mama came from Roanoke. Went down to South Carolina and met my daddy. So she doesn’t know anything about Baltimore. Just listens to my granny.”
“My grandparents came from Europe, you go back far enough. I guess your family comes from Africa?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here.” Caroline held out her hand for Joseph to shake. But he either didn’t see it, or ignored it.
“Well, I’m not.”
“I’m sure Jackie Robinson didn’t want to play baseball with white people, either, but he does all right.”
“I don’t like baseball.”
“Me neither. I like hockey.”
Joseph turned in Caroline’s direction, but the look on his face and the one he gave her spoke of utter confusion. “Huh?”
Caroline felt the blood in her veins start to boil. Were they really all alike? Every single one of them? “You gonna tell me that a girl can’t play hockey, too?”
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know what hockey is?”
Joseph shook his head.
This kid had never even heard of hockey?
“Fastest game on skates,” Caroline said.
“Roller skates?”
“Ice skates.”
Joseph looked down again. “I’ve never seen anyone skate on ice.”
“Really? I’ll have to show you sometime.”
The steps were filling up now as the time for the school day to start drew nearer.
Although one or two students shot nasty looks toward him, Joseph’s presence had lost much of its novelty. Most of the kids ignored him, but a few did a double take when they saw him chatting so casually with a white girl right out front on the school steps. But no one said a word until Alma came racing up.
“Where were you? I waited.”
“I’m sorry. I woke up late,” Caroline said. “I just got here.”
“Oh.” Alma looked puzzled. “But if you woke up late, how—”
“I just got here,” Caroline repeated.
Alma looked at Joseph, who looked at her, then at Caroline, then at the sidewalk again.
The bell rang and Caroline straightened her jacket. “See you,” she smiled.
Joseph looked up at Caroline—or at least in her general direction—and muttered, “Okay.”
Then Caroline turned to walk into school with Alma, who just stared in utter confusion.
It wasn’t something Caroline had given much thought to—the way black people went about their lives. They were always separate, and, considering what Joseph said to her, Caroline figured that they probably wanted it that way. The races didn’t mix, she knew, but she never really knew why, or even spent much time wondering.
“You ever think about why whites and Negroes don’t spend time together?” Caroline asked Alma after school. The two of them were walking to Alma’s house, where Caroline was going to spend the rest of the afternoon.
“Not really, but Lewis sure does. Drives my parents mad.”
Lewis. Alma’s older brother. He was almost ten years older than Alma and had always been an object of fascination for Caroline. All the other older boys wore blazers and thin ties and they all had their hair swooped over with Brylcreem pomade. But not Lewis. He favored bulky wool sweaters and he had facial hair (sometimes just a mustache, sometimes a thin beard, sometimes a strange combination that covered his chin but not his jawline) and the hair on his he
ad was shaggy and sometimes covered his ears. He was weird—all of Alma’s friends knew that—but Caroline thought he was super nice.
When they got to Alma’s house, Caroline was happy to see him. When she needed to use the bathroom, she passed Lewis’s room and stopped, transfixed by the music from the record player and the posters of black musicians on his wall. This was not something you saw anywhere—you just didn’t. Caroline imagined that the only other place you would see such things would be in the bedrooms of Negro kids across town, on their side of the city.
“That’s Billie Holiday,” Lewis said when he noticed Caroline standing there looking at one particular poster. The woman’s eyes were closed and her mouth was wide open. She was singing into a microphone and her hair was tied back with a silk flower decorating the crown of her head. She wore a long elegant dress. Somehow, even in the midst of singing, even with her eyes closed, there was a sadness on her face, something weary and hard.
“Isn’t that a woman?” Caroline asked.
Lewis laughed. “Of course it is.”
“Billy’s a boy’s name.”
Lewis’s smile radiated sweetness. He put down his book. “Billie wasn’t her real name. She was born Eleanora Fagan.”
“Why’d she change it to a boy’s name?”
“You know—I don’t know why. But I do know that her voice is something sublime.”
“Sublime? What’s that?”
“Just listen.” Lewis went to his record player. He picked up and then dropped the needle on the spinning disc. A few crackles and pops preceded a simple piano line and then a voice filled the air. It was odd, haunting; it never seemed to go up or down much. It just sort of skipped a bit above or below the music as she sang: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
Caroline stood there listening. And then came the end, just a few brief minutes later: “Here is fruit for the crows to pluck / For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck / For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop / Here is a strange and bitter crop.”
While it played, Lewis sat very still, his eyes closed. Caroline watched him, the way he seemed transformed into somebody else. No longer the sweet guy who always said hello when she came over or the guy who kissed his sister on the head and said, “What’s the story, Miss Glory?” when she walked through the door. Now, listening to the soulful woman with the man’s name and the strange but haunting voice, he was a different person, withdrawn, moving into his own world. When it ended, he plucked the needle off the record and sat down.
“It sounds sad,” Caroline said.
“It’s about Negroes getting lynched.”
Caroline had heard the word before but she didn’t know what it meant.
“That’s when white people hang a Negro by his neck from a tree until he’s dead.”
The tone in Lewis’s voice was low but clearly angry, as if the words were squeezed out between clenched teeth.
Caroline frowned. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“There are a lot of answers to that question, and none of them are good.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m afraid I don’t either.”
It was getting confusing, and Caroline was feeling uncomfortable. She also remembered she needed to use the bathroom. But Lewis had been happy and smiling when she first walked by, and now he seemed upset. She couldn’t help but feel that it was her fault somehow.
“There’s a new Negro boy at school,” she said, thinking, hoping, that perhaps this would make Lewis feel better.
It worked. He smiled. “Well, that is good. Integration is important. That’s the only way. That’s why I go to the Royal and the clubs down on Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s important. At the clubs, people are decades ahead of the courts and the politicians.”
Pennsylvania Avenue. Caroline had some idea that that was where the black businesses were. It was all the way across town, so far it might as well have been Pluto. But apparently Alma’s brother went there. To Negro music clubs.
Caroline could hear Alma calling her, asking what she was doing, but she heard this only out of the corner of her consciousness for Lewis was still telling her about the clubs, throwing at her a whole list of names she’d never heard before. She kept nodding as he talked, as if she knew who these people were, and that if she didn’t then at least she shouldn’t admit it, not after seeing how excited he was about it, like maybe no one else he talked to cared one way or another.
“Ike Dixon and his house band, the Jazz Demons, the guys Duke Ellington called the city’s best,” Lewis was saying. “There’s the Royal and the Sphinx and the Comedy Club. The guys who used to play there: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker. He’s my favorite.” Lewis pointed to the far wall, to a poster of a huge guy in a baggy suit blowing into a saxophone. “Fats Waller, Count Basie, Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Chick Webb, Cab Calloway.”
Alma suddenly appeared behind Caroline. “What are you doing? I’ve been waiting.”
“Hey Miss Glory,” Lewis said to his sister.
Caroline knew Alma adored Lewis, but she also knew Alma thought he was weird. Alma looked in at the room, at the pictures on the walls, at the stray shirts and pants on his floor, at his record player, and made a face. “Come on,” she said, tugging Caroline’s arm.
“See you later,” Lewis said. Then, moments later, the strange sounds of a high-pitched horn came floating out of his room.
WHEN CAROLINE WALKED into her house, her mother wasn’t there to greet her at the door, so she made her way to the kitchen where the radio was going. It was loud, much louder than usual, and it seemed to boom off the walls.
“You are listening to the Mutual Broadcasting System’s news report of the war in Korea. In a moment, we will hear the commentary of military analyst Major George Fielding Eliot, but first here is Supreme Commander of U.N. forces Gen. Matthew Ridgeway as he addresses a joint session of Congress.”
Caroline stopped short when she saw her mother standing in the kitchen. Just standing, staring into space, a dish towel clutched in her hand and held near her face. She clearly hadn’t noticed that Caroline had come in. She stood transfixed, listening to the broadcaster say, “sustained two of the severest attacks of the entire Korean campaign. Twice isolated far in advance of the general battle line, twice completely surrounded, in near zero weather—”
“Mama?”
Mrs. Panski jumped and dropped the towel. “Don’t do that,” she screeched. “You scared me half to death.”
Caroline fetched the towel from the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She handed the towel to her mother. “That about Daddy?”
Mrs. Panski fairly lunged at the radio, snapping it off in one quick motion. “No, no. Of course not. Let’s start your homework, okay?”
“OK.”
“You want a glass of milk?”
“Sure.”
Mrs. Panski rinsed a mug and filled it from the glass container in the icebox. Caroline noticed that her hand shook, just slightly. She got this way sometimes when she heard about Korea on the radio. Caroline was sure it was the reason why her mother was always turning the radio off, though she imagined that her mother listened during the day, when she was home alone. Caroline wanted to ask, but the topic was forbidden.
There were other ways to try and satisfy her curiosity about Korea. She discovered once when she was at the library that the Baltimore Sun ran stories about the war. She realized this quite by accident when she had to complete a current events assignment for Miss Bloom.
She picked up a copy of the paper and there, on the second page, was a photograph, taken in Korea, of two smiling soldiers, grimy with dirt, cigarettes hanging from their mouths. But smiling. Looking happy enough. She studied the picture for what felt like hours, days even, trying to imagine her father there, the two men standing along a ridge in fr
ont of a foxhole, just a hole in the ground, with sandbags all around the opening. She read the photograph’s caption, which explained that the men were carrying a machine gun and a “3.5 rocket launcher bazooka.” Because the bazooka was so big and so ugly, Caroline decided that her dad, in his foxhole in Korea, had the machine gun. And she imagined him looking much like the guy in the photograph, with, as the caption put it, “coils of ammo” wrapped in an X across his shoulders.
She read the accompanying paragraph, explaining more about the weapons and how the soldiers had to be especially vigilant because in severe cold there was always the danger of a jam, when the “lubrication in the guns gelled,” and how the “springs on the firing pins” could freeze up. Behind the foxhole, on the ridge of the hill, the newspaper explained, were the cylinders of “M-20 recoilless rifles.”
But there was little else in the article, little about the day-to-day lives of the soldiers. And after a couple of weeks, Caroline no longer bothered searching out newspapers. The articles only offered more frustrations, and frustrations seemed to have the run of her days. She’d had enough of them. And she knew that asking her mother more questions would upset her and lead to, yes, more frustrations, on both their parts.
So, as her mother got her the promised glass of milk, Caroline changed subjects.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Is it true that sometimes Negroes get hanged from trees?”
“Who on earth told you that?’
“Alma’s brother.”
“He the strange one?”
“He’s nice.”
“You’re right. He is nice. But he is a little strange, too.”
“Is what he said true?”