A Summer of Kings (24 page)

Both of them waved their letters in my face some more and yelled at me till their veins popped out in their necks, and then both of them left, trying to push back through the door of the pantry at the same time again. I watched them struggle together, neither one backing down, so that they burst through into the pantry at the same time and stumbled over one another and fell onto the floor, with Mother in her pretty pink shift, and King-Roy losing his glasses in the fall.

They looked like a comedy routine, but I didn't laugh. I watched them collect themselves and leave, and then I picked up my letter. I read that Mrs. Johnson had been planning to come all along. Their whole church was coming, and they had buses that would bring them, so she didn't need my money, but it was very thoughtful of me, she said. She also said that she looked forward to meeting me and seeing my mother after so many years. "It's been a long time, but at last your mother and I will be able to walk hand in hand again, just like we used to when we were little. Just as it says in the song, 'We'll walk hand in hand, someday.'"

I decided once King-Roy and Mother had cooled down a little bit, they'd be excited to be going, since
King-Roy would get to see his family again and Mother would get to see her old best friend. And then I realized that we were going; we were actually going to the march! My plan—my great idea—had worked. Maybe at least one thing would turn out right.

Excitement was in the air. We had our performance coming up and then our trip to Washington DC. We planned to take two cars to the march—the 1947 Ford Super Deluxe station wagon, which King-Roy had fixed so that it ran forward again, and the new Plymouth Fury. Mother told me I would have to help her prepare the picnic baskets so that we'd have food and something to drink while we were in Washington, and I was to gather up umbrellas and raincoats and sweaters in case it was cool out or it rained. Then we had to go into town to buy sunglasses for me, in case it was sunny, and comfortable walking shoes for Mother, Sophia, and Beatrice. Mother and Beatrice didn't own anything comfortable enough to be on their feet in the heat or rain all day, and Sophia had outgrown her Keds. I had pointed out to Mother that my Keds had big holes in the toes, so I thought I should get a new pair, too, in navy this time, and Mother said, "If I bought you new sneakers every time you poked holes through the toes, I'd have to buy a new pair every week. You'll get new Keds when you grow out of the old ones."

I tried explaining to Mother that my feet had stopped growing years ago, but she wasn't interested. I could get sunglasses and that was all.

I didn't feel too bad, since the whole trip to Washington—my great idea—had become a big production, and even Dad and Monsieur Vichy had grown excited about it. They were going as observers, they said. Dad got his camera ready, and Monsieur Vichy bought a new notebook so that he could take notes.

King-Roy had become nervous because Malcolm X had announced that anyone who chose to go to the march would be asked to leave the mosque, which is where the Muslims prayed and gathered together. Malcolm X said he would give them ninety days to get out.

"I only just got in, and look what you've done to me, Esther," King-Roy said. "Look how you've messed things up for me."

"But don't you want to see your family?" I asked.

"Course I do. That's why it's such a mess. And don't think this is all gon' go well, either. There'll be riots and beatings, and then how will you feel, Esther? How's it gon' be when you realize you risked my life and maybe your own family's life just so you could be the change, as you keep saying. You'll be the change all right. You'll be the change from safe to dangerous, or maybe to deadly. Now you think about that. There could be hundreds of angry people at this march, Esther. You don't know what that's like. You don't know what could happen."

What King-Roy said was true; I didn't know what
could happen. I was afraid of riots and violence, and I guess so was Dad, because even though Mother had purchased the Keds for Sophia, he said Sophia and Stewart couldn't go and that he'd ask Daisy if she would stay home with them. Then he started to worry about me going and then about Mother going, and then he wanted to call the whole thing off and he called it a bad idea, after all.

When Mother told me this, I stormed into my father's study, a dark-paneled room with lots of leather-covered furniture and framed photographs and posters of his plays, and Hirschfeld drawings of actors and actresses all over the place. He was sitting on his desk and talking with Monsieur Vichy, but I burst in and interrupted them and said, "Dad, you can't call off the trip. I have to go. I have to be there. This is important to me. Don't you see? We're going to change things. We're going to make it right. I have to go."

My father wiped at his balding head with an angry swipe of his hand and said, "Esther, don't come barging into my study and tell me what you have to do.
I'll
tell
you
what you have to do. You turn yourself around and you go out the door and you knock like a proper young lady."

"Dad, could you for once stop training me to be a proper young lady and just listen to what I'm saying? Could you just listen to what I have to say, just this once? This is important to me. This is the most important thing in the world to me. We have a chance to change things. We can go to Washington and show
President Kennedy and everyone that we
all
want what's right. We
all
want Negroes to have their rights and their freedom."

My father made a fist and hit it on his desk. He said, "Esther, your mother told me all about your romantic notions about King-Roy. And I'll tell you now that you will never—"

"That's not fair. I don't want this just for King-Roy. I want it for our country. What kind of people are we if we're so mean and hateful to people just because they got black skin? It's not fair. It's not fair, is it, Dad? Don't you want to see Negroes and white people get along? Don't you want them to be able to vote like us and to be able to eat at any diner they want and get equal pay for equal jobs? Don't you?" I had begun to march back and forth in front of his desk, and the marching gave me energy.

My father said, "Esther, yes, of course I do, but there are other ways of handling this. You can write—"

"It's time to act, Dad," I said. "It's time to march, not write," I said, still marching myself. "Sometimes I think we have to come out from behind our desks and come out of our houses and just march. Don't you think so?"

I stopped in front of Dad's desk and watched my father shake his head. Then he said, "You're just too young. It's not your battle—"

"No, I'm not! I have to go, Dad. I have to go."

I wanted to cry but I didn't because that would just prove to my father that I was too young. I paced over to the windows, then back again, while Monsieur Vichy
went, "Tsk, tsk, tsk," at me. I ignored him and turned back to my father and said, "Do you remember that postcard Pip once sent me from Washington, the one with President Kennedy on the front? Remember when he was visiting a pen pal there?"

My father leaned forward in his seat. "Esther, what does—"

"It said on it, 'Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.' Well, this is it. This is what I can do. I want to be a part of a group of people who want to make a positive difference in this world. Dad, this is important. Don't you see that? This is the right thing to do. This march is the right thing. Why can't you see that?" I looked at him and then at Monsieur Vichy, who had some kind of amused look on his face that made me want to kick him.

"Dad," I said, returning to him, "King-Roy says it's too late. He says we're in a race war. He says there are no more nonviolent Negroes left, but I don't believe it. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior doesn't believe it, either."

My father raised his hand to stop me and opened his mouth to speak, but I kept right on talking.

"We can't let mean, hateful people be the ones who control how our country behaves. Gandhi says we have to be the change we want to see in the world. Well, if all we do is sit around and do nothing while all the angry white and black people fight it out, then that just must mean we want to see all the blood and hatred and bad things happen."

"Esther." My father stood up and I shut my mouth.

"Where did you get all these ideas? From King-Roy?"

"No, all King-Roy and I do is fight. I've been reading stuff and"—I shrugged—"I don't know, I've just been thinking about it a lot, I guess."

"Well, Esther, you've surprised me," my father said. He crossed his arms and pursed his lips and stared so hard at me, I felt squirmy. I didn't know what he was thinking.

"I've surprised myself, too," I said, looking down at my feet. I thought maybe that was the end of our conversation, because nobody said anything, so I started to back away, but then Dad set his hand on my head and said, "All right, we'll go to Washington. But you'll stay with me and you'll listen to everything I tell you to do, do you understand?"

I sprung up onto my tiptoes and hugged my father. "Yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you." I squeezed him and let go and said, "You'll see, Dad. This is going to be beautiful, a beautiful event."

"Beautiful, eh?" Monsieur Vichy said behind me.

I spun around. "Yes, beautiful! You'll see."

Monsieur Vichy nodded and picked up his unlit cigar and stuck it in his mouth. "We shall all see," he said.

I didn't know if he was agreeing with me or being sarcastic, but knowing him, I decided he was being his usual mean old self.

Our trip to Washington was back on for everyone except Sophia and Stewart, who didn't care about the march, anyway, and the day of our big performance had arrived.

Auntie Pie had taken an old dress of hers and fit it to me. It was a sleeveless dress with a scoop neck in two layers of yellow material. The lacy outer layer had yellow beading all over it, and near my right hip she had pinned a large white cloth rose. The dress hung straight down from my shoulders to below my knees, and when I walked and tapped, the lower skirt part danced about my legs and I felt like a real flapper girl. Auntie Pie even gave me a soft pearl-colored crocheted cap to wear on my head, and Beatrice pinned my hair up under it, leaving just a few side pieces out to make my hair look bobbed. She did my makeup for me just as we had planned, highlighting my eyes with eyeliner, shadow, and mascara, adding foundation and rouge to my cheeks, and coating my lips with red lipstick. When she had finished, she stood back and took a look at me.

"You're absolutely stunning, Esther," she said, and
her eyes got all watery, which made mine watery, too.

I turned to look at myself in the mirror, and I thought I looked pretty, really pretty. My eyes looked so big and my eyelashes so long, and the eye shadow brought out the golden lights in the brown iris part. My lips looked fat with so much lipstick on. I didn't like the sticky way the lipstick felt and it smelled funny and tasted bad, too, but when I stood back and took a look at the whole picture, I knew I looked beautiful. I wished that Laura and Kathy and all those boys who Pip said told him I was a goofball could see me. I felt so excited, I wanted to burst. I didn't want anyone in the family to see me until I came out to do my dance, so I snuck down to the library early while Beatrice got Stewart and Sophia ready for their performances.

Sophia wore a short green dress with lots of frilly stuff around the neck and sleeves, and she, too, had a white rose pinned to her dress.

Stewart wore tights and a green tunic top that made him look like Robin Hood for his first dance, and he planned to change to his swim trunks for the second one. He had made up both dances all by himself, and he used some classical Tschaikovsky music for Robin Hood. For his second dance, which was my favorite because it had lots of leaps and somersaults and in-the-air cartwheels, he used the song "Surfin' USA"—another reason it was my favorite. He bought the single of the song and said if after the dances Mother and Dad let him keep dancing, he'd give me the record to keep.

Our program that I typed up on Dad's typewriter looked like this:

Welcome to a Saturday Afternoon of
Entertainment Galore!

Starring: Sophia Young, Stewart Young,
and Esther Young

Costumes: Hyacinth Jessup (Auntie Pie)

Makeup: Beatrice Bonham

Producer: Esther Young

PART 1
SOPHIA YOUNG SINGS!

1. "Wouldn't It Be Loverly"—from
My Fair Lady

2. "I Feel Pretty"—from
West Side Story

3. "Somewhere over the Rainbow"—from
The Wizard of Oz

SOPHIA YOUNG PERFORMS!

Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
(Co-starring Prissy, the Beast, as Toto)

PART 2
STEWART YOUNG DANCES!
"Robin Hood"
Music : Tschaikovsky
Choreography: Stewart Young
"Surfin' USA"
Music: Beach Boys
Choreography: Stewart Young

PART 3
ESTHER YOUNG SURPRISES!

Time step and variations
Shim Sham and variations
Music: "Stomping at the Savoy"

Shoop Shoop—choreographed by King-Roy
Johnson
Music: "In the Mood"

We hope you enjoy the performance!!!!

When everyone had taken their seats, Beatrice knocked on the library door and told me they were ready. I took a peek and saw Sophia standing in the center of the room waiting for her cue while Mother and Dad, King-Roy, Monsieur Vichy, Auntie Pie, and Stewart sat against the wall in our folding wooden chairs, waiting with their programs in their laps. The only person I didn't see was Pip. I felt crushed that he hadn't come. I pulled back from the door and closed it and tried to compose myself so I wouldn't cry and make all my makeup run. When Sophia began her first number, I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and opened the door
back up a crack to watch. Sophia sang and performed everything perfectly, as usual, and the only thing that went wrong was that the Beast had grabbed hold of Sophia's leg with her front paws and wouldn't let go. Finally Beatrice got her to behave and Sophia began again with her dramatic monologue, and when it was over everyone applauded and cheered for Sophia.