Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  To our horror, a mob was waiting at the rear of the school too.

  ‘Traitors!’ they shouted at us, pelting the car with tomatoes and eggs and spitting at the windows. ‘Uptown bitches! We’re going to kill you along with the niggers you love so much!’

  They rocked the car violently and I feared for Elsie. I had promised to take care of her and was tempted to tell Kitty we’d better reverse and drive her home.

  But then Elsie looked at me with her big blue eyes. ‘I hope those angry ladies don’t make me late for class. I’ve missed out on going to school for two days already and I want to say hello to the little coloured girl.’

  After I’d told Clifford about Jackie Fausey’s behaviour with her daughter on Dryades Street, he’d commented that racism was a disease that adults passed on to their children. Now, little Elsie passed on her courage to me. I took her hand.

  ‘You ready?’ I asked her as a policeman opened the door for us. ‘You hold on tight to my hand and don’t let go!’

  The noise as we stepped out of the car was deafening. I shielded Elsie with my arm as people spat at us and threatened to do obscene things to us. It seemed to take forever to reach the school door while the policemen pushed back the crowd that was jostling and trying to grab us.

  When we finally got inside, we found the principal of the school waiting for us. I breathed a sigh of relief to be on friendly ground. But if I’d expected her to be pleased by our heroic effort, I was soon set straight.

  She pursed her lips and scowled. ‘Well, I hope you’re satisfied with yourself, you uppity do-gooder. Look at all the trouble you’ve caused!’

  I gripped Elsie’s hand tighter. Was I really going to leave her with this hard-lipped poor excuse for an educator?

  ‘We weren’t given enough time to prepare for this,’ the principal continued.

  For one tense moment, I thought she was going to send me and Elsie back out to face the mob. But then I had a sense that I was standing at a significant point in history: a time when some things were going to unravel and fall apart, while other things were going to crystallise. This school principal stood for the past, and Elsie stood for the future. I thought of Leroy and his family and steeled myself. Things were going to change whether the old guard liked it or not.

  ‘You’ve had plenty of time to prepare,’ I told the principal. ‘You just didn’t want to. Now tell me where Elsie’s classroom is and I’ll take her there myself.’

  Once Elsie was safely in her classroom, I went to leave the building through the rear entrance. But through the glass doors I saw that the crowd had grown larger and more volatile. The women were shouting obscenities worse than I’d heard the most uncouth prostitutes on Bourbon Street use. I spotted Kitty’s car. Policemen on motorcycles had surrounded it, but it was covered in smashed eggs and the back window was shattered.

  I moved to the building’s front entrance, but the crowd was even worse out there. How was I going to make it the short distance from the door to Kitty’s car? When I’d entered the school, I’d been focussed on Elsie’s safety. Now I had to worry about my own. I could see the principal watching me from her office, a spiteful smile on her lips.

  Then, by the grace of the good Lord himself, one of the marshals who had accompanied Ruby Nell Bridges into the building saw my dilemma. He took my arm and told me, ‘Look straight ahead. Whatever you do, don’t meet anyone’s eye. Act as if they aren’t there.’

  He opened the door and touched the gun in his holster. Please don’t let it come to that, I thought.

  At the sight of the marshal and me emerging from the building, the crowd erupted.

  ‘Kill the bitch!’ one woman shrieked.

  The policemen surrounded us as the crowd closed in. Although the officers pushed people back with their batons, the marshal and I were shoved and pushed as if we were caught in a riptide. I was terrified that we would become trapped. Someone tugged on my arm and I found myself facing Aunt Elva. She held up that awful casket but said nothing. She looked so demented, I wasn’t sure if she’d even recognised me.

  The marshal pushed her away and managed to get me to Kitty’s car in one piece. He opened the passenger door and shut it firmly after me. ‘Accompany these women,’ he told the motorcycle police.

  As Kitty moved the car forward, I gazed around us at the contorted faces chanting, ‘Burn the witches!’

  But Kitty was as cool as a cucumber. ‘We really stirred this lot up, didn’t we?’ she said, a triumphant smile on her face.

  Back at home in the Garden District, Kitty and I spent the rest of the day playing with Dale and Louise and listening to the news bulletins on the radio. The whole country had its eyes on New Orleans. The protests against integration weren’t only taking place outside the schools; violence was flaring up in the streets too. Shops in coloured neighbourhoods were being vandalised and Negroes were being beaten. Policemen on motorcycles and horseback were trying to keep the peace.

  ‘We look like a bunch of racist hicks,’ said Kitty, taking a sip of tea. ‘It will be bad for tourism. Hopefully that will bring the moderates out of hiding to prove that we’re not.’

  Louise said she was thirsty so I went to the kitchen to get her some orange juice. Mae and Philomena were in there listening to the radio. I took a jug of juice from the refrigerator and Mae opened the cupboard and handed me a cup to pour it into.

  ‘Is it true that you’ve been driving the white kids to school to help them integrate with the coloured kids?’ she asked me.

  I was sure that she was about to admonish me. Although I was a married woman and the mother of two children, I felt like a child again in her presence. Still, I couldn’t deny what I was doing. ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Those white folks are making a whole lot of trouble for you. You thinking of giving up?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, we aren’t going to give up, Mae. It’s hard, but if we give up now, we’ll always be giving in to those people. They’ll tire before we do.’

  She straightened and glanced at Philomena with a satisfied smile. ‘I knew you wouldn’t give up!’ she said, turning back to me. ‘You’re a fighter. Always have been and always will be.’ Then a gleam flashed in her eye. ‘I’m mighty proud of you, Mrs Ruby.’

  Since Mae had come to live in the Lalande household I’d noticed some changes in her. Clifford’s policy was to pay his coloured help the same wages he would if they were white and to treat them like professional service providers rather than servants. It seemed to me that Mae was bolder these days and not afraid to look a white person in the eye.

  ‘I’m proud of you too,’ I told her.

  Ned had cleaned out the glass from the car and covered the rear window in vinyl. ‘No use getting it fixed,’ said Kitty, when we were ready to leave to pick up Elsie and take her home. ‘They’ll only smash it again.’

  I’d hoped that the crowds would have died down but they’d grown. Several television crews were there too, as well as vendors selling coffee and ice cream. I grimaced at the White Mothers Only signs on their trucks.

  ‘It’s like a circus,’ I told Kitty, who was following the directions of the policemen to the rear of the school. ‘One big grotesque circus.’

  Because the other women volunteers from the Urban League were already in the school building when I arrived, we decided to walk out with the children as a group. The tactic worked better at keeping the crowd at bay, and although their language was so disgusting I had to cover Elsie’s ears, we made it to our cars without incident.

  As Kitty set off, I studied our little charge. Elsie’s feet didn’t touch the floor of the car and she used her hands to shift herself on the seat so she could lean against me. People glared at us through the windows and shook their fists at us. I was sure that the crowd’s behaviour would have upset her so much that she wouldn’t want to return to school the following day, but when I asked her about it she looked at me with wide eyes.

  ‘Of course
I’m coming tomorrow! School must be very important if all these people are trying to stop us getting here.’

  Kitty glanced over her shoulder and we exchanged a smile. ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ she said.

  The police had cordoned off Elsie’s street and had to move a barricade to let us through. When we reached the house, some neighbours were gathered on the pavement outside.

  ‘I’d better stay with the car,’ Kitty told me. ‘Somebody might slash the tyres otherwise.’

  When Elsie and I got out, I braced myself for more abuse. But the bystanders said nothing, they only stared. In many ways the silence was more unnerving.

  I walked Elsie to her house, but before I had a chance to press the bell, the door swung open and I found myself face to face with a heavy-set man wearing blue overalls and a none-too-pleased expression.

  ‘Pa!’ Elsie cried. ‘Let me tell you all about today!’

  ‘Later, Elsie,’ he said to her. ‘This lady and I have something to discuss first.’

  ‘Her name is Mrs Lalande,’ said Elsie, skipping inside the house. ‘And she’s nice!’

  Elsie joined her siblings, who were playing marbles on a rug in the front room. Her father indicated for me to follow him to an enclosed porch at the back of the house. As we passed the kitchen, I could see Mrs Matthews busy cooking dinner but she didn’t look in my direction. My heart sank. I was certain Mr Matthews was going to tell me he was taking Elsie out of William Frantz Elementary School, and I couldn’t blame him. It was an enormous amount of pressure to subject a small child to, and unless he had an employer who could resist the White Citizens’ Council, Mr Matthews could be fired from his job.

  ‘I’m sorry about the people in the street,’ I began. ‘Have they been bothering you all day?’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, we don’t pay them any mind. They’re amazed to see so much activity going on in our quiet street, that’s all.’ He indicated a patio chair. ‘Take a seat, Mrs Lalande.’

  I did as he requested, and he picked up a picture in a frame from a bookshelf and handed it to me. The photograph was of a young woman in a 1920s cloche hat and pearls.

  ‘That’s Elsie’s grandmother,’ he explained. ‘Her dying wish was that Elsie get a good education. “That little girl has brains,” she told us. “With a decent education she’ll get a better shot at life.”’

  He sat down in a chair opposite me with his hands splayed on his knees. I waited for the crunch: how it would be difficult for Elsie to concentrate on her classes with all the commotion going on at the school.

  ‘You see,’ said Mr Matthews, ‘my mother was part coloured. But she always hid the fact so she could get better wages. She denied her race on her marriage certificate and described herself as white, but when my father’s family found out years later, they convinced him to abandon her. My mother brought up five kids on her own by working in factories and waitressing in cafeterias.’

  I looked at Mr Matthews with interest. This was an unexpected twist to the story. I knew then that he trusted me, because if his mother was classified as coloured, he would be too. All it took was ‘one drop’.

  ‘Do you know about “passing”, Mrs Lalande?’ he asked, peering into my eyes. ‘Although I look white, can you guess what I’ve had to endure to hide my past?’

  He coughed, suddenly embarrassed at having revealed something intimate about himself. But I knew far better than he could imagine what it was like to have to cover up your past.

  ‘I can,’ I told him. ‘It would be very difficult and lonely.’

  He cracked his knuckles. ‘Elsie doesn’t know about having coloured blood, but if desegregation happens nobody will have to worry about that any more. We’ll all be equal. That’s why we’re going through with this, otherwise we’d never subject our daughter to the harassment.’ He leaned forward. ‘Promise me that you won’t give up, Mrs Lalande. Promise me that you’ll take good care of Elsie and you’ll get her to her classes and you’ll encourage her. This could change her life for the better. It could change all our lives for the better.’

  I shook Mr Matthews’ hand before leaving. Mrs Matthews offered me some tea, but I told her Kitty was waiting in the car and we needed to be up early in order to get Elsie to school on time the next day.

  The neighbours had already dispersed when I came out of the house. Before getting into Kitty’s car, I turned to see Mr and Mrs Matthews standing on the porch and watching me.

  ‘Until tomorrow,’ I said, waving.

  ‘Until tomorrow,’ they called back.

  I felt my chest swell. I was no longer the Ruby I had been in Avery’s Ice Cream Parlor, too afraid of being called a ‘nigger lover’ to help Ti-Jean and his friends. Something had changed. I had found my courage by taking action, as Clifford had promised I would.

  Kitty, Elsie and I, and the other women and children, faced those mobs every day for a month until the Federal Government saw the value in what we were doing and assigned US Federal marshals to look after the white children as well as the coloured ones. But our troubles were far from over. We had to find new jobs for the fathers who’d been fired for sending their children to an integrated school, which wasn’t easy as the White Citizens’ Council threatened to boycott any business that hired them. Then we learned that the home addresses of the members of Save our Schools had been read out at a White Citizens’ Council meeting.

  One night, Clifford and I were having tea in the parlour before going to bed, when three loud bangs sounded and the front window shattered. Clifford pushed me to the floor as shards of glass scattered about the room. We heard a car accelerate and then its brakes squeal as it turned a corner.

  ‘Are you all right, Ruby?’ Clifford asked, his face ashen.

  I barely heard him over the pounding of my heart. I lifted myself on trembling legs. ‘The children!’ I cried.

  We both rushed into the hall. Mae was coming through the kitchen to see what had happened. Dale was standing at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed and clinging onto the banister. Clifford ran up the stairs and swept him into his arms while I hurried to check on Louise. She was peacefully asleep in her cot as if nothing had happened.

  I crouched down on the floor. My hands were shaking. If we’d been shot at a few hours earlier, when we were all in the parlour together, one of the children might have been killed.

  The police came the following morning and inspected the damage, but they weren’t too enthusiastic about following up who might have fired the shots.

  ‘This kind of stuff is happening all over town,’ the officer in charge told us. ‘Not much chance of catching the culprits if none of your neighbours saw the licence plate.’

  ‘They think it’s our own fault for sticking our noses in where they aren’t wanted,’ I said after they’d left.

  Clifford looked at me steadily. ‘Ruby, you make the decision. Do we fight on? Or do we give up?’

  I remembered Mae asking me not to give in, and the evening Mr Matthews had revealed his secret. People were depending on us. Nothing would change if we gave up now, and the world Dale and Louise inherited would be no better and no fairer than this one.

  ‘We fight on,’ I said.

  Our determination to continue didn’t mean a lessening of tensions. A week after the shooting, Philomena answered a ring at our doorbell but there was nobody in sight. Instead, a funeral wreath on a stand had been left on the porch. She called me and I looked up and down the street for a florist’s van, assuming the wreath had been delivered in error. But then I saw the ribbon printed with the words: The Lalande Family.

  A card was attached to it. I opened the envelope and read:

  We’re coming to get you.

  Your caskets have been measured and made.

  Your family will pay for its sins.

  Fear gripped my stomach and my vision blurred. I could almost feel on my fingertips the malevolence of the person who had sent the wreath. But Philomena was watching me and I didn’t want to alarm
her.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I told her, avoiding her gaze as I carried the wreath and stand into the house. ‘It’s from a distant relative who has only just heard that Maman passed away.’

  I tore off the ribbon and card before taking the wreath and stand out the back and asking Ned to burn them.

  ‘The wreath has got oleander in it,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want the children or Theodore to touch it and get poisoned.’

  Ned took the wreath, but the way he held it away from himself told me he knew it was suspicious. It wasn’t merely my lame excuse — after all, I could have had it sent straight to the cemetery — but Ned’s uncanny ability to size up a situation in an instant and take the appropriate action. He put the wreath on a pile of dry garden scraps and set it alight. I’d always liked Ned and at that moment I found myself liking him even more.

  But as I watched the flames, I thought of another time and the cross that had burned on the Thezan family’s lawn. An ominous feeling came over me, as if something — or someone — had returned from the past. I shivered and went back into the house.

  On my way upstairs I passed Clifford in his study, poring over some papers. He turned in my direction. ‘Who was at the door, sugar?’

  When we’d married we’d promised each other not to keep secrets, but I didn’t like the pallor of his complexion these days and didn’t want to burden him with any more worries than he already had.

  ‘Just a broom salesman,’ I told him, walking into his study and kissing him. But when he left in the afternoon for a meeting with Christophe, I drove straight to Kitty’s house.

  ‘Oh, those people are such chickens!’ she said, reading the card that had come with the wreath. ‘Everybody in Save Our Schools is getting death threats.’ She opened the hall table drawer and showed me four notes that had been put together with cut-out letters from newspapers.