Coming of Age in Mississippi (20 page)

“It was O.K.,” I said.

“What did you do while you were there?” she asked.

“I got a job,” I said.

“Oh, you didn’t tell me you were going to work. I thought you were going for a vacation.”

I stood looking at her, thinking to myself, “Why are you so interested in what I did while I was in Baton Rouge?”

“I would like for you to come back and work for me; if you are not doing anything Friday and Saturday I would like for you to help me give the house a good cleaning.”

“I gotta get my school clothes together before school starts,” I said. “I could help you next weekend.”

“And when does school start?” she asked.

“A week from Monday.”

“But I was kinda hoping you could help me
this
weekend. We are having company Sunday.” She waited for me to answer.

I didn’t say anything.

“O.K.,” Mrs. Burke finally said. “I’ll see you next Friday.” Then she drove off.

“That’s how you talk to white folks?” Mama said to me as I walked back on the porch.

“Now what did I say to Mrs. Burke? How
am
I suppose to talk to her?” I asked.

“You didn’t have nothing to do Friday and Saturday that you couldn’t help her.”

“I do have something to do. You heard what I told her. I gotta get my school clothes together.”

“You got all next week to do them clothes,” Mama said.

I still didn’t understand the change that had taken place in Mama while I was in Baton Rouge. Again, I knew that Raymond had something to do with it. He wasn’t just looking at me longing like he used to. Since I had come back from Baton Rouge, he had barely spoken to me. Whenever he was around, I got this strange feeling that for some reason or other he hated me.

About two weeks after school opened, all my plans were in operation. I was busy for a total of eighteen hours a day. Each day I spent the last two periods of school on the band or on basketball. Then I would go straight to work. I was never
home until eight or nine at night and as soon as I entered the house, I’d begin helping Adline them with their lessons so I wouldn’t even have to talk to Mama or Raymond. On Wednesday and Friday nights I took piano lessons. On Sundays I taught Sunday school and B.T.U.

I was so busy now that I could work for Mrs. Burke and not think of her or her guild meetings. I would fall asleep at night without dreaming old, embedded, recurring dreams. I had to keep a lot of things in the back of my mind until I finished high school.

When our mid-semester grades were released, I discovered I had made A’s in all my subjects. Everything seemed so easy now. Sometimes I got scared because things were moving along too smoothly. Things had always seemed hard before. But now I was doing three times as much and I felt as if I could take on the whole world and not be tired by it. I was even better in basketball than I had ever been. In fact, I was the number one girl on the team.

Mr. Hicks, our new coach, was a nut for physical fitness—especially for girls. He hated women who were dumb about sports and he used to practice us until we were panting like overplowed mules. Sometimes he’d even take us out to play touch football with the boys so that we could learn that game. All the girls who didn’t go along with his physical fitness program or who were fat and lazy he dismissed immediately. He was determined to have a winning team and was interested only in tall, slim girls who were light and fast on their feet. I think I worked harder than almost anyone else.

Shortly after mid-semester, Mr. Hicks organized a gymnastic and tumbling team. All the basketball players were required to participate. Running and heaving a ball on that open basketball court wasn’t so bad, but falling on it when we did somersaults, handsprings, and rolls was like falling on steel.

Mr. Hicks was the most merciless person I had ever met. The first few weeks some of the girls could hardly walk, but
he made them practice anyhow. “The only way to overcome that soreness and stiffness is to work it out,” he would say. We all learned to like Mr. Hicks, in spite of his cruelty, because in the end he was always right. After three weeks our stiffness was completely gone and we all felt good. Now I took in all the activities without even getting short-winded. And I finished the semester with straight A’s.

One Wednesday, I was ironing in Mrs. Burke’s dining room as usual when she came to me looking very serious.

“Essie, I am so tired and disgusted with Wayne,” she said, sitting down in one of the dining room chairs. “He almost flunked out of school last semester. At this rate he won’t finish high school. I don’t know what to do. He’s in algebra now and he just can’t manage it. I’ve tried to find someone to tutor him in math, but I haven’t been able to. How is
your
math teacher?” she asked me.

“Oh, he is very good, but he hardly ever teaches our class. Most of the time he lets me take over,” I said.

“Are you that good in algebra?” she asked.

“Yes, I make all A’s in algebra, and he thinks I am one of his best students.”

She looked at me for a moment as if she didn’t believe me. Then she left the dining room.

“Look, Essie,” she said, coming back with a book. “These are the problems Wayne is having trouble with. Can you work them?”

“Yes, we’ve passed these in my book. I can do them all,” I said.

“See if you can work these two,” Mrs. Burke said to me. “I’ll press a couple of these shirts for you meanwhile.”

I sat down at the dining room table and began working the two problems. I finished them before she finished the first shirt.

When I gave her the paper, she looked at me again like she
didn’t believe me. But after she had studied it and checked my answers against the ones given in the back of the book, she asked me if I would tutor Wayne a few evenings a week. “I’ll pay you extra,” she said. “And I can also help you with your piano lessons sometimes.”

Within a week I was helping Wayne and a group of his white friends with their algebra every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night. While Mrs. Burke watched television in the living room, we would all sit around the dining room table—Wayne, Billy, Ray, Sue, Judy, and me. They were all my age and also in the tenth grade. I don’t think Mrs. Burke was so pleased with the even proportion of boys to girls in the group. Neither did she like the open friendship that was developing between Wayne and me. She especially didn’t like that Wayne was looking up to me now as his “teacher.” However, she accepted it for a while. Often Wayne would drive me home after we had finished the problems for the night.

Then, one Tuesday, she came through the dining room just as Wayne was asking me a question. “Look Essie,” he said, “how do we do this one?” He asked this as he leaned over me with his arms resting on the back of my chair, his cheek next to mine.

“Wayne!”
Mrs. Burke called to him almost shouting. Wayne and I didn’t move, but the others turned and stared at her. “Listen to what Essie is saying,” she said, trying to get back her normal tone of voice.

“Mother, we
were
listening,” Wayne said very indignantly, still cheek to cheek with me.

The room was extremely quiet now. I felt as if I should have said something. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. I knew Wayne was purposely trying to annoy his mother so I just sat there, trying to keep from brushing my cheek against his, feeling his warm breath on my face. He stared at her until she looked away and went hurriedly into the kitchen.

Wayne straightened up for a moment and looked at each of his friends as they looked to him for an explanation. His face
was completely expressionless. Then he leaned over me again and asked the same question he had asked before. At that point, Mrs. Burke came back through the dining room.

“Wayne, you can take Billy them home, now,” she said.

“We haven’t done this problem, Mother. If you would stop interrupting maybe we could finish.”

“Finish the problem then and take Billy them home, but drop Essie off first,” Mrs. Burke said and left the room.

I explained the problem. But I was just talking to the paper. Everyone had lost interest now.

When we left the house Mrs. Burke watched us get into the car and drive off. Didn’t anyone say a word until Wayne stopped in front of my house. Then Billy said, “See you Thursday, Essie,” as cheerfully as he could. “O.K.,” I said, and Wayne drove away.

The following evening when I went to work, Mrs. Burke wasn’t home and neither was Wayne. Mrs. Burke had left word with Mrs. Crosby that I was to do the ironing and she had put out so many clothes for me to do that by the time I finished I was late for my piano lesson. I ran out of the house and down the front walk with my music books in my hand just as Mrs. Burke and Wayne were pulling into the driveway.

“Did you finish the ironing already, Essie?” Mrs. Burke asked me as she got out of the car.

“I just finished,” I said.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Wayne asked.

“I’m late for my piano lesson.”

“Let me drive you then,” he said.

“I’m going to use the car shortly, Wayne,” Mrs. Burke snapped.

“It’s not far from here. I can walk,” I said, rushing down the sidewalk.

The next evening Sue and Judy didn’t show up. Only the boys came. Mrs. Burke kept passing through the dining room every few minutes or so. The moment we finished doing the
problems, she came in and said, “Essie, I gotta stop in and see Mrs. Fisher tonight. I’ll drop you off.”

I had begun to get tired of her nagging and hinting, but I didn’t know what to do about it. In a way I enjoyed helping Wayne and his friends. I was learning a lot from them, just as they were from me. And I appreciated the extra money. Mrs. Burke paid me two dollars a week for helping Wayne and Wayne’s friends paid me a dollar each. I was now making twelve dollars a week, and depositing eight dollars in my savings account. I decided not to do anything about Mrs. Burke. “She will soon see that I won’t mess with Wayne,” I thought.

That Saturday afternoon I was out in the backyard hanging clothes on the line while Wayne was practicing golf.

“Essie, you want to play me a round of golf?” he asked as I finished and headed for the back door.

“I don’t know how to play,” I said.

“It’s easy. I’ll teach you,” he said. “Come, let me show you something.”

He gave me the golf club and tried to show me how to stand, putting his arms around me and fixing my hands on the club.

“Essie, the washing machine stopped long ago!” Mrs. Burke suddenly yelled out of the house.

“I’ll show you when you finish the wash,” Wayne said as I walked away. I didn’t even look back at him. Walking into the house, I felt like crying. I could feel what was happening inside Wayne. I knew that he was extremely fond of me and he wanted to do something for me because I was helping him and his friends with their algebra. But the way he wanted to do it put me up tight. By trying to keep him from doing it, Mrs. Burke only made him want to do it more. I knew Wayne respected me and wouldn’t have gotten out of his place if I’d remained distant and cool. Now I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to do anything for me—but I didn’t know how.

Wayne, Billy, and Ray received B’s on the mid-semester exams. They were so happy about their marks they brought
their test papers over for me to see. I shall never forget that night. The four of us sat around the table after we had corrected the mistakes on their papers.

“Gee, Essie, we love you,” Billy said. “And just think, Wayne, we could have gotten A’s, and if we make an A on the final exam we will get a B for a final grade.” Wayne didn’t say anything for a while. He just looked at Billy, then at me. When he looked at me he didn’t have to speak.

“Boy, let’s call Sue and Judy and see what they got,” he finally said. He ran to the phone in the hall, followed by Billy and Ray.

When they left me sitting there, I began to wonder how it was that Wayne and his friends were so nice and their parents so nasty and distasteful.

Sue and Judy came back to me for help because they almost flunked the exam. Mrs. Burke seemed more relaxed once the girls were back. However, they were not relaxed at all. They felt guilty for leaving in the first place. For a week or so they brought me little gifts and it made me nervous. But after that we were again one little happy family.

The dining room in Mrs. Burke’s house had come to mean many things to me. It symbolized hatred, love, and fear in many variations. The hatred and the love caused me much anxiety and fear. But courage was growing in me too. Little by little it was getting harder and harder for me not to speak out. Then one Wednesday night it happened.

Mrs. Burke seemed to discuss her most intimate concerns with me whenever I was ironing. This time she came in, sat down, and asked me, “Essie, what do you think of all this talk about integrating the schools in the South?”

At first I looked at her stunned with my mouth wide open. Then Mama’s words ran through my head: “Just do your work like you don’t know nothin’.” I changed my expression to one of stupidity.

“Haven’t you heard about the Supreme Court decision, and all this talk about integrating the schools?” she asked.

I shook my head no. But I lied.

“Well, we have a lot of talk about it here and people seemingly just don’t know what to do. But I am not in favor of integrating schools. We’ll move to Liberty first. I am sure that they won’t stand for it there. You see, Essie, I wouldn’t mind Wayne going to school with you. But all Negroes aren’t like you and your family. You wouldn’t like to go to school with Wayne, would you?” She said all this with so much honesty and concern, I felt compelled to be truthful.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Burke. I think we could learn a lot from each other. I like Wayne and his friends. I don’t see the difference in me helping Wayne and his friends at home and setting in a classroom with them. I’ve learned a lot from Judy them. Just like all Negroes ain’t like me, all white children I know ain’t like Wayne and Judy them. I was going to the post office the other day and a group of white girls tried to force me off the sidewalk. And I have seen Judy with one of them. But I know Judy ain’t like that. She wouldn’t push me or any other Negro off the street.”