The news shook Colleen to her core. She stared at the door for a long time after it closed gently.
Evelyn was right. She didn’t know how things worked around here. It wasn’t at all like The Little Rascals. She’d grown up watching the TV show, featuring Farina, Stymie, Buckwheat, and Alfalfa, poor black and white neighborhood friends whose adventures would have made any adult pull their own hair. No candles for the birthday cake? Use a firecracker. They had the He-Man Woman Haters Club and the Cluck Cluck Klams Club. That last one required meeting while wearing long white robes.
But the KKK wasn’t a TV show, or a game, or a club. Colleen had never realized that the hatred ran so deep. It was more than signs like WHITES ONLY. Everyone else seemed to know the unwritten rules. She had tried to put on a brave front so Evelyn wouldn’t think she was afraid. It had crossed her mind that she might be making herself a target, especially after the police officer had stopped her. Of course it had scared her, but she hadn’t considered that she might be putting children in danger.
As she drove home, she struggled with her next steps. Ask Miguel? Of course he would say she shouldn’t take the children to the library anymore. Confide in her father? Both men would want to protect her by eliminating the trip and therefore the danger. Was it smart or cowardly to stop?
Trust your gut. Take the warning, Colleen.
This felt like the time she’d had a research paper for her sociology class in college. The professor had been intrigued by the topic. Colleen had planned to interview local realtors. The research question had been “What is the basis of the demographic profile of the residents in her hometown?”
She remembered how confident she felt as she pulled up to the first realty office. That morning she wore her teacher interview clothes, a gray-and-white pin-striped gabardine suit. She had visited the library and found the census reports of the three towns bordering hers. She had the demographic information and statistics ready to back up her questions. A clipboard neatly held the questionnaires she had prepared.
Her view of her town as full of kind and reasonable people was clouded by the fact that not one black individual lived in it. The most common black faces she saw there belonged to men hopping on and off the garbage trucks as they drove down the streets and the one Negro cashier at the town’s supermarket, where she worked part-time. He went to a local college like she did. He also brought in the carts from the parking lot and unloaded the trucks in the back of the store.
The birds chirped on that bright, sunny April day as she walked up the landscaped concrete walk to the front door. There were four doorbells. Colleen pressed the one for Hometown Realty. A middle-aged woman wearing a shirtwaist dress buttoned up tight opened the door. Her dark red lipstick appeared freshly applied, and Colleen noticed a spot on her teeth when she smiled.
“Good morning. We’re just opening. Do you have an appointment?”
Colleen shifted the clipboard when she noticed the woman’s eyes drift to it.
“No, I’m a student at Teachers College, and I’m taking a survey. Are you the realtor?”
“No, I’m a secretary. Why don’t you come in, and I’ll ask the owner to speak to you?”
Colleen waited in the center of the office and tried to appear professional. The secretary hurried into an adjacent room. After a few minutes, a man came out to speak to her.
“Well, young lady, I understand that you have some questions for a school project?”
“Not a school project, but a survey that’s part of a research paper for one of my college classes. It won’t take very long. I’ll just ask a few questions and take some notes.”
“What is the topic?”
Colleen wished he would ask her to sit so that she could take notes. Her purse kept slipping off her shoulder when she held the clipboard to write on it.
“It’s a study of the community as an example of suburban life, which appears to exclude Negroes, when compared with adjoining communities.”
The realtor turned to speak with the secretary, who was now seated at a desk. The secretary’s eyes widened as he asked, “What is my appointment schedule this morning?”
She flipped through the calendar and answered, “You’re booked till three.”
Colleen looked around. No one else was there.
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t have time. Perhaps you can give me the questionnaire and come back later?”
She had no choice if she wanted the survey answered. Colleen shook his hand with a firm grip as she handed him the questionnaire. The realtor adjusted his glasses and shook his head as he glanced at it.
By the time she walked up the path to the third realty office, she knew that word had spread. A kindly gentleman met her at the door and suggested that she could get all of her questions answered if she went to see the person whose name and address were written on the index card he held out for her. She recognized the address. It was a Protestant church near her home.
As she recalled the meeting with the minister, Colleen could still feel his resistance cloaked in sincerity. He wanted to know if she was having trouble at home, if she worked with a group, if other students had surveyed the other towns. He didn’t answer any of the survey’s questions. None of the realtors did either.
Then Colleen remembered the reason the black cashier had quit working at the supermarket. It was after the second time he’d been stopped by police, who had demanded to know why he’d been driving through town after dark, going home from the job. Now, in a curious reversal, it was her turn: stopped because a white woman shouldn’t be driving through the black section of town. The black cashier had quit with the comment “This isn’t the mountain I want to die on.”
Remembering his statement helped her to decide. The risk was real and involved more than her. She wouldn’t take the children to the library anymore.