“Gary’s got the will and the spirit to fight this battle, Leola,” Mr. Patterson said quietly.
“I know, Lester. He’s got the fire, but not the gentle breeze to control it. I’m afraid he’ll get consumed by the blaze.” Sylvia watched her mother continue to sweep the already spotlessly clean floor.
Friday, January 4, 1957
For as long as I can remember, Gary has been pushing the edges. In the summer, when the whole town is like a bowl of hot broth, he wants to know why he can’t swim in the pool with the white children. He wants to know why gas station restrooms have toilets marked “white” and “colored.” When we were younger, Gary once used the white bathroom-on purpose-and got Daddy in lots of trouble. The policeman yelled at Daddy like he was a little boy, told him to make his children behave. Daddy kept saying, “Yes, sir,” but I could see in his eyes he was really upset. Later I heard him tell Mama that he had to pray till the rage flew away.
Gary doesn’t pray. He does stuff-usually before he thinks. I’m pretty sure he killed that dog.
Gary doesn’t like it when Rachel comes to visit. He slams doors and leaves, which is fine with me. She is my only white friend, and surprisingly, she and I are really pretty close considering we live in two different worlds just a few blocks away from each other. We go to different schools, of course, and I go to church every Sunday, while she goes to synagogue every Saturday. We first met when we were four or five, and we see each other at least twice a month.
The Zucker family is one of just a few Jewish families in town. They own a local grocery store, which is right next door to Crandall’s barbershop. On the other side of Zucker’s store is Miss Lillie’s flower shop. I can bet money that Mr. Crandall has never set foot in her store, even though he’s only two doors down. I’ve never seen Miss Lillie Cobbs dressed in any color but green. She’s tall and thin and looks like a flower when I squint. She does the floral arrangements for all the colored weddings and funerals, and she brings fresh flowers for the church every Sunday. She makes her son Calvin carry the heavy bouquets. It’s fun to watch him because he likes to act so silly.
Mama shops at Zucker’s grocery all the time because Mr. Zucker treats her with respect. He is the only white man I know who says, “Yes, ma’am,” to Mama when he speaks to her. Mrs. Zucker, who is big and cheerful and sells her fresh-baked cakes and pastries at the store, always gives me a big hug and a free cookie. It’s one of those hugs that envelops your whole head and you almost can’t breathe while she’s doing it, but it’s not a bad thing because you know her heart is in the right place.
When we were kids Rachel and I would run up and down the polished wooden aisles of the store, playing hide-and-seek among the canned goods and boxes of baking soda, laughing like little kids do, rarely thinking about our differences. She once asked me, “Why are your arms and legs brown like that? And if you wash, will the brown come off?” I wasn’t sure what to say. So I just said, “I’m brown and pretty, just the way God made me. Why would I want to wash it off?” I guess she didn’t know what to say after that, so we never talked about it again. It didn’t really matter between us.
She and I talk on the phone pretty regularly, and we still like to laugh about the same things, but as we get older, sometimes the conversation gets a little strained. I’ve never asked her what she thinks about integration.
I know the Jewish folk in town are mistreated sometimes, too. It’s hard to understand why some white folks hate the Jews so much. Mr. Crandall, for example, refuses to cut Mr. Zucker’s hair in his shop. I don’t get it. It’s not like Jewish folks look different from other white people, like we do.
I once saw Mr. Crandall spit in his hand just before he offered it to Mr. Zucker at his grocery store. I don’t think Mr. Zucker saw him do it, because he offered his hand to Mr. Crandall with a smile.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1957
Sylvia and Donna Jean, after cleaning their room and putting fresh chenille bedspreads on their twin beds, sat down and turned on the transistor radio. Elvis Presley’s “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog” was playing for what seemed to be the millionth time.
“Do you like Elvis?” Donna Jean asked Sylvia.
“I guess so. Everybody does. His songs sound a lot like colored music, don’t you think?”
“I don’t really know,” Donna Jean replied. “I don’t think I’ll ever learn the names of all the singers and their songs like you do. How will I ever be popular in junior high if I can’t tell the difference between Fats Domino and Perry Como?”
Sylvia laughed. “Well, Fats Domino is fat and loud and colored; while Perry Como is quiet and very white and sings love songs. Rachel thinks he’s the most! Learning all that stuff just comes with practice. I pretend at school all the time that I know what I’m talking about. I think lots of the other girls do, too.”
“So colored people don’t sing pretty love songs?” Donna Jean looked confused.
“Sure they do. ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’ by Frankie Lymon is one of my favorites. Now he’s somebody who is good-looking—and the same age as me!”
“I wonder how he got to be a rock-and-roll star,” Donna Jean mused.
“I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing—he doesn’t have a father like Daddy!” Both girls laughed as Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” began to play.
“Sylvia Faye! Turn that devil music down!” their father shouted up the stairs. “How is a man supposed to think with all that foolishness blasting through his house?” Sylvia noticed he didn’t really sound angry, nor did he ask her to turn it off completely.
“Sorry, Daddy!” Sylvia called to him. Both girls giggled, but Sylvia immediately decreased the volume a bit.
Donna Jean winced a little as she walked over to the window and looked out at the chilly afternoon. “I wonder where Gary’s going,” she mused. “He looks like he’s in a hurry.”
“He wants to make sure he’s long gone before Rachel gets here. How’s your leg?” Sylvia asked with concern as she joined her sister.
Donna Jean looked serious for a moment. “It only hurts a little bit—I’ll be fine.” Then she looked up at Sylvia and asked, “If they integrate the schools, how will we talk about stuff that only we understand, like colored singers and dancers and stuff?”
“I have no idea, DJ, but I have a feeling that talking about singers and dancers would be one of the last things to worry about. Staying alive while going to classes would probably be up there on the top of the list.”
Donna Jean touched her bandage. “That’s scary. Would you want to be one of the first people to integrate a big old school like Central?” Donna Jean turned the radio back up a little as a Fats Domino song began to play. “Now this is one I know!” she said happily. “I found my thrill,” she sang softly with the record, “on Blueberry Hill ...”
“Well, going to Central High would certainly be no thrill. It would be a real test of courage, and I don’t think I have any.” Sylvia hummed along with the song.
“What if Gary gets picked to go to Central?” DJ asked, frowning.
“Not a pretty picture,” Sylvia replied as she flopped down on her pillow. “Would he refuse to fight if they pushed him? Put up with nasty comments from smart-mouthed white kids?”
“Not likely,” DJ said. “He’d end up in jail for sure.”
Just then their mother came into the room with freshly laundered towels. “After you put these away, come down and help me freshen the living room,” she said. “Rachel will be here soon, and I want this house spotless.”
Sylvia didn’t hurry—she knew the house was ridiculously clean. “Mama, tell us again about when you were in school,” Sylvia asked as she folded the towels. It was fun to imagine her mother as a kid.
Her mother looked out the window and a smile crossed her face. “When I was the age of you girls, everybody I knew went to the schools built just for colored kids, just like you do now. We used books the white schools had thrown out, desks
they no longer wanted, and materials that were outdated and torn, but we didn’t care. We didn’t want to go to school with the white kids. We had strong, powerful Negro teachers like Miss Washington who taught us pride in ourselves, confidence in our abilities, and all the academic skills we needed. When I went to college, I finished first in my class at an integrated university. I had been well prepared.”
“Things are changing, aren’t they, Mama?” Donna Jean asked quietly.
“Yes, baby girl. Change is heading for us like a runaway truck.”
Just then the doorbell rang. “That’s Rachel! I’ll get it!” Sylvia said, jumping up from her bed. “Can you keep DJ in the kitchen while Rachel is here, Mama? We have girl stuff to talk about.”
“I’m a girl, too!” Donna Jean said defiantly, her arms folded across her chest.
“Come help me make the apple pie, Donna Jean. You’ve got lots of time to be a teenager,” her mother said smoothly.
Sylvia bounded down the stairs to open the door, waved to Rachel’s mother, who was just driving off, and gave her friend a hug. Rachel wore a turquoise-colored poodle skirt decorated with silver music notes, black vinyl records, and two white teenagers dancing. “I love your skirt!” Sylvia said. “I’ve got to get one of those!”
Rachel stamped the slushy snow off her saddle oxfords and took off her jacket. She grinned and twirled around to show the full effect of the huge circular skirt. “I brought the nail polish,” she said.
“Good.” The two girls walked into the living room and plopped down on the plastic-covered sofa. “Hey, what is it with mothers that they buy this nice furniture then cover it all up?” Sylvia asked as she traced the pattern of the well-covered fabric. “My mother had these custom-made so they’d fit the couch exactly!”
Rachel laughed. “I once asked my mother why she covered all our furniture with plastic. She told me it was to keep it nice and clean and that way if we had company, it would look like new.”
“My mom says the same thing. But I have never, ever seen her take it off, not even when ladies from church come over. They all have this stuff on their living room furniture, too. When I grow up, I’m going to let my children sit on the sofa with no plastic to stick to their legs,” Sylvia said with confidence.
“I like the way your mom lines up your magazines,” Rachel said. “My mom just throws them in a basket by her favorite chair.” Mrs. Patterson had arranged the stacks into three neat diagonal piles on the small coffee table, so the edges made a little pattern—one for Look magazine, one for Life, and one for Ebony.
Sylvia picked up a copy of Ebony. “I bet you don’t have this one at your house!” she said with a slight smile.
“You’re right there,” Rachel said. “My father gets newspapers printed in German, but my mother subscribes to Life and Reader’s Digest.”
“I like Ebony because everybody in the whole magazine is colored—even in the ads.”
Rachel looked a little uncomfortable and picked up a copy of Life. “Regardless of what color the people are, don’t you think the ads are stupid? Look at this one—a clothes dryer with a built-in sunlamp that will get your clothes thirty-four percent fluffier. How do they measure stuff like that?”
Sylvia chuckled. “All I know is the pile of towels in that pictures is a lot taller than any pile I’ve seen of our towels hanging in our backyard to dry!”
Rachel nodded and flipped through the magazine. “Look at this one!” She read it in the singsong voice of a television announcer. “Housework fatigue? If you feel headachy and irritable after a busy day of housework, take Bayer aspirin to relieve your pain. You’ll feel better fast—ready for a pleasant evening with your husband.” Both girls rolled with laughter.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sylvia asked, giggling.
“When you marry Reggie, you’ll find out!” Rachel replied in a teasing tone.
“Mama and Daddy are so strict that I’ll probably be old and dried up by the time they let me actually go out on a date, let alone get married!” Sylvia complained. “But Reggie Birmingham sure is cute!”
“My folks are stupid strict like that, too,” Rachel said. “And in no hurry to get me hitched. I’ve been told since I was a little girl that when I’m twenty-one I can start looking for a nice Jewish boy to marry.”
“Suppose you fell in love with a Catholic kid?”
“They’d have a heart attack.”
“What about a colored kid?” Sylvia asked, teasing.
“They’d probably roll over and die,” Rachel answered with a giggle.
“Mine are like that, too. Old folks have issues,” Sylvia commented.
Mrs. Patterson came in then with a plate of brownies and two glasses of milk. “I wonder what my life will be like when and if I get married,” Rachel mused when Mrs. Patterson left the room. “It seems like my mother is never really happy.”
“I know what you mean. I wonder if my mother dreamed of a rich man and pretty children and a fancy house like I do. Instead she got Daddy, who’s a little overweight; and us, just ordinary kids; and our small gray house, which is nothing like the houses I see in Life or Ebony magazine. I wonder if she ever gets tired of it all.”
“My mother worries a lot—mostly about things out of her control. She doesn’t sleep well,” Rachel said.
Sylvia nodded in agreement. “Late on Saturday night, I can hear my mother still fixing and cleaning. She never rests. I don’t know when she does her own hair, or irons her clothes, or even when she goes to bed. All I know is she’s always up before we are, and there’s a big breakfast ready on the table—French toast with Alaga syrup, fried eggs, grits, and cold glasses of milk. Do wives ever have any fun?”
Rachel had no answer. They ate their brownies in silence.
Saturday, January 5, 1957
Rachel and I had a good time today. Mama still hasn’t seen my red toenails. Some stuff you just hide. Rachel’s dad wears long-sleeved shirts and a tie every day, even in summer, and sometimes it’s hard for me to understand him when he speaks to me because he talks in a thick German accent. But every once in a while when the weather turns unbearably hot, he rolls up his shirtsleeves. I have seen the purple numbers tattooed on his forearm.
Sometimes Mama buys fresh beef from Mr. Zucker, and it’s always marked with a large purple stamp of quality. I used to think the mark on Mr. Zucker’s arm was something that had happened accidentally while he was preparing the meat. But the mark never faded and never came off. I think I was about eight when I asked him what that mark meant. Mr. Zucker said one word-Auschwitz. At the time I didn’t know what that meant, but the look of despair in his eyes scared me. He never said anything else about it, and I never dared to ask.
I’ve heard my parents whisper about a Jewish man named Leo Frank who got lynched in Georgia a few years ago. Almost every colored family can tell a story about someone they knew who was taken out at midnight by an angry mob and hung by a rope until they died. My father rarely talks about what happened to my grandfather, but I know he was hung from an apple tree, and my dad witnessed it all. I see the leftover hurt that wraps around Daddy like a shawl.
Even teenagers can get lynched. Just two years ago a boy about my age named Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. He was from Chicago, and was visiting some relatives. According to the story he bought some candy in a little store and spoke to the owner’s wife with disrespect. His Mississippi friends couldn’t believe this Northern boy who had so much nerve. Two days later he was dragged out of his house in the middle of the night by two men. Emmett’s body was found three days later in a river with a huge piece of machinery tied around his neck. He had been beaten, shot, drowned, and tortured—one of his eyes had been gouged out.
It was in all the papers and everybody in town had an opinion. I heard some white folks say it was his fault because he should have known better, but other white folks said it was an outrage—that Mississippi folks just go too far. All the colored folks I knew were
angry and scared. If a teenager from Chicago could get lynched, what chance did we have here in Arkansas? Anyway, they arrested the men who had taken him, but they were found not guilty at the trial. White folks expected that outcome. Colored folks knew not to expect better.
The thing I’ll never forget about that story is that Jet magazine showed the picture of Emmett Till’s dead body. His mother had insisted on having an open-casket funeral—she said she wanted the world to see what they had done to her boy. There he lay in his coffin, wearing a nice suit and tie. But that’s all that was pleasant about that picture. His head was swollen and grotesque from being in the water so long. One eye was missing, one side of his head was crushed, and a hole, I guess from a bullet, distorted his nose. He didn’t look like a teenager, like the good-looking boy with the cheerful smile they showed on the other page—he looked liked a monster. Mama told me it was monsters that did that to him, but it didn’t help much. I remember not being able to sleep well for weeks after that. It still bothers me—now, more than ever.
MONDAY, JANUARY 7, 1957
It was a little cold in the classroom on their first day back from the holidays. The heat had been turned off for two weeks, and it sometimes took it a couple of days to kick back in. Mr. Nathaniel, the janitor, told the students to be patient and to keep their coats on until it warmed up. The boiler was located right beneath the classroom, so Sylvia and the rest of her class could hear him tinkering around with it.
Just before nine, the students heard a clunky noise like a large piece of metal falling on a cement floor, followed by a very loud, very clear string of curse words from Mr. Nathaniel. He hollered up to them, “Hey, sorry about that,” but by then the whole class was laughing.
She glanced over at Reggie, who wore a brown bomber jacket, brown corduroy pants, and a pair of well-worn, dark blue Keds tennis shoes. One white sock peeked through the hole in the right shoe, and the rubber was peeling off the left shoe. Reggie was whispering something to Candace Castle, who seemed to be one of those girls who would, without hesitation, be found kissing a boy behind the high school. There’s a reason the boys call her Candy, Sylvia thought with a frown. She looked down at her book and pretended to read.
Fire from the Rock Page 3