“I feel horrible,” she told Ada. “I checked that book out to a boy, a white boy. He and his buddy were snickering over something in the corner. I should have known they were up to no good. I am so sorry! I wish I had told you.”
I wish you had, too, Ada thought. But what she said was, “I should have kept you better informed.”
At the meeting, Mrs. Knight, the woman whose son had borrowed the book, brought a formal measure before the PTA, requesting dedicated time for a committee of parents to inventory the library’s card catalog. The concern, she noted, was that certain books might be inappropriate for junior high students. She had become aware of at least one book written by “a militant activist who is a homosexual and atheist.”
“I shudder to think what else might have slipped into the stacks,” Mrs. Knight said. “Completely unintentionally, I’m
sure.” She cast a glance at Ada. “We don’t want to disrupt Miss Shook during school hours, but we would like time after school to formally assess the library’s holdings. I request a vote on this measure, which I typed up and we are now passing out to all attendees.”
In the flurry of whispers as people read the mimeographed sheet, Ada noticed Robert Browne enter the assembly hall and take a seat near the back. Someone passed him a copy of the proposal.
“We will take discussion of the measure,” Mrs. Gawley, the chairwoman, said.
Cam’s hand shot up.
“Please don’t antagonize them,” Ada whispered.
“Well, I’ve got to say something.”
When Mrs. Gawley recognized her, Cam said, “Good evening, y’all. I am Camellia Lively, a Central English teacher since 1955. My word, that does make me sound old!” People laughed, and Ada sighed with relief: Cam had turned on her signature charm, and opted for “My word” instead of her more typical “Sweet Jesus.”
“I am so pleased to meet you, Mrs. Knight,” Cam continued, her tone shifting. “It is gratifying to know we have parents who are willing to take on the monumental task of inventorying thousands of books that have been in the library for years—maybe decades. I’m not sure you are aware that Miss Shook, our librarian, got her B.L.S.—summa cum laude, I might add—from Carolina. On full academic scholarship.” She paused for effect. “It is the best library program in the state. Is that where you
studied library science, Mrs. Knight?”
“Please, Miss Lively,” Mrs. Gawley said. “Let’s keep this respectful. You’ve made your point.”
“No, Mrs. Gawley, I haven’t. This measure is simply preposterous, that’s my point. Parents can certainly choose what their own children read, but librarians and teachers are the only ones qualified to decide what belongs in our schools. The fact that one or two or three or even four parents don’t like something in the stacks doesn’t mean it should be inaccessible to all.” A low buzz rose from the side of the room where Mrs. Knight sat with her supporters.
“Thank you, Miss Lively. Is there more discussion?”
A parent raised her hand. “Perhaps Miss Shook could explain why she thought books by James Baldwin were appropriate for children. Because there’s more than one book, according to my daughter. There is also a novel called Go Tell It . . .” She referred to a slip of paper. “Go Tell It on the Mountain. I would just like to hear the reasoning.”
“Miss Shook?” the PTA chair said.
All eyes turned to Ada. Her fear of addressing groups had lessened, thanks to years of teaching students about the library, but there was a dryness in her throat when she stood up, signaling she might have trouble speaking.
“First of all,” she began, so softly that it barely registered above a whisper.
“Please, Miss Shook, we need you to speak up.” The chairwoman passed a microphone that had been furnished in case the crowd got too big.
“First of all,” Ada repeated, her voice now amplified to a boom, “I’d like to thank everyone for turning out for this important meeting. Second, to address the issue at hand . . .” She unfolded a sheet of paper and read from it. “. . . Mr. Baldwin is a distinguished American writer who has been recognized with many awards and fellowships over the course of his career—a Guggenheim Fellowship, an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Foreign Drama Critics Award, to name a few. The book in question, The Fire Next Time, was a New York Times bestseller. Go Tell It on the Mountain was critically acclaimed for its portrayal of black preachers and of racial injustice.”
The chairwoman interrupted. “I see you’ve done your homework, Miss Shook. But could you answer the question?”
“I thought I was,” Ada said, allowing just a shade of pique into her response. “These books are not trashy pulp. They are works of literary merit appropriate for our students, particularly the ninth graders. These books have helped integrate our library, which sorely needed it.”
Mrs. Knight’s hand went up. “Tell me what you make of this, Miss Shook. This is a direct quote from The Fire Next Time. ‘If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.’ How do you think a fourteen-year-old might respond to that?”
“I’d have to read it in context before responding,” Ada said.
“And here is a line from the novel, and I do ask everyone’s pardon for reading such words aloud. ‘In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp and awful as a reflecting knife, to usurp Elisha’s body, and lie where Elisha lay.’”
“As I said, I’d want to read that in context,” Ada said, her face hot with a mix of rage and fear.
Mr. Browne stood next, and he had no need of the mike to make his voice fill the hall. “As probably the only person in the room who has read these books cover to cover, I wonder if I might add the needed context?” He efficiently and succinctly outlined the novel and the essay collection in a few sentences. “Now, it is true that Mr. Baldwin is a homosexual and has written homosexual novels that are inappropriate for our students—for any good Christian people, really. But the books in question are not homosexual texts. If they were, you can be sure I would not have requested them for the library.”
“You requested these books?” the chairwoman asked.
“I did, and a number of others by very distinguished black authors. I did not choose the titles lightly. I was looking for books that would be accessible reading and would add to our black
students’ appreciation of their past. I also wanted them to have to think. Which is something any good teacher—” He nodded toward Ada. “—or librarian—wants his students to do.”
Mr. Browne removed a book from a worn leather briefcase that looked like a hand-me-down. “It has occurred to me that perhaps the works of Mr. Baldwin have been singled out tonight because he wrote a well-received and much quoted essay in which he took our city to task for the way black children were treated during the integration struggle. No one likes to have their bad behavior on public display.” He cracked open the book. “Here he quotes one of the four youngsters brave enough to enroll in white schools in 1957. I’ll warn you, he uses an offensive word. ‘It’s hard enough,’ the boy said, ‘to keep quiet and keep walking when they call you nigger. But if anyone ever spits on me, I know I’ll have to fight.’” He slapped the book shut, the only sound in the hall. “To reduce Mr. Baldwin to a homosexual atheist is just an insult. In his own words, he wants to help end our racial nightmare.”
“Thank you, Mr. Browne, for the context,” Mrs. Gawley said. “So we have learned that Mr. Browne requested the books in question to help his students think about racial inequality, and that he considered them carefully. We have also learned that these books have no homosexual content.” The chair turned to Mrs. Knight. “I am not convinced that the library needs to be immediately inventoried because of two books that aren’t as problematic as we may have thought. Mrs. Knight, do we still need to bring this measure to a vote?” Ada sensed a sl
ight emphasis on the word need.
Mrs. Knight whispered something to the woman sitting next to her before addressing the chair. “I withdraw the measure for now, Mrs. Gawley, thank you.”
“For now?” Cam said after the meeting adjourned. “What in the Sam Hill does that mean?”
“It means we are on notice,” Jack Riordan said from behind them. The principal had been awkwardly silent throughout the meeting, although Ada had seen him taking copious notes in a small black notebook. “Ada, I would like to talk to you as soon as possible about having a plan in place to address this type of thing in the future. Tomorrow, after school?”
“Don’t agree to anything you don’t feel comfortable with,” Cam said as they walked to their car in the dark. “You can always take it to the School Library Association.”
There was just one vehicle separating Robert’s car from Cam’s. He was standing with the door open, as if weighing whether to stick around or make a quick escape.
“I’m going to ask Robert if he wants to come for a drink with us,” Ada said as they approached the vehicles.
“I’ll wait in the car.” Cam’s tone was crisp, as if she had already written Robert off as a friend.
Ada held out her hand to the history teacher, and he hesitated before taking it. “Thank you, Robert. I am so grateful you came. We dodged that bullet, didn’t we?”
“Yes . . . for now,” he said. “But I wouldn’t count on this being over.”
“Cam and I are going out,” Ada added. “I’m too wound up to go home. I would be honored to buy you a drink.”
He glanced around, as if looking for Cam.
“Cam’s in the car, just itching to go,” Ada laughed. “Seems to have the motor running. Please come.”
“Thank you, but I don’t indulge.”
“Well, maybe I can buy you a cup of coffee or a slice of pie,” Ada said.
“I need to get home, Ada.” Something in the way he said her name, with a pinch of urgency, saddened her. She foresaw friendly nods in the hallway, clipped conversations about book orders, maybe some careful cooperation on the censorship issue. But she felt certain Robert would not become her friend or Cam’s.
“It’s just us, I guess,” Ada said as she slid into the passenger seat.
Cam didn’t question it; she simply laced an arm behind Ada’s seat and backed out of the tight parking spot. “Where to?” she asked.
The Language of New York
1982
Soft, dissonant music floated from the front seat of the cab. Ada eyed the driver’s ID, displayed in a clear plastic pocket on the privacy partition: AZIZI, FAROOQ. In the photo, he was at least ten years younger, and now his hair had flecks of gray. She was creeping up on fifty years old herself, but she had never met anyone with such an exotic name, although more and more students enrolled at Central Charlotte Junior High had names like Malik and Destinee.
“Lu said when cabbies know you’re from out of town, they take you on a joy ride,” she whispered to Cam.
“Well, since we have never been to New York, why don’t we just sit back and bask in the joy?” Cam said.
There weren’t any sights on the drive, just miles of expressway against a dull sky, and then lines of buildings stained gray with grime. “I think this might be Queens,” Cam remarked. Ada alternated between watching the road rush by and checking the meter on the cab as it clicked higher and higher. The fare inched up toward $20, and the Empire State Building was nowhere on the horizon. The trip, if Lu could be believed, might set her back a month’s salary.
The cabbie turned out to be a commendable driver—no weaving in and out or near-miss accidents or crude gestures at other cabs. He even removed their suitcases from the trunk at the Hotel Pennsylvania, something Lu claimed drivers never deigned to do. “They just might drive away with your luggage still in the cab!” she had warned.
“This has been one fine introduction to the city of New York,” Cam complimented him.
“Yes, thank you so much, Mr. Azizi,” Ada said, hoping she had pronounced it correctly, to rhyme with “dizzy.” He looked startled at first, then the corners of his eyes crinkled into a smile.
“You are from . . . Texas?” he asked.
“Charlotte, North Carolina,” Ada corrected. “It is our very first time in New York City.”
“In fact, it’s our first trip north of the Mason–Dixon line,” Cam added. “Yankeeland!”
“Ah, a very fine team,” Mr. Azizi said, accepting his tip with a gracious nod. Ada caught a glimpse of Alexander Hamilton as the bill disappeared into his pocket.
“Ten dollars, Cam, really? He was a good driver, but I didn’t know I was living with Rockefeller’s daughter.”
“It was worth it,” Cam said. “Admit it, darlin’. Lu put the fear of God in you about the Big Apple, and your worries were for nothing.”
“Well, let’s just get through the weekend,” she replied.
§ § §
Ada’s experience with travel was limited to the back-and-forth from Charlotte to Chapel Hill when she was in college, jaunts to Raleigh for library conventions, visits to her brother in Charleston, the disastrous, aborted Christmas visit to Cam’s hometown of Davidson, and vacations at Folly Beach. Those were plenty for her, all within a neat, three-hour radius of home. The prospect of flying to New York City for a long weekend had roused more fear than excitement in her.
On the plane, her fingers left white grooves in Cam’s hand. The landing at LaGuardia made her gasp—the plane seemed poised to take a belly dive into some body of water, but a ribbon of tarmac appeared beneath the wheels just in time. Cam held her breath, too, and Ada heard her release it as they scraped earth.
Cam had tried to lure her to New York many times before, always in June, after school let out for the summer; she’d wanted to attend the city’s Gay Pride event ever since she’d first read about it. She remained partial to large, “historic” events and still talked about having heard Dr. King speak the iconic words “I have a dream” (though he was just a speck from where she stood, she admitted).
“I’m fifty years old,” Cam said, “and I have never been to a real-life gay event.”
“We’ve been to parties. We’ve had our at-homes.”
“I mean an event event,” Cam said. “Something we could look back on and tell folks, ‘We were there.’”
“I don’t know who would care,” Ada pointed out. “Except maybe Twig.” She had no taste for the throngs that apparently attended the annual gay parade in New York; thousands of people on a street in a strange city was a petrifying prospect. “Maybe you could go with Twig or somebody else,” she had said, thinking that their gay friend might thrill to being among so many men—all shirtless, if you believed the pictures Cam had shown her.
“I want to go with you. For our anniversary.” It had been twenty-five years since they’d met in the hallway at Central. “Besides, you always pick the vacation—Charleston and Folly Beach. How about we do my choice this once?”
Without waiting for her permission, Cam made an appointment with Lu’s travel agent and came home waving two envelopes in front of Ada. “You only have one silver anniversary,” she said, “and we are going to celebrate in style.” Then Cam buried the itineraries in one of her dresser drawers, probably sensing that the next words out of Ada’s mouth would be, “How much is this going to cost?”
Their Manhattan hotel was nothing for picture postcards, but at least it was clean and right in the middle of the city, and when Ada inspected the towels, they weren’t skimpy. At the front desk when they were checking in, the clerk didn’t flinch at two middle-aged women sharing a room. “One bed or two?” the young man asked without even looking at them, to which Cam replied, “Two, thanks. And two keys.” Ada had insisted on the beds, for appearance’s sake, even though the city would be “crawling with gays,” according to Cam. Ada was grateful the clerk didn’t ask if they were sisters, a clumsy question usually phrased in a way that
was hard to refute (“Y’all are sisters, right?”) and despite the fact that she was short with reddish-brown hair and a heart-shaped face, while Cam was a head taller and blonde with a square jaw. Both had an answer always at the ready: “No, we’re just real good friends.”
Even from seven flights up, midtown Manhattan looked like it could use a vigorous scrubbing. “Lu told me when she was here, she saw a rat right on the sidewalk,” Ada noted as she scanned the scene below, New Yorkers pushing and shoving their way to somewhere else. Lu had told her plenty of things, all of which dampened her interest in the trip like a soggy washcloth. “Have your keys out at night and hold them like this.” Lu had demonstrated, arranging her house and car keys between her fingers so they looked like spiky brass knuckles. “Don’t be afraid to go straight for the eyes if somebody tries to mug you.”
But when they took to the streets in their tennis shoes, Ada felt her enthusiasm for New York rising. There were so many landmarks she’d only seen at the movies. Macy’s rose up in front of them like a tall ship. And even though Cam preferred anything to department store shopping, she agreed to a spin through the first floor—all the while dodging perfume girls who tried to catch them in a fragrant mist.
“You come out on a completely different block!” Ada marveled when they emerged through the revolving door into a bustling square.
It turned out, Cam had something better than Macy’s up her sleeve, but wouldn’t say what it was. They hiked several long blocks and then a few shorter ones, arriving at a majestic building flanked by stone lions. “Oh!” Ada said, awed by the words The New York Public Library etched into the facade.
The Rose Reading Room was the very definition of “library.” The ceiling mural and chandeliers, the polished tables equipped with lamps, the dumbwaiter that transported book requests from deep in the bowels of the city . . . this was truly a story to tell at the next meeting of librarians she attended.
The Ada Decades Page 10