One Night in Georgia

by Celeste O. Norfleet

He shook his head. “I was in World War Two. Them colored boys with the 332nd and the 477th saved my ass over there. You colored people are all right with me. If it weren’t for them boys, I wouldn’t have gotten back here and my two kids wouldn’t have been born. A lot of fine fighters died with their stupid prejudice, but not me. Them colored fighters saved the day many a time. And I’ll be forever grateful. So thank you. And you thank them colored boys down there too.”

  “Yes, sir, we sure will,” Daniel said dutifully.

  The sheriff stood and headed back into the kitchen, and after we finished eating, we went to the counter to pay. On our way, the four men said something derogatory about us. “Y’all shut the shit up,” the sheriff said.

  We asked for our check. “Oh, my daddy already took care of that, and he said to make sure you have cake for the road.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled. “I know you don’t know the men who saved my daddy’s life back in World War Two, but thank you for pretending. He’s grateful, and it makes him feel good.”

  Since the check was already paid, we left her a big tip. Tammy was thrilled. “Hey, Reggie, you see what they left us? We got ourselves a big fat tip. Y’all come back when you’re in the area. You’re always welcome here. Always,” she shouted. “Y’all boys see this?” she said to the four white men in the back. “This is what a tip looks like.”

  We paid for the gas and drove off. Two minutes down the road, Daniel said, “It’s a shame they don’t print The Negro Motorist Green Book anymore. That place would have been the perfect addition.”

  12

  WE WERE BREEZING THROUGH VIRGINIA AS DAPHNE, with map in hand, read out the cities and small towns we passed through. When we got to Richmond, we debated if we should stop at either Virginia Union University in Richmond or Virginia State University in Petersburg. We wound up not stopping at either. We didn’t stop at Norfolk State University or Hampton University either. We were soon to enter North Carolina and decided to stop since everybody needed to go to the bathroom. But trying to find a decent restroom was a problem. Every place we stopped, we were told that the bathrooms weren’t working. But we knew what was really going on.

  Yes, the Civil Rights Act had desegregated the South. We were now allowed to drink from all water fountains, sit anywhere we pleased to eat, and use any and all available bathrooms. So saying that the bathrooms were out of order when a black person asked to use them was the last recourse of the desperate racist. There was never an available bathroom except when a white person asked.

  “What about that one?” I asked.

  “Eww, no,” both Daphne and Veronica said.

  We drove a bit farther and came to a nice clean gas station. We pulled in and saw that the bathroom had a lock on the door. I went inside the gas station. There was a man behind a counter and two others sitting at one side of the room playing checkers. A dog was in the corner tied up and growling.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I said nicely. They glared at me, but no one responded. “I think we took a wrong turn. We’re trying to get back to the highway. And we need to use the restroom.” Still no reply. “Excuse me, may we have the key to the restroom?”

  “The bathroom ain’t working, gal. Now, git on outta here afore I sic my dog on you.”

  I nodded. “Do you know where I can find other accommodations?” I said contentiously.

  “I’m fixin’ to call the law. Now, you heard me. Git!”

  I left.

  “Hey,” one of the men playing checkers came outside after me and yelled, “Hey, what y’all coloreds doing with a fancy car like that? Y’all steal it?”

  “No,” I said over my shoulder.

  “You sassing me?”

  The other man who had been playing checkers came outside. “Dey stole dat dere car. Niggas always steal. Y’all know that. Dey’s probably some white man and his family lying in a ditch on the side of da road wid his head bashed in. Call the sheriff.”

  “We didn’t steal anything. It’s my friend’s car. We just needed directions and a bathroom.”

  The man behind the counter came out with the barking dog. He yelled, “I told y’alls to git outta here.”

  I hurried to the car and got inside. “Get in,” I shouted. Daphne quickly slid into the back seat with me, and Daniel sat in the front passenger seat. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” he asked, looking at me.

  “We have to get out of here. They’re crazy,” I said.

  “Let me just . . .” Daniel began, but before he could finish his sentence Veronica drove off fast. The man released the dog, and it ran after the car until he whistled for it.

  “What happened back there?” Daniel asked.

  “He threatened to call the sheriff if we didn’t leave.”

  “Assholes,” Veronica yelled.

  We drove farther down the road. “We should get back on the highway. I don’t like passing through these little towns anymore.”

  “Yeah, me either.”

  “Fine. Let’s find a restroom and get back on I-95.”

  Daphne opened the map, and we started checking the listings against the Green Book. We followed her directions and came across a dilapidated gas station. We saw men inside a small building. We didn’t say anything to them, and they didn’t say anything to us. We actually smelled the bathroom long before we saw it all the way in the back.

  There was only one dilapidated bathroom for both men and women, with the door nearly off its hinges. The old sign on the door read COLOREDS, with a rancid-looking water fountain beside it that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades.

  “You go first. I’ll wait out here,” Daniel said.

  We went inside and stopped in sheer horror.

  It was putrid and smelled like vomit and shit. It looked like someone purposely had thrown feces all over the walls and bathroom stalls. There were flies, maggots, and cockroaches crawling everywhere. I screamed and started jumping as a rat scurried by my foot. We ran outside holding on to each other.

  “What?” Daniel yelled. “What is it?”

  “Oh my God.” Daphne dry heaved.

  “God had nothing to do with that filth,” Veronica said.

  “Wait here,” Daniel said, moving to go inside.

  “No, let’s just go and get out of here,” I said while grabbing a bunch of tissues from my purse. “Here, use these the best you can and don’t sit down on the seat.”

  “Are you kidding? Hell no. I’m not going back in there,” Veronica screamed as Daphne vomited.

  I didn’t blame her. She was right. We held it and hurried back to the car. The men were outside laughing. We got out of there quick.

  “I can’t believe something like that still exists,” Veronica said.

  “They probably keep it looking like that just to mess with people,” I added.

  “Well, it worked,” Daphne said.

  “I’m sure there’s another bathroom. We can go back and I can . . .”

  “No, we’re not going back there.” Veronica reached over and turned on the radio.

  “This is such bullshit,” I shouted.

  “What?” Veronica asked.

  “This. That. Everything. Even this bullshit Beatles song ‘All You Need Is Love.’ Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”

  No one said anything after I raged. Then Daniel chuckled. We looked at him. He shrugged. “Well, at least it’s not Motown.” We all chuckled, even me.

  “Shouldn’t we ask for directions back to 95?” Daphne asked.

  “No, let’s just get out of here. Use the map. I’m sure we can find our way back to the highway,” I said.

  “How could anyone do something like that to a bathroom?” Veronica asked.

  “Because they’re sick and nasty. Think of the deranged mind that actually thought to do something like that. It’s revolting.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Daphne kept saying.

  “I can’
t believe black people actually live like this,” Veronica said.

  “They don’t have a choice. This is all some people know,” Daniel said.

  “No. I refuse to believe that. There’s more—they have to see that—on television, on the radio, in magazines. There’s so much more, but they need to want more,” I said.

  “It’s hard to want more when someone has their foot on your throat. You heard those men in the gas station back there. Imagine living with that day in and day out, all your life, from childhood to the grave,” Daniel said.

  “I guess after a while you just become what they call you, a second-class citizen.”

  “Times are never going change,” I said.

  “They have to. The future has to be better,” Veronica said. “There’s no going back the other way. And I can’t see this nastiness lasting into the next generation or the next century.”

  “Oh, it will last,” I assured her. “Didn’t you hear that little boy sitting at the counter with his mother? They learn to hate young and are rewarded for it. You heard those old men laughing. Now that little boy thinks what he said was okay, but it’s not.”

  “So what then? Are we as a people supposed to voluntarily return to slavery just to appease a few bigots?” Veronica said.

  “No, we’re supposed to pray for them,” Daphne said.

  “No!” I shouted. “They think we’re fine as we are, in most cases ignorant of the possibilities just as long as we know our place. When is it ever going to be over? I’ll tell you when. When we stand up for ourselves. When we’re not taken for granted with doors slammed in our faces. We have to keep going and stop being stuck in the fear mentality, afraid to take even one step forward.”

  “No one can erase centuries of physical and mental slavery,” Daniel said.

  “No, but we can realize that racial prejudice is taught, passed down from generation to generation like slaves once were. My fear is that in times to come all this will fade into lore like it never even happened, but it did, it does. And if we don’t face our past, then we as a nation will surely repeat it.

  “We need to fight for our rights. We helped build the country, and we’re part of it. Our blood, more than any other race’s, soaks these grounds. This is our country too,” I said.

  Daphne started applauding. Veronica whooped and cheered. Daniel just nodded his head in agreement. “I can see you’re gonna follow your uncle into politics one day,” he said.

  “No way. I’m going to be a civil rights attorney.”

  “Yeah, you can be that, and just like your uncle you can go further and make a bigger difference in politics.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Shit!” Veronica said again as she looked in the rearview mirror. “I bet those nasty asses at that first gas station called the cops on us. There’s a patrol car driving fast right behind us.” She turned off the radio.

  “Shit.”

  “Pull over,” I said. “Maybe he just wants to pass.”

  “No,” Daphne said. “Remember what happened last time.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t have a choice this time.”

  We pulled over, and the patrol car pulled up right behind us.

  “Okay, just stay loose. We can get through this.”

  A uniformed officer, tall with thick muscles and a crew cut, got out the driver seat and banged on the hood of the patrol car. The passenger door instantly swung open, and a younger, heavier man in a uniform a size too small got out. He was burly and thick, and carrying his baton. They walked toward us slowly. The heavier cop moved to the passenger door, where I was sitting. The other cop, now noticeably much older, moved toward Veronica in the driver’s seat.

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Veronica said softly.

  “I know,” Daniel said.

  “I don’t think that really matters,” I muttered. We didn’t say anything else as they approached. We looked straight ahead and kept our hands visible.

  “What y’all think y’all doing speeding down the road like dat? See, I’m the sheriff and dis is my deputy, and we don’t like speeding in dis county.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Veronica said. “We won’t do it again.”

  The heavier man leaned down and got right near my face and snarled. “You bet your ass y’all ain’t doing it again,” he said with an exaggerated Southern drawl.

  The older man said nothing as he walked around the front of the car, nodding and smiling. Then he kicked the front tires and continued to the back of the car. I glanced in the rearview mirror as he rubbed his hand along the convertible top and smiled. “You ain’t from around here? Where you gals coming from?”

  “New York,” we all said at once.

  “And you, boy, where you from?”

  “I’m from Philadelphia.”

  “New York City and Philadelphia, huh. Big city coloreds. Well, New York City and Philadelphia, y’all is in Virginia now, and I don’t like people coming to my town tearing up my roads. Y’all understand dat? Gimme all your IDs and your car registration.”

  We handed them over. Veronica gave him her car registration. “We’re very sorry, sir,” she said again, even though she had been careful not to exceed the speed limit. But he paid more attention to the car than to us. Then he read through the ID cards.

  “Daniel, what’s this last name? Never mind. That’s you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Zelda Livingston.”

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said.

  “Zelda, what kind of god-awful name is dat? Must be one of dem African jungle monkey names,” he said, chuckling. The deputy stood beside me, laughing.

  I saw the muscle in Daniel’s jaw tighten. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything to defend me and make matters worse.

  “Veronica Keller Cook. Which one’s dat? You?” He pointed to Daphne, sitting in the back seat.

  “No, sir, that’s me,” Veronica said, raising her finger. “I’m—”

  “Don’t need no more out of you, just your names.”

  “And that would make you Daphne Brooks. Okay, Daphne Brooks, what’s a white woman doing riding in the back seat of a colored’s car?”

  “We’re going to college,” she said.

  “What college? Where at?”

  I answered.

  The sheriff looked at me harshly. “Am I talking to you? No, I don’t think I am. I’m talking to this pretty young lady over yere. Now, you shut your colored mouth or I’m gonna shut it for you. You understand dat?”

  I quickly nodded. I didn’t want to get us in any more trouble.

  “Now, what college and where?” he repeated.

  “We attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and Daniel goes to Morehouse College.”

  He looked at his deputy. “You heard of dem?” he asked.

  “Yeah, fancy, uppity schools that accept everybody, don’t matter what color you are.”

  “Figures.”

  “I bet that was the best you could do,” he said directly to Daphne. She didn’t reply. “Dat’s a damn shame.” He paused a few seconds to look at the car again. “All right, whose car is dis?”

  “Mine,” Veronica said.

  He looked at her driver’s license again. “Veronica Keller Cook. Dat you?” She nodded. “And dis your car?” She nodded again. “Where you git it? You steal dis car?”

  “No, sir. My father gave it to me for a graduation gift.”

  “So y’alls one of dose rich coloreds from up there in New York City. Good, ’cause your fine is gonna be a whopper.”

  The deputy started laughing hard. Then the sheriff laughed, too, taking another look at the car. “This a convertible, right?”

  “Yes,” Veronica said.

  “What year is dis?”

  “It’s a 1968.”

  “Nice, very nice. Looks like y’all gonna be needin’ gas. Got a brand spanking new convertible, and y’all just driving it around like y’
all own the world. Well, we’ll see about dat.”

  The sheriff reached into the car and removed the key from the ignition. He tossed it in the air, caught it, then smiled. “A 1968 and do I likes that color red.” He walked around the front of the car and motioned for his deputy to follow him. The deputy nodded the whole time they talked. They went back to the patrol car, continuing their discussion. The deputy came back to us, slapping the baton against his hand.

  “Y’all get out of the car and get in the patrol car.” We looked at him. “Come on, now. I don’t have all day. Move.”

  We slowly got out and walked to the patrol car. The sheriff opened the back door. Daphne, Veronica, and I got in. Daniel hesitated. The sheriff hit him on the side of his head with his baton. Then punched him in the face. The deputy stepped in and pushed Daniel into the car. He stumbled and fell to the car floor. We grabbed and held him. Daniel turned around and glared.

  “That there’s resisting arrest, Mr. Daniel Johnson going to Morehouse College,” the sheriff yelled. “Now, y’all wanna add assaulting a deputy of the law, go on, say something back to me.”

  He didn’t.

  Daniel sat next to me and I held his hand tightly. We sat there a few minutes while the lawmen reconvened. After a short while the deputy came over and got into the patrol car. “I’m gonna take you all into town. I don’t want no trouble, you understand me?” he said loudly.

  As soon as he drove off he looked up in the rearview mirror and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “You all walked into a heap of trouble.” He shook his head. “He’s gonna keep dat der pretty red car for hisself. After you all is locked up, the car will be his. Listen to me, and I’m a-get you all out of here. But you keep your mouths shut and get out of town, and don’t stop till you all get to Georgia.”

  We were silent. We didn’t know if we could trust him.

  He drove us to a small town. The people there stared and pointed. He took us into the tiny sheriff’s office and told us to sit down. We sat.

  “I don’t know how I’m gonna do it yet, but I swear, I’m a-gonna get y’all out of here ’fore sunset.”

  We stared at him blankly.

  “Sir,” I said, “do you have a bathroom we can use?”