Fire from the Rock (10 page)

Miss Washington didn't waste any time
assigning our research papers for this semester, so I'm glad I didn't bring her that last piece of Mrs. Zucker's cake. I decided to give it to Reggie instead. He loved it, of course, and licked the waxed paper it had been wrapped in. Miss Washington is big enough-she doesn't need more baked goods!

I don't know why teachers make kids do homework like this—I guess she has nothing better to do than read stacks of student papers. She says the process is supposed to teach us something. Well, I've certainly learned something, but it wasn't what I expected.

Last year Daddy bought a set of World Book encyclopedias from a door-to-door salesman who was a friend of Mr. Zucker. I know it's sometimes a squeeze for Daddy to make the weekly payments on the books, but he believes that education is the key to success. Maybe it will be for me and Donna Jean. I worry about Gary though. I can't see him sitting still long enough to get through college.

I curled up on the sofa with the volume Non my lap. I love the smell of a new book. The maroon binding was still tight and almost squeaked as I opened it to reveal thousands of pages of small print and really neat photos. I wanted to look up information on the Negro for my research paper. I saw a picture of Napoleon, looking surprisingly baby-faced, articles on navigation and nature, and a map of Nebraska.

Finally I came to the article entitled “Negro.” I was excited at first, but then I couldn't believe what I was seeing! First I looked at the pictures—a frowning little brown boy, obviously on a farm, holding a basket of vegetables. Jackie Robinson—the first Negro to play major league baseball. A dentist, with a caption below that said, “A Negro dentist in a well-equipped office treats a patient of his own race.” A smiling Pullman porter in uniform, with the caption “Pullman porters are known in all parts of the United Stated for their smiling courtesy and efficient service on trains.” I felt a funny pang in my stomach.

As I continued to read the article, I felt downright sick. Words started jumping off the page and slapping me in my face. I wrote them down so I could copy them in my diary. “Such Negroid physical traits as dark skin, kinky hair, and long arms ... and “Negroes as well as whites have generally disapproved of intermarriage of the two groups,” “and ”Social conditions for the Negroes are gradually improving, but many still live under slum conditions in overcrowded houses without bathrooms, running water, electric lights, or refrigerators.” In a million years when somebody finds this diary, they won't believe that such mean stuff could be printed in America in 1957.

Yes, the article mentioned the accomplishments of Negroes like Harry Belafonte and Ralph Bunche and George Washington Carver, but it was obviously written by a white person who was describing my people the same way I would do a report on bugs! “In recent years, some progress has been made in improving the life of the African Negro, but his position is still far from desirable.”

If I need to know about frogs or stars or blood vessels, I'll know where to look. But for information about Negroes, I've got to look elsewhere. I wonder if the textbooks at Central High are all like this.

When Donna Jean told me she thought I was pretty, I was really shocked. First of all, she had never given me a compliment before-most of the time we tease each other, using names like “hunchback” and “beady ball.” But more than that, I have never in my life thought of myself as pretty. I guess I'm fair looking, maybe, but certainly not pretty. I don't even know what the definition of pretty is. Is it what I see in the mirror, or what I see in Mama's magazines? And what does Reggie see? That is, if he's still looking at me.

In
Life
magazine, like DJ said, all the women in the ads are white. They have pale skin and silky hair and they look sophisticated and in control. But is that what makes them attractive? Is it the blond hair? That couldn't be, because many of them have hair as black as mine, and red hair, and brown, and every other combination as well. So is it their small lips? Their tiny noses? I've got full lips and a large nose. Does that make me ugly? I have no idea.

Reggie seems to think I look okay, but I know he thinks Candy looks better. Where did she get those hips and those D-cups? I can't compete with equipment like that. Most of the boys at school, including Reggie, are attracted to Candy Castle like bees to honey, but it's not just because of her body. She has some other quality that makes them hover around her all the time. I don't know what it is, and I don't know how to get it.

In
Ebony
magazine, most of the women in the ads are Negro, but very few of them have dark skin like mine. Actually, most of them look more like the white women in Life magazine than they look like me. I wonder what colored men think of those models. What about white men? What attracts them? Does race make a difference? And how does all this fit in with the integration stuff?

When I was little I had a doll called Tiny Tears. I never gave her a real name—I simply called her Tiny. I loved that doll more than life. I still have her, and every once in a while I go to the top of my closet, get her out of the box I keep her in, and unwrap her carefully. I keep her wrapped in one of Donna Jean's old baby blankets. When I take Tiny Tears out and hold her in my arms, the smell of her, almost like baby powder, still makes me smile. Her eyes really blink in her sculpted face. When you squeeze the doll's tummy, she coos. That sound, the feel of her soft, rubber body, even her slightly scratched, painted-on hair take me back to a time of safety and happiness and real joy. I still love that doll and she is the most beautiful thing I own. And she's a little white baby. They don't make Negro dolls.