No Crystal Stair (35 page)

That made her feel better. Not too much gray, and her skin was smooth, her figure slender. She still retained a youthful look—she hoped.

And why, for goodness' sake, was she thinking about herself? This was Bobby and Cindy's day. She listened as they exchanged
vows and prayed that they'd be happy. Prayed that Bobby would be as loving, as steady, as Rob.

When the wedding party filed out, her thoughts were again on Maggie. That young man escorting her—Michael somebody. Wasn't he the one who'd stuck to her like glue at Dan and Sadie's party?

Ann Elizabeth was glad she and Rob had come early enough to enjoy some of the prenuptial parties. It had done her heart good to see Maggie talking and laughing, even flirting a little. She'd spotted Maggie sitting by Sadie's pool, apart from the others, dimpling up at him as if she really liked him.

I like him. I like that rich dark coloring like Rob's, his handsome clean-cut look and well-bred manner.
He was one of the four blacks who'd finished with Bobby's class from Emory. Bobby says he's going into cardiology. I must ask him where—

“Stop it!” she whispered to herself. She wasn't one of those pushy matchmaking mothers she despised!

A soft rain had fallen while they were in the church, and the clean earthy scent still lingered. Ann Elizabeth smiled as she breathed in the sweet familiar smell of Atlanta. Some things never change, she thought as she hurried into a car.

But many things have changed, she had to admit as they reached the biggest hotel in Atlanta and she was whisked by a glass-sided elevator to the roof. There they sat at tables laden with wedding memorabilia, sipped champagne, munched on hors d'oeuvres and wedding cake served by smiling courteous
white
waiters, enjoying the festivities as the carousel roof went round and round, offering splendid views of Atlanta.

In her lifetime! It was still hard to believe.

Ann Elizabeth chuckled. Essie Campbell was outdoing all the Negro—oops!—black society matrons. None had ever before held a wedding reception in such a spectacular place where blacks had only so recently been admitted. Anyway, few could have afford it.

Dr. Carter apparently had the same thought. “Campbell must've made a pile in that numbers racket,” he whispered.

“And must've known what to do with it. Smart man,” Rob said, grinning as he added, “Glad he's joined the family.”

Sometime during the evening, Bobby and Cindy left to take a flight to Florida, where they would board a cruise ship to the Bahamas for their honeymoon. And suddenly it was all over. But they were still talking about it when they got home—her parents, Rob, Maggie and the young man whose name, she'd discovered, was Michael James.

“We must have a nightcap to toast such a fantastic affair,” Ann Elizabeth said, bringing out chips and wine, and engaging the young man in conversation. Simply being gracious wasn't being a pushy matchmaker!

“I hope the marriage will be as wonderful as the wedding,” Julia Belle said.

“It will be,” her husband murmured. “Those two are made for each other.”

Ann Elizabeth looked at him.

He nodded in answer to the questions she hadn't asked. “Bobby has the brains and Cindy will handle the budget. She—” He suddenly gasped as if trying to catch his breath. He stumbled and almost fell.

The young man moved quickly and helped him to the sofa. “Nitroglycerin?” he asked.

Dr. Carter shook his head. “No. Could be ...” He couldn't finish the sentence.

“Call this doctor,” Michael said to Maggie, scribbling a name and number on a pad. Then he turned to Rob, who was already lifting Dr. Carter. “We'll take him to Georgia Baptist.”

Ann Elizabeth ran after them as they hurried out, but Rob gestured over his shoulder. “Your mother.”

Ann Elizabeth turned back to Julia Belle, who had not moved. She was so still, so pale. Obviously in shock.

“I'll get you some hot tea, Mother.” With lots of sugar, she thought. “Then we'll go to the hospital. Maggie...”

But Maggie was on the phone.

Ann Elizabeth tried to support her mother, but she could hardly hold herself together. She had never known her father to be sick, even with a cold. She was terrified.

Afterward she always believed it was Michael James's quick thinking that saved her father's life. Dr. Sutherland, the surgeon he'd told Maggie to contact, met them at the hospital. After a thorough examination he told Dr. Carter, “You need a bypass, two in fact, immediately.”

Dr. Carter, despite being in a hospital bed, was quite his old self again. He seemed to understand and he nodded in agreement.

Ann Elizabeth and her mother, who had never heard of a bypass, were extremely apprehensive.

Michael took them aside and carefully explained. “Two of Dr. Carter's blood vessels are clogged and not enough oxygen is reaching his heart. Dr. Sutherland will replace them. And don't worry!” he said to their dismayed expressions. “Bypass surgery is relatively new, but it's almost always successful, even when five vessels are replaced at once. And you're lucky. Dr. Sutherland is an expert heart surgeon, the best in the business. That's why I wanted him.”

The best surgeon. The best hospital, with all the necessary facilities and equipment. Available to her father who had served so many with inadequate facilities for so long.

Thank you, God

Even so, she was still scared, and her mother had fallen apart. She didn't know what they would have done without Rob.

And Michael. “This is a good thing. He'll be better than ever,” he kept saying. “You'll see.”

He was right. In almost no time, it seemed, her father was home, and feeling so well it was hard to keep him on his limited
exercise routine. As soon as he was out of danger, Rob returned to Sacramento and work. Ann Elizabeth and Maggie stayed to administer tender loving care.

Maggie was wonderful with him. “Sit out here, Grandpa. I'll play cards with you—Gin Rummy or Casino? What's your pleasure. Or, I'd better walk with you Or, are you crazy? I threw your cigarettes away!” He loved Maggie, and she seemed to have more influence on him than anyone.

“Don't worry so much,” Michael said. “He's a doctor. He knows his limits.”

Michael James. Such a nice young man. “A brilliant young man,” Dr. Sutherland had confided, adding that he was very pleased that Michael was to begin his residency under him at Georgia Baptist the next month.

“Maggie,” Ann Elizabeth said, “I'd better go home to Rob. But why don't you stay and help Grandma? You've been doing most of the grocery shopping and you're so good with Grandpa.”

Ann Elizabeth went home, glad that Maggie had agreed to remain. If she was there and Michael continued to haunt the house... Anything could happen.

She was dismayed when Maggie came home early in August. “Grandpa's fine and they don't need me anymore. And I have to register early to get the classes I want.”

“Yes, but—” she hesitated “—you were enjoying Atlanta so much. I thought you might transfer to Spelman.”

“Oh, Mom! You, too? That's what Michael asked me to do.”

“He did? So you'd be near...” she caught herself, cleared her throat. “Do you like Michael?”

“Oh, sure. He's nice.”

“But?”

Maggie frowned, “I got the feeling he wants to get serious and... well, I don't like him like that!”

Ann Elizabeth said nothing. She wasn't a pushy matchmaking mother, after all.

But she sighed, now, she thought, I know how Mother felt when I refused to marry Dan.

November 1971

 

H
ow you spell yestiddy, Maggie?' The little boy looked up from his desk and licked his pencil. His kinky uncombed too long hair stood out like a bush, his clothes were rumpled and none too clean, but the look on his face was intense, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. Maggie smiled. That was what drew her to these after-school study sessions. The eagerness of the youngsters who came.

“Yesterday,” she said, enunciating it clearly and loudly enough for him to hear over the din of the others in the room. Dena was helping with math problems, and Leland was tutoring a group of fifth graders in history. “I'll write it for you.” She wrote the word on the board, then pronounced it again, underlining each syllable as she did so. She watched while he laboriously copied it in the cursive writing he was just learning. “That's a might big word for a third grader. I'm proud of you, Ricky.”

He grinned. “We got to write 'bout our trip to the park yesti—yes-ter-day. I want to get a A.”

“Good for you. I'll check it when you finish,” she said, and turned to help Marylee with spelling.

Maggie had been up since six that morning, as she was every Monday and Wednesday, her volunteer days. From seven to eight she stood in line at the school cafeteria, helping to serve the hungry kids who came for the free breakfast. Then back to campus for her two morning classes, lunch and her one afternoon class. After that she returned to Martin Luther King Elementary in Oakland for the after-school tutoring.

“Christ! You could skip it today,” Sue Jekels, secretary of the Black Students' Union, had urged. “You'll miss our meeting. Anyway, you must be beat, hauling your ass over to that school every fucking minute.”

But Maggie wasn't tired. She was bursting with energy. She moved about the small desks, looking through scattered books and checking papers, explaining, correcting and praising, invigorated by the air that reeked of chalk dust, pencil shavings and the damp clothes of children who'd braved the rain to get there. She felt refreshed, full of zeal. Given the right start, these kids could make it!

“That's very good,” she said when she returned to check Ricky's paper. “Only you should capitalize the Y because that's the beginning of a sentence. And maybe we should change two words. We
went,
not
been,
to the park. And I
saw,
not
seen,
a duck.” She then gave a short English lesson, explaining verb tenses as simply as she could, wondering all the while if this was too much for a third grader to absorb.

“You're not supposed to do that,” Leland said as he and Dena climbed into Maggie's Volkswagen for the ride back to Berkeley. Leland was a slightly built young man with creamy brown complexion. He was from Washington, D.C., where his parents were both teachers. Like Maggie, he was at Berkeley on an academic scholarship. He was bright, sincere and genuinely concerned about the plight of those who lacked the advantages he'd always had.

“Do what?” Maggie asked as she put the car in gear.

“Correct the way they say things. That's putting them down.”

“Wrong. That's raising them up. Which is the point, isn't it? Why we're here?”

“Oh, Maggie, you know what I mean. This is their environment. If they use black English—”

“Don't give me that crap, Leland. That's poor English. Right, Dena?”

Dena, in the backseat, nodded vigorously. Dena was Maggie's roommate and they had made a bargain. She cut Maggie's hair and Maggie corrected her papers—particularly in English.

“And as long as I'm tutoring them, I mean to correct it,” Maggie said. “I want them equipped to compete in the real world.”

“The world they live in is pretty damn real,” Leland said, “and if this is how people talk...” The argument continued all the way to the campus, with Dena, in the back seat, looking from one to the other, saying nothing.

As soon as Maggie parked the car, the three tumbled out and headed for room 3A in the Student Center, where the meeting was being held. They went in the back door and Bud Wilson gestured to Maggie. “Over here, babe.”

She slipped into a seat beside him, mostly to avoid Jake Adams, who had also gestured. Jake had wandering hands.

Sue, at the front desk, gave her that I-knew-you'd-be-late scowl. She nudged Ted, the BSU president, who glanced at the latecomers and yelled, “Quiet!” over the din their entry had caused. “Okay, Sue. Let's wrap it up. Read the petition so everyone'll know what's happening.”

The petition was read, but not without interruptions.

“Fifty additional black professors?”

“You heard it, man. No token shit.” Sue, the fair-skinned daughter of a Denver dentist, seemed compelled to prove herself authentically black by peppering her speech with profanity and sporting the biggest Afro in the room.

“Yeah, but fifty? You're asking for that many?”

“Not asking. Demanding.”

The talk flowed around her, and Maggie sat quietly listening, enveloped in the warmth of a fellowship she'd never before known. She was part of this. Not the odd one out in a class full of blondes, the last to be chosen or shunted off with the doofus rejects. And not like her Atlanta cousins' who-got-invited
and who's-kissing-whom silliness. This group was real. Feeding and tutoring poor kids, petitioning for more black professors, expanding black studies, increasing the enrollment of black students, even those like Dena, who hadn't received the right preparation. Maggie was euphoric, exhilarated by the plans, the expectations. They were going to make the world better for black people. She was glad to be part of it and she reveled in the camaraderie.

The session ended with Ted reminding them that he wanted “every black ass on the quad at ten tomorrow morning when we're gonna bring our petition to the attention of the motherfuckin' head honky!”

Maggie filed out with the rest, refusing Jake's invitation to “take in a movie.” She knew what that meant. She also refused Bud's suggestion to go to a bar. She joined Leland and Sue and a few others at a coffee shop where they continued the discussion. Leland wasn't exactly a boyfriend. More like a pal she enjoyed arguing with. A safe pal, too. Not as pushy as Ted or Bud, who always wanted to get into her pants.

 

 

The next morning when the rally started the quad was full. There weren't that many black students at Berkeley. Maggie looked around. These were people she'd never seen before.

Dena nudged her with an elbow. “There's that guy.”

“What guy?”

“You know. The Black Panther. He's always at the breakfasts.”

“Oh.” Yes. She recognized the black leather jacket, the tough stance, legs apart, arms folded. He winked at her and she gave a wary smile. Of course he'd be at the breakfasts. It was the Panthers who had had the idea of feeding the poor kids in the first place. “What's he doing here?” she asked.

“Leland says they got some of the people from the community to join us.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Maggie said. The more people, the greater the impact. But she felt uncomfortable. She didn't like crowds. And this was a noisy bunch. She couldn't even hear what was being said. She stood on tiptoe, trying to at least see. Her view was blocked by big afros, shoulders and gesturing hands.

“Wanna see what's happening, babe?” In an instant she was hoisted onto Bud's wide shoulders. “That better, little mama?”

Well not much. She had trouble maintaining her balance, and she didn't like the way he nuzzled her thigh. Yes, now she could see. But she still couldn't hear the exchange between Ted and the college president, drowned out as it was by cat calls from the audience. “Right on!” “You heard him, motherfucker!”

This wasn't right. The hostility bothered her. Maybe they should have chosen a committee to discuss issues with the president in his office. Not this angry shouting crowd. She could tell the president was a little scared. And who could blame him? Ted was shaking his fist at him. And Sue... my God, Sue had spit on him. Maggie, appalled, saw his face contort, saw him back away, then turn and enter the administration building. The crowd moved forward, but two guards emerged from the building, rifles raised, and Maggie was almost knocked from Bud's shoulders in the crush. She saw Ted lift one hand in a “follow me” gesture as he started to run. With a great roar, the crowd followed.

Maggie had no idea where they were going and kept saying, “Let me down, Bud, let me down!”

“I gotcha, babe! Don't worry,” he answered, and taking a firm grip on her legs, jubilantly ran with the crowd. “Hold on, kid.”

Maggie, truly scared, held on. If she fell from her perch, she would surely be trampled.

Now she insisted. “No! Put me down.”

He did so, but clutched her hand tightly, pulling her along.

The bookstore. That was where they were heading. Someone inside shut the heavy glass door. But someone else—that guy
in the leather jacket—smashed it with something hard. A gun? The crowd broke through. Bud's long legs had carried them ahead of the others and they were among the first to reach it. She felt a jab of pain in her arm as they surged through the door, but she paid it no mind as she struggled to free herself from Bud's grip. This time he didn't resist. “Go to it, babe,” he yelled, and started yanking books from the shelves. Everybody seemed to be in a frenzy. Books were dumped, torn, trampled. The cash register flew from its hinges and a file cabinet was knocked over, its contents scattered.

This was madness. Maggie tried to make her way to the door, but was pushed back every time, jammed against the wall. She didn't know how long she stayed there, trapped, watching the destruction around her, helpless to stop it or to walk away. Then she heard the sirens. Police whistles. She felt relief, but not for long. They'd be after her, too.

“The pigs! Split, mothers!”The crowd rapidly dispersed, each on his or her own, running in all directions. Maggie ran, too. At last the way had been cleared and she made a dash for the door. But the riot squad had arrived now and they were entering the store, penning those they could surround for formal arrest. Frantic, Maggie ducked under a blue-coated arm and made her escape. He turned to follow, but someone tripped him. Maggie heard him curse as he fell. But she'd gained precious seconds. She ran faster, not sure where she was going, just away from the shouts, whistles and pounding feet.

The feet were gaining on her. She had to hide. Please, God, she prayed. As if in answer, she rounded a small building and an open door yawned before her. She tumbled through it, almost knocking over the young man on the other side. She slammed the door shut and gasped, “Hide me. Please. Quick!”

Steve Pearson wasn't sure why he did it. He'd heard the police sirens and figured there was another disturbance on
campus. Either the anti-war or the black power crowd protesting, raising hell about something. He was damn sick of these disruptions.

“Please,” she said again, clutching his arm.

It was something about her, the terror on her face, the appeal in her eyes, the human need that touched the human in him. “This way,” he said, and led her into an adjoining room, grabbed a white smock and helped her into it. He pushed her toward the sink and handed her a test tube, funnel and pitcher of water. “Pretend to be measuring something,” he said just as the door burst open and they were confronted by a scowling policeman.

“Anybody come in here?” he demanded.

The girl never turned. She concentrated on pouring the clear water through the funnel into the test tube, as if her life depended on measuring correctly.

Steve tried to register astonishment. “Nobody here but us,” he said, gesturing toward the girl.

“Damn! She got away,” the policeman muttered. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” he added, giving a little salute as he hastened off.

Steve crossed to the girl. Her hands were shaking, still fiddling with the water.

“It's okay. You're safe now. You're —” Seeing the blood, he stopped.

She turned to him. “Th-thank you,” she whispered just as the pitcher and tube slipped from her hand and crashed into the sink. He caught her just as she started to fall.

 

 

There was a funny monotonous sound like the hum of running water and a very strong smell she couldn't identify. Maggie opened her eyes. She was lying on a leather couch and a young heavyset man with very blond hair and a very freckled face was peering down at her.

“Like I told you, man, she's okay,” he drawled. “She's coming to.”

“Good. How do you feel?” Another young man moved nearer. Tall, sandy hair, blue eyes. The man she'd bumped into and—Oh, God! She tried to sit up.

“You're okay,” he said. “Lie still.”

“Nah,” said the other man. “Let her sit up. Fix that coffee now and put in lots of sugar,” he said as he helped her to a sitting position. “Don't want you to go into shock,” he explained.

“I won't,” she said. “I'm okay.”

“Yeah, but that was a deep gash. You lost a lot of blood. Sorry I had to cut your shirt.”

She gasped. Her left arm was bandaged; the bloody sleeve of her shirt hung loose. She remembered that jolt of pain when Bud had pulled her through the door. Broken glass. “I think I cut myself.”

That seemed to amuse him. “She thinks she cut herself,” he said to the tall man who held a mug of coffee to her lips.

“Sip slowly,” he commanded, sitting beside her.

“What y'all doing, anyway?” The freckled man asked in what she now realized was a distinctly Southern accent. “You think you gonna bust up the war by busting up one puny little bookstore?”

“Shut up, Roy,” the other guy said. “Don't be agitating.”