“And you expect me to come back down here to help take care of that?”
“You could do that . . . or if you’re really brave, you could ride one of the buses yourself. In fact, I recommend it.”
I stared at him. “You plan to ride one?”
“Now, what kind of journalist would I be if I didn’t take the ride at least once? Course now, I’d be scared shitless, but if I’m telling other people to do it, I can’t hardly not do it myself, can I?” He leaned toward me and spoke close to my ear. “We need to do this thing, Cassie. You need to ride too. You need to be on the bus.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I figured Solomon was right. I figured Rie was right too in what she had said about all of us needing to be in the fight. Stacey and I at Rie’s age would have taken on the fight. There was that much anger in us, that much that needed to be done. I thought about all the times I had put my pride aside, had tolerated the insults of whites, had been denied the rights all the white folks had just because of the color of my skin. I thought often of the time Charlie Simms had shoved me off the sidewalk in Strawberry when I was nine years old. I thought often of when we were on the road to Memphis to take Moe to the train to escape Mississippi and how I wanted to use the restroom at a gas station, a restroom for white women. I thought often of how I was so frightened by white men when they saw me standing in front of that restroom door that I fled in fear, slipped, and fell into the mud. I thought often of the white children taunting us as their school bus passed by my brothers and me, splashing muddy water over us, and how we had to scamper up the banks of the roadside to avoid being soaked. I thought often about all the insults, about all the days of humiliation. Every colored person in the South, every colored person in Mississippi, had memories of humiliation and anger.
Rie was definitely right. If I were her age, I would go join the fight. But I wasn’t her age any longer. Neither were Stacey, Christopher-John, or Little Man. My brothers had their families to look after. They couldn’t just take off and go south to sit-ins and demonstrations. As for me, I had my job and all my legal responsibilities—not the same as family, but still a responsibility. So I sent money instead to the organizations fighting the fight, NAACP and CORE and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I watched the daily news, saw the students and the arrests, listened to Rie when she called, harbored my guilt for not being there too, and stayed on in Boston.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“You’re looking mighty comfortable,” Guy said as he stopped in the hallway outside my open office door.
I laughed. I was seated at my desk with my feet propped upon it as I perused a stack of papers. My office was no larger than a sizeable broom closet, with only room enough for a desk, two file cabinets, two straight-back wooden chairs in front of the desk, a swivel wooden chair at the desk, and a narrow space for people to walk in and sit. There were no windows. I didn’t feel bad about the office. Everyone low in the office hierarchy had similar offices, even Guy, although his office did have windows. I took my feet from the desk and said, “Come in.”
Guy entered smiling and sat down on the edge of the desk. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt. I was dressed in jeans too. It was a Saturday and the office was closed. Everyone who came to do catch-up work dressed casually. There were usually only low-level people in the office on Saturday, none of the brass, so everything was more relaxed. During the week, when a professional appearance was required, I wore clothing more suitable for my position. There were two other women attorneys in the firm and they always wore suits. I chose to be different. I wore dresses, mostly A-line cuts. I had a couple of jackets that matched the dresses very nicely in case a more formal look was needed. The pumps I wore were practical for long standing or walking and were never flashy. Whenever I saw shoes or clothes I liked, I bought two or more in the same style, but different colors. That way I didn’t have to go shopping for a while. I hated shopping. Because I didn’t like dressing up, as soon as the workday was done, I slipped into a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting top and flat shoes. I felt more comfortable that way.
I tossed a set of papers to Guy. “Take a look and tell me what you think.” It was a case about a colored woman who had been forcedly removed from a white doctor’s office by the medical staff and had suffered injuries during the removal. The reason given for the removal was that the woman had no appointment and had become belligerent when she was told she had to leave. The woman said she had made an appointment over the phone, that her voice had not been recognized as being Negro, and the address she had given was in a white neighborhood. She believed she was denied the appointment because she was colored. There had been only white patients in the doctor’s waiting room. All medical complaints involving colored people and white doctors caught my eye, and I worked them all pro bono.
Guy read through the papers. “Obviously, there’s a strong case here. The woman needs to sue. But tell me, Cassie, are you billing for any of this, or is this another one of your pro bono causes?”
“Does this woman look as if she has any money to pay me or anybody else? We go to the same church, so she came to me. This case is personal to me, Guy.”
“All your pro bono cases are.”
“Well, some of the things in this case are similar to things that happened to me. I plan to win this one.”
Guy handed back the papers. “My dad and my uncle aren’t going to like this, all these pro bono cases of yours.”
“It’s a Saturday and I’m on my own time.”
“In the law firm’s office.”
“What they don’t know . . .” I took another look at the papers and asked Guy, “Have they said anything about my pro bono work?”
“You know they don’t talk about that sort of thing to me. I’m as low on the totem pole as you are. They’ll talk to you before they talk to me. But frankly I think you’re safe. They’re totally satisfied with all the cases they’ve assigned to you, and besides, as you’ve told me often, you’re our lone token in the office. As long as you do the assigned work well, they’re not about to get rid of you.” He smiled and got up. “So, what time shall I come this evening?”
“Anytime you want, after seven.”
Guy leaned over the desk and lightly kissed me. “All right then. One minute after the hour. You can tell me about all the similarities in your life to this case.”
“I’ll do that,” I said as he left the office, then put my feet back on the desk.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Although Guy had an apartment in the city that was almost totally bare, he also had a small farmhouse in the countryside. The house was secluded on thirty acres, set back far from the road and screened from view by towering sycamore trees. The house was nothing much to look at, but it was warm and comfortable and I helped Guy paint it inside and out. A barn much larger than the house was on the property and although there were no animals, Guy found other uses for it and invited me to do the same. He had discovered welding and loved collecting junk metal, which he transformed into intricate shapes that he used to decorate his house and his yard. Following his lead, I developed a penchant for making jewelry, mostly out of beads and organic material found in the forest surrounding Guy’s house. Although we didn’t go out much to public places together, we both enjoyed going to markets and scrapyards and secondhand stores looking for treasures that we could use.
Guy spent as many weekends as he could at his house, and I spent many of those weekends with him. Much of our time there we worked in the barn, but we also took long walks in the forest and sometimes Guy borrowed horses from a nearby neighbor and we rode along the trails. A small pond was on the property and Guy stocked it with fish, mainly for me. I loved fishing and I taught Guy. On summer weekends after hours at the pond, we usually had a big enough catch for at least one meal, and sometimes Guy even invited a few frie
nds over to join us. They were friends who knew about us and had no problem with our relationship.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Despite how good we were together, I knew from the beginning that I could never marry Guy. But once back in Boston, I let down my guard about all the reasons I couldn’t. Guy was sweet and caring toward me. We talked and laughed easily together. We had explored the big cities of Europe together, Paris and London, Rome and Athens, Stockholm and Berlin. We had walked the lush green mountains of Ethiopia and explored the glories of Tanganyika and felt the warm sands of Mombasa together as we walked along the shore, with the waters of the Indian Ocean lapping over our bare feet. Guy understood my work and I understood his. We were more alike than we were different. Mostly, it was our race that defined our difference. Guy’s mind-set was similar to mine in more than one aspect of our lives, but in particular our dedication to the law in finding the means to apply it equally for every breathing person. When I finally had told Guy about Moe and what had happened in Mississippi, Guy had become as passionate as I about defending Moe if he were arrested. I told Guy that an arrest warrant had been issued for Moe in Michigan, but Moe had fled. I hadn’t told Guy that I knew where Moe was and Guy hadn’t asked me, but I suspected he knew.
As we both became more and more involved in finding a legal argument for Moe in case he was arrested, Guy teasingly said, “You’re sure I shouldn’t be jealous of him?”
“I’ve told you how close Moe and I are and what’s between us. That won’t ever change.”
Guy was silent, his gaze on me. We were in his office. He rose from his desk and came over to me. “Cassie, I wish you’d let me more into that part of your life.” His voice was now serious.
I laughed curtly. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not? Look at all that’s going on around us. Things are changing.”
“Well, not that fast,” I said. “We can hardly step out here in Boston without people staring. Back with my family, back with people at the church, everybody at home, there would be no way we could live like we’re living now.”
“I took you to be with my family, Cassie, and you’re still working here in my father’s law firm. My family might not like our marriage any more than yours will, but I took that risk. Why can’t you?”
I hesitated, then said, “You are whiter than white, Guy. Blond, blue eyes, well-to-do. I just am not as brave as you, not when it comes to my family.”
Guy went back to his desk, then turned to face me again. “So, what about marrying me, Cassie? I’ve been waiting almost a year for you to say yes, but you don’t even address the subject.”
“Now’s not the time, Guy.”
“Well, when will be the time?”
I didn’t answer.
“Cassie, maybe I can never expect you to love me like you loved Flynn, but can you ever get over our racial divide and simply just love me for who I am? I am a man who fell in love with this beautiful woman with a brilliant mind and a laughing spirit. Color didn’t have anything to do with it. Despite our world, it shouldn’t.”
“Oh, please,” I said, “of course color had everything to do with it. You saw me sitting there by myself and you took pity on me. You figured I was sitting alone in that lecture hall because of my color. Well, truth is I was. But truth is too you have a good and compassionate heart, and that’s why you came over to sit by me. Don’t tell me if I had been sitting there with that whole row filled with other students that you would have noticed me, that you would have come over?”
“Who knows? But it wasn’t that way, was it? You were sitting alone for a reason . . . and for that reason I noticed you.” He sighed. “And, Cassie Logan de Baca, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you since.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I wasn’t being totally honest with Guy. Certainly, I wasn’t being honest with my family, and I wasn’t even being honest with myself. I looked at my life. It was slipping away. All the girls who had been in my class were married. Mary Lou Wellever, Gracey Pearson, and Alma Scott—all were mothers of teenagers or children even older. Some were even grandmothers. They had married the sweet boys of our Great Faith community, had stayed on working their sharecropped farmland, attempting to improve their lives as best they could. As the white landowners began to mechanize their farming methods and fewer workers were needed, some in the community had moved to Jackson or elsewhere with their families and seemed to be doing well. They all had something worthwhile in their lives. They all had their own little families, security in the men they loved. I knew their worlds weren’t perfect. Some of the men had strayed. Some of the women had as well, but for the most part they seemed to come back to each other, to embrace whatever they had built together and just get on with their lives, imperfect as they were. In comparison, I felt my life empty.
If I married Guy, he could help fill it. But whenever he pressed about our getting married, I put him off, not wanting to discuss it. Despite his liberal outlook and supposed understanding of what I experienced as a black person, I knew he could have no true understanding of my world. He had never walked in a black person’s shoes. He did not understand that my concern was not only about marrying him, but having children with him, children who would be mixed-race. My cousin Suzella had been mixed-race. Her father was Mama’s nephew and her mother was a white woman, mostly an unheard-of thing to me when I was a child. Things had been tough for Suzella, and more than once she denied her own heritage. I didn’t want that for my child.
I spoke to a colored woman married to a white lawyer in the firm. He was British, she was from Alabama, and they had four children. I asked her how having parents of two races affected their children. She was straightforward about it. “Sometimes it’s harder than hell,” she said. “Sometimes when they make a white friend at their school, the white parents don’t want their children socializing with them. They get along better with colored children most of the time, but then there are those times when colored children turn on them too, beat them up, say they’re acting uppity, think they’re better than the rest of the colored kids because they look so white, straight hair, light skin. It’s not an easy road, Cassie. You have to be willing to sacrifice for a marriage like mine, and your children will have to sacrifice right along with you. You have to be mighty in love to take it on. My advice? Don’t marry this man unless you’re willing to take it on.”
That was the thing. I didn’t know if I could take it on. The family would not have understood. Even though our family was racially mixed, that racial mixing had come during the days of slavery, when black people had little to no say about what happened to our bodies. We had no choice with whom we had relations; sexual relations were forced upon us. Both Papa’s father and Mama’s father had white fathers. Grandpa Paul-Edward’s mother, Deborah, was the child of a black slave woman, Emmaline, and a Choctaw Indian, Kanati. There was black-Indian heritage on Mama’s side of the family too. But now, despite all this racial mixing, we were expected to stick to our own race, and Stacey had made that very clear. I had so-called succeeded in a white world, but if I stepped outside the bounds of what the family and the community expected of me, I would betray them both. I would be a traitor to all the values they taught.
In addition to all the problems involved with interracial marriage, marriage between the races was illegal in the Deep South states, and a person could be jailed for it. So, I vacillated between making a commitment to Guy and totally breaking off the relationship. But I didn’t want to lose Guy. Since I had come to Boston, Guy had been such an important part of my life; it was difficult for me to imagine it without him. There had been a time I could not have imagined life without Flynn either, but when he died, somehow I managed to live. Still, every time Guy asked me about marrying him, I told him it would have to wait; for now, I just wanted to continue as we were. Reluctantly, he accepted that.
* *
*
◆ ◆ ◆
It was almost midnight when Stacey called. “Cassie,” he said, “Rie’s in jail.”
“What?”
“That sit-in today, you hear about it?”
“No . . . I was tied up at the office all day working on a case. Didn’t get home ’til late. What happened?”
“Hundreds of college students were protesting down there in Atlanta. Police came, arrested a bunch of them. Rie was one. I’m headed down there now. Man’s going with me to help on the drive. Need you to meet me there, help get her out.”
Without hesitation, I said, “I’ll check the planes. I’ll be down in the morning.” Stacey told me where they were holding Rie. “See you down there.”
All across the South, Negroes could not sit at lunch counters in department stores or try on clothing at those stores. Students in Atlanta had begun to protest. They came from the black colleges in the area—from Spellman, from Morehouse, from Atlanta University, from Clark, from Morris Brown. There was even a sprinkling of white students too from the white colleges—Emory and Georgia Tech. They all came together in sit-ins and protests against the big stores of Atlanta. Many protested, many demonstrated, and on October 19, many were arrested, charged with “trespass and refusing to leave private facilities.” That was how Rie was charged, along with more than fifty others. Among those arrested was Dr. Martin Luther King.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Stacey was already at the jail by the time I arrived. He looked angry and distraught. “Did you see her?” I asked. “Did they set bail?”
All the Days Past, All the Days to Come Page 33