Five hundred children arrested today, they said, ages six to sixteen. The principals tried to lock the children in the schools, and they jumped out the windows to join the demonstration.
Rosa Parks, King, Abernathy, Shuttlesworth—leaders, leaders.
Lionel Parrish, Christine Taylor. Leaders, leaders. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Her feet marched proudly on the sidewalk. She peered into shadows lest somebody be hiding there. Somebody ready to take her down.
The first man in her life had shoved her down to the carpet, bound her up with white clothesline. Did her. Somebody she knew. She hated him with a righteous hate. Coward, devil! She wanted somebody to do to him what he had done to her. Fuck him up his ass till he screamed. Terrify him. You don’t forgive somebody who treats you that way. You put as much space between him and you as you can, as fast as you can. You don’t ever forgive him because he’ll do worse next time. A coward, a shit. She believed in nonviolence, but maybe she’d have him tortured to death one day.
Bound her with rope, turned her over, pissed on the back of her head, the scalding piss dripping round the curve of her skull toward her eyes and mouth. She would not be humiliated. She would not feel shame.
His was the shame! He ain’t me, babe. No, no, no, I ain’t him, babe. She survived that union; separated herself from him. She had the strength to make anything she wanted of her life. She walked toward home with determination in each step: to learn, to study, to make herself achieve. To find the work right for her. Yes, that was her resolve. From physics to metaphysics, with music and art in between.
He was gone from her life, now.
But he was human, just like her.
She had known him;he hadn’t been a stranger coming up out of the dark.
She could wish him well.
Far from her life, let him live. (She began to hurry toward home.)
But he had come whining back around about how he had just wanted her to have his baby. She spat on him, wouldn’t dignify him with any words. And her heart had said to her, You done right! Just spit on that. She’d had babies. Not his. She wouldn’t have a crazy, cruel, cowardly shit as the father of her babies.
Even now, years later, she imagined herself turning away from his false love, and she felt strength well up in her and fill her soul and mind with purity. (Her feet scurried over the pavement toward home.) Didn’t matter what all had happened to her. Didn’t matter what mistakes she’d made. Now on, she loved herself. Loved her own independence. Loved the future.
Fielding’s Department Store
ALL EVENING AS STELLA ANSWERED THE DEPARTMENT store telephone, she thought of Darl, how when she came out the back door of the department store (“Good evening, Fielding’s”), he would be there, straddling the seat of the Vespa, one foot out on the pavement for balance.
Between telephone ringings (“Good evening, Fielding’s”), she tried to read The Divine Comedy. It was not assigned in any of her classes, but she had heard of it and wanted to know why it was supposed to be great. T. S. Eliot had referred to Dante in The Waste Land. When Stella tried to imagine the levels of hell spiraling down, all she could think of was Darl, the thrill of riding behind him on the motor scooter as he took the best curves down Red Mountain. Then she envisioned the brown freckles thrown like a net over all his classic handsome face.
From her perch on the mezzanine, she saw a boy she had known in high school. He had had a tiny hand, a birth defect. She had been a senior and Blake a freshman at Phillips High School, but they took drama and speech together. (“Good evening, Fielding’s.”) One day, their speech teacher, Miss White, from the North, had jabbed her own skin with her index finger and said, “Some people are so ignorant that they think the pigmentation of their skin means who’s smart and who’s dumb, who’s superior and who’s inferior.” While others looked down at their desks in embarrassment, she and the freshman boy had exchanged an electric glance across the room, made a connection, she had thought.
(“Fielding’s Department Store. May I help you?”) The school had buzzed about Blake, his weird hand, of course but also because he was a math whiz and had whole symphonies in his head. He was different. When Blake looked at other students, it was with contempt for their inadequacies.
High school hadn’t been that way with Stella’s friend Cat, who was in a wheelchair. (“Good evening, Fielding’s.”) Cat was as smart as Blake, but she was friendly. From the balcony, Stella watched Blake walk into the shoe department and throw himself down into a chair. He looked like a spoiled prince, his head topped by curls, his defective hand held up like a scepter. Maybe Stella would telephone Cat and gossip a bit. No, this was a night when Cat’s brother was escorting her to a party given by one of her handicapped friends.
Nancy was doubtlessly on a date. Ellie would be at a rehearsal for The Fantasticks.
During her break from the switchboard, Stella wandered toward the dress department. The store was quiet, almost empty of customers. With the trouble going on, people didn’t want to be out at night. She nodded to Sadie, the store maid, already running the vacuum in her neat gray and white uniform, and at two clerks chatting at a cash register. The store felt lonely.
Stella went to the dress rack and closed her eyes. She liked to feel the textures of the dresses first, before she looked at them. She always made sure no one was watching her. Touching the sleeve of a denim jacket made Stella feel young and tender about herself. She loved to touch corduroy, grooved like a plowed field. Some fabrics had a bright, glazed finish, and then there was the new no-iron shagbark fabric. She had bought a no-iron dress, its fabric covered with tiny knots. Aunt Krit had said she preferred a plain cloth. “I always tried the latest fashions,” Aunt Pratt had called from her bed, “when I was young.”
While she touched the fabrics of the dresses, Stella’s hand remembered the reassuring twill of Darl’s trousers, the curve of his buttock, and at their feet, the city down in the valley.
Stella wandered to the three-sided mirror and admired her dress, a smooth cotton broadcloth composed of tiny brown and black checks, edged with black rickrack at the collarless throat and short sleeves. When she had felt the dress on its hanger, the rickrack had pleased her fingertips. Small, bright black buttons ran down the front from the neck to the hem. That long line of little buttons somehow seemed brave.
With a part down the middle of her head, Stella thought she looked like the brave poet Emily Dickinson. Emily had not always worn white; she had not always been reclusive, but had become so, over time. Maybe Stella would be the reverse of Emily; maybe she was coming through the looking glass the other way. Coming out into the world, no longer in hiding.
Something in the air, or was it in the light reflected from the mirror, reminded her of her mother’s voice. “You look nice, Stella.” Emily Dickinson’s hair had been dark and pulled smoothly back. Stella’s blond hair ended in a flip just above her shoulders.
Both Emily’s religious skepticism and her courage amazed Stella. Though the other girls in Emily’s boarding school professed their faith in the divinity of Jesus, Emily had refused. From what starting point in yourself could you doubt what everyone you knew told you about Christ? Emily had believed in God, if not Jesus. Of course, if she wore a black-and-brown-checked dress such as Stella’s, it would have come to the floor. Had a hoop under it and been the prettier for it.
What did Darl see in her? He seemed to know she was quiet, and he didn’t care. What did she see in herself? Somebody who wanted to change. Somebody who wanted to live more fully. Someone whose scope was larger than the campus, broader than boring, part-time work, wider than a cloistered, borrowed home with two aunts, one a maiden teacher, the other an invalid (though she loved them and was grateful to them). Stella stepped out of the three-way mirror and returned to her station at the switchboard.
Though she opened The Divine Comedy again, she mostly daydreamed and gazed over the balcony at the business of the store, a
t the shoe department, men’s clothing, jewelry and accessories, at hats left over from Easter. Sometimes she peered down into the glass cases of gloves and lipstick tubes, the minutiae of fashion. (“Good evening, Fielding’s.”) She sized up the customers passing in the aisles—who was attractive and who was not. A department store was like a city. She had loved looking out over Birmingham from Vulcan. Like looking from a castle wall, his arm around her, her fingers knowing the twill of his trousers. And where would they go tonight?
Someplace to hug and kiss. Some fine and private place. Since Darl had gotten the Vespa, they could explore the city. How important were congruent values to a happy relationship? Suppose he kept his religion (she hoped he did), but she lost hers?
Mr. Fielding
WHEN THE OWNER OF THE DEPARTMENT STORE CAME UP the stairs to the mezzanine, on his way to his office behind the switchboard, he gave the switchboard operator a terse little nod. He knew how she perceived him: a short man, very erect, beautifully dressed in his well-pressed suit; his white hair circled his head like frosting on the sides of a cake. His own daughter—who loved him—had described him that way.
“Pretty quiet, tonight, isn’t it, Miss Silver?” he asked. He said it with grim regret. The protests cut into everybody’s business.
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“What do you think of these demonstrations. You all out at the college?”
“I just hope nobody gets hurt,” Miss Silver said.
“Medieval universities were surrounded by high walls,” he said. “The walls were topped with broken glass to keep the world out and the students in.”
Stella stared at him incredulously. How could she come to work for him if she were cloistered in the college?
“You all are students,” he went on, “and should bear in mind that now is your opportunity. Your obligation is to devote yourselves to your education.”
With a quick, definitive nod, he affirmed his own word and disappeared into his office. He closed the door behind him. Inside his office, he hiked up a leg of his expensive navy blue trousers. He placed one hand on his desk to steady himself and knelt. Fielding was pushing sixty, but he had no trouble kneeling. He’d kept in practice, in private, all his life.
Precious Lord Jesus, he prayed. Let this cup of integration pass from us, if it be thy will. Still, thy will be done. And give us strength to face what we must face with a loving spirit. Give them patience, Lord, and give it also to us. He pressed his chest with his spread hand. Keep us safe from harm, on both sides. In Jesus’ name, amen.
He imagined a high stone wall studded with glass and crooked nails. Would something like that be enough? He imagined the university boys of Europe and England leaning ladders against the walls, padding the top with thick, coarse horse blankets. He had heard that the Negro children had jumped out windows, on the first floors, to join the demonstrations.
At the Bankhead Hotel
THAT NIGHT, NOT A SCRATCH ON HIM, WHILE HE PUT ON his porter jacket, the noise of the protest still played in TJ’s head. Screams, sirens, barking dogs, the thud of the billy clubs, the songs. You didn’t go to war with songs. Over there in Korea it had been only the sounds of heavy weapons. Jeep motors. The clank of tank treads turning over. Cold and fierce snow like he’d never seen nor felt before. Men sobbing for their buddies. You didn’t go to war singing. The flag of war was khaki stained with blood. This was better.
Not pretty, no, he wouldn’t let himself say that when he pictured the fire-hose water blasts hitting the backs of huddled children. The blood on that woman’s face, the hose scouring the pavement with her body. Children squatting on the ground, their heads tucked down. One girl, on her knees but straight up, tall, had pressed her hands together, praying. The water toppled her over, hurt, screaming, her hands spread to catch her fall. The savage barking of the dogs. The enthusiasm of the police cocking their clubs. Not pretty at all. All that colorful clothing. A giant freedom flag. Noble. That was the word he wanted.
Glory! Glorious on our part. All the colors of the rainbow.
On the Vespa
“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” ALREADY, THEY WERE ALMOST flying.
Pressing her hands tightly against his sides, Stella felt Darl’s body contained between her palms. The wind of their speed rumpled her skirt, and she remembered the terrible wind buffeting the car on the way home from Helicon when the cyclone struck. She tried to stare over Darl’s shoulder into the distance, but at the sides of her eyes the gray pavement slid by like an endless blade.
“To the cemetery,” he answered, turning his mouth so the airstream could fly his words to her turned ear.
Darl steered the Vespa north, toward Oak Hill, a vast cemetery deployed over several hills. In the distance, a large water tower topped the highest elevation. When Darl found the gates closed to traffic, he parked the scooter. They climbed over a low brick wall and pushed through a tall, thick hedge of holly.
Once inside, they walked the narrow, deserted streets winding among the communities of the dead. Humidity veiled the trees and graves, the slopes of grass, homogenizing all the features of the cemetery. Hosts of gauzy monuments, like solid ghosts, rose solemnly from the graves toward the faint moonlight and fainter starlight. Behind them, the holly hedge held the ordinary world at bay. As Darl and Stella walked deeper into the cemetery, the darkness increased. To Stella, the quiet seemed holy, as though the slight noise of their walking was a sacrilege.
But Stella’s people were not here;they were all buried at Helicon.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” Darl asked, and lightly put his arm over her shoulders while they walked. “I drove through here earlier today,” he went on. “I want to show you a special statue. It’s deep in, over the next rise and down again.”
Hardly speaking to each other, they passed a grove of specimen holly trees and then walked on a footpath through an expanse of cedars. “The older graves are ahead, among the magnolias beyond the oaks,” Darl said.
Occasionally Stella saw a small grave marked with a lamb and assumed these were the graves of children. How quickly an aesthetic for monuments established itself. She disliked the heavy chunky monuments, especially if they were a dark, pretentious marble—the color of liver. She glanced up at the gibbous moon. The crowns of the elm trees spread like black lace against the deep blue satin sky. Like fans, she had said once to her cello teacher, Miss Ragrich, and the teacher had admired Stella’s phrase.
But where were the right words to render what it is to be alive? To walk, to see? She wanted the words of Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf. She pitied the myriad dead who slept in their small houses underground. “Has death undone so many?” T. S. Eliot asked in a line from The Waste Land. She felt she shouldn’t pass the graves so quickly.
When her foot crunched acorns underneath, the sound seemed wholesome. Occasionally she heard an unseen bird stirring on its night perch from within its shelter of thick oak leaves. Among the leaves, the bird made the sound of someone clearing his throat. While she walked, she closed her eyes and listened more intently. What was an unseen world like? A world of the immaterial, of spirits? Because they were walking rapidly, she could hear Darl’s breathing and her own breathing like woodwinds sighing.
She imagined the feet of the birds sleeping in the trees, how the little hidden birds’ feet were clasping their roosts, three toes curled in front, and from the back, one clamped over the twig. The birds were hot and restless.
“Let’s slow down,” she said, and Darl immediately responded to her request.
Quickly, he turned and kissed her cheek, like a reward, but a kiss such as a friend might give.
She opened her eyes.
“Listen,” he said. “That’s a horned owl.”
Night Duty
WHILE HE ADJUSTED HIS MAROON BOW TIE, TJ LISTENED to the radio in the porters’ room. He kept the volume low; all night it was something to come back to when he finished a porter duty. He stood still to listen: twenty-fi
ve hundred protestors had stormed the downtown business section. They replayed a recording of Shuttlesworth, on a different day: “We’re making history in that we’ve literally filled the Birmingham jails. Bull Connor thought the jails were like hell to us, but you all have made a heaven out of the jail…. You are fighting for what your country is and what it will be.”
These were beautiful May days. All that colorful clothing on the children. Like confetti at a parade. Yes, TJ had marched down Twentieth Street after World War II. Hadn’t seen much action in that war. But he’d never felt prouder before or after than marching down the middle of the street, home from France, paper bits drifting down from the open windows of the high-up floors of the Tutwiler. He hadn’t looked up, but with his face steady and straight ahead, he’d glanced up, had seen the white hands tossing the paper out the open rectangles of the high windows. Before the parade, they had told the soldiers a five-star general would be on the reviewing balcony. TJ could feel the butt of his rifle cradled in his hand, the weight of the rifle, its stock and barrel leaning against his body. Blue and pink confetti drifting right in front of his nose and eyes.
Sitting in his porter’s chair, TJ stooped down to polish the toes of his shoes with an old gray piece of terry cloth.
He’d fought hard in Korea. Cried there. More than once. Cried for a white boy bleeding to death in his arms. Cried for himself, so cold and worn out. Not even after Korea, and he’d fought hard there, had he been so proud as when he came home from Europe, from World War II, marched Twentieth Street—a soldier-boy—no prouder day than that.