Fire from the Rock Read online

  He shifted his weight against the wall. “I guess I was a little mad at you,” he admitted.

  Sylvia looked shocked. “What did I ever do to you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” He paused. “It’s just that I want you to stay here, and I think you’re gonna go there, and it upset me that you aren’t putting me first.”

  “You sure picked a funny way of showing your pain,” Sylvia said sarcastically.

  “I’m sorry, Sylvie. Can we start over?”

  Just then Donna Jean came tearing down the steps, almost out of breath. “Church is about to start and Mama wants to know where you are!” she said breathlessly. “You better quit your lovey-dovey talk and get upstairs—pronto! They’ve already started singing!”

  “Thanks, DJ,” Sylvia whispered as she hurried up the stairs to the main auditorium. She turned to Reggie and said, “I need you to be there for me. I’ve gotta know you’ve got my back—no matter what happens.”

  “I want you to be my girl,” he said earnestly. They had arrived at the door to the auditorium. Two ushers stood there, faces full of disapproval.

  She brushed a speck off her skirt. “I’ll think about it,” Sylvia told him calmly. “Call me tonight.” I can’t believe I handled this so well. Wait till I tell Lou Ann!

  Sylvia picked up a hymnal from the stack in the lobby and hurried to the second pew from the front to squeeze in next to her frowning mother. “I had to go to the bathroom,” she whispered. Her mother looked unconvinced. DJ giggled.

  The singing began then, and Sylvia settled into the pew feeling as if she had won a battle but not the war.

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1957

  Where are you going, Gary?” Mr. Patterson demanded. “Every evening after dinner you disappear, coming back at ungodly hours. What’s your problem, boy?”

  “It’s not me that’s got the problem,” Gary replied sullenly, looking at the floor.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” his father asked, leaning in close to Gary’s face.

  Sylvia, sitting on the plastic-covered sofa, watched the whole scene in silence. She hated it when they fought; it made her stomach hurt. Gary needed so much in a hurry, and her father was like their old car—slow and dependable.

  Gary, bristling with impatience, yelled back, right into his father’s face, “I’ve got to get out of this house! I can’t breathe in here!”

  “You seemed to be breathing just fine while you ate your mother’s fried chicken!” his father retorted. “Show some respect, boy.”

  Gary sagged. “Look, Dad. You know I love you and Mama and the girls. But try to understand my side of it. There’s a whole world of change happening out there, and I want to be part of it!”

  “Believe it or not, I understand, son. I really do. I let Sylvia’s name go on the list, didn’t I?”

  “That’s nice for Sylvie, but what about me? What about my chance?”

  “Be serious, son. They’d kill you over at Central—literally.”

  “Some stuff is worth dying for, Dad.” Gary glanced over at Sylvia, then back at his father.

  Sylvia gasped.

  “Gary, you’re like a fire truck driving down the street looking for disaster. The fire will find you soon enough. Don’t ask for trouble.”

  “Trouble got here before I did,” Gary replied darkly. He had sense enough to stop the argument there. “Look, Dad. I’m just going over to Anita’s house. Me and Reggie and some of the other kids are going to hang out”

  Reggie’s hanging with Gary now? This is not good.

  “And what will you do there that you can’t do here?” his father asked stiffly.

  “Breathe. Dream. Talk. Plan.”

  “Plan for what?”

  “The future instead of the past, Dad. Me and my boys aren’t afraid like you are.” Gary put on his jacket. “Besides, Anita believes in me,” he added pointedly. His father ignored the taunt but looked a little hurt, a little scared.

  “I promise I won’t look for trouble, but I won’t run from it if it finds me. But I gotta go. I just have to.”

  Mr. Patterson sighed and opened the front door for his son. “Try not to be too late. Your mother worries.”

  Gary nodded and bounded out before his father could change his mind. Mr. Patterson sighed heavily, turned, then saw Sylvia sitting in the semidarkness.

  “Gary’s a good kid, Daddy,” Sylvia began.

  “I guess I’m getting old, Sylvia,” her father said as he sat in the chair across from her. “I just don’t understand young folks anymore.” He rubbed his forehead.

  “Did your father understand you?” she asked.

  “He died before he had a chance to worry about how I’d turn out,” Mr. Patterson admitted. “They killed him, you know. Hung him from the apple tree in front of our house.”

  “I know, Daddy,” Sylvia whispered.

  “Seeing him hang from that tree changed me forever.” He paused. “But I couldn’t afford the luxury of being angry and having an attitude. I had to help feed my family.”

  “You hardly ever talk about him,” Sylvia whispered. “I was really surprised when you talked about him at church last month.”

  Her father nodded in understanding. “Gary looks just like my father did—thin build, almond eyes, freckles—and it scares me that he acts like my father, as well.”

  “Really?” Sylvia asked in surprise.

  “My father got himself killed because he had a smart mouth and a cocky attitude. White people hated him because he walked with a swagger and wouldn’t pretend to be less than a man.”

  “So that’s why you’re always on Gary?”

  “I couldn’t bear to lose my son the same way I lost my father,” Mr. Patterson explained. He looked directly at Sylvia then. “And I’d curl up and die if something happened to you, Sylvie. I’m a man of peace, but I’d give my life to protect you! You know that, don’t you?”

  Sylvia couldn’t believe her father was talking to her like this. Mama must have put something in his Kool-Aid!

  Sylvia walked over and touched her father gently. “I love you, Daddy,” she told him. He grabbed her hand briefly but firmly, then headed heavily up the stairs.

  Sylvia sat for a few minutes longer in the darkened living room, aware of all the words that were not said, and she trembled. For herself. For her father and brother. For the whole family. The silence settled uncomfortably, like dust.

  Wednesday, February 13, 1957

  Searching for a Dream-A Poem for Gary

  You grasp frantically

  to fight away the void of air

  and the collapse of earth

  and the sting of fire.

  You reach wildly

  to grab the knife of anger

  and the sword of sorrow

  and the dagger of defeat.

  You shiver silently

  to shield yourself from fear of failure

  and the guilt of family

  and the submission to need.

  You pace nervously

  to run beyond the pain of memories

  and the death of dreams

  and the loss of hope.

  You search desperately

  to find the answers to questions unasked

  and the key to all possibilities

  and the source of the invisible flames.

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1957

  Lordy, Lordy! Would you look at that! The world is turnin’ and I’m livin’ to see it!” Mrs. Patterson exclaimed as she came into the house from work. She slammed a copy of the current issue of Time magazine on the kitchen table and then, very unlike the mother Sylvia was used to, she danced around the table. The cover of the magazine was decorated with a full-face picture of Martin Luther King, Jr.—in color.

  Sylvia didn’t know which was more surprising—Mama showing off like that, or the fact that the very proper, very white Time magazine had decided to put Dr. King on the cover! Sylvia picked up the magazine and studied it closely. She
decided that Dr. King was a good-looking man, a little like the man of her dreams.

  “I wonder why they have him looking away from the camera, Mama,” Sylvia wondered out loud.

  Her mother looked at the photo closely. “He looks like something in the distance is making him angry, and he fully intends to make it right just as soon as the photographers are done with him! Umph! I love a powerful man!”

  Sylvia gazed at her mother in astonishment. “I’ve never heard you talk like this, Mama.”

  Her mother flicked her hand as if to dismiss the thought. She was peering at the photo again. “You know, he didn’t seem to be the least concerned with who was taking his picture, or even that he was about to make history by being on the cover of this magazine.” She continued to marvel.

  “I guess he had important things on his mind,” Sylvia said.

  The picture showed a man with a full face, strong cheek-bones, and a large nose. He did not smile.

  “I bet this man would really enjoy chomping down on a pork chop or a buttermilk biscuit,” Mrs. Patterson said, smoothing the cover with her hands and smiling like she’d found a new recipe.

  He wore a gray suit, a crisp white shirt that Sylvia figured his wife took great care in ironing, and a stunning red tie. Her father always wore a dumpy blue suit and a blue spotted tie. She loved her daddy, but Sylvia had never seen him look as bold and powerful as Martin Luther King did in this picture.

  “Why is a bus in the picture, Mama?” Sylvia asked.

  “I suppose because of his success with the boycott in Montgomery,” her mother replied.

  Sylvia pointed to the photo. “And look how they put a pulpit in the background, showing Dr. King preaching, which I guess is his other job when he isn’t out changing the world.”

  “You know what, Sylvie?” her mother mused.

  “What, Mama?”

  “I think this is a picture that will make white people very uncomfortable.” Mother and daughter exchanged glances of understanding.

  Sylvia promised herself that the next day after school she would take twenty cents of her lunch money and buy her own copy of the magazine. A man like that was worth it.

  Tuesday, March 19, 1957

  Maybe folks here in this country should just start over, like they are doing in Africa. In this week’s Life magazine, I read about a new country that’s just getting started—Ghana. I don’t know much about Africa, but I learned so much when I did my report that now I’m trying to read books to learn more. Each of those little squares we see on the map of Africa is about the size of some of our states, but each one is a separate country, with different languages, ruling systems, money, and customs. Most Americans tend to think of Africa as one big mysterious country, but it’s made up of dozens of individual fascinating places.

  It’s cool to think about the birth of a country. I wonder how they decide the rules and the rulers. It’s probably a lot like the birth of a real baby. After the initial happiness, they get grumpy with morning sickness, like Mama was before Donna Jean was born. I wonder if Negro women who are about to have babies this year in Little Rock are worried about bringing another child into this world of confusion.

  I noticed that Martin Luther King had been invited to the celebration for Ghana. There was a little tiny picture of him at the bottom of the page. The magazine referred to him as simply “an Alabama bus boycotter.”

  SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1957

  Sylvia was in a good mood. Reggie had called her earlier in the day and they had talked for about fifteen minutes— about nothing, really, but everything he said made her laugh, even the alligator and crocodile stuff. He didn’t argue this time about Central or integration or any of the racial issues that Gary seemed to be always angry about. Sylvia didn’t like the fact that Reggie kept hanging out with Gary and the older boys, but she said nothing because she hated arguing with him. She was relieved that the Candy crisis seemed to be over.

  The sun was out, making it look like spring might decide to show up after all. Sylvia had changed the sheets on her bed, and Donna Jean’s as well, and everything in her room smelled fresh and clean. The radio blasted as loud as she dared, and she hummed along with the songs she knew. Donna Jean was spending the afternoon with the little girls from next door; Gary had disappeared to one of his political activist meetings, and her father had gone to the brickyard to put in a few hours.

  Thinking of Reggie, she strolled down the stairs and into the kitchen loudly singing the end of her favorite song, “... that you’ll always be there at the end of my prayer!”

  “What kind of song is that about praying, Sylvie?” her mother asked. “It sounds more like a love song than a church song.”

  “Isn’t it all right to pray about love, Mama?” Sylvia asked with a grin on her face.

  Mama and Aunt Bessie were sipping tea and pasting green stamps into books. Both of them looked at Sylvia as if she had lost her mind.

  “What do you know about love, child?” Aunt Bessie asked.

  “It’s just a song called ‘My Prayer,’ Aunt Bessie. It’s by The Platters,” Sylvia answered defensively. “All the kids at school think they’re the most.”

  “The most what?” Mama asked with a laugh.

  “You know, they dig them—they think they’re really cool.” Sylvia smiled to herself, knowing her mother and Bessie just didn’t get it.

  “You better not let your daddy hear you talk that foolish slang talk or sing those love songs. If it’s not a hymn or spiritual, you know he’ll call it a sin.”

  “Daddy thinks everything fun is a sin,” Sylvia replied in exasperation.

  “Probably is.” Aunt Bessie chuckled as she sipped her tea. “You ought to hear some of the stories from the women in my shop as I do their hair. Oh, yeah. The most dangerous fun is big-time sin.”

  Sylvia’s mother gave a warning look to her sister, then said to Sylvia, “You want to help?” She offered her a pile of green stamps. Mama brought them home from the grocery store and saved them to redeem them in books. When the books were full, they could be redeemed for gifts and prizes. “Glory streams from the table of daily life,” her mother said cryptically.

  Rarely did Sylvia completely understand what her mother meant when she quoted those sayings of hers. “Do I have to?” Sylvia asked with a sigh.

  “No, but when I save enough books to get you a record player so you can play those ridiculous rock and-roll songs you seem to like so much, you’ll be sorry you didn’t help.”

  Sylvia wanted a record player more than anything, so she pulled up a chair and grabbed a pile of the stamps. She slid them across the wet cloth on the table to moisten them just enough so they’d stick in the book.

  “How many books do we need to get a record player?” she asked, looking at the small pile of completed booklets.

  “About twenty-five—the same number I need to get a new electric coffeepot.” Her mother gave her a smile.

  “No fair! You don’t even drink coffee!” Sylvia told her, pointing to her teacup.

  “Your daddy does.”

  “I think I deserve a record player more than Daddy needs a coffeepot. He likes the way you make his coffee on the stove, anyway.”

  “Hush while you’re ahead, child,” Aunt Bessie said then. “Paste and hope.”

  Sylvia sat down and ran a strip of stamps over the wet cloth. As she worked, her fingers quickly became tinged with green and slightly sticky.

  “I heard they’re going to try to integrate a few schools this fall in Virginia and Tennessee also,” Sylvia’s mother commented.

  “I pray for those children. They should only have to worry about learning their times tables, not how to dodge rotten eggs or rocks being thrown at them,” Aunt Bessie said bitterly. “You heard anything from the school folks here yet?”

  “No, but I read in the newspaper that the Arkansas Senate passed not one, but four segregation bills. One made attendance not mandatory at all integrated schools,” Sylvia’s mot
her replied.

  Sylvia looked up with amazement. “What? That means white kids can skip school and not get in trouble. No fair!”

  “Who said anything about fair?” Aunt Bessie replied angrily, making her stamps so wet they refused to stick in the booklet. “They don’t want us in their schools, and they’re not going to make it easy for anybody who tries.”

  “What a cost. What a cost,” Sylvia’s mother said, shaking her head, “that we must pay for progress.”

  “Speaking of cost, did you hear they’re paying the Jews over a thousand dollars each if they survived Auschwitz?” Aunt Bessie asked as she pasted another page of stamps, a little less wet this time.

  Sylvia looked up with interest as she remembered that hot day in Mr. Zucker’s store. She had learned in school about the horrors of the concentration camps during the war. Over six million Jews had been killed, similar to the millions of Africans that had been killed during the time of slavery. She wondered if that payment involved Mr. Zucker, and if it did, if he would apply for the money. It didn’t seem like something he would want to remember or call attention to.

  “They deserve more than that,” Sylvia’s mother replied with a shudder. “They were starved, tortured, and humiliated. So many of their families were gassed like animals, then burned in giant ovens. It’s horrible what people can think up to hurt one another.” She touched Sylvia gently with green-tinged fingertips.

  Sylvia’s mind reeled as she thought about kids her age being sold at auction, or being executed in a concentration camp, or being lynched like Emmet Till. And here she was, getting ready to volunteer to be persecuted for going to school. She shook her head.

  “Not much has changed,” Aunt Bessie said quietly.

  Sylvia spent the rest of the afternoon with her mother and her aunt, pasting the stamps into the books, and soaking in the edges of their adult conversation.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1957

  Miss Ethel Washington held a sheet of paper in her hand, which trembled slightly. Sylvia could see only that the words on it were typed in two neat columns. The class was silent-even Calvin had no jokes today.