One With Others: [A Little Book of Her Days] (8 page)

Spent Restoring

The Building

To Habitable Condition

A month later it was unofficially reported that a walkout was in progress at the all-Negro senior high.

Langston’s word was
fester.

King’s was
thingification.
The
thingification of our humanity.

What the King called
nobodiness.

Festina lente,
with all deliberate speed, make haste slowly. Voluntary gradualism, glacial time.

THE D.A. said it was not in the public interest to bargain with any evildoers; they had no cause to meet with or make concessions to any bush-league agitators from Little Rock, nor for that matter, with any hoodlum parasite element.

He speaks he claimed for the judge, the sheriff, the city, and himself.

THE CHIEF [former bouncer at the Cotton Club]: They got to yeah-yeahing each other. The whites have taken it off of them until they’ve got tired of it.

THE CONCERNED CITIZENS COUNCIL’s first guest speaker [over cookies and punch at their new offices in the former city barbershop]: The rule of the majority is being eroded by the minority.

MAYOR: I don’t think they have any real grievance.

COUNTY JUDGE: I assure you we’ve been nothing but good to the [N-word].

Come again.

You’ve got me, man, said the Invader to his assailants.

You’ve got me. [It was not part of his plan to die in Arkansas.]

THE PUBLISHER says this community has no quarrel with its Negro citizens, to the contrary, the average white and Negro citizen in Big Tree get along as well as citizens in any city anywhere in the world; the problem lies in the hands of a small minority of troublemakers who seem hell-bent on making Big Tree a focal point of racial unrest. The time for pacifying them is past. Our officials have no alternative now but to meet them head-on.

HEAD OF THE BIRCHERS [that backdoor abortionist] told newsmen [over cookies and punch] that the president was leading the nation toward insolvency, surrender, and socialism.

DEAR ABBY,

My daughter married a 30-year-old mama’s boy who is in love with tropical fish. He has 13 tanks of them. Just to give you an idea he paid $14 for 1 little fish.

DEAR MOTHER,

Water seeks its own level—even in a fish tank.

What’s your problem.

Lions cancel annual picnic due to concerns.

Spinster luncheon honors fiancée [an attractive blonde]

of Mr. Peacock.

County board recommends dismissal of Negro caseworker.

Death of a Gunfighter
ends Wednesday.

ELSEWHERE:

Camille pummels Gulf.

Israeli jets attack Egypt.

Squads ready to break up Irish riots.

Sept 3 marks the death of Ho.

+ + +

Harry says, What we really want from our time on this planet, is
that which is not this,
we want
the ethical this;
we want to feel and transmit.

It is known that when a blackbird calls in the marsh all sound back and if one note is missing all take notice. This is the solidarity we are born to.

King said no one could be an outsider who lived inside these borders. There are no Invaders.

What the white man wanted, no less than complete control.

Who expected the sidewalks cleared when they came down them [as in the days of the Raj].

+ + +

The boys hid under the reverend’s vehicle. I can’t say if the reverend knew they were there. I can’t say if he didn’t know. He probably knew. They hid on the concrete slab under the block. They held their breath and listened. One of them was hurt pretty bad. And the patriarch, the flat-fixer, lost an eye.

Hateful words survive in sticky clumps

Furry thoughts skid across the yellow line

And over the muddy embankment.

Big enough to hunt, being hunted.

Says the sheriff, Nowadays you can’t

Even say chigger you have to say Cheegro.

They fired the flat-fixer. They fired him after they put out his eye. The eel in the L’Anguille never were. The flat-fixer who said he’d get the radio fixed. He knew who could fix it. They fired him. Never held an eel, she just slithered. The fixer, they said, stole their shortwave. He had it fixed. They fired him. But first they put out his eye. So they named it L’Anguille. And the Mississippi receives them both, but you wouldn’t notice now. It’s casino to casino from here to the Big Easy. The other river, that would be the St. Francis.

They said they would take this harm. They would take it this time, would move on. They would walk away, walk away. Turn a blind eye. They would go forward into the seasons of their lives. They would see the sun shiver as it disappeared behind willow and cottonwood, the blackbird threading the phone lines, the combine continuing to rust on its haunches. They would not be deformed by this hatefulness. Nor be comforted by religion [though would be their women]. But if anyone ever touched any of them ever again. They would put this town on the map. They made their pact. They took the no-quarter oath. They were eight men strong. And they meant it, Gentle Reader. They meant it.

Outside of North Little Rock they are joined by a Quaker.

From ONE TOO YOUNG TO JOIN THE UPRISING: The all-Negro elementary school was behind the all-Negro junior high. They were letting us out early. The troopers were there. We wanted to see. We wanted to see the goings-on. I got to watch a couple of chairs fly out the window is all. And here come my loving mother to keep her baby out of harm’s way.

THE RETIRED WELDING TEACHER: After they put us in the pool, they taunted us. With chimp chants. They brought a
TV
and set it up and made us watch Tarzan. They wouldn’t let us sleep. They made us watch.

ONE OF THE STUDENTS ARRESTED AND PUT IN THE POOL: They arrested us in the morning and drove us around until dark. They told us all kind of things. But we didn’t know what they were going to do with us. The last thing my mother said before I left the house—Don’t you get in that line. Don’t you get in that line, girl. Stay away. Remain calm. I won’t even come see you if you go to jail. But later I found out she did try to see me. They gave us hand-me-down books. Turn to page 51, the teacher would say. It would be torn out. Lunch was slabs of butter between two pieces of bread. Milk usually spoiled and it cost 2¢.

GRADUATE OF ALL-WHITE HIGH SCHOOL, First Year of Choice: You have to understand about my mom, if she calls us up at three in the morning, and says, she wants ice cream, you get dressed and go buy ice cream. Even if you have to drive to Memphis. If she says talk to this woman, you talk.

Teachers’ kids stuck together. We were the only ones with a telephone, a
TV
, a record player.

Blew the front of our house off the day before my father’s funeral.

I see someone from that school now and think, I wonder if your father is still alive and if he is still wearing his little Klan outfit on Saturday night.

All of us who went to the white school have a story. Houlie went to Liberia. My husband never went back in the building.

HER MOTHER: I accept nothing less than respect. You hear me.

I haven’t seen the lightning bugs yet but I do enjoy them. And by day I enjoy the butterflies. I sit on my step; they flutter around me. And I think, well maybe somebody is paying me a visit.

A teacher sent a note home saying she couldn’t understand my oldest daughter. I told her I curse better than you speak. My daughter is not going to flunk English because you cannot speak it. No less than respect, you get what I’m saying.

The department store hired a couple of light-skinned blacks to work in the back [Saturdays only].

I remember her. Bought an Emerson from her husband for the Big Shootout.

Parents came down with food for the kids when we found out where they were. Police threw the burgers over the fence.

The former legislator said he fished with a man who told him the school wouldn’t be there when he came to teach in the fall, first year of Choice.

They march along here, the military road

The road they walk built by humpers

Those were the Irish

They pass Blackfish Lake

Ditch #1 about where they crossed

Gerstaecker slept here bundled up in a buffalo’s skin

But first the Choctaw Removal; then came the Creek with ponies;

Then Chickasaw; then Cherokee, maybe Sequoyah among them his syllabary nearly finished

Now stood another anonymous racist calling them names

His rod extended/ his line hung up in his own ignominy

THE MAN IMPORTED FROM MEMPHIS: When you get change you keep pushing and you get more. The hardest thing is to get the ball rolling.

We are marching to get this fear out of your hearts. You must remember the white man puts his pants on the same way you do, one leg at a time.

Since I have been involved with the Movement I have not committed any so-called crime.

The Movement is the best thing I’ve ever been involved in. It channeled my energy into constructive efforts.

My aunt raised me. She worked as a domestic for the family of Judge Bailey Brown.

If white people can ride down their highways with guns, I can walk down the highway unarmed.

Old enough to hunt, hunted.

When people have anticipated something and they have been let down, you must find some way to let them use up this excess energy. [That, Gentle Reader, is the accursed share.]

My walk will help do this for the people of Arkansas. Not a question of violence or nonviolence. Survival is the point. We are going to survive one way or the other. Sweet Willie Wine, V, and the Invaders are

Walking we are just walking

Dead doe on the median

Whoever rides into the scene changes it

Pass a hickory dying on the inside

A black car that has not moved for years

Forever forward/ backwards never

+ + +

IN HELL’S KITCHEN: Her apartment is smaller by half than the shotgun shacks that used to stubble the fields outside of Big Tree. Stained from decades of nonstop smoking. The world according to V was full of smoke and void of mirrors.

She was not an eccentric. She was an original. She was congenitally incapable of conforming. She was resolutely resistant.

Her low-hanging fears no match for her contumacy

Grappling hooks in the mud leaf out in the mind

She was my goombah.

Cats, Catholicism, alcohol, and men. She served them all.

Children—she failed her own. Of that she was acutely aware. It was the grief of her existence.

If I could summon her L’wha now. If this were her book of days. If she were still able to sit back on her double-joints and read my cards: “Sometimes you feel rather alone in the world; times of stress and dissatisfaction are likewise times of passion...” If she were to pass through that wall this very second...

V, what spurred you to get involved.

It was when they put the kids in the swimming pool. My babysitter’s granddaughter. They put her in the pool.

I knew some kids over at Memphis State and they put me in touch with the Invaders. I met one Invader and he wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I wanted them to come over and help.

After I was driven out of Arkansas I went to the FBI office in Memphis. He said, What are you going to do. You know, you’re not stupid. I said I don’t know. He said why don’t you take the civil service test. I took the civil service telephone operator’s test and I was the top passer.

I got a letter back that said, With your infamous acts there is no way we would employ you. It was creepy. I wish I’d kept that letter. I could probably have sued them. I could have gone to Europe and lived awhile.

She was guilty of no fear, no envy, no meanness, and when if once-in-a-knocked-up-again moon she felt a twinge of desire for a certain silk blouse, she was sure to touch the wearer, to touch the other on the sleeve that she not be afflicted by any such shallow tendencies.

I remember her in livid color. Her with the
radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy. The best mind
[ ]
of
[
a
]
generation
in an era, a place that thought nothing of a woman, even a white woman—and of a black woman, thought even less than.