by Robin Talley
She sits across from me on the bed and squeezes the bedspread in her fist. “That Sharon Whitson has some nerve.”
I sink back into my pillow. “It didn’t work?”
Mom shakes her head. “Maybe there’s still time to get you into a different class.”
My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it. “I can’t. She’s the only French teacher at Jefferson. Maybe I’ll just skip the project.”
Mom touches her hand to her forehead. “Apparently this is your main project for the year. If you don’t do it, you won’t pass the class.”
Maybe I could fail French this year. I don’t need it to graduate. And it isn’t as if I’m going to college.
But that’s silly. I’m not going to fail a class over some foolish colored girl.
But if Daddy—
“We can’t let your father find out,” Mom says. “Or anyone else in town. Can you meet with this Negro, this Sarah Dunbar, in private, somewhere you won’t be seen?”
“Yes. I’ll think of something.”
Mom puts her hand on mine and smiles. I try to smile back at her.
Then the front door slams in the hall.
We both stiffen and close our eyes. After a moment, we get up, smooth our skirts and go down the hall, not looking at each other.
Daddy doesn’t look at us, either. Instead he sets his briefcase down by the front door and walks straight past us toward the dining room. The way he always does.
When I was little I used to watch Daddy’s eyes when he came home at night to see if it had been a good day or a bad day. If his eyes were heavy with dark circles I knew to stay out of his way. If they were crinkled with the beginnings of a smile, I’d smile back. Then, if I was lucky, he’d pick me up and swing me around and call me his darling girl. I used to live for nights like that.
I never bother to look at Daddy’s eyes anymore. All I see now is the shiny bald patch under his thin red hair as he walks away from me. I inherited that thin red hair, and the freckles that came with it. I’d give it all back if I could.
Mom follows Daddy down the hall, going to the cabinet to pour them both a drink.
He doesn’t say a word to me. He’s not going to, either.
He won’t ask me any questions. He never does. He never even glances my way. He’s barely looked at me since I was eleven years old. When Daddy decided I was a waste of a daughter. I’m invisible to him now.
Maybe keeping this secret will be easier than I thought.
* * *
“Did you hear what Bo and the boys did at lunch?” Donna says. We’re in Home Ec, rolling out pizza dough and sneaking bites of cheese out of the bowl when Mrs. Brown isn’t looking.
“What did they do?” I ask.
Donna drops her voice. “Snuck up behind the colored seniors’ table and spit in their food.”
I sigh. When we were younger we used to think Bo and Eddie and their gang of friends were funny. Then we got older and more mature, and they stayed exactly the same.
“They said it was because of prom. You know, to get back at them.” Donna passes me a chunk of mozzarella. The cafeteria food is terrible. We always snack in Home Ec to get us through the day.
I wonder if the colored people really minded having their food spit on. They couldn’t have wanted to eat it anyway. They might have just as well said thank-you to Bo and Eddie and the other boys. That’s what I’d have done if it were me.
“As if that’s going to do any good,” I say. “If they want prom back, they need to go to court and file another petition. If we can keep the colored people out of our school altogether our parents won’t have to worry about the prom being integrated.”
“Yes, that does make more sense,” Donna says.
“It would be even better if the school board would stop dragging their feet on the Davisburg Academy,” I go on. “Then we could have all the proms we wanted.”
“When’s it supposed to open?” Donna asks.
“Soon. In the next month or so.”
Ever since the NAACP’s lawsuit started picking up speed, Daddy and the other parents have been talking about opening the Davisburg Academy, a private school where we won’t have to listen to the Supreme Court or other agitators in the federal government. I heard Daddy tell one of his friends at church that he’ll transfer me there the first day it opens, even though I only have a few months of high school left. Daddy said it’s the principle of the thing.
They’d planned to open the academy before the final court rulings came down, but it’s taking longer than they thought. They’ve already borrowed a spare building from the school board and they’ve got money from the state to pay part of the teachers’ salaries, but they still have to raise money to pay the rest of the costs. Daddy complained to his friend about that, too. He said if the teachers were true segregationists they’d be willing to take a salary cut if that was what it took.
“You always know so much about these things,” Donna says. “Do you talk with your father about it a lot?”
The only time Daddy talks to me is to deliver an order. Or a lecture. But I tell Donna, “We get advance copies of the paper every day. We always know the news first.”
Donna nods. She reaches for the tomato sauce. “Were you going to prom with Coach Pollard?”
“Yes.” I swallow.
“I was hoping Leonard might ask me. I think he’ll probably take me to a movie that night instead but it isn’t the same, you know? Oh, did you hear what happened to Joanie Williams’s car this morning?”
I nod. All last year, when people were saying the courts were going to integrate Jefferson any day, Joanie kept talking about how nice she’d be to the colored people when they came, and how she’d set a good example for everyone else to follow. So on Monday, Joanie went up to one of the colored boys at lunch. She tried to talk to him as if he were any other boy she’d run into in the cafeteria. The boy hadn’t wanted to talk to her, though. He’d left the first chance he got.
Ever since, people have been shouting “nigger-lover” at Joanie in the halls. This morning a gang of freshmen brought eggs to school and threw them at her mother’s car when she pulled up to drop Joanie off. Joanie hasn’t talked to any colored people since that first day, and now she never will.
“Joanie’s a Quaker,” I tell Donna. “What did you expect?”
“You’re right, of course.” Donna nods. “Hey, do you think the colored people will be allowed at graduation?”
It’s been four whole days since the colored people got here. Why do we always have to talk about them? Doesn’t anyone at this school think about anything else?
“I suppose so,” I say. “Three of them are seniors.”
“Oh, that’s right. The senior girl is in my History class. Did you hear what happened with her?”
I shake my head, but I listen with interest. She’s got to be talking about Sarah Dunbar.
“On Tuesday we were talking about the slave trade out of Africa,” Donna says, “and Mrs. Johnson said that girl would’ve gone for a good price as a house slave. Because she’s lighter-skinned than the others, you know, and her face is pretty. The boys were saying some things after that, I’ll tell you. I heard some of them even followed her out in the hall afterward. Do you think her skin is really that light? All of them look the same color to me.”
“Mrs. Johnson said that?” I say. “Really?”
“Yes. Why?”
I shrug. I don’t want to tell Donna, but it doesn’t seem right for a teacher to single out a student like that. How would it feel if a teacher said that about me? I shiver.
“Well it makes sense, doesn’t it?” Donna goes on. “It was a lesson about the slave trade, and here’s a former slave sitting right there. Might as well use it for the lesson.”
It does
make sense, but I wonder if Mrs. Johnson knew how the boys would act after she’d said something like that. And I wonder if it has anything to do with how strange Sarah was acting in the bathroom that day. “Did Sarah say anything about it?”
“Who?”
“The colored girl.”
“Oh, is that her name? No, she didn’t say anything. She sat straight up and looked at the chalkboard the whole time. You wouldn’t have known she even heard. Do you think their hearing is different from ours?”
I’m surprised Mrs. Johnson said anything about Sarah. Daddy said the teachers were all being very careful with what they said to the colored people because they were afraid they’d be hauled into court. He said that was why more teachers weren’t speaking out against integration. Most of my teachers just pretend the colored students aren’t there.
Donna and I slide our pizza into the oven with the others and sit down to listen to Mrs. Brown’s lecture. Today it’s Foods of Italy. I doodle in my notebook instead of taking notes on the different types of grapes. It’s hard to focus on classes now. School is almost over and I’ve got my real life ahead of me.
Graduation is June 15. Sometime after that will be the wedding. We haven’t set a date yet because Jack says we can’t get officially engaged until I’m out of school. I don’t see why it matters so much. I’m eighteen, and so many people already know about me and him. Jack says some people won’t think it’s right, since he’s older than me. My parents, for one. The head coach, for another. And that’s important, since the head coach is sort of Jack’s boss. Jack was the star quarterback of the football team when he was in school, and now he helps out as a part-time assistant coach. He’s also the assistant manager at Kiskiack Lake. Last summer he always made sure my friends and I got free French fries at the concession stand. Then he’d kiss me out under the pier where the others couldn’t see.
Jack’s never tried to do more than kiss. I used to think that meant he didn’t like me, because every other boy I’ve gone out with tried for as much as he could get. One day when we were out on a drive, I was upset enough that Jack finally asked me what was wrong, so I told him. He said it wasn’t about that at all. He said it was about respect. He said he didn’t want to treat me like he’d treated girls when he was younger. He wanted to treat me like someone special. Like his future wife.
That was the day he gave me his fraternity pin from the year he was in college. He said that pin meant we were engaged to be engaged. He said as soon as I graduated he’d give me a ring instead.
I’ve worn that pin on my collar every day since. I’ll wear it forever. Even once I have a ring. That pin means I belong to someone. It means I don’t have to live this way forever.
But I don’t see why we can’t just tell everyone. Jack’s not that much older than me, after all, but he says all the same, we can’t do anything that might put his work at the school in jeopardy. He wants to be head coach at Jefferson one day.
Mrs. Brown is standing over me. I slap my arm down over where I’ve been doodling “Mrs. John Pollard” in the margins of my notebook.
“Linda,” she says. I look up at her, pasting on a polite smile. “What city is most known for risotto?”
“Venice, ma’am.”
Mrs. Brown nods and steps away to scare someone else.
After class we see one of the colored boys in the hall. It’s the good-looking senior who’s in Math with me. His name is Charlie, I think, or maybe Chuck. Donna and I give him as wide a berth as we can, which isn’t hard because Bo and his gang have him surrounded. They shout names at him the whole way down the hall. The colored boy’s shoulders are clenched and he’s biting his lip.
“I heard a rumor about that one,” Donna whispers once he’s gone. “I heard somebody saw him parked beside the road up to Kiskiack last night. With Kathy Shepard.”
I shake my head. “People always say such nasty things about girls like that.”
Kathy Shepard has never been bright, but even she’d know better than to get mixed up with a colored boy. If her father found out he’d send her off to her grandparents’ farm in the country for sure. And who even knows what would happen to the boy.
“Well.” Donna doesn’t like to argue with me. Most of my friends don’t. So she changes the subject. “Are you coming to Deltas after school?”
Our girls’ charity group, the Deltas, meets once a week to do service projects and plan fund-raisers. Jefferson is the biggest high school around here, so it has a bunch of Tri-Hi-Y social clubs for girls, but everyone knows Delta is the best, with the prettiest, most popular members. Even though Alpha thinks they’re the best just because they’re listed first alphabetically in the yearbook.
Today we’re putting together gift baskets for the patients down at the hospital. Nancy, Brenda and I went shopping last weekend for the candy, paperback books and cigarettes. Today we’re putting them in baskets and tying them with pretty bows and writing note cards with little “get well soon” poems.
“Yes,” I say. “I have to go to the Clarion office, too. I’m writing an editorial for next week. I’ll have to leave early, though. I’m working on a French project with Judy.”
I don’t tell her I’m working with the colored girl, too. No one is going to find out about that if I can help it. Except Judy, but Judy can keep a secret. That’s why we’ve been friends for so long.
When I leave the school newspaper office that afternoon I don’t tell the others where I’m going. And during the walk to Bailey’s Drugstore I look over my shoulder every few minutes.
It’s not as if there’s anything wrong with going to Bailey’s. Everyone goes there after school, and on Friday and Saturday nights after the game or the movies. It’s part of what’s fun about living in a town like Davisburg. You can always count on seeing everyone you know at the same places all the time.
No one ever stays at Bailey’s longer than an hour or so in the afternoons. At four o’clock on a school day it’ll be empty except for Judy, who works behind the lunch counter. Sarah Dunbar will meet us there. We couldn’t think of anywhere else to meet, since none of us wants to be seen together.
I’ve been trying not to think about what Daddy would say if he knew. He’d pull me out of Jefferson for sure. He didn’t want me to come back here this year in the first place. He wanted to keep me out of school until the Davisburg Academy was open. I begged Mom to let me come back, though, and she talked Daddy into it somehow.
I was afraid the academy wouldn’t open before the end of the school year. Then I’d have to wait a whole other year before I could graduate and get married. And I couldn’t stand another year in that house with Daddy.
Jack’s apartment is in Fairland Park. It’s not as nice as where I live in Ridgewood, but Mom says Fairland Park is good enough for a young married couple, and at least it’s not New Town. I haven’t been inside the apartment yet, but it’s pretty from the outside. Jack said he’ll let me pick out new curtains and things after the wedding, provided I don’t spend too much.
Sure enough, Bailey’s is almost empty when I push open the front door. An hour ago the store and the lunch counter would’ve been teeming with kids from school, flirting in the merchandise aisles and belching over milk shakes, but not a single person is shopping now. At the checkout counter at the back of the store the cashier, old Mr. Fairfax, is dozing behind the register. The coffee-stained lunch counter at the front of the store with its neat row of stools and dimly lit booths is deserted.
On the other side of the counter Judy is pulling her dirty gray apron over her head. Standing at the counter’s edge—she wouldn’t have been allowed to sit on a stool, of course—is Sarah Dunbar.
The colored girl looks me up and down. For a second I wonder if she’s jealous of my new green angora sweater. I’d thought it was too tight, but when I wore it to school today, four different girls to
ld me they wanted to get one just like it.
Then Sarah scowls at me. I scowl back before I remember I’m supposed to ignore her.
Judy leads us into the back room, where she takes her afternoon breaks. It’s a big closet full of cleaning equipment and food containers, lit by a single lightbulb dangling from a cord in the ceiling. There are no chairs, only boxes and crates.
I enter the room last and sit on the crate farthest away from Sarah. I might have no choice but to spend time with a colored girl, but I don’t want her thinking I like it.
Judy’s hands tremble as she lights her cigarette. She offers me one. I shake my head. She starts to put the pack back in her pocket, hesitates, then holds it out to Sarah. Sarah recoils as if the cigarettes might bite her. Judy’s shaking so hard she drops them. I scoop up the pack, pass it to Judy and say, “Let’s get started. We should pick French opera for our topic. My mother has a lot of old magazines I can bring in. Judy, what about you?”
Our assignment is to make a book using typing paper and pictures cut out of magazines about a particular theme—Miss Whitson suggested “scenes of the Riviera” or “French music and cuisine”—and write a story in French to go with the photos.
“What about me?” Judy says, her forehead wrinkling.
“Do you have magazines at home you can bring in?” I ask her. “Anything with pictures that might look French?”
Judy frowns. “My grandmother used to bring me her old Reader’s Digests, but I don’t think they’ve got many—”
“I have a lot of magazines,” Sarah interrupts. “My mother never throws anything away, and my sister’s been getting Seventeen since junior high.”
I glare at her. Then I turn back to Judy. “We should start by deciding on a title.”
“Oh,” Judy says. “Well, um—”
“Maybe the title of a famous French opera,” I suggest.
“Um.” Judy looks helplessly from me to Sarah.
I try to think of a French opera, but now that I’ve suggested it I can only think of Italian ones. I’m about to make an excuse for why an opera title isn’t a good name anyway when Sarah interrupts.