Christmas angels, fire-prevention week, keep-your-city-clean week, brotherly-love week. There was always something to celebrate and I wanted to be there.
I never felt as wonderful by the time I got to the school gate as I’d thought I was when I left home, and I was always uncertain if anybody would be brave enough to play with me in the school yard before the morning bell. I may have been the teacher’s pet, but my classmates were still wary of me before they’d have a few hours to get used to me in class. By recess, it was usually OK, and if it wasn’t, I’d stroll around with the teacher. Mainly, it taught me how to stand alone.
In 1952 when General Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson were running for president, I overheard talk in the house that the Republicans were terrible and would bring a lot of hardship, but almost all the children in my class wore I LIKE IKE buttons to show that their parents were voting for him and his running mate, Richard Nixon. Being for Stevenson set me apart.
I didn’t know much about the Republicans except that I’d heard they’d have us selling apples on the street corner. My mother bought me a grey jacket after the election which she said was an Eisenhower jacket. It nipped in at the waist and was of corduroy. It was a catastrophe and nearly made my life miserable, because it didn’t look a bit like anybody else’s jacket at school. I had enough trouble without it. Eisenhower had been a general, so I guess it was based on some army jacket of his.
Life seemed unaffected after Ike had won. I didn’t have to sell apples, and he didn’t make us go to school on Saturday, which was the other rumour I’d heard. Things at school were different but it had nothing to do with politics. I was often singled out to do special things like deliver a folded message to the principal, pass out the milk or read out loud when visitors came into our classroom. This made my classmates like me better. So, when Miss Courtney asked us to take a partner to file out in pairs holding hands, which we did going to assembly, recess or in fire drill, I no longer needed to pretend that it didn’t matter that nobody wanted to hold my hand. I had a couple of friends. Even walking into the school yard in the morning ceased to be a crisis in my school life.
Playing with these friends was easier when I spoke with the tone and rhythm of their speech, which was slightly different from mine and much higher pitched. I imitated their manners, too, their giggles and walk and the way they cocked their heads. I don’t think I did it consciously, it just happened. At close range, I could hear their drummer and marched to their beat. As soon as I got home, I’d automatically revert to the old me. I spoke the way I was spoken to, and my thinking and body language accommodated my speech.
It was the beginning of a pattern, because at six, I led two lives which required two separate personalities. It wasn’t a game or an act, though, it was more like a function. I lived between two nations – one Melangian and one American – and I adjusted to each.
During my first Christmas season at John Wister school I participated in the annual carol-singing at Grumblethorpe. Grumblethorpe was a house four blocks from school at 5267 Germantown Avenue, built by John Wister in 1744. (The year Johann Würster emigrated from a town near Heidelberg, Germany, he was nineteen and broke. Johann became a successful wine importer, anglicized his name and built a large summer house in Germantown. The three-storey house was originally known as Wister’s Big House but John’s grandson named the house Grumblethorpe after an English manor he’d read about in a novel. It has been refurbished to look as it did when John Wister and his family lived there.)
We sang our carols in the big front room. The blinds were drawn, so that the flickering light from the candles and the smell of Christmas pine and evergreens had a strange awesome effect, especially on a kid who’d not long been free of 23rd Street. I’d never seen anything like it and was dumbstruck.
Even though it was grand, Grumblethorpe was marked by Quaker simplicity. After carolling, we were shown around it in our usual file, holding hands in two lines. Our freshly shined shoes pattering across the floorboards made the only sound. We dared not whisper or touch the four-poster bed or the grandfather clocks. The drop-leaf tables and wooden chairs were less of a temptation. It looked as if nobody had sat in the winged armchair by the fireplace or eaten at the refectory table. The pastel-coloured walls were so quiet we were scared to cough.
Before we left, a white-haired lady chatted to us and gave us each a mug of hot chocolate with a marshmallow floating on the top. Another, similar lady passed out home-made Christmas cookies. I had never had chocolate to drink before. I stood as still as I could and was very glad my mother had put my hair in two ponytails even though I still had that silly braid on top. Edna had starched my grey and white dress which had a separate pinafore. The stillness there had a profound effect on me.
We had to walk past Grumblethorpe to get to the Band Box Theater, which wasn’t a theatre, it was a cinema. Dennis and Pam and I were allowed to go most Saturday afternoons. A few times I went with Dennis by myself and we’d sit in the back row and stuff ourselves with buttered popcorn, Jujy fruits and Neco wafers, which seemed more the purpose of going than the movie. I always felt safe when Dennis was with me, because apart from the fact that the bad boys liked him, he was bigger than most kids his age and looked like the sort of boy you shouldn’t mess with. I don’t recall that anyone ever did.
Dennis loved the movies and comic books, and after we got a record player, he used most of his allowance to buy records. One of his favourite TV shows was Amos ‘n Andy, which my mother thought should have been taken off the air for depicting ‘Negroes’ as ignorant. My brother used to provoke her by imitating the actors as soon as the programme ended. Dennis would pull faces, roll his eyes and speak an exaggerated Melangian dialect. Finally we were all banned from watching the show, but we loved Amos ‘n Andy so we would sneak and watch it anyway. He’d turn the volume down and I’d guard the door for him. The telly was in the back room on the second floor so it was easy to get away with this.
There were hardly any Melangians on TV other than the cast of Amos ‘n Andy and boxers like Sugar Ray Robinson. Once Richard Boone, who played the main doctor in a weekly hospital series called The Medic, had to treat a little Melangian girl. We all screamed with shock when she came on the screen. We’d never seen one of us in a television drama. Even the most regular police series, Dragnet, didn’t have one Melangian criminal. There was a character called Rochester on the Jack Benny show, but it was very rare to see us on TV unless singing and dancing.
Our first major media star came through on the news in 1953. Her name was Autherine Lucy. She was a young woman who wanted so much to be free to study at the college of her choice that she took on the whole city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and finally the whole goddamn United States government so that President Eisenhower had no choice but to send her an army. I don’t know why there aren’t statues of her. She was our very own Joan of Arc and to see her on the television screen facing an avalanche of rednecks was unforgettable. For weeks after her appearance, our radio and television seemed to be tuned to nothing but newscasts from the moment Edna, Thelma or Ikey came home from work. Melangian neighbours who normally only exchanged hellos had a lot to talk to each other about.
I was stunned to see the hundreds of agitators jeering and spitting and name-calling while Autherine faced them. She never looked as if she was in a hurry; when the camera panned across her face she seemed neither angry nor anxious. She had that look of patience someone has when waiting for a bus they know is coming.
A couple of times since, when I’ve been up against bewildering odds and felt fear creeping up on me or dared feel sorry for myself, I’ve only had to think of Autherine facing the mob to put things in proper perspective.
As far as I could see, there was nothing uncommon about Autherine except her courage. The fact that she looked like most other girls of her age that ambled around the reservation on a Saturday afternoon made her confrontation all the more shocking. It could have been any one of us standing in her shoes when what looked like the whole city of Tuscaloosa was determined to keep her from entering the doors of a school which our taxes helped to keep open.
While this compelling national school drama played out, I’d start each school day like millions of American children by standing at attention after the bell rang to salute the flag. Led by the teachers, I’d