The Girl on the Outside (3 page)

“I'm upset 'cause I know what they do t' us when we try t' git outta our place.”

“What's our place, woman?” her father asked.

“Roger, you ain't crazy. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout. I was born and raised right here in Mossville. I've seen with m' own eyes things done t' our people too ugly t' mention in front o' Eva.”

“And I was born and raised in Texas, so I ain't no fool. And, I ain't 'bout t' be scared of none but God. I still say, if she wanta go there, I'll back 'er.”

Eva listened, feeling that excitement that she now knew was fear. She knew what life was like for Negroes in Mossville. She rode in the back of the bus, went to a separate school, separate church, lived in a separate neighborhood.

The scene she had been a part of in Woolworth's only yesterday, came full-blown into her mind. She had been in a hurry to catch the bus that ran to South End only once every hour, and the girl behind the counter had kept her waiting on purpose. The same smoldering anger and humiliation she had felt then, crept over her now. Making me wait while she did nothing until white customers came up. I know what she wanted: me to blow up or walk out without my things. But I wouldn't let her know she could put me through that kind of hell.

Eva was startled out of her thoughts by her mother's voice. “Eva, I wish … well, do you want to go over t' your Aunt Shirley's?”

Eva looked at her mother who had always been joyous, full of life. Now she looked worn with worry, and for the first time Eva noticed gray strands in her mother's hair. Had they been there before all this? She didn't want to do anything to hurt her mother. But she could not let the other eight students down, nor Mrs. Floyd.

Mrs. Floyd had suffered a lot, too, for her and the other students. She was the buffer between them and the lawyers, legislators, and school administrators. And there was her father. She couldn't let him down, either.

“Eva,” her mother said. “I'm askin' y' a question.”

She looked at her mother. All the love she felt for her rushed forth and Eva thought her heart would break. “I don't know, Mama,” she said. “Let me think about it.”

She went to her room, feeling weak. If only the heat would let up. It was too hot to think about serious matters. A small gray stuffed mouse on the floor caught her eye. Its floppy ears were almost hidden under a toy vanity that was once her favorite. She picked up the mouse and fingered its ear. How could anyone want to hurt Tanya, a six-year-old? She remembered the day Tanya was born. Then she herself had been nine.

She lay face down on her bed, wishing she had never said she would go to Chatman. She was not a super-smart student—a strong C + or B−—and her parents were not rich. They didn't even have a telephone at home.

Her mind flashed to that girl again who had made her wait at the counter.
She didn't even know me
. All I wanted was three little things … to
buy
them. Could she face a thousand girls like that at Chatman? Suddenly Eva was overwhelmed with fear. She could see their house blown into a thousand pieces. “O God, save me from all this,” she prayed.

Maybe she
should
go to her Aunt Shirley's … the whole family should go. But how could she tell Mrs. Floyd who had done all of that planning, that she was too scared to go to Chatman. And all the people at the church? They were counting on her.

She remembered the first reading from the Bible that morning:

Ye are the light of the world. A city set on the hill cannot be hid.… Let your light so shine
…

And then her minister, Reverend Redmond, had talked, had talked to them solemnly, as if he wanted to comfort them all. His text was from Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 6:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fettling together; and a little child shall lead them
.

Sweat poured off her in the heat of her tiny room. Yet, suddenly she felt bathed, fresh, her mind clear. She rushed through the house calling, “Ma, Ma, I don't wanta go to Aunt Shirley's. Mrs. Floyd wouldn't know how to reach me when we git ready to go to Chatman.”

Chapter 3

Shadows lengthened, but Mossville did not cool. Sophia stood at her bedroom window, looking out beyond her backyard. People sat on porches, doors and windows were open wide. The sounds of a Sunday evening spread through the muggy air. Supper dishes clattered and tentative fingers stumbled through “Clair de Lune,” while the barking of dogs blended with the hum of the city.

It was not much after five o'clock. In her own backyard Sohpia's father sat in a comfortable chair with a book, her mother was quilt-piecing, and Burt lay in the hammock sleeping. How peaceful her family appeared after that stormy afternoon.

Why had she opposed Burt and made that stupid outburst? Never before had she done such a thing in front of everybody. She remembered the hurt look on Burt's face and again felt the guilt and shame that flooded her when she had fled to her room.

The moment she shouted out had been the moment she realized that her family was falling apart over school integration. She didn't want Negroes in their lives just as she didn't want them in her school.

Her mind was plagued with a nagging fear, with the anxiety she often felt when a storm was brewing. She sat quiet and still in a storm, chilled by lightning that licked the edge of dark clouds like the tongues of snakes, the thunder too far away to be heard.

Sophia now fingered the ruffles on the white organdy curtains at the window and crushed them up around her face, thinking about her Grandma Stuart. If her grandma were alive, she would straighten Burt out.

She sat on the floor beneath the window. In spite of the heat, she was comforted by the coolness of her room. Practically all the furniture in it had once belonged to her grandmother, Sophie Stuart. Sophia had been named for her, pronouncing Sophia with a long
i, So-phi-a
.

The room was spacious enough to hold a four-poster bed. And even in summer Sophia insisted on covering that bed with a heavy white candlewick spread that was an heirloom in their family.

“It's nothing but a dust collector,” Ida had said when Sophia wanted the bedspread. “It's old and hot and heavy.”

“But I promise I'll fold it every night. Please, may I?” Now, sometimes as she kept her promise, Sophia wondered if the beauty the spread gave was worth the trouble.

She liked her room with its pale green walls and white ruffled curtains. The heaviness of an old desk and her bookcase was lessened by touches of color: pale yellow roses, a gold and blue pennant from Chatman High, a delicate hand-painted screen, Burt's gift from Korea, and paintings of her own here and there on the walls.

Now she stretched out on the floor and lay quiet and still, trying to concentrate on the sounds of that early evening, but her mind wandered back to Burt and the nine Negroes. She felt that exciting curiosity she had suppressed earlier, when she wondered how it would be with them in the classroom. Then suddenly she was frightened in a way that she had not been since she was a little girl.

She could dimly perceive an evening, hot like this, when she was about six or seven years old. She had gone with Grandma Stuart to South End, a section of town where only Negroes lived. She rode in the back seat of a big black car while her Grandma drove. The pavement ended abruptly and Sophia found herself in another world, a world of dusty streets and small houses with unpainted sidings. Many of the houses were adorned with pots of ferns hanging on porches.

Twilight was lavender and the people, dark as the twilight, sat on their porches. Soft voices were warmly punctuated with laughter. Sophia remembered the smells of spices, of fish and smoke mixed with dust.

Her grandmother pulled up in front of a house where lots of people sat on the porch. The yard was filled with children playing; smaller ones jumped rope or played tag; large ones played an unknown circle game, singing and clapping their hands. They were having so much fun that Sophia wanted to join them.

“I'll play just a little while,” she said to Grandma Stuart. She reached to open the car door.

“Don't you open that door!” The tone startled Sophia and she looked at her grandmother. The look on her grandmother's face frightened Sophia.

“I'll be right here,” Sophia said, thinking her grandmother felt she might get lost.

“You will not get out of this car.”

“Why, Grandma?”

“Because I say so.”

Her grandmother had never spoken to Sophia in that tone of voice before.

Suddenly, Sophia became afraid. She crawled over the seat and sat close beside her grandmother. Her grandmother honked the horn.

Soon a tall, dark woman came out to the car with a huge bundle wrapped in a white sheet.

“Evenin', Mis' Stuart. Your washin' all done, right here.”

“Thank you, Letha,” her grandmother said, as she put some change into the woman's hand.

Sophia stayed close to her grandmother as they rode home. Her grandmother was unusually quiet. Sophia, still worried and afraid that she had upset her, finally said, “I just wanted to play.”

Without looking at her, Grandma Stuart patted Sophia on the knee and said, “They are not our kind.”

That was the beginning of many trips with her grandmother into South End. Sophia always rode up front. Sometimes they went in the mornings or early afternoons. The streets were quiet and dusty. Old women, shading themselves with parasols, walked on the narrow shoulder of the road. They seemed to disappear in the dust when Grandma Stuart sped by in her big car.

If it was morning, fires blazed under black iron pots, steam rose from boiling clothes as women punched at them vigorously. Lines and lines of sheets, towels, shirts, and pillowcases dried in the white morning sun.

Afternoons, Grandma Stuart would pull up fast, making the dust fly all the way to Letha's porch where a small round kiln glowing with charcoal was stacked with flatirons. Sometimes Sophia saw Letha over an ironing board as they drove up.

Always Letha's dark face was wet with sweat and sometimes she came to the car with soapy water on her clothes from the washing board. Pale, pinkish hands, crinkled as if pickled by water, opened for the quarters Grandma Stuart placed in them, two for each bundle.

A whiff of fragrance through her window now reminded her of the clean sweet smell of laundry dried in the sun. She remembered the excitement each week of opening the bundles of sheets and pillowcases; and Grandpa's shirts by the dozens, starched and ironed like new. Sophia sighed and stirred on the floor. Twilight was now lavender here, too, and big green and yellow moths fluttered at her window. The air was still hot and muggy, but it was quieter. People were settling for the night.

The ring of the alarm clock startled her. Then she remembered. Arnold was coming at seven! She must hurry. The cool shower pelting her and the thought that Arnold cared made her glow. She smiled as she recalled the day he left for school for the first time. They had wandered to the end of the train station's platform away from the crowd to say good-bye. He held her hands and kissed her cheek. Her heart felt tight in her chest and she didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. Then he was gone.

After laying out her green voile dress, she rushed to do her hair up in a ponytail and tied it with a pale green ribbon. In the warm dampness, her hair curled in small ringlets around her face. After spraying all over with rose water, she felt cooler.

She slipped into her dress and turned to survey herself in the mirror. The capelike collar barely covered the top of her arms. The slim bodice tapered to a full skirt that flattered her small waist. With naturally rosy lips, she needed little makeup. If only there were some magic to make the freckles disappear.

The doorbell rang. She dabbed more rose water behind her ears and dashed down the stairs.

There was something about Arnold that both disturbed and soothed her. His cool self-assurance. The first minutes alone with him could be terrifying. She often felt shy, sure that she knew nothing; she could not find the right words.

Now, as she let him in, he smiled, and she knew that to say, “Hi,” was sufficient.

“Hi,” he said. “You look fresh and cool …”

“… and
colorful,”
she finished the sentence, unable to forget her freckles.

“And beautiful,” he said. He held her hands for a moment, as he looked at her and smiled. She blushed and led him through to the back of the house.

“Mother,” she called. “Arnold's here.”

“Come out where it's cool,” her father said.

Her parents liked Arnold so they were pleased that he was taking her out for the evening. After greetings, they parted with her father's words of caution. “Drive carefully now, and remember to be home before too late.”

Arnold drove through the quiet streets as the twilight deepened into purple. Warm air scented by a thousand night fragrances bathed Sophia's face as they sped through idle streets shadowed in pale lights. All the stores and shops were closed.

Sophia sat, head back, eyes closed, listening to the frying sound of the tires on the paved road. Even though she was relaxed, she was terribly aware of every inch of her body and of Arnold's presence.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked as she sat up and placed her hand on his.

“A surprise place, but nice. That is, I think so.”

Soon neon signs blazed red, green, blue, and white and the trees were now more alive. Stores dimly lighted were open. Small knots of Negroes stood around drinking sodas.

Abruptly the pavement ended. The rutted, dusty road was dark. Outlines of small houses let Sophia know she was in South End. A rush of fear came over her as she rolled up the window to avoid the dust. She sat tense, near the door, her hands stiffly folded in her lap. Where was Arnold going? She looked at him in the glow of the light of the dashboard. He appeared as relaxed as when they had started and he was just as quiet.