October 1944
Peggy Sue wrote to me at the hospital, and I let Imogene read the letter. I told her how Peggy Sue’s mother took us to the picture show sometimes on Saturday afternoon. Before the epidemic made her nervous, anyway.
“Maybe when we get out of here, you can go too,”
I said. Well, you should’ve seen the look Imogene give me then. First her mouth dropped open so wide I could’ve stuck my arm—Kenny pack and all—right in it. Then she busted out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“The polio done gone to your head,” said Imogene. “Has your Peggy Sue even seen the whites of a colored girl’s eyes? And what about her momma? How many coloreds has she carried in her fine car?”
“At least one,” I said. “They have a colored maid.”
“Well, I reckons anyone who has a colored woman washing her floors ain’t likely to let her girl go to the picture show with me.”
“Hey,” I said. “Mrs. Rhinehart is a Christian woman.”
“Oh,” said Imogene. “Well, I reckons that changes everything. So just supposing she and her little girl thinks it’s a wonderful idea. When we gets to the picture house, which door we gonna use?”
“Huh?”
“Is you going in the back door, up them rickety steps to the balcony? ’Cause I can’t go in the front door. And where we gonna sit?”
“Oh,” I said. I knew the colored folks always sat up in the balcony. But for a little bit there, I almost forgot how things was outside the hospital.
“That’s okay,” said Imogene. “My momma wouldn’t let me go with you to the movie house anyhow.”
“Why?” I asked.
Imogene looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Don’t forget. You white.”
“Yeah?”
“My momma say she ain’t never met a white person she could trust.”
“That’s not very nice,” I said.
“And that’s what my momma say about white peoples. They not very nice.”
“Maybe your momma ain’t seen the whites of our eyes neither. Maybe she thinks all white people are like the slave owners. But that was a long time ago.”
“Maybe,” said Imogene. “Or maybe it’s because she can’t hardly visit her momma in South Carolina because she can’t find a place to use the bathroom along the way. Maybe it’s because her childrens have to ride over an hour on the schoolbus and drive past three white schools getting there. I hope you know there’s a muddy wide river between your people and mines.”
I ain’t never thought about the way coloreds had to do before. But I still thought it was wrong of Imogene’s momma not to trust some white people.
“Well,” I said, “it’s just a few white people that makes them decisions. Most of us are not like that.”
“I know you right,” said Imogene. But by the sound of her voice, I knew she didn’t mean it. I was feeling put out with her just then.
“Tell me something, Imogene Wilfong,” I said. “If you and your momma think white people are so bad, how come you’re my friend?”
Imogene thought about that question for a minute. “Well, Ann Fay, it’s like this. My momma don’t have to be friends with white folks if she don’t want to. She got plenty of coloreds to turn to. But when they brung me in this hospital, they wasn’t nobody but whites all around me. I know there’s other coloreds here, but I don’t see none in contagious, do you? What was I gonna do—lay here and keep my mouth shut or make me a friend?” She laughed. “I know you not colored, but you right there beside me, so I reckons you the next best thing.”