No Crystal Stair (29 page)

“Hey, cut the crying.” Ann Elizabeth lightly tapped her cheek. “This is eat, drink, and be merry time. Take another cookie and I'll pour us more tea.”

She was glad Clara was recovering. It would have been doubly hard for Lisa to lose her mother and her best friend. Ann Elizabeth had the children travel home alone from Atlanta, so Maggie would have a few days to say goodbye to Lisa.

After the packing and goodbyes at the farewell parties, a large one with their Negro friends at Jennie Lou's and a smaller one at Mrs. Levin's with their Lansberg neighbors, they were on their way.

November 1959

 

T
hree months later in Cologne, Germany, Ann Elizabeth, drowsy from her stay in the sauna, relaxed on the massage table and surrendered herself to the soothing manipulations of the expert masseur.

“Have you been on holiday?” he asked in heavily accented English.

Ann Elizabeth nodded, then almost laughed as she realized why he'd asked. His admiration for her smooth golden skin was expressed in an excited mixture of German and English.

“Natural,” she explained. “I was born this way.”

The masseur only smiled, and she gave up. “With his poor English and my poor German,” she said to her friend, Rachel Shapiro, as they left the spa, “how could I tell him, yes, I'd been on holiday to Italy, but the skin I had on was the one I was born with!”

Rachel laughed. “Let him eat his heart out. He'll spend his next holiday trying to acquire your tan. Then in two weeks it'll be gone.”

“I thought he'd know I'm a Negro.”

“Trouble is, you all come in so many colors, you keep us whiteys confused.”

Ann Elizabeth chuckled, appreciating, as always, Rachel's tart humor. She liked Rachel and her husband, David, a colonel in the U. S. Air Force. He, like Rob, was on loan from the USAF to the Belgian, Italian, Netherlands and German air forces. All
were engaged in a sensitive high-priority project that had to do with air superiority over central Europe; it involved a NATO commitment to supply the recipient countries with the necessary planes and weapons. The effort had the additional objective of rebuilding each participant's industrial and economic base.

Rob and David were two of the five-man detachment assigned to do the job on time and within budget. The procedure was compounded by picky, sometimes petty, military doctrine, political dogmas and social protocol. Rob and David were inextricably swept up in the latter, since they were accompanied by their spouses.

“All these parties throw me,” Rachel complained. “Sound like the Tower of Babel and I can't distinguish which language is which, much less the meaning.”

“Yes,” said Ann Elizabeth. “Wish I'd majored in foreign languages.”

“Oh, you don't need it. You just stand around smiling, passing out canapes and looking gracious and beautiful and they love you!”

Ann Elizabeth said nothing, but she breathed a silent thank you to Julia Belle who had trained her well for this kind of role.

One of the parties being held at the German air base was to honor Rob and David for service above and beyond the call of duty. Walking together through the large entryway of the Officers'Club, the two couples stopped to view the portraits of German fighter pilots that lined the walls.

David chuckled. “I'll bet Hitler's turning over in his grave,” he said to Rob, “seeing a Negro and a Jew are being honored by his Luftwaffe.”

“Hush,” said Rachel. “Not so loud. We're all passing as Americans.”

They laughed, but Ann Elizabeth reflected that there was truth in the joke. For the first time in her life she felt more American than Negro.

 

 

To Ann Elizabeth, these years were a holiday. She traveled to Spain and Switzerland, stood atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris, explored the Coliseum in Rome, raced from one theater to another in London, sometimes with Rob and more often with Rachel or Julia Belle, who came over twice. Thelma also came and stayed a month, but she steadily resisted Ann Elizabeth's urging her to live with them.

“Lord, child, I ain't ready for the rocking chair yet. And I've got to get back. You know I'm a deaconess at Shiloh. They depend on me. Can't be away too long.”

Ann Elizabeth was surprised to find that, except for London with its theaters, Germany, their temporary home, was her favorite place in Europe. Perhaps it was the privileged setting in which she lived, one of the comfortable apartments in Plittersdorf, the diplomatic community near the American Embassy Club. Other facilities were conveniently adjacent—American chapel, base exchange commissary, beauty shop and garage.

Perhaps she felt this way because it was so great for the children. Maggie was enrolled at the International School on the Rhine, the elementary school maintained for children of diplomats. Bobby, along with other high-school students, was transported back and forth weekly via a special bus to an American boarding school at Weisbaden, eighty miles away. His senior trip was a ten-day excursion to Italy.

Perhaps it was their automatic membership in the exclusive Embassy Club, with access to its swimming pool, tennis courts, bowling alley and racquetball court. Frequently they dined and danced at the club, rubbing shoulders and conversing with people from every country in the world.

Or perhaps, she thought with surprise she was simply experiencing a sensation that was new to her. The sensation of feeling absolutely colorless.

 

 

“I love it,” she told Rob. “I didn't expect this.”

“What did you expect?” he asked.

“Oh, grim gray buildings, lots of cement and...” She choked back the words
concentration camps.
“The German people are so friendly and the country so beautiful,” she finished.

“And peaceful,” he said, a faraway look in his eyes. “So different from my first trip here.”

They had been strolling along the walkway that bordered the Rhine. Now they turned and walked across the grassy bank to the steps of the Embassy Club.

She nudged his arm. “I want to tell you something,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“This has medical conventions beat all to pieces.”

“Well, ma'am we do our best,” he quipped, but she could tell he was pleased.

“I feel like a queen. I didn't know people lived like this.”

“All at the expense of the United States government. Live it up, baby. White folks been doing this for years. And now... just a few of us niggers.” He chuckled. “Those big enough or smart enough, you understand.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him full on the lips. “What I understand is that I'm very glad I married one!”

“Me, too, honey,” he said, sweeping an arm around her and almost carrying her up the steps. “Anyway, you're stuck. No pale-face doctor still waiting for you back in the golden ghetto.”

“No. Isn't that wonderful?” She beamed, thinking of Sadie's letter. She followed the waiter to their table, a bemused smile on her face as she recalled every word.

 

Ann Elizabeth:

Ann Elizabeth was so pleased about this union of her two best friends that she immediately placed an overseas call to share her elation with them. The next day she sent them a whole set of the most beautiful German crystal she could find.

A few days after the big event, she received more particulars from other sources. From Helen Rose:

 

 

Girl, have I got news! Knowing how close you and Sadie are, you've probably already heard it from her, but it hit Atlanta cold! The whys and wherefores are flying all over the place. Our prized, sought-after, most eligible bachelor in town has
been hooked! And by whom? Sadie Clayton. The whole town is shocked and more than a few seditty females are quite seriously burned. How could a gal like Sadie catch what they couldn't get their hands on?

Well, all I've got to say is more power to her!

From Julia Belle:

It was in Amsterdam in Ann Frank's attic room that Ann Elizabeth confronted the spectre of what it had been like in Germany twenty years before. Was it because one Ann was a Negro and the other a Jew? Both from relatively privileged backgrounds? Or was she contrasting her own full happy life as a young girl with what life had been for another?

As she stood in the narrow little attic room that had shielded a young girl for a short while, she knew she identified with her. She gazed at the portraits of movie stars, torn from a magazine and pinned on the wall by Anne herself. From the tiny window she saw the street below, teeming with cars, bicycles and hurrying people, as it must have looked long ago to a young girl, so eager, so full of life—and shut away from it all.

“I feel like I've been dancing on somebody's grave,” she told her father a few weeks later. He'd flown over with Julia Belle for a visit. The two of them were alone, lunching on the patio of the Embassy Club, while inside, Julia Belle took Ann Elizabeth's place at the Tuesday Bridge session.

“I know how you must feel,” he said. “But the past is the past and you can't change it by grieving. As my mother used to say, ‘Leave it lay where Jesus flung it!'”

She pondered this Of course one could do nothing about what had passed. But the present?

She might be isolated, but she couldn't ignore what was happening in the United States as the battle for civil rights escalated. The news showed Negroes and sympathetic whites taking to the streets in non-violent direct action, marching, holding sit-ins, demanding equal access to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, jobs and the ballot box. The rabid segregationists fought back with a vengeance. Marchers were met with police dogs, electric cattle prods and fire hoses. One unforgettable TV newscasts showed a small child being washed down a Birmingham street by the powerful force of water from a fire hose. Twenty “freedom riders,” testing their rights to interstate travel, were set upon by a mob in a Montgomery bus station and beaten. One man was permanently paralyzed. A church was bombed, killing four children attending Bible school.

A burst of laughter and a small uproar from inside the club broke into Ann Elizabeth's thoughts. It sounded as if Julia Belle had made a slam. Ann Elizabeth smiled at her father. “I'm glad she's having a good time.”

“But?” he prompted

She shouldn't be surprised. He could always read her thoughts. “Oh, I was just thinking... it's so peaceful here and so ugly back home.”

Dr. Carter gave his daughter a keen look. “Feeling a little guilty about your good life?”

“Maybe,” she said, glad she didn't have to spell it out. “It just seems that...” She hesitated, as the comfortable chatter and laughter of the bridge ladies drifted toward her and she heard the
thump-whack
of a tennis ball from the not-too-distant
court. She gestured helplessly toward the tall trees that shaded the beautiful grounds. “Oh, that they're
there
and I'm
here.”

He took a sip of wine, gazing through the trees toward the river. Suddenly he put down his glass and pointed. “Look,” he said. She saw a barge sailing swiftly down the river. On its deck was a woman hanging clothes on a line suspended between two poles. Nearby a child was swaying on an improvised swing. “That woman is doing a terrific job of making do where she is,” he said. “You have to take your life where you're flung. You might be luckier than most, Ann Elizabeth, but this is where you are.

“I know.”

“Anyway, what would you do? Have Rob quit his job so you can go home and march in the streets and possibly end up living on welfare?”

She laughed. “I know,” she said again. “Anyway, marching in the streets—I don't have that kind of courage.”

“You're not the only one. It seems like a lot of people, but in reality there's just a small percentage of blacks and a few dedicated whites, bravely marching for the rest of us.”

“I guess you're right.”

“Didn't you tell me both you and Rob have life memberships in the NAACP?”

She nodded. “And we just bought one for Bobby.”

“Good. The battle is really won in court. Do you have any idea of the money it takes for court costs and to get the people protesting in the streets out of jail?” When she shook her head, he added. “Nothing wrong with being a success, either. You know, during the Montgomery bus boycott, they bought vans to transport people to work. The white insurance companies refused to insure the vans. It was a black insurance broker in Atlanta who secured insurance for them through Lloyd's of London. Success and know-how are powerful tools, honey.”

She nodded slowly.

“Someone once said that one man dies nobly for a cause while another lives humbly to achieve it.” He turned to look at her.