Yankee Girl (19 page)

Come back, Valerie. I'll be a better citizen. Promise.

Miss Gruen was still talking. “I know you're all concerned about Valerie.”

“Yeah, right,” muttered Saranne.

Miss Gruen didn't hear her. “Valerie will not be returning. The Taylors have moved to New York City to be near relatives.”

New York City!

Valerie was gone for good.

But I never got to say I'm sorry. Never got to be her friend.

I hardly noticed when the bus arrived and we all trooped on. I stared out the bus window. I had messed up so many things in the sixth grade. I'd probably mess up seventh grade, too.

“Scoot over.” Mary Martha plopped down next to me. “Maybe they'll change their minds and move back,” she said, reading my thoughts.

“Yeah, right.” Now I sounded like Saranne.

“Well, they might,” said Mary Martha, but not like she really meant it. We sat in silence, unable to think of anything cheerful to say. Finally, Mary Martha reached into her wicker purse and pulled out a transistor. “Now that Debbie's gone, I guess I'll have to bring the music.” She clicked it on.

The Supremes, singing “Come See about Me”.

“What station do you have on?” I asked.

“Rebel Radio, what do you think?” said Mary Martha. We listened, smiling. If Rebel Radio could play the Supremes, maybe things
could
change. Just maybe.

Carrie sat alone across the aisle, staring into a compact mirror, fluffing her face with a blusher brush. Alone? I leaned across Mary Martha and jogged Carrie's elbow.

“Hey, Carrie, what gives? How come you aren't sitting with the Cheerleaders?”

“Oh them,” Carrie sniffed. “I'm sick to death of ol' Saranne telling me what to do. Saying I was weird for liking Ringo. Who made her boss? She isn't even a cheerleader any more. At Belson, kids vote on cheerleaders.”

I glanced at Saranne in the rear seat. She looked lost with only Cheryl for company.

Mary Martha followed my gaze. “I've known Saranne since kindergarten. I never thought she'd turn out so downright mean. People sure aren't what they seem sometimes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like Miss LeFleur.” Thinking hard made me want to chew on something. “Got any toothpicks?” I asked.

“You kidding?” said Mary Martha. “Toothpicks are out. Binaca is in.”

She fished in her purse again, pulled out what looked like a lipstick tube, and uncapped it. “Open wide,” she ordered. I did. She squirted something peppermint into my mouth.

“What is that?” I asked, once I got the feeling back in my tongue.

“Spray mouthwash,” she said, helping herself to a few squirts. “Much cooler than toothpicks. Besides,” she lowered her voice, “you never know when a boy is going to kiss you. In junior high, you always have to be prepared.”

Kissing? And all I had been worried about was being late to class.

The bus pulled up to Belson. I had seen it a zillion times, but it had never seemed so huge before.

“I hear they make seventh-grade girls use the rest rooms on the third floor,” announced Saranne. “If an eighth or a ninth grader catches you in the other rest rooms, they flush your head.”

“Gross!” said Cheryl.

“Oh hush, Saranne,” said Mary Martha without turning around. “That's a rumour the ninth graders start every year. They just want to see if the stupid little seventh graders will believe it.”

Saranne opened her mouth, then closed it. And sat back. And hushed.

Belson's principal stood on the front steps, speaking into a bullhorn. “You are divided by last name. Look for your letter group. Pick up your schedule,” he bellowed over and over.

Long folding tables were set up on the lawn. Signs taped to the tables said A–G, H–M, and so on.

“Guess we split up for a while,” said Mary Martha. “See you at lunch, okay?”

“C'mon, Alice,” said Jeb. “Let's see if we can find our way around.” He socked me on the shoulder as we got in line. I wondered if seventh-grade boys were more mature than sixth-grade ones.

So our first official act of junior high was lining up. I thought I'd left lines behind at Parnell. I kind of expected to hear the “King Cotton March”.

There must have been three hundred kids milling around, all white except for a handful of Negro kids. A Negro girl in a green-flowered shift and pointy-toed flats wandered past our line. She looked familiar.

“Stay away from that girl,” I could hear Saranne mutter from the N–S line. “They wear them pointy shoes so they can kick you in a fight.”

The girl didn't look like she wanted to fight. She looked lost and a little scared. Now, where had I seen her before…

“Name,” said a disgustingly cheerful teacher at the head of the H–M line. His name tag said “Mr. Henderson”.

“Alice Ann Moxley.”

“Moxley. Is that with an ‘x'?” Not only was he way too happy first thing in the morning, but he had gooby glasses and a greasy flattop. He shuffled through a pile of papers.

“Yessir.” More paper shuffling before Mr. Henderson handed me a schedule and a name tag. “I'll be your guidance counsellor for the next three years. Any problems, just come to me. My office is room 101. I hope we'll be friends. Everybody calls me Uncle Jerry.”

Uncle Jerry! Yeesh! I hated adults who tried to be your buddy. I wouldn't set foot in room 101 even if the entire ninth grade tried to flush me.

“Put on your name tag, Alice Ann Moxley,” said Uncle Jerry. “We're all one big happy family here at Belson.”

Oh yeah? I could already see cliques forming out on the lawn. Some new, some left over from their old schools. Skipper and Jeb stood with what looked like the football team. Saranne and Cheryl huddled alone by the empty bike racks. I didn't see Mary Martha at all.

The rest of the morning was as blurry as the carbon-copy schedule Uncle Jerry gave me. My classes must have been put together by a distance runner. English on the first floor, math on third, then PE on first, then back up to third for science.

At noon we were herded to the basement cafeteria for lunch. I took my pinkish hot dog and bun and found Mary Martha. She was sitting with Skipper.

“Siddown,” said Skipper. “Pretty cool not having assigned seats, huh? Same old slop, though.”

“Shove over,” said Jeb, plunking his tray down. “This is so boss. We can talk without teachers getting on our case.”

“Where
are
the teachers?” I asked. “I don't see any.”

“Pammie says they eat in the teachers' lounge,” said Jeb. “They take turns watching us. There's our warden for the day.” He pointed to Uncle Jerry, grinning like an idiot, oblivious to kids fork-flinging peas at him.

The four of us poked at our plates, trying to find something edible.

“I met this guy in PE who's going out for football,” said Jeb, forking up Tater Tots. “Man, can he run. Pass, too. Name's Eddie Thigpen.”

“You mean that coloured kid you were horsing around with?” Skipper sounded surprised.

Jeb swallowed his mouthful. “Yeah. I mean, we got to talking football and…”

Suddenly, the room got quiet. Coming out of the lunch line was the Negro girl in the green dress. Then it hit me. She was Valerie's cousin Demetria.

I stood up.

“You going over?” whispered Mary Martha.

I nodded.

“You ain't gonna ask her to sit with us?” said Skipper, not whispering.

“You wanna make something out of it?” I said.

This is for you, Valerie.

Skipper swallowed the rest of his hot dog and grinned. “Nope. 'Cause I'm finished.” He still had a nearly full tray. “Anybody else finished?”

Mary Martha gave him a dirty look but went on eating.

“How 'bout you, old buddy?” He flicked a pea at Jeb. Jeb glanced up from his Tater Tots.

I didn't wait to see what Jeb did. Or Skipper or Mary Martha.

I walked up to the girl in green. She stood in the middle of the room, gripping her tray. It was so quiet it was like being underwater.

Suddenly it was last September all over again.

Only this time, I'm getting it right.

“Hi. You're Valerie's cousin, aren't you?”

The girl flinched, as if I might hit her. Then she glanced at my name tag, and her face cleared. “Alice Ann Moxley. Ain't you the one they call Yankee Girl?”

“Yankee Girl, yeah, that's me,” I said with a big fake smile. All around me kids muttered “Nigger lover, nigger lover” like a bunch of locusts.

Don't you be a chicken, Alice Moxley. Remember the Alice Rules.

“Valerie told me to watch for you,” said Demetria.

I smiled for real. “Yeah?” What else was there to say? “C'mon, let's eat,” I said as we walked back to our table.

Mary Martha and Jeb were still there.

When I was ten years old, I knew three things were true:

1. Paul McCartney was the cutest Beatle, and the Beatles were the fabbest band in the whole world.
   
2. No matter how much Dippity-Do I used, my hair wasn't ever going to look like Jane Asher's, Paul McCartney's girlfriend.
   
3. And I would never live to see eleven. The Ku Klux Klan would shoot me, or burn our house, or blow up our car. I just knew it.
   

Like Alice, I was the daughter of an FBI agent. In the summer of 1964, my family moved from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi. My father was one of 150 special agents ordered to Mississippi by President Lyndon Johnson.

Earlier that summer, three young civil rights workers disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where they were involved in registering African Americans to vote. At that time, white Southerners made it extremely difficult for black people to vote. College students and other concerned citizens from all over the country flocked South to help correct this situation. Southerners resented these “outsiders”. The Ku Klux Klan did everything they could to intimidate the civil rights workers, including murder. The local law enforcement turned a blind eye to the Klan's activities. In some cases, law enforcement officers were members of the Klan themselves.

It was the disappearance of the three civil rights workers that moved President Johnson to order the FBI to Mississippi. Two months after they vanished, the FBI found the bodies of the three missing men, buried in an earthen dam. This was only the first of many cases to come of civil rights workers beaten or killed as they helped others become voting citizens.

These incidents took place forty years ago. When I tell people, particularly young people, about events that happened during my childhood, they find them hard to believe. “These things didn't
really
happen, did they?” they ask.

Oh, but they did. I knew I had to write about Mississippi in 1964. I didn't want people to forget that once there was a time, not so long ago, when African Americans could be treated so cruelly. Could be called horrible names like “nigger” and “coon”. Could be
killed
for trying to vote. Or simply for looking a white person in the eye.

So while this is Alice's story, a lot of the things that happened to Alice also happened to me. My mother once said, “You know, someday you'll be glad you lived in this time and this place. You are seeing history in the making. You can tell your children and grandchildren about it.”

She was right.

Mary Ann Rodman wanted to be a writer since the age of three, but was only inspired to write
Yankee Girl
, her first novel, after leaving her job as a librarian and moving to Thailand. The experience of dealing with a completely different culture reminded her of her childhood years spent in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s.

Mary Ann moved to Mississippi when her father, an FBI agent, was sent there to investigate hate crimes during the civil rights movement.
Yankee Girl
is based on the author's personal experiences of that time and her character Alice Ann is, she says, “an improved version of me, someone who I wish I could have been”.

Mary Ann Rodman is married with one daughter and now lives in Alpharetta, Georgia.

Read on for a sneak preview…

The two people Ellie McKelvey hated most were Adolf Hitler and Victoria Gandeck. Hitler lived in Germany, but Victoria was just across the alley. And right now, Ellie hated Victoria more.

After all, it was Victoria's fault.

Ellie had been minding her own beeswax, thinking about the arithmetic homework she needed to do before the end of lunch hour. Then, as she crossed the schoolyard, sucking peanut butter from her teeth, Victoria yelled that horrible word. “Slacker! Ellie's brother is a yellow-bellied slacker!”

The next thing Ellie knew, she was sitting outside the principal's office with bruised knuckles and the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Victoria was sprawled in the chair beside her, a bloody hanky to her nose, outstretched legs taking up half the room.