Warriors Don't Cry (21 page)

It’s hard being with Little Rock white people. I don’t know if I can do this integration thing forever. It feels like this is something people do for only a little while. I want to run away now. I want a happy day.

 

The next morning, after a full night’s sleep, I felt fresh and new, and the ride with Sarge and the others was a real tonic to start my day.

“Smile, it’s Friday,” Danny said, greeting me at the front door of the school. I was in an almost chipper mood as I walked up the stairs to my homeroom, even though I knew I had to be extra careful because of that morning’s
Gazette
headline:

 

Grandma had told me the governor had given a speech the night before in which he talked at length about his anger that Little Rock was “an occupied city.” He also talked of people being injured by soldiers’ bayonets. But worst of all he showed a photograph of two Central High School girls being hustled along by soldiers with bayonets extended at their backs. A caller from the NAACP said to expect trouble because Faubus’s speech was inflammatory.

There had been fewer soldiers accompanying us up the front stairs. Their absence meant the defiant chants and hateful words grew much louder. When I stepped inside the school, the soldiers were not as visible as they had been the day before, but I thanked God that they were still there.

“I’m gonna be in the background today. They’re trying to figure how you’all will get along without us being up real close,” Danny said.

I nodded to him as though I felt okay with his announcement. I wanted to say, “Please, please don’t leave my side,” but I didn’t. I felt myself beginning to rely on him, but I didn’t know what else to do. I had never before felt such fear. It was an unfamiliar position—me, counting on a white man to defend me against other white people determined to hurt me. And yet I was resigning myself to the fact that, for the moment, I had no choice but to depend on Danny, and God.

As I drew near the classroom, I was very apprehensive because this time I was entering my homeroom before class officially got under way. Everybody would be free to laugh and taunt or even hurt me. But I had no place else to go.

One girl with short red hair, freckles, and a pixie smile was being especially attentive. She invited me to accompany her to the window that overlooked the school yard. I was suspicious of her kindness, but I wanted to believe someone was having a change of heart. As I stood beside her chatting about the bright day and the activity of soldiers on the grounds beneath us, I felt a twinge of joy. Maybe I wasn’t batting my head against a stone wall after all.

“Stand right here. We’re gonna salute the flag now,” she said. I raised my hand to my chest and smiled as the flag was hoisted up in front of the classroom.

“Aren’t you gonna take my picture saluting the American flag with this famous nigger,” she suddenly shouted to a boy who was focusing his camera. “Snap it, you idiot . . . now! I wanna get into
Life
magazine like the niggers are.”

My heart sank. What should I do? Everyone was looking at me. The teacher arrived, and chiding the girl briefly, she halted the flag salute and instructed the class to maintain reverence for the flag. I turned away from the girl to walk to the opposite side of the room, and that’s when I felt a stabbing blow that pierced my blouse and my skin. I lunged forward to escape the thrust, for a moment stunned by the pain. When I turned around, I saw the red-haired girl was holding a slender wrought-iron flagpole about twice as long as a chopstick with a very sharp point on one end. A Confederate flag was attached to it. I had seen other students carrying those flags in school and letting out the rebel yell. Now it had become her weapon.

The teacher either didn’t see, or pretended she didn’t. She resumed the salute to the flag. The puncture wound throbbed, and I could feel the blood trickling down my back as I held my hand over my heart and wondered whether I should go for first aid, tell the teacher, or stay in class. I decided I wouldn’t rush to report what had happened. I wouldn’t give my classmates the satisfaction of knowing how much pain they had inflicted on me. And I wasn’t sure any of the adults would do anything to tend my wound in any case, so I took my seat. I thought class would never end; the hands of the clock seemed frozen. When the break finally came, I raced for the bathroom to tend my wound while Danny trailed behind me asking questions about the blood on the back of my blouse.
AS with any high school on Friday, the anticipation of the weekend brought excitement, and this was a special Friday for Central High’s student body. The occasion for all the hoopla was a big football game that night with Baton Rouge, their archrival. People had been lingering about the stairwells, cheering, and waving pom-poms, making those areas particularly hazardous for the nine of us.

The stairwells were huge, open caverns that spiraled upward for several floors, providing ample opportunity to hurl flying objects, dump liquids, or entrap us in dark corners. As I descended the stairwell, it dawned on me that except for Danny, I was almost alone. There should have been many more people around because it was a class break.

“Look out, Melba, now!” Danny’s voice was so loud that I flinched. “Get down!” he shouted again as what appeared to be a flaming stick of dynamite whizzed past and landed on the stair just below me. Danny pushed me aside as he stamped out the flame and grabbed it up. At breakneck speed he dashed down the stairs and handed the stick to another soldier, who sped away. Stunned by what I had seen, I backed into the shadow on the landing, too shocked to move.

“You don’t have time to stop. Move out, girl.” Danny’s voice sounded cold and uncaring. I supposed that’s what it meant to be a soldier—to survive.
AFTER gym class, Danny met me in the hall with some unfortunate news. “You’re going to your first pep rally,” he said, concern on his face.

Going to a pep rally was rather like being thrown in with the lions to see how long we could survive. A pep rally meant two thousand students in a huge room with endless opportunity to mistreat us. As I climbed the stairs, I longed to sprint to the front door and escape.

“They won’t allow me to go in with you,” Danny whispered. “But I’ll be somewhere outside here.”

I didn’t respond; I was too preoccupied with finding a safe route into the rally. Nothing had frightened me more than suddenly being folded into the flow of that crowd of white students as they moved toward the auditorium. Maybe it was because they were all so excited that I got in and to my seat without much hassle. Once settled, I was delighted that Thelma was sitting only a few feet away. Nevertheless, I couldn’t relax because I was crammed into that dimly lit room among my enemies, and I knew I had to keep watch every moment. I ignored the activity on stage in favor of keeping my guard up.

Over the next twenty minutes, I worked myself into a frenzy anticipating what might happen. My stomach was in knots and my shoulder muscles like concrete. I decided I had to settle myself down. I repeated the Twenty-Third Psalm. All at once, everybody was standing and singing the school song, “Hail to the Old Gold, Hail to the Black.” Some students were snickering and pointing at me as they sang the word “black,” but I didn’t care. It was over, and I was alive and well and moving out of the auditorium.

Suddenly, I was being shoved backward, toward the corner, very hard. A strong hand knocked my books and papers to the floor as three or four football-player types squeezed me into a dark corner beneath the overhang of the auditorium balcony. One of them hurt the wound on my back as he pinned me against the wall. Someone’s forearm pressed hard against my throat, choking me. I couldn’t speak. I could hardly breathe.

“We’re gonna make your life hell, nigger. You’all are gonna go screaming out of here, taking those nigger-loving soldiers with you.”

Just as suddenly as I had been pinned against the wall, I was released. I stood still for a moment, holding on to my throat, gasping, trying to catch a good breath. I stooped to pick up my things, careful to keep a watch around me. I stumbled back into the flow of the crowd. I couldn’t stop coughing, and my throat felt as though I would never speak again. In the distance I saw Danny standing in the hallway, facing the door of the auditorium.

“What’s the matter?”

“Some guy tried to choke me,” I whispered in a raspy voice.

“And you did nothing?”

“What could I do?” Talking hurt my throat.

“You’ve gotta learn to defend yourself. You kids should have been given some training in self-defense.”

“Too late, now,” I said.

“It’s never too late. It takes a warrior to fight a battle and survive. This here is a battle if I’ve ever seen one.”

I thought about what Danny had said as we walked to the principal’s office to prepare to leave school. I knew for certain something would have to change if I were going to stay in that school. Either the students would have to change the way they behaved, or I would have to devise a better plan to protect myself. My body was wearing out real fast.

Later that evening, after Grandma tended my back and put a warm towel on my throat, I fell into bed, exhausted. In my diary I wrote:

After three full days inside Central, I know that integration is a much bigger word than I thought.

15

 

SINCE it was the end of my first exhausting week at Central High, I decided to claim Saturday for my very own. That’s why I set my alarm clock for 4 A.M. I wanted a slice of the fresh, still morning all to myself. What I liked most was the absolute silence inside my head and heart—silence I had not enjoyed for so long. Most of all, I wanted to be alone so I could search for the part of my life that existed before integration, the Melba I was struggling to hold on to.

 

I had also promised myself that I wasn’t going to turn on the news, read the newspaper, talk, read, or write about integration. I would listen to records, read my
Seventeen
and
Ebony
magazines, and write in my diary. I thought I’d never again be sitting on my bed, nestled between my huge white lace pillows and my stuffed animals, just like a normal girl. I was trying hard not to face the notion growing inside me that I was no longer normal, no longer like my other friends.

Nothing in my life was the same anymore. I felt so empty inside, like somebody had scooped out the warm sweet part of my spirit that made me smile and feel grateful to be alive. Integration hadn’t at all worked out the way I’d planned. I didn’t know it would eat up so much of my time—and so much of my life.

The changes crept over me, taking a little of my old life away each day. In the time since I’d decided to go to Central, my best friend, Marsha, had stopped the daily calls we had made to each other for so long. Each day I had meant to call her and ask why, but I was so busy thinking about integration—and even when I remembered, I didn’t have time. On those now rare occasions when I called her, she spent much of the conversation telling me how her friends and family members were suffering because of me. I spent the rest of the time defending myself, explaining how in the long run it would all be worth it. We never talked about boys or movies or Johnny Mathis or new clothes anymore.

Marsha had begun treating me as though I were different. She wasn’t inviting me places, she stopped calling to tell me what the old gang was doing. It felt as though she no longer wanted me as her friend. Whenever we happened to meet, she called me the “chosen one.” I thought it was a strange thing to say.

Most of my other friends were behaving a little strangely as well. Some of them stared at me whenever I saw them or snubbed me or talked to me like you talk to people you don’t know well. We seemed not to have things in common anymore. There was so much new information in my head, so many new worries, that I didn’t have space for the ordinary things we shared before. I spent a lot of time thinking about safety and life and death and what would make the white people understand that I was equal to them.

I felt different inside, like something was stretching me, growing me, making me somebody else. So much of the past month, I had lived inside my head, pondering what would happen to me. It was as though I were forced to turn inward to get along at Central High. No one on the outside could understand what I was going through. The change frightened me because I was going somewhere, becoming someone, but I didn’t know where or who. I wasn’t ready to be grown up—or to not be Melba. In my diary I wrote:

I am worried about what’s happening to me. I feel like someone forced me into a roller coaster that spins up and down and all around and won’t stop. Nobody can make it stop but God.

 

Later that morning when the family sat down together for breakfast, I couldn’t believe that Mama was reading the paper over the breakfast table, something we were forbidden to do.

“I see here where the head of the FBI is angry at Faubus for telling lies about the FBI holding those schoolgirls in custody.” Mother showed me the
Gazette
headline and the first part of the article.

 

September 28, 1957: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover accused Governor Faubus of Arkansas of disseminating falsehoods by saying FBI agents held teenagers incommunicado for hours of questioning.

 

“He’s really fired up the segregationists,” Grandma said.

I shut my mind off—I couldn’t listen. Their talk made me queasy. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I had to speak up. “We’re gonna only talk about good things,” I said, gulping my last sip of milk. “No Central High talk.”

“Deal,” Grandma said, standing to clear the table.

By ten, we all piled into the car and started off for our big adventure. Grandma had offered to buy me a new store-bought dress—I couldn’t believe my ears. Then Mama made her announcement.