SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1957
Sylvia and Donna Jean, after cleaning their room and putting fresh chenille bedspreads on their twin beds, sat down and turned on the transistor radio. Elvis Presley's “You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog” was playing for what seemed to be the millionth time.
“Do you like Elvis?” Donna Jean asked Sylvia.
“I guess so. Everybody does. His songs sound a lot like colored music, don't you think?”
“I don't really know,” Donna Jean replied. “I don't think I'll ever learn the names of all the singers and their songs like you do. How will I ever be popular in junior high if I can't tell the difference between Fats Domino and Perry Como?”
Sylvia laughed. “Well, Fats Domino is fat and loud and colored; while Perry Como is quiet and very white and sings love songs. Rachel thinks he's the most! Learning all that stuff just comes with practice. I pretend at school all the time that I know what I'm talking about. I think lots of the other girls do, too.”
“So colored people don't sing pretty love songs?” Donna Jean looked confused.
“Sure they do. âWhy Do Fools Fall in Love' by Frankie Lymon is one of my favorites. Now he's somebody who is good-lookingâand the same age as me!”
“I wonder how he got to be a rock-and-roll star,” Donna Jean mused.
“I don't know, but I can tell you one thingâhe doesn't have a father like Daddy!” Both girls laughed as Little Richard's “Tutti Frutti” began to play.
“Sylvia Faye! Turn that devil music down!” their father shouted up the stairs. “How is a man supposed to think with all that foolishness blasting through his house?” Sylvia noticed he didn't really sound angry, nor did he ask her to turn it off completely.
“Sorry, Daddy!” Sylvia called to him. Both girls giggled, but Sylvia immediately decreased the volume a bit.
Donna Jean winced a little as she walked over to the window and looked out at the chilly afternoon. “I wonder where Gary's going,” she mused. “He looks like he's in a hurry.”
“He wants to make sure he's long gone before Rachel gets here. How's your leg?” Sylvia asked with concern as she joined her sister.
Donna Jean looked serious for a moment. “It only hurts a little bitâI'll be fine.” Then she looked up at Sylvia and asked, “If they integrate the schools, how will we talk about stuff that only we understand, like colored singers and dancers and stuff?”
“I have no idea, DJ, but I have a feeling that talking about singers and dancers would be one of the last things to worry about. Staying alive while going to classes would probably be up there on the top of the list.”
Donna Jean touched her bandage. “That's scary. Would you want to be one of the first people to integrate a big old school like Central?” Donna Jean turned the radio back up a little as a Fats Domino song began to play. “Now this is one I know!” she said happily. “I found my thrill,” she sang softly with the record, “on Blueberry Hill ...”
“Well, going to Central High would certainly be no thrill. It would be a real test of courage, and I don't think I have any.” Sylvia hummed along with the song.
“What if Gary gets picked to go to Central?” DJ asked, frowning.
“Not a pretty picture,” Sylvia replied as she flopped down on her pillow. “Would he refuse to fight if they pushed him? Put up with nasty comments from smart-mouthed white kids?”
“Not likely,” DJ said. “He'd end up in jail for sure.”
Just then their mother came into the room with freshly laundered towels. “After you put these away, come down and help me freshen the living room,” she said. “Rachel will be here soon, and I want this house spotless.”
Sylvia didn't hurryâshe knew the house was ridiculously clean. “Mama, tell us again about when you were in school,” Sylvia asked as she folded the towels. It was fun to imagine her mother as a kid.
Her mother looked out the window and a smile crossed her face. “When I was the age of you girls, everybody I knew went to the schools built just for colored kids, just like you do now. We used books the white schools had thrown out, desks they no longer wanted, and materials that were outdated and torn, but we didn't care. We didn't
want
to go to school with the white kids. We had strong, powerful Negro teachers like Miss Washington who taught us pride in ourselves, confidence in our abilities, and all the academic skills we needed. When I went to college, I finished first in my class at an integrated university. I had been well prepared.”
“Things are changing, aren't they, Mama?” Donna Jean asked quietly.
“Yes, baby girl. Change is heading for us like a runaway truck.”
Just then the doorbell rang. “That's Rachel! I'll get it!” Sylvia said, jumping up from her bed. “Can you keep DJ in the kitchen while Rachel is here, Mama? We have girl stuff to talk about.”
“I'm a girl, too!” Donna Jean said defiantly, her arms folded across her chest.
“Come help me make the apple pie, Donna Jean. You've got lots of time to be a teenager,” her mother said smoothly.
Sylvia bounded down the stairs to open the door, waved to Rachel's mother, who was just driving off, and gave her friend a hug. Rachel wore a turquoise-colored poodle skirt decorated with silver music notes, black vinyl records, and two white teenagers dancing. “I
love
your skirt!” Sylvia said. “I've got to get one of those!”
Rachel stamped the slushy snow off her saddle oxfords and took off her jacket. She grinned and twirled around to show the full effect of the huge circular skirt. “I brought the nail polish,” she said.
“Good.” The two girls walked into the living room and plopped down on the plastic-covered sofa. “Hey, what is it with mothers that they buy this nice furniture then cover it all up?” Sylvia asked as she traced the pattern of the well-covered fabric. “My mother had these custom-made so they'd fit the couch exactly!”
Rachel laughed. “I once asked my mother why she covered all our furniture with plastic. She told me it was to keep it nice and clean and that way if we had company, it would look like new.”
“My mom says the same thing. But I have never, ever seen her take it off, not even when ladies from church come over. They all have this stuff on their living room furniture, too. When I grow up, I'm going to let my children sit on the sofa with no plastic to stick to their legs,” Sylvia said with confidence.
“I like the way your mom lines up your magazines,” Rachel said. “My mom just throws them in a basket by her favorite chair.” Mrs. Patterson had arranged the stacks into three neat diagonal piles on the small coffee table, so the edges made a little patternâone for
Look
magazine, one for
Life,
and one for
Ebony.
Sylvia picked up a copy of
Ebony.
“I bet you don't have this one at your house!” she said with a slight smile.
“You're right there,” Rachel said. “My father gets newspapers printed in German, but my mother subscribes to
Life
and
Reader's Digest.”
“I like
Ebony
because everybody in the whole magazine is coloredâeven in the ads.”
Rachel looked a little uncomfortable and picked up a copy of
Life.
“Regardless of what color the people are, don't you think the ads are stupid? Look at this oneâa clothes dryer with a built-in sunlamp that will get your clothes thirty-four percent fluffier. How do they measure stuff like that?”
Sylvia chuckled. “All I know is the pile of towels in that pictures is a lot taller than any pile I've seen of our towels hanging in our backyard to dry!”
Rachel nodded and flipped through the magazine. “Look at this one!” She read it in the singsong voice of a television announcer. “Housework fatigue? If you feel headachy and irritable after a busy day of housework, take Bayer aspirin to relieve your pain. You'll feel better fastâready for a pleasant evening with your husband.” Both girls rolled with laughter.
“What's
that
supposed to mean?” Sylvia asked, giggling.
“When you marry Reggie, you'll find out!” Rachel replied in a teasing tone.
“Mama and Daddy are so strict that I'll probably be old and dried up by the time they let me actually go out on a date, let alone get married!” Sylvia complained. “But Reggie Birmingham sure is cute!”
“My folks are stupid strict like that, too,” Rachel said. “And in no hurry to get me hitched. I've been told since I was a little girl that when I'm twenty-one I can
start
looking for a nice Jewish boy to marry.”
“Suppose you fell in love with a Catholic kid?”
“They'd have a heart attack.”
“What about a colored kid?” Sylvia asked, teasing.
“They'd probably roll over and die,” Rachel answered with a giggle.
“Mine are like that, too. Old folks have issues,” Sylvia commented.
Mrs. Patterson came in then with a plate of brownies and two glasses of milk. “I wonder what my life will be like when and if I get married,” Rachel mused when Mrs. Patterson left the room. “It seems like my mother is never really happy.”
“I know what you mean. I wonder if my mother dreamed of a rich man and pretty children and a fancy house like I do. Instead she got Daddy, who's a little overweight; and us, just ordinary kids; and our small gray house, which is nothing like the houses I see in
Life or Ebony
magazine. I wonder if she ever gets tired of it all.”
“My mother worries a lotâmostly about things out of her control. She doesn't sleep well,” Rachel said.
Sylvia nodded in agreement. “Late on Saturday night, I can hear my mother still fixing and cleaning. She never rests. I don't know when she does her own hair, or irons her clothes, or even when she goes to bed. All I know is she's always up before we are, and there's a big breakfast ready on the tableâFrench toast with Alaga syrup, fried eggs, grits, and cold glasses of milk. Do wives ever have any fun?”
Rachel had no answer. They ate their brownies in silence.
Saturday, January 5, 1957
Rachel and I had a good time today
. Mama still hasn't seen my red toenails. Some stuff you just hide. Rachel's dad wears long-sleeved shirts and a tie every day, even in summer, and sometimes it's hard for me to understand him when he speaks to me because he talks in a thick German accent. But every once in a while when the weather turns unbearably hot, he rolls up his shirtsleeves. I have seen the purple numbers tattooed on his forearm.
Sometimes Mama buys fresh beef from Mr. Zucker, and it's always marked with a large purple stamp of quality. I used to think the mark on Mr. Zucker's arm was something that had happened accidentally while he was preparing the meat. But the mark never faded and never came off. I think I was about eight when I asked him what that mark meant. Mr. Zucker said one word-Auschwitz. At the time I didn't know what that meant, but the look of despair in his eyes scared me. He never said anything else about it, and I never dared to ask.
I've heard my parents whisper about a Jewish man named Leo Frank who got lynched in Georgia a few years ago. Almost every colored family can tell a story about someone they knew who was taken out at midnight by an angry mob and hung by a rope until they died. My father rarely talks about what happened to my grandfather, but I know he was hung from an apple tree, and my dad witnessed it all. I see the leftover hurt that wraps around Daddy like a shawl.
Even teenagers can get lynched. Just two years ago a boy about my age named Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. He was from Chicago, and was visiting some relatives. According to the story he bought some candy in a little store and spoke to the owner's wife with disrespect. His Mississippi friends couldn't believe this Northern boy who had so much nerve. Two days later he was dragged out of his house in the middle of the night by two men. Emmett's body was found three days later in a river with a huge piece of machinery tied around his neck. He had been beaten, shot, drowned, and torturedâone of his eyes had been gouged out.
It was in all the papers and everybody in town had an opinion. I heard some white folks say it was his fault because he should have known better, but other white folks said it was an outrageâthat Mississippi folks just go too far. All the colored folks I knew were angry and scared. If a teenager from Chicago could get lynched, what chance did we have here in Arkansas? Anyway, they arrested the men who had taken him, but they were found not guilty at the trial. White folks expected that outcome. Colored folks knew not to expect better.
The thing I'll never forget about that story is that Jet magazine showed the picture of Emmett Till's dead body. His mother had insisted on having an open-casket funeralâshe said she wanted the world to see what they had done to her boy. There he lay in his coffin, wearing a nice suit and tie. But that's all that was pleasant about that picture. His head was swollen and grotesque from being in the water so long. One eye was missing, one side of his head was crushed, and a hole, I guess from a bullet, distorted his nose. He didn't look like a teenager, like the good-looking boy with the cheerful smile they showed on the other pageâhe looked liked a monster. Mama told me it was monsters that did that to him, but it didn't help much. I remember not being able to sleep well for weeks after that. It still bothers meânow, more than ever.
MONDAY, JANUARY 7, 1957
It was a little cold in the classroom on their first day back from the holidays. The heat had been turned off for two weeks, and it sometimes took it a couple of days to kick back in. Mr. Nathaniel, the janitor, told the students to be patient and to keep their coats on until it warmed up. The boiler was located right beneath the classroom, so Sylvia and the rest of her class could hear him tinkering around with it.