No Crystal Stair (20 page)

“Well, Mr. Metcalf, how much money you got?”

“Not a dime for what you've shown me so far! Is that all
you've
got?” asked a thoroughly irritated Rob.

“Well, there's Del Paso,”Jones whined.

Del Paso. Treeless. Arid. Junky. Washed-out stucco shacks. The prized site was one that had a three-foot high chain-link fence and a concrete covered backyard, with a picnic table and a redwood bench on each side.

It looked, Rob decided, more like a hony-tonk joint than a residence. He didn't even go inside.

“Don't you have anything in the Curtis Park area?” he asked. He'd been driving around in that area, with its beautiful old homes on tree-lined streets. He'd heard that houses there might be available to nonwhites.

Jones was honest. His license didn't allow him to contract south of W and X streets. But he had a friend, a white Realtor, who might accommodate Rob. He gave Rob the man's card.

Rob thanked him. Now he understood. The juicy prospects, fairly decent areas opening up to colored, were reserved for white Realtors. He wasn't annoyed with Jones anymore. He felt
sorry for him. What kind of business could you do with one hand tied behind your back?

He looked at the card. Ferdy. He drove back to where he'd seen that For Sale sign. A good neighborhood, tree-lined and quiet. Across the street a couple of Chinese children were at play.

It was an old house, but in its day it had been top of the line. A twenty-five-foot setback, big yard, front and back, a driveway to a rather rickety garage. It would probably do.

He drove to Mr. Ferdy's office. “Mr. O.T Jones said you might have some houses I could see.”

“I sure might. What are you looking for?”

Rob described the house he had just seen. “Your For Sale sign is in front.”

Ferdy drove him out to inspect the house. Not bad, Rob thought when he was inside. Lots of dark wood paneling, a stone fireplace in the living room, wide windows in both the living room and adjoining dining room. Another room downstairs, which could be used as bedroom or study, plus a kitchen and bathroom. Two bedrooms upstairs.

Not bad. Well... okay, anyway. Torn linoleum in the kitchen, plaster crumbling in the bathroom and bedrooms, back steps falling down.

“It's not in the best shape,” he said.

“Nothing that can't be fixed,” Mr. Ferdy said. “We'll knock off a bit for that.” He smiled at Rob. “It's still a good deal. I don't think you'll find a better one.”

Rob understood. This house he could buy.

“Okay, I'll take it.”The price was $11,500 with a down payment of two thousand dollars. They shook hands and went back to his office. Rob wrote the check. They signed papers and gave Rob the keys to the front door.

Not quite an hour's work for Mr. Ferdy. Rob wondered if he would give O.T Jones a small cut.

January 1949

 

“
N
o, Bobby. Don't put your hands in that gooey stuff. Sit over here and read me your book. As soon as I finish, we'll go outside and you can take your dump truck. Read to me about the three little pigs.”

Five-year-old Bobby dutifully retired to a corner of the bathroom and, with the help of the pictures and the words he recognized, tried to recite the story. Ann Elizabeth smiled as she listened to the childish voice imitating her own dramatic interpretation while she frantically applied wet sticky filler. The man in the hardware store had said it would work. If she could get it to harden in the cracks of the crumbling wall above the bathtub, she would cover it with contact paper. It had worked above the sink in the kitchen.

Rob had painted the woodwork and put down new linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom. The contact paper would make the rooms bright and cheerful. There was still a lot to be done, but the house wasn't really bad, she thought. Built of sturdy redwood, it had needed no outside paint and looked quite presentable once Rob had pulled down all those vines. She like the old-fashioned front porch and the big yard. Rob had had to haul away discarded cans and bottles and tear down that old garage.

There was shrubbery in the front around the porch. She had never worked in a garden in her life, but she hoped to plant some flowers in the spring. Right now she had to concentrate on the inside.

They'd opened an account at the furniture store, but hadn't had to buy much. Julia Belle had shipped the wedding presents and added her old dining-room set, studio couch, desk and other odds and ends more elegant than anything they could afford.

Ann Elizabeth worked hard to make the old house livable and beautiful. In this she had help from her only colored neighbor, Bertha Perkins. Bertha knew just what to do for rough floorboards, leaky faucets and crumbling plaster.

“You'd know what to do, too,” she told Ann Elizabeth, “if you'd lived in one of them shit-ass company houses at the lumber camp. Damn things fall down if you don't know how to prop em up.

“How long did you live there?” Ann Elizabeth asked.

“Ten years. Took me that long to skim off enough from Sam's pay and his gambling for a down payment on something I could call my own. Some folks been living in them shit-ass shanties for twenty years and don't own a plank. I told Sam to hell with that!”The Perkins were also beneficiaries of the “going colored” block. The down payment had been spent on the two family house next door, and they were now converting it to its original one family status. It was—or would be—big enough to house Bertha and their six children, and Sam who came home from the lumber camp on weekends.

Bertha was a small wiry woman who ruled her children and her tall husky husband with an iron hand. Although her conversation was punctuated with words that shocked Ann Elizabeth, Bertha would tolerate no cursing from her kids. “Thing I can't stand is a foul-mouthed young'un, specially one I'm feeding and clothing. Sammy Junior, get the hell outta them damn bushes 'fore I bust your butt!”

Despite obvious class differences, the two women got on well together. Bertha's practical know-how was more than complemented by Ann Elizabeth's inherent good taste in color and
decoration. Roberta and Racine, Bertha's quiet respectable older girls, earned spending money by baby-sitting Bobby.

Another neighbor who extended a friendly greeting was Sue Imoto, the Japanese woman across the street. “I'm so glad to have a new playmate for Tom,” she said as they watched the boys at play and shared the coffee cake she'd brought over. Though most of the other neighbors simply ignored her, Ann Elizabeth soon felt at home on the quiet tree-shaded street in Sacramento. She enrolled Bobby in the cooperative nursery at the public school only four blocks away, took her turn one morning every week, met more of her neighbors at the semimonthly mothers' meeting. There was several Japanese and Chinese families, but only one other colored family—besides Bertha's—that she knew of in the entire area, and she was the only Negro mother who regularly participated in the PTA meetings and the cooperative nursery school.

“Don't you feel kind of funny?”Bertha asked. “Being the only one'mong all them white folks?”

“Well, no,” she answered. “Guess I haven't thought about it.” Then she chuckled. “But now that I do think about it, I realize I'm quite an asset.”

“Oh?” Bertha looked skeptical.

“I'm the one who had the idea of labeling all the kids' boots and coats. Before that, you can't imagine how mixed up we got—after naps and getting them dressed to go out to the park or home. So many look alike jackets and mostly the same size. And I'm the one,” she said, puffing out her chest, “who wrote the skit we're performing at every PTA in town. So they ought to be glad to have me.”

“Guess you're right,” Bertha conceded, but her mouth twisted. “All the same, I bet some of them don't like your being there one little bit. I know white folks.”

Ann Elizabeth hadn't really thought of them as “white folks.” Only concerned mothers like herself. And she enjoyed them,
enjoyed acting in that silly play she'd written. A funny play, pointing out all the mistakes made by frustrated mothers and of course the better way to handle problems. It had become quite a hit.

It was after a performance one night that she was reminded of what Bertha had said. Mary Gibson, one of the mothers she particularly liked, invited the participating women to her house afterward for cake and coffee. Mary turned to her and said pointedly, “You have to get home early, don't you. Ann? Sorry.” Ann Elizabeth realized she wasn't invited. Some of the others looked shocked. But they all got the message. Later Ann Elizabeth wished she'd thought of a disdainful reply like, “You surprise me, Mary. I gave you credit for more intelligence.” But a cutting remark, even in retaliation, wasn't her style. Besides, she was more amused than hurt by what she recognized as Mary's insecurity.

She thought of what her father had said that day at the hospital.
Your mother's daughter with that same core of inner pride... a kind of confidence no outsider can shake.
She grinned.
Right, Daddy.
I'm Ann Elizabeth Carter. What do I care about having coffee at Mary Gibson's house?

However, the incident did open her eyes a little. Bertha was right about some white folks, and Ann Elizabeth became more aware of Rob's problems. He was being snubbed by certain people at work—where it mattered. But, she thought with pride, he was handling it. As for herself, the Mary Gibsons meant little. Unlike Rob at work, she could pick and choose her own friends. She also gained new friends from old ties. “Be sure to look up Laura Tinsley,” Julia Belle wrote. “I saw her mother at church Sunday and she says Laura lives in Sacramento now. Her married name is Mason. You remember that she went to Howard. Met and married a law student there, who is now practicing in Sacramento. Oh, yes, and on old classmate of mine has lived there for years. Selina Chatwell. On her last Christmas card...”

Laura and Mrs. Chatwell took her to the Negro Congregational Church, formed, Selina said, after a couple of Negroes were refused admittance to the white Congregational Church downtown. Services were held in an old renovated house, but the congregation was perfect. Her kind of people.

“Doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs,” was the way Rob described them. “Ann Elizabeth, you're a snob. You think if anyone comes from Spelman or Morehouse or marries someone you knew in Atlanta or—”

“Oh hush up! You like them, too. I couldn't drag you away from Phil and Laura's the other night.” Nothing wrong with seeking out the kind of friends you enjoy, she told herself.

But she felt a little guilty when she entertained the bridge club she'd joined with her new friends. What about Bertha? “Come for lunch, even if you can't play bridge,” she invited her.

“Who you having? That lawyer's wife and her crowd?”

“Laura Mason, you mean?”

“Yeah. That's the one. Comes over here switching like a freshwater trout!”

“Well, Laura is...”What could she say? Bertha's description was apt.

“Just count me out. I don't have no truck with them highfalutin society broads who look at me like I was something the cat dragged in.”

In the end Ann Elizabeth was relieved that Bertha persisted in her refusal. Bertha wouldn't fit in—particularly not her language.

Ann Elizabeth did enjoy her new friends. It was like having a little piece of Atlanta that she could wrap cozily around herself. Rob likes them, too, she thought. Only vaguely aware that she and Rob were pulling in different directions. While she was grasping for a small secure world like the one she'd known in Atlanta, Rob was striving to enter a wider world. He was trying to gain a toehold in the economic reality dominated by whites,
many of whom wanted no part of him. But at least his boss didn't feel that way.

“He might talk like a Georgia cracker, but he treats me like he does everyone else. Matter of fact, I seem to be in on more consultations than most. Can't figure out whether he's testing me or what,” Rob told Ann Elizabeth.

“Probably knows you're smarter than he is.”

“Not so sure about that, honey,”Chuck Samples was a GS-13 deputy to Lieutenant Colonel Henry Marks, who headed the T-33 Weapons System Division. “It's true that he came up through the ranks with no engineering degree, but he's very respected. He's a hard worker, sharp as a tack and has no use for incompetents. I know he was pretty skeptical about me at first,” Rob added. “I mean to cross every t and dot every i with precision.”

She grinned at him. “You mean you'll perform the job with your usual brilliance?”

He smiled, wishing he could be as sure of himself as she was. He was smack in the middle of an enormous undertaking. The cold war between capitalism and communism simmered, boiled and threatened to explode. Planes had to be recycled or discarded, bought, maintained, peddled or donated to allies throughout the world. Aeronautical engineers were indispensable.

Chuck Samples might have no attitude about color, but he didn't play favorites. Like the other engineers, Rob was saddled with extensive travel and major consultations. Samples had been right. The job wasn't easy, particularly not for Rob. Some supervisors, like Samples, were only interested in getting the job done, but others clearly resented having to work with a Negro, and he had to quickly discern which was which and how best to deal with each. So this was more than a job. It was more encompassing than that—a challenge he tackled with vigor, expertise and, strangely enough, some amusement.

Consultations often spilled over into after-work drinking sessions or golf games, and he made a point of participating.

“Sometimes playing golf with a guy is the best way to get to know him or let him get to know you,” he told Ann Elizabeth. “I never lack for partners,” he said with a wink. “I've got a low handicap.”

Ann Elizabeth, remembering Mary Gibson, never complained about the long hours he spent on the golf course.

Rob enjoyed the games and he enjoyed his work. He wasn't designing the planes, but he played a major part in keeping them running and creating the innovations that would improve them. He discovered that both his bosses, the colonel and Samples, were good to work with.

So well did this team work together that the F-86 and F—94 weapons systems were added to their division. Marks went up to full colonel and Samples to CAF-14. Samples immediately put in a request for Rob's promotion to CAF-11. “You deserve it. We have you to thank for the modification and delivery, on time, of the F—86 Fire Control System.”

“Not me alone,” Rob said. As point man for the project he had worked with engineers, manufacturers and flyers at several bases. He was proud that he and his team had delivered a system that would allow the plane to hit a target on a collision course at supersonic speed, but his feelings were mixed. Hadn't he once vowed not to drop another bomb?

When he thanked Samples for the promotion, the other man chuckled. “It wasn't a favor, buddy. We need you black ass.”

Rob grinned, aware that procedures had sometimes been delayed while participants got used to dealing with first a nigger, then a black guy and finally and respectfully Rob Metcalf.

What was most difficult was the hotel accommodations. Once, in Mobile, the government vehicle sent to pick him up sped away as he walked toward it. The woman civilian driver had stopped just long enough to shout, “I ain't gonna drive no
nigger?” Often he had to seek out a colored hotel or an acquaintance for housing, like the doctor in Virginia who'd been a classmate of Dr. Carter's.

It could be difficult for his companions, also. Chuck Samples had been working with him on the F-86 engine-power problem in Oklahoma City the time the base restaurant was closed. Directed to an establishment across the street, the two had been deep in discussion when the waitress placed Chuck's utensils and left.

Chuck beckoned to her and pointed to Rob. “You missed him.”

It was then that the manager appeared and gruffly announced, “We don't serve niggers.”

An irate Chuck rose to protest, but Rob grabbed his arm and hustled him out. “I don't want to eat here, anyway.” Such incidents had become routine—needling interruptions that mustn't be allowed to interfere with the work at hand. And they weren't unique. He knew that other Negroes, beneficiaries of Truman's Executive Order, in both low-level jobs and the few-and-far-between high-level positions, were dealing with the same experiences. He was lucky to have the support of his immediate bosses.

Even so, he considered the relationship a purely business one and was quite surprised when Chuck said, “We need to celebrate. Can you and your wife come for dinner Friday night?'