Yankee Girl (5 page)

“I like them all,” Mary Martha said with a polite smile.

“That's just plain ignorant,” sniffed Debbie. “Everybody's gotta have a favourite. I'll trade a Ringo for two Pauls.” Carrie and Debbie passed the cards right over my head.

Yep, Invisible Alice. That was me. Invisible most of the time: When I wasn't picked for kickball and Miss Gruen made a team take me. When the girls talked about sleepovers or going to the movies. When I sat in the front seat on the bus, because none of the sixth graders let me sit with them; nobody wanted to sit behind Ralph.

The more they ignored me, the more I looked forward to Valerie Taylor.
There
was somebody who
really
needed a friend. She wouldn't care that I was a Yankee.

On the third Monday of sixth grade, Valerie arrived.

The protesters and reporters and police still hung around, but not as many. I don't know how she got past them, but Valerie was already standing by Miss Gruen's desk when we came in.

“Class, this is Valerie Taylor.” Miss Gruen stood behind Valerie, not quite touching her. “I know you will show her the same courtesy you would any other member of this class.” Her expression added the “or else”.

Valerie reminded me of the flagpole in the auditorium, tall and straight and thin. Freckles spattered her honey-coloured cheeks and nose. I didn't know Negroes freckled. A reddish brown ponytail swooped down her neck like a feather plume.

“She don't dress like a nigra,” Debbie said to Carrie, not bothering to whisper.

What did that mean? How were Negroes supposed to dress? I liked Valerie's maroon dress with the monogrammed collar.

“Mama says she don't trust a nigra that'll look you in the eye,” Carrie said back. “Means they're uppity. Don't know their place. See, she's looking right at us.”

No, she wasn't. Her eyes, the grey of a winter sky, looked
through
us, not at us. As if she didn't see us at all. Anyway, she sure didn't look like she wanted a friend.

“You may take the seat behind Leland,” said Miss Gruen. “Raise your hand, so Valerie can see you.” Leland sat catty-corner from me, the last desk in the last row.

“No nigger gonna sit behind me,” Leland grumbled, but raised his hand.

Miss Gruen opened her roll book and began taking attendance, scanning the rows for empty seats.

Valerie moved down the aisle, eyes fixed on her new desk. Suddenly she sprawled in the aisle beside me, books flung one way, notebooks another. Leland jerked a sneaker back under his desk.

“What happened?” Miss Gruen didn't move, her voice cool as water.

“I tripped, ma'am.” Valerie gathered her belongings without looking up.

Miss Gruen gave us all the fisheye but went on taking roll.

I leaned over to help Valerie. She smelled like Ivory soap.

Something sharp poked me in the back.

“Don't do that,” Jeb hissed, pencil poised to jab again.

“Why?”

“Tell you later. Just don't!”

Jeb cornered me at recess as I waited my turn at kickball.

“You can't be helping that nigra,” he said. “You know what kids are gonna call you?”

“Isn't Yankee Girl enough? What else could they call me?”

“A nigger lover. And no one will be your friend.”

“Big deal,” I said. “You're my only friend anyway.” Then I got what he meant. “You mean if I talk to Valerie, you won't be my friend any more?”

Jeb scuffed at a bald spot in the grass with his loafer. “You don't get it. Nigras ain't like us.”

Miss Gruen yelled, “Alice Ann Moxley,” and then a whole sentence I couldn't understand. Why couldn't Southerners talk normal?

“Huh?” I stepped up to home plate.

“She said it's your turn to kick,” said Jeb.

Miss Gruen marched across the infield and grabbed me by the elbow. “Young lady, you say ‘Yes, ma'am' and ‘No, ma'am' when you speak to an adult. Didn't they teach you manners up North?”

I didn't know what to say, besides “Yes, ma'am.”

Chicken hips! I was about to lose my one friend, and my teacher hated me.

I made the third out for our side.

“Nice going, Yankee Girl,” Saranne yelled as we headed for the outfield. “Bet that nigra can kick better'n you.”

Where
was
Valerie? From the outfield I spied her, slouched against the school wall, staring at her loafers. No one had picked Valerie for their team, and Miss Gruen hadn't made anyone take her.

An ear-shattering whistle split the air. Miss Gruen had our attention.

“Class! Time to go inside. Line up, please.”

No one wanted to be next to Valerie. The kids on either side of her scooted away from her.

“Pee-yew, I smell something,” said Debbie, who wasn't anywhere near Valerie.

“Niggers always stink,” added Leland.

Halfway down the hall, we stopped at the water fountain. When it was her turn, Valerie drank, then daintily patted her mouth with a hanky.

Suddenly, the kids behind her in line weren't thirsty. I was glad when the rest of the class headed for the room, because I had a bad case of cotton mouth. But before I could even get close to the fountain, Jeb grabbed my arm.

“What do you think you're doing?” he said.

“Getting a drink of water. What does it look like I'm doing?”

“Not after
her
. Are you crazy?”

“But I'm thirsty.”

“It's almost lunch. You can wait.”

So! Jeb was my friend after all. He talked to me in front of his friends! He was right. I could wait half an hour for lunch.

We had assigned seats in the lunchroom. Saranne and Debbie and Leland, who chewed with his mouth open, sat across from me. Carrie and Andy, who had a retainer he liked to pop in and out with his tongue, sat on either side of me.

None of them talked to me.

“Hey, somebody pass me the salt,” Saranne said. Carrie passed it right across my plate.

“Thanks, sweetie.” Saranne's voice dripped sugar.

Why is she nice to everybody but me?

“Wonder where the nigra's gonna sit?” asked Andy.

“Who cares?” Leland said with his mouth full. “Long as it ain't with us.”

“Look,” said Carrie. “She's just standing there.”

Valerie gripped her tray, eyes flicking around the room.

Miss Gruen appeared and hustled Valerie towards the teachers' table.

“She gonna eat with the teachers?” said Carrie. “I almost feel sorry for her.”

“Feel sorry for the teachers, don't you mean.” Leland crammed a roll in his mouth. “I couldn't eat with a nigger.”

Miss Gruen pulled out a chair for Valerie at the empty table next to the teachers. After a few minutes, a smaller Negro girl joined her.

Valerie took a sip of water. The other girl picked up her roll, and then put it down, as if it were too heavy. They stared at their trays and ate nothing.

Lunch over, we lined up for the rest room with Miss LeFleur's class. Mary Martha, the girls' rest-room monitor, guarded the door, letting us in five at a time.

I punched the soap dispenser for a dribble of the green Lysol-smelling goo. Two girls from 6A strolled in just as Valerie came out of the toilet stall.

“Karla, look who's here,” smirked the taller girl. “Miss Martin Luther Coon.” She backed Valerie into a corner where the sink pipes met the water heater.

“I'm still hungry,” said Karla. “I feel like some barbecue. Barbecued coon.” She grabbed Valerie's wrist and forced it towards the pipes.

“Hey, you can't do that,” I yelled without thinking.

“Says who?” said the tall girl. “You?” She spat out “you” like a bad taste in her mouth.

The rest-room door banged open. Mary Martha.

“Y'all get out of here before I write you up for talking,” Mary Martha said, hands on hips, looking official.

The girls let Valerie go and slunk out, muttering about rat finks and snitches. Valerie smoothed her bangs, fluffed her ponytail, and left without looking at me or Mary Martha. Valerie Taylor was one cool customer.

Me, I was shaking all over.

“Thanks, Mary Martha,” I said on our way back to class.

Mary Martha gazed at me, eyes clear and blue as a gas flame.

“The only reason I didn't write you up is you're new. I'll do it next time.”

“Me? Who you need to write up are those two girls.”

“Why?”

“They were trying to burn Valerie on the water pipes.”

Mary Martha narrowed her eyes. “I didn't see anything.”

“But you said you heard them,” I sputtered.

“But I didn't
see
anything. It's your word against theirs.” Mary Martha opened the door to 6B, and we went in.

All afternoon I tried to puzzle it out. I could be in trouble for talking in the bathroom, but not the girls who tried to burn Valerie?

I still hadn't figured it out by the time we filed to the coatroom before the closing bell.

Valerie's sweater was missing.

“Has anyone seen Valerie's sweater?” Miss Gruen's mouth flattened in a tight line.

The second hand on the wall clock whirred loudly in the silence.

“No one leaves until we find Valerie's sweater,” said Miss Gruen.

Since half the class rode the bus, I figured Valerie's sweater would turn up in pretty short order.

It did.

“Look what I found.” Debbie reached into the trash can under the pencil sharpener. Valerie's maroon sweater, dripping pencil shavings and bits of paper, dangled from Debbie's fingers. “Now, how did that get there?” She balled it up and threw it at Valerie.

Valerie calmly peeled the sweater from her face and shook the pencil shavings off.

Didn't Miss Gruen see Debbie? No, she was erasing the blackboard. She thumped the eraser into the chalk rail and turned around. “Class, line up for dismissal.”

We lined up. The kids next to Valerie shrank away again. We were through the door and down the hall before the bell stopped vibrating. Outside school, we scattered like a bag of dropped marbles.

In all the commotion, I couldn't tell who knocked Valerie's books out of her arms. I did see Leland step on her sweater. On purpose.

Valerie picked up her belongings for the second time that day, and made her way to the kerb where a white station wagon waited.

“I reckon Parnell is good and integrated now,” Jeb said as we got on the bus.

I wondered if it would still be integrated tomorrow. If I were Valerie, I wouldn't come back.

I could see that making friends with Valerie Taylor would take some doing.

Br-r-r-i-ing
. The phone. I shot straight up in bed. I hated phone calls after bedtime. They always meant trouble. A bombing, a shooting, a church burning. Or just someone telling us to take our nigger-loving selves back to Chicago.

Click. The light in my parents' room. Daddy. Mumble-mumble on the phone, his last words, “I'll be right there,” like always. Thump. His feet hit the floor. Closet door creaked open then shut.

Daddy sock-footed down the hall. Clunk. He dropped his heavy-soled shoes by the back door to put them on. Back door rasped open and closed. Car door thunked shut. The Chrysler coughed, then whined into gear as it backed out of the carport.

Go back to sleep
.

But I couldn't. I clicked on my transistor to see how many far-off stations I could find. I got Cuba once. I think it was Cuba; the deejays jabbered in Spanish. I wished
I
were in Cuba, even if it was full of Communists. In Cuba, I wouldn't have to worry about the Ku Klux Klan. Or the Cheerleaders. Or Valerie.

Living in Mississippi was so confusing, it might as well have been Cuba. Even Mama and Daddy couldn't figure things out. For the first time, they didn't have all the answers.

“I don't know what ails these people,” Mama said at supper one night. “Have some meat loaf, Alice. And some string beans.”

“Hmm?” Daddy helped himself to mashed potatoes and passed me the bowl.

“The Negroes act so strange.” Mama handed Daddy the gravy boat.

“How so?” Daddy ladled gravy over his potatoes.

“For one thing, when I walk down the sidewalk, they jump out of my way like I'm the Queen of England.”

“Happens to me, too,” said Daddy. “They're used to letting white people pass by. I've had Negroes step into the gutter to let me by.”

“Well, I don't like it,” said Mama. “It gives me the willies.”

Daddy shook his head. “There's some things laws can change. Years of being forced to bow and scrape to white people isn't one of them.”

“Another thing,” Mama went on. “When I speak to a Negro man, he looks at the ground. I like a person to look me in the eyes when I talk to them.”

“I'm not surprised,” said Daddy. “They're afraid to speak to white women.”

“More Southern stupidity.” Mama plopped mashed potatoes on her plate.

“Not stupid at all,” said Daddy. “Negro men have been lynched for talking to white women. Or even looking at them. Remember Emmett Till?”

“Who's Emmett Till?” I asked.

“A Negro boy from Chicago, not much older than you. He was lynched a few years back while he was visiting Mississippi. Supposedly, he whistled at a white woman. Didn't matter whether he did or not. Somebody
said
he did. White men took him out in the country, beat him, shot him, and threw his body in the river.”

“That's terrible!” I put down my fork. “Did they catch those men? Was it the Klan?” I never thought about
kids
being killed by
adults
before.