My Mother the Cheerleader

by Robert Sharenow

  I didn’t know much about menstruation, but what I did know I didn’t like one bit. My mother had never had a “birds and the bees” talk with me, so most of what I knew came from Jez Robidoux, who maintained that during your period you peed blood instead of urine. “Why do girls make blood instead of boys?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, and then added: “There’s all sorts of stuff that’s different between boys and girls, right? If you start asking those questions, why not ask why girls have vaginas in the first place instead of a penis? Did you ever think about that? Why don’t you have a penis, Louise?” It was hard for me to argue with that logic.

  Just a few hours earlier I had prayed for puberty to grow breasts; now here I was praying for a miraculous reversal to dam the menstrual river.

  As my eyes blinked open, I noticed that Morgan looked concerned. My mother looked concerned too, but also more than slightly annoyed.

  “She’s coming to,” he said.

  “Thank the Lord,” my mother replied.

  “I guess she fainted.”

  “Louise, honey,” she asked, “are you all right?

  My mother helped pull me up to a sitting position.

  “Sugar, can you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you okay?” Morgan asked.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “You gave your nose and lips a pretty good whack,” he said. “You must’ve fainted and hit the edge of the toilet on the way down.”

  My nose and lips! That’s when I first felt the hotness running over my lips and down my chin. It wasn’t my period! The blood had splattered the front of my dress from my nose! Rejoice! I felt my mind rush to thank the Lord but then stopped myself short, not wishing to risk bringing God into my personal life any more that day. I ran my tongue over my lips and felt a small opening oozing blood.

  “It doesn’t look like your nose is broken,” Morgan said.

  I slowly stood up and discovered my knees were solid again.

  “I’ll get her cleaned up,” my mother said to Morgan. “Please go to bed—you’ve been more than kind.”

  “All right,” he said. “Good night, ladies.”

  He exited as my mother wet a washcloth and began to wipe down my face and neck. She let a moment pass to make sure Morgan was out of earshot, and then she interrogated me in a hushed rasp.

  “And what were you doing in here at such a late hour?” she asked.

  “Going to the bathroom,” I said.

  “Still wearing your dinner dress? You should’ve been in your nightgown and asleep an hour ago.”

  I didn’t respond.

  She rubbed the bottom of my neck hard with the washcloth, all pretense of tenderness gone.

  “I can’t have you running around the house like a wild animal at all hours of the night. What do you think our guests think of that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll tell you what they think, that I’m a bad mother who raised a disrespectful swamp rat of a child. I will not have you making me look bad in front of guests, Louise, do you understand? I want you to be in bed at a proper hour. You hear?”

  I nodded.

  She tossed the bloody washcloth into the sink.

  “Sometimes I don’t know how I put up with you,” she said. “And will you look at that dress? You probably ruined it.”

  She tugged the dress off over my head.

  “Go downstairs and soak this in some water and Ivory flakes before the blood dries.”

  I looked down at myself, naked save for a pair of old panties.

  “Go on,” she said. “I paid good money for that thing.”

  My mother flung the dress at me and walked out. I grabbed my pink cotton robe from a hook on the back of the door, slipped it on, and then went downstairs to wash the dress.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning I slept until seven thirty and cursed myself. I had fully intended to follow Morgan to his morning rendezvous, but I was so tired from my late night of surveillance, fainting, bleeding, and washing that I just couldn’t wake myself up. I finally stirred at the sound of Mr. Landroux’s bell ringing for breakfast, a bedpan change, or both.

  My mother had the enviable ability to sleep through nearly any noise. Part of this skill must be attributed to the lime juleps, which nicely dulled most of her senses when she slept. Yet that morning she was already awake when Mr. Landroux started ringing. She added a shrill vocal to accompany the bell.

  “Louise! Louise!” she called. “Can’t you hear the bell?”

  I got up and pulled on some clothes. As I trudged out into the hallway toward the stairs, my mother emerged from her room. To my surprise she was already dressed in her powder-blue dress with the heart print, and her hair was neatly arranged with a matching blue bow. She leaned one hand on the railing of the stairwell and pulled on a blue patent leather pump.

  “After you’re done with Mr. Landroux, make sure you make a fresh pitcher of lemonade,” she said. “And sweep out the front hall before Mr. Miller returns in the afternoon.”

  “Why are you going so early?” I asked.

  “Don’t you remember? It’s Monday.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t usually go until eight thirty…”

  “I’ve got three letters for you, Louise: C-B-S.”

  A rumor had circulated at the end of the previous week that CBS News was sending down a television crew to do a story about the Cheerleaders. All the ladies were hoping to get on TV. My mother planned to arrive extra early to insure that she had the best position for the camera.

  She pulled on her other pump and headed downstairs. She called back to me as she rushed out the front door.

  “If Mr. Miller comes back, you just be sure to tend to him properly.”

  The bell rang again, more insistently.

  CHAPTER 12

  After cleaning Mr. Landroux’s bedpan and serving him a breakfast of oatmeal, coffee, and tomato juice, I went back downstairs to clean Morgan’s room. I took great care making up his room. I made sure his hospital corners were extra tight on the bed, and I puffed up his pillow so it looked just right. I laid out fresh towels, careful to choose the ones with the fewest rips and stains. I polished the mirror over the dresser, making sure not to leave any stray fingerprints along the way.

  With my chores complete, I slipped back into spy mode and very carefully searched through Morgan’s possessions. Typically, I’d just start rifling through everything without giving it a thought, but with Morgan I hesitated. I almost never felt any pangs of guilt about violating the privacy of our guests. Oh, I knew I was doing something wrong. But I never felt as if it was seriously wrong, just a little bit wrong. It’s not as if I was going to tell anyone if I found anything interesting. Of course, my mother or Charlotte would have severely punished me if they knew about my searches. And I didn’t have any friends I trusted enough to share vital information like that with, even Jez.

  Over the years I did make some notable discoveries. All were dutifully recorded in my Spy Log with the following information: date, guest’s name, a brief description of the guest, and a description of the key object.

  June 23, 1958: J. Agostino. Salesman from Indiana. Set of 25 jars with preserved animal babies in formaldehyde, including frogs, a baby chick, and a bat.

  April 14, 1959: The Petersons. Old couple from Mississippi. The books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female by Dr. Alfred Kinsey. No pictures.

  May 24, 1959: M. Smith. Trucker from Alabama. One Colt revolver wrapped in a red bandanna and a box of bullets.

  January 16, 1960: S. Hermanson. Marine on leave. Photos of naked men posing on the beach.

  March 29, 1960: J & J Johnson. Country boys. Six jugs of moonshine and $75 in rolled quarters, dimes, and nickels.

  My affection and respect for Morgan gave me a moment’s pause before I completely violated his privacy. But it was really only a moment. I took my surveillance of
Morgan so seriously that I retrieved my Spy Log to record everything I found, not wanting to risk any detail to faulty memory. He had unpacked his suitcase and put his clothes in the dresser. I went through each item, recorded it in my log, and carefully put everything back exactly how I found it.

  5 crew-neck T-shirts

  6 pairs of socks, four black, two brown

  4 button-down shirts with a label from a store called Monty’s for Men, New York

  6 pairs of white boxer shorts

  2 pairs of slacks, one brown, one beige

  1 blue blazer, also from Monty’s for Men, New York

  Nothing out of the ordinary there. His toilet kit also yielded very little of interest. Although he did use some very pleasant-smelling brand of aftershave and talc called Pinaud Clubman. The label read “World Famous Since 1810.” I unscrewed the cap of the aftershave and took a deep sniff—it was the source of the faintly sweet but masculine scent that I had noticed at dinner.

  Although I was usually disappointed to find nothing of interest in a guest’s room, with Morgan I was relieved. I didn’t want to have my image of him dimmed by some hidden vice tucked away in his underwear drawer. In truth I was searching in the hopes of not finding anything incriminating.

  I completed my accounting of his possessions and was returning everything to exactly where it was when I noticed a small leather briefcase beside the door. Of course I couldn’t let something like that elude my investigation. The first thing I pulled out of the case was an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes. Next I retrieved a 257-page manuscript of a book called Landing the Job: Tips for Recent Graduates, by Alice Timmons. I flipped through the pages and read through some of what I assumed were Morgan’s comments written in blue ink along the margins.

  Page 71—“Let’s move the résumé section earlier. Maybe Chapter 3?”

  Page 128—“Great section on what not to wear. Line about the purple tie made me laugh out loud.”

  Page 232—“More sample interview questions would be useful. Something about long-term goals, etc.”

  None of the notes made much sense without really knowing the context, but I assumed they were all brilliant and helpful. Insane jealousy swept over me at the thought of Alice Timmons getting to work with Morgan. Did this girl realize how lucky she was?

  The next item I retrieved was a small newspaper. I was just going to put it aside when the name flashed before my eyes and I froze. A chill ran through my entire body as the words sank in.

  DAILY WORKER

  I instinctively dropped the paper like a hot coal and stared in horror. This was the paper of record of Communist conspirators and enemies of all things good. Pornography, guns, moonshine—none of those hit me with the same shock of revulsion as was caused by Morgan’s copy of the Daily Worker. For a moment I was afraid to touch it. In my universe Communists ranked neck and neck with Satan on the chart of evildoers. Was Morgan one of them?

  I dumped out the rest of the briefcase, fearful I’d find a cache of microfilm, a dagger with the Soviet hammer and sickle emblazoned on the handle, or a secret transmitting device to communicate with the Kremlin. But there was nothing else in the bag save a Zippo lighter and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. My mind raced in the opposite direction, hoping to absolve Morgan of this ugly suspicion. He must work for the FBI, I assured myself, and he was merely researching the enemy. Yes…he must be some sort of government agent. That must be it.

  I turned my full attention to the paper. The front-page headline read “Garment Strike Looms.” I flipped through the entire contents, scanning the articles, all of which concerned the oppression of workers and other abuses by bosses and corporations. Nothing really penetrated until I got to the very last page, the sports section, where Morgan’s name jumped out at me from the byline of an editorial column.

  Boston Still a Racist Stronghold

  By M. I. Miller, Sports Editor

  Imagine an outfield with both Ted Williams and Willie Mays. Sounds like a fantasy, right? That fantasy could have been a reality. The Boston Red Sox had the opportunity to sign Willie in 1949 and perhaps build the greatest baseball dynasty of the 1950s. The Red Sox sent a scout to look at the young Say Hey Kid, but the game was delayed by rain. The scout left, deciding it wasn’t worth waiting to check out a Negro ballplayer, because they probably wouldn’t sign him anyway. The racism of the Red Sox management was a boon to New York Giants fans like me, but a disgrace to baseball.

  My heart sank. M. I. Miller was a Giants fan. Morgan did not work for the FBI. He was one of them. Worse still, he wasn’t just one of them: He was an editor, a person of authority on the Daily Worker.

  Some tiny alarm bell went off in my head, telling me that I should go to William Frantz Elementary School right away. At the Citizens’ Council meetings the speakers blamed the Communists for inciting the Negroes. Would I find Morgan holding a sign or passing out pamphlets or just generally inciting civil unrest? I stuffed everything back into the bag and ran to find out.

  CHAPTER 13

  It’s important to remember that the Cheerleaders weren’t some crazy fringe group. Literally everyone I knew supported segregation. Nearly every elected official in the state of Louisiana had marshaled all available power to block integration. In the months leading up to the beginning of the school year, the state legislature had passed more than two dozen new anti-integration laws. Governor Jimmie H. Davis himself swore he’d go to jail before he’d let Negro kids into a white school.

  To my mind it seemed as if the only white person in the entire state of Louisiana who supported school integration was U.S. District Court Judge J. Skelly Wright. I heard Judge Wright called every nasty name in the book, from “nigger lover” to “Communist spy” to plain old “nut job.” Kids in the neighborhood referred to him as “Go-to-Helly Wright” or “Old Smelly Skelly” or simply “Judge Skelly Wrong.” Whatever he was, Judge Wright seemed to be determined as a mule to let school integration proceed.

  Since every single white parent had pulled their children out of my school, Ruby Bridges was the sole student in the building at the beginning. Eventually a few white parents broke the boycott, but in those first few months it was never more than a handful. And no one ever dared to join Ruby Bridges’s class. She was taught by a single teacher all by herself for the entire year. None of the regular teachers at Frantz would go near her, so Ruby was assigned to someone new to the school system who was an outsider. Rumor had it that the teacher herself was a Northern agitator, specifically planted by the N.A.A.C.P. I heard some of the ladies gossip that this teacher was everything from a Communist to a beatnik to a nymphomaniac who specifically liked to have sexual relations with black men.

  Since November, big crowds had gathered in front of the building two times a day every week-day—once in the morning when school began and once in the afternoon when school let out. Typically, the crowd in front of the school consisted of the following groups in varying numbers.

  The Cheerleaders

  Rednecks and good old boys (like Royce Burke)

  Local police officers

  FBI agents

  Journalists

  High school boys

  Random spectators

  Neighborhood kids

  I rode my bike down North Galvez, and the crowd grew thicker and thicker as I neared the school. I arrived on the scene just before eight thirty A.M. and stowed my bike between two parked cars near the corner of Alvar Street. I scanned the crowd and breathed a small sigh of relief when I didn’t spot Morgan or his Chevy Bel Air anywhere in the vicinity. I passed along the fringes of the crowd, careful to go unnoticed.

  Right away I could tell that the CBS television crew had not shown up, because my mother stood toward the back of the group of Cheerleaders, smoking a cigarette with her friend Nitty Babcock. Approximately thirty ladies gathered that day, and no one jockeyed to be at the front of the pack.

  Royce Burke and a few of his friends leaned against a pickup truck nearby, eyeballing everyth
ing that went on. There was a tremendous amount of eyeballing going on at all times. Whenever an unfamiliar face or vehicle arrived on the scene, everyone took note. FBI agents milled around in their sharp blue or gray suits, taking down license plate numbers and descriptions of suspicious-looking characters in little black notebooks. I wasn’t the only one in my neighborhood who kept a Spy Log.

  The Cheerleaders always gathered at the same spot on the sidewalk beside the school’s main entrance. John Steinbeck later described them as a pack of satanic dogs. But the truth is they were not dogs, satanic or otherwise. They were just a normal-looking bunch of ladies. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think they were gathered for a church bake sale or a PTA meeting. A couple of them might be described as naturally mean-looking. Bea Williams had deep lines in her forehead and down the side of her cheeks, which made her look cross all the time, and Jeanette LeFevre had a pinched face and a shrill voice. But other than those two they were an extremely average-looking bunch, except for my mother, who most people said was beautiful.

  Most of the Cheerleaders dressed plainly compared to my mother, but almost all of them dressed decently. There were a few housecoats in the group, and several wore their hair in curlers under head kerchiefs in the morning (something my mother would never do in public). Some commentators noted that the fact that they wore their hair in curlers was a sign the Cheerleaders were low class. In truth, no one in the Ninth Ward could really be described as high class, and it was probably unfair to criticize them for wearing curlers in the early morning. Many of the ladies worked at jobs, so they didn’t have much time to take care of themselves before they had to stage their daily protest. When else could they curl their hair?

  Several women held signs on wooden sticks that read WE WANT SEGREGATION, GOD BLESS JIMMIE DAVIS, and READ YOUR BIBLE—INTEGRATION IS WRONG! Others carried light wooden crosses or small Confederate battle flags. Bea Williams frequently brought a Negro baby doll in a tiny wooden coffin that she’d prop up on the sidewalk so Ruby Bridges could see it as she walked up.