New Boy (22 page)

A few days after I returned from Christmas vacation, I stopped by the mailroom to check my mailbox. The mail usually arrived in the late morning but it had to be sorted, so it wasn't in the mailboxes until after lunch. I had a free period before lunch and I was hanging around the Dutch door to the mailroom, the top half of which was always open, watching Connie sorting. Connie was in charge of the mailroom. He was a crusty old man, so badly stooped from arthritis he had to lean his head to one side to look you in the eye. Connie knew every boy in the school. Finally he took the stub of a cigar out of his mouth, stopped sorting for a moment, and leaned his head to one side to look at me standing in the doorway. "Where does she live?" he said.

"Virginia," I said, surprised that he knew I was expecting to hear from a girl. "Connie, how did you know I was expecting a letter from my girl?"

"Happens all the time after vacations," he muttered. "Won't be hearing from Virginia for at least another three, four days
though. They're slow as hell down there." I was stunned. My parents had written to me, but I'd never paid attention to how long it took their letters to arrive. I didn't know if I could last that long. I was certain Paulette had already mailed a letter, and the thought of having to wait another three or four days to read it was agonizing. "If it gets too bad, you can always call her," said Connie, and he put the cigar butt back in his mouth and resumed sorting.

Since I was saving my money to send to Russell, I decided to hold off on calling, and, by some miracle, Paulette's letter arrived the next day. I whooped and showed the envelope to Connie. "Must have mailed it early in the morning," snorted Connie. On her way to school the morning that I left, I thought, looking at the postmark. I tore open the envelope and walked over to a hallway window to read the letter.

Dear Rob,

I just can't believe you have left. I miss you so much already. When are you coming back?

After you left last night, my grandmother kept asking me about you. She wanted to know what you are studying in school and whether you are going to be a doctor like my dad. I told her I didn't know and it didn't make any difference to me, anyway. She said I would be better off to know something like that now, rather than later. I wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but I knew if I did, my mother would have a fit. Old people think they can say whatever they want.

When I went to sleep last night, I dreamed that we were climbing a mountain together. We were climbing through these woods and every time we got close to the top, the mountain got higher, and when the sun started to go down, we could see it set through the trees and the sky turned black and it was so dark I was afraid we wouldn't be able to find our way back, and I was holding your hand like I did in the living room yesterday afternoon, but when we looked the sky was covered with stars and the moon was glowing like a big silver lantern, and the woods were as bright as day, and we walked all the way back down the mountain holding hands until we reached the bottom, and when I woke up this morning, I felt like I still holding your hand and I still do.

Please write me a letter as soon as you can.

Love,
Paulette

For the next month, I heard from Paulette two or three times a week. I tried to keep up with her, but I was also trying to stay on the honor roll. When I sat down to write her, she was all I could think about for the rest of the day. So I wrote her once a week, on Sunday afternoons when I had finished studying. My
letters would go on for five or six pages, describing what life at Draper was like and how much I missed her. I always made sure I asked her about Russell and what was happening with the plans for the sit-in, and she always wrote back to me with the latest news. "Russell says there is nothing new to report." "Russell talked to Joseph and they want to start it in April, but some students at the college are backing out because they don't want to be in jail during exam time (beginning of May)." "Russell says thanks for the money. Sylvia bought paper for the leaflets and she taught herself how to run the mimeograph machine without her daddy finding out." But at the beginning of February, Paulette wrote to say that something had come up and there might be a problem with the plans for the sit-in. She said she couldn't go into it then, but she would write to let me know as soon as she could find out more.

A week went by and I still hadn't heard from her, and I was becoming anxious. I was able to keep up with my schoolwork, but I knew it was going to become harder and harder for me to concentrate if I didn't hear something soon. I finally decided one morning that if I didn't get a letter by the end of the day, I'd follow Connie's advice and give her a call. Just before lunch, I stopped by the mailroom to check my mailbox. Connie was still sorting, but I thought I'd ask anyway. "Anything for me, Connie?" I said.

"Dunno," he muttered, without looking up. "Come back after lunch."

Lots of Draper students subscribed to their hometown newspaper, but the most popular, by far, were the
New York Times
and the
New York Herald Tribune.
Newspapers were usually picked up from the mailroom in the morning, glanced at to see if there was anything interesting on the front page or the sports page, and then either discarded or tucked under the arm to take back to the dormitory. I was on my way to the dining room for lunch when I noticed the headline "Negro Students Stage Sit-In" on the front page of a discarded copy of the
New York Times.
The paper was lying on the floor in a hallway and I picked it up to read the article. It was about four students from North Carolina A&T who had started a sit-in at a lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina. There was even a picture of them sitting alone at the counter, with a handful of white people looking on warily, as though they weren't sure what to do next. And then I read a passage in the article that shocked me. "A Negro woman kitchen helper walked up, according to the students, and told them, 'You know you're not supposed to be in here.' She later called them 'ignorant' and a 'disgrace to their race.'" So this is what it's going to be like, I thought. My heart was pounding with every sentence I read, but when I finished the article, I felt a strange sense of calm. The Greensboro sit-in simply confirmed the importance of what we wanted to do Now it was up to us to make sure that everything fell into place at home I folded the newspaper tucked it under my arm and walked into the dining room.

At lunch, I had to sit through an explanation of the different kinds of igneous rock provided by Mr. Bellard, the geology instructor, to whose table I was assigned. It was so boring. I don't think anyone at the table listened to a word of it, although we all pretended to be on the edge of our chairs. All through the meal, I was thinking of the article in the
New York Times
and wondering if the Greensboro sit-in had anything to do with why I hadn't heard from Paulette.

As soon as lunch was over, I went back to the mailroom, and sure enough, there was a letter from Paulette in my mailbox. I opened it and read it. I felt like a spy who had just received a secret message. "The sit-in is set to start on Friday, March 19, at the big Woolworth's downtown on Main Street. Joseph and Albert are going to lead a small group of students from the college inside the store to sit down at the lunch counter when it opens, but there are some problems. If the first group gets arrested, right now there are only a few students at the college who are willing to show up and take their place, and if there are no replacements, the sit-in will be over. The other problem is that the parents of some of the high school kids found out that we are planning to be at the store to support the sit-in, and they are trying to stop us. Roosevelt's daddy told him if he went out there he was going to get a whipping he would remember for the rest of his life, and Reverend Newsome told Sylvia if she went, she would have to stay in the house for three months. My mother hasn't said anything to me about it so far, but I'm sure she will. Right now, we're trying to keep it quiet so the people at Woolworth's don't find out and try to stop it before it starts. Russell has been telling everybody 'Don't talk about it anymore,' but a
lot of kids in school know about it already and they say they want to help. Did you hear about Greensboro? Their sit-in has made everyone around here even more excited. I hope you are able to come down on March 19.1 miss you so much." I started to read through the letter again, to make sure I hadn't missed anything. When I came to the part about Roosevelt, I wrinkled my nose, since Roosevelt was a half a foot taller than his daddy, and I began to wonder if some kids had other reasons for backing out.

"Must be pretty important," said a familiar voice over my shoulder. "Anyone I know?" It was Gordie. I hadn't seen much of him recently, and it seemed like ages since the night we had gone out on the town in Harlem. He had told me that after Christmas, he had gone back to Jinxie's to try to find the waitress for me, but it turned out that she no longer worked there. He was still my only real friend in the school, but I also felt my life was speeding past him, just as it was speeding past Draper.

"It's from someone back home," I said. "A girl I met over the Christmas holidays."

"How'd you meet her?" said Gordie.

"At a party," I said with a quick smile, thinking of how Mrs. Braxton had led me through her living room and straight to Paulette. "Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going?"

"Same old story," said Gordie with a sigh. He sounded bored. "Still in the rat race and the rats are winning. I'm hoping to make the honor roll again this marking period, but it's going to be close. Greek Two is a killer and physics is worse. What about you?"

"Same boat," I said. "When I got back from Christmas vacation, I had so much on my mind that I guess I kind of let things slide. I was in sort of a daze. McGregor even kept me after class to talk to me about it."

"Oh, yeah?" said Gordie. "What did he say?"

"That I was in trouble," I said. "That my work hadn't been up to honor roll standards and I was in danger of falling off." I felt an awkward silence that I was reluctant to fill. I wasn't sure if I should mention what McGregor had said about the faculty, but then I decided that since I was talking to Gordie, it was okay. "Oh, yeah, he said that the faculty had been talking about me being the first Negro student here and they were hoping I would succeed. I'd never heard that one before."

"Sounds like he was doing you a favor," said Gordie.

"Yeah, I guess he was. But it was still hard for me to really bear down again. I managed to do it, but I'm just hoping I did it in time to stay on the honor roll." I hesitated to say anything more, and then I did anyway. "I've just had a lot on my mind."

"Like what?" Gordie looked curious as well as sympathetic, but we were standing in the mailroom and lunch must have been over, because students were coming in and out all the time.

"Let's go for a walk," I said, and we went outside and drifted across the campus into a stiff March wind that billowed our clothes.

"This girl I met at home over Christmas vacation," I said. "I really like her."

Gordie was listening closely. "Wait a minute," he interrupted. "You didn't do it with her, did you? She's not pregnant, is she?"

"No, no, no," I said, laughing. "It's not like that at all. It's just hard to be away from her. And I also got involved with this group of kids at home that's planning a sit-in to protest segregation at the Woolworth's in town."

"Did you see the
New York Times
this morning?"

"I sure did. We're planning the same kind of thing."

"Why Woolworth's?"

"Because they won't allow Negroes to sit at the lunch counters at their stores in the South. You can buy a notebook or a box of pencils, but you can't sit down and have a cup of coffee."

"But you can sit at a lunch counter at the Woolworth's in New York. I've seen colored people at the lunch counter in the store on Forty-second Street many times."

"That's the point. Woolworth's is being hypocritical. It has one policy for stores in the North and another for stores in the South."

"What are you going to do?" said Gordie. We had veered away from the footpath and were walking on the stiff brown grass. The earth felt as hard as stone.

"We're going to try to break the back of segregation at home by making an example of Woolworth's," I said. "We're going to start on March 19 with one group of college students who'll sit down at a lunch counter until they are either served or arrested, and if they are taken away, another group will be standing by to
take their seats, and we'll fill up the jails with as many people as we can." Gordie and I were walking toward the golf course, directly into the sun, and I was squinting and my eyes were starting to water, and I felt far, far from home. I realized that I was describing a world to Gordie that he knew nothing about.

"And where do
you
fit into all of this?" he said. "I hope you're not planning to go down there and get arrested yourself?" He looked very concerned, but he sounded patronizing.

"They aren't asking the high school students to get arrested. They just want us to pass out information leaflets in front of the store," I said. "But now my girl says in her letter that the parents are putting pressure on the high school kids to stay away altogether." The wind was brisk and I was shivering, but it felt good to finally talk to someone about everything that had been on my mind.

"You haven't answered my question," said Gordie, in a schoolmaster's voice, and I thought he was acting pretty cocky, though I was relieved that I had taken him into my confidence.

"I want to be there when it happens," I said. "I want to be
there,
not up here in this no man's land—or this no colored man's land, anyway—but I don't know how to pull it off. I can't be in two places at one time."

Gordie seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. "It may not be that difficult," he said, and at last I felt that he was on my side.