With the Might of Angels (5 page)

I was sick of it all. I’m glad I’d brought my baseball bat. I was able to rustle a game together.

Reverend Collier volunteered to be the ump.

Freddy Melvin was the pitcher. Freddy’s got
more hot air than a wind balloon with a basket underneath it. He makes my gift of gab sound like mumbling.

I was the first batter up. Freddy Melvin shouted, “Hey, grandma, you ready to play ball?”

“Just pitch it, will you?” I said.

Freddy pitched underhand, slowly. He was treating me like a girl player. When the ball loped at me, I caught it, didn’t even try to swing.

I walked the ball back to Freddy. “Pitch it regular,” I told him. “I’m ready to bat — and to run.”

“Don’t you need a cane for runnin’, little old lady?” Freddy said.

Freddy knew I could bat the pants off anybody. He was just wisecracking.

His next pitch came fast, overhand.

Yeah, Freddy can call me “grandma” all he wants. But this granny hit a triple.

“Here’s your ball back, gramps!” I called to Freddy. “I hear there’s a sale on canes down at Millerton’s. You might want to get one,” I hollered from third base.

Roger Wilkes was up next. If I’m grandma and Freddy’s gramps, Roger’s great-grandpa. He moves slower than slow, and can’t bat worth
a dime. “Bring me home, Roger!” I yelled.

I sure wish Freddy had pitched Roger a slowpoke-y underhand girly pitch. Roger’s the one who needed it, not me.

Freddy was making it worse by winding up his arm to show Roger he meant business. The pitch came—
shwoop!
Roger jumped back, out of its way.

“Strike one!” called Reverend Collier.

Freddy’s next pitch was faster than the first. It tore past Roger.

“Strike two!”

“I wanna go home, Roger! Home, you hear?” I shouted.

Roger adjusted his eyeglasses. “Home, Dawnie.” He nodded.

Schwooooop!
Freddy’s third pitch was a smear of white.

Roger leaned in, and managed a good hit!

He worked his way to first base.

I hauled it home.

Freddy came at me with the ball, trying to get me out before my feet landed on the base. But I was too fast for gramps.

“Safe!” called Reverend Collier.

It was sure true. Today in Linden Park, I was as safe as could be.

Man, that baserunning felt good. As summer’s heat hugged its warmth around me, integration flew far out of my mind.

Sunset’s light had called every mosquito in Hadley, inviting them to leave a dotty map on my arms and legs.

Then came dusk. And fireworks dancing in the night sky.

Today was Goober’s ninth birthday, and my turn to give him a special gift. I decided to take Goober to Ruttledge Street, where Mr. Albert sells bags of roasted peanuts with salt. He peddles peanuts from a cart, along with squash, peaches, rhubarb, and cukes. Mr. Albert is a member at Shepherd’s Way Baptist Church, and he told me to bring Goober by for the peanuts, for free, since it’s his birthday.

Goober ate the peanuts fast. There was a film of salt left at the corners of his lips when he was done. He licked at the salt. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

Every Negro child in Lee County knows that when you’re thirsty, and there’s no colored
drinking fountain, you drink your own spit till you get home.

But Goober, he doesn’t know nothing about colored water fountains, or those marked “Whites Only.”

He kept whining, “I’m thirsty. I’m thirsty.” And before I could stop him, he was running fast to get water from a “Whites Only” fountain.

I know a water fountain doesn’t care who drinks its water. But white people care. They really care.

Goober got to the “Whites Only” fountain, and started slurping the water. Then he dipped his face down into the basin to cool off! I have never been more scared for Goober than when I saw three white boys coming up on him from behind. I knew those kids. They were the Hatch brothers, Bobby, Cecil, and Jeb. Their daddy owns Hatch Hardware.

“Goober, get back!” I shouted.

Goober startled, then lifted his face, which was glistening from the water.

The boys had circled around Goober, who was offering them a drink from the fountain.

Bobby, the oldest Hatch brother, is my same
age, but much taller. He said, “Well, if it ain’t a Negro retard!”

My heart was a fast pitch inside my chest, making its way to my throat.

The Panic Monster had sharpened his claws, and did they ever pinch!

“My brother can’t read good,” I managed to say. “He was thirsty. He made a mistake. But we’re leaving now.”

Jeb Hatch said, “Look, is that a colored girl, or a colored boy? Can’t tell by the dungarees.”

Mr. Albert had left his cart and come over. He looked just as scared as I felt inside. “Goober, Dawnie, get on now. Go home, you hear me?”

But Goober said, “Want some water, Mr. Albert?”

I didn’t want to holler at Goober. That would scare him. He didn’t know what was happening.

Mr. Albert folded one arm around Goober and one around me and backed us away slowly.

“Get outta here, and take that Negro retard with you!” Cecil called.

All three Hatch boys started to chant. “Negro retard! Negro retard!”

Then came sticks.

And spitting, too.

Daddy and Mama have told us to always tell them when we have a run-in with white folks. But telling about run-ins always leads to more trouble somehow.

It is late night as I write this. Goober has been rocking in his sleep.

And singing very quietly,
“Happy birthday to me,”
as he dreams.

And whispering “Negro retard” into his pillow.

It’s the in-between. Not night, not morning. I’m folded into my bedroom’s tiny closet with a flashlight, writing.

It’s hot as blazes in here, and the only good air is what’s slicing through the crack of my partway open door. I’ve come to my closet because what I’m about to tell you feels supersecret. And, Mama has some kind of special power that lets her know when I’m awake, or when I’ve got my flashlight on under my covers. I don’t want to beckon whatever that thing is in Mama.

Yolanda told me that same white lady and the two Negro men in city suits came to her house.

“Did they sit in your living room?” I asked.

Yolanda nodded.

“How long did they stay for?”

“My daddy showed them to the door soon after they started talking,” she said.

I told Yolanda how the lady hugged Mama.

Yolanda’s eyes went wide. “Hugged for real — like, touching each other?”

“For real,” I said.

That’s when Yolanda fished a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket. It was a mimeograph copy of a flyer with lines for people to sign their names.

“This is what the two men and that lady gave my ma and daddy before they left.”

I have the steadiest hand in Lee County, on account of how firm I can hold a baseball bat. But my hand, all on its own, has a little quiver to it right this minute. And I’m doing something I hate when others do it, especially at school — I’m chewing on the pencil Goober gave me.

The paper Yolanda showed me has Mama’s and Daddy’s signatures on it.

I am pasting it here, just to make sure it’s real, and that this is not one of those dreams like when a Martian comes and takes you to someplace green.

Right off, I recognized Mama’s curly signature and Daddy’s blocky way of forming letters. They’d signed me up to attend Prettyman Coburn, come September!!

Is what I pasted during the in-between really here? Or is it part of a Martian dream?

I’m going to flip your thick pages back, one … two … three …

Yolanda’s no pogo-stick expert, but she’s good at rhyming and singing. Today I jumped high and hard on my pogo, while Yolanda set my pumping to a song.

Pogo, pogo,
Where do we go?
To the clouds.
To the sky.
Jumping, pumping, way up high.
Pogo, pogo,
Where do we go?
To the moon.
To the stars.
Take a pogo trip to Mars.

There was a small item in today’s newspaper about the All-American Girls Baseball League. It looks like the owners of the AAGBBL will decide to suspend play for the 1955 season. Some of the players will keep touring around, but eventually the AAGBBL will call it quits. The paper
said the crowds at the baseball parks, coming to see girls play, are drying up. How can that be? Who wouldn’t want to see the best girl batters, pitchers, and base runners around?

Now I’ll never get to play in the league. I hope Yolanda doesn’t ask, “Have you ever seen a Negro player in the All-American Girls Baseball League?”

I was planning to be the first one.

Tonight for supper Mama served my favorite two foods — pulled pork and fried pickles. When I came to the table, Goober had set up his peanuts in the shape of a happy face, smiling at the center of us all.

Right off, I asked, “How come we get special food on a regular night?”

“We’re celebrating,” Mama said.

Mama and Daddy explained some of what Mr. Calhoun had told us, that the test I had taken at school with Yolanda and Roger had been issued by the Department of Education for the state of Virginia. They said that because of the test results, I’d been picked to attend Prettyman Coburn in September.

They told me the test was set up to be very hard so that even me and the other smart kids at Bethune couldn’t pass it. If we all flunked, the Department of Education would have a reason to keep us out of Prettyman.

“I don’t ever flunk,” I said.

Mama nodded. “You three kids who took the test passed.”

She told me I only missed one question. I knew the question Mama was talking about. She said, “They showed us your test.” Mama looked pleased. “On one of the questions, the test asked to give a word that means a force that propels, and starts with the letter M. It said this force is tumultuous, like a storm.”

I told Mama, “That question didn’t say anything about a storm.”

“Anyway,” said Mama, “the correct answer was
maelstrom
.”

I folded my arms. “What kind of word is
maelstrom
to give to a kid on a test?”

Mama said, “You did very well on the test, Dawnie. That’s what matters most.”

Daddy was smiling and shaking his head. He said, “‘MY pogo stick’
does
start with the letter M.”

He told me about the white lady in the black
dress and the colored men in big-collared suits who’d come to our house. They were from the NAACP, a group of people whose members work to get equal rights for Negroes.

“How come that lady was
tawlking
funny?” I wanted to know. “And how come she hugged you, Mama?”

Daddy answered with a question. “How come you weren’t minding your business, Dawnie? That was a private meeting between grown-ups.”

Goober had set a fried pickle spear onto his plate, and had made a pickle-shaped man with peanut arms and legs. “Funny
tawlking.
Grown-ups funny
tawlking
,” he said.

I didn’t dare mention the paper Yolanda had shown me. Daddy told me the lady was from New York, and that’s how Northerners speak, and that there’s nothing funny about people wanting to help you. Even white people.

“That lady’s name was Cynthia Woods,” Mama told me. “She was very kind, and was pleased that we agreed with the work she and the others from the NAACP are doing.”

Mama and Daddy told me that I’d get a better education at Prettyman Coburn, and, they reminded me, Prettyman is a far walk from where
we live, a whole two miles away. “But you have a right to attend the best school in this district,” Daddy said, “no matter how far it is.”

I guess that meant I had the right to walk on those clean Prettyman sidewalks. And the right to say good morning to those pretty, pointy Prettyman trees out front. And to play on that pretty Prettyman baseball diamond after school.

I’d walk a million miles for that.

Yolanda doesn’t own a telephone, so I couldn’t call to tell her about how happy I was that she and Roger and me were chosen to be Prettyman students.

With all this news, none of us had eaten. Mama said grace.

“Pass the pork,” Daddy said.

“Pass me a pickle,” I said.

Goober said, “Look at my peanut-pickle person, Dawnie. See my peanut-pickle person, on my plate?”

Mama doesn’t ever let us play with food, but tonight she allowed Goober his fun. “Let’s eat” was all she said.