The meeting adjourned a few minutes later and Mrs. Terry invited everyone to have some refreshments before they left. “Grab me a cucumber sandwich, Marlee?” Miss Winthrop asked. I was hungry, so I grabbed two, and when I came back, Miss Winthrop was deep in conversation with an older woman I thought I recognized from church.
“All I’m saying,” said Miss Winthrop, “is that it still seems odd to me that we haven’t invited any colored women to join the WEC.”
“Oh my,” said the lady from church. “I’m not sure my Terrance would feel comfortable about me being here if he knew I was associating with Negroes.”
“But the Negroes want their schools reopened too.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“So wouldn’t it make more sense to work with the Negroes?” Miss Winthrop asked.
Before the church lady could answer, Mrs. Brewer came up and put a hand on Miss Winthrop’s shoulder. “Would you help me in the kitchen for a moment?”
“Of course.”
I tagged along, but I should have known she didn’t really need any help, because as soon as we reached the kitchen, Mrs. Brewer said, “Miss Winthrop, I appreciate your idealism, but admitting Negro women to our group would be the end of the WEC.”
“Don’t you believe that the schools should be integrated?” asked Miss Winthrop.
“Of course I do,” Mrs. Brewer whispered. “But if anyone calls me an integrationist, half the women here will run out. And it’s in everyone’s best interest to get the schools reopened. I’ve talked to the Negro leaders and explained what we are trying to do. They understand.”
“Well,” said Miss Winthrop, “I believe they’ve told you they understand.”
“We’re all doing the best we can,” said Mrs. Brewer.
“I know.” All the fizz was suddenly gone from Miss Winthrop. “Call me about the petitions?”
Mrs. Brewer nodded.
“Come on, Marlee,” Miss Winthrop said. “Let’s go home.”
On our way to the door, we ran into Mrs. Terry, who was talking to a lady in a fancy hat with flowers on it.
“I’d love to help,” said the woman. “You know I’ve been to every meeting since the first one in September. But Stephen works downtown, and if I agreed to lead a committee, my name might end up the paper. There could be problems with his job.”
“I understand,” said Mrs. Terry, though her teeth were clenched. It was obvious to me she didn’t understand. Surely that lady’s husband wouldn’t really lose his job.
My sleeve caught on something, and I stopped, expecting I had snagged myself on a vase or a statue or a fancy carving. But JT’s mother was clutching my sleeve. Her hand was thin and bony, like a skeleton’s.
“It’s Marlee, isn’t it?” she said. “You go to school with James-Thomas.”
I nodded.
“Would you . . .” She spoke so quietly, I had to lean forward to hear her. “Would you please not mention to anyone that you saw me here? I believe in public schools, but if my husband found out I was attending these meetings, he”—the scar on her eyebrow suddenly flushed red—“he wouldn’t like it.”
I nodded again and tore myself away, like a cricket escaping from a spiderweb. I looked back at her, and she looked so sad, I gave her a little smile. She did not smile in return.
Miss Winthrop and I waited at the bus stop together. It was raining. We were sharing her umbrella, but my toes were still getting wet. “Miss Winthrop,” I asked, “is Mrs. Brewer right? If she invited Negroes to join the WEC, would the group really fall apart?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Winthrop. “Probably. But that doesn’t make it right.”
I thought about that. Doing the right thing was harder than I’d expected it to be. And more confusing too.
“I know it’s frustrating,” said Miss Winthrop. “But sometimes change is slow.”
“Will they find people to run for the school board?” I asked.
Miss Winthrop nodded. “Mrs. Terry is going to work the phones tonight. I said I’d go around tomorrow and help get the petitions signed. They only need twenty-five names for each one. That’s not that many.”
“Can I come too?” I asked.
“Sure.” Miss Winthrop smiled as the bus pulled up. “I’d love the company.”
The WEC found five people to run: Ted Lamb, Billy Rector, Everett Tucker, Russell Matson and Margaret Stephens. Miss Winthrop stopped by to pick me up around nine. My father was the third to sign the petition. Mother was busy with the wash and did not come to the door. We walked around the neighborhood and by noon we had the names we needed. It seemed simple. A few people had refused to sign, but everyone had been polite.
That afternoon, as I was scrubbing the toilet and doing my other chores, the phone rang. I thought it might be Liz, so I ran to answer it. It was a man’s voice. “Is this Richard Nisbett’s daughter?”
“Yes,” I said politely.
“Little nigger lover,” he snapped. “You’d better watch yourself because—”
I slammed down the phone.
Daddy walked into the room a moment later. “Who was that?”
I shook my head, too upset to say anything.
“Are you all right, Marlee?”
I realized I was trembling. “I don’t feel well.”
“Go to bed,” Daddy said.
I did. I closed the curtains and pulled the blankets up to my chin, but it took me a long time to stop shaking. I wanted to tell my father about the phone call, but I couldn’t. Because if I did, he might not let me go back to the WEC.
28
THANKSGIVING
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Liz and I met again at the rock crusher. I thought about telling her about the phone call, but I was too embarrassed to repeat the man’s words.
“I did what you said,” said Liz, when we were settled on our usual rock.
“And?”
“It didn’t work,” said Liz. “Shirley started talking to Janet about how other folks were going to pay for me being so uppity. I didn’t say a word, just started reciting the nines times tables, counting on my fingers like you taught me. I got all the way to seven times nine is sixty-three before Shirley turned to me and said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said it in a nasty voice, but it was the first time anyone had spoken to me in weeks, so I decided to answer her. ‘I’m reciting the nines times tables,’ I said, and I showed her how to do it. I only got to three times nine is twenty-seven before she and Janet started laughing and I started yelling again. The rest of the day, whenever I walked by, everyone wiggled their fingers at me and snickered.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Liz shrugged, but I felt horrible. My plan had failed. It had made things worse for her. She’d helped me learn to talk, and I couldn’t even teach her how to be quiet. I couldn’t figure it out. When I was upset, calculating the area of a triangle, or adding up columns of numbers, or reciting pi always helped me.
Then I realized that was it. Liz simply wasn’t a numbers person. She liked words. If she was going to be quiet, we had to go about it a different way.
“What if, when you felt the words building up, instead of saying them out loud, you wrote them down?”
“Wrote them down?” asked Liz.
“Yeah,” I said. “You could carry around a notebook. Like Little Jimmy does.”
“I guess that might work,” Liz said slowly.
“You could say whatever you wanted. As long as no one reads it.”
“Well.” Liz smiled. “It’s worth a try.”
Thanksgiving morning was cold and gray. Central was playing its last football game of the season. Daddy and David were going, and I tagged along with them, leaving Mother at home to cook the turkey. Judy and Granny were coming in the afternoon,
just in time for dinner. The game started at ten thirty A.M., and I shivered as I sat on the bleachers, wishing I’d put on a warmer coat.
In the first quarter, Red intercepted a pass. Everyone cheered. Everyone except for me.
David glanced over. “How you doing, sis?”
“Cold,” I said.
David laughed, took off his own jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The jacket was warm and old, and it smelled like it hadn’t been washed in a really long time.
“Mr. Harding is teaching me algebra,” I said during a time-out.
“Algebra?” David didn’t say anything about it being a high school class, and I loved him for it. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said. Then ’cause it was my brother and I figured I could brag a little, “Actually, really well. I like it. And he says I’m good at it.”
“Phew,” said David, wiping his brow. “Marlee, you are making me feel so much better.”
“Me?” I protested. “How?”
He glanced over at Daddy, but he was engaged in a conversation with a neighbor and wasn’t listening to us. “I dropped out of all those math classes. I’m studying English now, like Daddy did.” He wiped his brow again. “Sure is a relief to know someone else’ll be taking care of beating those Soviets.”
I grinned. “Mr. Harding says he sleeps better at night knowing there are girls like me to invent those satellites.”
“That Mr. Harding,” said David as he tousled my hair, “sounds like a real smart man.”
Judy was waiting for us on the front porch when we got home from the game. I screamed and ran to give her a hug. She smelled different, like she’d been trying a new shampoo. After we’d said our hellos to everyone, Judy and I ran off to our old room.
As soon as the door was closed, I turned to Judy.
“Guess what!” we both said at the exact same time. We laughed. It was so good to be with my sister again.
“You first,” I said.
“I have a boyfriend,” squealed Judy. She pulled a picture out of her purse and shoved it into my hands. It was a snapshot of her and a skinny boy with thick brown hair sticking up in all directions. They were at a roller-skating rink, holding hands. They were both grinning so big, a raccoon could have crawled up in their mouths and settled down inside.
“It’s Robert Laurence!” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The boy I told you about when you cut your thumb.” Judy didn’t even take a breath before she continued, “His parents sent him to live with his uncle in Pine Bluff. I didn’t even know, because we’d never really said much to each other at Central, but in Pine Bluff of course we started spending time together because we were both from Little Rock. And then he asked me out to the movies and then we started going steady.”
I was beginning to think the new shampoo wasn’t the only change. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Mother reads all our mail,” said Judy.
That was true.
“Besides, if Mother knew I had a boyfriend, she’d make Daddy bring me home.”
“Don’t you want to come home?” I asked.
“Of course I do,” said Judy. “When the schools reopen and Robert Laurence can come too.”
I’d spent the past two months thinking she was miserable, and it turned out that wasn’t the case at all. She’d fooled me along with Mother, and I didn’t like it.
Judy sat down on the bed and started unpacking her clothes. “What was your news?”
I’d been planning to tell her all about Liz and JT and the nasty phone call and everything. But now? It wasn’t like anything had really changed. She just had a boyfriend. But I still felt like I’d been betrayed.
“I joined the Women’s Emergency Committee,” I said finally. “We’re trying to get the schools reopened.”
“That’s great,” said Judy. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”
Last I’d heard, she wasn’t even sure she was in favor of integrating the schools. Now she wanted to help? More likely she just wanted to make sure she and Robert Laurence came home together. And even though Judy had always been the one I’d told everything, I kept the rest of my news locked up tight inside of me.
I’d always thought Judy was an ice-cold Coca-Cola. Now it seemed like she’d gone flat.
We went to bed early, but in the middle of the night I woke up. The phone was ringing, one short ring and one long. For a minute, I thought I was dreaming, then I heard my parents’ door open and Daddy stumble into the hall.
I scrambled out of bed. Daddy was just slamming down the phone when I reached the kitchen. “Who was it?” I asked.
“Wrong number,” said Daddy. “Go back to bed.”
Before I got back to my room, the phone rang again. This time Daddy left it off the hook. Judy slept on.
29
GOOD ENOUGH
As soon as I saw Liz that next Tuesday, all my words about my sister just came tumbling out.
“Wow,” said Liz when I was finished. “All I had to report was that we ate a lot of pumpkin pie.”
We were folding a bunch of WEC flyers on the big stone. The flyers were asking people to come out and vote in the December 6 election. Miss Winthrop had dropped them off the night before. “I just don’t understand how you get so much done,” she marveled. I didn’t tell her Liz was helping me too.
Each time the wind picked up, it blew a few of the flyers across the meadow, and either Liz or I had to run after them. As we folded and stamped all the flyers, I kept talking, telling Liz all about the Christmas float our church was doing.
Every year the Saturday before Christmas, all the churches in town (well, all the white churches) built a float and sent it down Main Street. The mayor voted on the winner, and that church got bragging rights for a whole year. Usually, everyone wanted to ride on the float and only one or two people were picked, but this year we had a theme from Matthew 19:14: Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. Reverend Mitchell was going to be Jesus, sitting on a throne, and all the kids from Sunday school were going to be the children. Everyone who wanted to could ride on the float, and I was super excited.
“You’ll come, right?” I asked Liz.
“Marlee, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Someone might recognize me.”
“Can’t you wear a disguise and—”
Liz shook her head.
I knew she was right, but it didn’t make it any easier. For the hundredth time, I wished we could do all the normal things friends do. Go places for fun. Have the same circle of friends. Eat lunch together at school. “How’s school going?” I asked. I’d been talking so much, I was embarrassed to realize I hadn’t even asked about her.
Liz grinned. “It worked! I got a notebook over Thanksgiving break. I’ve already written five pages, and that was just yesterday. Today Shirley asked me why I was scribbling away, but I just wrote my answer down—making sure she couldn’t see it, of course—and after a minute of my not responding, she left to talk to Janet. Maybe they started gossiping about me and maybe they didn’t, but I was so busy writing about them, I didn’t hear a word.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Tommy will be at the parade,” Liz said. “I’ll tell him to wave to you. I know it’s not the same as being there myself, but . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s good enough.”
After Tuesday afternoons with Liz, I started spending Friday afternoons with Betty Jean. It started when she baked me an extra-special triple-layer chocolate cake to say thank you for helping with Curtis. Then I did the ironing for her one week to say thank you for the cake, and she baked me a strawberry rhubarb pie to thank me for
the ironing. After that, I said why don’t we just help each other out each Friday, and she thought that was a great idea.
Betty Jean taught me a lot, starting with the NAACP. That stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They filed lawsuits and stuff to help Negroes get more rights. They’d even been part of the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that had started this whole integration issue. I told her about the WEC and what we were doing with the election and how there weren’t any Negroes in the group.
Betty Jean nodded. “Heard about that from Mrs. Daisy Bates.”
Mrs. Bates was what Betty Jean called an activist. Her husband owned a newspaper, and she’d spent a lot of time helping the Little Rock Nine last year.
“I can’t say we’re thrilled about the ‘No Negroes’ policy, but Mrs. Bates says Mrs. Terry is a good woman.”
What I learned most from talking to Betty Jean was that things were complicated. Take starting a private high school for the Negroes, for example. The whites had done it with T. J. Raney. At first it sounded like a good idea to me, but Betty Jean said the NAACP had asked the colored community in Little Rock not to do so.
“Why not?”
“It would be doing what the segregationists wanted—setting up separate schools. Not to mention that it would be betraying the nine Negro students at Central who suffered through last year.”
“What happened to them?” I asked. “I mean, I know Ernest Green graduated and Minnijean Brown was expelled, but what about the rest of them?”
“Minnijean is still in New York,” said Betty Jean, “at the school she was invited to attend when she was expelled from Central last year. Carlotta, Melba, Thelma, Elizabeth and Jefferson are taking correspondence courses. Terrence moved to Los Angeles to live with relatives and go to school there, and Gloria went to Kansas City to do the same.
The Lions of Little Rock Page 12