Warriors Don't Cry (36 page)

Mama and Grandma could draw a picture, then sit in the middle of the floor and cut a pattern out of newspaper, and make a dress come to life in the fabric.

For the next hour, we rummaged through Grandma’s trunks filled with fabrics she had collected over the years. There were remnants of dresses and suits I had seen her wear all my life. There were brand-new pieces and full bolts she had gotten from her mother before she died or from her sisters as trades for other things. Easter was always a time when we each were allowed to choose the cloth we wanted.
CELEBRATING the Easter holiday was a big event in our family. Attending church on Easter was a grand ceremony when everybody dressed up in the very best they could afford. There was always an Easter-egg hunt on the church grounds, and a parade of people in special hats. A few weeks back we had officially begun the sacred holiday with the pledge of our sacrifices for Lent. It was a family tradition that Mama and Grandma would review our Lenten commitment as we shopped the trunks.

“Have you two considered adding more items to your sacrifice list this year?” Grandma asked as she began to sketch the design for my dress.

“Uh, Grapette colas. That’s what I’m doing without. I haven’t slipped yet,” I declared, thinking how many times I’d thought about slipping.

“That’s all?” Grandma’s tone let me know she wasn’t pleased with either the number or quality of sacrifices on my list. One year I had chosen to give up the radio, and another, candy bars. I knew for sure I would never promise to give up either of those things again.

“Well, what about giving up television to spend more time reading your Bible?” Grandma said.

“Ohhhh, Mother, Grandma, please, since I’m giving up so much in Central, can’t you let me slide by this year?” I pleaded with them as I sat caressing the thick folded piece of purple velvet I had pulled from the trunk to covet. The scent of cedar balls was beginning to fill the room.

“There’s lots of hard work to be done on repenting for sins. Have you listed your sins?” As Grandma spoke, she rocked back and forth a little faster, and turned her attention away from her sketching to look at me.

“I’ve lumped together into one big sin all the hundreds of times I thought evil of people at Central,” I said. “There were also several times I thought about sassing adults back, mostly teachers and principals at school. And I didn’t trust God on two occasions.”

“And how about not answering all your fan mail?” Mother Lois added. “Don’t you think it a sin to ignore all those people who take their valuable time to write to you? You were so good about it at first.”

I realized she was right. At the beginning, I had faithfully answered those letters each weekend. They came from France, Germany, England, Africa, and Australia, from people all around the world, mostly congratulating me for going to Central High. Grandma would sift out the mean ones, which were few and far between. I got several marriage proposals from cute boys, some of them white, who sent their pictures. Grandma forbade me to send them more than a polite thank-you. I wanted at least to learn more about them and file them in an “if you need a husband when you’re a grown-up file.” But Grandma said that would be a personal sin.
MEANWHILE, back at school, I feared my grades would suffer horribly because I couldn’t concentrate. Every moment of every day was filled with awful surprises that began early each morning. I hoped and prayed I wouldn’t get ejected before the end of school. I took heart because I could see signs of the kind of student activities that only come near the end of the school year.

Late one evening, Link telephoned. He was furious about the announcement of the cancellation of many of his senior class activities. He spoke of all his hard work to maintain good grades, his athletic awards, and his student leadership, and now his hopes for a wonderful senior year were dashed. The traditional senior events had been canceled because of the possibility of trouble as a result of integration. School officials also cited the presence of the Arkansas National Guard as another reason.

Link was inconsolable. “I don’t know what I can do about it,” I said even as I wondered whether his disappointment and anger would make him turn against me.

“You can do a news interview saying we’re not such bad people and that everything is getting better at school. That way everybody in the world won’t think we’re all villains.”

“Link, you don’t want me to lie, do you? Everything is getting worse . . . not better.”

On and on he went, telling me how Central High’s students were suffering and sacrificing the reputation of their nationally acclaimed school because we had come there. He was more angry than I’d ever heard him. “This was a good school, ranked high on the national scale, and now our halls are filled with soldiers and people are treating us like criminals!”

I could only think to tell him to have faith that God would make things okay. I couldn’t do what he asked, I couldn’t change things. That’s when he really got sarcastic, saying, “Don’t give me that God stuff. That’s what Nana Healey always says. I don’t believe in God. If He’s there, why is He letting all this happen?”

“Who’s Nana Healey?”

“My nanny. She’s colored—like you.” He had often spoken of her, but this was the first time he had told me she was not white.

“The reason I’m attending Central is so I don’t have to spend my life being somebody’s nanny,” I said in a tone to match his indignant manner.

By the end of the conversation, Link’s anger had shifted from me to the situation. He was frustrated, vowing he was going to do something about the cancellation. Our conversation aroused my suspicions anew. Was he just being nice to me temporarily to get me to lie to the news people? Who was he? After all, I had no way of checking him out. I couldn’t tell the others about him or talk about him to the NAACP people. I was at his mercy, having to decide on my own whether or not he was genuine. I would have to be on constant alert from now on, watching for signs of what his real motives were.

But meanwhile he warned me to watch out for any students who tried to hand me election pamphlets. School officers were to be elected on April 24. They would be nice and offer us literature, he said, but as we paused to take it they would ink our dress, grab our books, or worse. “I’ve been to some of those planningmeetings recently, and I can tell you they’re gonna pullout all stops and do everything they can to get you out of school before it ends, to make certain you’re not coming back next year.”

“What more could they do. They’re already exhausting us.”

“Yeah, but it’s gonna get much worse. The thing is, lately, they’ve been talking about pulling off something really big that will not only hurt you but your families—something that will force you to quit.”

 

 

THIS more than any other story in the newspaper made me fear that the segregationists were making real progress in their constant hammering to defeat integration. Getting rid of that judge who was so important to our cause must have been an occasion for celebration among their ranks. Slowly, they were waging an effective campaign on every level, even at the federal level, to have things their way.

 

Back at school on Monday, just as Link had warned, people approached us as though they were including us in the election process.They would come up and offer a pamphlet with one hand while using the other hand to shower us with all manner of smelly liquids. Sometimes they would kick or even punch us, and usually whatever they did was followed by a shower of rude name-calling.

The elections at our old school, Horace Mann, weren’t nearly so sophisticated. At Central, people put up signs, wore buttons, and passed out materials, just as though it were a real election. They held debates and voting parties and did all manner of campaigning. I was intrigued watching the process, delighted at the complexity of it all compared to what I had been accustomed to seeing at our old school. It made me extra sad that I wasn’t allowed to participate.

Distributing campaign literature also gave renegade students an opportunity to hand out more flyers opposing us, like the “One Down, Eight to Go” cards. We figured somebody somewhere must have a full-time press going, dedicated to anti-eight campaign literature. Meanwhile, avid segregationists were fueling the battle against us by regularly appearing on television in order to enroll more people outside school to fight against us. For example, one group orchestrated a bizarre parade of cars that drove back and forth in front of the school honking their horns. That outside pressure ignited more explosions inside as the atmosphere became like a devil’s carnival with us as the central attraction.

The experience of walking down that hall to my homeroom each morning got so worrisome that I doubled my repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer as I walked from the front door up the stairs. Inside the homeroom class, I was entertained by a whole new series of indignities. I arrived one day to find a doll that resembled me, with a rope around her neck, hanging from the door frame. Another time, someone had provided genuine urine to spray in my seat and on my clothing.

I decided to ask the teacher whether or not she could stop people from throwing rocks at me and pushing chairs into my back. She told me I’d have to speak to Vice-Principal Huckaby because there was little she could do. The next day, I asked Mrs. Huckaby what could be done, and when she said she didn’t know, my heart sank. It felt like no capable adults were in charge. Later, Link confirmed that the teachers who made a big thing of disciplining segregationists hoodlums were themselves the victims of ostracism.

More frequently now, Link was full of talk about graduation events. Under any other circumstances, this would have been an exciting time of year, filled with wonderful events. He told me about the parties for the juniors and seniors. He told me about a huge gala at the Marion Hotel, and said the junior and senior picnics at Central High were better than Christmas and New Year’s combined. It made me feel more isolated, because now I had also been left out of the events at my old high school.

As our conversations grew more relaxed, Link began telling me about his parents. His father, a wealthy and very well-known businessman, had been forced to contribute money to the Citizens’ Council campaign in order to do a healthy amount of business in Little Rock. “He isn’t for race mixing, but he also isn’t for beating up anybody’s children,” Link explained.

 

 

AS I read the article I felt despair creeping over me. Judge Harry Lemley of Hope, Arkansas, had been named to hear the Little Rock School Board petition asking for a postponement of integration for public schools. The first hearing was set for the following Monday at 9:30 A.M. He promised the final hearing would be held long before September. The article described him as a native of Upperville, Virginia, and a man who “loved the South as though it were a religion.” It was evident from that description that he wouldn’t be likely to violate southern tradition for my people.

 

 

I DESPERATELY needed the break that came with the Easter holiday. As usual on Easter Sunday morning, each of us twirled and pranced in our family fashion show. “Spiffy do,” Grandma India said as we climbed into the car. The church was filled to the rafters with people we didn’t see during all the rest of the year.

 

And Vince was there, smiling and beckoning to me, I smiled back but continued down the aisle to sit with my family as usual. The Easter sermon was much longer and louder than on ordinary Sundays. “Old Rugged Cross” was sung with tears and organ chords that made goose bumps and chills climb up my spine. As we sang the last song and prepared to gather for a traditional Easter dinner, I even felt a moment of contentment.

Vince and I sat together at the church dinner, reminiscing about our earlier dates, and for the first time I felt as though we were good friends again. Still, he was not someone with whom I could talk about my Central High experience. I had lived through so much turmoil since we first met that my thoughts and dreams were now totally changed from a year ago. We had simply drifted apart because we had so little in common, except our past relationship. I now felt as grown-up as I had once thought him to be. Nevertheless, as we sat sipping lemonade on that sunny day, there was no doubt in my mind I was enjoying one of the special moments of my life. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that I had more than a month to go until the end of the school year. Central High was never out of my mind.

In my diary I wrote:

I am happy today, but I am also frightened. The appointment of Lemley means we have to pray hard. This is not supposed to happen in America. I mean segregationists aren’t supposed to be able to have their own judge.
I salute the flag every morning as I look at a picture on the homeroom wall directly in front of me. I will never forget that picture as long as I live. It is a brown pasture with white sheep. As the boys behind me call names and the girls to each side sneer, I look straight ahead because those sheep are smiling at me. I think it is a smile from God. It is a promise that if I salute the flag like a good American, all these integration problems will be worked out eventually.

26

 

INSIDE Central, everyone who wasn’t talking about getting us out of school seemed to be talking about the upcoming production of
The Mikado.
I listened intently for every little crumb of information I could get. I felt a vicarious delight just being near the excitement. From what I could learn, the production was nearly professional, with many props and the kind of fancy equipment I’d never even heard of. How I longed to be included, or at least permitted to attend. I thought I had resigned myself to being left out, but it was haunting me again.