No Crystal Stair (4 page)

She'd almost reached the lobby when she spotted Dan, leaning against a wall, talking to a group of friends. He was a
handsome man and was, as always, impeccably attired. His tan suit fit his almost too-slender form perfectly, lending him an air of sophistication that Ann Elizabeth said had attracted her the first time she saw him. His eyes brightened when he noticed Sadie, and excusing himself from the group, he came forward to join her.

“Sadie Clayton. Just the person I wanted to see.”

“Hello, Doctor. And how are
you
?” She said, smiling. “And what do you want now?”

He grinned. “All right, hello. But I don't need to ask how you are. You look great. And, yeah, you know me too well. I do want something.”

“At your service, sir.”

“I read in the paper that at the AMA meeting here last week, there was an interesting seminar on hypertension, and I wondered if you could get hold of a copy of the transcript.”

“I'll try,” she said. If possible, she was always glad to do things like that for black doctors, who weren't allowed to attend AMA meetings or special seminars at the hospital. Some doctors, black and white, were content to peddle pills, relying on what they'd learned to pass the Medical Board exams. But dedicated ones like Dan and Ann Elizabeth's father were eager to learn new techniques. Dr. Carter had once waited tables at a seminar on innovative diabetes treatments and said he was quite pleased with what he'd learned.

“Dr. Basil attended that session on hypertension,” she now said to Dan. “I'll see if he's willing to share his notes.”

“Oh! Isn't he the head of your department?”

“Yeah. And he's not nearly as racist as some of them.”

“Thanks. I'd sure appreciate it. How did you like the play? Wasn't Ann Elizabeth great?”

“She was, indeed,” Sadie replied, wondering if Ann Elizabeth knew how much this man loved her. Or if she really appreciated what a prize he was. She doubted it. If you never had anything
but the best all your life, you tended to think that was all you'd ever get.

And Ann Elizabeth was so
protected
. Her mama never let her visit me in Beaver Slide—might get her pretty little pumps dirty. And, my God, if she had to deal with a bunch of bigots like those crackers at Grady... It'll be tough going if she ever moves out of that seditty circle. Those high-society muckety-mucks who thought they were so much. Probably won't though. Not if old lady Carter has her way. She'll push Dan down Ann Elizabeth's throat and clamp her mouth shut. She's not likely to let a rich nigger white-looking doctor get away.

Not that any of that would weigh with Ann Elizabeth. She may be dumb about real life, but she's all heart. That's why I like here and why I'm standing here about to make myself late for my shift, just waiting to tell her she was good in that dumb play.

 

It wasn't Dan who stood at the foot of the steps leading from the stage to the auditorium. This man was short, stocky, red-haired and freckled. He looked strangely familiar, but Ann Elizabeth was almost sure she didn't know him. Was he one of the students from Clark College? She knew most of the Morehouse boys. His smile was shy and rather hesitant.

“I just wanted to tell you I thought you did a spectacular job.” It came out in a slow cracker drawl. Oh, he was white! Not one of those very fair-skinned Negroes.

“Why, thank you. That's very kind of you.”

“You folks do a much more professional job than we do at Emory.”

Emory. Atlanta's premier white university. Ann Elizabeth had once gone there with some of the other drama students when, surprisingly, they'd been invited to view a performance.

“I wouldn't say that,” she objected. “I very much enjoyed your
Cyrano
production.” A downright lie. It had been lousy. But she'd only seen the dress rehearsal. Heaven forbid that a group
of Negro students should be allowed to sit among white spectators at a regular performance! Professor Rose had said, “Don't knock it. At least it's a beginning of getting together.”

It hadn't felt like getting together. Segregated, in the balcony, at a dress rehearsal. Here in Rockefeller Hall at Spelman, white spectators were allowed to attend any show and sit anywhere they chose. Of course, that shouldn't seem strange. Half the teachers at Spelman were white, as were the president and dean.

She became aware that the young man was staring at her awkwardly, as if he wished to continue the conversation and didn't know how.

“Are you in drama at Emory?” she asked.

“Heck, no. I'm no good at that stuff. I'm in business administration. I saw you at one of the ‘Let's Talk' seminars.”

Oh. Now she remembered where she'd seen that red hair. Last fall some liberal professor at Emory had dreamed up the idea of arranging meetings between black students and white students. There had been two sessions, one at Morehouse, one at Emory. Ann Elizabeth had attended but hadn't become too involved, especially at Emory. Sitting in that stuffy classroom, she was only vaguely conscious of the anxious white professor standing next to Morehouse's Professor Lindsey. She hardly noticed the intense faces of her fellow black students and strange white ones. Hardly heard the strained, slightly discordant verbal exchange. The day before, she'd been chosen by the Morehouse boys to be their homecoming queen, and she was planning her outfit.

“I wish we had more of those sessions,” the young man continued. “We don't get much chance to talk to people of, er different backgrounds.”

“Yes, I know.” She smiled at him, feeling a deep sympathy for his confusion and concern. And suddenly she remembered. No wonder he looked familiar! At the Emory seminar he'd caught even her attention when he stood up and made an impassioned
speech for social justice, followed by a rather pitiful appeal. How was he to reconcile his own attitude with his father's opposite one?

The other white students had countered, expounding about the practical difficulties of equal treatment given the social and economic chasm between whites and Negroes.

Awakened from her stupor, she'd spoken more harshly than she'd intended, surprising everyone in the room. “How dare you sit here discussing how to treat me.? I'm a person. Treat me like one.”

Now she gazed at the serious face before her, wanting to reach out and tell him not to worry.
We're doing all right without you help.

Impulsively she extended her hand. “I'm so glad you came. And I'm glad you enjoyed the play.”

“Especially you.” The hand gripping hers was warm and a little damp. “You were great. Are you going into the theater? You could be another Lena Horne. You even look like her.”

She smiled. “Most people tell me I resemble Loretta Young.”

“I didn't mean... that is, I only meant...”The deep red flush extended to the roots of his hair, and she was sorry for the dig.

“That you're very beautiful,” he finished.

“Thank you. And yes, I do love the theater. But I'm afraid it's not for me. You see. I don't sing.” She didn't add that neither was she the Aunt Jemima type, but he seemed to get the message.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I wish things were different.”

Again she felt the need to reassure him. “Not to worry.” She laughed. “It's been fun, but I really have no wish to be a star of stage and screen.”

“Red!” a voiced called. “Are you coming? We're in the car.”

“Coming,” he answered over his shoulder. Then he said to Ann Elizabeth, “They call me Red. My name is Stanley Hutchinson.”

She nodded. “Mine is—”

“I know.” He held up the program. “Good night, Ann Elizabeth. I hope we meet again.”

“Yes,” she said, knowing there wasn't the remotest chance that they would.

In the lobby she found both Sadie and Dan.

“What took you so long?” Sadie scolded. “I'm about to be late for work. I've been waiting to tell you that you were stupendous!”

“Thank you. Oh, Sadie, I'm so glad you came.”

“Wouldn't have missed it.”

Wouldn't have missed a possible chance to see Randy, Ann Elizabeth thought, and was sorry her brother hadn't made it.

“Well, don't miss the debut, either. Everybody will be there,” she called as Sadie hurried off.

She smiled at Dan, who'd been patiently waiting. “Thank you for the roses,” she said. “They're lovely.”

“Almost as lovely as you.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere!” she said, laughing.

They walked out and sat on a bench under an oak tree near Rockefeller Hall. There were other couples standing around, privileged to spend a few moments together because the boys had been at the play. Spelman was a women's college and Morehouse a men's, and never the twain should meet... at night. Daytime was a different matter. Classes and professors were exchanged. Half of Ann Elizabeth's classes were on the Morehouse campus across the street, on the other side of the library. The library was shared by both colleges and was said to have spawned more romances that master's theses.

“I'm going to miss all this,” she told Dan. “Even Mr. Willshoot.”

“Willshoot?”

Ann Elizabeth laughed. She sometimes forgot that Dan was relatively new to Atlanta. He was from Washington, D.C., and had attended Howard University before setting up his practice
in Atlanta. “That's not his real name. The Morehouse boys just named him that because he's always insisting that he ‘will shoot' He's Spelman's security guard and it's his job to see that the boys say goodbye at the gate and don't accompany the girls to their dormitories.”

She watched the lights going on one by one in the dorms, casting a faint glow through the trees. She listened to the laughter and chatter of the girls and the muted whispers of the couples around them. She became suddenly aware that this part of her life was almost over.

“I feel a little sad,” she said. “Something is ending. And nothing's beginning.”

“Something could begin. And I suggest it be with me.”

“Dan... I'm not sure.”

“We belong together, Ann Elizabeth.”

“I know. But I'm just not sure I'm ready to begin a marriage.”

“Okay, okay.” He took a pack from his pocket and drew out a cigarette. “Tell me. What
would
you like to begin?”

“That's just it. I don't know. I honestly don't know.”

“Well it's not over yet. There's graduation. And your debut.”

“That's just part of the launching.” But launching into what?

I majored in drama, she thought, just because I like it. Nothing I can do but teach it, maybe. She recalled her conversation with the redheaded boy. No yearning to be an actress, a movie star? Or was it simply that she knew she could never be one? The only thing she was suited for was marriage, she concluded. To someone like Dan.

Dan, his face illuminated by the flame from his lighter, stared down at her. “Well, Mrs. Moonlight, do you want time to stop? Do you want things to stay as they are forever?”

“No, no. Of course not. Guess I've got graduation blues.”

The chapel bell tolled the curfew hour, and they walked slowly toward Morgan, her dormitory. At the foot of the steps he kissed her and she thought of her father. That same clean
antiseptic smell, mingled with a slight odor of cigarette smoke.

Ann Elizabeth's room was on the third floor, and she made her way up the stairs, passing girls in various modes of attire. She borrowed a vase from the matron and stopped to arrange the roses, then continued to her room. She heard the giggling before she opened the door.

“Surprise!” Her crowd—Doris, Etta May, Jennie Lou and Millie. All seniors and all members of the Debutante Club, except Etta May who was from Brunswick, Georgia, and roomed with Doris.

“Moonlight feast for Mrs. Moonlight,” announced Millie. “We even got permission.”

Ann Elizabeth's eyes brightened at the sight of hot dogs and hot chocolate. “Mrs. Moonlight thanks you from the bottom of her starving heart.”

“Lord, Ann Elizabeth, are you ever
not
hungry?”

“Yeah, when I'm asleep. Pass the mustard, please. This is great!”

“You were really very good, Ann Elizabeth,” said Millie

“
She
was good? What about Ed Sanford?” Etta May, Her hair tied up for the night in a strange assortment of old socks, leaned over her hot dog and crooned, “ ‘I love you, Mrs. Moonlight, very very dearly.' Oh, if he'd just say that to me!”

Millie chuckled. “Forget it, Etta May. He whispers to Ann Elizabeth onstage and to Eloise Jenkins offstage.”

“Don't see what you want with him anyway.” Doris poured herself another cup of chocolate. “He drinks too much.”

“And when he's not lapping it up, he's quoting Shakespeare,” Jennie Lou chimed in. “If he ever does make it out of college, he won't have two cents to rub together. Now, if I wanted to hook someone, I'd go after Dan Trent.”

Doris fingered a button on her plaid robe and didn't look at Ann Elizabeth. “Yep, he's already established. Gonna be one rich nigger.”

“Well—” Jennie Lou smirked “—you'd have to fight half of Atlanta to get him.”

“Shut up, Jennie Lou!” Millie's voice was sharp.

“Well, I think Ann Elizabeth ought to know she's not the only pebble on the beach. He's a skirt-chaser.”

“Maybe it's the skirts who chase him.” Millie bristled and glanced protectively at Ann Elizabeth, who blew on her hot chocolate.

“Maybe.” Jennie Lou, glamorous even at bedtime, tightened her silk scarf around her head. “Personally I can't stand the man.”

“Good.”Millie smiled. “Then it's lucky for you that you won't get a chance to marry him.”