The night of the party, Daddy took my picture and wiped pretend tears from his eyes. “My little girl is growing up.” He sniffed, and I smiled as I waited by the window for JT to pull up.
It was raining, but finally an old gray Chrysler Windsor pulled up to the curb and JT walked up to our door. He had a suit on, a bit too big, but he looked nice, if only I didn’t think about how he was a cheat and a racist. Daddy snapped one more picture, and we walked out to the car. I had my pink purse in one hand and Sally’s present in the other.
JT opened the door, and we slid into the backseat. The car started moving, and I looked into the front seat, expecting to see Mr. or Mrs. Dalton. Instead, Red sat behind the driver’s wheel.
My heart started beating in time with the windshield wipers, only twice as fast.
“You still friends with that colored girl?” asked Red at a stoplight.
I didn’t answer. My stomach hurt as if my mother had dosed me with castor oil.
“Leave her alone,” said JT.
“JT’s in looooooove,” teased Red.
“No, I’m not,” snapped JT. Then he looked at me, aghast. “I didn’t mean . . .”
He needn’t have worried. I certainly wasn’t in love with him.
Finally, about ten hours later (for some reason my watch only said eight minutes), we turned onto Asher Avenue, and there we were. A neon sign blinked at us from the parking lot: TROY’S ROLLER RINK.
“When’s this stupid thing over?” asked Red.
“Nine,” said JT.
“Well, don’t keep me waiting,” Red snapped. “I got better things to do than drive you two around.”
The car rolled to a stop, and we jumped out. Mrs. McDaniels was waiting for us at the door. “Welcome, Marlee, welcome, JT. Everyone’s inside.”
When she said everyone, she wasn’t kidding. In order to get the maximum number of presents, Sally had invited every single person in our class. There was a gift table by the door, so I put my present down and looked around.
I’d been to Troy’s with my sister once or twice before, but never for a party. The rink was a large, open room with a hard wooden floor. There was a snack bar, where Mr. McDaniels was setting up a cake, and an organ in one corner, where old Mrs. Chapman, the piano teacher from down the street, was playing a polka. The strangest thing about Troy’s was a huge quote painted on the wall. It read The more you skate, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you skate. I could never quite figure out what that meant.
I sat down to put on my skates (I had to rent a pair since I didn’t have my own), and when I was done, Sally and Nora skated over to me. Sally’s dress was so pink and frothy, she looked like a piece of cotton candy. She had new white leather roller skates, and I couldn’t help feeling a little envious. Nora was in lime green, the color all wrong for her complexion.
“Glad you made it, Marlee,” said Sally. “We’re going to do the limbo later!” And with a flip of her hair, she was off.
JT rolled up to me then, in black leather skates, carrying a cup of punch. “For you,” he said with a little bow.
I nodded, took the punch and put it on the side of the rink.
“Oh, come on, Marlee,” JT pleaded. “Don’t be cross. Let’s skate.”
He took my hand and pulled me onto the floor, linking his arm through mine. I kept my arm stiff, standing as far from him as possible as we started to skate in circles around the room.
“Why don’t you like me?” asked JT.
“Why do you care?” I asked.
“Maybe I want your good opinion.”
“Maybe you want help with your math.”
JT smiled. I could see a little bit of the golden child who got away with everything.
“I mean it, Marlee. What’d I do?”
I thought for a moment. What was the harm? I might as well tell him the truth. “You called Liz a name,” I said. “When we all found out she was colored.”
“You’re upset because I called your friend a ni—”
“Don’t call her that!”
“Gosh, Marlee, you’re a square tonight. Defending your colored friends.”
“Why shouldn’t I defend my friends?”
“Negroes are not your friends,” said JT. “They are trying to destroy our schools and—”
“Who told you that?”
“Red. And my father. They said—”
“Liz never did a thing to you. You liked her. Probably would have been trying to get her to do your English homework for you if she were still here.”
JT laughed. “Yeah. That sounds like me.”
We skated for a moment without talking, the polka music oompahing along.
Finally, JT shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. I didn’t much care last year when those nine students first started at Central. But then my father said it wasn’t right. Red skipped school to make signs and protest. And Liz did lie to us! I don’t like dishonesty.”
I snorted. “Don’t seem to have a problem with it when it comes to math homework.”
“Yeah, well . . . I got no problem with Negroes, long as they stay in their place.”
“Which is?”
“Driving your car and shining your shoes and cleaning your house.”
“Liz is about ten times smarter than you. Why should she clean your house?”
“Marlee, you can’t say stuff like that. People will call you a communist.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I do. And my brother wouldn’t say those things if they weren’t true.”
“Really?” I snapped. “Red’s a great scholar, is he?”
“Shut up.”
We skated in silence again. The organist switched over to a waltz, and the lights dimmed, but JT gripped my arm, and we kept skating. Little Jimmy was watching us from the side of the rink. I waved at him, but he just scowled and looked away. I suddenly remembered Judy had said waltzes were for couples. Did Little Jimmy think . . . “Are you still friends with her?” JT asked.
I said nothing.
“Red says you are, but I didn’t think you’d—”
I nodded.
“But she’s, she’s . . . ,” JT sputtered.
“A Negro?” I supplied.
“A colored girl and a white girl can’t be friends,” said JT.
“Says who?” I asked.
“Says everyone!” exclaimed JT. “That’s why we go to different schools and churches, and . . . that’s why the high schools are closed!”
“Then maybe,” I said quietly, “everyone is wrong.”
I finally dropped his arm and skated away from him, and it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be. JT drifted on, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the floor. Even with a frown on his face, he still looked handsome, and it irked me. Sally skated over to him and grabbed his arm, and he waltzed off with her.
I sat in a metal folding chair on the edge of the room until the song was over. My fingers were cold. I shouldn’t have told JT about Liz. It had been reckless and foolish, and yet it had felt good to speak my mind.
I imagined a magic square to calm down, all the rows and columns and diagonals adding up to fifteen. Fifteen. How old I’d be in two years. A year older than Emmett Till was when he was killed. For the first time, the magic square didn’t really work.
It was time for the limbo then. I threw myself into it, trying to stop thinking. Maybe because I’m small and short, I was good at it. Pretty soon, Sally and I were the only ones left. I’m pretty sure I could have won, but it was her party, so I tripped on purpose.
Sally got a bouquet of flowers as the winner, and I got a single rose as the runner-up, and Mrs. McDaniels made us take a victory lap around the rink so she could get some pictures.
>
“You know,” said Sally as we were skating, clutching our flowers, “I didn’t throw away my hairbrush.”
“What?” I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“The one I loaned to Liz. I know I said I did, but . . . it’s a nice brush. I washed it in the sink, but then I thought, if I hadn’t gotten lice yet . . .”
Had she overheard JT and me talking? Was she saying she was wrong?
“I just wanted you to know I hadn’t thrown it away,” said Sally.
“But you said—”
“What you say with your friends is one thing,” she said. “How you really feel, that’s another.”
Not with Liz, I thought. With her, I say how I really feel. For the first time, I felt a little sorry for Sally, that she didn’t have a friend with whom she could do the same.
“Come on,” said Nora, skating up to us. “Let’s go have cake.”
The organ lady played “Happy Birthday,” and we all sang, and Sally blew out the candles. While I was eating the sweet cake, I noticed the quote on the walls again: The more you skate, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you skate.
It made sense this time. It was about practice. The more I talked, the better I got at it. The better I got at it, the more I wanted to do it. I’d been waiting for it to feel natural for me to talk to my mother, waiting for just the right moment. But maybe that was the wrong approach. Maybe I had to talk to her first, and then, after I did, maybe it would start to feel natural.
In any case, I knew one thing. I didn’t want to ride home with Red. I had a dime in my purse and found the pay phone in the corner. Watching the numbers go around and around as I dialed made me dizzy. I wished I had a napkin or something to jot down what I was going to say, but there weren’t any nearby, and I didn’t have a pen anyway. I’d just have to figure it out on my own.
“Hello?”
Drat, it was Mother. I’d been hoping Daddy would answer the phone.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Marlee?”
“Can you come pick me up?”
“Why?” said Mother. “I thought the Daltons were bringing you home. It’s not even eight thirty.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Womanly troubles?” asked Mother.
That was her way of asking if I had cramps.
“Something like that,” I said. “I don’t want to say anything to JT and—”
“Oh, of course not,” agreed Mother. “I’ll be right there.”
I told JT I wasn’t feeling well, and he didn’t say a word. I wanted to tell Sally I was leaving early, but she was busy opening presents. I put my street shoes back on and went to wait by the door.
Little Jimmy walked up to me. “Why’d you come with JT?” he asked.
I shook my head. “It’s too complicated to explain.”
“Oh,” he said, shifting from one skate to the other, like he wasn’t really comfortable on them. “Well, I wanted to give you this.” He handed me a piece of folded paper.
I unfolded the paper. It was a page from his journal, dated February 28, 1959. I’m planning to ask Marlee to go with me to Sally’s skating party when she comes back to school. I hope she says yes.
“But then I heard you were going with JT,” Little Jimmy said when I looked up at him. “So I never asked.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” I said. “I wish you had.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
A horn honked then, and it was Mother.
“Bye,” I said. “See you at school.”
“See you.”
I slid into the front seat, and Mother drove off before I could even figure out exactly what had happened.
“Hi, sweetie,” Mother said. “Are you feeling any better?”
I almost said yes or shrugged or made up some other lie. But then I remembered, The more you skate, the more you learn, and I thought about Liz and doing what you were afraid of, and I realized I’d never have a better chance.
“No,” I said.
“I’ll get you a hot water bottle when we get home.”
I could let it go, or I could speak up. “That’s not going to help.”
“What?”
I took a deep breath and counted 17, 19, 23, 29. “JT’s been making me do his homework for him all year, and when I finally told him no because it was cheating, you made me do it again. And then Red drove us there tonight, and he hates colored people and eggs houses and is really creepy.” Once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. “And Little Jimmy was planning on asking me to go to the party with him, and I actually think I like him, but you set me up with JT first. And Sally still brushes her hair.” Okay, so that last bit didn’t make sense without an explanation, but Mother didn’t seem to notice.
The blood drained from Mother’s face, like I’d seen it do only once before, the time she’d got the phone call telling her that Granddaddy had died.
“Marlee,” Mother said, her voice breaking, “I thought you liked JT?”
“I did,” I said. “About four months ago.” I hadn’t said this much to her in years.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interfere.”
I waited for her to lecture me about cheating on homework, or say I shouldn’t be scared of Red, or at least ask what I meant about Sally’s hair. But Mother didn’t. She didn’t say another word.
38
SECRETS ON THE BUS
Judy came home for Easter. Things were still odd between us. We’d only exchanged a few postcards since Christmas. I did an extra-thorough job cleaning up my room the night before she arrived, just in case she wanted to be roommates again. But Daddy put her bag down in David’s room, and she didn’t tell him to move it.
So I was kind of surprised when she suggested we take the bus across town to see David at college one evening. Mother and Daddy agreed and gave Judy some money for dinner, and before I knew it, we were on our way.
The bus wasn’t crowded. We sat next to each other, not touching. In the old days, Judy would put her arm around me, and I’d lean my head on her shoulder. I kept expecting her to start talking, to give me advice like she always did. But she didn’t. I wanted to tell her something—anything—so we’d have another secret to share.
“Judy?” I said.
“Hmmm?” It was raining outside and the bus was warm.
“You know that friend I had? Liz.”
“The one who was colored?” asked Judy.
“Yeah.”
“What about her?”
I glanced around the bus to make sure there was no one I knew. There wasn’t. “I’m still friends with her.”
“What?” Judy sat up.
“Sometimes we talk on the phone. And on Tuesdays we meet in the rock crusher.”
“Marlee!”
“Don’t tell Mother and Daddy.”
“Of course not. But why—”
“You’re the one who was always telling me to find someone I had stuff in common with, someone I liked. Well, I did. It’s not my fault she’s not exactly who I expected.”
Judy gave me a long look. Before she could say anything else, the bus reached our stop and we stumbled out into the rain.
David was waiting for us. “Hey, sis one and sis two,” he said. “Long time no see.” I ran over and gave him a hug.
We went to a cafeteria near his dorm. I ordered fried chicken and chocolate pudding and pecan pie, and no one said a word about me not selecting a single vegetable. It didn’t take long before David was talking all about the high schools being closed. “Most of the displaced white students have found somewhere to go to school. Like ninety percent or so.”
“Not Red,” I said.
“That’s
his choice,” said David. “His parents could totally afford to send him to private school. But fifty percent of the colored students haven’t been to school at all.”
“Where’d you learn all this?” asked Judy.
“Meetings.”
“What kind of meetings?”
“There are a couple of colored students here now. I talked to one and—”
“I work for the WEC,” I said. “That’s the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools.”
“I know,” said David. “Daddy told me. That’s how I got the idea. One of my friends knows a professor at Philander Smith. That’s a Negro college in town. We all got together for a meeting at the house of one of the professors. He served us wine and everything. Anyway, everyone’s in a tizzy over Act 10.”
“What’s that?” asked Judy.
“It’s a new law requiring all state employees to turn in a list of all the organizations they belong to. It has to be notarized and everything.”
“So?”
“So!” said David. “The governor and his friends are going to use those lists to fire anyone they suspect of being an integrationist.”
“But I thought people were allowed to associate with anybody they wanted, long as the group wasn’t doing anything illegal,” I said.
“Exactly!” said David. “A couple of the professors are refusing to submit a list.”
“I’ll have to ask Miss Winthrop about it,” I said. “See what the WEC is planning to do about—”
“Can we talk about something else?” said Judy. “I’m only home for a little while.”
So we did. We joked and poked at each other and talked about nothing in particular. It was wonderful. When it was time to go, David pulled me aside and said, “Keep up the good work.”
“Will do,” I said.
The Lions of Little Rock Page 16