Yankee Girl (6 page)

Mama glared at Daddy. “Let's talk about more pleasant things, shall we?”

Daddy cleared his throat. “So, Alice. How's Valerie Taylor doing?”

That was his idea of pleasant?

“Okay, I guess.” I took a bite of meat loaf. “The kids are kind of mean to her. But she doesn't act like it bugs her or anything.”

Daddy gave me a long look over the top of his glasses. “Do you talk to Valerie?”

“I don't
not
talk to her,” I said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”

Daddy slowly sliced his meat loaf. “I'll have to think about that one.”

“Well, it's hard! If I talk to her, then nobody will talk to me. She doesn't act like she wants to talk anyway.”

“How can you tell?”

I skated a string bean around with my fork. “It's like she's a robot or something. She stands up for the Pledge and sits down for the Lord's Prayer and the rest of the time she stares at Miss Gruen.”

“She's probably scared to say anything. I'll bet she's waiting for someone to break the ice. You, for instance.”

There were things that parents just didn't get. Daddy would say that making friends with Valerie was the Right Thing to Do. There was the Right Thing and the Wrong Thing. No in-betweens.

“I'll bet you two would have a lot in common if you sat down and talked,” Daddy went on.

“Hmmm,” I mumbled into my milk.

“Just give it a try,” he said. “I know you'll do the Right Thing.”

End of conversation, thank goodness.

That night I dreamed that Valerie jumped off the sidewalk to let me by.

“Don't be silly,” I said. “I'm just the same as you. We have a lot in common.”

But Valerie had turned into a Negro boy.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I'm Emmett Till,” he said. “But you ought not to be talking to me, miss. Not where folks can see. It's dangerous. For both of us.”

Daddy was right about one thing. Valerie and I did have something in common. We were the most unpopular kids in the sixth grade.

Everyone still called me Yankee Girl, except Jeb.
He
didn't talk to me at all if his friends were around.

“Nothing personal,” he reminded me. “You know how it is.”

Yeah, I knew how it was and I hated it. I hated Parnell. They did dumb stuff we didn't do in Chicago.

Like folk dancing.

On rainy days, we folk-danced in the auditorium instead of going outside for recess. There were lots of rainy days in October.

Miss Gruen put on a scratchy record of some old geezer calling “The Paul Jones”.

“All join hands and circle left,” hollered the caller.

I took Andy's sweaty hand, and turned towards a boy from 6A named Duane. He was picking his nose. Yech! I wasn't about to take his hand. I grabbed his wrist and circled left.

Valerie sat in the front row, reading a library book. No one would dance with her. For once, I envied her. I hated folk dancing.

As much as I hated folk dancing, I hated lunch more.

“It must be a hundred degrees in here,” griped Jeb as we stood in the lunch line. “Why don't they open the windows?”

“They
are
open,” I pointed out.

“Then how come it smells like old sneakers?”

“That's lunch,” cracked Andy.

It was Roast Beef Day. Stringy roast beef, covered by a brown gravy skin. I collected my food and sat down.

Andy popped out his retainer and plunked it on his tray. Trying not to look at the pink plastic thing, I gulped down the least disgusting parts of lunch. Not a good idea. Because right after lunch was math. Math always made my stomach hurt.

On this rainy afternoon, I stared at my
New Directions in Math
workbook, while Toad Woman croaked directions.

“Put your workbook on my desk when you finish. Then you may have a free art period.”

I tried to hurry through the assignment. The problems dissolved in a jumble of plus and minus signs, parentheses and brackets. The page became a grey smear with a hole erased in the middle.

I rubbed my eyes and stared out the window at an oak tree. The wet leaves looked like big cornflakes as they slid to the ground. Soggy cornflakes. Lunch rumbled in my stomach.

6B smelled even worse than the lunchroom. Leland never changed his shirt. Jeb was experimenting with his daddy's cologne. Today he wore enough Old Spice to flatten an elephant.

The smells. My stomach. I turned hot, then cold, followed by a sour taste in my mouth. I wobbled up to Miss Gruen's desk.

“I feel sick.” I hoped I'd throw up on her teacher's edition of
New Directions in Math.
“Ma'am.”

Miss Gruen peered over her steel-rimmed glasses. “You may go to the clinic in the office.”

Ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung.
Mrs. Messer, the school secretary, was running the ditto machine when I stumbled in. Usually, I loved the smell of ditto ink. Today, it was one smell too many.

“You sick, hon?” She felt my forehead. “You don't have a fever.” A whiff of her inky hands, and my stomach lurched. I moaned.

“You going to throw up?” Mrs. Messer took a quick step back.

“I don't think so.” Now that her hands were out of nose range.

“All right. But you can only stay a little while since you don't have a fever.” She opened a door marked CLINIC and let me into a tiny closet of a room.

I kicked off my shoes and flopped across the nearest cot. A fan ticked in the corner, putting me to sleep. I woke up when the door clicked open. Mrs. Messer and Valerie stood in the doorway.

“There.” The secretary pointed to the other cot, her mouth crimped in a mean line. “You best not be faking, girl.” She left, thumping the door shut behind her.

Valerie placed her loafers neatly beneath the cot and unfolded the blanket at the foot. She stretched out, pulling the blanket over her shoulders.

At last, I could talk to Valerie without anyone knowing.

“Hi,” I said.

Valerie stared at the ceiling.

I stared at it, too. Nothing up there except ceiling tile, the kind with little holes in it.

“Lunch got me,” I said. “Did you eat the beef?”

Cot springs squeaked as Valerie settled in.

“It wasn't just lunch,” I went on. “I hate math. My stomach gets all snarly. Do you like math?”

A sound from the next cot. I turned on my side to look. Valerie stared straight up, big tears sliding towards her ears.

“What's wrong?” I said. “Want me to get Mrs. Messer?”

“Leave me alone.” Valerie flounced over, turning her back to me.

“Fine,” I snapped. “I don't want to talk to you either. I wish I'd never heard of you or Parnell or Mississippi.” I turned my back on
her
. Even Valerie wouldn't talk to me. Now my stomach
really
hurt.

“Don't talk to me,” said a blanket-muffled voice. “Just 'cause I go to school with white kids don't mean I hafta talk to them. I never wanted to go to this sorry old school anyway.”

“You didn't?” This was news to me.

“Shoot, no.” I heard Valerie punch her pillow a couple of times, then flop back down.

“Then how come you're here? I mean, if you're not even going to try to be nice to white kids.”

“Because my daddy said so. Didn't even ask if I wanted to. It's not fair.”

“Me, too.” I sat up. “I mean, nobody asked me if I wanted to move down South.”

Sca-reech
sang the cot springs as Valerie sat up. She cleared her throat. “Daddy keeps saying stuff like ‘You're making history. You're blazing a trail for black children in years to come.' I don't give a horse's patoot about history. Let them kids blaze their own trail.”

“My folks say the same stuff,” I said. “‘You're witnessing history.' Who cares? I just want some friends.”

“Parents!” Valerie honked into a hanky she pulled from her dress pocket.

“Yeah.” I waited to see if Valerie would turn her back again. She didn't. “So, if you hate it here so much, and you don't even like white kids, why don't you go back to your old school?”

Valerie sighed so hard her shoulders hiked up to her ears. “Daddy says I have to be an example. That somebody has to go first and it might as well be Lucy and me.”

“Is Lucy your sister? Is that the girl you eat with? How does she like it here?”

“Yeah,” Valerie said. “She's only a first grader. She doesn't know how much fun school can be.”

“Fun?” School?

Valerie slid the cot pillow behind her back. “On rainy days, we danced in the lunchroom at recess.”

“We do that here,” I reminded her.

“That folk-dancing mess?” Valerie flapped her hand. “I mean
real
dancing, like the monkey and the twist.” She smiled, and I knew she was back in her old school, doing the twist.

“Wish we did that,” I said. “I wish somebody would step on that old Paul Jones record.”

Valerie giggled. “You aren't very good.” Her eyes twinkled, winter-sky coldness gone.

“Don't remind me.” I giggled, too. A warm, familiar feeling came over me. The feeling of making a new friend. “Hey, who do you like best? Paul or Ringo?” If she said Paul, we would be friends for ever.

“Paul or Ringo who?” Valerie frowned.

“You're kidding, right? The Beatles? Everybody knows the Beatles.”

Valerie didn't. Her eyes were question marks.

“They're a rock-and-roll band. They were on
The Ed Sullivan Show?
” I kept trying. “They sing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand'?”

“Oh, them!” Valerie shrugged. “They sing okay for white boys, I guess.”

Was she kidding? White boys? Jeb and Andy were white boys! “Well, when you danced at your old school, whose records did you bring?”

Valerie hugged her knees. “The Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations.”

“Gee, I've never heard of any of them.”

“Everybody's heard of the Supremes.” Valerie sounded real sure of herself. “You know that song ‘Where Did Our Love Go'?”

“Oh yeah.” Now I remembered. “That was number one last summer in Chicago. But I haven't heard them since I moved down here. Did they make another record?”

“Are you kidding?” It was Valerie's turn to sound surprised. “What radio station do you listen to?”

“Rebel Radio.”

“Oh.” Valerie smiled and leaned across the space between the cots. “That's a white station. They don't play Negro music. Everybody I know listens to WOKJ.”

“I'll give it a try,” I said. Something still bugged me, though. “Why don't you tell your daddy you want to go back to your old school?”

Valerie's smile vanished. “Can't disappoint my daddy. I wish somebody else would do the integrating. I just want my friends back.”

“Aren't they still your friends? You probably don't see them as much…”

“I don't see them at
all
.” Valerie bit her lip. “They think I've got the big head, going to a white school. Think I want to
be
white.” She sighed. “They say it's dangerous to come over to my house.”

“Why? You got alligators in your yard or something?” I tried to make Valerie smile again, but she wasn't in a smiling mood.

“The Klan's been watching our house.” She didn't have to say anything more.

“I'm scared of the Klan, too,” I said.

Valerie's grey eyes widened. “What would the Klan want with y'all?”

“My daddy is an FBI agent.”

“Oh.” Valerie smiled sadly. “What did the Klan do to y'all?”

“Nasty phone calls mostly, telling us to go back to Chicago.”

“Shoot, that's nothing. They put sugar in our gas tank. Dead rats in the mailbox. We gave our dog away 'cause Daddy was afraid the Klan would kill her.” Valerie ticked off these things as if they were nothing. I knew they weren't.

“I'm scared someone will shoot through my window,” I said. “My bed is right under it. I sleep hanging off the edge so I can hit the floor and roll under the bed if I have to.”

“I sleep
on
the floor. Saves time, just in case.” Valerie's eyes met mine. She
understood.
Understood like no one else in the sixth grade ever could.

“Want to be friends?” I blurted.

Valerie looked away. “I told you. Just 'cause I go to school here don't mean I have to be friends with y'all.” She laughed, but not like anything was funny. “You gonna invite me over to your house after school?” The warm, easy feeling disappeared.

“Well, uh…” I hadn't thought that far ahead.

“Or you gonna come home with me?” She pointed to herself. Her fingernails were bitten down past the quick. Little blood crusts circled the thumbnails. It hurt just to look at them.

Mrs. Messer poked her head in the door. “If y'all feel good enough to talk, y'all can go back to class,” she said. “Put your shoes on and scoot.”

Valerie slid into her loafers, brushed the wrinkles out of her skirt, and glided out the clinic door. She never looked back.

I thought about Valerie the rest of the afternoon. I never thought somebody wouldn't be my friend because I was
white
.

I thought myself into one big, fat headache.

My head still hurt when Mama picked me up after school for an appointment with Dr. Warren.

“Don't even think about it,” said Mama as I reached for the radio knob. “That music makes me nuts. Driving in rain is bad enough. Why don't you try talking to your old mother for a change?” She grinned. For a moment she was her old Chicago self. Maybe she could help make sense of things.

“Mama, are Negroes really different from white people?”