When I got to Mr. Dunphey’s History class, the desks were pushed back against the wall. Democracy was written on the blackboard.
“Don’t sit,” Mr. Dunphey instructed. “I want everyone to come to the center of the room and to stand in a circle.”
Mr. Dunphey looked pleased by whatever it was we were about to do. I was curious, but fretting, too. Alls I could think was, I hope he’s not going to make us square dance.
Well — Mr. Dunphey didn’t start calling out steps for the Virginia Reel. What he made us do was worse.
He explained that we were forming a “Democracy Circle.”
“Let’s make this circle strong by holding hands,” he said.
Kids all joined up, clasping fingers and palms. But the “Democracy Circle” ended with me. I was wedged between two students whose names I didn’t know: a redheaded girl on my right, a buck-toothed boy on my left.
Not one of them would hold my hand. With the way Mama insists on me being cleaner than clean, I knew there was no dirt on my palms, but I checked to make sure. There was not even a smudge from my pencil’s lead.
It didn’t surprise me, or make me mad that nobody wanted to hold hands with me. Truth was, I really didn’t want to hold hands with them, or anybody in this class. Just by looking, I could tell that boy’s ma did not make him wash his hands. Neither did the mother of the redheaded girl.
Mr. Dunphey was eager to see the circle come together. I waited on what to do next.
Mr. Dunphey came into the circle between me and the bucktoothed boy. He took my hand in his. This still left an open space in our “Democracy Circle.”
I tried to make the circle work by reaching for the hand of the redheaded girl. She flat-out refused to join hands with me.
I wiped my palm on the pleat of my skirt to get off any clamminess. Even I wouldn’t have wanted to join up with a fish-hand. But the girl wasn’t having it. She balled up her fingers and held her fist tight at her side.
Mr. Dunphey, he’s clever. He put a classroom chair between me and the girl, and told us to each hold on to the back of the chair. The girl looked relieved.
Mr. Dunphey said, “By forming this circle, we represent the people of America, joined together under our nation’s guiding political principle — democracy.
“This circle represents what democracy stands for — that we are all equal. None of us is higher or lower than the other. Democracy is the standard that makes America’s government unique. The chair I have set between Dawnie and Jennifer represents the seat of government, the place where a government exercises its authority. It’s where key political decisions are made. America’s seat of government is Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital.”
I was glad to have my hand on the seat of government, but there was no kind of democracy at Prettyman that I could see.
When Mr. Dunphey gave my hand a gentle squeeze, I felt something I have not ever once felt for a teacher. I felt sad for Mr. Dunphey. He really believed what he was trying to teach us about democracy.
But when you go into a store and can’t try on the clothes, when water fountains won’t let you drink from them, and when you’re the only Negro student in a school where every day you eat lunch alone, democracy is as far off as the moon.
Tonight I looked up democracy in my dictionary. Here’s what I found:
Democracy: A fair and equitable government by the people.
Dear Mr. Webster:
I have a question about your definition of democracy.
Which people do you mean?
Heaven’s parlor has lost its shine.
Today in the Science laboratory, we got to use our microscopes to look at cells.
To see the cells, we had to put blue liquid onto a glass slide, then place the slide under the microscope’s viewer.
Theresa and I had to share a microscope. Even though I was super-eager to see the cells, I let Theresa go first. I don’t think she even cared about looking at the cells. She put her eye to the viewer, blinked, and said, “Your turn.”
I pressed my eye to the microscope’s viewer. Those cells were beautiful clumps of jewels, swirling together in the pocket of blue liquid that brought them into view.
I watched the cells dance and play together. But the party ended when I felt something warm and wet, then burning, pouring onto my lap.
It was the blue liquid we’d used to put on our microscope’s slide — all over the front of my skirt! Snatching at my thighs, making them itch, heating my skin.
I sucked in a hard breath. Cut my eyes at Theresa.
I raised my hand. Mrs. Elmer must have seen me wincing. She came right over. She looked at me sharply, then at Theresa.
“It was an accident,” Theresa said.
Accident, my eye!
Tripping on a tree root coming up through the dirt is an accident.
Going to the wrong address ’cause you wrote the number three instead of the number two, that’s an accident.
Theresa Ludlow pouring blue cell juice onto the front of my skirt is no accident.
It’s what Daddy calls intentional — Theresa meant to do it.
Mrs. Elmer brought a cold compress. She gave it to me to wipe the burning blue from my thighs. “Don’t worry, it’s not dangerous,” she said.
The cold cloth soothed my legs right away, but I was still burning.
I spent the rest of today going from class to class with a blue splotch down my front, putting up with kids’ snickers.
When I came home from school, Mama gasped. I told her all about the “accident.”
Mama tried every way possible to get that stain out of my skirt, but even she couldn’t get rid of the blue.
“Wool holds on,” she explained. With disappointment and disgust both tugging at Mama’s expression, she told me to throw the skirt away. “Even if I could get it clean, I do not want that memory in my house.”
Dear Theresa Ludlow,
You meant to spill that Science lab liquid on me. You intended to do it. I know that. That blue juice made me red-hot-orange mad!!
Theresa, more than anything, I want to pour a jug of that blue stuff all over your head. I want to watch you twist in your seat ’cause your skin itches and your clothes are messed up. I want your mother to have to throw away one of the few skirts you own. I want this badly.
But, Theresa, I will not pour anything on you. I will not, ’cause I have a better plan. My plan is called DAWNIE RAE JOHNSON’S INTENTION.
Pay attention, Theresa, ’cause this is no accident.
I intend to do well in Science.
I intend to be a good student at Prettyman so that I can become a doctor.
I will not let you stop me from reaching my dream. I INTEND this.
This letter should really be a thank-you note.
To you, Theresa Ludlow.
Thanks to you, DAWNIE RAE JOHNSON’S INTENTION is stronger than ever!
I thought I would die from chalk dust today. I have made a decision — another intention. I will do whatever studying it takes to earn my way to that Bell Ringer job.
More flypaper from head-to-toe, getting the chalk off my clothes. Hair blowing in the wind of our house fan. How does Mama think of these things?
It’s warm for November. I have just come in from being outside, at the tree mop, where I beat that stringy thing silly with my baseball bat. Half past ten, that’s the time. Lights-out is long gone. Everyone’s asleep.
The moon is a softball, pitched high up into the curtain of black sky that hangs over our house. If my bat could reach, I’d swing and knock that ball free until it fell and tumbled to the place in our yard where the tree mop swings from its raggedy rope.
For now, I’ll let that softball moon spread its white light, right here into my bedroom, giving me the light I need to fill your pages with my determination.
I miss Bethune. I don’t miss the broken toilets and the stopped clocks. But I miss learning in a place where teachers talk to you, and smile, and say “honey” and “darlin’” when they speak your name. And I miss just being at school, not being a Negro at school.
I miss teachers who call on you in class and work hard to help you get the right answers. And who know you’re paying attention and trying your best.
Those are the same teachers who can always find a way out of no way. Even with ripped books, they taught us somehow. I miss the simple dignity everyone has at Bethune, and the self-respect we were made to have by our teachers.
Here’s what else I miss — every man, woman, and child at Bethune has beautiful dark skin, same as mine. They are all shades on the colored rainbow—everything from butterscotch to baker’s chocolate, all sweet. Nobody looks at you funny at Bethune.
And — every man, woman, and child who steps foot in that school takes pride in knowing about Mary McLeod Bethune and what she accomplished and stood for. I miss that, too.
If you ask any kid at Prettyman who their school is named after, they’ll tell you that Ronald Prettyman was a rich Virginian who made his money in the pork rind business and built the school so he could have a building named after himself.
As bad as I want to learn what it takes to be a doctor, and as keen as I am to someday get myself into college, I am doing it by attending a school built from the skin of pigs.
Daddy’s still out of work. Mama’s taken in extra laundry. Our house is filled with sheets and table linens and collars and cuffs. After school, I help Mama hang shirts to dry.
“Two clothespins at each shoulder,” she told me today, pressing the pins onto the bleached cotton corners, showing me how it’s done. “There’s more wind at this time of year,” Mama said.
Our wash line has become a parade of sleeves, waving at the Virginia breeze, flapping hello in the cold.
Today when I emptied the chalk water in the janitor’s closet sink, I set eyes on the best sight ever. It was a small thing, but a big thing, too. I don’t know where it came from, but there it was, tucked into the crevice where the sink meets the wall — a Jackie Robinson baseball card, same as mine!
Oh, and now I know why the hall floors of Prettyman shine so brightly. Our janitor, whoever he is, has got five mops, standing proud as a parade, in his closet.
The only time I’ve ever heard Mama and Daddy argue was when Daddy told Mama that from now on he was only putting a penny in the collection plate at church because he had a feeling that some of his hard-earned money was going into the gas tank of Reverend Collier’s Pontiac.
Tonight, after the dishes had been cleared and washed, Daddy and Mama had angry words between them.
Goober and I had long since gone to bed, but I hadn’t been able to sleep.
Daddy said, “White folks have been against us for too long, Loretta. When I was a boy, they humiliated my own daddy, and he felt powerless. My father couldn’t keep whites from undermining him. And nothing’s changed. Now I feel powerless. I can’t get a job because of the hatred of those people and their feelings about Dawnie integrating Prettyman. With her at that school, how am I supposed to earn a living and keep my integrity as a man?”
Mama was quick to speak. “Curtis, this isn’t about you!”
Daddy tried to get in the next word, but Mama wasn’t having it.
“Loretta —”
“I’m talking now!”
Daddy got quiet.
Mama said, “What do you mean, nothing’s changed? Everything’s changed, and Dawnie’s making that change possible. Our daughter wants this. She’s as smart and as capable as any of those white children, and she deserves what that school has to offer. Have you seen the books she’s bringing home? The materials are better at Prettyman. That school’s got higher-level math. And a Science lab.”
That made Daddy even madder. “Somebody needs to go into that Science lab and whip up a peace potion that will make all kinds of people get along.”
Mama said, “Where’s your faith, Curtis? I’m taking in extra laundry. We’ll make ends meet. Work at Sutter’s Dairy, or any job, doesn’t give you your integrity as a man. Dawnie is being watched over with the might of angels, and so are we. I believe that. The Lord has chosen our child to be at that school.”
Daddy snapped, “I know it’s not Dawnie’s fault, but where were those angels when I lost my job?”
Now Mama was really yelling. “Enough, Curtis! Enough!”
Goober must have heard Mama and Daddy fighting. He came into my room. Folded himself into the corner near my night table.
Without looking, he reached up, fished around the night table’s top. He slid my pink curlers onto each one of his fingers.
“They hurt,” he said.
Today Daddy walked me to school, like always.
Waddle was waiting. She watched and listened to me and Daddy talk.
I blurted, “It’s because of me that you got fired, isn’t it? I’m going back to Bethune.”
I started to cry, but yanked in a hard breath. Bit hard, too, on my lip.
You would have thought a baseball had smashed through the front window of a car. Daddy stopped walking. Just like that. He knelt down to where he could look me in my face.
“It’s because of you that I have the strength to keep my head up,” Daddy said. “It’s because of you that I told Mr. Sutter he could let me go, that I was not pulling my daughter out of a school where she belongs, and has a right to attend.” Daddy thumbed my chin. “It’s because of you that I walk the path to Prettyman every morning with the pride of ten men.”
“But —”
Daddy put a finger to my lips to shush me.
“But is a word best left to doubters, quitters, and weak-willed souls. I am not a doubter, Dawnie. You are not a quitter. We are not weak willed.”
Daddy stood up. He cupped my hand, gave it a gentle tug. And we walked.
Daddy’s right. I’m no doubter or quitter. But today I was tested on both those things.
When I got to Science class, Mrs. Elmer told us to take our seats quickly and that she’d be handing out our midterm tests. “Get settled, students, we don’t want to waste any time getting started,” she said.
“The test is today?” I asked.
Mrs. Elmer set my test sheet in front of me. “Today” was all she said.
There was no time to flip through my assignments log, but I was as sure as I am that my name is Dawnie Rae Johnson, that the mid-term Science test was scheduled for Friday, November 19, three days from now. That date had been written on the blackboard. That date had been entered into my assignment log by me. That date had been dancing around my dreams for weeks.
I tried to protest, but having a teacher think you’re being disagreeable is never a good idea. I didn’t want to sass Mrs. Elmer. I just wanted to make sure I was not the one making the mistake.
“But—you said—you wrote —” was all I could manage.
“I said the test is today, Dawnie.”
Other kids were beginning to write their test answers.
Mrs. Elmer came over to me. I did my best to whisper. “Back when we started class, you wrote on the blackboard: ‘FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19 — MIDTERM TEST.’ That’s what I recorded in my assignment ledger.”
“Are you back-talking me, Dawnie?”
“No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Elmer explained, “The test date change was announced last week before everyone lined up for recess.”
“That’s when I clap erasers,” I told Mrs. Elmer. I wasn’t whispering anymore. “I never heard about the change.” I’m no crybaby, but my voice had a whine to it.
Mrs. Elmer said, “It’s your responsibility to stay up on assignments, Dawnie. Besides, your lab partner was supposed to apprise you of the new test date.”
The time for taking the test was sliding away quickly. I was already behind. I needed to get started, or I wouldn’t finish the test.
I set my pencil to work, but was it ever hard to concentrate! This was worse than being shoved into a cold pond when you’re not expecting it, and landing face-first with a smack.
I was writing my answers fast and furious. I couldn’t think about the answers, though. I’d studied for the test, but getting ready for a test takes more than just knowing the facts. I need the warm-up in my mind — spending a minute picturing myself taking the test and doing good on it. And holding that picture in my thoughts till it’s all I see in front of me.
I didn’t have a minute, though. By the time I’d begun, I had less than twenty minutes to take a half-hour test.
The only warm-up in my mind was the thud of a headache starting as I tried to see the test questions clearly.
Then something changed.
Somewhere between filling in the blanks about the nervous system and respiration, the thud in my head turned to punching in my chest. At first, I thought it was my heart pounding past my ribs. But it was more than that — it was my intention. Then came the same voice I’d heard when Mama and I first set eyes on the papers that explained what my science lessons would be.
You can do this? You can do this?
The voice grew louder. My intention, simpler.
You can.
I raced through my answers, filling in the last question one second before Mrs. Elmer announced our time was up. The punching, pounding intention in me said, You did.
When Mr. Dunphey, my History teacher, sees me in the hallway, he says hello. At dismissal, Mr. Dunphey says good-bye to all the students. He doesn’t leave me out, like some of the other teachers do. Mr. Dunphey is a person with manners.
Today in class, Mr. Dunphey called on me. He asked me to describe the three branches of government. I was startled by the question. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because he asked the question so frankly. I could tell by the kindness in Mr. Dunphey’s way of talking that he wouldn’t twist my answer, like Mrs. Ruth does in her English class.
I said my answer to Mr. Dunphey’s question clearly. “Legislative, judicial, executive.”
Mr. Dunphey nodded. “Good,” he said. “Now, stand up, Dahhhnie, and repeat your answer so that we can all hear it,” he encouraged.
I did what Mr. Dunphey said, plain and simple. This teacher made me feel like a regular student. It was almost as good as sliding into home base.
Every Friday I ask myself how I made it through another week at Prettyman. Mrs. Elmer gave back our graded test today. I got every answer right, but didn’t get a 100% on the test.
Mrs. Elmer handed back everyone’s test but mine. With one test paper left from her pile, she asked me, “Is this yours?”
In glancing quickly at the page, I could see that every question was marked as correct with a check mark. I looked closer, and soon saw why my paper said “98%” on top. Mrs. Elmer had spelled it out in red:
MISSING NAME
MISSING DATE
I’d been so rushed, I’d forgotten to fill in my paper’s very top line. That cost me two points.
I admit — it’s not good to forget your name. But as far as the date goes, I sure as heck do not want to remember the day of that surprise test!
If leaves were pennies, I’d be on my way to the rich man’s bank. I raked more leaves today than I knew could even live on a tree. I saved two of the prettiest ones, a yellow leaf with red veins, and a red leaf with a yellow stem. They’re opposites, but the same. While Mama pressed sheets and shirts for her customers, she let me iron each leaf into a square of waxed paper. I looped a string of yarn through the top of each leaf and hung them in my bedroom window. When the light hits them just right, those leaves are as bright as the stained-glass windows at Shepherd’s Way Baptist Church on a sunny day.
As much as I hate raking, there is one more good thing that came out of today’s leaf pile. I found a frog.
I’ve never seen a frog smile, but this frog looked glad when I scooped him up, then set him down in the shoe box where my Vaselines once lived.
I felt it was only fair to warn the frog that he wouldn’t be in the shoe box for long, and that he would be devoting his life to a higher purpose.
I’ve never seen a frog cry, either, but I would have bet all the pennies I’d put in that rich man’s bank that this little rust-colored critter was shedding some froggy tears when I told him the news.
If I ever do become a doctor for people, I will tell my veterinarian friends to treat frogs kindly. Frogs have sure paid their dues for the sake of science. Today we dissected frogs as part of our Biology lesson. Nowhere on the school paper about what lessons we’d be learning did it say that the school would be giving us frogs to pull apart. I’d brought my frog from the leaf pile to school, and kept him in his shoe box all morning.
When we arrived in the Science laboratory, each of us had a frog at our place — an already-dead frog. The ugliest frogs ever! My own frog must have smelled his dead cousins. He’d been quiet and still all morning, but was now bumping the sides of the shoe box.
When Mrs. Elmer asked about the shoe box, I explained that I’d brought a frog from home for the Science lesson on frog dissection. The other kids tittered, and even I thought it was funny. Mrs. Elmer put my shoe box on her desk during our lesson. She shook her head, looking not-too-pleased.
The already-dead frogs were the palest pink, and scrawny. By the looks of them, they’d been fed some bad flies, and had died of amphibian indigestion.
Those frogs had had a hard life, it seemed. They could not have been from the pond near Orem’s Pasture, or Hadley even. And, those already-dead frogs were the stinkiest things. Hoo-boy. Stink-eee.
Each frog was on its back, arms spread, eyes open, mouth wide. And, man sakes, the frogs had already been sliced open, down the belly! The way those frogs’ eyes were rolled upward, I was certain each one of them had been praying to heaven before being killed in the name of Biology.
Mrs. Elmer instructed us to first wash our hands, then to put on the safety goggles. Then she walked us through our lesson. She kept calling the frogs “specimens.”
We had to look at a large frog line drawing at the front of the room, and identify our frogs’ stomachs, livers, and hearts. I think my frog from the leaf pile was watching out one of the holes I’d cut into the sides of his shoe box. He was tap-tapping during the entire class. Nobody seemed to notice but me.
As sorry as I felt for those already-dead frogs, I liked poking around their innards. My frog’s stomach swelled out from him like a little balloon. Now I know where all those flies go. And by looking real close at the belly of my already-dead frog, I could see how fried pickles work their way through my own tummy. I like this thing called “biology.”
After class, Mrs. Elmer gave me back my shoe box, which I kept under my desk until the school day ended. As soon as I got home, I let my frog free into the pile of leaves. There is no doubt he was wearing a frog grin.
“Get on, now,” I warned. “Prettyman’s on the lookout for specimens!”
At supper, I told my family about the already-dead frog, and the frog’s pinky innards. I even drew a picture on my napkin, just like the picture in our classroom.
Mama said, “No drawing at the table.”
Daddy said, “Let the child show off how much she knows.”
Goober asked, “Do frogs eat peanuts?”
At school, I broke Daddy’s rule about keeping my hands to myself.
I couldn’t help it. That Jackie Robinson baseball card in the janitor’s closet has been looking at me every day for weeks. And every day, I’ve been asking myself, Why would somebody just leave a Jackie Robinson baseball card out like that? Seems the card wanted me to touch it. As soon as my hand was on the card’s corner, peeling it out from its crevice, I found out why it had been put there.
Today I met Mr. Williams, our school janitor. “Jackie keeps me going” was his way of introducing himself when he came into the closet and caught me holding his card. We shook hands. I told him my name.
Aside from the lunchroom ladies, Miss Cora and Miss Billie, Mr. Williams is the only other Negro I’ve seen at Prettyman. “You make the fourth to ever set foot in this building,” Mr. Williams said.
And he told me something else, too. “Dawnie, you and Jackie Robinson have a lot in common.”
Thanksgiving break. I’m grateful for our tree mop, fried pickles, and my pogo stick. Today, when I bowed my head for Daddy’s Thanksgiving prayer, I whispered a quiet gratitude, “Lord, I am most thankful for four days of freedom from chalk dust and murky eraser water!”
Mama wastes no time bringing on Christmas. Our tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving. Tonight we decorated that tree from its pointy top to the lowest branches. Goober ate half the popcorn meant for stringing. But we still had plenty of balls and bows to cover every limb.
This year Mama made decorations to represent each of us. For Goober, she created a wreath made of peanut shells. For me, a strand of felt-cut bells that we looped along our banister. Daddy’s decorations were shredded newspaper strips pulled into pom-poms.
“Where’s your decoration?” I asked Mama. “What did you make to show who you are?”
“Come see.” Mama led us to the porch, where she’d built a miniature Christmas village, constructed with clothespins. There were even clothespin reindeer and a clothespin sleigh.
We spent the rest of the evening eating Thanksgiving leftovers. Tonight when Mama came to my room to kiss me before bed, she held me for a time, and sang, “Dawnie, Dawnie, sweet potato pie.”
Reverend Collier called a special meeting this evening at church. Shepherd’s Way was filled with lots of people I didn’t know. They’d come from congregations throughout Lee County, and were eager to fill our pews. There were Negroes, white folks, boys and girls, and babies bundled tight. I spotted people from Calvary Baptist, the church whose team we whipped last summer in baseball at Orem’s Pasture. That boy Lonnie gave me a quick wave.
Daddy explained that the white folks were all from the NAACP. I recognized the lady and the men who’d come to our house.
Somebody needs to tell the NAACP lady to stop wearing mud-colored lipstick. At least her dress wasn’t black. Tonight she was wearing a suit the same color as peas. There were other white ladies, too, all dressed like her. And men with big-collared suits.
Mama made me wear the Peach Melba dress and the Vaselines. Since she’d worked so hard on giving me Christmas bell decorations, I didn’t make a stink about the dress and shoes. At least the dress fits now, and I didn’t have to do much walking in the Vaselines.
Reverend Collier asked our family to sit in the first-row pew. We were one pew up from the NAACP people. The NAACP lady put a gentle hand on Mama’s shoulder when we got to our seats. A man I didn’t know shook hands with Daddy.
Reverend Collier said, “This will be a night to remember at Shepherd’s Way. We have a very special guest here this evening.”
People clapped. The man who’d shaken Daddy’s hand rose and made his way to the pulpit. He stood next to Reverend Collier, who introduced him. “I am very pleased to welcome a young preacher from the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He has just been named the pastor at Dexter, and has come to address us this evening. Please welcome young Brother Martin Luther King, Jr.”
The applause grew. I’d heard of Martin Luther King. He was just starting out as a preacher. Folks had been talking about him. He had a powerful way of speaking.
Martin encouraged us to become active members of the NAACP, and to vote in government elections. He spoke about the importance of peace and his belief in something he called “nonviolence.” There was brass and thunder in his delivery. I could not take my eyes off this man. His strong-strong way of speaking scooped me up and held on.
“Praises be!” somebody shouted.
Another voice rang out. “Amen, Brother Martin.”
But people also expressed doubts about Martin’s ideas of nonviolence. Yolanda’s father said, “With all due respect, I’m not one for standing by and letting white people hurt us.”
“Praises be to that!” came a voice from the back of the church. It was Mr. Albert, who sells peanuts from his cart.
Martin told us that love and unity will move Negro people forward. And that fighting for justice and equality can be done quietly, without weapons, or hatred.
“Tell it, young brother!” someone called out. “Tell it!”
Others protested loudly, and soon our church became a swarm of debate, with people taking sides. Goober covered his ears from all the yelling. Martin raised a hand to quiet the noise.
Reverend Collier spoke next. That’s when I saw why we were sitting in the first row. He pointed at Daddy. “This is a man whose livelihood has been threatened because he has taken a stand against segregation by allowing his daughter to attend this town’s white school.”
More applause rose up. Martin Luther King clapped, too.
Reverend Collier said, “Brothers and sisters, I return to a question I asked in this church months ago — who among us steps back in the face of a threat?”
The reverend talked more about threats. And he spoke about Daddy. And about me.
“Mr. Sutter, who owns Sutter’s Dairy, is a man who has stepped back. His customers had threatened to boycott, to take their business elsewhere because Brother Curtis and his daughter, Dawnie, and the Johnson family, have been brave enough to step forward toward progress.”
Applause, louder this time.
“When Mr. Sutter let Curtis go, his white customers stayed loyal. But what Mr. Sutter must have forgot is that Negroes buy as much butter as whites, and that a good chunk of his business comes from our side of Hadley and Negroes living in nearby towns, and throughout Lee County.”
Reverend Collier’s delivery now came on as strong and as booming as a drum. He was truly sermonizing. “We know what it means to boycott, too! We have what it takes to pull our business away from Sutter’s — to step forward peacefully, but powerfully.”
Goober had not taken his hands away from his ears. And it was a good thing, too. There was all kinds of yelling going on.
“How’s boycotting Sutter’s gonna do anything?” Miss Nora, Roger’s ma, wanted to know. “Why should I have to give up cream for my tea, on account of that too-good-for-the-rest-of-us child sittin’ up at Prettyman, not staying with her own for schoolin’?”
I’m good at lots of things, but I’m not a too-good-for-the-rest-of-us child!
“She started this mess.” Miss Nora was pointing at me. “Let her miss out on some milk.”
Somebody else shouted, “We need to take a bold step! Boycotting butter ain’t bold!”
With the help of Martin, Reverend Collier quieted everyone.
Our reverend tried to reason with the doubters. “Boycotting is nonviolent, but it’ll hurt Sutter — in a quiet way. We’ll be putting a hard pinch on his wallet. After a while he’ll feel the pain.”
Some of the NAACP people and Reverend Collier gave us very simple but perfectly direct instructions.
“Starting Monday, when the milkman comes, refuse to take his bottles. If he leaves them on your porch, don’t use the milk. Let it spoil.”
People listened.
“Don’t purchase any butter, cream, or cheese,” the reverend instructed.
I was all for nonviolence and for helping Daddy, but no milk, butter, cheese, or cream?
That sure was a pinch — just thinking about it hurt as much as sleeping in curlers. Martin led us in a prayer. Miss Eloise, our choir director, stood. She played on a tambourine, and started to sing “I’m on My Way.”
The congregation joined her. The song swelled, rising through the church with the tambourine’s rattle.
When I glanced at Daddy, he looked like he’d just won a prize at the fair. He was so pleased. Mama, too. And Goober — he’d found a church fan and was waving it and singing. He had the tune right, but had changed the words to “No more cheese for me!”
I sang, too, but I was not ready to say good-bye to buttered toast and mac-and-cheese.
First day back to school after turkey and pie. I dragged my feet to the breakfast table.
Dry toast didn’t help. Daddy drank his coffee black. Goober filled his oatmeal bowl with cider.
When Daddy and I walked to school, Waddle was waiting in her usual spot. Dawn’s blue curtain made it hard to see her fully. But the streetlamp’s light showed off the double rings that formed Waddle’s raccoon mask.
Waddle’s fur’s gotten thicker, her tail bushier. She looks thick, too. Big around the middle, storing fat to keep warm for the cold months ahead. Winter’s not far off. “Nice coat,” I said to my raccoon friend.
Even by afternoon, I had to wear mittens for clapping the erasers. I smacked them together with a fury to get it over with quickly. White pooof rose all around me, from the chalk dust, and from the steam that spewed warm into the icy air as I coughed.
It snowed lightly during the night. Powdered sugar on our grass. Goober had his coat and mittens on already when he brought me my pogo stick. “Teach me, Dawnie.” He shoved the stick at me. “Show me. There’s no more dirt. The stick won’t get stuck. It’s all white now.”
“It’ll be slippery,” I said.
But Goober was right. The ground was hard enough to make the pogo go. With winter coming, I knew this would be one of the last times I’d be jumping on my pogo stick, so I gave Goober another lesson, with the snowy ground beneath us.
First I showed Goober how to jump on, then off the stick, two feet at a time.
“Watch me. On — off.” I demonstrated for Goober, who hardly let me finish, he was so eager.
Goober copied me. “On — off!” He did good on the first try.
We worked our way up to five full bounces. Goober was able to jump a little bit forward. “Am I flying, Dawnie?”
“You’re flying good, Goob.”
“On — two, three, four — off!” Goober was all smiles, even though the spring on my rickety pogo stick was squeaking the whole time.
A few tries at pogo-flying were enough for Goober. When his nose started to run, he was ready to go inside.
I’ve set my pogo stick in my bedroom closet, where it’ll sleep till spring.
I woke up this morning to the promise of winter.
We don’t get lots of snow in Virginia, but when snow covers all the houses and trees, and spreads a quilt thick enough for making snow angels, I’m the first one to sing about jingle bells.
Yolanda came over after church today, bringing gingerbread baked by her ma. We made up a song about the snow, and sang it together:
Fluffy silver stuff, stuff, stuff
Makes a ball of puff, puff, puff
Will it be e-nuff, nuff, nuff?
Yolanda and I giggled and giggled. She saw for real that I am not uppity.
The milkman came today, early, before the sun, like always.
He left the six glass bottles of milk in our tin collection box on the porch.
Oh, did I want some milk with my oatmeal!
At cafeteria time, I was tempted to drink from the Sutter’s milk carton that comes on our lunch trays. Miss Billie delivered me from temptation by not putting the milk on my tray. She also left off the pudding, and gave me a burger without cheese. If I didn’t think the kids at Prettyman would ridicule me, I’d have brought my lunch in the Peach Melba pail with the bow on top.
Ever since the boycott started, our phone has been ringing more than before. When Mama answers, no one speaks. Tonight eight calls came, with silence on the other end of the line.
Here is my Christmas list.
It’s called Dawnie Wants.
1. Dawnie Wants a new pogo stick.
2. Dawnie Wants Daddy to get a new job.
3. Dawnie Wants a glass of milk and some mac-and-cheese.
4. Dawnie Wants to be Bell Ringer.
And here is the rest of the Dawnie Wants list, for my eyes only.
5. Dawnie Wants to kick Bobby Hatch in the teeth.
6. Dawnie Wants Mrs. Elmer to slip on a wet floor and break her collarbone.
7. Dawnie Wants Theresa Ludlow to wake up with warts.
Back came the milkman to take the bottles from Monday, and to deliver new milk. It was so cold outside that the milk probably didn’t spoil. Still, the man in the Sutter’s truck set out six bottles of fresh temptation. Is it ever hard to not drink that milk!
The telephone has been ringing all evening. Only three of those calls have been from people we know. The rest were hang-ups. We only have one phone. It’s on the wall next to our refrigerator. With all the ringing, our phone seems to jangle the whole house.
I can tell by the way Mama’s snapping for us to keep out of her kitchen, and to fold the laundry faster, and to do our homework, and to get ready for church on Sunday, that she’s agitated.
Goober’s getting on Mama’s nerves. I just know it. He’s annoying me, too. Walking in fast circles, pretending to answer a telephone, repeating, “Hello … hello … hello …”
Finally, this evening, Mama took the phone off the hook so that we could eat supper in peace. But Goober wouldn’t let up.
“Hello … hello … hello …”
Except for saying grace, we ate with hardly any words between us.
Goober kept on.
“Hello … hello … hello …”
Finally, I couldn’t take anymore. I yelled at Goober almost near to cursing. “Goober, shut the heck up!”
Mama and I went to the post office in town today to mail Christmas packages to my aunt Karen, Mama’s sister in Tennessee. We ran into Miss Nora, Roger’s loud mother. Mama was cordial.
“Happy holidays, Nora,” she said.
Miss Nora was not feeling the joy of the season. “It’s hard to be happy when you can’t use cream to make eggnog,” she huffed.
“Try canned milk,” Mama suggested.
“Try sending Dawnie back to Bethune,” Miss Nora huffed.
Mama was working hard to stay nice. “Nora, it’s too late for that now. Besides, nobody’s making you boycott Sutter’s.”
Miss Nora held tight to her parcels. “My boy Roger has twisted my arm. I’m just glad we’ve kept him at Bethune. You’re courtin’ trouble, Loretta,” Miss Nora said. “I would not want to be standing in your shoes now.”
“Believe what you believe,” said Mama. “I believe my shoes are walking in the right direction.”
I couldn’t help but turn my eyes to what Miss Nora was wearing on her feet. She had her nerve! Those were the ugliest shoes ever. They looked like warty toads, with shoelaces.
I would not want to be walking in them.
Who put Miss Nora on hospitality duty at our church’s front door?
Seems she invited one of her friends to join her in putting me down.
Miss Laura, a lady from our church sewing circle, stood next to Miss Nora as we filed into the entry at Shepherd’s Way.
This must be the season of ugly feet.
Miss Laura’s shoes were as black as my Vaselines, but no kind of shiny. She must have picked them up from the giveaway pile on the Wicked Witch’s front curb.
Mama nodded to both women. “Ladies, good morning.”
Miss Laura’s greeting was as sharp as her shoes. “Well — hello to the too-good-for-the-rest-of-us Johnsons.”
Not that again.
Reverend Collier started services by asking everyone who was participating in the Sutter’s boycott to raise their hands.
Some hands went up right away. Many stayed down. But after a moment, all hands were raised. All of them! Roger had both hands raised.
That made me want to raise both my hands.
So I did.
Today we were sent home with two flyers from school. One announcing something called the “Bell Bake Sale,” the other reminding students about final tests for the semester. The Bell Bake Sale is to raise money for a new bell that will be stationed outside the school building on the front lawn. The flyer showed a drawing of the bell. That is a big bell. It’s housed in a brick well, and swings from an iron hinge. The handle for ringing the bell is as big as the grip on a butter churn. Just by looking, I can tell that bell rings loud enough to slice the clouds.
I reminded Mama about my miserable eraser job and about the Bell Ringer job I really want. As soon as she read the flyers, she put on her apron. “I’ll start baking, you start studying,” she said.
Soon our kitchen table was covered with sugar, bowls, textbooks, tablets, flash cards, and flour.
I asked, “How we gonna make sugar cookies with no butter or milk?”
“Canned milk and Crisco oil,” Mama said.
Canned Crisco Sugar Cookies. That sounded yuckier than yucky. If one person bought one of my cookies, I’d be lucky.
“But, Mama —”
“But nothing, Dawnie. Let’s get started.”
Mama wasted no time. She mixed the ingredients, kneaded cookie dough. I memorized state capitals.
Then we switched. I got busy with the rhythm of our rolling pin. Mama worked with me on algorithms.
We baked enough cookies to feed all of Hadley. We let the Math facts flow. We sprinkled and studied. And tasted and tested. The Canned Crisco Sugar Cookies were sweet and good.
As I write this, I’m exhausted, but ready for the Bell Bake Sale and any bonus test questions thrown my way on semester finals. And — I’m ready for that bell. That big, beautiful bell.
One of the great things about a bake sale is that nobody knows who’s baked what. My Canned Crisco Sugar Cookies stood among all the baked goods for the Bell Bake Sale. I didn’t tell a soul that those glittery cookies came from Mama’s kitchen. If I haven’t learned anything else at Prettyman, I’ve learned that the kids at that school will do whatever they can to undercut me.
I watched with silent satisfaction as those cookies sold. Since Mama and I had made so many — and since they were the tastiest cookies ever — they earned the most money for our school. It made giving up milk and butter worth it.
My end-of-the-term tests went well, too. I whipped through state capitals from Boise to Nashville. Fractions — easy. Word problems — no problem.
Mr. Lloyd, our principal, announced the successful sale of so many sugar cookies, and told the whole school the bell was on order and would arrive by spring.
I came home with an empty cookie tray and a mind filled with knowing my stuff.
Counting
A Poem by Dawnie
Counting days till Christmas.
Counting days till spring.
Counting days till Dawnie Rae gets a new bell to ring.
Today’s erasers spewed enough chalk dust to coat my tongue. Thank goodness Mama’d kept some of our cookies at home for all of us to enjoy.
I licked the red-and-green sugar crystals off two cookies. It was their sweetness that let me taste how unfair the bake sale was. My cookies had earned the most money to help buy the school’s new bell, but I can’t ring the bell.
P.S. I haven’t seen Waddle for some time now. Daddy told me that raccoons don’t truly hibernate in winter, but they do sleep more, and only come out a little bit in cold weather. I wish I were a raccoon.
I’m writing so fast. And shaking. And my head hurts. I can hardly believe today.
Goober came to Prettyman to meet me after school. He’d come on his own. Another one of his surprises! I was leaving out the back way, which cuts to the street quicker. I spotted Goober far off at the place where Prettyman’s playing field ends and the railroad tracks begin.
I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Goober was waving with both arms. He had my pogo stick in one of his hands, waving that, too. He jumped onto the pogo’s pedals, pumping, then falling off, then trying again. From where he was, I could hear the squeak of the pogo stick’s rickety spring.
He called out to me, “Look, Dawnie! Look at me! I can pogo, even when there’s a whole mess of snow!”
I raced to him. “Goober, what are you doing here? You’re not supposed to come out past our fence without first asking Mama or Daddy or me, not ever! And you’re not wearing a hat or mittens.”
I was super-angry at Goober, but I worked hard not to show it. He cries when I yell at him. The last thing I needed was for Goober to cry.
I yanked him off school property as fast as I could.
I have to wonder — are we wearing some kind of magnet that pulls the Hatch brothers to us? We were two blocks past Weedle Lane, and there they were! Again. The three of them — Bobby, Cecil, and Jeb!
I can’t even write all what they said. I don’t want to remember it, so I won’t put it on paper. But I will tell you this — only because if I don’t, I will break open from holding on to today as an ugly memory.
The Hatch brothers threw Goober down in the snow. Bobby punched Goober twice. Once in the stomach, then once in the nose, until it started bleeding. Then all three boys ran off.
The wet on my face from crying was stinging my skin, and making a frosty film from the wintry air. I sniffed once, hard. I didn’t want Goober to see me really crying.
I helped Goober up. He was yelping from the pain, and rubbing at his nose. I pressed my scarf to the place where his bloody nose still dripped.
Mama was right about Goober. He sees the world in his own way. I tried to encourage Goober to put his head back to stop the bleeding. But he was too fascinated with the snow.
“Look, Dawnie, look. Do you see it?”
“See what, Goob?” I said softly.
“It’s pretty, Dawnie. It’s red, like a flower. Like a rose with white all around it. It’s so bright in all the white-white.”
“Yes, Goob, I see it.” I couldn’t keep from crying, no matter how hard I tried.
Mama gently rubbed salve on the inside of Goober’s nose, and on the outside place where Bobby Hatch had punched him.
Goober let out a tiny moan. He flinched, then was silent.
Daddy held me while we watched Mama dab witch hazel.
That night I did some punching of my own. It started with my baseball mitt.
I rammed my mitt onto my left hand, then punched into its fold, hard, with my right.
Bam! Bam! BAM!
Something slammed at me right then, ’cause the punching grew to an all-out attack with my fist. I couldn’t stop.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
My punching hand got redder and redder and started to hurt me bad. But the BAM! BAM! BAM! kept coming.
Both my hands were shaking with a rage. Soon all of me shook. I roped both my arms tight around myself. A throb pulsed into both my fists, till I fell asleep on top of my bedcovers.
Goober’s gone somewhere I can’t reach. He’s locked himself off in a place that’s deep inside him, and has slipped down a silent hole. He won’t talk. This morning I unfolded our checkerboard, set it up with peanuts as playing pieces.
Goober rocked in his seat at the kitchen table, eyes looking past me to where only he could see.
“Leave him be,” Mama said.
After what happened to Goober, Mama and Daddy have put my pogo far back in our cellar’s canning closet. They said it’s too dangerous to leave it in my bedroom closet, where Goober can find it.
“You’re not to play with that stick, or even go near it,” Daddy said sternly. “Do you hear me, Dawnie?”
I understood why Daddy was being so strict, but winter passes quicker when I can at least see my pogo stick.
Mama said, “You can take it back out in May for your birthday. You are not to look for it before then.” She was firm. “That stick stays where it is until the eighteenth of May.” “Yes, Mama,” I said.
May is forever from now. The eighteenth of May is more than forever away.
The only thing I can do is wait.
I tried to make Goober laugh tonight before bed, but it was no use. I put my curlers on each of my bare toes, and danced the Slop. He didn’t even crack a smile. He watched me dance, though, with a quick flick of his eye following my sloppy toes.
Goober’s nose is badly bruised.
So are my knuckles from punching.
Dear Santa,
Here is a new Dawnie Wants list:
1. Dawnie Wants Goober back.
Dear Santa,
Thank you! I got my Christmas wish.
Goober padded into our living room with woolen feet. He yanked his Christmas stocking off the banister. It was filled with peanuts. He cupped a bundle in both his hands, offered me a bunch.
“Happy Christmas, Dawnie!”
My Christmas stocking jangled with fifty pennies, ten nickels, and five dimes — a whole $1.50! I’ve put the coins inside my Vaselines. That’s the only good use for those shoes.
My report card came in the mail today! I made the honor roll. I have pasted my report card here!!!
PRETTYMAN COBURN SCHOOL
Mid-Year Academic Report
Student: Dawn R. Johnson
Grade: 7
Markings This Term:
Math: B
English: A–
Science: A
History: A
So yeah, they can trick me into taking a test on the wrong day. They can ignore me in Math and keep me hopping in English.
I may not be a super-duper genius, but I know what I know. What I know is that when I bat, I’m playing to win. Same for school.
Prettyman, pitch as hard as you want, ’cause I’m going for a home run.
My name is in the Hadley Register for making the honor roll. And what’dya know—they’ve listed the students alphabetically, and I’m in the right place with the Js. I sure hope Mrs. Taylor reads the paper.
Our phone is back to ringing. All day.
Today I answered it.
There was a voice coming through the receiver.
A muffled man’s voice.
“Milk bath,” he said.
I hung up quickly.
“Don’t answer that phone!” Mama scolded.
Here it is, the last day of the year, and the front page of the Hadley Register carried this headline:
Hadley School Superintendent
Takes Action to End Integration
Says the Negro Influence is
Tarnishing the Learning Effort
The article said integration has come too fast to Hadley, that segregation is the natural order of things, and the “rapidity with which integration has happened has caused social and emotional unrest for the students at Prettyman, thus making it difficult for them to learn.”
I looked up rapidity and tarnish in my dictionary.
Rapidity: The quality of moving, acting, or occurring with great speed.
Tarnish: To make dirty. To stain. To soil. The only thing occurring with great speed is how fast I’ve been able to get good grades at Prettyman. If this has “tarnished the learning effort” of those other kids, then they weren’t too smart to begin with.
Rapidity, stupidity.
We went to midnight church services to celebrate the coming of a new year. Reverend Collier made an example of me in front of everyone. From his pulpit he congratulated me for making the honor roll. He then referred to the newspaper article in the Hadley Register about the school superintendent wanting to end integration.
Boy, did the reverend preach tonight! He gave a sermon that started in the final half hour of 1954 and lasted through the first hour of 1955! He referred to the article again and again. He called me up to stand next to him in front of everybody. “And here,” he proclaimed, “is the Negro influence!”
I really don’t mind church, but our family seems to be getting a lot of attention. No wonder Yolanda’s gone sour on me. After services, Yolanda came up close behind to where I was standing. She spoke so only I could hear what she had to say. She poked me at the waist. “This here,” Yolanda whispered, “is the uppity influence.”
Yolanda Graves has turned sometime-y. She’s become one of those friends who’s nice sometimes, and sometimes not nice. The problem with sometime-y people is that you never know which sometime they’re on — nice or not nice.
I’m glad I made the honor roll, but this New Year doesn’t feel happy, or new. We’re pushing the same old rock up the same old hill. At night I dream about Goober’s blood piercing the snow.
And about the Hatch brothers turning into haints.
And about Daddy working at Sutter’s Dairy, and getting eaten alive by a giant cow.
And Yolanda calling me uppity sometimes, and sometimes singing and making snow angels.
I’m bone-tired from not sleeping good. I’m hot-mad-angry, too.
This is not a New Year to celebrate.
If Jack and Jill went to the top of Hadley’s same old hill, not even fetching a pail of water could put out the slow fire burning in me.
It’s the in-between, and I’m restless. I’m so glad to have this Diary Book. The book and my red pencil have become good friends. I need friends now.
The sky is purple, same color as a scab. That means more snow. I don’t like more snow. More snow gives me nightmares about Goober’s bloody nose staining the white.
My window has set that scab-colored sky behind a screen of gray, put there by the radiator’s steam. The radiator paints the glass with its hot breath.
Back to school tomorrow.
There’s a new girl in my homeroom class. Her name is Gertie Feldman. Gertie Feldman is not like any white girl I have ever met. She tawlks like that lady from the NAACP. She speaks to grown-ups like she knows them. There’s nothing shy about Gertie Feldman.
At lunchtime today, Gertie was behind me in the cafeteria food service line. When Miss Cora and Miss Billie served my plate with the most food of anybody, then served Gertie with the same measly portions every other student gets, Gertie wasted no time telling them she wanted what I had. “And more gravy, too,” she insisted.
Miss Cora and Miss Billie exchanged a sharp look that could only mean they have never witnessed a child like Gertie Feldman.
When Gertie came to sit next to me, she said, “You get this whole table to yourself?”
Before I could explain that the lunch table has been my own since September, Gertie was tawlking about how much she liked the gravy.
The other kids in the lunchroom had their eyes all over Gertie and me. She didn’t seem to notice or care. The best part about so much tawlking from Gertie is that she was quick to tell me she’s moved to Hadley from Brooklyn, New York, the home of Jackie Robinson’s team, the Dodgers! She was proud of it, too.
And — Gertie’s father is a doctor!
When her mouth was too full of potatoes to speak, I was able to ask two questions. Gertie’s answer was the same for both.
“Have you ever seen Jackie Robinson play?”
Gertie slurped her chocolate milk.
I let her swallow before asking, “Have you ever seen a colored doctor?”
The last bit of chocolate milk gurgled through Gertie’s straw before she said, “Lots.”
The only place I’ve seen more grease is at the bottom of Mama’s skillet after frying bacon, when Mama collected that thick yellow gunk to unstick my pogo spring.
This morning Mama was on a Vaseline mission. She would have shined my snow boots if I hadn’t begged her to put that jumbo jar of goop away. She was determined to slather my face, though. “Keeps the cold from chafing,” she said. “Protects you from wind.”
Mama had my cheeks squeezed tight in the grip of her folded hand. And, oh, did she smear. Even with my squirming, Mama was putting a shine on me that glistened more than a basted turkey. “Hold still, Dawnie!”
I had no choice but to stand there and take it. She even spread the Vaseline on Daddy, who let her do it without complaining one bit.
When Daddy and I left for school, it was cold.
“That stuff works, doesn’t it?” Daddy said as we faced the windy street, still cloaked in darkness.
My hood was tied tight under my chin. January’s bluster met us straight-on.
Okay, I admit — Brother Wind was no match for my basted-turkey face.
Waddle was waiting for me today. She’s lucky to have a face full of fur. No grease for her.
I’m awake, writing fast.
Tonight after supper the phone rang six times. Mama didn’t answer it. Daddy, either. I know I’m not supposed to answer the phone, but this whole thing is riling me. On the seventh ring, I grabbed for it. Daddy tried to coax the receiver from my hand, but it was too late.
A man’s voice whispered the same strange message as before, “Milk bath.”
I hung up quickly. Didn’t tell Daddy and Mama what I’d just heard.
I’m guessing this all has to do with the dairy boycott.
Tonight I’ll be sleeping with the light on.
I’m scared to death!
Mrs. Taylor must have gotten a note from Santa telling her that she needed to be more nice and less naughty. Today Mrs. Taylor told me that I could clean the erasers during Study Hall, so that I could go to PE in the gym with my class, which replaces the recess period I was missing last term.
The only thing is, I still have to find time to study somehow. Maybe I can clap the erasers fast, then make it to Study Hall for half the period. I’m sure not gonna worry my mind over it. With winter here, and me having no recess all last semester, I was feeling like a cooped chicken at school. But starting tomorrow I’m going to PE. Finally!
Mama says that high expectations lead to low serenity. That was sure true today. PE at Prettyman is for babies! This afternoon we did something called “calisthenics” — jumping jacks, toe touches, and arm circles. What kind of mess is that? We ended the period by hauling large blue mats onto the gym’s center floor and participating in what Mrs. Remsen, our PE teacher, called “tumbling.” Each one of us had to take a turn doing somersaults down the length of the mat.
I’m no Charles Atlas, but I can do a bunch more than arm circles, toe touches, jumping jacks, and somersaults.
You wouldn’t know it, though, by watching me today. Thanks to Mama’s Vaseline, my somersaults were the slipperiest bunch of tumbling ever. Each time I pressed my head to the mat, my greasy scalp sent me sliding!
This did not sit pretty with the other Prettyman girls. When they saw my oil patches left on the mat, they wanted to quit the tumbling. Mrs. Remsen wouldn’t let them, though. She made them somersault, one after the other, behind me. The only one who didn’t make a stink about it was Gertie, who out-tumbled us all.
I guess every white family in Ivoryton wants clean clothes to start the year. Mama’s been under a mountain of laundry. With the weather being so cold, we hang the wet clothes on racks in our cellar. But we’re low on racks and space to hang. Our living room has turned into a haunted house of sheet ghosts and headless dresses, hanging from ceiling rafters, dancing above our radiator’s steam.
“What if they boycott us?” I asked Mama.
“Then the Lord will provide some other way,” Mama answered, sounding sure.
Daddy said, “Your Mama’s laundry service is the only one — and the best one — within miles. Some white people can be mean, but they know what’s good when it comes to laundry.”
I AM NO MONKEY! I AM NO ELEPHANT! I AM NO DOG!
If going to PE means I will have to put up with stupid girls, then I’ll stick with eraser clapping. At least when I clap erasers, there’s Mr. Williams, who treats me kindly.
Today in the girls’ locker room, after I had changed into my gym suit, I had to pee before going out into the gym. Mama had warned me quietly that whites don’t like us using their bathrooms, and that I should always be mindful of this when I feel the need to relieve myself. Most school days I hold it from morning to afternoon, then gush as soon as I get home. But today I couldn’t keep it in. So I went.
I knew something was strange when the locker room grew silent when I squatted to urinate. As soon as I let loose, I heard muffled giggles and whispering coming from someplace above my head. I didn’t want to look up. But how could I not?
Looking over the top of the stall was Theresa Ludlow from Science class, and four other girls. I yanked up my panties and gym bloomers, but it was too late. They’d seen my bare bottom already. Theresa said, “I thought monkeys had tails. Where’s your tail, Dawnie?”
Another girl, Jennifer Little, the redheaded child from Mr. Dunphey’s “Democracy Circle,” answered, “Maybe Dawnie’s not a monkey. I mean, she’s such a big-boned girl, I would think she’s got an elephant’s tail.”
They all laughed. Then two more girls whose names I didn’t know started making barking noises.
“Didn’t you know?” one girl asked the others, “All Negroes have dog tails. Maybe Dawnie’s tucked hers away in her underpants.”
Mrs. Remsen’s whistle sounded right then, and the girls scurried away to the gym. I waited till I heard the door to the gym rattle closed. When I came out from the stall, I kicked hard at the lockers. I wanted my baseball mitt. I wanted to punch.
I sat for a moment on the locker room bench, punching at my knees. I could hear the girls’ squeals and shouts echoing in the gym. I made my way to join the rest of the class.
Gertie was waiting for me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No ghosts in there,” I said. “But plenty of witches.”
Mrs. Remsen’s whistle blew for the second time. Now she was blowing it at me. “Dawnie, you’re late. Take twenty laps around the gym.”
I didn’t flinch. Mrs. Remsen had done me a favor. I started off slow, then sprinted, while those baby witches tumbled their somersaults.
Daddy has taken to helping Mama wash, fold, and iron. He complains that this is “women’s work.”
I love my daddy, but that is a backward idea. God gave hands to men and women. Except for bigger palms and longer fingers, a man’s hands can do the same things a woman’s hands can do.
The same is true the other way around — except for softer skin and nicer cuticles, a woman’s hands are the same as a man’s. Ironing and folding clothes can be done by anybody with hands.
I hope Daddy gets a job soon.
Gertie called out to me as I was walking home from school.
“Dawnie, wait up.” Her coat was made from the thickest wool plaid I’ve ever seen. It was a nice coat. She fished a black licorice twig from her pocket. “Want some candy?”
I am never supposed to take candy from somebody I don’t know well, and I’m sure not supposed to eat candy on a regular day that’s not a holiday. But Gertie wasn’t really a stranger. And, one licorice twig was more like a snack, not a treat.
Gertie chomped and talked and walked alongside me.
“Where you going?” she asked.
Where else would I be going?
“Home,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Gertie.
Gertie was with me for most of the whole two miles as we made our way closer to Crossland Avenue.
When we got to the place where Ivoryton ends and my neighborhood begins, Gertie kept walking. Now I was the one asking, “Where you goin’?”
“Home.” Gertie handed me another licorice twig. Red this time.
“Where’s your house at?” I wanted to know.
“Maple Street,” Gertie said.
I stopped walking. So did Gertie. “What’s the matter?” Gertie asked.
“You live in the colored part of town?”
Gertie shrugged. She looked puzzled. “I guess I do.”
Man sakes, I was witnessing a strange miracle — a white girl who does not live in Ivoryton.
I explained all about Ivoryton and Crow’s Nest, and how the neighborhoods work in Hadley.
“That’s just stupid,” Gertie said.
At the corner of Crossland Avenue, me and Gertie waved good-bye. “See you tomorrow,” she said. She handed me a third licorice twig. Another black one. It was sure sweet.
The ball on top of Gertie’s hat bobbled as she walked away.
A letter to the editor appeared in today’s Hadley Register. Here it is:
Dear Editor,
Thank you for your coverage of the recent events surrounding integration. I have lived in Hadley all my life. This is a peaceful town. We have enjoyed the goodness of neighbors and friends. As a mother, I have always done right by our three children, and have made their well-being my top priority. This includes their education. But now, with this push for integration, school has become a bad place for my children. It will only get worse if we let integration continue. There is good reason to keep schools segregated. Colored children learn differently than white children. Coloreds are slower, and less capable of grasping certain concepts. It is unfair to white and colored children to mix them together, especially in a school setting. By doing so, we rob each of them the opportunity to learn as best they can, and we ruin any chance we may have for keeping our town one of this state’s finest.
Signed,
Anonymous
I read the letter twice, then I looked up anonymous.
Anonymous: Having an unknown name or identity.
I don’t agree with the letter from that unknown mother with the three kids. But she’s right about one thing. Integration has robbed people and ruined chances.
Because I’m attending Prettyman, nobody will hire Daddy in Hadley. Not even black people. Everyone’s afraid that employing Daddy will somehow bring them trouble. Today he drove as far as Richmond looking for work. He came home with his hands in his pockets, his head down, and no job. Tonight I heard him tell Mama that somehow, some way, word has traveled that his child is the one integrating the schools in Hadley.
When Daddy goes asking for work, he should tell the people his name is Mr. Anonymous.
Somebody threw a glass milk bottle at our front door. It smashed onto our porch, splattering milk everywhere.
I will be sleeping with the light on again.
The phone won’t stop.
My prayers stay strong.
I’M SCAREDER THAN SCARED.
Another letter to the editor of the Hadley Register appeared today. It said:
Dear Hadley Register:
We are living in the modern age. We have television. And we even have frozen TV dinners. Scientists have found a way to launch a rocket ship.
These are all great advances in scientific progress, but they don’t account for human progress. We slow human progress by trying to go against natural forces. If race-mixing were meant to be, then blacks and whites would be able to get along much easier. This has never been the case. Coloreds make it hard to like them, or to trust them. They are mean and dishonest people.
“Whites Only” signs serve an important purpose. These signs should be posted at Prettyman Coburn. Integrating our schools allows for the influx of boys and girls who come from a disreputable clan of people.
Sincerely,
Lester Rudd, President,
Hadley Business Owners’ Association
I have never met Lester Rudd, but I think he’s very confused. I have never seen a frozen TV dinner. Why would anyone want to eat a dinner that’s frozen and shaped like a TV?
The phone woke us this morning. Four rings in a row. Then silence. Then four rings more. We all came into the kitchen. None of us answered the phone. Daddy was in his bathrobe still. With his tool kit, he carefully dismantled the phone. He took the whole thing off the wall!
Now the phone never rings. Daddy’s hushed it for good.
Another day of Vaseline cheeks and slippery somersaults. Today Gertie asked me how I get my skin so smooth. “Vaseline by the ton,” I said.
Gertie and I walked home again today. She had a pocketful of gumdrops, all colors. But our walk turned from sweet to sour as soon as we got off school grounds.
Somehow the Hatch brothers had hooked up with Theresa Ludlow and her friends — the PE class witches — and they were following us from behind.
Theresa started off with the troublemaking. “A colored and a Jew, both at our school. That’s a bad combination,” she said.
Next came Jeb Hatch, calling out, “I think I smell fish.”
Cecil said, “That’s not fish, that’s how dirty Jews smell.”
I started to walk faster, but Gertie was slowing down. Then she just stopped, dead in her tracks.
She turned to face those boys and the witches, and stepped right into the center of them. I have never seen a white girl stare down a white boy with such fury. Gertie got right up in Cecil’s face. “What did you say?”
All my insides were clanking. The Panic Monster had his shaboodle-shake on full blast.
Nobody said anything.
Gertie just kept glaring. One of the witches said, “Better not mess with her. She may put some kind of Hebrew hex on you.”
Gertie leaned in. Cecil backed away. So did his brothers and the other kids. So did my Panic Monster.
Gertie turned toward home, walked past all of them, her shoulder bumping through the wall made by the group.
“C’mon, Dawnie, let’s go home,” she said.
Right then, on what was probably the coldest day in Virginia, I was warm as coals stoking a potbellied stove.
I asked Mama, “What’s a dirty Jew? And what’s a Hebrew hex?”
Mama looked horrified. “Where in the world did you hear such disgusting talk?”
I knew anything coming out the mouth of a Hatch boy, or one of those witchy girls, had to be bad. But I wanted to ask the question just how they said the words, so I’d get the full, real answer.
Mama said, “If I ever hear you talk like that again, I will wash your tongue with lye, do you hear me, Dawnie?”
I told Mama all about Gertie Feldman, and the Hatch brothers and Theresa and her friends. “Gertie lives on Maple Street, down by Orem’s,” I said.
Mama sat me down. She explained the history and culture of Jewish people, and the persecution they’ve endured. She told me about a man named Adolf Hitler, and World War II, and something called the “Holocaust.” “It is an ugly story,” Mama said.
Now I looked horrified. I knew nothing about Jewish people. I thought white people were white people, and if they had different religions, it didn’t matter because they were white.
I had no idea that whites hated other whites because of their religious beliefs. Living in Hadley, all I knew was that most white people hated Negroes, and the same was true the other way around — most Negroes did not like whites.
Well, I now had a white friend. And she liked me, too. So, as far as Gertie and me were concerned, there was no other way around it.
With all due respect to Mama and Daddy, I don’t believe there is no hate in God’s eyes. Has God seen the Hatch brothers and Theresa Ludlow, and their friends? They are full of HATE! HATE! HATE!
They probably invented the H word! And I HATE it!
Gertie came to school with more shine than me. “I tried the Vaseline,” she said. “How does my face look?”
Gertie had caked the stuff too thick. Even her eyelashes were gloppy.
In the girls’ room, I helped her thin down the Vaseline by spreading my palm across her forehead.
Now Gertie Feldman is a city slicker who’s not too slick.
Dear Mr. Jackie Robinson,
Happy Birthday! If my figuring is correct, today you’re thirty-six. That’s as old as Daddy. Did the Dodgers help you celebrate? If I was invited to your birthday party, and you let me blow out the candles, I’d wish for a job for my daddy.
Filled with wishes,
Dawnie Rae
The other thing I really miss about Bethune is Negro History Week. Yolanda told me that starting Monday, seventh graders at her school get to pick their favorite “Notable Negro” and give an oral report in front of the class.
If I was still a student at Bethune, I wouldn’t have to think twice about the subject for my oral report. I wouldn’t need to study or practice, either. I can speak good about what colored people have accomplished. I would be happy to give a speech. The Panic Monster takes a vacation during Negro History Week.
There is no Negro History Week at Prettyman Coburn School. There is no Negro History anything at Prettyman Coburn.
Very early. Before the in-between. My throat hurts.
Missing school and having to make up work will hurt worse.
Prettyman, here I come.
Feels like I’ve swallowed a rusty saw. Oh, my throat!
I spent much of today wishing I could put my head down on my desk and sleep. I’m sure my classmates would’ve laughed from here to Halifax County at the sight of me drooling onto my books. Thankfully, there was no drool, only a long day at school.
That rusty saw has met up with a heap of cotton inside my head. My ears are more stuffed than Mama’s pin cushion. I’m so tired. I’ve been moving slow all day. Thinking slow, too. What was Mrs. Elmer saying about bacteria? I bet that’ll be on Monday’s Biology test.
Spent the day coughing, sniffling.
This morning I woke up with a nose so red, I could have been mistaken for a circus clown. I must have sneezed ten times before rolling over on my pillow. My sheets were clammy, too. When I looked out my bedroom window, there was a whole mess of hurly-burly snow flying sideways. I could tell by the rattling of my windowsills that there was some mean wind outside. Still, I was hot as heck when I sat up in bed.
Morning was full-on bright. “What time is it?” I asked Mama.
“You’re staying home from school today,” Mama said, bringing me tea and two handkerchiefs.
It is every child’s wish to hear her mama say she’s staying home from school. And I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t admit there have been times I have prayed for the croup so I could miss at least one day of school. But couldn’t the day be next week — after my Biology test?
“I’ll stay home tomorrow,” I told Mama, kicking off my sheets.
Mama’s hands came on fast, sliding my bedcovers back near to my chin. “You’ve got a cold, Dawnie, and you shouldn’t be spreading it.”
I told Mama about the test, and how missing the test would hurt my grade.
“I’ll send a note to the school, explaining,” Mama said. She tried to comfort me by adding more honey to my tea, but a bathtub of honey could not have sweetened the ache I felt from having to miss my Biology test.
Then Mama brought a jar of camphor rub and started gooping it on my chest, under my nose, and behind my ears. I thought Vaseline was bad. But camphor —yeech! That stuff is sure powerful! Its fumes could clear the pipes on the crustiest church organ in Lee County.
I never, ever thought I’d write this—but more than anything, right now I want to be sitting in Mrs. Elmer’s class answering questions about how bacteria grows!!
Home from school again. Swallowed the rusty saw all day. Cotton on the brain. What day is it? Too weak to write more.
Two more milk bottles were thrown at our house tonight. Two more quarts of hate. Skidding onto the snowy floor of our front porch.
Daddy’s taken to spending nights propped in a chair by our front window.
Watching through our curtains.
Trying to keep us safe.
Goober’s made me a red paper heart that’s as big as his head. When I told Goober Valentine’s Day has come and gone, he said, “Love is all the time, Dawnie.”
More sideways snow.
The tree mop’s strings are a frozen clump of cold, stuck to an icy rope.
How many days till May?
Feeling better. I begged Mama to let me go to school today. If she’d have allowed me to get out of bed for something other than to use the bathroom, I would have gone to Mama on my knees, saying, please, please, please.
“You’ll go back to school tomorrow,” she said. “One more day at home will do you good.”
This must be what jail feels like. I hate being stuck at home.
At least the snow has melted. As I write this, the sky outside is a beautiful shock of bright blue. My waxed-paper leaves are showing off their colors, their opposite-but-same yellow and red veins.
Mama loaned me a wax pencil from her pattern-making kit. I have decided to name my leaves. I wrote their names at the top of each.
Dawnie’s the one in yellow. Gertie’s wearing red.
People say if you can smell something bad on yourself, it really stinks. I knew I’d be showing up at school today smelling like camphor. Mama would only let me go back to school if I agreed to let her make me the Queen of Camphor.
Whew, is that stuff powerful! The only things smellier were the already-dead frogs from Biology class.
No wonder the snow has melted. The camphor fumes must have seeped from our windows onto the streets. Today its odor rose so high off my clothes that even the neighborhood dogs ran in the opposite direction when they smelled me coming.
Same with the kids at school. More than usual, they did their best to avoid me.
Gertie was glad to see me, though. “Camphor” was the first thing she said when I slid into my homeroom seat next to her. “My papa uses camphor rub on me when I’m sick,” Gertie said.
“Your daddy the doctor uses camphor?”
Gertie nodded. “Rubs it all over me, like he’s waxing a car.”
I will not be telling Mama that a real true doctor uses camphor. If she ever finds out, she will for sure keep me steeped in that stuff.
Gertie had volunteered to clap erasers and sponge the blackboard when I was gone. She said, “There’s only one good thing about that bad job — Mr. Williams, the janitor.”
Today I was back to clapping the erasers on my own. When I got to Mr. Williams’s closet to dump my chalk water, he helped me lift the bucket to the lip of his sink. “Missed you,” he said.
He smelled me right away. He said, “Camphor’s good for the soul.”
Daddy showed me a Look magazine article about Jackie Robinson. In the picture, Jackie’s holding his bat high over his shoulder. I clipped that photo and pasted it to my bedroom mirror. I can see why they put Jackie in Look. He sure looks strong.
Daddy’s grown restless trying to find a job. While I did my homework, Daddy went outside in the cold dark nighttime. He took my bat with him. From where I sat at our kitchen table, I could see Daddy out our back window, swinging and swinging at my tree mop.
When I finished my homework, I asked Mama if I could go outside with Daddy, expecting she’d say no. But she let me. I yanked my hood strings tight at my neck, put on my mittens.
Daddy and I took turns batting righty.
Today in Mr. Dunphey’s History class, we talked about current events. Bobby Hatch brought in the Look magazine article about Jackie Robinson. He stood up, waving the page with Jackie’s photo. “I don’t care how many runs Jackie Robinson’s had,” Bobby said. “He should’ve stayed playing with coons. That’s why there’s a Negro League. The game is called baseball, not blackball.”
The other kids laughed.
“Bobby, stick to the article, please,” Mr. Dunphey said. “What’s current about what you’ve read?” he asked.
Bobby did something I have never seen a kid do. He smart-talked a teacher, right in front of everybody. Bobby said, “What’s current is that the major leagues currently have a new song to sing. It’s called ‘Darkie in the Dugout.’”
Something ripped through me then. Something so powerful it could have only been what Mama has called “the might of angels.”
My chair screeched when I stood up at my seat. I was glad my throat was better. I needed to speak. Negro History Week is over, but colored people make history every day, so I had a lot to say.
I talked, talked, talked about Jackie Robinson and the accomplishments of notable Negroes. I kept talking. And Mr. Dunphey let me. I told everybody about Mary McLeod Bethune and Thurgood Marshall, one of the lawyers from the New York paper. During my time at Prettyman, I’d held on to my gift of gab for too long. Today was the time to use it.
Everybody got quiet. Bobby looked like he’d swallowed a baseball. He could have thrown a dozen eggs at me right then. I would have caught each and every one of them, and hard-boiled all twelve with the heat rising up in me.
But not one egg flew in my direction. Not even a word came from the other students. Everybody was too busy listening.
Whether those other kids would admit it or not, I had given them their first Negro History lesson. Gertie was smiling big.
When I was finished, I said, “That’s all Dawnie Rae has to say.”
Dear Mr. Jackie Robinson,
I told my History class about you. Since then, something’s changed in that class. The air seems different in Mr. Dunphey’s room. Better somehow. Maybe I’m different. And better.
Yours,
Dawnie
Boy, the editor of the Hadley Register must have a very full mailbox.
Tonight Daddy pointed out another letter in the paper. This letter is not anonymous, or filled with wrong ideas. This letter is brave. And smart. And true. I have pasted it here.
I became a History teacher because I believe that the past provides a vital key to the future. The founding fathers of our nation spent long days in the Philadelphia heat of summer authoring a document that would serve as the definitive statement on all that America stands for. This document became the Declaration of Independence, a road-map, if you will, for how we are to conduct ourselves within the auspices of all that America holds dear. The Declaration of Independence also makes it clear that under the laws of nature and of nature’s God, all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
By denying Negro children entry into any school they wish to attend, we slap the faces of our founding fathers. We trash their intentions. We soil what it means to be American.
When I moved to Virginia from Boston last summer and was offered the chance to teach at Prettyman Coburn School, I came expecting Southern charm. I looked forward to small-town life and to the courtesies afforded those who call the South their home. It was my hope, too, that I could someday share my passion for American history with young people of all races, sitting side by side in the same classroom.
Segregation is an evil and corroding thread. If we allow segregation to continue, if we give power to its iniquity, we risk the immoral.
If we are to live comfortably within our own skins, we must push past the prejudices of skin color. If we’re to create a future for ourselves and our children that promises life, liberty, and happiness, then we must turn our backs on segregation. We must, as it says in the concluding sentences of the Declaration of Independence, “pledge our sacred honor” to embrace the promise that integration offers.
Among those who made this pledge on July 4, 1776, and who signed their names to America’s most prevailing document, seven were Virginians, including Thomas Jefferson.
Let us now follow their example. Let us now turn our backs on the scourge of racial hatred. We, the residents of Hadley, have a tremendous opportunity. That is, to show America that the state of Virginia is a great beacon of democracy.
Very truly yours,
Andrew Dunphey,
History teacher,
Prettyman Coburn School
It’s late. I should be asleep. But this letter has made me squirrely. My History teacher sure can write!
I have read Mr. Dunphey’s letter six times.
I have looked up words from the letter.
Iniquity: Lack of justice, wicked.
Immoral: Violating principals of right and wrong.
Scourge: A source of criticism. A whip used to inflict punishment.
The evil words from Mr. Dunphey’s letter have come to pass. And more words, too — H words.
Some bad.
Some good.
This was a day of Hatred. Horror. Help. Hope.
Morning light came slow. Had the sun forgotten it was time to rise? Had she slept past the in-between? Where was dawn?
The sky was an iron blanket. Dark. Cold.
It was black outside when we prepared to leave for church. And so quiet.
Mama and Daddy drank dark coffee. Goober had grown used to oatmeal with cider instead of milk. For me, toast with Crisco and salt, not butter.
Goober was first on the porch. First to see the Horror.
The streetlamp’s light had brought the ugly sight into view.
Goober spotted the pail set at the edge of our porch, near the post by the porch steps.
“A bucket of milk, Dawnie. A big bucket,” he observed.
With the way morning was still so dark, something inside held me back from wanting to see what was in that pail. But Goober was too fast. He’d already peered down in.
Goober’s face was a little moon of light under the streetlamp’s white. With urgency rising in him, he shouted, “Dawnie, come see!”
He was wincing. He started to cry, then wail. “Dawnie, Daddy, Mama!”
We all came at once. I was quick to see the Horror for myself.
A dead raccoon. Bloated. Belly floating up. Drowning in a bath of milk.
There was a note that said:
KILL INTEGRATION!
STOP THE DAIRY BOYCOTT!
NOW!
Daddy and Mama stood over Goober and me, blocking the streetlight, but still able to see enough to tell us to come away from the bucket.
This was the work of that strange voice calling on our telephone—anonymous.
This was Hatred.
My insides fought to keep down the Crisco toast. Some of it came up, but not out.
I shook and shook.
And thought of Waddle.
And worried about her being next.
I held Mama around her waist.
Buried my face in the lavender smell of Mama’s church coat. Goober was shaking, too, and he buried himself into my coat, wetting its wool with all his crying.
I managed to tell Mama and Daddy about the man’s voice on the phone, about the “milk bath” warning.
“I should have told,” I cried. “We could have stopped this somehow.”
Mama just hugged me tighter. She said, “Evil is powerful, Dawnie. Even with those phone calls, we had no way of knowing this was on the minds of evil-hearted people.”
Daddy put the creature’s remains in a sack. Cleaned the bucket off our porch. He somehow got rid of it all quickly, and eased us into his truck for church. We rode through the dark-as-night morning, with Mama praying silently. Where was sunrise?
Daddy greeted Reverend Collier right away, told him about the raccoon in the pail. Word spread through our congregation before Miss Eloise even had a chance to start the choir on their opening hymn.
Rather than services, our church became a stew pot of debate. People all talking at once about nonviolence, and boycotting, and integration.
Some agreeing. Some arguing. All of us angry.
I was so rattled, I couldn’t hardly breathe. I couldn’t hardly see, either. Even with the lights on overhead, our church seemed darker than usual. And there was so much wet blurring anything in front of my eyes.
Daylight finally came. Gray as lint.
Lady Sun had taken the day off. Maybe she was too scared to come out. Too sad to show.
Reverend Collier said, “Now is the time to act for our greatest good. The Lord has given us this day to come together.”
Some people wanted to hurt Mr. Sutter and his team of milkmen. Others said we should storm his dairy.
There were people who recalled the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. They wanted only peace.
There was so much arguing. It made my stomach more queasy.
Reverend Collier had to work hard to settle his parishioners. “We must act as brothers and sisters,” he said.
When the congregation had quieted down, there was one thing everyone in that church agreed on — this was a time for light and prayer.
And Help. And Healing for me and my family.
Miss Nora handed out candles. She lit hers first, then touched its tiny flame to Roger’s candle, who put his to Yolanda’s. It went from there, flicker to flicker, bright to brighter, until our church glowed on this gray morning.
Everyone gathered in a circle around me, Mama, Goober, and Daddy.
Miss Eloise took it from there. She didn’t need her organ. She just started singing:
Believe in the light of the Lord
Feel his goodness
Know his strength
Let him lead us on this day
Faith, strong, faith
Is the shepherd’s way.
That music was as warm and as bright as the shine of so many candles. The power of our voices filled our rickety church.
Filled me, too.
With Hope.
Mr. Dunphey is gone!
We were told today that he’s chosen to go back to Boston. But how could he choose that so fast?
I don’t think Mr. Dunphey chose that. I think it was chosen for him. In the lunchroom, I heard some of the other kids calling Mr. Dunphey “Mr. Dummy.” They say he cooked his own goose. They say our new teacher, Mrs. Harris, has been teaching at Prettyman forever, and that she knows the real truth about American history.
At supper when I told Mama and Daddy about all of this, Daddy shook his head. “A shame,” he said.
Goober repeated, “Shame, shame, shame.”
Dear Mr. Dunphey,
I hope wherever you are, it is far away from the scourge of racial hatred. I hope there are no iniquities in Boston. I miss you.
Yours truly,
Dawnie Rae Johnson,
Prettyman Coburn, 7th Grade
Can’t write long. I’ve fallen very behind on my schoolwork. Mrs. Elmer’s letting me make up the Biology test tomorrow. (Well — at least she says it’ll be tomorrow. I learned my lesson from last time — Mrs. Elmer has a tricky memory.)
I also missed Math and English.
Unless some miracle happens, I have no chance of earning my way to being Bell Ringer.
If I were allowed to attend Study Hall, I’d be able to catch up. Today I banged the erasers harder than hard. Stomped my feet, too.
There was one good thing about today. Spring training has begun for Major League Baseball. That means Jackie’s got his bat hiked high, getting ready to play. Yay, Jackie, yay!
I took the Biology test today. At least Mrs. Elmer gave the test when she said she’d give the test. But man sakes, that test tripped me up. I got confused about the parts of a cell — nucleus, cell wall, flagella. Which is the outer layer? I couldn’t remember, even though I’d studied hard. The stuff about bacteria came to me a little easier.
We got a story assigned for English class — “The Three Questions” by Leo Tolstoy.
Here are three questions by Dawnie Rae Johnson:
1. Why is school so hard for me now?
2. When will my eraser-clapping torture end?
3. What really happened to Mr. Dunphey?
Mama and Daddy were glued to the radio tonight. They’d turned the volume up, which always means there’s something they especially want to hear.
I listened close when I heard the man on the radio say, “It’s yet to be determined if the child has sustained injuries.”
There was a news report about a Negro girl named Claudette Colvin. Today she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demanded it.
Claudette was carried off the bus backward, while being kicked and handcuffed on her way to the police station.
Dear Claudette Colvin,
I know how scared you were on that segregated bus. I know how you felt when the driver demanded that you move, and all of a sudden you were carried backward.
You wanted to kick those people back, didn’t you? I know.
Love,
Dawnie Rae
Less than two months till May. If anybody asks who’s counting, I will be quick to tell them — I’ve got ten fingers and ten toes, and I have used each and every one five times over to tick off the days till I can break free on my pogo.
My report card came today. My grades have slipped. Being sick and missing school set me back. I got all Bs. Not a single A!
I did not make the honor roll. My name will not be in the newspapers near Gertie’s, whose name will be at the top of the list of students with last names beginning with the letter F.
There’s one thing integration has not put a halt to, and that’s Mama’s laundry business. I guess no matter who goes to school with who, people still like their collars and cuffs done right. Daddy was right. People know a good thing when it’s good. And Mama’s way of doing laundry is the best.
It seems the more laundry Mama takes in, the more requests she gets. Her reputation is growing. Daddy’s put together a system for getting it all done.
Mama washes and presses. Daddy folds, then wraps the clean items in their brown delivery paper. I label the packages with the names of each one’s owner. Goober stacks them. This is how we spend Saturdays, and many weekday evenings after homework and supper.
Daddy’s taken to making the laundry deliveries in his truck. Something’s changed in Daddy. He’s stopped calling laundry women’s work.
Today Daddy told Mama, “You oughta hang out a shingle, Loretta.”
“What kind of shingle?” Mama was only paying attention partway. She was pressing a collar tip with the nose of her iron.
“You need a sign outside that says ‘Loretta’s Laundry.’” Daddy seemed to be thinking hard on his suggestion.
Mama didn’t look up from her ironing board. “Who’ll see my shingle?”
“Your customers,” Daddy said.
“My customers are all from Ivoryton. They won’t come close to this neighborhood. I go to them, remember?”
Daddy was lining up the corners on a pillowcase, preparing to fold it.
Steam rose from Mama’s iron. Her face glistened from its heat. She said, “There is not a single one of those people who will come to this neighborhood, Curtis, not even to drop off or pick up their own clothes. Expecting them to come to me is expecting cats to play peacefully with dogs. It’ll never happen.”
Daddy didn’t press the issue, but I could tell by the determined way he was folding the pillowcase that the discussion wasn’t over.
Mama didn’t let it go. She shook her head. “It’ll be a long day off before anybody from Ivoryton comes to see my shingle.”
March is coming in with a roar. It snowed today, then turned to rain, then got icy. This is not like Virginia. Hurry up, spring! My pogo stick’s waiting.
I’ve thought of a way to make the clapping of erasers go faster, and that’s to sing while clapping them.
But what song goes well with erasers? I need something with a sure rhythm.
When I told Mr. Williams my idea, he said, “Singing does make unpleasant work tolerable.” He told me to sing “This Little Light of Mine,” one of my favorite songs from church.
The clapping did go faster, but it’s very hard to shine though a cloud of chalk dust. And that white stuff still clings to my clothes and hair, and the insides of my nose.
Do teachers even talk to each other? Don’t they know they’re each assigning a bundle of homework to the same students at the same time? I can do the work, but it’s getting all the work done on time that’s twisting me up.
Everything’s due next Friday! Everything!
Tonight I read and read and read Leo Tolstoy’s “The Three Questions” for English class. Then, for Biology, I read and read and read about something called “cell division.” History has not been the same since Mr. Dunphey left. We don’t talk about things in class. We read, Mrs. Harris tells us what she thinks about what we’ve read, then there’s a quiz.
So, tonight, I read and read and read about the Virginia Plan of 1787, and memorized stuff about how this plan helped develop the branches of government.
Then on a Math worksheet I wrote and wrote and wrote answers to a whole mess of questions about exponents.
When my eyes broke free from crossing, I went back to my Biology book, and read, for fun, about froggy innards.
There was an assembly at school today. Mr. Lloyd, the principal, announced the arrival of what will be called “The Prettyman Bell.” He held up a picture of The Prettyman Bell, which is set to be delivered to our school in May.
Mr. Lloyd said the new Bell Ringer will be announced at that time.
This afternoon, as I clapped and clapped those erasers clean, I heard that bell sounding in my thoughts.
Mr. Sutter came calling again. It was morning this time. He was holding a small crate in both his arms. Daddy greeted him. I was in our side yard, working on my batter’s swing, slicing through this cold day with the weight of my bat’s wood. Daddy didn’t see me, but I had a good view of him from behind.
Mr. Sutter said, “Curtis, I’m here to offer you your job back. This boycott has been hard on all of us. To be honest, my business has taken a real dip with so many Negroes not purchasing my products. The boycott has spread from Hadley to towns all over. Not one colored customer or supplier will buy from me. If things don’t pick up, I’m at risk of having to shut down.”
Mr. Sutter held out the crate toward Daddy. He said, “I’ve brought you and your family some cheese, and our best butter — Sutter’s Premium Salted.”
I’ve never tasted Sutter’s Premium Salted. We can’t afford it.
I was glad not to be in Daddy’s shoes right then. He had a hard decision to make. He wanted a job badly. But the boycott had brought on some ugly, dangerous things. And — Sutter’s Premium Salted was as good as a crate filled with gold.
Daddy didn’t even take a moment to think about Mr. Sutter’s offer. He said, “Sir, while I’m thankful for your butter, I can’t work for you. Your advertisement in our local newspaper made your opinions about segregation very clear.”
There was silence between the two men. Finally Mr. Sutter said, “I acted in haste, Curtis. I didn’t know where this integration was going. Besides, that was in the past. Can we just move on?”
There was pleading in Mr. Sutter’s voice. He was near to begging.
Daddy said, “I’ve moved on, sir.”
The straightforward way Daddy spoke is not how Negroes talk to whites in Hadley. Daddy was polite, but he was also standing up to Mr. Sutter.
Daddy said, “Thank you for the offer, but my answer is no.” Mr. Sutter couldn’t say anything to that.
He set the crate on our porch steps. He was leaving Daddy his gift. Daddy shook his head. He lifted the crate, handed it back to Mr. Sutter. “No, thank you, sir.”
I don’t know if Mama’s requests for laundry have doubled, or if the same number of people are sending more clothes to be cleaned and pressed. But man sakes, have the piles grown! On Sundays we no longer linger after church services for doughnuts and fellowship. We come right home and get to laundering.
Today I asked Mama, “Isn’t Sunday the day the Lord made for resting?”
Mama said, “If the Lord had meant us to rest, he wouldn’t have blessed us with so many shirts and skirts that need cleaning and pressing.” Lord, I’m tired of laundry!
Dear Month of March,
Please make up your mind! You seem very confused about who you want to be—winter or spring. Today you threw down more snow, enough to make Hadley look like a Northern town in December.
March, the official first day of spring is around the corner, so can you please go more in that direction?
It’s hard to be in-between, I know. I was born when it was part night, part day, so I understand having a toe in both places. I wake up during the in-between, so I know what it’s like to have one eye looking ahead and the other glancing back.
With me going to Prettyman, I’m between a colored world and a white one, so I feel the struggle of being pulled two opposite ways at the same time.
But March, I’m depending on you. In case you forgot, spring is not cold. Spring has no snow. Please be spring.
Begging,
Dawnie Rae Ready-for-a-
Warm-Day Johnson
As sick as I am of winter weather, there was one good thing about today’s cold. After school, Gertie and me stopped at Orem’s Pasture on the way home, where we made good use of the snow.
It was Gertie’s idea.
“Dawnie,” she asked, “why are there only snowmen, and not snow ladies?”
I hadn’t ever thought about it, but Gertie was right. The closest I’d ever seen to a snow lady was a snow angel, but who knew if they were boys or girls.
Before I could answer, Gertie was rolling and packing snow to make a snow lady’s body.
“Do the middle,” she encouraged, so I started gathering enough snow for the tummy of our lady.
We formed the head together, placing it on top of the body’s two parts.
“Now we make it a her,” Gertie said.
Gertie had a pocketful of more gumdrops and licorice. She handed me a bundle of drops. I got right to work on a face. This snow lady would be colorful — orange eyes, a grape gumdrop nose. Gertie made the snow lady’s mouth, a wide smile, made bright from red-licorice lips.
Gertie bumped her boot to mine. She said, “Dawnie, you’re good with gumdrops.”
“You got a way with licorice, Gertie,” I said.
Gertie put her arm around both my shoulders. She led me to stepping back away from our snow creation so we could see it better from a ways off.
“Our snow lady needs to be more fancy,” Gertie said.
Gertie decorated the sides of the lady’s snowball head with lemon gumdrops to form loop earrings. The gumdrop jewels caught glints of the afternoon sun.
With two fallen twigs, I positioned snow lady arms that reached up toward the cloudless sky.
“That’s a happy lady,” Gertie said.
With all those gumdrop colors, our snow lady did look good. Gertie bit off a piece of licorice she’d yanked from her pocket. She chewed slowly. She was eyeing our creation, and thinking. Gertie snapped her licorice in two, shared a piece with me. Finally she said, “Our lady needs a stole.”
At first I thought Gertie was talking about something having to do with stealing, until she explained that a stole is like a mink collar a grownup wears for going to the theater.
“Like to the movies?” I asked.
“Like to a Broadway show or the opera,” Gertie said.
For me, ladies with fur collars going to the opera was stuff that only happened in movies.
“Have you ever been to a Broadway show or the opera?” I asked.
“Once — to each.”
“Is it like going to a baseball game at a stadium?”
“Baseball at a stadium is much better,” Gertie said.
“Do ladies wear stoles to a stadium?” I had to know these things.
“The ones with the seats close-up do,” said Gertie.
Gertie volunteered her scarf for our snow lady’s stole. She draped it from the back of the snow lady, coming around to hang off each of her twiggy arms.
“That looks silly,” I said.
“Lady clothes can be that way,” said Gertie. “But it’ll let people know this is no snowman — it’s a snow lady who’s going places.”
Since Gertie had given up her scarf, I let our snow lady have my mittens. I figured March would make up its mind soon enough, and decide to become spring. So I was happy to give up my mittens.
Gertie was quick to share one of her mittens with me. “You take my other one.” She fitted her left mitten onto my bare hand, kept the right mitten for herself. Then Gertie pulled open her coat pocket, still filled with candy. “Put your other hand in here to keep it warm,” she encouraged.
I slid my hand down in. The gumdrops and licorice twigs greeted my fingers.
My coat had a pocket, too. “Put your free hand in here,” I told Gertie.
Gertie did the same as me, slid her hand down in my coat pocket.
We said good-bye to Hadley’s first-ever snow lady. We walked the rest of the way, toward our neighborhood, with warm hands. Each wearing one mitten, the other hand safe in the pocket of a friend.
Gertie had taught me something important, too. When I do get to a stadium to watch Jackie Robinson steal bases, I will need to wear a stole.
Tonight Daddy helped me with my homework by reading Leo Tolstoy’s “The Three Questions” out loud. It’s a fable about a king who wants to find answers to the three most important questions in life.
Before kissing me good night, Daddy asked me the study guide questions from the story.
1. What is the best time to do each thing?
2. Who are the most important people to work with?
3. What is the most important thing to do at all times?
Here’s what I told Daddy.
1. The best time to do each thing is when you’re sure it’s the right time.
2. The most important people to work with are people who need your help.
3. The most important thing to do at all times is the thing that helps those people.
Daddy said, “You, Dawnie Rae, have the right answers to ‘The Three Questions.’”
I showed Mr. Williams the story by Leo Tolstoy. I watched his face as he read it. His eyes worked smoothly across the pages, taking in each word, pausing some, thinking.
He answered the three questions this way:
1. Yesterday is past — forget it. Tomorrow is the future — don’t fret it. Today is a gift, and that’s why it’s called the present. The best time to do each thing is now.
2. The most important people are the ones God’s put right in front of you. Treat them like you want to be treated.
3. The most important thing to do at all times is to believe.
I said, “You, Mr. Williams, have the right answers to ‘The Three Questions.’”
Today is the first official day of spring, but there is nothing spring-y about it. Our front lawn is crunchy from icy dew that won’t let go. And it’s cold outside. I refuse to wear my hood, even though I still need it. Who wears a hood in March? Not me.
Daddy drove all the way to Norfolk looking for a job. He was gone for two days. He returned early this morning, honking his horn loudly as he pulled up to our house in his truck. Mama came out in her house dress. Goober and I followed in our pajamas. I was certain Daddy’d gotten a job. Why else would he be pressing his horn to make such happy sounds?
Morning was the color of a pearl. As soon as we got onto our doorstep, I saw why Daddy was honking. On each side of his truck he’d had a sign painted in curly letters:
LORETTA’S LAUNDRY. FULL SERVICE. FREE DELIVERY.
He said to Mama, “I hope you’ll hire a man whose child is taking such a bold stand by integrating her school.”
Mama had picked the morning paper up off our doorstep.
“Look, Dawnie!” Goober said. “Do you see Daddy’s truck?”
I smiled bigger than big. “I see it, Goob. I see it!”
Daddy came to where we stood. He hugged Mama. “Can I start calling you ‘boss’?”
Mama gave the top of Daddy’s head a playful slap with the folded newspaper.
She said, “You’re hired.”
Daddy’s truck is drawing a lot of attention. Loretta’s Laundry has officially come to Hadley, Virginia.
Mrs. Taylor told us today that the Bell Ringer job will now be decided by the results of something called the “Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.” Each student will take a final test for the school year. The test will cover every subject.
So, I need to know everything about parts of a cell. And, there might be so many questions about branches of government I’ll be wishing those branches could help me climb a tree out of my classroom window. And I bet the test will have enough algorithms to stuff a sofa. And probably thirty questions about “The Three Questions.”
The test will determine who becomes Bell Ringer starting in May and continuing through the next school year.
Tonight when I helped Mama pack up laundry deliveries for Daddy to make tomorrow, I told Mama and Daddy about the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam. Mama set her iron on its holder. The iron’s steam sputtered from its spout.
“One test decides? Whose knuckleheaded idea was that?” Mama asked.
“The school’s,” I said.
Daddy was balancing a stack of brown-paper laundry packages. His chin secured the one on top. “There’s a gift in it, Dawnie,” he said with a voice that knows.
A giant exam. Where’s the gift in that?
The man on the radio announced the official start of baseball season is only ten days away! And even though it’s the first day of April, this is no April Fool’s joke. Batting time is finally coming soon.
The announcer asked everybody who was listening, “Will the Brooklyn Dodgers win the world championship?”
Daddy said, “If Jackie Robinson has anything to do with it, they will.”
The Dodgers have come close a few times, with Jackie playing on their team. They’ve played in seven World Series games, but not once in any of those series have they won the world championship.
Dear Mr. Jackie Robinson,
Will the Brooklyn Dodgers make it to the World Series?
I want to know.
Thunder. Lightning. Rain. Rain. Raaaain.
I am not like most people when it comes to a storm. I like the rain and everything it makes. When the sky sends down a sprinkle, I pray for a sheet. Raindrops on my face make me happy. And, I’m a true puddle lover.
When there’s so much thunder that it sounds like heaven has spilled a bag of baseballs, I ask the Lord to have someone up there hire a drum band to bring on more booming.
As for lightning, let it strike!
How else can we see the sky’s design?
Mama practically sealed me in wax paper to make sure that not a drop of wet touched my skin. And she armed me and Daddy with umbrellas as wide as our porch roof. If there was such a thing as a wet-weather mask, Mama would have insisted on one of them, too.
Today, when Daddy walked me to school, I said, “I bet you can’t make it to Waverly and Vine without wanting to open your umbrella.”
“Bet,” Daddy said.
We were already soaked, and Daddy didn’t look too pleased. But Daddy, he’s a smarty. He slid his newspaper out from his coat’s inside pocket, opened it wide, and walked under the tent made by its pages. As good as rain feels on my face, it doesn’t compare to sharing a newspaper with my daddy.
More rain.
More puddles.
Goody, goody!
Today after delivering laundry packages, Daddy took me to the only public place in town that’s not segregated — the Hadley Public Library—so I could study for the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.
When I got to the library, Daddy and I slid into one of the study carrels, where we laid out all my schoolbooks and papers. The library is supposed to be a quiet place, but there’s one person whose whisper is loud — Gertie. She and her daddy were in the study carrel next to ours. They were doing the same thing, studying for the exam. As soon as I heard Gertie’s voice, I folded myself over the top of my carrel, peered down, and saw Gertie’s head. There aren’t many people I can recognize by looking at their scalps, but from watching Gertie somersault, I know the top of her head as good as I know my own.
“Gertie!” I tried to speak softly, but it came out loud.
When Gertie looked up and saw me half climbing into her carrel, she was through with whispering. “Dawnie, come down from there. Help me study! What does metamorphosis mean?” she asked.
I came around to where Gertie was sitting. Daddy followed. Our fathers introduced themselves. Gertie’s daddy is a small man with a kind face and glasses that slide to where his nose almost ends. When he shook Daddy’s hand, he did it with both his hands wrapped around Daddy’s. He introduced himself as Dr. Saul Feldman.
“Pleased to meet you,” Daddy said, and brought his second hand around to join both the hands of Dr. Feldman.
This is another thing I will never forget if I live to be a hundred. Four hands — my daddy’s strong brown ones and Dr. Feldman’s gentle white ones — clasped together, greeting each other.
Dr. Feldman said to Daddy, “You have quite a daughter. Gertie’s told me about Dawnie.” He smiled when he said this.
We all moved to one of the library’s center tables, out in the open, which we covered with our schoolbooks, papers, pencils, writing tablets, and plenty of scrap paper for figuring. We started with Gertie’s science question.
What is metamorphosis?
I knew the answer right off.
“It’s when something changes from one thing into another.”
I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, but I do believe in sweet things and surprises. Today, Easter Sunday, I got both.
At church, Yolanda kept to herself during the service. But afterward, when it was time for fellow-shipping, Yolanda asked if I wanted to play “Tell the Truth or Die Tryin’.” She was making an X over her heart before I even said yes.
Yolanda started off the game. “Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye. If I’m lyin’, watch me cryin’. ’Cause I know I will be dyin’.”
We pressed our foreheads together. Neither one of us had shed a “lyin’ cryin’ dyin’” tear.
“Dawnie,” Yolanda said quietly, “I’m gonna tell you something that’s the truth, but you gotta promise to keep it between us.”
I said, “Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.”
Yolanda took a breath. She lowered her voice even more. “I wish I could go with you to Prettyman Coburn,” she admitted. “I want shiny books, and classes with names of things that sound like they make you smarter just by saying them. Most of all, I want to be in school together, Dawnie.”
Yolanda hooked her pinkie to mine. She said, “I know it’s hard being the only Negro student at that school. But if I was there with you, you wouldn’t be alone, and maybe we could help each other.”
I locked our pinkies even tighter. “Prettyman would be a lot nicer with you in it,” I said.
Yolanda said, “I’m sorry for calling you uppity, Dawnie.”
I asked, “Did you hear what Reverend Collier said this morning during his sermon?”
Yolanda shook her head. “I was too busy thinking about truth tellin’.”
I said, “Reverend Collier told us that Easter is about celebrating a new beginning that’s come out of a dark time.”
Yolanda nodded.
“Let’s go to the fellowship table and get us some colored eggs,” I said.
“Nice making up with you,” said Yolanda. She pressed her forehead to mine for the second time. “And that’s the truth.”
Gertie knows everything there is to know about government and the Virginia Plan of 1787, and how a bill becomes a law, and what statutes are.
No doubt she will ace the questions about American history.
I asked Gertie, “How badly do you want to be Bell Ringer?”
“Not half as bad as you.”
“Are you worried about the exam?” I asked.
Gertie was at it again, giving the same answer for a different question. “Not half as bad as you.”
Then she added, “As long as they don’t make me sponge the blackboard and clap erasers.”
Like Gertie, I repeated the answer, but put the answer onto myself. I said, “As long as they don’t make me sponge the blackboard and clap erasers.”
The afternoon’s drizzle is as thick as blackstrap, the same molasses that once filled my lunch tin.
I should be studying, but my mind is someplace far away, daydreaming about diamonds. Diamonds with bases for running and rounding, and pretending to be player number 42 — Jackie Robinson.
If I had more time to go out and play, I bet I could hit an A+ home run on the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.
I thought the rain had stopped, but it’s back with an attitude.
As much as I love rain, I’ve now had enough of it.
Rain, rain, go away.
Come again some other day.
Stay all gone so I can play (after I get through seventh grade).
I’ve missed you! I thought you got lost somehow. But today I found out where you’ve been. Goober got his hands on you. He’s kept you from me, and for this whole week he’s made you his Diary Book. Eight full days without writing, eight days of wondering where you were, has been as hard as all these months with no pogo stick and a snowed-on, rained-on tree mop. There’s some stuff to catch up on, but I’m pressed for time. The Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam is next week. If I don’t write about what’s happened, though, I’m gonna pop.
Your pages are scribbled and drawn on, and a mess. Goober’s covered you with pictures of pogo sticks and peanuts, peanuts, peanuts!! Peanuts with faces and arms and legs.
And to make it worse, I’m now running out of pages for writing. I probably won’t make it till summer with the few pages left. Summer’s the best time for a diary, because I’ll have time to write.
I AM SO ANGRY AT GOOBER!! And I told him so, too. I hollered at him as soon as I found my scribbled-on Diary Book’s pages, where Goober’d left the book on my bed. I don’t care that my hollering made him cry and rock. I don’t care that Goober told me he didn’t mean to ruin my book’s pages, and that he just wanted to draw stuff! I don’t care one bit! Goober has broken Daddy’s rule about keeping your hands to yourself!! First my pogo stick, now this.
Goober ruins everything!
How come I got Goober for a brother?
How come Goober’s so … so … ugh!
How come Goober’s Goober?
I’m too angry for more catching up. If I write anything else, my pencil will snap. That’s how mad I am!
I’m going outside to slam my bat at the tree mop. I don’t care that it’s raining knives and forks. I’m raining knives and forks!!!
The new hiding place for my diary is in my shoe box, where the Vaselines once lived, where that frog almost lost his life in the name of science, and where I’ve hidden my Christmas money. Goober can’t find my Diary Book there.
I’ve now had the chance to look more closely at Goober’s scribbles. His peanut people have broken legs and arms. And heads split open. And bandaged noses. And smiles turned down. And Xs for eyes.
Goober’s labeled each broken peanut person. He’s named all of them after himself.
Before Prettyman, there wasn’t a single lesson, paper, assignment, or test that turned me to gooseflesh. Now I’m all goose. Nervous as a jumpy bird.
Back at Bethune when I took that test with Yolanda and Roger, I didn’t know what to expect, so I didn’t study. I was only just a little nervous. But that was different. The only truth that test unveiled is that it’s no secret I’ve got what it takes to succeed at Prettyman. But do I have enough smarts to pass Prettyman’s Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam?
Today was a church service filled with good surprises.
That preacher from Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr., had come back to Shepherd’s Way as our guest. Martin talked about the Sutter’s Dairy boycott.
He spoke about our progress as a people, and told us that change takes time. Nobody argued about nonviolence. But plenty grumbled about non-buttered toast, no milk for coffee, and baking without cream.
Before the protests got out of hand, Reverend Collier introduced a new member of Shepherd’s Way. “Brother Arne Pelham, welcome.”
A pudgy man stood and nodded to the congregation. The reverend asked Mr. Pelham to tell us about himself. But Reverend Collier didn’t give Mr. Pelham time to speak. The reverend was eager to share the good news.
“Brother Pelham is a dairy supplier who’s come to Hadley from Maryland. His company, Pelham Dairy, will start operation throughout Lee County this month.”
I tugged at Daddy. “What does that mean?”
“It means we can buy our milk from Brother Pelham,” Daddy explained. “We now have a Negro selling us dairy products.”
“Will there be a Negro milkman, too?”
Daddy nodded.
Mr. Pelham was glad to shake some hands.
Reverend Collier then introduced another church visitor. He motioned to the back of the church, encouraging the guest to come forward.
It was Mr. Dunphey!
He stepped to the pulpit and stood next to Reverend Collier. I blinked to make sure I was not dreaming this up. But as soon as Mr. Dunphey told us about being a teacher at Prettyman, and writing the letter to the newspaper, and believing in change, I knew this was no dream — I was wide awake.
My heart’s beat-beat-beat proved I was far from asleep.
Mr. Dunphey told the congregation about being asked by Mr. Lloyd, our school principal, to leave Prettyman. And he told us about going back to Boston, but thinking twice on it.
“Change starts with one person, then another, then more. I’m only one man, but progress can start with me, and with each of us.”
Mr. Dunphey’s words got some people to clap.
He said, “School administrators can kick me out of Prettyman, but nobody can make me leave Hadley.”
Reverend Collier said, “Brother Dunphey, you are a shepherd for peace.”
And there it was, another H word at our church—Happy!
At home, I showed Mama and Daddy the scribbles and pictures Goober had made in this diary book.
A sharp frown pinched at Mama’s face. Daddy’s, too.
Daddy went to his truck and came back with a roll of brown paper used to wrap laundry packages. He pulled out two long sheets, spread each on the floor of our living room.
“Goober, Dawnie,” he called. “We’ve got work to do.”
I was not in the mood for chores. Or folding linens. Or hanging shirts to dry.
Daddy instructed us to each lie flat, faceup, on one of the paper sheets. I looked at Mama, then Goober. They were as puzzled as me.
“Be still,” Daddy said. “Goober’s first.”
Daddy pressed Goober’s open hands flat down on the paper, and pulled his arms away from his sides. With Mama’s laundry pencil, he traced Goober’s outline — head, neck, arms, legs, hands, and each finger. Goober started to giggle, then wriggle. “Daddy, you’re tickling me.”
I was next — head, arms, neck, legs, and the outline of my hair. Goober was right. It did tickle.
Mama watched, and knew just what to do next. She taped the tracings to our living room’s biggest wall. She printed our names on the bottom.
She handed me and Goober each a laundry pencil. “Write good words. Draw nice pictures,” Mama instructed.
Goober and me, we didn’t waste any time. On the inside of my silhouette I wrote: “SMART. BRAVE. INTENTION. POGO. HOME RUN.”
I drew baseballs and frogs and bells and lots of 42s, Jackie Robinson’s jersey number.
Goober’s pencil got busy, too.
He wrote: “GOOBER. BOY. ME. FREE. RUN. FLY.”
His drawings covered the whole page, inside the tracing and out.
He drew dancing peanuts, smiling peanuts, peanuts playing in leaves, and peanuts with wings.
When we were done, Mama said to Daddy, “Curtis, I will never badger you again about hanging wallpaper in our living room. We now have the prettiest walls on Marietta Street.”
We got our first delivery from Pelham’s Dairy today. That milk tasted real good with my buttered toast.
Tonight Mama made me a warm cup of milk before bed to help me sleep before the exam. But as welcome as that warm milk was, I can’t sleep.
I’m writing during the black-night hours that churn slowly before the in-between. For three nights in a row, sleep has not been my friend. Two days till the exam.
It’s still raining, but less.
Can you cram for an exam?
Can you scram from an exam?
Is there ham at an exam?
I’m getting punchy!!
Today was the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam. The rain had stopped, but there was wet everywhere. I’m sure Bethune’s red bricks have stained the streets. After days of downpour, that school is probably a puddle of mud.
The air was thicker than biscuit gravy this morning. Mrs. Taylor had opened our classroom windows. No breeze came. Just heaviness everywhere. Mama made me wear galoshes to school. If there’s one thing that makes your feet sweat, it’s galoshes. And the one thing that makes the rest of you sweat is sweaty feet.
Mrs. Taylor handed out each test packet, facedown. She looked at the wall clock. “Students, begin,” she said. I flipped my test packet over faster than a spatula flips a burnt pancake. At the top of my test it said Science for the Ages, the name of my Biology textbook. Daddy had been right. Here was my gift.
The first section of my test was all about the dead frog! I had to draw its innards and explain how they work. So, I was starting off the exam with real good thoughts in my mind. That set the tone for the rest of the test. Real good.
I set my pencil to work, labeling the frog’s stomach, liver, and heart.
My own heart was beating a happy dance of relief. Not once did I need to use my pencil eraser. I was sure of my answers. By the time I got to the parts of the test that had to do with government and algorithms, I was warmed up and feeling fine.
The questions about “The Three Questions” didn’t stop me one bit. By now, me and Mr. Tolstoy were buddies.
When I was done, I reviewed my work. I put down my pencil. I watched the minute hand rise on the clock. I’d finished with two minutes left to flex my sweaty toes.
The exam is over. Even with the gift that came in getting a test that started off with frog dissection, I feel like I’ve been dissected. Oh, my innards!
Gertie was glad for so many exam questions about democracy and the branches of American government.
“Easy, easy, pillow squeezy” was how she described her test.
I’m just glad Gertie’s got know-how about branches, and I’ve got a brain for frog’s legs.
Now we wait. For our grades.
Sunshine!
At last.
Warm sunshine.
Happy sunshine.
Shine on, sunshine!
My tree mop is worn from the winter weather. But with so much sun, its ropes are dry and dangling.
The mop is as stringy as ever, and ready to play.
This afternoon I reared back with my bat, swinging righty, then met the mop — bam! — and sent it soaring.
If that mop could sing, it would have joined me for a chorus of “Welcome Spring.”
I asked Mama if I could please get my pogo stick out from the cellar. “Patience, Dawnie” was all she said.
That means no.
Before now, I never gave the first days of May a second thought other than to mark the beginning of my birthday month. But this is May with a capital M.
I was awake before the dew even knew what to do. With Daddy now working for Mama, he drove me to Ivoryton, let me out at Waverly Street, where we usually part ways on foot.
Waddle greeted me this morning! The markings on her face were the same, but she looked different somehow, smaller. She was partway under a rosebush, scuttling back to where I couldn’t see, out again to greet me, then back to hiding.
Mrs. Thompson’s rosebush was beginning to shed its winter brown. There were no blooms yet, but come summer, pink buds will bring joy.
I followed Waddle to the spot under the bush. I pulled back the low parts of green. Waddle’s whiskers twitched.
She had four baby raccoons suckling her!
They were tiny as newborn kittens, and just as hungry. None of them had face masks or tail rings. Just fur, and tightly shut eyes.
I whispered, “Waddle, you’re a ma! You’re a beautiful ma!”
I left Waddle to her babies, letting a small singsong fill my thoughts:
Waddle’s a ma … Waddle’s a ma …
When I got to the front of the school building, the new bell was there, but was covered in what looked like blue silk.
The Prettyman Bell was waiting for its unveiling.
The entire school gathered, with seventh graders standing in a row closest to Mr. Lloyd.
Mr. Lloyd spoke into a megaphone. “This bell will serve as a salutation to all who enter Prettyman Coburn School each morning. And the bell will usher students out in the afternoon. The power of its sound will be in the hands of our new Bell Ringer.”
Gertie nudged me.
Mr. Lloyd continued. “Our seventh-grade class has the Bell Ringer privilege beginning this month, and extending through the 1955–1956 school year.”
I wanted Mr. Lloyd to stop talking. I was eager to see the Prettyman Bell. But Mr. Lloyd, he sure was taking pride in his megaphone.
“As our seventh-grade teachers tally test scores, the question remains — who will the Bell Ringer be?”
Quietly, with my lips making the words, I prayed a silent prayer: me, me, me.
That’s when Mr. Lloyd unveiled the Prettyman Bell. He flung off the blue silk, let it flutter behind him. That bell was as big as Goober! It was a brass dream come true, waiting proudly on iron hinges.
My prayer rose up, this time from the deep place somewhere between my heart and belly. The spot where hard wanting lives.
Me … me … me …
How long does it take to grade some tests? It’s been a week since we took the Seventh-Grade All Competency Exam.
The Prettyman Bell is ready for a ringer.
I’m sick and tired of clapping erasers.
I can’t take another minute of Mama’s flypaper and fan.
Enough chalk dust!
Before the sun even knew it was morning, I was awake in bed. Now that spring’s here, light comes sooner into my window. The in-between is the bluest blue, with silver-pink curling in at its edges.
Our whole house was asleep when I crept to the cellar to get my pogo stick. I know Mama had told me not to go near the stick until my birthday, but between waiting for the exam results, and waiting to see if I’ll become the Bell Ringer, and waiting for me to turn thirteen — I’m sick of waiting.
I pushed past cobwebs and puddles left from so many days of rain, to the back corner of our cellar’s canning closet where my pogo had been stored.
When I pulled the chain that turned on the ceiling bulb, the closet was lit, yellow, dim. There’s not much to that closet. What you see, is what you see. And I could see that my pogo stick was gone! I looked under the potato bin and behind the canning shelf where Mama had stored pickles all winter. No pogo stick. Anyplace.
I couldn’t help what I did next. “GOOBER!” I shouted.
Daddy and Mama came running. Daddy was holding a flashlight. Mama held Goober’s hand.
I was breathing hard, like I’d been the one racing to the closet.
“Where’s my pogo?” I hollered.
Mama said, “Where’s your patience, Dawnie? You were supposed to wait until your birthday to come looking for that stick. You disobeyed me.”
I kicked at the potato bin. I was thinking on what to say.
Daddy said to Mama, “Should we punish her, Loretta?”
Mama said, “Yes, Curtis, let’s punish her.”
Daddy told me to follow him to the subcellar, a cramped, tiny space where our house pipes live. Only the two of us could fit.
Daddy pointed the beam from his flashlight. He moved toward the direction of the light’s ray, which he’d fixed to shine onto an odd shape leaning against the dirt wall. Right then, in our subcellar, Daddy unveiled my punishment. There was no blue silk, like the fabric that had covered the Prettyman Bell, but a burlap sheet had kept the surprise hidden — a new pogo stick! A red Ace Flyer with green tassels at the end of each handle.
Mama called, “Has she gotten her punishment?”
Daddy peered through the small opening that led up to where Mama and Goober waited. “I’ve socked it to her good,” he said.
This is the best punishment ever!
Warm weather has a way of putting people in a good mood. Yolanda came over today. I showed her how high I could jump on my new pogo stick.
Yolanda made up a rhyme, right on the spot.
That pogo stick’s new, it’s never been seen.
Its body is red, its tassels are green.
So much pogo joy, you won’t want a breather.
That Ace Flyer doesn’t squeak, either!
We giggled at the whole silly thing.
I now know four things for sure about Gertie Feldman.
Gertie Feldman is the daughter of a doctor.
Gertie Feldman is smart.
Gertie Feldman is a big faker!
Gertie Feldman will be my true good friend for a long time.
Our exams came back today. I scored high, but not high enough to be named Bell Ringer. I missed two out of twenty-two questions, and lost points for misspelling metamorphosis and nucleus.
Gertie got a perfect score on her test. She gained three points for spelling everything right.
This afternoon there was another assembly, this time to name the Bell Ringer. Mrs. Taylor made me finish clapping erasers before the gathering. When I arrived at the bell, I was covered in chalk dust, like always at that time of day. Mr. Williams, the janitor, had come with me. Miss Cora and Miss Billie, the ladies from the cafeteria, were there, too.
Mr. Lloyd’s megaphone could be heard from here to Norfolk. Boy, was it loud. Mr. Lloyd called Gertie forward in front of everybody. “Now, Miss Feldman, you may christen the Prettyman Bell.”
Well, it didn’t take a dictionary to know what christen means. I’ve been to enough church services to know that when somebody is christened they’re introduced as new and special in the eyes of God. And if the eyes of God were watching at that moment, they could see that me, me, me was not the one christening the Prettyman Bell.
But soon me, me, me saw the real and true Gertie Feldman.
As soon as Gertie curled her fingers around that bell’s weighty handle, she slid her eyes toward me, me, me. The whole school was waiting to hear the christening of the bell. But Gertie would not oblige them. She pulled down on the bell’s handle. The handle didn’t budge. Then she went up on tiptoe to get her hands and the weight of her body above the handle. She tried with a will to plunge down on the handle, but it still didn’t move. Not even a little bit.
Gertie gave a grunt. She bit on her bottom lip, and tried to pull the handle toward her. Still no christening. That’s when I knew Gertie was faking. Someone who’s so good at somersaults and talking to grown-ups could most likely ring a bell, even a big one.
Finally Gertie said, “This bell’s too heavy for me. I need help.”
Mr. Lloyd came forward to get the bell started, but Gertie stopped him! Before he, he, he could christen the bell, Gertie grabbed on to me, me, me!
She positioned my fingers around the bell’s handle, then wrapped her hands on top of mine. The bell and its handle were heavy, but not heavy enough to keep Gertie from ringing it by herself.
Together we hunkered down on that handle and christened the Prettyman Bell. We sent its song right to God’s ear.
But after the first strike of sound, Gertie stepped away so I could ring all by myself. And did I ever ring. The bell’s handle got lighter with each yank. And as the bell started to swing on its iron hinges, its sound grew louder and louder, taking on a steady rhythm and a claaannggg that stirred me from the inside out.
I’m sure Mr. Lloyd didn’t expect that I’d pull on that bell’s handle twenty times over. But I was there to introduce that bell. Mr. Lloyd could not stop me, me, me.
I claaaaannnggged that bell for Mama and Daddy.
I claaaaannnggged for Jackie Robinson and Mr. Dunphey.
I claaaaannnggged for Mr. Williams, Miss Cora, and Miss Billie.
I pulled on that bell’s handle doubly hard for Gertie and Goober, who both see things in ways others don’t, and for Yolanda, who can always make me giggle.
Most of all, I christened that pretty Prettyman Bell for myself.
Dawnie Rae Johnson.
When I was done, Gertie asked Mr. Lloyd for his megaphone. He was so startled by the whole thing that he gave it to her without thinking twice.
Gertie really didn’t need a megaphone. Her voice is loud enough.
She said, “I give my Bell Ringer job to Dawnie.”
Not one person protested. How could they? Mr. Williams and the lunchroom ladies were clapping too loudly.
With the school year almost over, I have a bad case of spring fever. The last day of school is this Friday.
Today Mrs. Taylor posted the roster of school jobs for next year. They were listed alphabetically, and for once my name was in the right place.
There were three names and jobs on that list that caught my eye:
Morning Salutation: Gertie Feldman
Blackboard/Erasers: Bobby Hatch
Bell Ringer: Dawnie Rae Johnson
Happy birthday to me! I haven’t written in a while, for the simple reason that this book’s pages have run low because of Goober’s scribbling, and I wanted to save some space for writing on my birthday.
As it turns out, I now have enough pages to write for at least another year. I’m in bed as I fill up on writing. My red pencil is short now, but its point is still as sharp as ever.
This morning the in-between had nothing on me. I was awake while the moon started to wave good-bye. The sky was peeling open to let in the sun.
Something hard-edged poked through my pillow’s softness. I knew right off what it was, and reached around to pull it out from its hiding place.
It’s a new Diary Book! For my thirteenth birthday! From Goober!
I will never use the bad H word about my brother again. He has given me a new H word to describe how I feel about him. I am humbled by how good a soul that boy is.
My new diary has a green fabric cover and a pocket in the back. I can tell by the lavender smell coming off the book’s front and by the stiff-stiff way it’s been sewn together that Mama’s had a hand in making it. The book has been pressed with an iron, I just know it.
The pages are the same as this diary’s pages, rough at the edges from the way Goober’s cut them to fit between the new book’s covers. Goober’s written a note on the book’s inside front. I recognize his handwriting. It says:
To Dawnie. My sister. You can fly.
Now I have reached this book’s last page. It’s just as well. I need to stop writing. Goober’s calling me.
“Dawnie, come out and play!”