Leigh (2 page)

“There it is,” Dory piped up from the backseat, sounding the usual joy of coming to Grandmother’s house. “There’s Ivy Manor!”

As her mother drove up the lane to the large house with white pillars and green ivy, Leigh felt a lift in spite of her frustration.
Until…

“Maybe Grandmother can make you see sense,” Bette said as she parked and turned the key.

“No one—not even Grandma Chloe—is going to change my mind,” Leigh kept her voice low as her little sister climbed out of the
backseat.

Her mother ignored her, as usual. Now that they’d stopped and the wind no longer evaporated their perspiration, the humidity
wrapped around Leigh, smothering her. She felt limp in the heat. Her mother, on the other hand, looked as fresh and collected
as always. Of course, even when going to the country, her oh-so-proper mother wore a stylish red sundress and chiffon scarf,
under which her bouffant style had every hair in place. In contrast, Leigh and Dory had dressed sensibly in one of their matching
outfits that Dory loved so much—blue shorts and white sleeveless blouses with blue collars. The outfit now made Leigh feel
childish in comparison to her mother.

Her insides still churning at highway speed, Leigh got out and slammed the car door, eliciting a world-weary sigh from Bette,
who scolded her with a look for slamming the door. Leigh felt like going back and slamming it again. But she couldn’t give
in to childish anger. Instead, her ponytail swishing against her shoulders, she ran ahead, overtaking her sister, calling
for her grandmother. Then Leigh heard the voice she loved best, summoning them to the shaded and screened summer house on
the back lawn.

With Dory right at her heels, Leigh whipped inside the summer house and flew straight into Grandma Chloe’s arms. Dory was
right beside her, and they hugged Chloe together. Chloe wasn’t overweight and she didn’t rinse her gray hair blue or tease
it like other grandmothers did. And she always smelled subtly of roses. The fragrance enveloped Leigh, giving her a sudden
feeling of ease. Grandma Chloe would set everything right.

“Leigh, Dory, how wonderful to see you.” Chloe kissed
their foreheads and cheeks before releasing them. She rose then and reached for their mother. The two older women hugged.
“Bette, honey, of course I’m happy to see you, but what’s come up so suddenly?” Dressed in a cool, sleeveless lavender-print
sundress, Chloe eased back onto the wicker rocker. Dory took her usual place, perching on one of its wide, curved arms.

With another sigh, Bette sat down on a white Adirondack chair. “I hope you can put up with these two girls for the rest of
the week.”

“No!” Leigh fired up, vaguely aware of her grandmother’s surprised look. “Grandma, Mr. Pitney, my journalism teacher, said
that the one of us who writes the best first-person account of the march on Washington will be the new editor of the
Scribe
this year.”

“Your safety is more important than an article in a school paper,” Bette snapped.

“Grandma, she’s treating me like a baby again.” Leigh pictured Mr. Pitney’s face in her mind. He’d said the newspaper staff
could call him Lance when they were working on the school paper. Mr. Pitney looked like a Lance—tall, young, with golden hair
and a cool mustache. “I’m old enough to go to a public place alone. I’ve been to Lincoln’s Memorial a zillion times.”

“Mother,” Bette raised her voice, “would you please talk some sense into this girl’s head? President Kennedy tried to persuade
Martin Luther King Jr. to cancel—”

“Nothing’s going to happen!” Leigh’s hands tightened into fists. Her mother never took her seriously. Lance did. He didn’t
treat her like she was just another teenager. “It’s going to be a peaceful demonstration. Dr. King believes in nonviolent
protest—”

“Well, the KKK doesn’t,” Bette declared flatly. “The po
lice in Washington and the surrounding counties in Virginia have had all leaves cancelled. The Justice Department and the
army are practicing riot control—”

“Stop it,” Leigh snapped, imagining the appreciative look on Lance’s face when he read her account of the march. “Nothing’s
going to happen.”

Chloe looked back and forth between her daughter and granddaughter with a look of growing distress.

“That’s enough, young lady,” Bette ordered.

“But,” Leigh began. Dory hid her face against Chloe’s slender shoulder, bringing Leigh’s words to an abrupt stop. She sighed.

“Sorry, ladybug,” she apologized to her little sister with her favorite endearment.

“I don’t like arguments, and don’t speak disrespectfully to your mother, Leigh,” Chloe scolded gently, rocking while patting
Dory’s head.

Leigh flushed, feeling warmth suffuse her face and neck. “Sorry.” Her little sister looked upset, but their mother had involved
her in this. Leigh hadn’t.

“The KKK will not let this go by without reacting,” Bette continued in a calmer voice. “They gunned down Medgar Evers on his
own
front porch just two months ago. What if one of them decides to shoot Dr. King right in the middle of the march? It would
be chaos. Leigh could be trampled—”

“This is Washington, D.C.,
not
Mississippi.” Leigh felt her tenuous hold on her temper begin to fray. She could not lose this battle. She’d die if Mary
Beth Hunninger got the editor’s job. Mary Beth was “the girl” on campus at St. Agnes Girls Academy—runner on the track team,
National Honor Society president last year, and now she wanted to horn in on the
Scribe.

“Why does everybody got to be so mad?” Dory’s small
voice asked. “Make them stop fighting, Grandma.” Again, Dory buried her face in their grandmother’s shoulder.

“I’ll do what I can, ladybug.” Chloe smoothed back Dory’s dark bangs and then tightened the little girl’s ponytail. “Now,
if I have this correct, Bette, you want me to keep your girls here at Ivy Manor this last week before school starts so that
they will be out of Washington, away from Dr. King’s march, right? And Leigh, you want to go to the march and write an article
about it for school?”

Leigh stood in the center of the screened octagonal room, tension zinging through her.

Chloe sighed. “I hate being put into the middle like this, Bette.”

Leigh stood her ground. Surely Grandma Chloe wouldn’t side with her mother. She couldn’t.

Bette rubbed her forehead. “I know, but for some reason whatever I say, my daughter always does the opposite.”

That wasn’t true. Leigh folded her arms and glared at her mother.

“What does Ted say?” Chloe asked.

Bette humphed. “He says he won’t get into it.”

Chloe nodded and continued to stroke Dory’s hair. “Well, only because you asked me, I’ll tell you what I think. You’re both
right. Dr. King plans this to be a non-violent protest. But there’s always a possibility of violence whenever any very large
group of people gets together.”

Bette nodded and murmured a satisfied, “I know.”

Leigh frowned at her grandmother.

“They’re preparing for at least one hundred thousand,” Bette declared. “Apart from the KKK barging in with baseball bats,
just a crowd of that size… Anything could happen to Leigh.”

Sensing defeat, Leigh flung herself down into a wicker chair with a sound of disgust.

“Why is reporting on this march so important to you, Leigh?” Chloe asked.

Leigh frowned. That was easy. She couldn’t bear to think of having to take direction from
Mary Beth,
her rival ever since Leigh had started at St. Agnes in the ninth grade. “Grandma, I’ve worked hard on the
Scribe
the last two years. I can’t let… someone else get the editor job.”
I
’
m going no matter what you say or do, Mother.

“Your mother’s fears about possible violence aren’t exaggerated.” Chloe rocked back and forth gently. She picked up a strand
of Dory’s ponytail and tickled the little girl’s nose with its end, making her smile. “Even Dr. King is afraid that they may
be met with resistance from white supremacists.”

Leigh looked down at her lap, fisting her hands.
No. No.

Bette sat up, looking relieved. “So you’ll keep Dory and Leigh for the rest of the week?”

Leigh could defy her mother, but not her grandmother. She recognized this, but couldn’t explain it. She blinked back frustrated
tears. Defeat tasted bitter.
This can’t be happening.

“Bette, while I agree to some extent with what you’ve said,” Chloe continued, “I can’t do what you want me to do.”

Leigh’s head snapped up to see her grandmother’s face.

Bette leaned forward. “Why not?”

Chloe met their eyes. “Because I’m going to attend the march myself.”

S
hocked silence reigned in the summer house. Then Leigh squealed, “Grandma, we can go together! This is so cool!” She leaped
to her feet and ran to hug Chloe.

“
Mother”
Bette opened her mouth and babbled, “have you lost your mind?”

“Bette, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you.” Chloe let Leigh hug her and then pushed her to go back to her
seat. “But your stepfather and I discussed it, and we’ve decided to go and show our support for civil rights. You know we’ve
been hoping and praying for the end of Jim Crow since before you were born.”

“But to actually attend a march,
Mother.”
Bette stared at her, her mouth still open.

“You can’t stop me from going now,” Leigh declared. “Not if Grandma and Grandpa are going.”

Bette’s gaze went from her mother to her daughter’s, and then sharpened. “You are still my daughter,” she stated firmly. “And
you will not—”

The sound of a car horn blaring from the drive interrupted the conversation.

Chloe stood up, joy flashing over her face. “They’re here!” She hurried out of the summer house, nearly running toward the
front of the house, calling, “Minnie! Minnie!”

With open arms, an older Negro woman met Chloe in the drive. They crashed together—hugging, laughing, weeping. Leigh stood
back, wondering who this woman was and why she was so special to her grandmother. And did any of this have anything to do
with Wednesday’s march?

Leigh couldn’t take it all in. That evening, the white-linen-covered dining room table at Ivy Manor was crowded with family—her
own, including her stepfather (who’d arrived just as they sat down), her grandparents, and three strangers. At least strangers
Leigh had heard of but never met. These were Mrs. Minnie Dawson (whose stage name was Mimi Carlyle), her husband, Frank Dawson,
and their grandson, Frank Dawson III, who had been away in college. In her late eighties, Minnie’s frail mother, Jerusha—who’d
still been the housekeeper at Ivy Manor when Leigh was a little girl—had also joined them.

Minnie was very attractive for her age—she had a nice figure and was well-dressed, with only a touch of gray in her hair.
Her husband matched her in good looks and fashionable clothing, as did their grandson.

While this wasn’t the first time Leigh had seen Negroes sit at her grandmother’s table, Leigh sensed these strangers were
different… special. Chloe and Minnie kept touching hands, grinning at each other and wiping away tears with embroidered hankies.
From their conversation, Leigh understood this wasn’t a reunion of two friends long separated. Her grandmother and Minnie
talked of visits over the years. But the visits had apparently been in New York City rather than
at Ivy Manor. The tears, the auspicious quality of the moment, came from Minnie’s long-awaited homecoming—after having spent
nearly fifty years away.

Leigh listened with avid interest to Chloe’s explanation that Minnie and she had grown up together at Ivy Manor and had gone
off to New York City in 1917. Minnie had ended up as an actress there. It sounded like a story from a book, but the truth
was sitting here right in front of her.

Delighting in the history lesson, Leigh asked several questions. After a while, though, she noticed Minnie’s grandson, whom
they called “Frank Three,” glancing her way a few times, looking amused. Something about his looks made her feel very young
and even gawky. Embarrassed, she curtailed her comments, answering just yes and no to questions sent her way. This was not
like herself at all, especially here at Ivy Manor.

After a dinner that passed with laughter and much banter (some of which Leigh didn’t fully understand), she was sent upstairs
to put Dory to bed. She kept the door to the hallway open as she tucked her sister into the trundle bed for the night. Snatches
of conversation floated up to her.

“I’ll never forget the first time we saw you on the stage.” That from her grandfather Roarke, she assumed, to Minnie.

“Oh Bette, I loved picking out your prom dress.” That from Minnie.
Why did Minnie pick my mother’s prom dress?

“I can’t believe I’m really here.” That from Minnie, repeated one more time. “And sitting at the dining room table.” She chuckled.
“Chloe, what would your parents say if they could see us now?”

Leigh heard her grandmother laugh amid the sounds of everyone rising to go sit out in the summer house. But she missed the
rest of Chloe’s response because Dory interrupted Leigh’s eavesdropping, reminding her primly she hadn’t said
her prayers. Leigh performed the nightly ritual, concluded with hugs and kisses, and then left her sister. She knew the younger
girl would get right up and sit at the window watching and listening to the night sounds and the conversation below. She didn’t
blame her. The day had turned out so much differently than Leigh could have predicted.