Warriors Don't Cry (24 page)

“Easy, girl, easy. You’re gonna be fine.” It was Danny’s voice, his hands holding my head and dousing my eyes with water.

“I can’t see,” I whispered. “I can’t see.”

“Hold on. You will.”

Over and over again, the cold water flooded my face. Some of it went into my nose and down the front of my blouse. Bit by bit I could see the sleeve of Danny’s uniform, see the water, see the floor beneath us. The awful pain in my eyes had turned into a bearable sting. My eyes felt dry, as though there were a film drawn tight over them.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said, “maybe some kind of alkaline or acid. The few drops that got on your blouse faded the color immediately. Hey, let’s get you to the office so we can report this. You gotta get to a doctor.”

“No. No,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“School’s almost over, I wanna go home, right now. Please, please don’t make me. . . .” I felt tears. I knew he hated me to cry, but the thought of going to the office made me crazy. I couldn’t handle having some hostile clerk telling me I was making mountains out of molehills.

“Calm down. You can do what you want but—”

“No, home right now,” I said, cutting Danny off.
A SHORT time later, an optometrist examined my eyes and studied the spots on my blouse. He put some kind of soothing substance into my eyes and covered them with eye patches. As I sat there in the dark, I heard him say, “Whoever kept that water going in her eyes saved the quality of her sight, if not her sight itself. She’ll have to wear the patch overnight. She’ll have to be medicated for a while. She’ll need to wear glasses for all close work. I’d really like to see her wear them all the time. I’ll need to see her once a week until we’re certain she’s all right.”

Glasses, all the time, I thought. No boy wants to date a girl with glasses.

Despite the doctor’s instructions to wear an eye patch for twenty-four hours, I had to take it off. I couldn’t let the reporters see me with the patch because they would ask questions and make a big deal of it.

By the time we got home it was seven o’clock, and I wasn’t very talkative for the waiting reporters. Once inside I fell into bed, too exhausted to eat dinner. “Thank you, God,” I whispered, “thank you for saving my eyes. God bless Danny, always.”

 

The newspaper story contained several vivid pictures of Central High students gathered the day before, hanging the effigy, then burning it. They were smiling gleefully as though they were attending a festive party.

“You made it. It’s Friday,” Danny said, greeting me at the front of Central once more. “Your peepers okay?”

My eyes still felt very dry and tight. There were floating spots before them, but I could see. They only stung when I went too long without putting the drops in.

Later that afternoon there was a movie star—someone I’d never heard of—speaking before a pep rally: Julie Adams, a former student. She was there to boost spirits because, she said, Central High School’s reputation was being tainted.

Over the weekend of October 5th, a great thing happened that took the Little Rock school integration from the front pages of the national news. The Russians launched their 184-pound satellite, Sputnik.

But as the next week began, local radio, television, and newspapers claimed that 101st guards were following us females to the lavatory and harassing white girls. GI’S IN GIRLS’ DRESSING ROOMS, FAUBUS SAYS ran as a banner headline in the
Gazette
for Monday, October 7. Of course it wasn’t true. However, it made the military tighten up rules about where soldiers could or could not go with us and prompted them to launch a massive internal investigation.

I could see a steady erosion in the quality of security in response to charges of interference by the soldiers. It was evident as the early days of October passed that whenever the 101st troops relaxed their guard or were not clearly visible, we were in great danger.

17

 

 

THE governor continued to conduct a public campaign, complaining loud and long in a nonstop series of newspaper, radio, and television interviews that integration must be halted. Inspired by his attitude, those who did not want us at Central High were digging in their heels and becoming much better organized in their efforts to get rid of us.

 

Each day we arrived to find we were facing a different set of circumstances. Officials experimented with ways of protecting our safety that would at the same time please politicians who wanted the troops gone from school and gone from Little Rock. Increasing physical violence brought back the 101st guards on some occasions. We found ourselves spending our days with one personal bodyguard from the 101st, or with varying numbers and kinds of bodyguards, or totally alone.

For example, when one of us had a major problem, they brought in a three-hundred pound 101st guard nicknamed Goggles. With nightsticks and other equipment strapped at his side, he made the kind of shield that fended off even the most hard-core segregationists. We grew to love him because being with Goggles meant a safe day no matter where you went. God bless Goggles and keep him in good health forever, was my prayer.

The beginning of the second week of October brought with it the realization that I would have to settle into some kind of routine that would allow me to cope with day-to-day harassment. Beyond the noise and hoopla of integrating school, beyond the glitter of news conferences, beyond anything else going on in my life, I had to figure out how to make it through seven hours with Central High segregationists each day.

My diary entry for Tuesday, October 8, read:

The ride to school today seemed livelier than ever. The driver of the jeep was friendlier. He finds all this confusion quite amusing.
I like what I wore—my orange blouse and quilted skirt. On my way to the third-period class, someone squirted ink on my blouse. I went to class feeling hurt and angry because I knew it would never come out. In English class, a boy was called on to recite. When he failed to answer the question, I raised my hand to recite. When I gave the right answer, he said, “Are you going to believe me or that nigger?”

 

Two days later, on Thursday, October 10, I wrote:

This morning I was given two new guards. This made me feel quite uncomfortable. I left home without eating breakfast and gee was I hungry. But I couldn’t go to lunch in the cafeteria because that room is becoming the main place for them to get me.

 

On some days I found myself thinking every waking moment about nothing else but my safety—consumed with learning skills that would keep me alive. When would someone get the best of me, and how could I head them off? By October 11, I had made myself ill with what appeared to be flu but was probably greatly compounded by a real case of fear and exhaustion. On that Friday, I stayed home from Central and snuggled down into my bed where it was safe.

I was well aware that my illness was more sadness and exhaustion than flu. I knew I had to get myself together because the next day I was supposed to meet with some of the eight others and some hard-core segregationist student leaders for a discussion that might lead to an understanding. To insure my speedy recovery, Grandma came after me with castor oil. I protested, but I knew it was no use.

I had tried to explain to her that I was just weary of hostile white students, hurtful deeds, soldiers and army jeeps back and forth to school, and news reporters with their endless questions. “Weary” had always been an older person’s complaint. But I knew for certain I was weary. Grandma was having none of it.

“The orange juice will cut the taste—here, drink,” she said, leaning in so close that I had no prayer of escape. “Don’t make me bend over this way, my back hurts.” Her spectacles slid to the end of her nose. I looked into her huge determined eyes, and I knew I was trapped. I gulped it down. The warm oily liquid was oozing across my tongue, down my throat when she popped a peppermint drop into my mouth.

And it wasn’t only the castor oil I had to endure with my claim of flu. That was just the beginning of a whole official ceremony that included Grandma’s garlic and herb poultice on my chest, which I figured was guaranteed to asphyxiate the germs. If that didn’t do it, the inch-thick Vicks salve she smeared over every centimeter of my body would surely send the flu bugs running. Yet as awful as some of her healing treatment was to endure, it felt better to be there at home with her than at Central High.

“It’s too bad you have to miss a day of school.” Mother Lois fluffed my pillows and tightened the sheet at the bottom of my bed. Dressed in her tan gabardine teaching suit with black blouse, she was off to school. “Hope you’ll be able to attend the meeting tomorrow.” She leaned over to kiss my forehead and to fetch her briefcase from the chair where she had left it. “Meeting with those Central High kids could be a first step to some kind of peacemaking.”

I knew very well I would have to force myself to attend. It would be the first time ever that segregationist student leaders would be coming to talk to us integrating students in a reasonably safe place where we all could speak our minds. It was sponsored by a Norwegian reporter, Mrs. Jorumn Rickets, who had set it up with Ernie, Minnijean, and me, and the group spotlighted as staunch troublemakers: Sammy Dean Parker, Kaye Bacon, and their crowd. Sammy Dean Parker had been seen in the newspaper embracing Governor Faubus as she thanked him for keeping us out of school.

People referred to the meeting as a possible turning point, a time of coming together. I had thought about nothing else for several days. I even dreamed that we would go to the meeting, and afterward things would calm down considerably at school. After a real heart-to-heart, the white students would see the light, and that would be the beginning of a smooth year.

It was that hope that made me drag myself out of bed on Saturday morning and head for the Parish Hall of St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Upon arrival I learned the meeting would be recorded by the National Broadcasting Company for future use on a network radio show. I hoped that wouldn’t change our being able to speak our minds.

The meeting room was a stark white setting, with mahogany straight-back chairs. It was the kind of place that could well inspire a deep, honest talk that might help us get along with each other. Mrs. Rickets, a woman of medium stature with blond hair pulled to the nape of her neck, began asking questions.

Joseph Fox, labeled a Central moderate because he didn’t violently oppose our presence, said, “I lay the whole blame for this thing in Governor Faubus’s lap. We wouldn’t have had nearly so much trouble if he hadn’t called out the National Guard.”

“That’s not so. I think our governor is trying to protect all of us,” said Sammy Dean Parker, an avowed segregationist seen embracing the governor on the front page of the newspaper. “He’s trying to prepare us. He said we’d have to integrate, but he has to prepare us.”

Ernie said, “All we want is an education and to be able to go to school and back home safely.”

When Mrs. Rickets asked why some of the white children objected to going to school with us, Sammy Dean replied: “Well, it’s racial, marrying each other.”

“School isn’t a marriage bureau,” Ernie said.

“We don’t have to socialize,” I said.

Kaye Bacon said she had heard rumors that we wanted to “rule” over them.

“I don’t think you know much about our people. I don’t think you ever tried to find out,” Minnijean said.

Kaye admitted she hadn’t tried to understand much about us until that meeting.

“We’re scared to death five hundred of you’all are gonna be coming into school,” Sammy Dean said.

The white students also expressed their feelings about the troops. Several times they spoke of their outrage at having soldiers in their school. “How do you think we like being escorted in and out of school?” I said. “How do you think we like not knowing who will hit us and when or where we’ll be attacked?”

Later in
The New York Times
, Sammy Dean Parker and Kaye Bacon said that as a result of the meeting they now had a new attitude. One headline in the
Gazette
read: TWO PUPILS TELL OF CHANGE IN ATTITUDE ON SEGREGATION.

Sammy Dean Parker was quoted as saying, “The Negro students don’t want to go to school with us any more than we want to go with them. If you really talk with them, you see their side of it. I think the NAACP is paying them to go.”

When I read her statement, I realized Sammy hadn’t understood at all our reason for attending Central High. I wondered where on earth she thought there was enough money to pay for such brutal days as I was enduring. I wouldn’t know how much money to charge for all the good days I wasn’t having in my old high school with friends who liked me. What price could anyone set for the joy and laughter and peace of mind I had given up?

I stayed in bed all day Sunday, telling myself I was ill, but the truth was I was partially suffering from downhearted blues. That meeting hadn’t helped the integration at all. Those white students didn’t understand. Even when Vince called for our regular Sunday date, I didn’t give up my claim of illness. Snuggling down into the safety of my bed made me feel as though I were a carefree little girl who hadn’t been to Central High and hadn’t yet discovered that miracles don’t happen exactly when and how you want them to.

In my diary, I wrote:

October 14, Monday
Flu, absent—Governor Faubus is still speaking out and causing turmoil. Quotes in daily papers make me know he will not let us rest.
Today Mother Lois brought home a new hi-fi. I guess she thought it would cheer up my sadness.
October 15, Tuesday
Flu—absent
With my head under the covers so Grandmother could not hear or see me, I cried myself to sleep. I know I am fighting for a good cause—and I know if I trust God I shouldn’t cry. I will keep going, but will it really make a difference?
I feel like something inside me has gone away. I am like a rag doll with no stuffing. I am growing up too fast. I’m not ready to go back to Central and be a warrior just yet. I don’t have any more strength. I want to stay right here, listening to Nat King Cole.