Louise's Blunder (11 page)

I was finishing my coffee when a sudden silence fell over the restaurant. It was so palpable that our awareness of it interrupted our conversation. The eyes of everyone in the place were fixed on the door. Three black girls had entered the cafeteria and gotten into line at the buffet. The colored man serving at the first station stared at them, his eyes wide open and his spatula hovering over the meatloaf. I saw him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, looking at the girls, then over at the white manager at the cash register. He was afraid of what might happen next. The manager, a thin bald man with a dishtowel tucked into his apron pocket, came around the front of the buffet line and strode toward the girls.

Every pair of eyes in the restaurant fixed on the unfolding drama.

‘What do you girls think you are doing here?’ the manager said, his chin jutting out. He gripped the rails of the buffet line with his right hand as if he might rip a piece of the metal out and shake it at them.

‘We’re getting our dinner,’ the first girl in line said. She was older than the other two girls and looked almost masculine in black trousers, with short curly hair and no make-up.

The diners stirred then, murmuring and clattering their silverware. I looked around me. I was relieved to see that most of the people in the dining room didn’t seem hostile to the black girls. They seemed to be waiting mostly, to see what the manager would do and what would happen next. There were a few tables, though, where the restaurant patrons were quite upset. I could tell by their ugly expressions.

Sadie gripped my arm and then Rose’s. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a sit-in!’

‘A what?’ I said.

‘The girls must be Howard University students,’ Rose said. ‘There’s a campus group that organizes what they call sit-ins. They go into restaurants and try to get served.’

I’d protest too if I were those girls. In all of the downtown District there were only two places where a Negro could get a meal and use the restroom: the YWCA cafeteria on 11th and ‘K’, and Union Station.

‘Sadie, let go of me, you’re breaking my wrist,’ Rose said.

‘This is so exciting!’ Sadie said, bouncing a little in her seat. ‘What do you think is going to happen?’

‘You girls need to leave,’ the manager said again. ‘We don’t serve coloreds.’

‘Why not?’ said one of the girls, smart in a hot pink and yellow sundress with dangling pink earrings to match. ‘Our money’s as good as anyone else’s.’

‘Now you all know you can get just as good a meal up at the Y,’ the manager said.

‘It’s too far away. We’re on our way to the movies,’ said a third girl, who wore her hair in a mane curl tied back at the base of her neck, the first one I’d seen outside a fashion magazine. She’d pulled all her hair back, tied it at the base of her neck with a thick ribbon, then tucked the rest of her hair under the ribbon. I liked it.

‘It’s against the law,’ the manager said. ‘You know that.’

The manager glanced over at the front door to the restaurant, where some people had stopped at the door, noticed the scene and turned away. A few remained, their faces pressed to the plate-glass window, voyeurs eager to see what was going to happen. Most of the diners inside began to collect their belongings and head for the exit, leaving uneaten food on their plates. A few of them shot nasty looks at the girls on their way out.

Please God, I thought, no violence. No beatings. I had seen a grocer back home beat his colored boy for spilling flour on the floor of his store and I’d never forgotten it.

The older girl, the one wearing trousers, reached out her hand to shake hands with the manager. He looked at her in pure astonishment and refused her outstretched hand.

‘I’m Pauli Murray,’ she said, introducing herself anyway. ‘I’m a law student at Howard University. There are no segregation laws in the District. And you haven’t got a sign in your window saying you don’t serve Negroes.’

I saw smiles cross the faces of the colored man who served the meatloaf and the white-haired colored lady further down the buffet who dished up the vegetables.

By now most of the diners had slipped out the door. A few tables remained. One with two older couples who just kept eating. Some young servicemen leaned back in their chairs, watching as if they were at a baseball game. I was concerned about a group of three men wearing Capital Transit uniforms at a table in the center of the big dining room. They were shifting in their seats and putting out their cigarettes as if they were about to do something.

‘We have to stay,’ Rose said to Sadie and me. ‘And help them.’

I thought we should do our best to convince the colored girls to leave the cafeteria with us, but then I decided instead that we should stand our ground, no matter what happened. I doubted the protesters would leave anyway.

‘What should we do?’ I asked.

Sadie slid out of her chair.

‘I’m going to join those girls,’ she said. ‘I wish I could get hold of my reporter friend.’

‘Louise and I are coming with you,’ Rose said.

‘No,’ Sadie said, ‘you two work for the government. Best stay out of it. Mr Layman doesn’t care what messes I get into.’

Sadie marched right up to the girls, grabbed a plate and joined them in the queue.

‘What are you doing?’ the manager asked her. ‘Stay out of this!’

‘Getting some dessert to eat with my friends here,’ Sadie said.

‘Look,’ he said to her, ‘what are you, a pinko? We don’t serve coloreds here. That’s just the way it is, you know that. I’ll lose all my customers if these girls don’t leave right now.’

The crowd outside had grown, lining the front windows of the restaurant.

Then the police arrived.

‘I didn’t know the District had any colored policemen,’ Rose said.

‘I’ll bet these are all of them,’ I said.

The Negro lieutenant left two of the three colored patrolmen on guard outside and brought the third into the restaurant with him. He looked utterly careworn, his skin more grey than black.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘what’s going on here?’

‘These girls won’t leave,’ the manager answered. ‘This one here,’ he said, nodding at Pauli Murray, ‘says there ain’t no laws against them eating here. That’s not true, right?’

‘No, they’re right,’ said the police lieutenant, whose nametag identified him as E. Mosely. ‘But,’ he said, glaring with disapproval at the girls, ‘it’s accepted, and you girls know that. Move along now and get your supper at the Y.’

‘There’s no sign in the window saying colored people can’t eat here,’ Sadie piped up, waving her plate toward the buffet line for emphasis. ‘How were they supposed to know? They should be able to get their dinner here like everyone else.’

Pauli Murray moved further along the buffet line with her plate. ‘I’ll have the catfish, please,’ she said. The colored man behind the steam table lifted up a spatula piled high with fried fish.

The manager, with his eyes on the gathering crowd outside, stood between the girl and the buffet. The Capital Transit men stood up, ready to intervene. The crowd outside murmured. The trouble they’d been hoping for had arrived.

The colored lieutenant stretched out his hands toward the manager, palms up. ‘Looky here,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a deal. You let these girls eat here this evening, tomorrow you post a sign in your window saying your place is segregated. How about that? Then all these folks can go home and no one gets hurt. You don’t want your place in the newspapers, do you?’

The manager gave in. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Just this once. The dinner hour is almost over anyway. You girls go on down the line, but don’t ever come back here.’

The men in the Capital Transit uniforms moved toward the girls, but the Negro policemen stood between them. I’d had enough. I didn’t care if they beat me up too, this was too awful to just sit and watch.

I jumped up from my chair and grabbed the arm of one of the Capital Transit drivers, the one who was clearly the leader. He pulled back from me in surprise. ‘Stay out of this,’ he said.

I glanced at my watch, pointedly. ‘I believe your dinner hour is over,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you due back at your streetcars at eight? Or do you want to get thrown in jail for starting a race riot? We’ve got plenty of witnesses here to testify who started it.’

He tried to stare me down, his fists clenching and unclenching. But then one of his friends took his arm. ‘Come on, Clem, let’s go. I don’t want to get fired.’

‘OK,’ he said, then glared at Pauli Murray, who’d calmly progressed through the buffet line, adding French fries and butter beans to her fish. ‘You there,’ he said, ‘you heard what the man said, don’t ever come back here.’ She ignored him.

The Negro policeman opened the door and the drivers left, along with the crowd outside that had been waiting for the excitement to start.

‘Good work,’ Rose said, as I sat back down at our table. I’d gotten a coffee refill, figuring we needed to stay to see the colored girls leave safely. I wished it was a Martini.

‘I think we’re going to miss the movie,’ I said.

‘Better to watch history being made,’ Rose said.

‘You think this was that important?’

‘Yes I do. Social movements don’t ever stop. They can be delayed, but in the end things move on.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe this country will ever be integrated,’ I said.

‘No one thought a bunch of Russian peasants could overthrow the czar, either,’ Rose said.

Sadie had eaten her jello with the colored girls, but came back to our table when they left the restaurant, smiling broadly. The policemen, who’d been guarding the door all this time, left with them. Sadie was still wound up.

‘Pauli said the Howard students are going to integrate the District and no one can stop them!’ she told us.

The manager flipped the sign on the door to ‘Closed’. ‘Time for you girls to leave,’ he said. As we went out the door he said, ‘And don’t you ever come back here either.’

When I got back to ‘Two Trees’ I was exhausted. I had pain between my shoulder blades from the tension that had built up in me in the restaurant. Propped up on my pillows I sipped a Martini. It was smart of those Howard students to send girls to the restaurants. If they’d been boys, I didn’t doubt there’d have been an awful fight.

Royal was waiting outside the Western Market for me, leaning up against the big plate-glass storefront to take the weight off his game leg, smoking a cigarette. When he saw me he dropped the butt on the sidewalk and ground it into the cement with the tip of his shoe.

‘Where to?’ Royal asked.

‘Across the street,’ I said.

We slid on to the cracked seats in one of the six booths in the tiny café. A fan missing one blade slowly turned overhead.

‘It looks dingy, but it’s clean,’ I said. ‘Great biscuits.’ My stomach was still somewhat dicey so biscuits would be all I could eat.

The young colored waiter came out from behind the counter to wait on us.

‘Coffee,’ Royal said. ‘Adam and Eve on a raft over medium, and my friend here tells me the biscuits here are good.’

‘They’re the best in town. From my grandma’s recipe.’

‘I’ll just have biscuits and milk,’ I said. ‘Do you have real butter? Jelly?’

‘We got butter,’ he said. ‘But no jelly. How about some honey? We bring it up from my cousin’s farm in Virginia.’

‘Yes, please,’ I said.

When Royal’s coffee came he pulled an aspirin bottle out of his coat pocket and tossed down two with his first gulp.

‘I hope your leg really hurts,’ I said.

He grinned at me. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said. ‘It does. Bourbon kills the pain best, but it’s a bit early in the day for that.’

The colored boy brought our food.

‘These biscuits are real good,’ Royal said.

I mixed up butter and honey into one thick spread and layered it on a biscuit. It went down well between gulps of milk so I ate another one.

When we were done the waiter cleared our plates and Royal had another full cup of coffee. Then he pulled out his narrow pad and pencil.

I considered very carefully what information I would share with him.

‘Paul Hughes’ parents are dead,’ I said. ‘There is no mother in Fredericksburg.’

Royal glanced up from his notes, his eyebrows raised.

‘No kidding!’ he said.

‘His next of kin is listed as a sister in Knoxville. That’s where his body was shipped.’

‘I’ll be damned.’

I told Royal a few more selected facts such as Hughes’ birth date and his education at Yale, and then delivered the bombshell. ‘The telegram, the one that was supposed to come from Hughes’ mother: it was sent from the Western Union office 434 Twelfth, Southwest.’

‘Wow,’ he said, ‘so close to the Tidal Basin!’

‘I know. What do you think it means?’

‘We don’t have enough information to connect the dots yet, but it’s a hell of a coincidence.’

I said nothing about Clark Leach and Spencer Benton or about Hughes’ file being transferred to the ‘L’ room.

‘That’s all the information you have?’ Royal asked.

I shrugged. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘The file could have been edited by someone in Personnel after Hughes’ death, I suppose.’

‘Must have been,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t say it was nice knowing you. Goodbye. I’m going to work now.’

But as I began to rise from my seat Royal reached across the table and grabbed my wrist, hard.

‘You’re not done yet, Mrs Pearlie. I have another job for you.’

I pulled back from his grip and he let me go. At this point there was nothing to keep me from just leaving the café. I was fairly sure he wouldn’t report me to OSS now. But I couldn’t repress my own curiosity. I lowered myself back down to the bench.

‘What now?’ I said.

‘I want you to go to that Western Union office,’ he said. ‘Even if the return address wasn’t printed on the telegram they’ll have a record of it.’

I knew immediately that I would do it. I wanted to know myself.

‘What if it’s just a girlfriend’s?’ I said. ‘Hughes could have spent his weekends with her, pretending to be visiting his mother. And when he fell ill the girlfriend sent the telegram to Mrs Nighy, leaving her return address off the telegram message.’