Palisades Park (36 page)

“Yes. I’m a model at the Manhattan Art Students League.”

“A model? I should’ve known, you’re pretty enough to be one.”

“Well, thank you,” the woman said, disarmed by Toni’s earnestness.

“Did you always know you wanted to be a model?”

Melba laughed—a warm, open laugh. “Oh, I’m not sure
now
I want to be one. I just sort of fell into it. I also study ballet and flamenco. What about you? Did you always want to be a lifeguard?”

Toni laughed. “Not hardly. But I’ve always loved the water. I practically grew up in this pool. For a while I thought I’d like to…” She paused. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. People tell me it’s a silly dream—”

Soberly, Melba said, “Don’t do that—don’t let anyone tell you that. If you want to do something new, there are always people who’ll take that as, ‘Oh, she wants to be different. She thinks she’s better than us.’ When I talk about wanting to dance, some people in my neighborhood say, Oh, that Melba, she doesn’t want to be ‘just another Negro.’ But that’s not it. I just want to be Melba. Like you want to be Toni. Don’t you ever let go of that.”

Toni felt a sudden kinship with this woman she barely knew. But before she could say “Thanks,” a park security guard came up to the young woman and in a stern voice told her, “I’m sorry, miss, but you’re going to have to move along, people need to get through here. Why don’t you—”

“Go enjoy one of the other rides?” Melba finished for him.

Toni said to the guard, “Listen, maybe I can do something to help hurry along her application…”

Melba told the guard, “Fine. I’ll leave. Just give me a minute.” After he turned and walked away—though lingering at a distance to make sure she followed through on her promise—Melba turned back to Toni and put a hand, gently, on her arm. “Hon, don’t get yourself in any trouble on my account. They’re not going to give me any membership card. This whole ‘private club’ thing is just an old dodge to exclude Negroes.”

Toni was shocked at the suggestion. “Oh, but that, that’s not true—Palisades lets anyone in. Why, just a couple weeks ago there was a group of kids from the Fresh Air Fund…”

“Did any of them get into the pool?”

“Well, I … I didn’t notice. But when I was little, I rode on rides with Negro and Puerto Rican children all the time—”

“You ever swim with any?” Melba asked.

Toni started to reply, then thought about it—and realized to her dismay that she couldn’t automatically say yes.

“Thank you for the lemonade, Toni,” Melba said warmly. “It was very kind of you. I enjoyed meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you too,” Toni said, still baffled. Melba Valle turned and walked away from the pool, and Toni watched her figure retreat down the midway until she turned a corner and was gone.

Toni went back to her station and looked out across the pool—really
looked
for the first time.

She saw people sunning themselves on the boards of the sundeck—their backs white, occasionally pink. She looked across the beach at families sprawled on towels or huddled under beach umbrellas—but not a brown or black face among them. The waters of the pool were packed with hundreds of bodies—pale bodies. A sea of white.

My God, she thought, blushing with her own shame and naïveté. How had she never noticed before?

16

S
HORTLY AFTER NOON
, Melba Valle returned, and she brought company: eleven men and women, both white and black, an uncommon enough sight in and of itself. When she tried once more to gain entry to the pool and was again denied, the members of the group lined up in front of the ticket booth in what they referred to among themselves as a “stand-in”—refusing to move until Miss Valle was admitted, even as they chanted in unison:

“Don’t get cool at Palisades Pool! Get your relaxation where there’s no discrimination!”

Upon hearing this catchy refrain, ticket sellers burst out of the booth in a panic and ran like startled chickens toward the administration building.

Toni saw a little of this, but first and foremost she had to keep her eyes on her zone of responsibility; so mostly she just heard the chants, as did almost everyone in the pool area.

“Don’t get cool at Palisades Pool! Get your relaxation where there’s no discrimination!”

After several minutes of this, a number of pool patrons, annoyed that their “relaxation” was being spoiled, began jeering at the demonstrators. One woman leaned over the gate and summed up the general feeling: “Why don’t you all go away and let us enjoy ourselves!”

The protestors did not stop chanting.

Toni decided to take her lunch break, getting to the ticket booth in time to see the arrival of a flying wedge of park security guards, headed by Irving Rosenthal, striding onto the scene like the potentate he was. “Who’s in charge here?” he demanded. A slightly built white man around thirty identified himself as James Robinson and informed him that they were members of an organization called the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE.

“You can’t just stand here and chant your Bolshevik slogans, disrupting my business,” Rosenthal told him. “You need to leave.”

“We’ll leave when Miss Valle is admitted to the pool,” Robinson said.

“The pool is a private club, and Miss Valle’s application for membership has been taken. We’ll notify her by mail of our decision.”

“We’d rather wait here until she’s been accepted.”

Toni could see Rosenthal’s jaw clench, his avuncular manner turning steely. He strode over to the pool gate, cast a perfunctory glance inside, then went to the ticket booth and announced in a loud voice, “The pool is crowded to capacity. Suspend all ticket sales for the rest of the day.”

Toni knew damn well the pool wasn’t anywhere near capacity.

Ticket window shutters came crashing down like a theater curtain in mid-performance—distressing not just the demonstrators but the many paying customers waiting to get into the pool.

“Hey! What gives?” one heavyset man shouted. “We came all the way from Parsippany for this!”

“There—no one else is getting in today,” Rosenthal told Robinson. “Now why don’t you all just leave?”

“We won’t leave until Negroes are admitted to this pool.”

Rosenthal’s face flushed with anger; he obviously wasn’t used to being contradicted here in his own dominion.

“In that case,” he warned, “I’ll have to have you forcibly removed.”

The CORE members were not intimidated and did not budge.

Rosenthal ordered his security guards to eject the demonstrators.

One burly guard, stepping forward eagerly, went straight to the heart of the ruckus: Melba Valle. He grabbed her roughly by the arm, yanking her out of line. “C’mon, lady, move it!”

“Hey!” Toni found herself calling out. “Leave her—”

Suddenly Bunty was at Toni’s side, laying a hand gently on her arm. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “It stinks, kiddo, but he’s the boss.”

Toni watched helplessly as the demonstrators appeared to let their bodies go limp as soon as they were seized, forcing the security guards to literally drag them like dead weights away from the pool. As he was hauled past Rosenthal, one CORE member promised him, “We’ll be back!”

Rosenthal, nearly popping a vein, shouted at the guards, “Put these Communist agitators on the next ferry back to New York!”

Toni wasn’t the only one watching this scene play out with astonishment and dismay. At the first sounds of confrontation, Eddie had left Jack in charge of the stand and hurried over to his daughter’s workplace. Now he stared at the park guards manhandling women, dragging Negroes away as if they were trash to be thrown out—and felt, uncannily, as if he had been transported to the Deep South he had traveled in his carny days.

He couldn’t believe this wasn’t Alabama, but New Jersey.

Things returned to normal at the pool though no one else was admitted for the rest of the day, doubtless damaging the park’s bottom line.

On the way home late that night, Toni and Jack peppered their father with questions: “How could they do that to people?” “Mr. Rosenthal always seemed so nice—” “Did you know colored people couldn’t use the pool?”

“I never thought about it,” Eddie said in answer to the last question, ashamed at his own ignorance. “I saw coloreds in the park, on the rides, in the restaurants, and I never thought about the pool.”

“There was a big brouhaha last year about Negroes in the dance pavilion,” Jack said, “but I thought it all blew over.”

“Really?” Toni said. “I hadn’t heard about that.”

“You were too busy scheming your way into Slim Welker’s—”

“Your next word better be ‘heart,’” Eddie warned.

“Melba’s such a nice girl,” Toni said. “It’s not fair she can’t get in.”

“Life isn’t fair. Especially if you’re born with the wrong color skin.”

“Can’t you talk to Mr. Rosenthal and convince him to let her in?”

Eddie reminded himself this
wasn’t
Alabama, it was Jersey, and even if cities like Trenton were segregated, others, like Newark, weren’t.

“I can give it a try,” he said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

*   *   *

The next morning, Eddie found Irving Rosenthal patrolling the midways, as usual, at the moment dressing down a hot-dog vendor over his wares: “These dogs are stale and tasteless,” he told the man. “How many days have they been sitting there? Redo the whole batch with fresh franks.”

“
All
of ’em?” There were thirty frankfurters revolving on his rotisserie.

Rosenthal said, “In thirty years I’ve learned that when a hot dog sours a youngster’s stomach, you’ll lose him as a customer no matter how many stupendous thrill acts and exciting rides you offer. I take no chances.”

Eddie had never worked for anyone more conscientious than Irving—he liked and respected him. But he sure didn’t like the side of him he’d seen yesterday.

“Mr. R.,” Eddie said, approaching, “can you spare a minute?”

“Sure, Eddie, what’s on your mind?”

Walking alongside him, Eddie said, “I wanted to talk to you about what happened yesterday. At the pool.”

Rosenthal winced. “That was uncomfortable for everyone, wasn’t it?”

“Look, I don’t get it. If Negroes are allowed in the park, why not let them into the pool? What’s the big deal?”

Irving sighed. “Some white people—and I’m not one of them, Eddie, you know me better than that—have this idea that Negroes are … unclean.”

“What, they’re afraid the black is going to rub off on them?”

“Bathing is an intimate thing, Eddie. Whites are simply not ready to get that intimate with colored people. If I let Negroes into my pool, business would dry up. I can’t afford that. It’s strictly business.”

Eddie measured his words. “Y’know, I spent a lot of time in the South when I was a carny. One town we were playing, they hung a colored boy because he dared
speak
to a white woman. They just strung him up and lynched him—no trial, no lawyers, no waiting.”

“We’re not lynching anybody here,” Rosenthal said testily. “It’s our right to admit whoever we want to our pool.”

“It’s dangerous. You never know what this kind of thing can lead to.”

Irving thanked him, rather frostily, for his opinion, then reminded Eddie that he had a French fry stand to open.

Eddie swallowed his annoyance, thanked Irving for hearing him out, and went off to the stand.

The following Sunday, July 20, was a hot day that held the prospect of good pool attendance. The CORE demonstrators returned as promised, picketing the main gate on Palisade Avenue with signs reading
PROTEST JIM CROW—FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
and
DON’T GET COOL AT PALISADES POOL! GET YOUR RELAXATION WHERE THERE’S NO DISCRIMINATION!

But it was a peaceful protest, with the picketers scaring off few, if any, paying customers. Nevertheless park security guards watched them like circling hawks, as did the small contingent of officers that made up the Cliffside Park Police Department, including Chief Frank Borrell.

His family back from the Poconos the night before, Slim met Toni on her lunch break at the Grandview Restaurant overlooking the Hudson. It was a warm, sunny day, made more idyllic for Toni by Slim’s presence after what had seemed an eternity apart. After a welcoming kiss they sat down, ordered sandwiches and a couple of Pepsi-Colas, and Slim remarked, “So what the hell’s going on outside? All those picket signs?”

“Oh, you missed all the excitement,” Toni told him. “A young Negro woman tried to get into the pool but they wouldn’t let her in. So this group is protesting until the park agrees to let colored people into the pool.”

“What? That’s ridiculous.”

She nodded. “I know, I think it’s terrible that they—”

“The whole idea’s ridiculous,” Slim repeated. “Everybody knows coloreds don’t have the same standards of cleanliness we do.”

Toni felt a chill in the eighty-degree heat. Was he kidding her? She looked into his eyes—they were the same eyes she had spent hours gazing into dreamily, but now they seemed suddenly opaque to her.

Her reply to this pronouncement was a feeble, “What?”

“I’ve got a cousin goes to high school in East Orange,” Slim said, “and they’ve got the right idea. They only allow coloreds to swim in the pool on Fridays, so over the weekend they can clean it and change all the water.”

Toni managed to eke out a protest: “But this girl, Melba … she’s a very pretty, very clean-cut girl…”

“Well, I guess some of them are,” Slim allowed, “but most of ’em come from farms in the South and they don’t know squat about hygiene. How do you know they won’t just shit and pee in the water, right next to you?”

No, Toni thought, this couldn’t be happening, these words couldn’t be coming from this boy she adored.

“My dad says if the races aren’t kept separate,” Slim went on, “the next thing you know, you’ll have coloreds living right next door to you.”

“I—I wouldn’t mind having Melba live next door to me,” Toni said, though her voice quavered as she said it.

Slim looked uneasy. “Look, honey, I’m sure she’s nice, for a colored girl, but…” He leaned forward, his brow knitting in concern, lowering his voice a notch: “Watch what you say, Toni, okay? You don’t want people thinking you’re some kind of nigger lover, do you?”