We Are All Good People Here

by Susan Rebecca White

  “We can find out when the next CORE meeting is,” said Daniella.

  “Let’s.”

  But life got in the way. There were papers to write and film screenings to attend (after Godard’s Breathless was shown on campus Daniella had to talk Eve out of chopping off her hair à la Jean Seberg). And then Eve had to fly home for the Halloween Ball, of all things, where she was officially presented as a member of the 1963 Atlanta Debutante Club. All the while Pete, who was now very much Daniella’s boyfriend, tried to caution the girls against joining CORE, which he considered radical.

  “A lot of its members are admitted communists,” he told the two of them over beers at the West End.

  “So what?” Daniella challenged.

  “Ask the Rosenbergs how well the Communist Party worked out for them,” Pete retorted.

  Daniella’s face turned red. Without a word she stood up and walked out of the bar.

  “You’re a real jerk,” said Eve as she gathered her pocketbook to go after her friend. “You know she has nightmares about the Rosenbergs.”

  “Damn. I know. I am a jerk, Eve. Stay here. I’ll go get her.”

  He was out the door before she could protest. Suddenly she was alone at the table, a nearly full pitcher of beer her only company. It seemed that lately Eve was always alone, that Daniella was always running off with Pete. It made no sense to Eve that Daniella was dating him. Well, actually it did. He was attractive—tall and lean with reddish-brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses that he was perennially pushing back on his nose. He had elegant hands and long fingers, the sort that might effortlessly play scales up and down the piano. He was always polite, always deferential, and he looked at Daniella as if she had hung the moon. Yet the two of them were so different. In addition to being a WASP from Connecticut (a term Eve had learned from Daniella), he was a member of the Columbia Young Republicans, though he always stressed that he was a moderate and did not approve of that “nut” from Arizona, Barry Goldwater. Still! He wasn’t planning to vote for Kennedy the following year when Kennedy would be up for reelection. He thought that Kennedy was all style and no substance.

  That Daniella was dating him, was in love with him, felt like a betrayal. Hadn’t Eve left behind the WASPy world of Fleur and Belmont in order to join Daniella at Barnard? And then what did Daniella do as soon as they arrived in New York? Link arms with a man who would have fit in just fine at Hampden-Sydney, back in Virginia.

  She craned her neck toward the door, hoping to see Daniella and Pete returning. Instead, she locked eyes with Warren St. Clair, who had just walked in. He wore a leather jacket over a black T-shirt, jeans, and work boots. She thought of Pete Strum’s pressed button-downs and smiled, giving Warren a half wave. Just then a girl Eve had seen around campus but did not know by name ran up to him and they embraced. Eve watched as Warren patted her rear. She imagined what his hand might feel like on her own bottom.

  He extricated himself from the girl and walked toward Eve, squeezing into the booth beside her even though the opposite bench was empty.

  “Drinking alone, eh?” he said.

  “Pretty much,” she said. “My friend has abandoned me for a Young Republican.”

  “Well, fuck ’em and the polo ponies they rode off on.”

  She knew, even as she laughed, that she was betraying Daniella, but here she was in New York, away from all that was familiar, and Daniella, who was supposed to be her anchor, kept floating away.

  • • •

  Eve and Warren had emptied the pitcher of beer by the time Daniella and Pete returned, arms around each other, happy once more.

  “It’s the Young Republican!” heralded Warren as the couple sat down across from them.

  Daniella shot Eve a look of incredulity.

  “I was just telling my friend Warren here about Pete’s campus involvement,” she said.

  “Heck, I’m not ashamed!” said Pete, meeting Warren’s disdainful gaze. “Anything you want to know, just ask. It’s a good group of fellows.”

  “What’s your take on the Negro situation?” asked Warren.

  “Jim Crow is a damned shame, of course, but these things take time. You can’t just put a gun to someone’s head and say, ‘Integrate!’ ”

  “Seems to me that’s exactly what it’s going to take,” said Warren.

  • • •

  A week later, Eve was headed to her last shift at the Hungarian Pastry Shop before the Thanksgiving break, which she would be starting early, having booked a ticket to fly home the following day, a Saturday, skipping her Monday and Tuesday classes. Her mother had insisted, even though Eve argued against going home for Thanksgiving at all, considering that she had just been to Atlanta for the Halloween Ball and she would be returning so soon for Christmas. But then her mother started talking about how Barnard was just too far away and that maybe she would be better off finishing her degree at the University of Georgia, and Eve had quickly acquiesced.

  She had made it nearly all the way to work when an odd feeling came over her, a sort of internal catch-up of what was going on all around. She looked up from the sidewalk—she had been brooding about her upcoming trip—and noticed that everyone walking by appeared stunned, was crying, or both.

  “Excuse me, do you know what’s going on?” she asked a colored woman walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

  “Someone shot President Kennedy,” she said, her voice clipped, northern.

  • • •

  When Eve arrived at work, all of the other employees were huddled around the portable television that someone had brought up from the back office. She watched as Walter Cronkite gave an unconfirmed report that the president had died and then a few minutes later confirmed it. Cronkite’s words did not make sense. She could feel a sob in her chest, which she pushed down, not wanting to break down, not here. Instead, she washed the dirty coffee cups in the little sink behind the counter while silent tears ran down her face. President Kennedy was so young, so dashing and hopeful. He had little children, little children who no longer had a daddy.

  When she finished the dishes, she turned and walked out of the café without saying good-bye to anyone, without punching out. She didn’t care if she was fired. She walked back to her dorm as fast as she could. She needed to see Daniella.

  She found her friend in the common room, crying with everyone else, even Abby, who usually made a point of being tough, stoic. Eve walked straight to Daniella, who was sitting on a couch, and collapsed beside her, resting all of her weight against her friend’s side. She thought of how Daniella’s mother loved Kennedy so much that she had spent all of her spare time volunteering for his presidential campaign and so Daniella had spent her weekends volunteering as well. She thought, too, of how Pete had not been a particular fan of Kennedy’s, had thought his containment strategy for communism weak, had thought he had more charisma than actual substance. She wondered how much comfort Pete would be able to offer Daniella.

  As these thoughts went through her head, Abby went to her room and placed The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan on the record player, setting the needle to “Blowin’ in the Wind” and turning up the volume as loud as possible. Eve loved the song, but at that moment it annoyed her, as if Abby thought they were in a movie, as if they needed a soundtrack for their grief. Eve didn’t want to hear anything intended to capture the moment. Instead, she felt a strong urge to go to church, to be among incense and ritual, to pray for the president’s widow and two young children. She held Daniella’s hand in her own and asked if it would bother her to go to St. John the Divine.

  “Why would that bother me?” Daniella asked.

  “Well, it’s a church,” said Eve. “A Christian church.”

  “God is God,” Daniella said, sounding annoyed. In a kinder voice she added, “You keep forgetting about us Unitarians. We don’t deny anyone their divinity—even Jesus.”

  This was one of many not-too-funny Unitarian jokes that Daniella had told before, including o
ne about burning a question mark on somebody’s front lawn, though Eve could never remember exactly who was burning the question mark, the Unitarian or the vigilante. In any event, she half-smiled at Daniella’s remark, and then the two of them went to their shared room, Daniella to change out of her tennis clothes and Eve to blow her nose and run a brush through her hair. They left Brooks Hall and made their way to the eerily empty street, walking down Broadway to 112th, which took them to the enormous stone cathedral.

  As they approached the entrance, Eve spotted Warren, wearing the same black turtleneck he had worn when she first met him at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. He was sitting on the cathedral’s front steps, smoking a cigarette. Eve had an urge to make contact, but not knowing what to say, she only nodded in his direction. He nodded in return, offered a weary smile.

  She and Daniella walked through the massive front doors, large enough for an elephant to pass through. Eve heard organ music. They joined the other souls in mourning, some sitting, some kneeling in prayer, everyone dwarfed by the magnitude of the place. Eve dipped her hands in the font of holy water, flicking the water on her skin, thinking it might somehow protect her. They chose seats about halfway down the aisle. Eve bowed her head. Daniella grabbed her hand and held on tight as if they were walking in a fast current and might otherwise lose each other.

  Chapter 4

  CORE

  New York City, 1964

  On their way out the door after the meeting, Eve grabbed two application forms from the woman who had come from the national office to tell them about the Mississippi Summer Project. She and Daniella could look over the application at the West End, where they were meeting Pete for beers, Pete who would inevitably bring along a fraternity brother of his in yet another attempt to set Eve up, no matter how many times Eve told both him and Daniella that she was not interested in dating a Sigma Chi. Before exiting the building the girls buttoned up their coats and wrapped their scarves tightly around their necks; still, their exposed cheeks turned red from the cold March air as they walked at a fast clip toward the West End.

  Warren had also been at the CORE meeting, positioned on the other side of the room, and though seeing him made Eve’s stomach flip, she had only slightly lifted her hand to give a half wave. He had his arm slung around Abby’s shoulder. Never mind. There were more important things at stake, like the action CORE was planning for that summer, sending hundreds of college students to Mississippi to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field officers already stationed there. Once in Mississippi, they would canvass the state, urging Negro residents to register to vote.

  “Of course, the Mississippi registrars will refuse to process their forms,” the woman from the national office had explained. “But if enough people are denied, we’ll have a federal court case on our hands.”

  • • •

  They arrived at the bar before Pete, so they grabbed a booth and ordered beers. Even though she had been to the West End a dozen times before, Eve was suddenly cognizant of how far she had come from her upbringing: Not only was she hanging out at a bar, but she was also—at least at that very moment—unaccompanied by a man. And once the waitress brought the Blatz she ordered, Eve would crack it open and drink it straight from the can.

  Daniella did not seem as convinced as Eve that going to Mississippi was a good idea. She hadn’t said no but had not expressed any enthusiasm when Eve tried to impress upon her the importance of their going.

  “Do you not want to do it?” Eve finally asked, halfway through her beer. She had shed her coat, revealing a black cashmere turtleneck that she wore over a heavy tweed skirt.

  “It’s not that,” said Daniella, who drank her beer from a glass. “I just think we need to seriously consider how dangerous it’s going to be.”

  “We should only take actions that are safe?” asked Eve.

  “Of course not. I’m just saying that we should really think it through. I hate to bring it up, but we don’t want to rush into things like we did with Miss Eugenia.”

  It was kind of her to say “we” when really it had been Eve who had rushed into things.

  “This isn’t the same as interfering on behalf of Miss Eugenia,” Eve argued. “This isn’t just me with some half-baked plan. CORE has been around for twenty years. They’re smart, they’re organized, and they know what they’re doing.”

  “We also need to think about whether or not we could handle it, not to mention our parents, who would surely be worried sick all summer.”

  “That’s a gas. As if Patty and Lem would let me go.”

  “You would go without their knowing?”

  “I can always find a reason for being in Mississippi. There was a girl in Fleur from Greenwood. I could tell them I’m staying with her, doing the deb circuit or something.”

  “Are you talking about Caroline Foster?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember the first time it snowed at Belmont and she came out of the dorm in a full-length mink coat and mink hat?”

  “Caro was very concerned about the cold,” said Eve.

  “I think I want to do it,” said Daniella slowly. “I just have to sit with it. Make sure it’s something I’m actually capable of.”

  “I don’t think we know what we’re capable of until we try,” said Eve.

  “That’s probably right,” conceded Daniella, and then her attention shifted from Eve because Pete had entered the bar and was rushing toward them, apologizing for running late, eager as always to kiss his girl. Behind him trailed a tall man wearing a varsity jacket—Eve’s consolation prize. The boys sat, introductions were made (Pete’s friend was named Tad), and more beer was ordered. Eve’s mind wandered as Pete and Tad discussed Dr. Strangelove. She was thinking of what she would say in her CORE application, how she would write of what happened to Miss Eugenia.

  She would tell of how Miss Eugenia’s firing haunted her, how she would lie in bed at night worrying about how she and her crippled husband were supporting themselves now that she had lost her job. She would write of how she would do anything to take back having sent that letter, to have been more strategic, smarter, wiser. She was wiser now. She wanted to make up for what she had done. Perhaps by going to Mississippi she could help mend the tear. Perhaps going to Mississippi would render her a little less complicit.

  Chapter 5

  LETTERS HOME

  Leflore County, Mississippi, 1964

  June 14, 1964

  Dear Eve,

  Just a quick note to say I arrived in Ohio for the volunteer training. Western College’s campus is beautiful and things feel very peaceful here—a sharp contrast to what will greet us in Mississippi, I’m sure.

  Are you feeling better about things? I wish you were with me. Whoever made the decision not to accept your application was an absolute idiot. I think of your wonderful heart, and how fully you would have given it to this mission.

  Please forgive me for going on. My conscience told me I had to. I miss you already.

  Love,

  Daniella

  July 2, 1964

  Dear Daddy,

  I am sending this directly to your office because I worry it might be too much for Mother to bear. I will send a lighter note to the two of you at home. Of course if you feel obliged to share this with her, I understand. I’m sure both you and Mother were thrilled that President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act today. I was happy, too, of course. I just wish I had more confidence that it would make a difference to the people down here.

  As our bus crossed over the state line, we were greeted by a billboard that read: “Welcome to Mississippi, The Magnolia State.” Beneath the sign were two Highway Patrol cars that pulled out and followed us for the rest of the trip. I should not be telling you this, I suppose, because I know that like Mother, like all of us, you are worried sick about those who have gone missing: Michael Schwerner, Andy Goodman, and James Chaney.

  The levity I felt at the beginning of the summer, w
hen I first pulled into Western College, is long gone. It began to erode the very moment I checked in, when I realized how frosty relations were between the white volunteers and the Negro field officers from SNCC. Tensions escalated the evening Bob Moses, the brilliant man behind this whole thing, played a movie produced by CBS Reports about the disenfranchisement of Negroes in Mississippi. There was a clip showing this absurd-looking Mississippi bureaucrat, with a potbelly so large it looked like he might topple over from the weight of it. He’s a county registrar in Mississippi and therefore uses his power to systematically deny Negroes their constitutional right to vote. He’s a man who surely uses the word “nigger” freely, spits tobacco on the floor, and calls any effort to bring the vote to Negro people a “communist plot.” He looked like such a cartoon version of a dumb, racist villain that all of us white college students just started laughing. Six SNCC officers stormed out of the room.

  Afterward everyone stayed and talked. It was very heated. Someone from SNCC said, “You people are going to get us killed!” and then another said, “You white folks don’t understand; you are going to have to live like black people when you’re down there. You don’t get to make up the rules. You don’t get to decide what’s what. The danger is very, very real.” We ended up staying in that auditorium for over two hours talking. I think it helped to open things up between us, to release some of the tension.

  And then Michael, Andy, and James went on down to Mississippi early, to investigate a church bombing that occurred in Meridian. A call came to Michael’s wife, Rita, who was still at Western, saying that no one had heard from any of them. Honestly, we all expect the worst. Still, most of us boarded the bus that would take us to Mississippi anyway.