All the Days Past, All the Days to Come

by Mildred D. Taylor

  It was obvious as heads turned to look at the house that many people were impressed by it, and we took pride in that. The house was large, a duplex. On one side of it was a rundown ramshackle house with unpainted wooden siding blackened with age and a huge barn in the backyard filled with rats. On the other side was a neat house, a side-by-side duplex, but smaller than ours. When we moved in, families in both those houses were white.

  That did not last long.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Despite having been in Toledo less than a year, Stacey and Dee had managed to buy the Dorr Street house in the spring of 1945. They had managed this by both of them working. Once Dee arrived in Toledo, she had left Rie and ’lois with Mrs. McClaire and gotten a job at a tool factory, and she and Stacey had saved their money for a down payment on the house. Stacey and Dee had good heads for business and they figured to pay the mortgage by renting the upper portion of the house. Their decision was a smart one. In May 1945, the war ended on the European front. In September 1945, the war ended in the Pacific. With Christopher-John and Man soon coming back from the war, Stacey and Dee figured they would need a house.

  By the time I arrived in Toledo, Stacey and Dee already had the house. They and the girls and I stayed on the first floor, where there were two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, sun parlor, and what we termed the front or “Sunday” room, where we sat on Sundays with all the folks who came to visit. Dee furnished the room with her best furniture and sheer white curtains that draped across the only window, a large picture window that looked onto Dorr. The house was the finest in which we had lived and had more space than any of us had ever experienced. Even though I shared a bedroom with the babies, I felt the enormous size of the house and shared Stacey and Dee’s pride in owning it.

  We learned that the house had not always been a duplex, but once had been a one-family house. The room that was now Stacey and Dee’s bedroom was evidence of that. Once most likely another common room for the residing family, the bedroom was adjacent to the dining room and had two sets of stairs. One set of stairs, closed off by a door, led to the basement. Inside the bedroom closet, another set of wide stairs with a heavy carved banister led to the second floor. At the top of the stairs to the right of the hallway was a large bathroom, then the hall turned and along the rest of it were four rooms, presumably once all bedrooms, one of which had been converted into a kitchen. A door near the end of the hall opened into the upstairs sun parlor, a room with windows lining the exterior walls and stairs going to the downstairs sun parlor and the front door. In addition to the front door, there were doors opening from the downstairs sun parlor into the living room and the Sunday room. Both the lower and upper sun parlors as well as the downstairs bathroom had been added to the house years before.

  The remodeling and the additions were a boon for Stacey and Dee. Three separate families lived in the three upstairs bedrooms and all paid a monthly rent. They were all young couples, two with children younger than three. They all shared the bath, the kitchen, and the sun parlor, and they all were happy to be there, for this was their start in the North. All the families, like ours, had migrated up from the South looking for better jobs, for less discrimination, for all the opportunities of the North. Stacey and Dee were fair with all of them, friends with all of them, and when any of the families upstairs decided they needed more space and could afford to move, there was always another family waiting in line to take their place, for with the house came assurances of who Stacey and Dee Logan were, who we were as a family, and how tenants were treated. Those upstairs rooms were in great demand and were never vacant.

  With all the rooms upstairs occupied I asked Stacey about rooms for Christopher-John and Man. Stacey told me not to worry about them. They would stay downstairs with us when they finally came home. When that would be, we didn’t know. We didn’t know either if they would be coming to Toledo or going back to Mississippi. Following the end of the war on both fronts, we had expected their return any day, but the months of 1945 had passed into the spring of 1946 and still both Christopher-John and Man were in service over in Europe. I was exasperated with the waiting. “How much longer do you think it’ll be?” I asked Dee as she stood at the kitchen table rolling dough for a sweet potato cobbler. “Before they come home, I mean.” I was at the ironing board ironing a dress for the night.

  Dee looked at me and shook her head. “Have no idea. Clayton and Christopher-John don’t either.”

  “Well, I hope it’s soon. I want them home.”

  Dee smiled at my impatience. “We all want them home, Cassie. Have patience.”

  “You know that’s something I’m short on.”

  Dee laughed. “You’re telling me? You never were one for patience, Cassie.” She glanced over. “You about finished with that dress? I want you to make the cornbread before we go. No telling what time we’ll get back.”

  “I’ll be finished in a few minutes,” I replied.

  “All right.” Dee, always organized, checked the wall clock. “I just have to get this cobbler in the stove and finish up the collard greens. The beets are ready and the okra’ll be done in a minute. Pork chops won’t take that much longer. Soon as the cobbler’s done, you can put the cornbread in.”

  I nodded, enjoying the smell of frying okra and smothered pork chops and onions slowly baking. It was Friday morning and we were preparing dinner early because we were going to see the doctor in the afternoon. Dee was taking the girls in for a checkup and I was going to have a physical exam for a job for which I had applied. It was a position as a counselor at a girls’ summer camp sponsored by Stacey’s union. If I got it, it would be something different, and a challenge too. I would be out of the city for the summer and back in the countryside. More important than that, it would mean a full-time paycheck for two months. Since I had arrived in Toledo I had not earned much money. Although I had a little part-time job at Roman’s, which was fine while I attended the University of Toledo, taking courses I needed in order to teach in Ohio, the pay was minimal.

  Dee finished rolling the dough and began cutting it into large squares. “So, what time is Moe coming?”

  “About the same as usual. He’ll go home from work, change, then get on the road.” The iron was now cold. I took it over to the stove, took a second iron from the gas fire, and set the cold iron on the grill. I placed the hot iron upright on the ironing board to let it cool a minute and readjusted my dress on the board. “He’ll be here in plenty of time for us to go to the movies.”

  “I still wish Moe would just move down to Toledo,” Dee said. “I hate that he has to make that trip from Detroit every weekend.”

  “He doesn’t have to make it,” I said, testing the iron on a rag to see if the hot metal scorched it.

  Dee laughed. “Oh, yes, he does! Moe would be lost if he couldn’t come down to see you!”

  I waved off her comment. “It’s not just me he’s coming to see. It’s everybody, the whole family.”

  “Cassie . . . you know how Moe feels.”

  I shrugged. “You know I love Moe. He’s my friend.”

  “But that’s all, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But he’s in love with you, Cassie, and you know it.”

  “Yes, I know it, and I’ve told Moe I don’t feel that way about him, and that’s okay with him—”

  “Maybe for now. But that can’t go on forever, his feeling the way he does and you not returning those same feelings.”

  “Dee, I think you’re wrong. I like being around Moe. I like talking to him. It’s good to have a man to talk to other than just Stacey.”

  Dee smiled. “That, and because you can wind Moe around your little finger. He always agrees with you, whether he really does or not.”

  I took up the iron, cool enough now to finish
my dress. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Having a man who agrees with you?”

  Dee eyed me in all seriousness. “Not all the time. That’s sure not what I would ever want in a man.” She began to layer the cobbler. Setting slices of uncooked sweet potatoes in a deep pan, she layered them with the thinly rolled squares along with pats of butter and a mix of sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon. “If Robert had been that kind of man, we never would have gotten together. I need a strong man, and, Cassie, I know you do too.”

  I just looked at Dee and continued ironing my dress.

  I knew Dee was right about Moe and me. But then Dee was pretty much right about everything, and she always knew what she wanted. Even as far back as when she had first come into our lives she had known what she wanted, and what she wanted as soon as she saw him was Stacey, and as soon as Stacey saw Dee, he wanted her too. That was back in early ’42, when Stacey came home from Memphis, where he was working as a trucker driving big rigs and living with Aunt Callie’s son Percy and his family. When Stacey arrived he already knew a lot about Dee. Mama, Christopher-John, Man, and I had written and told Stacey that Dee was beautiful, petite, and cocoa-skinned, a striking young woman.

  Dee Davis had come into our community in the fall of ’41 to teach at Great Faith School. She was a recent graduate of the Negro Teachers Training School down near Brookhaven, and like other young Negro teachers in the state, she looked for teaching positions in Negro schools throughout Mississippi. As part of her contract with Great Faith School, Dee was given housing and board in the home of members of Great Faith Church. Initially she boarded with the Caldwater family, but in January of ’42, when the Caldwaters needed the room they had given her, Mama, having been a teacher at Great Faith School, and Papa, who was a deacon at Great Faith Church, invited Dee to stay with our family. At that time, I was a student at Lanier High School and Stacey was in Memphis, but Christopher-John and Little Man were still at home. Since I went home about every weekend, I got to know Dee soon after her arrival and I agreed with Christopher-John and Man that she was right for Stacey. The three of us repeatedly told Dee we wanted her to meet our oldest brother. We had all fallen in love with Dee, and we had a feeling Stacey would too.

  We were right.

  When Stacey arrived the two immediately hit it off. Within two months of their meeting they were married. In the summer Stacey moved back to Jackson, found work driving a truck at the box factory, and they moved into the house on Everett. In the fall, when school began again, Dee continued her teaching at Great Faith School and stayed during the week with Mama, Papa, and Big Ma. By this time Stacey and Dee were expecting their first child. Marie was born, and with her arrival came a new generation. Rie was a beautiful baby and, as Big Ma liked to say, she was the best thing since peanut and butter. Rie was the first Logan grandchild and everybody fawned over her. Actually, with so much attention, she carried the risk of being spoiled, but I knew that would never happen. Both Dee and Stacey were too sensible for that, and their own upbringing pretty much guaranteed that Rie would be brought up the same.

  Although Dee had fought Stacey about coming north, once in Toledo she had adapted to the move and did all she could to make their lives a good one. She too had wanted a house. Unable to qualify as a teacher in Ohio because she had not graduated from an accredited college, Dee had worked the evening shift at the tool plant making machinery parts for the war. With the end of the war, her job was terminated, but by then, she and Stacey had bought the house and, like Stacey, she envisioned that once they had a house, the family would follow.

  I figured she would be right about that too.

  I had known Dee less than five years and she was several years older than I, but she was now a sister to me, the sister I never had. I listened to her and trusted her opinion. She finished alternating the layers of sweet potatoes and dough and topped off the cobbler with the final uncut thick layer of dough. As she headed for the stove, I finished my dress.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  I hated going to the doctor’s office. The few times I had gone, once for myself, the other times with Dee and the babies, the waiting room was full, with babies crying and restless children running about in play or pure frustration at the wait. The room was filled with working-class families, both colored and white. Sometimes there weren’t enough seats and those left standing leaned against the walls or stood outside until they were called. In the winter, the room was overheated, hot and stuffy, and the air smelled thick. In the summer, the heat was different, a stifling hot muggy heat that permeated the small building and seemed only to be made worse by the open screen door that allowed in the racket of the passing traffic. Appointments, if one had an appointment, were mainly in the evening when people had time after work to go see a doctor. Afternoons, though, were first come, first served. But whether one had an appointment or not, whether it was evening or not, the wait was long. It always was.

  So far, on this day, we had been waiting for more than an hour and I was tired of waiting. “This is ridiculous,” I said.

  Dee just looked at me and smiled. Finally our names were called by the white receptionist. All the medical personnel were white. We got up with the girls and followed the white nurse, uniformed in white, down a long hallway. Dee was shown into one room. I went into another. The nurse told me to take off my dress and shoes and handed me a gown. As she left the room, she said after I was undressed, I should sit on the examination table. I did as I was told, then waited for the doctor. I wasn’t sure which doctor I was seeing, for several worked in the office and they saw patients according to the order in which they had arrived. The doctor came in. I had not met with him before. He was a middle-aged man, beginning to gray. He nodded and spoke. “Cassie, is it?”

  “Miss Logan,” I corrected. I was almost twenty-two now and expected to be treated as an adult, even by white folks in this northern town.

  He just looked at me and sat down at the corner table. Opening the file, he perused it for a few seconds before looking at me again. “So, what’s the problem today?”

  “I don’t have a problem,” I said. “I just need a physical exam for a job I’m applying for.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Counselor at a girls’ camp.”

  “Which camp?”

  “One run by the union at Willys Overland.”

  “You work there?”

  “No. My brother does. I have the medical form you’ll need to fill out.” I opened my purse, pulled out a long envelope, and handed it to him.

  As the doctor looked over the form, he said, “I didn’t know they were hiring Negroes for these positions.”

  I stiffened, but said nothing.

  But then he went on. “As I understand it, girls that go to that camp are white.”

  This time I spoke up. “As I understand it, the camps are open to the children of anyone who belongs to the union. My brother belongs to the union and if his children were old enough, the camps would include them too.”

  The doctor just looked at me, then put down the form and came toward me. “Well, let’s get started.”

  I glanced back at the door. “Where’s the nurse?”

  “We don’t need the nurse for this.”

  The one other time I had come to see a doctor, a nurse had been in the room, but I didn’t point this out as the doctor came over and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm. He held my arm against his body as he took my blood pressure. “Don’t move,” he instructed. He noted the pressure then took off the cuff.

  “How is it?” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “I mean, what was the reading?”

  “I told you it was fine.”

  “Well, that’s not telling me what it was.”

  “One twenty over eighty,” he said, sounding a bit exasperated. “Mean something to you?”

  “
Yes,” I said, and looked straight at him. He was talking down to me and I didn’t like it. “It’s perfect, right where it’s supposed to be.” I had read about blood pressure in a class I had taken. I didn’t tell him that. He chose to be superior, and it gave me satisfaction that in this particular thing, I knew the same as he.

  His sandy eyes stared at me, but he said nothing. He went on with the exam. He checked my eyes, my ears, my neck, then placed a cold stethoscope inside my gown and listened to my heartbeat. He did the same with my back and asked me to cough twice. After that, he struck my knees with a small rubber hammer and commented that my reflexes were fine. I didn’t say anything. Throughout the exam, he had said little to me. But now he said, “All right, lie down on your back, scoot toward the end of the table, and put your feet in the stirrups. I assume the nurse told you to take off your underwear.”

  “What?”

  He opened a drawer and pulled out rubber gloves. “I need to give you a pelvic exam.”

  “A pelvic exam?”

  “You’ll need to lie flat and do as I say. You need to put your feet in the stirrups and spread your legs so that I can check you.”

  I glanced at the iron shoes on either side of me on the examination table, then looked again at the doctor. I had never had a pelvic exam. “Why do I need a pelvic exam? There’s nothing about a pelvic exam on that medical form.”

  The doctor turned to me. “The form calls for a full examination and a full exam for a female means a pelvic examination.”

  “Well, I don’t see why. I’ve never had to have one before.”

  “It’s simple enough,” the doctor said as he pulled on the gloves. “They want to determine if you have any kind of medical problem in your uterus or if you’re pregnant.”