“THEY DID IT FIRST IN GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA,” Christine told Gloria. “We’re just gonna sit up on a stool.”
Gloria looked at the circles of green leatherette on the seats of the stools at Woolworth’s lunch counter. They reminded her of lily pads in her grandpa’s pond in the country. She would just perch up there, like a frog on a lily pad. Feet, move! Gloria told herself.
She felt the rim of the stool against her hip. She put her foot on the dirty metal bar under the counter to step up.
Because she had already decided to do it, now it was just one step leading to another. She slid onto the leatherette. She didn’t have to think;she’d already made a decision. Christine sat on the stool beside her. The countergirl looked down, scared of them; she didn’t know what to do.
Gloria put her hand on her heart to still its beating. “I’d like to order, please.”
“You can’t,” the girl said in a high birdlike voice.
Gloria could feel a strange calm rising inside her.
“I believe I’ll have a hamburger with onions,” Christine said into the air in front of her.
White customers at the counter were staring at them. A woman with blond hair clutched a slim tan-and-brown-striped Loveman’s bag to her chest. “Oh no,” the woman whispered, “not here,” and she slid off her seat and stood there staring.
Other white people left their stools and melted away.
“Come on, Ryder!” the blond woman reached back for her husband, timidly touched his elbow. “Come on,” she said urgently. She seemed terrified.
“I ain’t leaving ’cause of two nigger bitches.”
“Manager! Manager!” the countergirl shrieked.
Then the stubborn white man dismounted from the stool. His face was red and his slitty eyes were bugging out. He swaggered toward Gloria and Christine.
He stopped behind Christine, sniffing. “Stinking Communists!” he said.
He swung his head around to look at Christine, who sat like stone. Then he circled around to Gloria. He cleared his throat as loudly as he could. Then he spat on Gloria’s cheek.
Christine suddenly clamped onto Gloria’s wrist. “Let’s go,” she said.
The man retreated, put his arm around his wife.
“Don’t y’all come back,” his woman said vehemently. “Don’t you ever come back sit down here no more!”
Gloria pulled a napkin from the napkin box to wipe her cheek. The man was still holding his Coke in a glass. Suddenly he tossed the contents toward Christine, but the ice cubes fell short, onto the floor. He slammed the glass on the counter, and it broke in a big jagged peak, but he didn’t get cut. And he didn’t pick it up, didn’t aim it at her or Christine. Gloria placed her used napkin on the counter.
“I had a gun, I’d shoot you right now,” the man said.
“He would,” his wife said.
He stood there scowling with his hands on his hips. His wife put her hands on her hips, just like him.
Gloria took another napkin; then she let herself be led away. She let Christine pull her along gently. She felt sick. Wanted desperately to find a rest room she could use to wash her face with soap.
Christine whispered, “Next time, we’ll come with a group. Plan ahead.”
Gloria rubbed her cheek with the flat paper napkin.