No Crystal Stair (30 page)

“That's true, you know. A black maid who does a good job of cleaning her white employer's house makes a statement, too. ‘I'm reliable and trustworthy.'Your Rob makes a powerful statement when his black face appears at a conference negotiating with international officials. And they didn't exactly roll out a red carpet for him, don't forget.”

“No. Quite the opposite.”

Dr. Carter beamed. “He's come a long way. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of you, too, kitten. You do your part just rearing your children to be decent contributing citizens, and you make a step forward when you integrate a neighborhood. Which reminds me, what about the house you're planning to build back in Sacramento?”

She frowned. They'd be returning to California next year, when the assignment here in Germany was finished. “Dead end. We got the lot. Rob gave the cash to Chuck Samples, who bought it and turned it over to us. But we can't live on an empty lot, and we can't build. Every loan agency we contact turns us down. No fire hoses, but they don't want that area integrated, either.”

 

 

“Guess what?” Rob greeted her when he returned from a trip to the States a few weeks later. “We almost got our house scot-free!”

She raised one brow. “Quite a distance between almost and scot-free!”

“Right. But that's the way it was. I have to admit I was kind of tempted.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you know we were making a twelve-million-dollar decision on the installation of this refueling system on the 104.”

“Yes,” she said, though she didn't.

“Three competing companies,” he said, “and yours truly happened to be the major decision maker.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I knew Al Simmons, who's with Kenco, one of the competing firms. He was at McClellan when I started there, one of the few whites friendly to me. Got snatched up by Kenco and he's head honcho there now. We happened to board the same plane to Chicago, where we both were making a change—he was going to Ohio and I was coming back here. We sat together and he asked how much longer I'd be in Germany and I said not too long and—” Rob stopped, stared at her. “Damn. I wonder if he thought I was hinting.”

“Hinting? At what?”

“Well, I started talking about the house we wanted to build in the States if I could ever cut through the financing runaround I was getting. Al looked down at his drink and said, plain as day, that wouldn't be a problem if Kenco got the refueling contract. Everything free and clear, no mortgage.”

“Rob! What did you say?”

“Nothing. I was too stunned to speak. When I did get my thinking cap on, I just said, ‘I didn't hear that.'”

“And what did he say?”

“Not another word. He knew that if I did hear him, I'd have to report it. It really burned me up, Ann Elizabeth. What does he think I am?”

“It's what
he
is,” she said, her heart swelling with pride. Her husband had refused a bribe, but given the perpetrator an out. “Maybe he's used to buying his way in,” she said.

“Well, he ought to have more confidence in his product.”His mouth twisted. “The irony is he got the contract, anyway. I recommended him.” He frowned. “You see, his really was the best deal. The only one, in fact, with the safety features we required.”

“Don't explain to me,” She laughed and held up a hand. “I don't know a thing about refueling and such. But I know if you say it's the best, then it is. Now come on, eat your dinner. And, oh yes, there's mail from home.” She made a face. “One letter you won't like.”

He read it, then crumpled it and threw it aside. “Another rejection. And they don't even bother to make an excuse. I've got the down, I've got the credit—” he shook his head. “But as soon as I come in to sign the application, they see my black face and...

“Ssh. Don't get upset. You'll spoil a good dinner. I found some frozen mustard greens in the commissary.”

He was still fuming when he picked up his fork. “Maybe I'm the fool. All I had to do was nod my heard and I wouldn't have to worry about a mortgage. What the hell's wrong with me?”

She smiled “I think it's called integrity.”

 

 

In July 1961, when the luxury liner
United States
pulled into New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, Ann Elizabeth, standing on the deck, felt a surge of joy. She was excited about being home, anticipating the pleasure of decorating her new house in Sacramento.

Rob had secured financing, she'd gleefully written her father, through a Negro insurance company in Los Angeles. One of its directors was Greg West, a former Tuskegee airman.

Rob had checked on their home's construction on business trips to the States, and the house was now finished. Ann Elizabeth's mind was full of landscaping, carpeting, textures, colors and the rush to ready a son for college.

She looked at Bobby, standing next to his father at the railing, and thought how much alike they were. The same curly black hair and deep-set dark eyes, but Bobby's skin was a lighter
brown and he was an inch or two taller. Thank goodness, he'd filled out. The endless search for jeans small enough in the waist and long enough in the legs was over.

Ann Elizabeth smiled when Bobby grabbed Rob's arm and pointed to something. The two of them had grown close during the past two years. Men don't always become pals with their sons, she thought. Rob's travels had been somewhat curtailed while they were in Europe, and he'd had time to play tennis with Bobby, attend his football games, take him to soccer matches and to car races in Nuremberg. The Weisbaden school had been good for Bobby, too, and he was all set for college.

College! Incredible that she, Ann Elizabeth Carter, had a son old enough for college. It seemed only yesterday that she was at her debut and Rob, so tall and handsome in his uniform, had come into her life. Now their son would enter the same university complex where she'd spent four happy years.

She drew in a quick breath. Would Bobby be happy there, too? More important, would he be safe? Students from the seven Negro colleges and universities were determined to integrate Atlanta, and had joined the scores of sit-ins and marches that were sweeping the country.

She'd talked it over with Rob. Of course, she'd always wanted Bobby to attend Morehouse, but in view of the possible risks in Atlanta, should they send him to a California college instead?

Rob, in his direct way, had said it must be Bobby's decision. Looking at her grave face, he'd added, “Time marches on, honey. This is a different era.”

Bobby, with no hesitation, had chosen Morehouse, “where Grandpa went,” he said.

But things really
were
different now. And she wondered...

“What's the matter, Mom? Maggie, fresh and pretty in the simple navy dress with its crisp collar, gazed anxiously up at her. Strange how that sensitive child caught her every mood. ”What are you thinking, Mom?”

“I was thinking I'm getting old.”

“Old? You're not old. That lady in the lounge last night said my mom was sure young and pretty.”

“I hope you thanked her.” Ann Elizabeth, pleased glanced down at the black sheath that complemented her slender form. The exercise and massages had paid off.

“I like your hair cut short like that,” Maggie said. “I'm glad you and Daddy aren't fat and old-looking.”

Ann Elizabeth laughed. “I love you, too,” she said, reaching down to tighten the blue ribbon that held Maggie's ponytail in place. “Don't lean over the rail,” she cautioned as Maggie started to do just that.

She sighed. Once a mother, always a mother. And, like most mothers, she wanted her children safe and happy.

A
s summer gave way to that fall of 1961, the house was finally beginning to look like it was theirs. The children seemed happy, Maggie at a neighborhood school and Bobby at Morehouse in Atlanta. Now that the decorating was complete and the landscaping underway, Ann Elizabeth could relax a bit. She was doing some volunteer work with the Red Cross and the YWCA, and had rejoined her old bridge club, as well as another with Cora Samples and some other wives from the base. She had never been more content.

No, not content. How could she be content when her son was marching, participating in sit-ins, facing jail in the campaign for civil rights? The television coverage was so upsetting. Ann Elizabeth watched and suffered with the demonstrators, feeling every blow—the whack of the billy club, the sting of the cattle prod, the propelling gush of water from a fire hose. Her heart turned over as she watched a bleeding boy, about Bobby's age, being dragged and shoved into a police van.

When the students began to march in Atlanta, Ann Elizabeth was frightened for her son.

“Rob, let's bring Bobby home,” she said, urgently. “He could transfer to Berkeley.”

“And what's to guarantee he'd be safe there?” Rob answered. “Students are agitating all over the place.” He put an arm around her. “Anyway, honey, this kind of brutality isn't hap-ping in Atlanta. Not one student there had been hurt or even
mistreated. I have to give it to those kids. Their campaign is well-organized and orderly.”

“Stop saying that!”she cried. “How do you
orderly
break the law?
Orderly
go to jail?” But she'd heard it all before—from Julia Belle and the newspaper clippings she sent. How students of the seven institutions what made up the Atlanta University complex had banded together, drafted “An Appeal for Human Rights,” which they sent to city officials, all the news media and other interested parties. They addressed existing inequities and announced their intention to act, to gain the rights inherently theirs as human beings and citizens of the United Sates. The edict was so concisely and eloquently written that it elicited praise from members of the press and a comment from some high-level bigots that “it couldn't possibly have been written by a bunch of ignorant niggers. More likely it was inspired and drafted by communists.”

However eloquent, the appeal also alerted authorities that the students meant to act. And act they did. The campaign was in full swing before the Metcalfs returned from Europe.

She phoned her mother and was surprised to find her complacent. More than complacent. Excited. “Oh, for goodness' sake, it will be a wonderful experience for Bobby!” she said. “The students are behaving so beautifully. The whole thing was their idea. But we're behind them one hundred percent.”

“We?”

“The whole community. We're boycotting the stores.”

“Oh.”What did that have to do with what those kids might encounter? “What does Dad say?”

“That his bank balance might increase for the first time in years. And that it might do some good.”

“But, Mother. I'm worried about the kids. The police—”

“Yes, honey. I was concerned, too. But the college president has been in touch with Police Chief Jenkins, and the students have promised to submit quietly to arrest.”

“Arrest!” She couldn't believe her mother was being so calm about this. “Mother, I don't like it.”

“Oh, honey, Bobby will be perfectly safe. Don't worry.” She called the college president.

“Yes, Mrs. Metcalf. I sympathize with your concerns. But I contacted Police Chief Jenkins, and he's been out to confer with the students.”

“The chief himself?” An unheard-of precedent.

“Yes. And everything's been orderly. No brutality.”

So far. The words caught in her throat as she recalled that long-ago night at the Subers' when the police had wanted to throw two innocent Negro boys in jail. And that day in the car with Rob.

The president sighed. “Frankly I can't stop the students. And I don't think I would if I could.”

You don't have a son there,
she thought as she replaced the receiver.

Yet according to his letters, Bobby was happy at Morehouse.

Statements like that last scared her. And the horrors happening to demonstrators in other cities, so vividly shown on television.

“Rob, do you have any travel plans?” she asked.

“Not for a while. Why?”

“Then you'll be here with Maggie. I thought I might spend
a couple of weeks with Mother and Dad, and check on Bobby.”
I'll see for myself, she decided.

 

 

“It doesn't matter what anyone says!” Sophie exclaimed. “The students don't intend to give in.” She and Julia Belle sat in the breakfast room having coffee with Ann Elizabeth and bringing her up to date. Ann Elizabeth listened, hearing a replay of what she'd seen on television as students in other cities invaded facilities banned to Negroes. Atlanta students were employing the same strategy. They invaded restaurants, lunch counters and theaters. Negroes with fair skin would buy several theater tickets, which they would pass to their darker companions. They would check to see when the tearooms were open and then notify the other students, who would go in and occupy every seat. When one group was arrested, the second moved it, although they were always refused service. Most of the tearooms were forced to close, and one five-and-dime store removed the stools from its lunch counter.

“No better for them,” chuckled Sophie. “Nobody's coming anyway with all that ruckus going on. When I think of the money I spent in these stores and they wouldn't even serve me a cup of coffee, I feel downright ashamed.”

“You shouldn't be ashamed,” Julia Belle said. “Will said we had to show them how much money we spent before we could withdraw it. Well, we've withdrawn it now,” she told Ann Elizabeth, explaining that Negroes no longer patronized any of the downtown stores. “Do you know sales in the department stores are down twenty-two percent?”

“I believe it,” Ann Elizabeth said, thinking of all the shopping trips with her mother for her college wardrobe, her debut, her wedding and so on. When you multiplied that by all the Negro shoppers in Atlanta. How much money to how many merchants in how many cities for how many years? Ann
Elizabeth, like Sophie, began to feel ashamed. How often had she entered these stores, searching eagerly for the right outfit for some planned function, spending money freely, knowing before she spent it that she wasn't permitted to eat lunch or use the ladies' room there? Why hadn't she thought then of how unfair that was? She'd considered herself privileged, encased in her own private world, never realizing how much she was contributing to a larger world where she was treated like scum.

Negroes were right to withdraw their money, she thought now, glancing at her mother and aunt, sharing their enthusiasm.

Still, it was the students who'd had to make them aware, these young people who were refusing to take it anymore, who were pushing their way in, demanding respect. If she was honest, she'd come here to stop her son, not just to see what he was doing. But now she couldn't. She remembered Bobby, sitting with the Carter family under the magnolia tree not long before the Metcalfs had gone to Germany, saying. ‘I'm never going to Uncle Tom!' As clearly as if it were yesterday, she remembered her father's answer. “No, I don't think you'll have to.”

Yes, these kids had more to bargain with. But not enough to shield them from diehard segregationists, who meant to maintain the status quo and had never even pretended to be nonviolent. The visions of what had happened in other cities still haunted her. She tried to stifle her fears, even mouthed the moral support she knew Bobby needed. “You're right, son. I'm proud of you.”

But she was scared.

So far, no students had been hurt. “Police Chief Jenkins said if we played fair with him, he'd play fair with us,” Bobby said. “You know, give him notice where we plan to protest, submit quietly to arrest.”

But Ann Elizabeth simply couldn't reconcile this attitude.

“Oh, yes,” her mother said. “Chief Jenkins has been very sympathetic and supportive. So has Mayor Hartsfield. But Governor Vandiver is a different matter.”

“A dyed-in-the wool racist,” her father added. “Says he'll never submit to a passel of nitwit niggers calling themselves students.”

So when the students determined to confront the governor, Ann Elizabeth panicked. It started out simply enough—a planned march from the West Side through downtown Atlanta and up Auburn Avenue to Martin Luther King, Sr.'s Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Auburn Avenue. Once that was all we wanted.
Ann Elizabeth remembered happy treks down Auburn—the colored library, the Citizens' Bank, her debut on the roof of the Odd Fellows Building. But now, against Chief Jenkin's direct orders and warnings from college administrators and parents, the students planned a demonstration at the state capitol where Police Chief Jenkins had no jurisdiction and where the governor and his state troopers would be waiting, guns and billy clubs raised.

Ann Elizabeth's heart almost stopped. What did anything matter if Bobby was maimed or killed—which he certainly might be if those crazy students tangled with the governor and his state troopers.

“Don't go,” she begged him. “Not this time.”

“Aw, Mom, it's just a march. Not a sit-in where we'll be hauled out.”

“All right,” she conceded, “but not to the state capitol. If they decide to go there—”

“I'll go,” he said, his voice steady. “I wouldn't let the others down.”

So on the morning of the march Ann Elizabeth stood with the crowd in front of the university library, the rallying ground for the protesting students, as they listened to pep talks from
their leaders. She'd come hoping that someone would dissuade them from confronting the governor. But she felt helpless, lost in the mass of young people all around her, out of place in her yellow sundress and sandals. Like Bobby, they were clad in jeans, pullovers, low walking shoes. Like Bobby, they were young, eager and excited. She heard them laughing, making jokes, her Bobby—like Randy—the chief clown among them. The laughter faded and they became silent when a tall brown-skinned boy stood on the top step, raised his hand and began to speak.

Ann Elizabeth heard and didn't hear. She was watching the serious faces around her and remembering how it had been twenty years before. She had sat on those steps on such a day as this, a warm Indian-summer day, when the sun was hot, the smell of fall in the air. She'd faced the beautiful vista between the library and the Atlanta University administration building as she laughed and flirted, talked about dates and frat dances, the homecoming game and exams. And that was what she wished for Bobby. That he should sit on these steps, stroll serenely about his campus with his “stone fox,” whoever she was, that he should be content and peaceful. Not this...

The voice of the speaker caught her attention, “... planned a stopover at the capitol to pay our respects to Governor Vandiver.” He paused as the students broke into cheers, then continued, “It seems the governor has made special arrangements for us. He's brought in hundreds of state troopers, who have surrounded the capitol.” Here the boos exploded and Ann Elizabeth's heart plummeted. The speaker went on to say that he'd been asked by the college presidents and Chief Jenkins, who had no jurisdiction over the capitol, to exclude it from their march. He concluded, “I told them the decision would be yours. Do we go?”

Ann Elizabeth's heart sank further as the enthusiastic YES from the crowd turned into a chant. “We will go! We will go!”

Ann Elizabeth hardly heard the speaker's impassioned plea urging that “only the pure in heart should go, those committed to nonviolence, those dedicated to ending injustice, those brave enough to bear insult and physical violence and not strike back.”

An image from a TV report remained in her mind—a bleeding boy lying on the pavement, passively submitting to abuse. Shaking with fear, she looked at the young people all around her.

Not one student hung back. They jostled each other, preparing to move out, as if to a picnic. Their laughter was like a death knell to her ears, and tears ran down her cheeks. Still, a line the leader had quoted from the manifesto drummed in her ears.

“Every normal human being wants to walk the earth with dignity.'

Oh, God, she wished she were back in Germany. No problems, no manifestos. There they'd walked streets with dignity and without all this hullabaloo.

Then she remembered. On those same streets, not so long ago, Jews had been humiliated, beaten, murdered. What was it the old Jewish doctor had said to Rob?
A little bit at a time.

But how important was it to sit in a restaurant, to defy a governor? Important enough to get your head bashed in?

She looked at Bobby, still beside her. So young, so handsome. A nice kid. Her only son, her first child. She'd almost lost him. She would have if Dr. Benson hadn't sneaked him into that hospital. Sneaked... she lifted her head, thinking. It wasn't just a restaurant.
Every human being has a right—to a hospital... a school... dignity.

Bobby bent down, brushed her cheek with his lips. “We're off, Mom.”

“Wait,” she said. “I'm coming with you.”