CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The lobby had a high ceiling that was lined with wood. Along the front entrance, windows stretched the full height of the building, and the morning light streamed in. On the floor were rows of wooden seats, like church pews. The ticket counter, baggage claim, and telephones lined the walls. Through a doorway to the left, I saw the restaurant that Jarmaine couldn’t use. A security guard was stationed by the door, the only sign that there had been trouble. Workers, all of them white, stood behind the counters. A Negro custodian swept the floor and dusted the seats.

I checked the big clock above the ticket counter. It was almost eleven. The Montgomery bus was scheduled to leave at eleven thirty, so we had a half hour to wait. Without thinking, I sat in the white waiting area. Jarmaine hung back, eyeing a section in the corner marked Colored Only, where a well-dressed group of men, women, and children were crowded.

“Sorry,” I said, getting to my feet.

I started for the corner, but Jarmaine stopped me. She looked nervous but determined. Her eyes darted back and forth.

Finally she said, “Let’s sit here.”

Jarmaine took the place beside me. She held the basket in her lap like a shield.

The security guard scanned the room. He wasn’t much older than some kids I knew at Wellborn High. When his gaze came to rest on us, he slowly walked over.

“You’re not allowed here,” he told Jarmaine in a rough voice, as if trying to prove he meant it.

She hugged the basket to her chest.

“You hear me?” he said.

“We’re not moving,” said a voice. I guess it was mine.

“You can stay,” he told me. “She has to go.”

Jarmaine said something, but I didn’t catch it. Neither did the guard.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I said, have you heard of Boynton versus Virginia?”

He stared at her blankly.

“It’s a Supreme Court case,” said Jarmaine. “Last December they ruled that segregation is unconstitutional in bus and train stations where there’s interstate commerce.”

He didn’t answer. She might as well have been speaking Chinese.

“Have you heard of the Freedom Riders?” asked Jarmaine.

“The troublemakers? Yeah, they were here. Bull Connor fixed them.” He squinted, eyeing Jarmaine and then me. “Are you with them?”

“Yes,” I answered. Well, we were in a way.

“Aren’t you kind of young?” asked the guard.

Jarmaine said, “We’re students like them.”

“Anyway,” I said, “my friend and I are sitting together. We’re not moving.”

There was confusion in his eyes. I saw something else too. It was fear—not of two girls but of the Freedom Riders. The riders had been mocked, beaten, and arrested, but the security guard was afraid of them. They hadn’t fought back, and they had earned a kind of power in spite of it—or maybe because of it. The thought made me determined to stay. I didn’t want to let them down.

The guard eyed us again, then walked away. For a minute I thought we had won, but he came back with a stern-looking older man. On the pocket of the man’s shirt was a badge that said Station Manager.

“We don’t want trouble,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Neither do we.”

The station, buzzing just a few minutes before, was quiet. The old man with the sour expression sat a few rows back, watching with a look I’d seen in the crowd at Forsyth’s Grocery—mean and stubborn, the face of a person who’s been beaten down and wants to fight back. I wondered who had done the beating, and why the man blamed Jarmaine.

There were two dozen passengers in the station, and it seemed that all of them were staring at us. I thought of the mob at Trailways, and suddenly I was afraid.

The manager noticed too. “These people are angry,” he said. “They’ve been through a lot during the past few days. Don’t test them.”

Jarmaine said, “They’ve been through a lot?”

She glanced around the room and caught the eye of the custodian, who had stopped sweeping and was watching from the corner. He nodded and stood up straight.

Jarmaine turned back to the manager. He met her gaze, then looked away toward the big windows by the door. I wondered if he had expected anything like this when he took the job. For a minute I almost felt sorry for him. He had parents, the same as I did. He had learned some things from them, and he had absorbed other things through his skin and from the air he breathed.

“These people don’t want to change,” he said.

“What about you?” asked Jarmaine.

He shrugged. “I guess I don’t either.”

“I do,” I said.

“They should whip you,” said a voice.

The words came from a sweet-looking lady sitting down the row from us, someone you’d expect to sew a quilt or bring you homemade jam.

A low rumbling started behind us. It spread across the room, the sound of frustration and trouble. A young woman got to her feet and, holding the hand of her little boy, came across the room toward us. She had a pretty face, and her son’s cheeks were smudged with jelly. She stopped in front of us.

“You shouldn’t sit here,” she said. “You never know what people might do.”

At first I thought she was being kind, and then I saw her eyes. They were like two black holes, pits you could fall into and never climb out.

Suddenly the man with the sour expression was behind her. Beside me, I heard Jarmaine’s rough breathing. We watched as others got up and came over. It seemed that half the station was there, staring down at us.

I thought of what I had learned in social studies about the Bill of Rights—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to bear arms. What about freedom to sit? It seemed like such a simple thing.

I reached for Jarmaine’s hand. It was damp with sweat. I squeezed, and she squeezed back.

“We’re not moving,” I said.