“But when the principal stuck his head in to see how she was doing, she just smiled like a possum in the middle of a cow plop and said, ‘Just fine, sir. You have nice students here,’ and he like to busted his face smiling back,” a rawboned bus student told Peyton on the school steps. “My brother said that after he’d gone she just looked at the class and winked. He said everybody hoped nobody tells on her. They thought she was great.”
Peyton knew that nobody would tell parents or faculty about Nora Findlay. She was life, rebellion, even affirmation to them. No teacher had ever been anything but the oppressor. They would simply say, “Oh, just fine, thanks. She’s nice,” to their parents, and the faculty would say to each other what a sweet girl she seemed to be, so deferential to the older ones, not at all like the young girls you were beginning to see around Atlanta now.
Peyton did not think it could last, of course; Nora was bound to be found out in this small, airless arena. But for now she was flying high, and Peyton soared with her, riding her updraft. One of the cheerleaders actually asked her to sit with them at lunch the next day.
“I’m going home, thanks,” she said. “My cousin and I always have lunch together.”
That evening as they sat at dinner Frazier McKenzie said, “Well, how did it go at the high school today?”
“Just fine,” Nora said. “Peyton, please pass the butter.”
Peyton went back to the Losers Club the next afternoon. She knew Ernie and Boot would have heard about Nora’s first day at the high school. It would be a triumph for her, to have a cousin who had embarrassed her and her whole family in front of the entire town.
But Ernie and Boot said nothing about Nora. They were looking at pictures in a book that Ernie had, with photographs and illustrations in dark sepia and pale tints, as if they had been washed with watercolor. Ernie closed the book smartly, but not before Peyton had seen a remarkable image of a mustachioed man on all fours in what looked to be a Turkish harem, naked except for an elaborate harness of leather and metal around his waist. Behind him stood a massive, simpering lady, also naked except for rolled mesh stockings that came up to her thighs, holding a whip.
“It’s Victorian pornography,” Ernie said smugly, seeing the blank shock on Peyton’s face. “Very erotic. Very rare. This is one of only a hundred ever printed. Not for ladies, though, Peyton.”
“I don’t care,” Peyton said, face flaming. “It’s stupid, anyway. Who wants to look at a grown a man playing horse?”
“Yeah, my uncle got a better harness for his mules than that,” Boot said. “In fact, he got two of them. Your mama know you got this book, Ernie?”
“My mother doesn’to know everything about me, not by a long shot,” Ernie said fiercely. “I have a whole other life she doesn’t know about. A life of the mind, if you will.”
“That don’t look like no life of the mind to me,” Boot said.
“Well, it’s considered quite highbrow, a kind of literature really. I wouldn’t expect either of you to understand.”
“I’m reading literature myself,” Peyton said, trying to sound offhanded. “My Cousin Nora gave me a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. She’s teaching it to her class, too. It’s been printed in a bunch of different languages.”
“A nice little book,” Ernie said. “Not, of course, the great American novel, but nice.”
“That idiot,” Nora said, grinning, when Peyton told her that night what Ernie had said. “That’s just what it is.”
On Saturday morning they went to Atlanta. The fresh cold had given way before the green surf of spring rolling north from Florida, and the earth smelled wet and new and rich. The sun was mild, and there were a few daffodils and snowdrops winking from their mulched beds around the town.
“If you’ll put on your sweater we’ll put the top down” Nora said. “I’ll turn the heater on. I used to do that all the time in the winter in Miami, whenever it got a little chilly. It drove everybody who knew me wild. But there’s nothing like spring wind in your face and warm air on your feet.”
And there wasn’t. By the time the little pink arrow of a car rolled into downtown Atlanta, Peyton was drunk on air and light and wind and warm feet.
“We’ll park at Rich’s because it’s a good starting place. But I assume you don’t want to go in,” Nora said, smiling sideways at Peyton.
“Never again.”
“Never say never.”
They walked up Peachtree Street from Rich’s in the spring sun. The streets were full of people moving languidly, and the sound of car radios spilled out into the sweet air. Many convertibles went by, motors idling, just drifting.
“None of them as sexy as mine,” Nora said. “This is nice, though. This reminds me of a Saturday afternoon in Havana, or maybe Miami in the earlier days. Everybody came out into the streets.”
“To do what?” Peyton asked. She was still glancing at the deer-girl in the store windows. The deer-girl, dressed in Aunt Augusta’s Villager and flat shoes, looked back. When Peyton averted her eyes, so did the girl. Presently Peyton stopped looking.
“Just to be there,” Nora said. “You need to learn the fine art of just being, Peyton. I don’t think your daddy or your Aunt Augusta is going to teach you that, so I guess the job falls to me. The first thing you do when you’re being is to kind of float around seeing what you can see. Listen hard. Smell the smells—like that peanut shop over there. And exhaust fumes. And the narcissus and daffodils from that lady on the corner selling flowers. Want some flowers?”
“What for? They’ll just wilt.”
“Ah, but how pretty they’ll be until they do.” She bought a big bunch of ruffled yellow daffodils, still wet from the morning dew, and gave them to Peyton. “Don’t pass up feasts for any of your senses, Peyton,” she said. “Dorothy Parker—do you know Dorothy Parker? a poet and satirist who wrote in the twenties and thirties, marvelous—once wrote a poem that said, in part, ‘passing by a fountain, wringing at a rock.’ Don’t wring at rocks. Wait for fountains.”
“OK,” Peyton said, not knowing what Nora was talking about and yet somehow knowing. She slowed down, consciously slackened her muscles, and sniffed the air.
It’s Atlanta in the spring, she thought in surprise. I’ll never forget it. I’d know it anywhere. It’s not like any other smell.
They stopped in a little stationery store that also sold tobacco and cigarettes and cigars and hard candy. It was in the Peachtree Arcade, a wondrous hall between two buildings, two stories high, completely arched over with glass. Many small shops and businesses lined the aisles. The arcade was full of people, milling and chattering and examining wares spread out on tables. They did not look, to Peyton’s eyes, very prosperous. This was just the sort of place Aunt Augusta was always warning Peyton about. Not as bad as the bus station, but in the same arena.
“Exactly like Havana,” Nora said. “Wonderful. Not a Baptist or a lady in here.”
At the shop Nora bought a long, fat black cigar from a beautiful box of red and gold. She sniffed it, then asked the clerk to cut it for her, and lit it and put it into her mouth.
“Mmmmm,” she said. “Not a Romeo y Julieta, but not bad for an export,” she said, blowing a plume of aromatic white smoke from her nostrils. She closed her eyes, savoring the tobacco. Peyton closed hers, too, but in profound embarrassment. The clerk was staring at Nora, as was a group of ladies obviously up from the country, their chapped mouths tight, and a roving band of young men in tight blue jeans, the red, crosshatched backs of their necks proclaiming them to be country boys in the city for a Saturday.
“Got something bigger than that you can suck on,” one of them called to Nora. The rest snickered.
“Not as big by a long shot, sonny,” Nora called back through smoke. “And for sure not as tasty. Come back when you’ve grown up.”
The young men hooted and pummeled the speaker’s biceps. He turned and strutted out, the back of his neck redder than when he had come in.
�
�If Daddy could see you he’d have a fit,” Peyton said. “If Aunt Augusta could, she’d buy a megaphone and start broadcasting it.”
“Who’s going to tell them?” Nora said. “I can’t imagine your aunt has ever set foot in this enchanting place, and I somehow don’t think you’re going to tell on me, are you?”
“No,” Peyton said, grinning suddenly. Her heart took off in crazy flight, fueled by a kind of reckless joy. “Can I have a puff?”
“Not till you’re sixteen. I may be definitely suspect, but I’m not a child corrupter. Come on, let’s buy you a journal.”
In a far corner of the shop there was a dusty pile of books. They seemed to be very old, some with flakes of yellowing paper spilling from them, some thick with dust. All were leather, and some were stamped with faded gold. Nora ruffled through them, smiling appreciatively.
“Lovely,” she said. “Just imagine the hands that have touched these, Peyton. Whole lives, right here in these books. What do you think of this one?”
She held up a green, soft-leather book, faded to a pale sage, with the letters “AMS” stamped on the front. Inside, in a faint copperplate hand, was written on the flyleaf, “Anna Marjorie Stephens. Her book.” There had been a date, but it was lost now. The thick ivory pages were edged with dull gold.
Some of the first pages had been torn out, but the rest were blank and ruled with sepiaink. There was a long, frayed gold ribbon to mark the reader’s place.
“Do you like this? I think it’s gorgeous,” Nora said. “It was obviously Anna Marjorie’s journal. You’d always have her looking over your shoulder, wouldn’t you? She’d be the only one you’d have to share your secret thoughts with.”
“It’s pretty,” Peyton said dutifully. She had thought they would go to the Cokesbury Book Shop and select a fat leather book with a lock and key and flowers on the front, and “My Diary” written on it in script. She had seen them there before. A proper diary. A new one.
“I think you should have it,” Nora said. “When you’re grown and you look back over this, you’ll see that there’s a resonance to it that a mass-produced teenager’s diary could never have. Usually it’s a good policy to stick to the old stuff.”
She paid for the book and they went out into the warming street. It was past one o’clock and Peyton was growing hungry, but she did not want to break the dreaming spell of this strange day. The crowds had thickened, but they seemed to have slowed down, like people walking under water. Peyton saw forearms bare under rolled-up shirt sleeves, and for the first time, pale, winter-white feet in sandals. The collar of the hated Villager felt hot and constricting. She ran a forefinger under it and bent her neck.
“Just unbutton it,” Nora said. “It’s gotten hotter than the hinges of hell. I’m going to.” She undid the top three buttons of her silk shirt. Under it Peyton could see the freckled slopes of her breasts. She looked away.
“Come on,” Nora said. “Unbutton. It’s not as if you’ve got much to shock the populace with yet.”
Peyton unbuttoned a top button, and then another. Cool air and warm sun kissed her collarbone. The little talisman her grandmother had made sent up a drift of rosemary. It smelled wonderful.
“I guess it’s about lunchtime,” Nora said. “What are you in the mood for? French, Mediterranean? Chinese? Indian?”
“I don’t think Atlanta has any of those,” Peyton said.
“I know. I was kidding. There’s a delicatessen over there. How about a kosher pastrami on rye with potato salad and garlic pickles? Have you ever had Jewish deli food?”
“I don’t think so,” Peyton said faintly. Aunt Augusta had once told her never to eat in a Jewish household: “They cut the throats of the chickens and lambs and use the blood in the cooking,” she had said. Peyton’s stomach lurched.
“Well, then, come on,” Nora said, starting toward the big delicatessen catty-corner across from the arcade. “Best in the world. But I expect they could rustle you up a hamburger if you’d like.”
When they approached the deli they saw a crowd on the sidewalk outside. People were milling and buzzing like bees from a dislodged hive, and there were policemen with nightsticks among them. The crowd had the air of a holiday throng at first glance, but as they approached Peyton caught the tenor of the buzz. It was angry.
“They must hate the day’s special,” Nora said, pushing through the crowd to look in the window of the deli.
Then she said, “Look, Peyton, it’s a sit-in. See those black kids at the counter? Nobody’s looking at them, and there’s no food in front of them. In fact, there’s not a living soul at the entire counter. Looks like we’d have our choice of seats.”
“Are we going in there?” Peyton squeaked. She had heard, vaguely, of sit-ins, but they had seemed to have as much relevancy to her world as the practice of suttee. She did know, however, that people went to jail for sitting in. Why, she could not quite remember.
“I thought we might. I think it would be good for you to see how the other half of your country lives. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.”
“Will we get arrested?”
“Oh, no. It’s OK for us to eat there. Just not them.”
“Is it against the law? Will they be arrested?”
“Probably not, unless they start a fuss. And I doubt they will. Sit-ins are a nonviolent protest. But the restaurant owner gets to decide if he’ll serve Negroes or not. Not many do. Obviously this one doesn’t.”
“I can’t go in there, Nora. There’s a television camera over there. What if Daddy and Aunt Augusta saw me on TV?”
“I hope they’d be proud of you. Come on, Peyton. Sometimes it’s absolutely necessary to do something that scares you. I think this is one of those times.”
“Are you scared?”
“No. But then I’ve been eating my meals with black people for a long time.”
They went inside. The deli was dim and arctic with stale air-conditioning. There was a faint garlicky smell that was strange but not unpleasant, and stratas of cigarette smoke still hung in the air. But there seemed to be no customers. Behind the counter, two blond beehived waitresses were sitting on stools and staring fixedly out the windows at the crowd. Their faces looked red and ready to burst.
Nora sauntered to the counter and sat down beside one of the young Negroes. He was dressed neatly in a coat and tie and looked to be about eighteen years old. He looked at Nora, who smiled. Tentatively he smiled back. The other three men, similarly dressed, looked over, too. None of them smiled, but they all nodded.
“What’s good here?” Nora said.
“I don’t think we’re likely to find out,” said the first young man.
“How long have you been here?” It was a casual, pleasant question, as if Nora were asking about the weather.
“Since eight o’clock this morning,” the young man said. “We came in for coffee.”
“Must take a long time to brew,” Nora said.
“We got time,” one of the others said.
Nora nodded thoughtfully. Then she raised her voice slightly and said, “Miss? My cousin and I would like to order some lunch.”
“We don’t serve niggers,” the waitress said tightly.
“Well, we shouldn’t have any trouble, then, should we? I think we’d both like a hamburger, and some coleslaw and garlic pickles on the side. And a cup of coffee for me and Coca-Cola for the young lady.”
The woman stared. “You may not be niggers, but you’re sitting with them,” she said.
“I’m not going to serve you.”
“Oh,” Nora said. “Is this a private club?”
The woman merely glared.
“All we want is a simple hamburger,” Nora said mildly. “I thought this was a public restaurant and we were allowed to sit where we liked. If that’s not the case, I think that guy out there with the television camera would like to know about it. Looks like he’s just waiting.”
“The owner won’t let the newspeople in,”
the woman said. Desperation was shading her nasal voice.
“Now I really don’t believe that’s legal. There’s this little thing called the Thirteenth Amendment. To the Constitution, that is. That guy out there would be real surprised to find that you all hadn’t heard of it.”
A fat, bald man put his head around a door at the end of the counter.
“She’s threatening to bring the TV people in here if we don’t serve her,” the waitress squealed.
“Then serve the bitch,” he shouted, and he shut the door.
“All right. What was it, hamburgers?” the waitress snapped.
“Yes. Two. And one apiece for my friends here.”
“I ain’t serving no niggers!”
“Well, then, bring me six,” Nora said. “With six sides of pickles and coleslaw and five coffees, and a Coca-Cola.”
“Mr. Stern!” the waitress shrieked.
“Do it,” he snarled from behind the closed door. “Do it and get that trash out of my place.”
When the hamburgers came, they all ate silently and neatly. Peyton, at the other end of the counter, beside Nora, kept her head down. Her face was burning. She was close to choking on the dry bun, but she did not.
When they had finished and Nora picked up the check to go to the cash register, the first young man said, “Thank you. We were getting pretty hungry. I hope we didn’t scare the young lady.”
“You’re entirely welcome,” Nora said.
“I wasn’t scared,” Peyton said, surprising herself.
They pushed through the crowd outside in silence. A reporter and a television cameraman came up and thrust themselves into their faces.
“What’s going on in there?” the reporter said. The cameraman started filming. Peyton sidled behind Nora, who merely smiled.
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