Yankee Girl (4 page)

“Where's Mary Martha?” I asked when the song ended.

“She doesn't ride the bus,” said the girl. “She lives across from school.” She stared straight ahead at “Leland B stinks”, scratched into the metal seat back.

I tried again.

“Is your name Carrie?” I pointed to her notebook.

“Whaddyathink?” She shrugged and looked out the window. At least she hadn't told me to get lost.

There was no air in the bus. All the windows were shut tight. I leaned across Carrie to unlatch the window.

“Don't do that,” my seatmate said. “It'll blow my hair.”

A dozen tiny smells grew into big smells in the hot, stuffy air. Hair tonic on the boys. Lime chewing gum. Peppermint toothpicks.

“Guess who's gonna be in our class?” hollered Leland, the gooby boy, bouncing in his seat. His flattop haircut stuck up in greasy spikes.

“Dry up, Leland,” said Jeb from across the aisle. I glanced over at him, but he was talking to a boy with a crew cut seated in front of him.

Leland stood and yelled, “Doesn't anybody care who's gonna be in our class?”

“Siddown, Leland,” hollered Ralph.

“Okay,” sighed Jeb. “Go ahead. Tell us.”

“Valerie Taylor,” Leland announced.

Heads turned. Fifty pairs of eyes stared blankly at Leland.

“Who's Valerie Taylor?” said Carrie-the-Ringo-lover.

“Valerie
Taylor
?” Leland repeated. “Reverend Taylor is her daddy!”

Jeb gave a low whistle. “You're kidding!”

“Wow,” said the boy with the crew cut.

“How do you know, Bouchillon?” asked someone from the front seats.

“I have my ways,” said Leland with a smirk.

“Who's Reverend Taylor?” I asked.

Jeb gave me a boy-are-you-stupid look.

“You know,
Reverend Taylor
. Martin Luther King's right-hand man?
That
Reverend Taylor.”

Reverend
Claymore
Taylor? I'd heard of him, even in Chicago. Whenever Martin Luther King marched or made a speech for civil rights, Reverend Claymore Taylor was always at his side.

“Bet there'll be TV reporters at school,” said Jeb. “We're gonna be famous.”

TV reporters…and what else? I knew from Walter Cronkite what happened when schools integrated. Jeering crowds, snarling police dogs, fire hoses turned on full blast.

“Don't see why the big fuss,” grumbled Leland. “Jus' some nigger listening to Martin Luther Coon what thinks she can go to school with white kids.”

“Hey, you can't call him Martin Luther—
Ow!
” A three-ring notebook smashed me in the head.

“Oops,” said Jeb.

“What was
that
for?” I rubbed my scalp.

“You were fixing to say something about Martin Luther King, weren't you?” Jeb shielded his face with his notebook so no one could see him talking to me.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Didn't you hear what that Leland guy said?”

“If you want to get along around here, don't ever stand up for Martin Luther King or anybody coloured.”

“Why not?” I whispered behind
my
notebook.

“You just don't,” Jeb said. “You don't have to say anything bad about him. Just don't say
anything
, okay? Unless you just
want
kids to hate you.”

The bus took a sharp corner and there we were. Parnell School.

A mob of grown-ups swarmed over the playground and sidewalk. My stomach churned and my hands turned to ice.

So this is what it's like to be a current event. I'd rather read about it in the newspaper.

“Ooba dooba,” yelled someone in the front seat. “Look at that!”

“Hey, are those TV cameras?” Saranne called from the back.

“Look at all the cops,” added Crew-Cut Boy.

“Cool it, Andy,” said Jeb. “You never seen a cop before?” Jeb sounded calm, but he looked a little white around the mouth.

“Oh boy,” squealed Debbie. “We're gonna be on TV.” She fished a lipstick from her purse and drew a crooked pink mouth as the bus jounced to a halt.

Outside, the crowd chanted, “Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate!”

Nobody on the bus moved. Nobody made a sound. Ralph cranked open the door.

“Okay,” he bawled. “All you Parnell kids, off.”

With the bus doors open, the crowd sounded even louder.

“Send 'em back to Africa!” someone yelled.

“Y'all ain't scared, are you?” Ralph grinned. Ralph didn't have to worry. He wasn't getting off the bus.

“Eight, six, four, two, send 'em back to Tougaloo!” the crowd shouted.

“Y'all a bunch of babies? Get off the bus,” ordered Ralph.

One by one, we stepped into the aisle. No pushing, no shoving, no tripping. As careful and polite as a film on bus safety. Andy, Crew-Cut Boy. Leland. Jeb. Then me.

Follow Jeb. Keep your eyes on Jeb.

I stared at the back of his blue shirt. A spreading sweat stain turned it a deeper blue.

“Niggers, go home! You ain't gonna marry my kid!” shrieked a woman's voice.

I stared down a human tunnel that stretched to the school door: policemen, and reporters with cameras in the front row. Behind them, people shook their fists and waved signs that said SEGREGATION NOW AND FOR EVER and NIGGER GO HOME.

The sign-wavers shouted words I couldn't understand except for “nigger” and “coon”, their faces twisted with hate. I grabbed the back of Jeb's soggy shirt. I had to hang on to someone.

Beyond the crowd, a car horn brayed the first notes of “Dixie” over and over.
Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton.
Over and over.

The path narrowed as the cops struggled to keep the crowd away from us kids. Red screaming faces strained over the locked arms of the police.

Sweat trickled down my sides.

Keep moving. One foot after the other.

The front door was just ahead. Somewhere.

Remember Daddy's trick. Send your mind someplace else.

The Dunes. The Indiana Dunes at Lake Michigan. A lake breeze ruffled my hair. The scorching sidewalk turned to beach sand. The screaming mob faded into the surf slapping at the shore. I breathed in beach smells: Coppertone, hot dogs, and the slightly sour smell of lake water.

I opened my eyes. The shouting sign-wavers searched the line of kids for Valerie Taylor. Little by little, the noise died down as only white kids made their way up the front walk.

In the open school door a tall man in shirtsleeves waved to us.

“This way, students,” he called. “Don't be afraid.”

Jeb and I stepped through the door into the warm, dim hallway. Safe inside, I felt my legs suddenly turn to Jell-O.

“Let go of my shirt,” Jeb grumbled. “You got it all wrinkled.”

The tall man pointed towards the auditorium. Inside, teachers directed us to seats, one right after the other, as if they were parking cars.

“I don't sit next to girls,” protested Jeb as Miss LeFleur waved us to our seats.

“You sit where you're told,” snapped Miss LeFleur, not so sweet today. “And no talking.”

The auditorium seats steadily filled, row after row. Kids craned their heads to see if the latest arrivals included Valerie Taylor.

Every single person in that room was white.

When it seemed as if the auditorium couldn't get any hotter, the shirtsleeve man climbed the stage steps and walked over to a microphone.

“Boys and girls, I am Mr. Thibodeaux, your new principal,” he said.

Mr. Thibodeaux looked too young to be a principal. He had a lot of dark hair combed straight back with hair goop. He seemed like he might be nice. For a principal.

“Students,” said Mr. Thibodeaux, “we are a part of history. Parnell is one of five city schools that will have coloured students this fall.”

“You mean niggers,” muttered somebody behind me.

“Our new students will arrive in the next few days. I expect you to treat them as you would any other student. Do we understand each other?”

Silence.

“I said, do we understand each other?” The principal frowned and his eyebrows met in a straight line over his nose. “Say ‘Yessir, Mr. Thibodeaux.'”

“Yessir, Mr. Thibodeaux,” the room echoed.

“And now, students, let's begin the school year with the Lord's Prayer.”

“You pray in school? Isn't that against the law?” I whispered to Jeb.

Jeb cut his eyes sideways but kept his head down. “Yeah, but only folks up North pay attention to it. Mama says folks up there are all atheists.”

“But…” I started to tell Jeb that all Northerners were
not
atheists, when I caught a whiff of scent behind me. Yardley's English Lavender, like my grandmother kept in her nightgown drawer. A real old-lady smell.

The smell grew stronger as a pudgy, brown-speckled hand clamped on to my shoulder. It belonged to a toad-faced woman in a prune-coloured dress.

“Hush your mouth, or I'll send you to the office,” said Toad Woman.

“Amen,” said five hundred voices, with Mr. Thibodeaux's, loudest of all, crackling into the microphone.

“You are dismissed to your classrooms. Let's have a good year,” shouted Mr. Thibodeaux as five hundred folding seats slammed shut. The toad-faced teacher turned her attention to the kids surging towards the door.

“Who caught you talking?” Jeb said as we inched up the aisle.

“Some teacher. Didn't you see?”

“Not me. I was praying.” Jeb pulled an innocent face that somehow looked just the opposite. “Let's see whose class we're in. Now, don't get the idea I'm going to do this all the time,” he added quickly. “Just today, 'cause you're new.”

Kids stampeded past us, since there were no hall monitors yet. The girls all wore shifts and slip-on flats. Not one in a full skirt and oxfords. I felt like a freak. A sweaty, frizzy-haired freak.

We stopped at the door to room 6A.

MISS LEFLEUR'S CLASS, read the sign. WELCOME TO 6A. Bright construction-paper cutouts of fall leaves decorated the door.

Jeb and I scanned the blurry mimeographed list taped beneath the sign. We read it three times but didn't find our names.

“Miss Gruen, here we come,” sighed Jeb.

There was no welcome sign on 6B. Just the list of names, with MISS EUGENIA GRUEN written in no nonsense black Magic Marker across the top.

Jeb and I went in.

Behind the teacher's desk stood the Toad Woman from the auditorium.

Miss Eugenia Gruen. My new teacher.

“Hey, Yankee Girl.” Someone goosed me from behind. I turned around. Saranne. “I hear Miss Gruen eats Yankee Girls for lunch. With salt.”

Great. Just great. Miss Gruen
and
Saranne Russell.

It
was
going to be a long year, just like Pammie'd said.

Leland Bouchillon stomped in.

“Hey, did y'all see the list in the hall? That Valerie Taylor girl is gonna be in our room.”

A very, very long year.

I snickered as I glued that headline into my scrapbook. Of course there hadn't been any “incidents” the first week of school. There hadn't been any Negro students. At least not at Parnell. Still no Valerie Taylor.

“Why do they call it ‘race mixing'?” I asked. “The newspaper's always using that expression.”

“It means the newspaper doesn't like the word ‘integration',” said Daddy. “They think it's too civilized a word for something they don't want to do.”

Even without “race mixing”, sixth grade turned out to be tougher than I thought.

If math was hard in Chicago, it was twice as hard in Mississippi. It was harder because I couldn't understand Miss Gruen's accent. Her words ran together like poured molasses. I raised my hand three times that first morning to ask what she'd just said. Not that it helped. I didn't understand the second time either.

“I don't know about up North, but here we expect students to pay attention,” said Miss Gruen after the third time. At least I think that's what she said.

Then there were the Cheerleaders. They always looked like they were having fun. Giggling in the lunch line. Trading Beatles cards on the playground before school. Singing along to Debbie's transistor on the bus.

That is, until I showed up. Suddenly the smiles and giggles shrivelled and died. They stared over, through, and past me. I felt invisible.

It's because I'm new. They'll just have to get used to me.

I hovered at the edges of the group, hoping that someday they would let me in on the fun, too.

The Cheerleaders were harder to figure than math or Miss Gruen. They weren't the prettiest girls in the class. Or the smartest. They just were. And they had
power
!

When Saranne announced that her favourite word was “vomitaceous”, sixth graders used it in every other sentence. It wasn't even a word. I looked it up.

Debbie chewed
only
lime Fruit Stripe gum. Suddenly,
everybody
chewed lime Fruit Stripe. No one would be caught dead with orange or cherry.

Cheryl, Saranne, and Debbie decided that Paul was their favourite Beatle; the other Beatles were vomitaceous.

“I like Paul,” I said, sidling closer.

“Anybody want to trade a John for a George?” said Saranne, as if I weren't standing right next to her. They were trading cards that came in packs of vomitaceous bubble gum from the Tote-Sum.

“I don't care,” said Carrie. “I still like Ringo.”

“Mary Martha, you never said which Beatle you like best.” Debbie fanned her cards like a poker hand.