Leigh (6 page)

Mary Beth stared at the new girl. “Then why did you write the article?”

Cherise grinned. “I only wrote it because Mr. Pitney asked me personally to do so. I mean, I only watched the march on TV—”

Leigh laughed out loud and then covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry. It’s not you. I’m laughing about—” She stopped because
she couldn’t bring herself to say she was laughing at Mr. Pitney.

Interrupting their conversation, the teacher at the front of the room began to take roll. Mary Beth walked quickly to her
appointed seat. At the teacher’s direction, Cherise sat down on the bench beside Leigh. They grinned at each other and Leigh
wondered what Mr. Pitney—Lance—would have to say when Cherise gave him the news.

After school that afternoon, Leigh walked into Mr. Pitney’s classroom. She knew it was naughty of her, but she was eager to
hear what he had to say about the editorship of the
Scribe.
He was sitting at his desk, marking papers. “Hi,” she said softly in the quiet room.

He looked up, blond, young, handsome. Leigh drew up
Frank’s image—dark curly hair, smooth
café au lait
skin, and large, black eyes.
Why am I comparing them? They have nothing to do with each other.

“I’m glad you stopped in, Leigh.” Lance pushed back his chair and stood up. “Why didn’t you submit an account of King’s march?”

Why ask me that? You wouldn’t have published it anyway. I’m white.
Leigh shrugged. “So you chose the new girl’s article?”

“Yes, well, I didn’t think it would look right if I chose an account by a white student over a Negro student’s.”

Leigh nodded. So he’d done it for appearance’s sake just as she’d guessed. Why did she feel like she was on the outside looking
into St. Agnes as if she weren’t a part of it? She watched him finger back the thick blond hair that always dipped over his
forehead, a gesture he repeated several times an hour. It reminded her of a few guys in surfer movies. It was like he was
always calling attention to his hair, himself. Didn’t he realize how that gesture revealed his self-absorption?

“I know Mary Beth is upset, but I’ll find a way to reward her for her cooperation.” He walked up the aisle between the desks
toward her, the sun at his back, his face in shadow. “And I know both of you will help Cherise as she heads up the
Scribe.”

So he didn’t know yet.

At that moment, Cherise walked in. “Hi. Mr. Pitney, I don’t have—”

“I told you to call me Lance.” Beaming, the teacher hurried around the desks to Cherise.

“I came to tell you,” Cherise said, sounding apologetic, “I don’t want to be editor of the
Scribe.”

“You what?” Lance gaped at Cherise.

As Cherise continued, Leigh turned to leave, hiding a
smile. In her mind, she started to describe all this to Frank. But she wouldn’t be seeing Frank again. He was back in New
York City with his family, his life, and he’d probably forgotten all about the silly teenager he’d taken pity on.

But Leigh recalled what he’d said when he’d decided to take her with him to the march. He’d said something about their grandmothers
running away together and that it changed their lives. What he’d said next she remembered word for word: “Maybe our running
away together today will have a similar effect on our own lives.” Well, that had been true for her. Their day together had
changed the way she saw people, Lance, for instance. But she wondered if it had affected Frank in the same way, to the same
extent. After all, he was older, and he had more experience. Wasn’t it just wishful thinking that the shared day had forged
a tie between them? Make that dangerous, wishful thinking.

Four days later, Leigh stared at the return address on an envelope from the mail she’d just brought in after school. Dory
already sat in front of the TV watching a noisy cartoon and Leigh was about to go into the kitchen to make her little sister
a snack. But the letter halted her. It was from Frank.

He wrote to me.
Why? What did it mean? Her hands trembled slightly as she held the unassuming-looking envelope. With the letter opener on
the hall table, she slit open the flap, drew out a single sheet of paper, and read:

Dear Leigh,

I just wanted to drop you a line or two since I think you may be the only person who will hear my news and not begin squawking.
I applied for Officer’s Candidate School with the army yesterday.

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. I “enlisted” yesterday. I don’t have to tell you what attending the march did to me.
You were there. I know you were moved and changed by it, too.

He’d sensed that about me.
The words made Leigh’s heart pound. She read on.

Anyway, I thought over my options. I don’t want to be a lawyer like Frank Dawson One and Two. I also don’t want to get my
master’s degree in engineering. I want to go out and live life on the front lines, so to speak. I decided that I was already
about to be drafted for my two years of military service and that I would prefer to be an officer.

The U.S. Army is technically integrated, but Negro officers are scarce. I hope I can change that. I also hope that merit and
not my skin color will be what I’m judged by. Signing up for Officer’s Candidate School, of course, means that I had to take
qualifying tests and then sign up for four years. But that will give me time to see if I like the military or not. Maybe by
the time I’m out, I’ll want to be a lawyer like Dad and Grandad.

Well, my family is angry with me. Shocked. You name it. Though they should have realized I might do something like this since
I was active in ROTC in high school and college. Anyway, I thought of you and knew you’d understand. If you have a kind word
to send to a soldier, here is my military address. I leave for camp in three days.

Yours, Frank Three

Leigh reread the letter, feeling something inside her expand.
He doesn’t think I’m just a kid.

“I’m hungry,” Dory called from the couch.

Leigh folded the letter and slipped it into her pleated skirt pocket and headed for the kitchen. Her mind was already composing
the first sentence of her reply. But should she even send him an answer? Suddenly she wished Grandma Chloe were here to talk
to. Something warned her that her mother would not want her writing to Frank. Maybe she’d be allowed to visit Ivy Manor this
weekend without Dory and she could show Grandma Frank’s letter.

Or would her mother’s anger keep her at home?

C
all me when you want me to pick you up,” Ted, her stepdad, said as he parked his gray Mercedes sedan to let her off at the
curb in front of Cherise’s house.

“Thanks, Dad.” Leigh leaned over and kissed his cheek. Internally, she sighed. Why couldn’t her mother be more like her stepdad,
who was fun, easygoing, and didn’t freak out over every little thing. Her mother hadn’t liked her coming here today—it was
like she wanted civil rights to succeed, but some form of separation to continue—but her stepdad had persuaded her to let
Leigh go.

Frank’s letter, concealed in Leigh’s purse, had remained unanswered. What was she going to do about it?

She’d hoped Grandma Chloe could help her decide. Last weekend, her stepdad had persuaded her mom to let her take the train
and stay at Ivy Manor. Sitting in the summer house with her grandmother, Leigh had asked why her mother liked
Aunt Jerusha, seemed to admire Minnie Dawson, but wanted to keep her distance from them. Why hadn’t she wanted Leigh to go
to the march? Why was she so angry at Frank for taking her? There hadn’t been any violence, and Frank had been a perfect gentleman.

Her grandmother had been vague at best—she’d told her to discuss it with Bette, not her.

A red Volkswagen Beetle pulled up near their bumper as Leigh got out and shut the door behind her. She had been a bit surprised
when Cherise had invited Leigh’s former rival to her home along with Leigh. But the three of them did share a French class,
and Mary Beth was very good at languages. Now, Mary Beth met her on the sidewalk and they walked together up to the strange
house in a newer Negro neighborhood in northern Virginia.

“Do you feel weird about this?” Mary Beth whispered.

Leigh glanced at her. And then raised one eyebrow. Did Mary Beth mean about getting together with her or visiting Cherise?

“I’ve never been in a Negro person’s house before,” Mary Beth admitted, as if embarrassed about revealing this private information,
but unable to stop herself.

Ah, it was Cherise’s being different. Leigh thought of Aunt Jerusha, whom she and Grandma Chloe had visited last weekend.
In her late eighties, Aunt Jerusha, Frank’s great-grandmother, lived in a neat little cottage behind Ivy Manor, close enough
for Grandma Chloe to check on her every day. What would Mary Beth say if Leigh told her that?

Mary Beth nudged Leigh’s arm, bringing Leigh back to the present.

“This isn’t my first time,” Leigh said, leading Mary Beth up the steps.

“You probably think I’m dumb for feeling odd,” Mary Beth muttered.

“No, feelings are feelings. I wouldn’t try to deny yours or tell you not to feel them.”
Like my mother always tries to make me feel what I should, not what I really feel. “
Maybe Cherise,” Leigh suggested, “will feel funny having us over.”

“I didn’t think about that.” The other girl brightened.

Leigh and Mary Beth reached the door of the white-frame bungalow on a quiet street of small neat homes and lawns. Leigh knocked.
A pretty Negro woman opened the door. “You must be Leigh and Mary Beth.”

“Hello, Mrs. Langford.” Leigh held out her hand.

Eying them thoroughly, Cherise’s mother welcomed them inside and sent them upstairs, after calling out, “Cherise, your classmates
are here!”

Leigh’s mind went back to Ivy Manor again. The afternoon spent with Aunt Jerusha had brought back what Frank had said about
how their two families were related.
Frank.
She resisted the urge to trace the outline of his letter within her purse. Over the past few days, she’d changed it from purse
to drawer and back again-it was crumpled and finger-smudged, worn from her touching it over and over. But she still couldn’t
decide whether or not to reply.

Obviously still in her church outfit, Cherise met them at the top of the stairs and led them to her room. “Have you listened
to the news?” Cherise motioned toward a small black-and-white TV with rabbit ears in the corner of her pink-and-white Early
American bedroom.

“Wow,” Mary Beth breathed, “you’ve got a TV in your room.”

Cherise chuckled. “Mom and Dad got a new color set in the living room, and I got the old, small one for here. I had to
promise it wouldn’t interfere with my homework.” Cherise gave them a look to show how silly parents could be.

On the small black-and-white, slightly fuzzy screen, Walter Cronkite was talking to some NAACP officer about a tragedy that
had just occurred in Alabama. Leigh perched on the side of the sheer-white canopied bed, folding one leg under. In green pedal
pushers and matching blouse, she felt as if she’d dressed too casually for the very feminine setting. “What happened?”

Smoothing her straight skirt carefully as if not wanting to wrinkle it, Cherise sat down beside Leigh. “The KKK blew up part
of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and killed four little girls.”

Leigh took it in. “They blew up a church?” The news was unreal, like saying the Martians had landed. A bomb set in secret.
A cowardly act of intimidation, of violence. The Klan didn’t want to be photographed doing their dirty work, but didn’t they
realize that its results were just as overwhelming? It caught in Leigh’s craw, especially knowing that Frank would hear about
it at boot camp, probably on someone’s transistor radio. He’d be angry.

“That’s creepy,” Mary Beth commented, staring at the TV while settling herself on Cherise’s other side. Even though Mary Beth
wasn’t wearing her school uniform, the top button of her plain blouse, the one most girls left undone, was buttoned up tight
at her neck.

“I guess the KKK still thinks they can hold back integration with violence,” Cherise said. “You’d think they’d get the message.
The day has come for the end of segregation.”

“Well, in the past, violence and intimidation served them—before nationwide news coverage,” Leigh pointed out. She remembered
Frank’s bitter tone when he’d told her about sitting in at the lunch counter. “The KKK burned a cross on
my grandparents’ lawn back before World War II.” The words just slipped out.

“Why’d they do that?” Mary Beth wanted to know.

Leigh wished she’d kept her mouth shut. But she couldn’t refuse to answer. “My grandparents took in a Jewish immigrant.”

Both girls stared at her. Walter Cronkite began repeating the story of the day, the four little girls who’d died at church
this morning, another day of tragedy in Alabama. Leigh shifted her attention to him, but it was just a cover. She studied
the other two girls on the bed surreptitiously.

Cherise was very pretty, light skinned, and dressed in a very feminine pink blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a black straight
skirt, hose, and black flats. Somehow she wore the clothing as if it were finer than it was. Cherise had an air about her
that drew attention—favorable attention—to herself. Leigh had observed her over the past two weeks at St. Agnes and she’d
noted that about her. Cherise was very good at getting people to like her. She’d bowed out of the
Scribe
editorship and Mary Beth had gotten the job. And in the process, Cherise had won quite a bit of good press for herself.

Leigh wondered why she was studying and analyzing the new girl’s every move, every word. Was it prejudice? Or did it have
anything to do with her friendship with Frank?

Mary Beth wore brown plastic glasses, a very plain white blouse, a pleated black skirt, white bobby socks, and white tennies.
Her hair was a nondescript brown, and her eyes were lost behind thick lenses. Mary Beth was the epitome of
dogged.
She staked out her goal, and heaven help the person who got in her way or wanted the same plum. Last month this had irritated
Leigh; now it amused her. And she didn’t know why she’d changed.