The Girl on the Outside Read online

  “What y’ think, Eva?” her father asked.

  Suddenly, Eva could see Chatman, the three-story brick building with its tall white columns and great stone lion at its front doors. That lion had always seemed as forbidding to her as the FOR WHITE ONLY signs she saw throughout the town on water fountains, rest rooms, and park benches. The thought of passing through those doors made her shiver with a strange excitement. She didn’t know if it was joy or fear. Eva was glad that her mother did not give her time to answer before she said, “Roger, I don’t think Eva knows what t’ think in this matter.”

  “It’s Eva that’s gonna be going,” her father said. “Eva?”

  Eva felt the tension between her parents and sensed the fear in her mother’s voice. She looked at the two men and then at Mrs. Floyd. She put her head down. “I don’t know.” She thought about her boyfriend. Would Cecil be going? “How many of us going?” she asked.

  “We’re trying to get nine students to enroll,” Mrs. Floyd said.

  “Hmmm. I … I think I’d just as soon stay with all m’ friends at Carver.” She looked at her father. “I’m not sure it’s worth it, if it’s dangerous.”

  “There are a lot of advantages, Eva,” Mr. Johnson said. “You’d have much better equipped classrooms, new books, new supplies, and good science labs.…”

  “You’d even have nice warm rooms heated with steam, not with ol’ pot bellied stoves,” Mrs. Floyd said. Everybody laughed.

  “And credits from Chatman are readily accepted at many colleges and universities if you’re planning to go on for a degree,” Mr. Cook said.

  Again Eva felt that strange excitement. “Maybe … but what do you think, Daddy?”

  “It’s up to you, Eva. Whatever y’ decide, I’ll back y’.”

  Eva looked at her mother who still sat upright on the edge of the chair. “Ma, what you think?”

  Her mother sighed and slumped slightly. “I don’t know. We could find ourselves up a creek ’thout a paddle.”

  “Who knows, you may be right, Audrey,” Mrs. Floyd said. “But if we didn’t think the time was ripe, we wouldn’t dare ask these children to do it. Your daughter will make history.”

  “I don’t know much,” her mother said, “but I do know that a lotta people who make history die in the doing. I don’t want Eva dead.”

  “Now Audrey, we don’t want Eva dead, but we want the best for her. Don’t you agree?” her father said.

  “Oh, I agree to that.”

  “We don’t want any child hurt, even,” Mrs. Floyd said. “We now have seven of the nine we hope to get. We’d like you, Eva.”

  Eva knew she would like to go to the main high school, but she was afraid. Maybe her mother was right. “Daddy, tell me, what you really think?”

  “I understand y’ mama’s fears. It won’t be easy, no struggle is. But our family together should be able t’ do what’s gotta be done.” He reached over and took her mother’s hand.

  Eva stood looking from one face to another, not knowing what to do. She did not want to die … not to go to Chatman. Not for anything. Then suddenly words that she had heard her father say many times flashed before her: “Dying ain’t the worst thing in the world. When y’ can’t choose what y’ wanta do, and where y’ wanta go, that, havin’ no choice, is worse’n death.”

  As Eva turned off the shower, the quiet reminded her that on that day the rain had stopped suddenly. The noise of the scratchy ink pen sounded in the room as she and her parents signed permission for her to be registered as one of nine Negroes to be enrolled that fall in Chatman High.

  Before she finished dressing, the front door slammed. The rest of her family was home. Eva scrambled. By now she should have started preparing dinner.

  “Where’s Tanya?” she shouted from the kitchen to her mother who was still in her room undressing.

  “She went home with your Aunt Shirley,” her mother said.

  Finally, her mother came into the kitchen. Most of the food had been cooked before they had gone to church. The chicken pie was reheated. Eva was making Kool-Aid. “Mama, it’s just too hot to be eating all this food,” she said. “Left up to me, we’d have sandwiches and this Kool-Aid.”

  “Well, I’m glad it ain’t left up to you, missie,” her father said. He walked through the back door and began setting the table.

  When they were just about finished with dinner, Eva asked, “When is Tanya coming home?” Even though she and Tanya were always at each other, Eva missed her when she was away.

  Her mother looked at her, then at Eva’s father. “Roger, I think we oughta tell Eva.”

  “Tell me what?” Eva asked, alarmed.

  “Honey, folks sayin’ our house might be bombed.”

  “What?” Eva cried.

  “It’s nothin’ but hearsay,” her father said calmly, trying to allay Eva’s fear. “But we thought it might be best for Tanya to stay over t’ Shirley’s.…”

  “And I want y’ t’ go t’ Shirley’s, too,” her mother interrupted.

  “Are y’all coming, too?”

  “I ain’t runnin’ away from home. And Eva, it’s up t’ you.”

  “How come y’ always leavin’ things up t’ Eva?” her mother shouted. “I’m worried t’ death ’bout all this. Why can’t y’ just stand up for once and say Eva ain’t going?”

  Here they go again, Eva said to herself. She was worried and frightened. Maybe she should not have agreed to go to Chatman.

  “Listen, Audrey,” her father said. “I understand your worryin’ but it ain’t no use in y’ keep bringin’ up her not going. She done said again and again she want t’ go, and I’m standin’ behind ’er.”

  “I still say I wish it wasn’t happenin’,” her mother said.

  “Mama, maybe it is just talk and nothin’ to be upset about.”

  “I’m upset ’cause I know what they do t’ us when we try t’ git outta our place.”

  “What’s our place, woman?” her father asked.

  “Roger, you ain’t crazy. You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. I was born and raised right here in Mossville. I’ve seen with m’ own eyes things done t’ our people too ugly t’ mention in front o’ Eva.”

  “And I was born and raised in Texas, so I ain’t no fool. And, I ain’t ’bout t’ be scared of none but God. I still say, if she wanta go there, I’ll back ’er.”

  Eva listened, feeling that excitement that she now knew was fear. She knew what life was like for Negroes in Mossville. She rode in the back of the bus, went to a separate school, separate church, lived in a separate neighborhood.

  The scene she had been a part of in Woolworth’s only yesterday, came full-blown into her mind. She had been in a hurry to catch the bus that ran to South End only once every hour, and the girl behind the counter had kept her waiting on purpose. The same smoldering anger and humiliation she had felt then, crept over her now. Making me wait while she did nothing until white customers came up. I know what she wanted: me to blow up or walk out without my things. But I wouldn’t let her know she could put me through that kind of hell.

  Eva was startled out of her thoughts by her mother’s voice. “Eva, I wish … well, do you want to go over t’ your Aunt Shirley’s?”

  Eva looked at her mother who had always been joyous, full of life. Now she looked worn with worry, and for the first time Eva noticed gray strands in her mother’s hair. Had they been there before all this? She didn’t want to do anything to hurt her mother. But she could not let the other eight students down, nor Mrs. Floyd.

  Mrs. Floyd had suffered a lot, too, for her and the other students. She was the buffer between them and the lawyers, legislators, and school administrators. And there was her father. She couldn’t let him down, either.

  “Eva,” her mother said. “I’m askin’ y’ a question.”

  She looked at her mother. All the love she felt for her rushed forth and Eva thought her heart would break. “I don’t know, Mama,” she said. “Let me think about
it.”

  She went to her room, feeling weak. If only the heat would let up. It was too hot to think about serious matters. A small gray stuffed mouse on the floor caught her eye. Its floppy ears were almost hidden under a toy vanity that was once her favorite. She picked up the mouse and fingered its ear. How could anyone want to hurt Tanya, a six-year-old? She remembered the day Tanya was born. Then she herself had been nine.

  She lay face down on her bed, wishing she had never said she would go to Chatman. She was not a super-smart student—a strong C + or B−—and her parents were not rich. They didn’t even have a telephone at home.

  Her mind flashed to that girl again who had made her wait at the counter. She didn’t even know me. All I wanted was three little things … to buy them. Could she face a thousand girls like that at Chatman? Suddenly Eva was overwhelmed with fear. She could see their house blown into a thousand pieces. “O God, save me from all this,” she prayed.

  Maybe she should go to her Aunt Shirley’s … the whole family should go. But how could she tell Mrs. Floyd who had done all of that planning, that she was too scared to go to Chatman. And all the people at the church? They were counting on her.

  She remembered the first reading from the Bible that morning:

  Ye are the light of the world. A city set on the hill cannot be hid.… Let your light so shine …

  And then her minister, Reverend Redmond, had talked, had talked to them solemnly, as if he wanted to comfort them all. His text was from Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 6:

  The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fettling together; and a little child shall lead them.

  Sweat poured off her in the heat of her tiny room. Yet, suddenly she felt bathed, fresh, her mind clear. She rushed through the house calling, “Ma, Ma, I don’t wanta go to Aunt Shirley’s. Mrs. Floyd wouldn’t know how to reach me when we git ready to go to Chatman.”

  Chapter 3

  Shadows lengthened, but Mossville did not cool. Sophia stood at her bedroom window, looking out beyond her backyard. People sat on porches, doors and windows were open wide. The sounds of a Sunday evening spread through the muggy air. Supper dishes clattered and tentative fingers stumbled through “Clair de Lune,” while the barking of dogs blended with the hum of the city.

  It was not much after five o’clock. In her own backyard Sohpia’s father sat in a comfortable chair with a book, her mother was quilt-piecing, and Burt lay in the hammock sleeping. How peaceful her family appeared after that stormy afternoon.

  Why had she opposed Burt and made that stupid outburst? Never before had she done such a thing in front of everybody. She remembered the hurt look on Burt’s face and again felt the guilt and shame that flooded her when she had fled to her room.

  The moment she shouted out had been the moment she realized that her family was falling apart over school integration. She didn’t want Negroes in their lives just as she didn’t want them in her school.

  Her mind was plagued with a nagging fear, with the anxiety she often felt when a storm was brewing. She sat quiet and still in a storm, chilled by lightning that licked the edge of dark clouds like the tongues of snakes, the thunder too far away to be heard.

  Sophia now fingered the ruffles on the white organdy curtains at the window and crushed them up around her face, thinking about her Grandma Stuart. If her grandma were alive, she would straighten Burt out.

  She sat on the floor beneath the window. In spite of the heat, she was comforted by the coolness of her room. Practically all the furniture in it had once belonged to her grandmother, Sophie Stuart. Sophia had been named for her, pronouncing Sophia with a long i, So-phi-a.

  The room was spacious enough to hold a four-poster bed. And even in summer Sophia insisted on covering that bed with a heavy white candlewick spread that was an heirloom in their family.

  “It’s nothing but a dust collector,” Ida had said when Sophia wanted the bedspread. “It’s old and hot and heavy.”

  “But I promise I’ll fold it every night. Please, may I?” Now, sometimes as she kept her promise, Sophia wondered if the beauty the spread gave was worth the trouble.

  She liked her room with its pale green walls and white ruffled curtains. The heaviness of an old desk and her bookcase was lessened by touches of color: pale yellow roses, a gold and blue pennant from Chatman High, a delicate hand-painted screen, Burt’s gift from Korea, and paintings of her own here and there on the walls.

  Now she stretched out on the floor and lay quiet and still, trying to concentrate on the sounds of that early evening, but her mind wandered back to Burt and the nine Negroes. She felt that exciting curiosity she had suppressed earlier, when she wondered how it would be with them in the classroom. Then suddenly she was frightened in a way that she had not been since she was a little girl.

  She could dimly perceive an evening, hot like this, when she was about six or seven years old. She had gone with Grandma Stuart to South End, a section of town where only Negroes lived. She rode in the back seat of a big black car while her Grandma drove. The pavement ended abruptly and Sophia found herself in another world, a world of dusty streets and small houses with unpainted sidings. Many of the houses were adorned with pots of ferns hanging on porches.

  Twilight was lavender and the people, dark as the twilight, sat on their porches. Soft voices were warmly punctuated with laughter. Sophia remembered the smells of spices, of fish and smoke mixed with dust.

  Her grandmother pulled up in front of a house where lots of people sat on the porch. The yard was filled with children playing; smaller ones jumped rope or played tag; large ones played an unknown circle game, singing and clapping their hands. They were having so much fun that Sophia wanted to join them.

  “I’ll play just a little while,” she said to Grandma Stuart. She reached to open the car door.

  “Don’t you open that door!” The tone startled Sophia and she looked at her grandmother. The look on her grandmother’s face frightened Sophia.

  “I’ll be right here,” Sophia said, thinking her grandmother felt she might get lost.

  “You will not get out of this car.”

  “Why, Grandma?”

  “Because I say so.”

  Her grandmother had never spoken to Sophia in that tone of voice before.

  Suddenly, Sophia became afraid. She crawled over the seat and sat close beside her grandmother. Her grandmother honked the horn.

  Soon a tall, dark woman came out to the car with a huge bundle wrapped in a white sheet.

  “Evenin’, Mis’ Stuart. Your washin’ all done, right here.”

  “Thank you, Letha,” her grandmother said, as she put some change into the woman’s hand.

  Sophia stayed close to her grandmother as they rode home. Her grandmother was unusually quiet. Sophia, still worried and afraid that she had upset her, finally said, “I just wanted to play.”

  Without looking at her, Grandma Stuart patted Sophia on the knee and said, “They are not our kind.”

  That was the beginning of many trips with her grandmother into South End. Sophia always rode up front. Sometimes they went in the mornings or early afternoons. The streets were quiet and dusty. Old women, shading themselves with parasols, walked on the narrow shoulder of the road. They seemed to disappear in the dust when Grandma Stuart sped by in her big car.

  If it was morning, fires blazed under black iron pots, steam rose from boiling clothes as women punched at them vigorously. Lines and lines of sheets, towels, shirts, and pillowcases dried in the white morning sun.

  Afternoons, Grandma Stuart would pull up fast, making the dust fly all the way to Letha’s porch where a small round kiln glowing with charcoal was stacked with flatirons. Sometimes Sophia saw Letha over an ironing board as they drove up.

  Always Letha’s dark face was wet with sweat and sometimes she came to the car with soapy water on her clothes from the washing board. Pale, pinkish hands, crinkle
d as if pickled by water, opened for the quarters Grandma Stuart placed in them, two for each bundle.

  A whiff of fragrance through her window now reminded her of the clean sweet smell of laundry dried in the sun. She remembered the excitement each week of opening the bundles of sheets and pillowcases; and Grandpa’s shirts by the dozens, starched and ironed like new. Sophia sighed and stirred on the floor. Twilight was now lavender here, too, and big green and yellow moths fluttered at her window. The air was still hot and muggy, but it was quieter. People were settling for the night.

  The ring of the alarm clock startled her. Then she remembered. Arnold was coming at seven! She must hurry. The cool shower pelting her and the thought that Arnold cared made her glow. She smiled as she recalled the day he left for school for the first time. They had wandered to the end of the train station’s platform away from the crowd to say good-bye. He held her hands and kissed her cheek. Her heart felt tight in her chest and she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. Then he was gone.

  After laying out her green voile dress, she rushed to do her hair up in a ponytail and tied it with a pale green ribbon. In the warm dampness, her hair curled in small ringlets around her face. After spraying all over with rose water, she felt cooler.

  She slipped into her dress and turned to survey herself in the mirror. The capelike collar barely covered the top of her arms. The slim bodice tapered to a full skirt that flattered her small waist. With naturally rosy lips, she needed little makeup. If only there were some magic to make the freckles disappear.

  The doorbell rang. She dabbed more rose water behind her ears and dashed down the stairs.

  There was something about Arnold that both disturbed and soothed her. His cool self-assurance. The first minutes alone with him could be terrifying. She often felt shy, sure that she knew nothing; she could not find the right words.

  Now, as she let him in, he smiled, and she knew that to say, “Hi,” was sufficient.

  “Hi,” he said. “You look fresh and cool …”

  “… and colorful,” she finished the sentence, unable to forget her freckles.