by Robin Talley
When they get to the M’s, when Ennis should be called, the teachers skip over him, too. The same thing happens with Chuck when they get to the T’s.
Maybe this was all a big mistake.
We were told we’d been admitted to the school, and that we should come in today along with the white people, but maybe the courts have issued a new ruling. Maybe the police will troop in to pull us out of here. The white people will line the halls and cheer as we’re escorted from the building.
The auditorium is almost empty now. Somehow it’s scarier seeing just a few angry white faces staring us down instead of a hundred. If they got one of us alone they could do anything they wanted and it would be their word against ours.
Finally the last name, Susan Young, is called. Mr. Lewis gives Susan her schedule. Once her back is turned he comes over to stand in front of Ennis, Chuck and me.
The rest of the teachers have left. Mr. Lewis leans back and rests his elbow on the stage, looking us over.
My heartbeat speeds up. Mr. Lewis is a teacher, but that doesn’t mean he supports integration. Would he do something to us if it meant risking his job? Not that anyone would believe three colored children telling stories about a grown white man.
Then Mr. Lewis smiles.
I tilt my head, confused. It looks like a real smile, not a sneer.
“Hello,” he says. “Welcome to Jefferson High School.”
Is this a trick? Next to me, Chuck shifts in his seat. There’s suspicion in his eyes.
Mr. Lewis looks at each of us in turn, still smiling. “I’m told you three will be the first Negroes to graduate from a white school in Davisburg County. All I can say is, it’s about time.”
Oh.
It’s the first kind thing anyone has said to us.
I try to smile back at Mr. Lewis. Mama would want me to be polite.
“Let’s get you some schedules.” Mr. Lewis pulls three rumpled papers from his pocket. “Sorry we didn’t have them with the others. Apparently someone in the office didn’t think you’d be here today, so your schedules had to be assembled rather hastily.”
He chuckles. I don’t. We might very well not have been here today. Some of the white parents tried to file an emergency petition at the courthouse just yesterday to stop us from getting into Jefferson.
The white parents, and the school board, and Senator Byrd and Governor Almond fought this with everything they had. It’s been five years since the Supreme Court said integration had to happen, but for five years, the white people kept fighting, and our schools stayed segregated. Until last week, when the courts put out their final ruling: the white parents, and the governor and the rest of the segregationists had lost.
Here we are. Whether they like it or not.
Whether we like it or not, too.
“Miss Dunbar.” Mr. Lewis hands me a paper.
No one ever calls me “Miss.” Usually it’s just “Sarah.” Or, if it’s a white person talking, “Girl.”
He hands Chuck and Ennis their schedules, too. I try to read the scrawled handwriting on mine.
* * *
Typing? I took Typing at my old school. And I’ve already had two years of French. Plus there’s no music class on my schedule at all. At my old school, Johns High, I was going to take Advanced Music Performance this year.
“What do these R’s after the course names mean?” Chuck whispers. I look at his schedule. He has the same first-period Math class I do. Other than that, we don’t have any classes together.
I don’t know what the R’s mean, either. I want to ask Mr. Lewis, but Ennis is already standing up.
“Come on,” he says. “We don’t want to be late. Thank you, sir.”
“Go straight to your first-period classes,” Mr. Lewis says. “There’s no Homeroom today. Good luck.”
Good luck? I wonder if he’s joking.
We file out of the auditorium in silence. Someone has shut the doors, even though the assembly only just ended. Ennis pushes them open and steps out into the hall.
“There they are!” The cries are coming from all around us. At least a dozen boys are gathered, most in letterman’s sweaters. “There’s those coon diggers!”
“You have to go to the second floor?” Ennis mutters to me, not taking his eyes off the boys. They’re coming closer. They’re smiling.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Chuck does, too.”
“You go first, Sarah,” Chuck says. His voice is low and gravelly. “We’ll keep them from following you.”
“If we separate they’ll only split up and follow us all,” I whisper.
I wonder if Mr. Lewis knew this would happen. If that’s why he kept us late. I want to trust him, but it’s hard to trust anyone in this place.
“What’re you doin’ here, niggers?” one of the boys says. “You know you don’t belong in our school.”
“It’s our school, too,” Chuck says. “So what are you doing here?”
That sets the boys off. Two of them run at Chuck.
“Hey!” comes a loud voice behind us. Mr. Lewis. The boys stop in their tracks. “What’s this about?”
“That one started it,” one of the boys says, pointing at Chuck.
“He didn’t,” I say. “He wasn’t doing anything, he—”
Mr. Lewis raises his eyebrows at me. “Young lady, I think you and Mr. Mack had better get to class. Charles, Bo, Eddie, come with me.”
“But—”
Ennis takes my arm and pulls me away before I can finish.
“What will happen to Chuck?” I whisper when we’re far enough away. Behind us Mr. Lewis is leading Chuck and the two white boys who charged him toward the front office.
“Probably nothing,” Ennis says. “That teacher got there before anything happened. He’ll get a lecture, that’s all.”
“Will anything happen to the white boys?”
“No way.”
We’re walking up an empty staircase. Ennis is looking around in every direction, and I remember I’m supposed to do the same thing. We have to be extra alert in the stairwells. In Little Rock that’s where they set off the firecrackers.
“Keep an eye out for Ruth, will you?” I ask Ennis. “If you see her in the halls, make sure she’s all right?”
“I’ll try.”
Ennis leaves me at my classroom door, walking as fast as he can down the hall. I hope he doesn’t run into any other white boys.
I hadn’t thought much about Ennis before this morning. Chuck was in my group of friends back at Johns, but Ennis mostly kept to himself. After the way he helped Ruth in the parking lot, though, I’m going to be watching out for him, too.
The door to room 218 is closed. I’m scared to push it open, but if I don’t I’ll get a tardy slip. So I take a long breath, say a quick prayer and open the door.
Inside the room it’s dead silent. Then, as one, twenty heads jerk up. Twenty white faces gaze up at me. The door latches closed behind me like a gunshot.
I want to drop my eyes. Instead I look out into the sea of faces. Every one is looking back at me.
First come the stares.
Next, the pointing and the whispers.
Last, and most frightening, are the grins.
Lie #3
ALL THE GRINNERS are boys. They’re looking at me as if it’s Christmas morning and I’m the biggest present under the tree.
My legs are so weak I’m sure they’ll give way. I’ll wind up sprawled out across the floor on my backside while the white people laugh.
I keep my chin up as I move toward an empty seat in the front row.
“Who are you?” a woman asks. She’s tall, with gray-streaked hair, a sour look on her face and a stack of textbooks in her arms. She was the other teacher handing
out schedules in the auditorium. Mrs. Gruber.
We have to be polite to the teachers, no matter what. We can’t do anything they could discipline us for. Especially not today.
That’s easy for me. I’m always polite to adults. I don’t know how to be any other way.
“My name is Sarah Dunbar, ma’am. My schedule says room 218.”
Mrs. Gruber dumps the stack of books on an empty desk and snatches my schedule out of my hand. She frowns at it. “Did you write this yourself? How do I know you’re supposed to be here?”
After Mr. Lewis, I’d thought the teachers might be nice to us. I should’ve known better. Mr. Lewis is just one white man. This school has plenty more.
“No, ma’am, I didn’t write it,” I say. “Mr. Lewis gave it to me. He said the office had to write out our schedules by hand at the last minute.”
Mrs. Gruber gives the paper back to me. “That doesn’t give you an excuse to take until the last minute yourself. Maybe at your school students can show up for class whenever they please, but at Jefferson you get detention when you’re tardy.”
I bite my lip. Mama and Daddy will be so disappointed in me. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Gruber writes out a detention slip and thrusts it at me. “Take a seat.”
I go to the empty desk in the middle of the front row and put down my books. Before I can sit down, the white girl at the desk next to mine bolts out of her chair.
She’s moving so fast I don’t recognize her at first. She sweeps up her books and her coat and glides to an empty seat on the far side of the room. Her hips swing under her pleated skirt and her lips curl in a smile. Everyone is watching her. And she knows it.
It’s the red-haired girl from the auditorium. With the smattering of freckles across her nose and the bright look in her blue eyes.
She’s even prettier up close. Except for the hateful look on her face.
Her frizzy-haired friend is in the seat right behind mine. She has a heavy layer of makeup on one side of her face and a stricken look in her eyes.
Only when the boy in the seat on the other side of mine gets up to join the red-haired girl do I understand what’s going on.
Everyone sitting within two desks of mine is gone in seconds, scurrying to find other seats. Soon there aren’t any empty desks left except the ones near me. The extra white students perch on the radiator at the back.
Mrs. Gruber studies a pile of papers on her desk. To look at her, you’d never know students were running around as though the classroom were under siege.
The seat behind mine is the only one near me that’s still occupied. Everyone looks at the frizzy-haired girl.
The girl looks fast from side to side. She meets my eyes for a second. Then she cups her hand over her made-up cheek. The red-haired girl whispers, “Judy, come on.”
The frizzy-haired girl, Judy, jumps out of her seat, dropping her books in her haste. A few boys laugh as she kneels to gather them up. She goes to the back of the room and sits on the radiator with the others.
I keep my chin high. At least this way I won’t have to worry about anyone drilling pencils into my back.
Mrs. Gruber passes out our textbooks as though nothing happened, dropping mine onto my desk with a thud. She’s turning toward the blackboard when the door swings open.
Every head in the room jerks up again, mine included.
I should be glad to see Chuck standing there. Instead I wish he’d turn around and walk right back out. I don’t want to watch it happen all over again.
“What now?” Mrs. Gruber slams a textbook down.
“I’m sorry I’m late, ma’am,” Chuck says in his most polite teacher voice. “I’m Charles Tapscott. I was talking to Mr. Lewis in the office about—”
“Sit down.” Mrs. Gruber sighs and writes out another detention slip.
Chuck takes the empty seat next to me. Two boys sitting near him get up and join the others in the back of the room.
Chuck doesn’t ignore it the way I did, though. He turns to watch them walk away, his mouth open in an O.
One of the boys in the back of the class opens his mouth wide and makes a face just like Chuck’s. Then he squeals like a pig.
Everyone laughs. Mrs. Gruber acts like she didn’t notice that, either.
“Hey, this ain’t fair,” another boy says. “Why we gotta have two of ’em in our class? Like one coon’s not bad enough.”
Some of the others grumble in agreement.
“All right, everyone, settle down,” Mrs. Gruber says. She doesn’t even look at the boy who spoke. “Who doesn’t have a book yet?” Chuck and a few other people raise their hands.
I flip open my new textbook. I’ve always liked school. Adults always tell me I’m a bright girl with a good future ahead of me. If I can concentrate on my classwork maybe the white people’s antics won’t bother me so much.
As soon as I open the book I know something’s wrong.
I leaf through to the last chapter to make sure. There’s no doubt. I raise my hand. Then I put it down again. Mrs. Gruber isn’t going to want to help me.
But she saw. She comes to stand right in front of my desk and sighs again, loudly. “Did you want something?”
“No, I—” I start to falter, but I can’t show any weakness in front of these people. I meet Mrs. Gruber’s eyes. “I was curious as to the name of this course.”
One of the white boys laughs. “Nigger shows up, doesn’t even know what class she’s in!”
Another joins in. “Don’t you see the charts on the wall? Can’t you tell a Math class? Ain’t you ever seen numbers before, nigger?”
“As your schedule clearly states, this is Remedial Math 12,” Mrs. Gruber says. Then she turns her back.
“Remedial?” Oh. That’s what the R’s stood for. They were on almost every class on my schedule. Chuck’s, too. They’ve put us in the remedial track.
All the Negroes who came here were in the college prep courses back at Johns. That’s why they picked us to integrate Jefferson. We were supposed to be the best of the best. The kind of students who could handle the white school’s classes and still have enough smarts left over to put up with the rest of it.
I learned how to do the work in this textbook in ninth grade.
I wonder if they put us in these classes because they think we’re stupid or because they wanted to punish us for coming here in the first place. I wonder if my college will still let me in when they see those remedial classes on my transcript.
But I don’t have time to worry about that now. I have a bigger problem.
Everyone in this room heard what I said.
They know I think I’m too smart for Remedial. Smarter than they are.
I am smarter than they are, but that isn’t going to help me now.
The boys start in right away.
“The nigger thinks she’s a genius,” one says. “Look everybody, we’ve got Einstein in our class!”
“Hey, girl, if you too good for Remedial, how ’bout you put your smarts to use and come clean my house?”
“Hey, nigger, can you count this high? Two, four, six, eight, we don’t wanna integrate!”
Mrs. Gruber keeps her eyes on the chalkboard.
It goes on that way for the rest of the period. The boys leave us alone while Mrs. Gruber is talking, but as soon as she looks away they start in on me, and Chuck, too. Mrs. Gruber hears it, but she doesn’t say anything.
I keep looking straight ahead. At first I think I’ll get used to it. Instead, the longer it goes on, the more it stings.
“Those niggers need to be put in their place.”
“What’d they come here for? Don’t they know we don’t want to look at their ugly black faces?”
“I bet they got their nigger tai
ls tucked in under those clothes. Let’s rip ’em out.”
When the bell rings I want to charge out of the classroom. I want to put as much distance between myself and these people as I can.
There’s no use. The white people in the hall won’t be any better. It’ll be worse, in fact, because there will be more of them.
So Chuck and I gather our things and leave with everyone else, ignoring the pushing and shoving until we’re out in the hallway. There, the white people gather around us in a circle to shout names until we’ve separated and made our way to our next classes. Then they follow us down the hall, shouting at us, pushing us, stepping on our heels, jabbing elbows into our sides.
Not much changes the rest of the morning. In every class the students move away from my desk as soon as I sit down. My Typing and History teachers aren’t as bad as Mrs. Gruber, but neither of them makes any effort to make me feel welcome. I come to recognize the look in each of my teachers’ eyes when I walk through their classroom doors. The look that says they wish I’d turn around and walk right back out. I’m making their jobs harder just by being here.
Fourth-period French is different.
The students look the same as ever. Most of them have been in some of my classes already that day. The red-haired girl and her friend Judy are there, sitting on the far side of the room, scowling at me.
As I come in a boy yells, “Ain’t you heard? We don’t care what no nigger-loving judge has to say. We don’t believe in race mixing in this class. So you best turn around and run back to Africa.” The rest of the class move their seats away from mine.
I sit straight in my seat, blinking at the chalkboard, like always. It’s a lucky thing I’m good at pretending.
The teacher, Miss Whitson, comes in as the final bell rings. She stands in the doorway for a long minute, gazing around the classroom. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
She comes over to my desk and whispers, so low only I can hear, “What’s your name?”
“Sarah Dunbar,” I whisper back.
She makes a note on her roll and goes to the chalkboard. The room is still quiet. Everyone must already know you don’t mess around in Miss Whitson’s class.