The Lions of Little Rock (22 page)

45

MAYBE BRAVE

The next morning when I woke up, I had an idea. I was pretty sure Mother wouldn't like it, but at least I could ask. “Mother?” I said over breakfast.

“Hmm.” She didn't look up from the paper.

“Any chance you'd let me stay home from school today so I can help STOP get a head start on those petitions?” The words came out in a rush.

Mother thought for a long time. “I guess so.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “In fact, I think I might call in sick myself and give you a hand.”

I was too shocked to say a word.

“Unless you'd rather go with Miss Winthrop,” Mother said, suddenly very interested in her toast.

“No,” I said. “I'd rather go with you.”

Mother smiled.

“Does this mean you think it's okay if Judy goes to school with Negroes now?” I asked.

“You know,” said Mother, “I think it does.”

Two hours later we'd been up and down our street and had a handful of new names on our petition. Old Mrs. Chapman was the first one to sign. Turned out, before she was married, she was a music teacher.

Mrs. Madison (the mother of Jill, the little girl I'd taken trick-or-treating) was a different story. Mother barely got out what we were doing before Mrs. Madison started to scold us. “Maurine Nisbett, what is a smart woman like you doing with a group like that?”

Mother was flustered. “Well, Debra, I don't think—”

“I'm ashamed of you, Maurine, supporting those communist race mixers!”

Mother took a deep breath. “If you would just listen to what I—”

Mrs. Madison slammed the door in our faces.

“Well, I never!” said Mother, which was about as close as she ever got to swearing.

A few houses later, I saw Sally and her mother walking around as well. I waved and ran to meet Sally in the street. “You're working for STOP too?” I asked.

Sally stuck her nose up in the air, so high a bat could fly right in it. “Of course not,” she sniffed. “We're with CROSS.”

“What's that?”

“The Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools. We're working to keep the schools segregated.”

“Oh,” I said. “I guess I thought after what you said at the skating rink, you'd—”

Sally grabbed my arm and pulled me away from where our mothers were trying to pretend they hadn't just realized they were on opposite sides. “Truthfully,” Sally said, “I don't much care which side of this issue I'm on, as long as I get to skip school and get new clothes. Mother bought me this.” She pointed to her new sweater set. “Just in case a TV reporter comes by and we get to be on television. I want to look my best.”

Pure Sally. “Oh,” I said. “Well, good luck. With getting on TV, I mean.”

As I walked off, Sally called, “Hey, Marlee!”

I looked back at her.

“Good luck to you too,” said Sally.

“Thanks.”

We smiled and went our separate ways. For the first time in ages, I felt okay about Sally. She was only against integration because her mother was. Eventually, she'd come around.

“Are you still friends with Sally McDaniels?” Mother asked. “After JT, I just thought I'd better ask, because . . .”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I think I am.”

At lunchtime, we took a break and went to Krystal to grab a burger. On the way into the restaurant, I noticed someone had placed a bunch of advertisements by the front door. I bent down to pick one up.

It was a card inviting us to join the KKK.

“What is it?” asked Mother.

I handed the card to her.

She bit her lip. “Daddy found some of these at a newsstand last week.” She glanced around. “Quick. Let's pick them all up.”

After we had gathered and thrown away all the cards, we went inside to order. I'd lost my appetite, but Mother insisted I get a burger, fries and a chocolate shake. She ordered a cheeseburger, onion rings and a cherry Coke. We shared a little tub of ketchup.

“This is nice,” she said as we took turns dipping into the ketchup. “We should do this again soon. Spend time together, I mean. Maybe go to the zoo?”

I nodded. “I'd like that.”

“It's not too babyish for you?” Mother asked.

“No, I love the zoo.”

“You always did,” she said. “Especially the lions.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Do you remember when we moved to our house?” asked Mother.

I shook my head.

“You had just turned four. It was our first night in the house, and the lions started roaring. Judy, David and I were terrified. But you went right over to look out the window. You weren't scared of getting eaten; you wanted to see them.”

“I was only four,” I said. “I didn't know any better.”

Mother shook her head. “No, you were brave. Like I said at the PTA meeting.”

“You were just giving a speech.”

“No,” said Mother. “I meant it.”

I finished the last of my chocolate shake. Brave? That was crazy. But if you had told me Mother would ever let me skip school, I would have said that was crazy too. Brave? Maybe I was.

The next day at school, JT had a black eye. He kept his head down all day, but I saw it, we all did. After math, this time I cornered him in the hallway.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Red.”

“Your brother hit you?”

JT shrugged. “Not the first time.”

“Why don't your parents do anything?”

“I didn't tell them! They think I ran into a tree.”

I was pretty sure they didn't believe that. “Why?”

“I told you, Red thought I'd betrayed him. I hadn't, but”—he gestured for me to come closer—“the dynamite is locked in the trunk of his car. I saw it this morning, and he saw that I saw it.” He pointed to his eye. “He said if I say anything to Mother or Father, he'll kill me.” JT bit his lip. “But he didn't say anything about telling you.”

“Thank you, JT.”

He nodded.

Sally and Nora walked up then, and we jumped apart. “What's wrong with you two?” Sally asked. I shook my head and ran off.

As soon as Daddy got home, I told him what JT had said. Daddy frowned, but called his friend at the police station. His face was grim when he hung up. “They already searched Red's car. There was nothing there.”

“He moved it,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Daddy. “Or maybe JT was mistaken. Or lying to upset you. In any case, try not to worry. The grown-ups will take charge of things.”

I nodded, but what I was really thinking was,
So far they aren't doing a very good
job.

46

SAINTS, SINNERS AND SAVABLES

At the petition drive on Sunday, May 10, my job was to greet the cars as they drove up and bring the petition for them to sign right up to the car window. Mother or Daddy would come by with the notary to check their driver's license. No one even needed to get out of the car. Lots of people I knew came by. Mrs. Brewer, of course, and Reverend Mitchell from church. Even Mr. Harding and Miss Taylor from school.

Late in the afternoon, Betty Jean and Pastor George stopped by to drop off all the signatures they had collected. I was thrilled to see that Liz and Curtis were with them. “We've been gathering names since nine this morning!” exclaimed Liz. “Only one person we asked refused to sign. Marlee, I think this just might work!”

“You should have seen her,” said Curtis. “If someone was hesitant or nervous about signing, Liz just started talking, and by the time she was done, not only had the first person signed, but he'd gotten three of his friends to sign too.”

“Liz can be very persuasive,” I said.

“You can say that again,” said Curtis. Liz blushed, and he beamed at her the way I'd always wished a boy would look at me.

By Monday, STOP had enough names, but CROSS got their petitions in too, so all six board members were being recalled. The special school board election was set for Monday, May 25. That afternoon, Dr. Agar and Mrs. Brewer came to our house to talk to my parents about the next step for STOP.

“We have a copy of the poll tax book listing all the registered voters in Little Rock,” said Mrs. Brewer. “We need to put their names, addresses and phone numbers onto note cards. Next, we'll divide the city into sections, assign each section a ward captain, and give each captain a shoe box full of cards with the names of all the voters in their area. Block workers will then personally contact as many voters as possible before the election.”

“Do you think that will help?” asked Mother.

“It has in other cities when there was a tight election,” said Mrs. Brewer. “But we won't win without the Negro vote.”

“Pastor George and I will handle that,” said Betty Jean. There were already tea and cookies on the coffee table. But this time, instead of going back into the kitchen, she was standing in the doorway, listening to the conversation.

“Good,” said Dr. Agar, “then there's only one problem.”

“What?” asked Daddy.

“There are thirty thousand registered voters in Little Rock,” admitted Mrs. Brewer.

“Thirty thousand?” repeated Daddy. “But the election is only two weeks away. By the time we get all the cards organized . . .”

Mother shook her head. “It's impossible.”

But I was doing some calculations. “No, it's not.”

They all turned to look at me.

“Thirty thousand names sounds like a lot,” I agreed. “But if you divide it up between thirty people, that's only a thousand names each. If you figure it takes a minute per card, that's a thousand minutes, or about seventeen hours. That's not forever. It's one long weekend.”

They all stared at me. What can I say? I've always liked long division.

“Marlee is very good at math.” Mother sounded proud.

“If you have more people,” I said, “it'd take even less time.”

Dr. Agar looked at Mrs. Brewer. She nodded. “We'll see what we can do.”

For the next forty-eight hours, all the WEC members we could round up worked frantically, putting the names, addresses and phone numbers of all thirty thousand registered voters in Little Rock onto note cards. Miss Winthrop and Mrs. Dalton both came over, and they stayed working late into the night. Mrs. Brewer went to the county clerk's office and got copies of the recall petitions. Everyone who signed the STOP petition was listed as someone we could count on for their support. Everyone who signed the CROSS petition was labeled as someone it probably wasn't worth our time contacting. We were going to focus on those who weren't on either list.

While I copied names at home, Liz copied names at church. “We've got the saints, the sinners and the savables,” she'd commented to Pastor George. The joke was repeated, and Mrs. Brewer liked it so much, we started putting a halo in the upper right-hand corner of each card for the saints, an X for the sinners, and a question mark for the savables. When we were done, there were one hundred shoe boxes stacked in our living room, full of three hundred cards each.

The plan was simple: on election day, we had to get all the saints to the polls. We didn't want to do anything to remind the sinners that there was an election going on, though Mrs. Brewer nixed Miss Winthrop's idea of letting the air out of their car tires. We would spend our time on the savables, contacting them and trying to win them over to our cause.

Mother kept one of the boxes for herself. Every minute she wasn't at school she spent on the phone, or having tea, or just dropping in on neighbors we hadn't talked to in years. At night, she'd tell Daddy and me about whom she'd contacted, and whom she'd won over.

Betty Jean got her own shoe box of people in her neighborhood, and Daddy told her to make free use of our phone, so she got real good at dialing and cooking, sweet-talking and folding laundry. Her box was mainly full of saints and savables—the real problem was convincing people it was worth taking the time to vote.

Liz organized some students from Philander Smith College to provide rides to the polls on election day. “People want to vote, but we have to make sure they can get there.” I helped with a rally STOP held on May 19 at Robinson Auditorium to get people energized about the election. Pastor George held a separate rally for Negroes at Dunbar Community Center the same evening.

I thought it was odd that even though we were working together on a common goal, we still had separate rallies. But no one else said a word about it.