by Lois Lenski
Aunty Ruth brought word that her employer would try Imogene in a temporary vacancy. One of her workers was out sick. So now Lula Bell’s mother left the house early each day with her aunt and uncle. Sometimes her father was there, but more often not. Aunty Ruth arranged for Lula Bell to stay with old Mrs. Robinson across the hall. Mrs. Robinson was queer and kept a parrot. Lula Bell stayed three days with her, then Mrs. Robinson told her not to come back.
“I don’t want you,” she said. “You sit so still and look at me with those big dark eyes and never say a word. It gives me the creeps. Polly don’t like it neither. She’s been sulkin’ all the time you been here. She never talks any more. No, I don’t want you.”
“She’ll have to start to school, then,” said Aunty Ruth. “It’s a long way to walk, but if we can find some older girl to take her, she’ll soon learn the way.”
The way to school was over the main line tracks of several eastern railroads. There were twenty tracks to be crossed at grade level. Frequent express trains whizzed through without slowing down at all. Hundreds of children walked over the tracks daily. Aunty Ruth found an Eighth Grade girl called Edwina Berry, who stopped each morning for Lula Bell.
Crossing the tracks and hearing Edwina’s stories of all the cars that had been smashed and people killed there, was a frightening introduction to school. Arrived at the school gate, Edwina promptly left Lula Bell and dashed off to locate friends of her own. There were more than six hundred boys and girls in the school, of all races and nationalities. The noise and confusion as they rushed through the halls was terrifying. They all seemed to be in a hurry. Lula Bell stood inside the door bewildered. She did not know where to go.
Then a teacher found her and took her to the principal’s office. She was placed in an over-crowded Third Grade, with fifty other children. She sat at a desk with another girl, because there were not seats enough for all. The teacher was too busy to speak to her. No one told her where to go for lunch, so she did not eat. When school was out, she followed the others to the outer door. There at last she found Edwina.
“Where you been?” scolded the older girl. “I’ve waited half an hour.” On the way home, Edwina kept singing popular songs under her breath, while Lula Bell marched behind, frightened of the traffic, trying to keep up. When Imogene and the others asked her how she liked school, she said, “All right,” but she knew she hated it.
“When’s Mama Hattie and Lonnie and Eddie comin’?” Lula Bell asked that night.
“I don’t know,” said Imogene.
“Gosh! They’re not comin’, are they?” cried Daddy Joe.
“You said they’d be comin’ soon, Imogene,” persisted Lula Bell.
“I said as soon as Mama Hattie sells her house and is able to travel,” explained her mother.
“Is she able? Is she better?” asked Lula Bell.
“I don’t know,” said Imogene. “Irene don’t write.”
“Irene’s got her hands full with all those young uns,” said Aunty Ruth.
“Why don’t you call her up? Why don’t you send her the money to come?” asked Lula Bell. “I’ll jest die if I can’t see Mama Hattie soon.”
“Gosh! Leave ’em stay where they are,” said Daddy Joe.
“I’m not made o’ money,” said Imogene. “I’m up to my neck in debt and it’s chokin’ me.”
“You’ll send the money, won’t you, Aunty Ruth?” begged Lula Bell.
“I can’t spare it right now, honey,” said Aunty Ruth. “Soon as your mother and daddy get settled in steady jobs and find a place to live, so they can pay their own bills, then …”
It sounded indefinite. That night Lula Bell cried herself to sleep. When would she ever see Mama Hattie again?
CHAPTER VII
Not Wanted
It was Saturday and no school, so Lula Bell was glad. Children came from other apartments on the street, and they sometimes asked her to play. She ran down the four flights of stairs and the stone steps. Three girls were waiting. They welcomed her eagerly, so eagerly she could not understand it. But it was pleasant, so she acted agreeable.
“This is my girl-friend,” said Hildegarde, the leader. “Her name is Queen Esther.”
“‘Queen Esther.’” Lula Bell giggled. “That’s a funny name.”
No one laughed. Queen Esther had a hard look on her face. “You jest never heard it before,” she said. “That’s why you say it’s funny. There’s lots o’ things you never heard of before.”
Lula Bell hung her head. She had made a bad start.
“We’re goin’ to the Trick Shop,” announced Hildegarde.
“What’s that?” asked Lula Bell.
“Don’t you know? Ain’t you the dumb bunny!” laughed Geraldine.
“Ain’t they got Trick Shops down south?” asked Queen Esther.
“Not that I know of,” said Lula Bell.
“There’s lots o’ things you don’t know,” said Queen Esther.
“Come along, we’ll show you,” said Hildegarde. “But first, give us all your money.”
How did they know she had money in her pocket? She had not told them—Daddy Joe had slipped her fifty cents the night before. She had planned to send it to Mama Hattie in a letter, but now she meekly handed it out. She had to do what the girls said, if she was ever going to be friends with them.
“Do they really want me?” Lula Bell asked herself. “Maybe they think I’m rich.”
Hildegarde and Queen Esther took her by the hands and pulled her along. Geraldine came close behind. They came to a store that said TRICK SHOP on the front. Lula Bell read the words, but did not know what they meant. The girls let go her hands now. They took money out of their own pockets and gave it to Hildegarde. Several boys and younger girls joined them. They crowded in the door and up to the counter, where they all began talking at once.
“I’ll wait outside,” said Lula Bell. She went out.
“Don’t you run away now,” called Hildegarde.
The store window was jammed with all sorts of things from snakes to pumpkins and lizards. Across the front was a row of horrible masks. Lula Bell looked inside and saw a wizened old man with a long beard. He wore a red skull-cap and waited on the children. It took them a long time to make their purchases. They were spending her 50¢ and money of their own. She got tired of waiting.
Across the street from the Trick Shop was the Greyhound Bus Station. Lula Bell watched people getting on a blue-and-white bus which stood there. She listened to the loud speaker: “All aboard for the south. This bus goes to Washington, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and points south. All aboard!”
Suddenly she was homesick, bitterly homesick. If she could only get on that bus and go down south again! Up north wasn’t what she had thought it would be. She hated it. She wanted to be with her grandmother again, safe and secure on Hibiscus Street. Lula Bell watched as the bus pulled out and turned the corner.
“Someday I’ll be on it,” she said to herself. “Someday I’ll get on and go back to Mama Hattie.”
The children came out of the shop snickering. The girls took her by the hand again. A block away from the Pearlena Apartment house, they gathered in a circle about her. Two boys, called John Willie and Ollie Lee put large brown cigars in their mouths.
“You smokin’?” gasped Lula Bell.
“Sure! See the smoke?” They pushed the cigars up close to her, but instead of smoke coming out, water squirted in her face.
“Oh, oh!” cried Lula Bell, jumping back.
All the children laughed. Lula Bell hid her face. She felt ashamed to have them making fun of her. Hildegarde came over and acted friendly. “Now you boys stop teasin’ Lula Bell,” she said. She put her arm around Lula Bell’s shoulder as if to comfort her.
Queen Esther came up and pulled on Lula Bell’s plats. “How many plats this little gal got?” She began to count them, and pulled each one so hard that it hurt. “Little gals from down south wears cute little braids all over their head, don’t t
hey?”
Lula Bell turned angrily. “Stop it!” she said. “Stop pullin’ my hair.” The children giggled. She saw that Hildegarde and Queen Esther had their hair straightened and fixed like grown-up ladies. But the little girls had plats like her own.
Hildegarde smiled. “See what I bought?” She showed Lula Bell a pretty little bottle. “Perfume! Wanta smell it? What kind o’ perfume you like best, Lula Bell?”
“Gardenia,” said Lula Bell, thinking of the bush in Mama Hattie’s yard.
“How’d you guess it?” laughed Hildegarde. “Let me squirt some on you.”
Before Lula Bell could tell her not to, Hildegarde had squirted not perfume, but a powder into her face. Lula Bell began to sneeze and could not stop.
“Sneezing powder!” cried the children, doubling up with laughter. “She thought it was gardenia perfume.” “Ain’t she the dumb bunny!”
Poor Lula Bell knew now what the words Trick Shop meant. She knew that the children were playing tricks on her. Sneezing and sneezing, she turned and stumbled away from them. They stood there, jeering and yelling at her. They called her all kinds of names. She began to run. She never stopped running until she reached Aunty Ruth’s apartment house. As she came into the hallway, Mr. Ferguson, the big burly landlord, blocked her path.
“You the kid in Ruth Copeland’s flat?” he demanded.
Lula Bell nodded, speechless.
“Tell Mrs. Copeland I give your family two weeks to get out.”
“Get out?” Lula Bell had no idea what he meant. She fled up the four flights of stairs and stopped in front of Aunty Ruth’s door. After she caught her breath, she went in.
“What did you buy with the 50¢ I gave you?” asked Daddy Joe.
Lula Bell hung her head. “Nothin’,” she said. She could not explain to him what had happened. It was simpler to say: “I lost it … down the sewer.”
“Well, of all things!” Daddy Joe slapped his hand on his knee and laughed. “Lula Bell’s gittin’ to be a city girl fast.”
The next Saturday when Lula Bell went outside to play, the gang was waiting for her. Hildegarde and Queen Esther were the leaders, and the same two boys were back again, as well as some younger children.
“We’re goin’ to play along the railroad tracks,” said Hildegarde.
“I don’t want to,” said Lula Bell.
“Yes, you do.” Queen Esther stepped up and took her by the hand. She held her hand in such a tight grip, Lula Bell could not get it loose. The boys and girls marched through a network of back alleys, behind a forest of broken-down shacks. They came out on the railroad tracks.
“Where we goin’?” asked Lula Bell.
“To the Big Ditch,” said Hildegarde.
“We’ll go diving,” said the boy called John Willie.
“We’ll ketch snakes,” said Ollie Lee.
Lula Bell shuddered. “I don’t like snakes,” she said, remembering the snake under Miss Annie Sue’s hedge.
“What’s the Big Ditch?” she asked faintly.
“A hole in the ground with water in it,” said Hildegarde.
“Used to be an old canal,” said Ollie Lee.
“It’s an old dump,” said Queen Esther.
Lula Bell did not have to wait long to see what it was. Beyond the edge of the city, the railroad track passed a desolate spot covered with rocks. Off to one side was a stagnant pond of water with green scum on top. There was no grass, no trees. The memory of Gray Moss Bayou came back to Lula Bell, with a flash of homesickness. The boys and girls picked up rocks and began to throw them in the pond.
“Is this where you fish?” asked Lula Bell.
“Yes ma’m,” answered Hildegarde.
“Where’s your fishin’ poles?”
“We left ’em home.” They all laughed noisily.
“Where’s your bait? You use fiddlers?” asked Lula Bell. They could not fool her about fishing. She knew more about it than they did.
“Fiddlers—what’s that?” asked a boy. “You can dig us some worms.”
“But I need a shovel,” said Lula Bell.
“Oh, use your hands,” said John Willie.
“There’s too many rocks,” said Lula Bell.
They all seemed to think this was terribly funny. They doubled up with laughter.
“Let’s take Lula Bell for a ride!” cried Queen Esther.
“O. K.,” said the others.
“Where to?” asked Lula Bell.
They began to run. They chased around the pond, returned to the tracks and soon came to an unoccupied building. They picked up rocks from the ground. They threw them breaking the windows.
“Why do you break windows?” cried Lula Bell.
“To have fun!” answered the others.
The boys began to tussle and soon were trying to hit each other with stones. They were clever at dodging, so no one got hit but Lula Bell. A rock; thrown by John Willie, struck her on the temple. It stunned her for a minute. She fell to the ground and buried her head in her hands, sobbing.
“Now you done it, John Willie,” said Hildegarde. “I done tole you not to git too rough. You better run.”
“She ain’t hurt,” said Ollie Lee. “Look, she’s laughin’. She ain’t hurt.”
“Cryin’, you mean,” said Queen Esther. “Maybe she’s hurt bad. We better run before she tells on us.”
They started running back to town along the railroad track. Lula Bell jumped to her feet and stumbled after them. She knew she could never find her way back to Mechanic Street if she lost sight of the others. They ran and ran, but she could not keep up. The blow had raised a great welt on her forehead and it pained her badly. She heard a train whistle. Blindly she stumbled down the embankment, waiting there until it passed by. When she came up on the tracks again, the boys and girls were out of sight. She walked on and on.
When she got back to where the cross streets began, she asked a woman where Mechanic Street was, and the woman pointed vaguely in a southerly direction. She had to ask again and again. She kept walking farther and farther, and at last she saw a landmark—the Greyhound Bus Station. From there she found her way to the Pearlena Apartments easily enough.
It was nearly dark when she got there and her head was paining badly. She thought her folks would see the lump on her head and make her explain, but they didn’t. They paid no attention to her, so she lay down quietly on the bed and rested.
Imogene was upset about something.
“They put you out?” asked Aunty Ruth.
“They sure did,” said Imogene angrily. “The waiter said, ‘I can’t serve you. We don’t serve Negroes in this restaurant. You’ll have to go somewhere else.’ Joe spoke up and said, ‘My money’s as good as anybody else’s, ain’t it?’ The manager came up and Joe started to make a fuss. But I pulled him by the arm, and we walked out.”
Lula Bell lay on the bed and listened. She could not help hearing what her mother said. She was surprised to learn that even up north there were places where Negroes were not wanted. She was used to it in the south, and had never thought much about it. Her mother and aunt discussed the matter quietly.
“Down south you know just what you can do and you never try to do different,” Imogene went on. “Up here you’re never sure. It’s not very nice to think you’re welcome and then be thrown out.”
“Jim Crow’s been done away with on the trains, remember that,” said Aunty Ruth. “When I first used to travel south, a few years ago, I always had to change my seat at Washington or Richmond and go into a Jim Crow car for Negroes. Now we can keep the same seat straight through, the same as white people. We can eat in the same dining car.”
A sharp knock came at the door. It was Mr. Ferguson, the landlord. He came to the point at once. “I can’t have two families living in one apartment, Mrs. Copeland,” he said. “Not unless each family pays $45 a month rent.”
“This is my sister, Mrs. Imogene Lucas, from down south,” said Aunty Ruth, introducing Imogene.
“She’s just visiting me.”
“Yes, I know,” said the landlord, frowning. “A visit of six months or a year or two years. I know all about this doubling-up in apartments. She can pay rent for every day she’s been here after the first two weeks. She’s got a kid too. I been seeing her go up and down the stairs. You know there’s no children allowed in this apartment house.”
Aunty Ruth flared up. “Do you mean to say, Mr. Ferguson, that I can’t have my own little niece come and visit me? Who do you think you are, anyhow—Hitler?”
“‘No children! No dogs, no cats!’” said the landlord firmly.
“How about Mrs. Robinson’s parrot?” asked Aunty Ruth. “That’s a pet.”
“I said: ‘No children, dogs or cats.’ I made that clear to you when you first came, Mrs. Copeland,” said the man.
“All the other apartment houses on this street are full of kids,” protested Aunty Ruth.
“This one’s different,” said Ferguson. “Kids bust up too much property. I won’t have ’em on my place. Tell ’em to get out—these visitors of yours and these kids.”
“There’s only one child, and she’s a nice little girl,” said Aunty Ruth, pleading now, “well-behaved and as quiet as a mouse. She wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“Tell ’em to get out or I’ll have a policeman put ’em out.” The landlord turned and went down the stairs.
“He don’t want me,” said Lula Bell. She had gotten up and was standing inside the door, trembling. She had heard it all.
“Well, of all the nerve!” cried Imogene, as soon as the door was closed.
“He’ll make life miserable for me, if you don’t go,” said Aunty Ruth sadly. “I just hate to have this happen.”
“We’ll go stay with Lucy for a while,” said Imogene. “Your boss told me she don’t need me any more—the sick worker got well and came back. Joe hasn’t found a job he likes yet, so it don’t matter where we go.” Her tone sounded discouraged.
“Can’t we take the Greyhound bus and go back home to Hibiscus Street?” cried Lula Bell eagerly. “Can’t we go live with Mama Hattie again? Nobody wants us here. Our Mama Hattie wants us.”