With the Might of Angels (2 page)

Yolanda looked at me sideways. She was wearing a smirk. “Geese make big plops,” she said.

Roger snickered, but I really didn’t see what was so funny. Yolanda was sticking up for me, and she was only telling the truth.

Mr. Calhoun didn’t think it was funny, either. He was serious when he said to me, “Dawnie, you have the highest grades in the elementary division at Mary McLeod Bethune School, and as such, we’d like you to give a speech for the sixth-grade Stepping Up ceremony next month.”

I know I have good grades, but giving speeches — that’s not me. I answered with a question. “How come Yolanda and Roger are here?”

Mr. Calhoun was quick to answer. “The three of you are our best and brightest students, and we’d like each of you to speak at the Stepping Up ceremony. Yolanda and Roger will say a few words. As the highest-ranking student, you, Dawnie, will deliver a speech.”

Yolanda bumped me with her leg. Roger was
shaking his head, like he was being asked to walk on fire.

“Additionally,” said Mr. Calhoun, “we’ll be administering a special academic test to each of you to assess your full abilities as you enter seventh grade.”

I don’t mind school tests, in the same way that baiting a fishhook doesn’t bother me. But it’s the end of the school year, and I’m sick of studying, and it doesn’t seem fair that we have to take a test, seeing as the three of us are the smartest kids at Bethune.

Right then I was wishing I was getting in trouble for my ploppy pogo stick. At least a scolding would be over as soon as we left Mr. Calhoun’s office.

Mr. Calhoun explained that the test would be given in four parts, each for a different area of study, and that we’d take the test in one hour segments after school, beginning next week. At the same time, at home in the evenings, we’re to work on our remarks for the Stepping Up program.

Roger and Yolanda started to grumble quietly.

They had no good reason to complain. They were way luckier than me. They were being asked to “say a few words” at the Stepping Up ceremony.
I would have to give a whole speech! I tried to turn my attention to taking the test, which came to me a little more natural.

Roger raised his hand. “Mr. Calhoun, is the test on stuff we’ve already learned?”

“It’s a standardized test issued by the Department of Education for the state of Virginia. It covers all aspects of the sixth-grade curriculum,” Mr. Calhoun said.

“How are we supposed to study?” Yolanda wanted to know.

“Just come prepared to do your best” was Mr. Calhoun’s answer.

As much as I tried, I couldn’t yank my thoughts away from the ceremony. I asked a question more important than all the questions about the test. “Do I have to wear a dress for the Stepping Up?”

Mr. Calhoun said, “That’s up to you, Dawnie.”

When we got outside, Yolanda said, “That’s up to your mama.”

When I told Mama and Daddy about the Stepping Up ceremony and the test, they were pleased.

“Up, up, up,” said Goober. “You can fly, Dawnie.”

Daddy said, “You’re a Johnson. You’ll perform well on that test, and you’ll step up proudly at that ceremony.”

Mama’s words were hard to hear. “I’ll go down to Woolworth’s tomorrow and buy fabric for a new dress. Two weeks isn’t a lot of time, but I can make you something lovely for your Stepping Up speech.”

“You can fly, Dawnie,” Goober repeated. “Dawnie can fly.”

Since what I write is between you and me, I will use your pages for pie-in-the-sky dreaming. My biggest, most pie-in-the-sky wish is to meet Jackie Robinson.

Jackie won’t ever get the chance to read you, but I will write him letters right here on your pages. I will tell him what I wish I could say if he knocked on our front door, and stayed for supper.

There are two public schools in Hadley—
ours
and
theirs.

Our
school, Mary McLeod Bethune, is for colored kids only. It includes kindergartners up to twelfth graders. Everybody at Bethune is colored, including the teachers.

When you live in Hadley, and your skin is any shade of dark, you attend Bethune. There are three
“divisions” at our school — elementary, middle, and high school. But really, it’s all the same — the Negro school, where white kids wouldn’t go if it was the last school on God’s earth. Bethune is in the colored part of town, the place white folks call “Crow’s Nest.” I hate this name. I am no ugly blackbird, and I don’t live in a nest. I live in a green wood-frame house on Marietta Street, just off Carlton Avenue, a few minutes from Bethune.

Their
school, Prettyman Coburn, is for white kids only. It’s in the white part of town, the part people call “Ivoryton.” I hate this name, too. How come
they
get to live in Ivory, when
we
have to live with crows?

Our school is named after Mary McLeod Bethune, a fine Negro lady who started a black college and gave advice to President Franklin Roosevelt. Good for Mary. She really helped Negroes. But I will only tell this in my diary, because I’m ashamed to admit it out loud — I hate our school.

I mean, I like
going
to school, but I hate the stuff
in
school. At Bethune, everything’s broke.

Our pencils are chewed to the bone. The spines on most books are cracked and so raggedy. And how many lessons have I had to piece together
because the pages of our books are torn, or missing?

At Bethune, our classrooms are cramped. We stay in the same room all day with the same teacher who teaches us all subjects.

Even though we’re not supposed to chew gum in school, underneath the desks there are enough wads of Wrigley’s Spearmint to patch the cracks in a whole bathroom. And speaking of bathrooms, the girls’ rooms at Bethune stink. The toilets never flush right. The sinks are rust-stained the ugliest brown ever. Even a crow would not want to pee at Bethune.

Bethune’s wall clocks haven’t worked since I started in kindergarten. It has been 2:45 at Bethune for seven years!

Bethune is a redbrick building that covers two blocks. When it rains, the bricks rain, too. The streets and sidewalks around Bethune fill with red clay streams from the silt powder that’s come loose from the school’s rickety bricks. I like rain, but sometimes I worry Bethune will melt right into the ground, like syrup on a pancake.

Prettyman Coburn is two miles from where we live. It’s double the size of Bethune, and twice as nice.

That school is a limestone castle, and as white as the kids who go there. Like Bethune, Prettyman takes up two blocks. But those are two of the cleanest blocks anywhere, with sidewalks free of cracks and weeds.

The outside of Prettyman Coburn School looks just like its name — pretty. There’s a clock on Prettyman’s front cornice. A brass clock that tells the time perfectly and is always correct.

That’s how it is. Negroes get a stinky school with broken clocks. White kids get a castle.

We pass Prettyman Coburn each Sunday when we drive to church. Every Sunday, I look and look at that white-as-white building, with the big white-as-white doors, and the little pointy trees lining the walk, spreading across the front like the collar on an expensive coat. And every Sunday, I wonder what’s inside Prettyman’s walls. If the outside is any clue, the kids at that school are getting their book learning with some nice stuff.

I hear they’ve got a science lab in that pretty school, that you get a different teacher for each subject, and that students move from room to room for their classes. I would give my eyeteeth, and my molars, too, to have a science lab at school. There’s even something called a “homeroom”
where kids start and end the day. Can you imagine? A classroom like a home?

Yolanda and I walk to school together every morning.

Well, Yolanda walks. She carries her books and mine, while I pogo.

This morning I told Yolanda I’d race her.

“No fair,” Yolanda said. “You’re wearing overalls. I’m in a skirt. I can’t run in a skirt. And — I’m carrying a bunch of books.”

“I’ll give you a head start.”

“What if I trip or get my clothes dirty? My ma will put a wooden spoon to me when I get home.”

Poor Yolanda. She’s as fast a runner as me, but hardly ever gets to run for real, because of wearing skirts and dresses every day. I mean, she can sorta run, like when a car is coming, and we’re trying to make it across the street. But that’s not fun running.

Today I agreed to walk with Yolanda. “Okay, me and you, together.”

Even though Yolanda’s feet couldn’t run today, her mind was working fast. “We’re early, Dawnie,”
she said. “How about we go again past Prettyman before Bethune, just to see?”

I’d never been by Prettyman in the morning, other than on a Sunday with my family. I’d already disobeyed Mama and Daddy once by going to Ivoryton without them.

“I don’t think we should,” I said, wanting more than anything to see kids going
into
that pretty building with its pointy trees and diamond fields, all under the morning sun.

“We’ll just pass by the back, like before,” Yolanda said. “We won’t even stop this time to look really. We can just keep walking.”

We got near enough to the school to hear the bell that was ringing to welcome the students. The same girl from before was ringing it, too. She looked so proud and happy to be holding that bell.

The bell’s rounded tone seemed to be calling me.

Mama says there’s not enough time to make me a fancy enough dress for the Stepping Up ceremony. So today we went downtown to Millerton’s Department Store to buy me a dress.

The whole thing gave me a bad case of the
how comes.
That’s when questions pester me and will not let go. The
how comes
are like flies. As soon as one
how come
shows up, more follow.

How come
the saleslady at the store wouldn’t let me try on any of the clothes? She made Mama hold each dress up in front of me.

Same for the shoes. Mama had to trace my foot on a piece of paper and slip the paper inside the new shoes to see if they’d fit.

I noticed a white girl my same age going in and out of the dressing room, appearing each time with one of the new dresses on, and her feet in new shoes, seeing if they were her size.

How come
Mama didn’t tell the saleslady that you can’t know if something fits unless you put it on your body?

How come
Mama hushed me when I started to say this to the saleslady myself?

How come
Mama held my hand so tightly the whole time we were in that blasted store? She was near to crushing my fingers in her grip. Alls I could think on was how the blood was being shut off from my pitching hand.

How come
Mama’s voice changed from strong to scared whenever the saleslady spoke to her?

How come
Mama never once looked that saleslady in the eye?

We settled on a pastel dress with a rounded white collar, and black patent leather shoes with an ankle strap. The dress had a label that described it as “Peach Melba.”

I stood very still in front of the store mirror, my arms out wide like a scarecrow, while Mama held up the dress and shoes in front of me.

Right then I wanted to do something that would’ve made Mama punish me from here till forever — I wanted to spit! First on the saleslady, then on the dress. Then on the insides of each patent leather shoe.

I know
how come
I wanted to spit, too — it wasn’t fair that I couldn’t try the dress on, ugly as it was. It’s a good thing I held on to my spit. I don’t think there was enough of it inside my mouth to show how mad I was.

The white girl came out of the dressing room wearing the same pastel dress. We both stood in front of the mirror.

“Oh, Mother,” squealed the girl. “This dress is dreamy! I’ll take it.” She was so happy, and twirling in the same dress
my
mama was buying for
me.

How come
the white girl’s mother told her they would
not
be buying the pastel dress?

When I cut my eyes, and looked hard for a moment, I knew that girl. It was the girl from Prettyman Coburn! The bell-ringer girl!

It’s too bad her mother wouldn’t let her buy the Peach Melba dress. It looked good on her. Her hair is pastel to match the dress. And with all that twirling, she made the dress come alive.

But as
my
mama was folding
my
Peach Melba dress into a Millerton’s shopping bag,
her
mama was forcing the other Peach Melba dress back on its hanger, and onto the dress rack.

Later, I heard Mama tell Daddy we’d be eating Goober’s peanuts for dinner till September since they’d spent so much money on that stupid dress.

Daddy said, “I’ll eat peanuts till I’m older than Methuselah if it means my Dawnie can look proper for her Stepping Up.”

Shepherd’s Way Baptist Church has to be the loudest congregation in all of Lee County. Services start off slow, but as Reverend Collier works
up his sermon, the
amens
and
hallelujahs
can be heard all the way over in Norfolk, and they grow like the swell of dust that rises after sliding into third base.