Yankee Girl

by Mary Ann Rodman

  “Was it her?”

  “She said not. I let it pass. I’ve had Inez since Pammie and Jeb were babies. I don’t want to have to train up another girl.”

  A tiny steam cloud hissed from the iron.

  “What if it was Inez?” asked Mama. “Doesn’t she have the right to vote?”

  Mrs. Mateer’s smile was all teeth and lipstick. No friendliness.

  “Nigras have no more notion who to vote for than Jeb.”

  The vein on Mama’s forehead bulged, the way it did when she was upset. She changed the subject.

  “So,” said Mama, “when does school start down here?”

  I guess all that talk about getting a “girl” to do the ironing got Mama thinking about the “girl” she already had. Me.

  “It’s high time you learned to do some of the housework,” Mama announced one Saturday morning. She shoved the steam iron around a tablecloth, pausing to shift the pressed part down and the wrinkled part up.

  “Hmmmm.” I sat cross-legged on the floor, watching cartoons and eating Cocoa Krispies from the box. Outside I could hear Daddy wasting a rare Saturday off, mowing the lawn.

  “I mean now, young lady. Put that cereal box away and come over here.”

  I did as she said. Mama got on these housework kicks now and then. She’d spend so much time showing me how to do something that she usually wound up doing it herself.

  “You need to learn to iron.” Mama showed me how to funnel distilled water into the steam chamber and set the temperature dial. She showed me how to dampen clothes with water from a 7-Up bottle with a sprinkler top.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked. Not that I cared. Maybe if I asked enough dumb questions she would lose patience and do the ironing herself.

  “A little water helps smooth out the wrinkles.” Uh-oh. Mama thought I was interested. “Let’s start with something easy.” She poked around the laundry pile until she found a wad of plain white cotton squares. Daddy’s handkerchiefs.

  “Why don’t we do yours?” I asked. At least Mama’s were pretty, with lace and embroidery.

  “They’re too easy to scorch.” Mama flapped a wet white square across the board. “Now, watch me.”

  Ironing was even more boring than I expected. Press the hanky out flat. Fold and press again. Fold and press again. All the corners had to match up exactly. I must have re-dampened and re-ironed each one four times.

  A million hours and a crick in my neck later, I finished. All that work for a little stack of folded linen. No wonder Mama hated ironing!

  “Nice job, Alice,” said Mama. “Now, if you would put them away for me, you can go play.”

  I looked around Mama and Daddy’s room, wondering where Daddy kept them. I started at the top of his dresser, yanking out drawers. Nope. Shirts. Nope. Socks.

  I pulled open the middle drawer.

  A gun in a holster was nestled among Daddy’s undershirts.

  A rattlesnake in the dresser couldn’t have shocked me more.

  I slammed the drawer shut. I knew that Daddy carried a gun for his job, but I had never seen it. He had always left it at the office.

  “Guns don’t belong in a house with children,” he said, when I asked him once.

  But that was years and years ago. Up North.

  In Mississippi, Daddy had a gun in his undershirt drawer.

  That’s why he didn’t let me hug him when he came home from work.

  He didn’t want me to feel the gun holster.

  He didn’t want me to know.

  We needed a gun in the house.

  In Chicago, school always started the day after Labour Day.

  But not here. Not this year.

  Daddy came in one night and tossed the evening paper onto the breakfast bar. “The Jackson schools are being integrated. School won’t start for another two weeks,” he announced. He pointed to the newspaper headline.

  Terrific! In two weeks, I would own all the Monopoly properties, a new world’s record, I was sure.

  Mama slammed the oven door on the pot roast. “You didn’t know about this any earlier?” she said.

  “I did not.” Daddy sounded annoyed. “The school district has been fighting integration all summer. They just lost their last court appeal, and now they need time to get ready.”

  “Ready for what? Should we be worried?” Mama nervously flapped the oven mitts against the kitchen counter. “Will it be safe for the children?”

  Images from the news flashed before my eyes. Police dogs. White hoods. Burning crosses. My stomach did a cartwheel. That headline was about my school. Something that was going to happen to me. Now I would be part of current events.

  “Look at the trouble those Negro children in Little Rock had,” Mama pointed out.

  “That was seven years ago,” Daddy said. “Civil rights leaders have learned a thing or two since then.”

  “Such as?” Mama folded her arms across her chest.

  “Such as avoiding confrontation. The parents will probably keep their children home a few days until all the fuss dies down. That won’t stop the protesters, but maybe they’ll get tired of it after a while.”

  “Why do Negro kids want to go to a white school?” I asked. “Schools are all pretty much the same, aren’t they?”

  Daddy shook his head. “Negro schools are mostly old and falling apart. They get the white kids’ leftovers. Old textbooks. Broken equipment. Beat-up desks. Wouldn’t you rather go to a shiny-new school with all the advantages, if you had the choice?”

  My school in Chicago had been shiny-new. I couldn’t even imagine one that wasn’t. I wondered what Parnell School would be like.

  I found out the following Wednesday, when our mothers took Jeb and me to register.

  “How come you had to register?” I asked Jeb as we walked up the school steps. “You went to school here last year.”

  Jeb shrugged. “I don’t know. Mama said everybody has to register whether you’re new or not. Bet it has something to do with the nigras coming to school.”

  I blinked in the dim hallway, my eyes adjusting after the bright outdoors. I breathed in and relaxed. Parnell School was somewhere between falling apart and shiny-new. It smelled the same as my school in Chicago. Like the green soap in the bathrooms, sweeping compound, and pencil shavings, all mixed up with last year’s vegetable soup.

  We passed the office where the custodian was fastening a nameplate on the door that read PRINCIPAL BENNY THIBODEAUX.

  “I’m going in here to see about transferring your records,” said Mama. “Why don’t you go with Jeb and meet your new teacher?” She disappeared into the office.

  I nudged Jeb. “Is that how you spell Tippytoe?” He shrugged.

  Mrs. Mateer turned her head. “It’s a French name,” she said. “Young fella from downstate, I heard.”

  We passed a poster-painted banner: WELCOME TO OUR SCHOOL. The last two letters of “school” crawled sideways up the end of the paper.

  “Second graders.” Jeb’s lip curled. “They mess up everything.”

  “Sixth grade, right here.” Mrs. Mateer hustled us into a room labelled 6A.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. Hanging over the chalkboard were three flags. The American flag, one that I had learned was the Mississippi state flag, and a…

  “Is that a rebel flag?” I whispered to Jeb, pointing to the third flag. “What’s that doing there?” Up North, we learned in social studies that the rebel flag stood for evil slave owners who seceded from the Union. I sure never thought I’d see a rebel flag in a schoolroom.

  “It’s the Confederate flag,” Jeb corrected me. “It’s a symbol of our glorious heritage.” I could tell he had heard some adult say that.

  What glorious heritage? I started to say. You guys lost the war. But I decided that might not be the smartest thing to say to a boy named for a Confederate general.

  A young woman with perfectly flipped silver-blonde hair sat at a long table covered with cards and papers. She looked up
at Jeb and me standing in the doorway.

  “Y’all come on in.” The woman smiled like we were the best thing that had happened to her all day. “I’m Miss LeFleur. In French la fleur means ‘the flower’.”

  It seemed like a good name for her.

  She wore a madras shirtwaist dress, penny loafers, and silvery pink lipstick. She couldn’t be a teacher; teachers weren’t this young and pretty.

  “Are you the new sixth-grade teacher?” asked Mrs. Mateer. “I heard Miss Carpenter retired.”

  “Yes, I’m taking Miss Carpenter’s place.” Miss LeFleur flashed a quick smile. She had dimples! “However, Miss Gruen is still here. She retires at the end of the school year.” She handed Mrs. Mateer a sheaf of papers. Miss LeFleur’s fingernails were painted pink; her silver charm bracelet tinkled faintly. I hoped that I would get Miss LeFleur and not some cranky old teacher who was tired of sixth graders.

  “Where is Miss Gruen?” Mrs. Mateer fanned herself with a registration card.

  “She’s…uh…at a meeting at the Central Office.” Miss LeFleur suddenly found something fascinating in a stack of papers.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that integration business?” Mrs. Mateer asked sharply.

  My insides squirmed. Was there going to be trouble after all?

  Miss LeFleur shuffled through her cards, bracelet jingling. “Please keep your voice down.” She dropped her own voice to a whisper. “Some coloured girls are coming to school here. I really can’t say more.” Her nostrils flared, as if she smelled something bad. It was an ugly look on a pretty face. Then it vanished as quickly as it had come.

  “Any of them going to be in the sixth grade?” Mrs. Mateer clicked open her purse and pulled out a gold fountain pen.

  Miss LeFleur turned about six shades of red.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” said Mrs. Mateer, her pen moving across the registration papers. “Nigras have to go to school somewhere. I just don’t want any trouble, know what I mean?”

  I think I knew what she meant. I felt sorry for these Negro girls, whoever they were. Last Wednesday, during my visit to Dr. Warren, I had gotten a taste of how it felt, not being wanted.

  “You Yankees,” shrilled Dr. Warren’s nurse. “Y’all come down here thinking you can tell us what to do with our nigras.” She waved the patient information form, where Mama had written “FBI Agent” next to “Spouse’s Occupation”. Everyone in the waiting room put down their magazines and stared at us like we were Martians. “Why don’t y’all go back where you came from? There’s plenty of crime up North. Ain’t none of y’all’s business how we treat our nigras.”

  I tried to disappear behind a copy of Life, but it didn’t work. Waves of hate came right through the magazine. These people didn’t even know me.

  I cringed at the memory as I watched Miss LeFleur paging through the registration cards. “Yankee, Yankee, Yankee go home” her charm bracelet jangled.

  But I was home. Mississippi was home now.

  Chapter Three

  JACKSON DAILY JOURNAL, Monday, September 14, 1964

  CITY SCHOOLS OPEN TODAY

  Race Mixing Plan in Effect

  “Ninety degrees here at Rebel Radio on this back-to-school morning,” shouted the deejay on Pammie’s transistor as Pammie, Jeb, and I waited for the bus.

  The Dippity-Do on my bangs oozed down my forehead. Even though I wore a sleeveless dress, I felt like I was melting into the soft asphalt. The full skirt had a scratchy petticoat that prickled my waist and the back of my legs. My feet were swelling, hot and heavy in suede oxfords and ankle socks. Next to Pammie’s short blue linen shift and dyed-to-match pointy-toed flats, I looked like a big, fat baby. Pammie even wore nylons!

  “Does everyone wear nylons?” I asked.

  “Not until junior high.” Pammie rooted around in her purse. “Sixth graders wear Peds when it’s hot. You know, those little shoe-liner things that just cover your foot? Don’t girls wear Peds in Chicago?”

  Some girls did. Girls with reputations.

  “Mama wouldn’t let me go without socks if it was two hundred degrees,” I sighed.

  Pammie pulled a tiny bottle out of her purse, unscrewed the cap, and took out…a toothpick? She offered me the bottle.

  “Soak ’em in peppermint oil. We aren’t supposed to have them in school.”

  “Okay.” I might be dressed wrong, but I could chew the right thing.

  “I’ll take one of those.” Jeb snatched the bottle from Pammie’s fingers. He wore his usual madras shorts.

  “You’re allowed to wear shorts to school?” You sure couldn’t do that in Chicago.

  “Yeah, but only when it’s over ninety. And only the boys. The schools ain’t air-conditioned.” Jeb gnawed his toothpick. “Whew, Pammie! How long did you soak these things? My head’s coming off.” He rolled his eyes and passed me the bottle.

  “Don’t get your hands near your eyes,” Pammie warned. “Peppermint oil stings like crazy.”

  It stung my mouth, too, like candy fire. Once my sinuses stopped hurting, it tasted pretty good, though.

  The school bus groaned to a halt in front of us. The door clanked open. I followed Pammie and Jeb on.

  “Remember,” Jeb muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t talk to me unless I talk to you first. Okay?”

  “Okay.” It wasn’t, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

  “No toothpicks on the bus,” said the driver, a teenager whose name tag said RALPH. “Ditch it.”

  I dropped the toothpick in the little trash can at Ralph’s feet and faced my first problem of the school year. Where to sit?

  I spied Saranne and the Cheerleaders in the rear seats, giggling about something. No room there. I scouted around for Mary Martha. She hadn’t been friendly, but she hadn’t been mean either.

  Mary Martha wasn’t on the bus.

  Jeb fell into a seat across from a redheaded girl. Nope, not with Jeb. I wasn’t even supposed to talk to Jeb, let alone sit with him.

  Pammie plopped down next to a girl reading a 16 Magazine, and turned the transistor up full blast. The Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night”. So much for Pammie.

  “Siddown, kid,” yelled Ralph. “No standing.”

  The bus lurched forward as I swayed down the aisle, looking for a seat.

  “Turn down that radio,” yelled a big scruffy-looking boy. “Stupid Beatles.” He looked old enough to be in junior high, but the notebook in his lap said “Parnell Rebels”. Maybe he’d flunked a grade. Definitely a goob.

  The redheaded girl across from Jeb clouted the gooby kid with her purse. “Shut up, Leland Bouchillon. The Beatles are the fabbest.” Braces twinkled on her upper teeth. I recognized her as the redheaded Cheerleader. A fellow Beatlemaniac!

  “Can I sit here?” Before she could say no, I asked, “Who’s your favourite Beatle?” And sat down.

  “Ringo, of course. Everybody likes Ringo.” I should have guessed. “Carrie loves Ringo” was scrawled in red Magic Marker across her three-ring notebook.

  “Unless they like Paul better. I do,” I said.

  “Paul is just cute,” the girl said. “Ringo has personality. You know you’ve got green goo on your forehead? Aren’t you the Yankee?” She sang along to “Hard Day’s Night”, braces flashing. I dabbed at the Dippity-Do goo with a Kleenex. The tissue stuck to my fingers.

  “Where’s Mary Martha?” I asked when the song ended.

  “She doesn’t ride the bus,” said the girl. “She lives across from school.” She stared straight ahead at “Leland B stinks”, scratched into the metal seat back.

  I tried again.

  “Is your name Carrie?” I pointed to her notebook.

  “Whaddyathink?” She shrugged and looked out the window. At least she hadn’t told me to get lost.

  There was no air in the bus. All the windows were shut tight. I leaned across Carrie to unlatch the window.

  “Don’t do that,” my seatmate said. “It’ll blow
my hair.”

  A dozen tiny smells grew into big smells in the hot, stuffy air. Hair tonic on the boys. Lime chewing gum. Peppermint toothpicks.

  “Guess who’s gonna be in our class?” hollered Leland, the gooby boy, bouncing in his seat. His flattop haircut stuck up in greasy spikes.

  “Dry up, Leland,” said Jeb from across the aisle. I glanced over at him, but he was talking to a boy with a crew cut seated in front of him.

  Leland stood and yelled, “Doesn’t anybody care who’s gonna be in our class?”

  “Siddown, Leland,” hollered Ralph.

  “Okay,” sighed Jeb. “Go ahead. Tell us.”

  “Valerie Taylor,” Leland announced.

  Heads turned. Fifty pairs of eyes stared blankly at Leland.

  “Who’s Valerie Taylor?” said Carrie-the-Ringo-lover.

  “Valerie Taylor?” Leland repeated. “Reverend Taylor is her daddy!”

  Jeb gave a low whistle. “You’re kidding!”

  “Wow,” said the boy with the crew cut.

  “How do you know, Bouchillon?” asked someone from the front seats.

  “I have my ways,” said Leland with a smirk.

  “Who’s Reverend Taylor?” I asked.

  Jeb gave me a boy-are-you-stupid look.

  “You know, Reverend Taylor. Martin Luther King’s right-hand man? That Reverend Taylor.”

  Reverend Claymore Taylor? I’d heard of him, even in Chicago. Whenever Martin Luther King marched or made a speech for civil rights, Reverend Claymore Taylor was always at his side.

  “Bet there’ll be TV reporters at school,” said Jeb. “We’re gonna be famous.”

  TV reporters…and what else? I knew from Walter Cronkite what happened when schools integrated. Jeering crowds, snarling police dogs, fire hoses turned on full blast.

  “Don’t see why the big fuss,” grumbled Leland. “Jus’ some nigger listening to Martin Luther Coon what thinks she can go to school with white kids.”

  “Hey, you can’t call him Martin Luther— Ow!” A three-ring notebook smashed me in the head.

  “Oops,” said Jeb.

  “What was that for?” I rubbed my scalp.