Fire from the Rock Page 13

“Well, I’m glad you told me. I don’t want you to ever go out alone, you hear? Little Rock just ain’t safe, especially for you.”

  Sylvia sniffed back her tears. “I’ll be careful. I promise.” She was glad she had opened up to him. It felt right.

  “And, Sylvie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You better think long and hard about being one of the integrationist students. Maybe what I’ve been saying all along is not so stupid after all.”

  “I know,” she replied quietly. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  Saturday, May 4, 1957

  I think I finally understand Gary’s anger and hatred and his need to do! It’s a good thing I like to write—it’s my way of letting out all that stuff without screaming. I want to hit something, hurt something! I want to break a window or smash in some ugly, yellow teeth! I want to cry.

  I can still smell their rotten breath, see the hatred in their little bitty eyes, feel their hands on us. And how dare Johnny touch my baby sister! She’s too young to have to live like this. She’s supposed to worry about stupid little-kid stuff like playing with her dolls and teacups, not about unwashed teenaged bigots knocking her around on the sidewalk. This is going to mess her up for a long time—maybe for the rest of her life. Memories like that don’t go away.

  I know I’m not going to forget. Ever.

  Is this what it will be like every day at Central High? Walking down the halls with people who hate you just because your skin is darker than theirs? Maybe I’m not the hero Miss Lillie says I am. Maybe this is not the path I’m supposed to walk. So many folks are depending on me, putting me up on a pedestal I never asked to be on. It was never my idea to do this anyway—it was Gary who wanted to be in the front of the fight. I hate fighting. Does that make me a coward?

  It could have been so much worse. If they had wanted to, they could have dragged us off and killed us. Nobody would have paid much attention to teenagers horsing around on a public street in broad daylight in downtown Little Rock. Not until it was too late.

  Am I willing to die for all this? Honestly, I don’t think so.

  MONDAY, MAY 6, 1957

  You got it! You got it!” Sylvia crowed excitedly.

  Instead of the coffeepot, Sylvia’s mother had redeemed the green stamp books for the record player. Made of pink plastic, it was sitting on the little table next to Sylvia’s bed when she got home from school. She ran to her mother and hugged her tightly.

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. You make good grades, you help me around the house, and there’s no telling what’s going to happen this fall. Our yesterdays and tomorrows are written in the stars.”

  Sylvia ignored her mother’s quote of the day and hugged her once more. “You’re the best,” Sylvia told her mother.

  “Maybe the record player will help. But don’t play that rock-and-roll stuff too loud when Daddy is home. You know he doesn’t like it.”

  “I promise.” She ran back to her room and even showed Donna Jean how to set a record carefully on the turntable, then place the needle on the record as it spun.

  “You gonna buy a million new records now?” she asked as they listened to a Johnny Mathis song.

  “No, not a million, but maybe a few. Records cost about forty-nine cents, so I’ll have to save my milk money for a couple of weeks.”

  “Which one are you gonna buy first?”

  Sylvia grinned. “‘You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog,’ by Elvis Presley! Daddy will love it!”

  The two girls collapsed on the bed in laughter. Sylvia sat up when the telephone rang.

  “You think it’s Reggie?” DJ asked.

  Sylvia didn’t have a chance to answer out loud.

  “Sylvia, come downstairs,” her mother called from the bottom of the steps. “Gary, you and Donna Jean as well.”

  The children trooped down the steps and into the living room. Everyone’s face was a question mark. “Who was on the phone?” Sylvia asked finally.

  “That was Miss Ethel Washington.” Their mother paused. “The list of potential students to go to Central has been narrowed to seventeen. Sylvia Faye, you’re on that list.”

  I Love Lucy was playing on the television, but no one in the living room noticed as Lucy tried to sneak once more into Ricky’s band. No one laughed as she fell over with a huge headdress made of bananas. Everyone instead looked at Sylvia like she had won a prize or something. It made her feel uncomfortable.

  “What happens now?” Donna Jean asked as she gave her sister a squeeze.

  “Are you scared?” Gary asked Sylvia. “You want me to teach you how to fight?”

  “Gary!” his mother said sternly.

  Sylvia looked down at her small, brown hands and curled them into balls—fists obviously too weak to do any fighting. “I wouldn’t know what to do,” Sylvia said helplessly.

  “She’s going to need to know how to protect herself! I’ve seen what those people can do, and I’m not going to let them harm my sister!”

  “All you’re going to do is get her hurt,” Mr. Patterson said sternly. “Why do you have to fight all the time? Isn’t it possible that integration can happen peacefully?”

  “No!” Gary yelled. “It is not possible!” Sylvia had never seen him so upset—and he was always angry at something.

  “Shut up, boy!” his father demanded. Sylvia glanced at DJ, who blinked in surprise. Gary took one step back. Smoky feelings hovered over the quickly silenced room.

  “I heard Miss Daisy Bates is going to try to teach the young people how to approach difficult situations with peace and nonviolence,” Mrs. Patterson said, her voice purposely calm and quiet. “There is a meeting on Saturday at her home. I guess we’ll find out more then. Peace is a powerful panacea.”

  “It won’t work,” Gary replied, his tone much quieter, but still argumentative. “And neither will your quotes, Mama. You’re trying to fight battles with proverbs instead of swords.”

  Mrs. Patterson flashed her eyes at her son. “Don’t push me, young man. You will respect me in my house, or I’ll show you a side of me you don’t want to meet!”

  Gary bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Mama.” Then he raised his eyes again, pleading with both his parents to understand. “You gotta try to see my point. This is no Sunday school picnic—it’s a war for our survival! Even her boyfriend agrees with me.”

  Sylvia cringed, waiting for her father’s reaction.

  “What boyfriend?” her father asked, bristling even more.

  “You started talking to me when I was fifteen, Lester,” his wife reminded him. “But that’s not the issue here. The problem is your boiling point, Gary. I worry about you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama. But for once I’m right, and you and Daddy are wrong!” Angrily he opened the front door and stormed out of the house. The slamming of the door echoed throughout the house. There sure has been a lot of door-slamming lately, Sylvia thought sadly.

  The perplexed parents looked at each other in helplessness. The world was starting to spin faster than anyone in the family knew how to handle.

  Sylvia had barely said a word since the phone call. She honestly did not know what to say.

  Tuesday, May 21, 1957

  Gary is going to burst into flames. He wants to be in the middle of this fight so bad he can taste it. He wants to taunt white kids who dare to oppose his presence in their school. He wants to punch the first kid who calls him a name or who treats him like dirt. He scares me. I’m afraid he’s going to do something stupid. And now Reggie is following Gary like a little puppy, copying the words and actions of Gary and his friends.

  It seems to me you need to have a reason to be angry all the time. Until he started hanging with Gary, Reggie enjoyed life with his parents in a nice house, had plenty of spending money, and even an after-school job at one of the department stores downtown. The owner really likes him and says he’ll let Reggie train for a management position. What
’s he so mad at?

  Gary wants change right away. Maybe his way is better—it sure would be quicker. If people are going to hate us anyway, why not fight?

  Sugar Ray Robinson, a Negro boxer, knocked out his white opponent last week in a championship prizefight. So now he’s the world champ, and most of the colored men I know think Robinson is awesome. Even some white people admire him. So what’s the difference? If they pay you to fight, it’s acceptable, but if somebody like Gary fights, then it’s wrong? Gary says he is willing to fight for rights and freedom and a better life. Robinson fights for money. Which is better?

  I feel very alone. Lou Ann barely talks to me anymore. She told me I was “trying to be white,” and I need to stay with my own kind. I try to talk to Rachel, but there’s so much she just doesn’t get about this situation. She gets to go to Central High in the fall. Nobody cares that she is Jewish. She got her class schedule in the mail last week.

  I read in the State Press a couple of days ago that a black student at the University of Texas was removed from her role as the lead in the school opera because the segregationists said the part called for a white person. I wish my voice was good enough to sing opera. It seems to me that if she could sing well enough to get that part, she must have a pretty powerful voice. What does her skin color have to do with her singing voice? Doesn’t singing come from inside the body?

  The weather has been terrible-dark and overcast and rainy. In Missouri and Kansas yesterday, a huge tornado ripped through the two states and forty-eight people got killed. Dozens of houses and barns and businesses were destroyed. I listen to the news and read the paper and all I see is death and destruction and despair.

  And I’m supposed to change the world? Hah.

  Great Britain is testing nuclear bombs in the Pacific. I know that’s a long way from England, but what about the people who live near where they are testing that bomb? I wonder if anybody asked them if they minded a big old dangerous bomb going off in their backyard. I bet they didn’t. Maybe all this that’s happening in the world is a sign that what we are doing here in Little Rock is not the right thing.

  And I’m supposed to change the world? Hah.

  Three of the seventeen students who were on the list have already removed their names. One girl quit because her mother’s job was threatened. Another girl said she wanted to be a cheerleader more than she wanted to be a freedom fighter. I think she was just scared. And one of the boys quit because he said he had a chance to go to college on a basketball scholarship. He couldn’t risk losing that one chance to make it. So far, it looks like I’m still going. It’s terrifying.

  And I’m supposed to change the world? Hah.

  THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1957

  Sylvia awoke to an absolutely lovely morning—the last day at Dunbar for the ninth graders. The bad weather of the week before had disappeared. This was to be a day of finality and good-byes and uncertain futures for all of the graduates of Dunbar. The sun shone brightly, and if clouds awaited any of them, no one could tell by the bright possibilities of the sky that morning.

  “Dipped in brown gravy and dressed in white.” That’s how her mother described Sylvia as she left for school that morning. She wore a white, flared spaghetti-strap dress with a crinoline slip. Her mother had worked for hours on her sewing machine, making sure it was perfect—and it was. Sylvia felt like a princess. She wished every day could be this delicious.

  At school the girls strutted up and down the halls, all in lovely dresses of blues and greens and yellows—a rainbow of giggles and press-curled hair. They flirted with the boys, who wore slippery-soled new shoes, and spent lots of time in the bathroom mirrors, applying the pale pink lipstick and pancake makeup that Lou Ann had brought in her purse.

  All the boys wore dark suits, white shirts, and skinny little ties. Calvin was so proud of his new suit he kept the price tag on it—$9.98 from Sears! Sylvia knew she would miss silly old Calvin. If I go to Central, who will make me laugh? she thought desperately.

  Candy Castle showed up, the last one to arrive at the building, of course, in a cherry-colored velvet party dress. She made no pretense of hiding the lipstick and bright red fingernail polish she wore. “What difference does it make if I’m late?” she said with a laugh. “It’s the last day of school.” Sylvia chuckled to herself, figuring if she was a princess today, then Candy had to be the Wicked Witch of the West. Candy cheerfully ignored the looks the girls gave her, and passed out pieces of red-and-white peppermint candy to anyone who wanted them—mostly the boys.

  Sylvia jumped when she realized Reggie had eased up close behind her. “You look lovely in white,” he whispered. “She looks like a clown.”

  Sylvia relaxed, turned to face him, and smiled. “Actually, I feel a little sorry for Candy,” she said.

  “How come?”

  “Well, she lives with an elderly aunt and uncle who basically ignore her. I think she just needs someone to love her—as long as it’s not you,” Sylvia added shyly.

  “No worry about that,” Reggie replied. “I’m working on somebody else right now!” He grinned.

  “And who would that be?”

  “Miss Ethel Washington!” he cried out. Then he ran down the hall laughing. Sylvia watched him run, enjoying every step he took.

  “Looks like you got Reggie’s nose sewn up tight—for now,” Lou Ann said as she approached.

  “I’m working on my stitches!” Sylvia replied with a grin. She was glad Lou Ann was in a good mood and speaking to her today. “You’ve been a big help, Lou Ann.”

  “I guess you’re on your own now, kid,” Lou Ann said, frowning a little. She wandered off to get autographs.

  Each graduate had an autograph book and they spent most of the day getting signatures from every single person they knew—teachers and students both. Some kids just signed their name on the colorful pages, but some tried to be clever and write little verses. Calvin Cobbs wrote in Sylvia’s book, “I like you, I like you, I like you so well; If I had a peanut, I’d give you the shell.” She knew she would really miss sweet, silly Calvin.

  Lou Ann wrote, “Sylvia, Sylvia, sitting on a fence; trying to go to high school without any sense.” Then she taped two pennies under her name—for luck—and said, “One is for school sense, the other is for boy sense. You might want to use both of them for boys because school doesn’t look like it will be much fun for you.”

  Sylvia sighed because Lou Ann always spoke the truth. She’d saved a whole page for Reggie—a green one. He took almost fifteen minutes to write the message, then he folded the page into a triangle. When he gave the autograph book back to her, he looked a little embarrassed. “Don’t show this to all your friends, okay?”

  “I promise,” Sylvia assured him.

  She opened it a few minutes later. She thought the message would be long and complicated, but all it said was, “I dream of a future with you.” He’d signed it, “Love, Reggie—1957-” Sylvia’s heart thundered with delight and she held the autograph book close to her body. She had never read anything so sweet and wonderful. And he’d used the word love.

  Miss Washington, according to tradition, took each student aside to say “one nice thing” before graduation. It was very private and students took Miss Washington’s words quite seriously. But Calvin, who just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, told Sylvia what she said to him: “Calvin, never lose your gift of laughter and love of flowers. They will save you from despair.” Sylvia thought that was a little depressing, but she didn’t tell him.

  When Sylvia walked in to ask Miss Washington to sign her autograph book, she was a little nervous. First, Miss Washington told Sylvia that her dress was lovely, complimenting her mother on her fine sewing skills. Sylvia blushed and thanked her, but she figured that was a compliment to her mother, not for herself.

  Then Miss Washington looked at Sylvia and said, “Sylvia Faye, I know you dream of greatness. Many students do. But you are one of the few that will succeed. I am proud to know yo
u.”

  Sylvia was stunned. She thanked the teacher and hurried out of the room. Unlike Calvin, she didn’t tell anyone what Miss Washington had said.

  At the end of the day an awards ceremony was held. Her parents and Donna Jean all came—even Gary showed up, scowling whenever one of his former teachers wanted to give him a hug. The boys in their class received certificates for excellence in categories like carpentry and agriculture, as well as honors for math and science and spelling. Reggie, the best in the class in science and math, received a special honor award trimmed in gold. His mother, beaming with pride, took lots of pictures with her Brownie camera.

  Sylvia received certificates for typing and sewing, as well as excellence in English, history, spelling, and a special award for poetry. What seemed to make her parents most proud was when they called her name for the National Junior Honor Society. Sylvia walked to the front, her white dress swaying gently from the huge petticoat she wore, and proudly accepted the honor. Her mother cried.

  Thursday, June 6, 1957

  I write poems all the time, but I feel like most of them aren’t very good. I don’t really know because I haven’t got nerve enough to show them to my teachers, and I know I’ll never show anything about love or kissing to my mother. She just wouldn’t understand. I’ll never be able to put verses together like Langston Hughes or write prose like Zora Neale Hurston, but somehow, Reggie makes me feel poetic. I wrote these after our graduation from Dunbar. Little Rock isn’t even close to an ocean. I must be crazy!

  Reggie

  HE MAKES ME TREMBLE

  He makes me tremble.

  His breath, soft upon my lips

  His arms, bold around my waist

  His smile, warm upon my face.

  His kiss, moist upon my mouth.

  His touch, hot within my heart. He makes me tremble.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1957—AFTERNOON

  Wasn’t that the best television show you ever watched in your life?“ Donna Jean screamed with delight. “Maybe I am learning how to be a teenager like you!” She seemed to be pleased with that idea.