“Come in!” Evelyn shouted.
The morning of the first day at Kettle Creek Elementary School had passed without incident, and it was almost time for lunch.
The knocking continued.
“Come in!”
Now someone was pounding. The students were wide-eyed. Evelyn interrupted her lesson, walking through the narrow row between desks and wondering what was so important that she had to go to the trailer door. When she opened it, a tall white student shoved a paper at her and left without speaking.
Guess he didn’t want to come into a colored classroom.
Evelyn’s stomach clenched as she read the note.
Teachers:
There has been a problem at the high school. Do not leave your classrooms until your assigned lunchtime. Escort your students to the cafeteria in an orderly manner.
The lunch aides will keep the students indoors for recess. Do not discuss this information with your classes.
Mr. Palmer, Principal
Evelyn scanned the area outside the open door of her mobile classroom. A gentle breeze rustled the trees beneath a cloudless blue sky. The street was empty. All police, reporters, and parents were gone. What was the problem?
She closed the door with a gentle tug, wishing it had a window. When she turned, thirty pairs of questioning eyes greeted her. One boy bravely raised his hand, and she nodded at him.
“Ms. Glover, what he done give you? Are we movin’ agin?”
“No, child, nothing like that. Just directions on how to get to the cafeteria. You must be getting hungry. We can line up inside now, and then I’ll take you there. Doesn’t that sound good?”
She hated lying, even with the goal of protecting her students.
Once her class was safely situated in the cafeteria, Evelyn spotted Lulu walking in the opposite direction.
“Lulu, where are you going?”
“Don’t know. No one told me where to eat.”
Lulu looked distraught. Her fitted shirtwaist dress appeared to be the only thing holding her together.
“The teachers’ lunchroom. Follow me.”
As they walked, Lulu wouldn’t stop talking. “I’m an aide in a class. Supposed to be a teacher, but they don’t let me do anything. Then I had to cover another class so the teacher could have a break. A break! To use the bathroom! Don’t know where our bathroom is.”
She kept it up, even when they entered the lunchroom full of teachers they didn’t know. The white teachers were whispering to one another: “How unruly are your new ones?” “Is that smell from their hair?”
Still, Lulu wouldn’t stop complaining.
“Hush, now.” Evelyn gave her friend a gentle nudge with her arm.
“Oh no—two more,” one of the white teachers whispered too loudly.
“Are they going to use our dishes?” another murmured.
Lulu didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, it didn’t stop her from talking. “Well, aren’t you the one—Evelyn Glover, handpicked to keep your class.”
Evelyn gritted her teeth, feeling the eyes of the white teachers on her. “Let’s talk about it later.”
They joined a table of black teachers in the back of the room. Evelyn’s chair wobbled, and she saw that one of the plastic caps on the legs was missing.
Lulu continued to mumble. “Lordy, least they gave us a table inside.”
Evelyn thought about the previous day, which felt a world away by now. As the men with clipboards had left her classroom, she had overheard Mr. Palmer tell Mr. Peterson, “If I have to take all these teachers, I want only the best to keep their classes.”
Lulu gasped and poked Evelyn in the ribs, bringing her back to the present moment. What had finally made Lulu stop complaining?
It was Colleen, sitting down at the same table of white teachers who had been so rude.
A blond ponytail swished as the teacher at the end of the table stood up and said, “Same here, darlin’—don’t think we need Yankees helping us with our coloreds.”
A fierce blush rose on Colleen’s face, hiding her freckles. Colleen bit her lip and stared down at her brown paper lunch bag.
Well, that girl has her own troubles, doesn’t she?
At the end of the day, Lulu came to Evelyn’s classroom trailer. Her easy laugh was gone, and her eyelids were puffy. Wide circles of perspiration marked her underarms. Lulu’s class had been divided up into the other second grades. Six in Colleen’s, and a new white teacher got the rest. What was Lulu supposed to do now?
“Look here, now, Lu. Don’t let them beat you down,” Evelyn said. But she felt a quiet guilt. She was proud to have been chosen to keep her class, but did that pride betray her friend?
Lulu shook her head. “You saw what those white teachers did to Colleen at lunch. White women usually say mean things in a sweet voice with a smile on their face. Today, they didn’t even bother to smile.”
Evelyn shrugged. “Colleen can deal with her own kind. She must know how to handle them.”
“Do you hear yourself? Colleen’s no better off than we are.”
“I can’t worry about a white woman.” Evelyn opened a drawer to her desk, staring down into it. She couldn’t remember what she was looking for.
Lulu tugged at the buttons on her shirtdress. “It’s hot in here, Evie. I can hardly get a breath.”
“I turned off the air conditioner because these poor babies were cold. They’re not used to it.”
Lulu walked to the back and turned it on, letting the blower wick the sweat trickling down her neck.
“Humph. Feels good to me.”
Evelyn frowned. “I told them to bring a sweater or wear a long-sleeved shirt tomorrow.”
“You’ve got no worries, Evelyn Glover. Know what I had to put up with today? Is this a hundred years ago?”
Evelyn searched for the right thing to say. Lulu was a kind soul who visited her students at home if they took ill. Her desk and bookshelves had been cluttered with cherished treasures from years of teaching second-graders. She even saved handmade creations of pipe cleaners and Popsicle sticks licked clean.
“Tell me about it. I’m listening.”
“Those white teachers got special meetings on how to integrate our children into their classes, but no one could bother telling me where I could eat my lunch.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“And the white teachers keep complaining.” Lulu sat on a student’s desk and said, in a high, whiny voice, “‘What are we supposed to do with these children? Why did they close the colored schools now?’”
“I guess that’s the one thing we agree on with the white teachers. Why now?” Evelyn walked over to the air conditioner to turn down the blower. “We should have been included in the meeting. Remember, if we don’t do well, the principal can transfer us.”
Lulu scowled. “For what? Do you see any white faces in your classroom? And where will they send me, Evie? I’m at the bottom now. There’s no place lower for me to go.”