Yankee Girl

by Mary Ann Rodman

  I punched the soap dispenser for a dribble of the green Lysol-smelling goo. Two girls from 6A strolled in just as Valerie came out of the toilet stall.

  “Karla, look who’s here,” smirked the taller girl. “Miss Martin Luther Coon.” She backed Valerie into a corner where the sink pipes met the water heater.

  “I’m still hungry,” said Karla. “I feel like some barbecue. Barbecued coon.” She grabbed Valerie’s wrist and forced it towards the pipes.

  “Hey, you can’t do that,” I yelled without thinking.

  “Says who?” said the tall girl. “You?” She spat out “you” like a bad taste in her mouth.

  The rest-room door banged open. Mary Martha.

  “Y’all get out of here before I write you up for talking,” Mary Martha said, hands on hips, looking official.

  The girls let Valerie go and slunk out, muttering about rat finks and snitches. Valerie smoothed her bangs, fluffed her ponytail, and left without looking at me or Mary Martha. Valerie Taylor was one cool customer.

  Me, I was shaking all over.

  “Thanks, Mary Martha,” I said on our way back to class.

  Mary Martha gazed at me, eyes clear and blue as a gas flame.

  “The only reason I didn’t write you up is you’re new. I’ll do it next time.”

  “Me? Who you need to write up are those two girls.”

  “Why?”

  “They were trying to burn Valerie on the water pipes.”

  Mary Martha narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “But you said you heard them,” I sputtered.

  “But I didn’t see anything. It’s your word against theirs.” Mary Martha opened the door to 6B, and we went in.

  All afternoon I tried to puzzle it out. I could be in trouble for talking in the bathroom, but not the girls who tried to burn Valerie?

  I still hadn’t figured it out by the time we filed to the coatroom before the closing bell.

  Valerie’s sweater was missing.

  “Has anyone seen Valerie’s sweater?” Miss Gruen’s mouth flattened in a tight line.

  The second hand on the wall clock whirred loudly in the silence.

  “No one leaves until we find Valerie’s sweater,” said Miss Gruen.

  Since half the class rode the bus, I figured Valerie’s sweater would turn up in pretty short order.

  It did.

  “Look what I found.” Debbie reached into the trash can under the pencil sharpener. Valerie’s maroon sweater, dripping pencil shavings and bits of paper, dangled from Debbie’s fingers. “Now, how did that get there?” She balled it up and threw it at Valerie.

  Valerie calmly peeled the sweater from her face and shook the pencil shavings off.

  Didn’t Miss Gruen see Debbie? No, she was erasing the blackboard. She thumped the eraser into the chalk rail and turned around. “Class, line up for dismissal.”

  We lined up. The kids next to Valerie shrank away again. We were through the door and down the hall before the bell stopped vibrating. Outside school, we scattered like a bag of dropped marbles.

  In all the commotion, I couldn’t tell who knocked Valerie’s books out of her arms. I did see Leland step on her sweater. On purpose.

  Valerie picked up her belongings for the second time that day, and made her way to the kerb where a white station wagon waited.

  “I reckon Parnell is good and integrated now,” Jeb said as we got on the bus.

  I wondered if it would still be integrated tomorrow. If I were Valerie, I wouldn’t come back.

  I could see that making friends with Valerie Taylor would take some doing.

  Chapter Five

  JACKSON DAILY JOURNAL, Monday, October 5, 1964

  FBI ARRESTS THREE WHITES IN HOME BOMBINGS

  Br-r-r-i-ing. The phone. I shot straight up in bed. I hated phone calls after bedtime. They always meant trouble. A bombing, a shooting, a church burning. Or just someone telling us to take our nigger-loving selves back to Chicago.

  Click. The light in my parents’ room. Daddy. Mumble-mumble on the phone, his last words, “I’ll be right there,” like always. Thump. His feet hit the floor. Closet door creaked open then shut.

  Daddy sock-footed down the hall. Clunk. He dropped his heavy-soled shoes by the back door to put them on. Back door rasped open and closed. Car door thunked shut. The Chrysler coughed, then whined into gear as it backed out of the carport.

  Go back to sleep.

  But I couldn’t. I clicked on my transistor to see how many far-off stations I could find. I got Cuba once. I think it was Cuba; the deejays jabbered in Spanish. I wished I were in Cuba, even if it was full of Communists. In Cuba, I wouldn’t have to worry about the Ku Klux Klan. Or the Cheerleaders. Or Valerie.

  Living in Mississippi was so confusing, it might as well have been Cuba. Even Mama and Daddy couldn’t figure things out. For the first time, they didn’t have all the answers.

  “I don’t know what ails these people,” Mama said at supper one night. “Have some meat loaf, Alice. And some string beans.”

  “Hmm?” Daddy helped himself to mashed potatoes and passed me the bowl.

  “The Negroes act so strange.” Mama handed Daddy the gravy boat.

  “How so?” Daddy ladled gravy over his potatoes.

  “For one thing, when I walk down the sidewalk, they jump out of my way like I’m the Queen of England.”

  “Happens to me, too,” said Daddy. “They’re used to letting white people pass by. I’ve had Negroes step into the gutter to let me by.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” said Mama. “It gives me the willies.”

  Daddy shook his head. “There’s some things laws can change. Years of being forced to bow and scrape to white people isn’t one of them.”

  “Another thing,” Mama went on. “When I speak to a Negro man, he looks at the ground. I like a person to look me in the eyes when I talk to them.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Daddy. “They’re afraid to speak to white women.”

  “More Southern stupidity.” Mama plopped mashed potatoes on her plate.

  “Not stupid at all,” said Daddy. “Negro men have been lynched for talking to white women. Or even looking at them. Remember Emmett Till?”

  “Who’s Emmett Till?” I asked.

  “A Negro boy from Chicago, not much older than you. He was lynched a few years back while he was visiting Mississippi. Supposedly, he whistled at a white woman. Didn’t matter whether he did or not. Somebody said he did. White men took him out in the country, beat him, shot him, and threw his body in the river.”

  “That’s terrible!” I put down my fork. “Did they catch those men? Was it the Klan?” I never thought about kids being killed by adults before.

  Mama glared at Daddy. “Let’s talk about more pleasant things, shall we?”

  Daddy cleared his throat. “So, Alice. How’s Valerie Taylor doing?”

  That was his idea of pleasant?

  “Okay, I guess.” I took a bite of meat loaf. “The kids are kind of mean to her. But she doesn’t act like it bugs her or anything.”

  Daddy gave me a long look over the top of his glasses. “Do you talk to Valerie?”

  “I don’t not talk to her,” I said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”

  Daddy slowly sliced his meat loaf. “I’ll have to think about that one.”

  “Well, it’s hard! If I talk to her, then nobody will talk to me. She doesn’t act like she wants to talk anyway.”

  “How can you tell?”

  I skated a string bean around with my fork. “It’s like she’s a robot or something. She stands up for the Pledge and sits down for the Lord’s Prayer and the rest of the time she stares at Miss Gruen.”

  “She’s probably scared to say anything. I’ll bet she’s waiting for someone to break the ice. You, for instance.”

  There were things that parents just didn’t get. Daddy would say that making friends with Valerie was the Right Thing to Do. There wa
s the Right Thing and the Wrong Thing. No in-betweens.

  “I’ll bet you two would have a lot in common if you sat down and talked,” Daddy went on.

  “Hmmm,” I mumbled into my milk.

  “Just give it a try,” he said. “I know you’ll do the Right Thing.”

  End of conversation, thank goodness.

  That night I dreamed that Valerie jumped off the sidewalk to let me by.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’m just the same as you. We have a lot in common.”

  But Valerie had turned into a Negro boy.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Emmett Till,” he said. “But you ought not to be talking to me, miss. Not where folks can see. It’s dangerous. For both of us.”

  Daddy was right about one thing. Valerie and I did have something in common. We were the most unpopular kids in the sixth grade.

  Everyone still called me Yankee Girl, except Jeb. He didn’t talk to me at all if his friends were around.

  “Nothing personal,” he reminded me. “You know how it is.”

  Yeah, I knew how it was and I hated it. I hated Parnell. They did dumb stuff we didn’t do in Chicago.

  Like folk dancing.

  On rainy days, we folk-danced in the auditorium instead of going outside for recess. There were lots of rainy days in October.

  Miss Gruen put on a scratchy record of some old geezer calling “The Paul Jones”.

  “All join hands and circle left,” hollered the caller.

  I took Andy’s sweaty hand, and turned towards a boy from 6A named Duane. He was picking his nose. Yech! I wasn’t about to take his hand. I grabbed his wrist and circled left.

  Valerie sat in the front row, reading a library book. No one would dance with her. For once, I envied her. I hated folk dancing.

  As much as I hated folk dancing, I hated lunch more.

  “It must be a hundred degrees in here,” griped Jeb as we stood in the lunch line. “Why don’t they open the windows?”

  “They are open,” I pointed out.

  “Then how come it smells like old sneakers?”

  “That’s lunch,” cracked Andy.

  It was Roast Beef Day. Stringy roast beef, covered by a brown gravy skin. I collected my food and sat down.

  Andy popped out his retainer and plunked it on his tray. Trying not to look at the pink plastic thing, I gulped down the least disgusting parts of lunch. Not a good idea. Because right after lunch was math. Math always made my stomach hurt.

  On this rainy afternoon, I stared at my New Directions in Math workbook, while Toad Woman croaked directions.

  “Put your workbook on my desk when you finish. Then you may have a free art period.”

  I tried to hurry through the assignment. The problems dissolved in a jumble of plus and minus signs, parentheses and brackets. The page became a grey smear with a hole erased in the middle.

  I rubbed my eyes and stared out the window at an oak tree. The wet leaves looked like big cornflakes as they slid to the ground. Soggy cornflakes. Lunch rumbled in my stomach.

  6B smelled even worse than the lunchroom. Leland never changed his shirt. Jeb was experimenting with his daddy’s cologne. Today he wore enough Old Spice to flatten an elephant.

  The smells. My stomach. I turned hot, then cold, followed by a sour taste in my mouth. I wobbled up to Miss Gruen’s desk.

  “I feel sick.” I hoped I’d throw up on her teacher’s edition of New Directions in Math. “Ma’am.”

  Miss Gruen peered over her steel-rimmed glasses. “You may go to the clinic in the office.”

  Ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung. Mrs. Messer, the school secretary, was running the ditto machine when I stumbled in. Usually, I loved the smell of ditto ink. Today, it was one smell too many.

  “You sick, hon?” She felt my forehead. “You don’t have a fever.” A whiff of her inky hands, and my stomach lurched. I moaned.

  “You going to throw up?” Mrs. Messer took a quick step back.

  “I don’t think so.” Now that her hands were out of nose range.

  “All right. But you can only stay a little while since you don’t have a fever.” She opened a door marked CLINIC and let me into a tiny closet of a room.

  I kicked off my shoes and flopped across the nearest cot. A fan ticked in the corner, putting me to sleep. I woke up when the door clicked open. Mrs. Messer and Valerie stood in the doorway.

  “There.” The secretary pointed to the other cot, her mouth crimped in a mean line. “You best not be faking, girl.” She left, thumping the door shut behind her.

  Valerie placed her loafers neatly beneath the cot and unfolded the blanket at the foot. She stretched out, pulling the blanket over her shoulders.

  At last, I could talk to Valerie without anyone knowing.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Valerie stared at the ceiling.

  I stared at it, too. Nothing up there except ceiling tile, the kind with little holes in it.

  “Lunch got me,” I said. “Did you eat the beef?”

  Cot springs squeaked as Valerie settled in.

  “It wasn’t just lunch,” I went on. “I hate math. My stomach gets all snarly. Do you like math?”

  A sound from the next cot. I turned on my side to look. Valerie stared straight up, big tears sliding towards her ears.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. “Want me to get Mrs. Messer?”

  “Leave me alone.” Valerie flounced over, turning her back to me.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “I don’t want to talk to you either. I wish I’d never heard of you or Parnell or Mississippi.” I turned my back on her. Even Valerie wouldn’t talk to me. Now my stomach really hurt.

  “Don’t talk to me,” said a blanket-muffled voice. “Just ’cause I go to school with white kids don’t mean I hafta talk to them. I never wanted to go to this sorry old school anyway.”

  “You didn’t?” This was news to me.

  “Shoot, no.” I heard Valerie punch her pillow a couple of times, then flop back down.

  “Then how come you’re here? I mean, if you’re not even going to try to be nice to white kids.”

  “Because my daddy said so. Didn’t even ask if I wanted to. It’s not fair.”

  “Me, too.” I sat up. “I mean, nobody asked me if I wanted to move down South.”

  Sca-reech sang the cot springs as Valerie sat up. She cleared her throat. “Daddy keeps saying stuff like ‘You’re making history. You’re blazing a trail for black children in years to come.’ I don’t give a horse’s patoot about history. Let them kids blaze their own trail.”

  “My folks say the same stuff,” I said. “‘You’re witnessing history.’ Who cares? I just want some friends.”

  “Parents!” Valerie honked into a hanky she pulled from her dress pocket.

  “Yeah.” I waited to see if Valerie would turn her back again. She didn’t. “So, if you hate it here so much, and you don’t even like white kids, why don’t you go back to your old school?”

  Valerie sighed so hard her shoulders hiked up to her ears. “Daddy says I have to be an example. That somebody has to go first and it might as well be Lucy and me.”

  “Is Lucy your sister? Is that the girl you eat with? How does she like it here?”

  “Yeah,” Valerie said. “She’s only a first grader. She doesn’t know how much fun school can be.”

  “Fun?” School?

  Valerie slid the cot pillow behind her back. “On rainy days, we danced in the lunchroom at recess.”

  “We do that here,” I reminded her.

  “That folk-dancing mess?” Valerie flapped her hand. “I mean real dancing, like the monkey and the twist.” She smiled, and I knew she was back in her old school, doing the twist.

  “Wish we did that,” I said. “I wish somebody would step on that old Paul Jones record.”

  Valerie giggled. “You aren’t very good.” Her eyes twinkled, winter-sky coldness gone.

  “Don’t remind me.”
I giggled, too. A warm, familiar feeling came over me. The feeling of making a new friend. “Hey, who do you like best? Paul or Ringo?” If she said Paul, we would be friends for ever.

  “Paul or Ringo who?” Valerie frowned.

  “You’re kidding, right? The Beatles? Everybody knows the Beatles.”

  Valerie didn’t. Her eyes were question marks.

  “They’re a rock-and-roll band. They were on The Ed Sullivan Show?” I kept trying. “They sing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’?”

  “Oh, them!” Valerie shrugged. “They sing okay for white boys, I guess.”

  Was she kidding? White boys? Jeb and Andy were white boys! “Well, when you danced at your old school, whose records did you bring?”

  Valerie hugged her knees. “The Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations.”

  “Gee, I’ve never heard of any of them.”

  “Everybody’s heard of the Supremes.” Valerie sounded real sure of herself. “You know that song ‘Where Did Our Love Go’?”

  “Oh yeah.” Now I remembered. “That was number one last summer in Chicago. But I haven’t heard them since I moved down here. Did they make another record?”

  “Are you kidding?” It was Valerie’s turn to sound surprised. “What radio station do you listen to?”

  “Rebel Radio.”

  “Oh.” Valerie smiled and leaned across the space between the cots. “That’s a white station. They don’t play Negro music. Everybody I know listens to WOKJ.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” I said. Something still bugged me, though. “Why don’t you tell your daddy you want to go back to your old school?”

  Valerie’s smile vanished. “Can’t disappoint my daddy. I wish somebody else would do the integrating. I just want my friends back.”

  “Aren’t they still your friends? You probably don’t see them as much…”

  “I don’t see them at all.” Valerie bit her lip. “They think I’ve got the big head, going to a white school. Think I want to be white.” She sighed. “They say it’s dangerous to come over to my house.”

  “Why? You got alligators in your yard or something?” I tried to make Valerie smile again, but she wasn’t in a smiling mood.