With the Might of Angels (4 page)

I made my way to the very front of the stage, still not knowing what I would say.

I pledge allegiance to perspiration …

Shaboodle-shake-shake-shake!

Our school has no microphones or fancy equipment for speaking, so it was just me and all those people.

Shaboodle-shake-shake-shake!

Then me and all those people sucked in a loud breath when my too-tight dress busted its seams.

Mama’s sewing stayed put in the back by the zipper, but the dress had split open on each side! Thank goodness for my undershirt. At least I had no skin showing! But the dress was no-doubt torn.

Not only did I step
up
at today’s ceremony, I also stepped
over
to the place on the stage where nobody could see the rips in my dress. Then, quick as those Vaseline-y shoes would take me, I stepped
off
that stage and into a far corner.

Mr. Calhoun didn’t try to coax me back with the other speakers. He just left me to my spot. He came to the front of the stage and started applauding loudly. Everybody joined him, including me. “Thank you, Roger, Yolanda, and Dawnie,” he said enthusiastically.

And there it was, as it’s been for weeks. No speech.

Peach Melba from Millerton’s had saved me.

The Panic Monster started to let go.
Shaboodle-shake
slowed its rhythm. At least I could breathe regular again.

As the top student in sixth grade, I got a copy of the Webster’s Dictionary, donated by a local chapter of the Delta Sigma Thetas. The dictionary is used, but it’s new to me, and in very good condition.

I pressed the dictionary under one arm to cover the open place showing my undershirt, and kept my free arm pinned to my other side to conceal the rip there.

Afterward, for a special treat, Daddy took me, Mama, and Goober to the Woolworth’s food counter.

There is no colored section at Woolworth’s. That place is “Whites Only” all over. We can order our food and leave, but we can’t sit and eat with the white customers. We can’t even come in the front door. There’s a back entrance for Negroes.

When the waitress asked what we each wanted, Daddy gave the order.

We don’t have special treats from Woolworth’s often, but when we do, I usually get an egg cream. But, Daddy said, “For this occasion, Dawnie gets a banana
split.
”

As soon as we got home, Mama took a seam ripper to the back of the dress, and released me. I don’t know why she bothered to put the dress back on its hanger. I will never wear Peach Melba again.

Our family now owns two big books.

The King James Bible (Old Testament) and the Webster’s Dictionary, also old. Even though the dictionary is used, it has all its pages as far as I can tell.

Daddy insists that I keep the dictionary in my room. “Smart children need books around them,” he says. Man, is that book big.

How many words can there be in the world?

Tonight I read the article from the New York newspaper a second time. I looked up two words in my dictionary —
segregation
and
integration.

Segregation:
The state or condition of being separated.

Integration:
The act or interest of combining.

If I wrote my own dictionary, I would call it
The Dictionary of Dawnie.

Here are
my
definitions:

Segregation:
Negro kids go to Bethune. White kids go to Prettyman Coburn. Colored people can’t try on clothes or shoes they want to buy to see if they fit. We can
pay
for the clothes and shoes, but once we leave the store, we own the stuff whether it fits or not. Negroes can be hungrier than hungry, but we can’t sit down at the food counter to eat at Woolworth’s. We can be thirstier than sand in the desert, but we can’t drink water from a fountain if that fountain’s wearing a sign that says “Whites Only.”

The same is true for swimming pools,
restaurants, and the Hadley Motor Hotel. They’re all segregated.

Here is one more definition of
segregation
from
The Dictionary of Dawnie:

Segregation:
Stupid.

Integration:
Pie-in-the-sky.

After church today, a strange lady came to our house. She had two men with her. I know most folks in Hadley, and most folks know me and my family. But I had never seen the likes of these people. The men were Negroes, but the lady was white. I could tell by the looks of them they were not from around here.

I have never in all my whole life seen a white person come into our house with so much ease! She had a weird way of talking, too. Or, maybe I should say
tawlking.
Every other word out of her mouth had a saw behind it. She asked Daddy if it was okay that she’d parked their
caw
in our driveway. And she didn’t
tawlk
about her ideas — she was full of
idears.

Even her clothes were not right. I’m smart for book learning, but I am no expert on girly
fashion-y stuff. I do know, though, that wearing a black dress in the middle of the afternoon is what people do only for funerals. And I have never seen lipstick that dark on a real live person.

The Negro men wore suits, but the suit jackets had wide lapels and cuffed pants. Definitely not something I’ve ever seen in Hadley.

The not-from-around-here people spent near to a whole hour sitting in our living room. Drinking lemonade from our glasses, and
tawlking, tawlking, tawlking
to Mama and Daddy about their
idears.

I was outside near an open window, so I caught snatches of what they were saying. I heard something about my Stepping Up speech.

Goober must have sensed something weird, too. He was very restless. He kept snatching my pogo stick and trying to slam his feet on it, and singing and screeching, “Dawnie can fly! Dawnie can fly!”

Finally, the people left. On the porch, Mama and Daddy shook their hands, even.

The white lady in the black dress gave Mama a hug! Right outside where everybody could see.

Goober and I were in the side yard. I’d given up my pogo stick to Goober. It was the only way to keep him quiet. We watched the not-from-around-here
people drive away in their
caw.

As soon as they were out of sight, I raced inside.

“Did somebody die?”

Here’s a secret I’m embarrassed to admit out loud, because it seems like a pie-in-the-sky wish that can’t ever come true.

When I grow up, I want to be a doctor. I want people to call me “Dr. Dawnie Rae Johnson.”

Other than studying hard, I’m not real sure on how I could get to become a doctor. I
do
know that I would have to first learn enough to be smart enough to somehow go to college, then doctor school.

What I
don’t
know is how you get the learning you need that puts you
into
college so you can go to doctor school after that.

What I also
do
know is that whatever books and supplies a kid needs to learn the stuff to go to college, and then to doctor school, are not at Bethune. And what I also
don’t
know is anyone who’s ever gone to college.

That’s why Dr. Dawnie Rae Johnson is as far away as Mars.

Daddy brought me a present — a new Jackie Robinson baseball card! I have now read the stats on the card at least a hundred times. I’m tucking the card in my diary’s safe gutter to mark today’s date as the day the card got to be mine. The stuff about Jackie is sure nifty. Here are some Jackie facts:

* Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson

* Major League Baseball Debut: April 15, 1947, for the Brooklyn Dodgers

* Received the Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award in 1947

* The first Negro player to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949

* Bats: Right

* Throws: Right

I want to add one more fact about Jackie:

* Bravest player on the field.

Today I told Yolanda about my dream of being a doctor. Why in the world did I do that? I might as well have been telling her that hogs can dance the Hokey Pokey.

Yolanda laughed so hard.

She asked me, “Have you ever seen a colored doctor in Hadley?”

Well, no, I have never seen a colored doctor. Or a colored nurse, either. I’ve seen plenty of colored teachers and preachers, but no Negroes working in medicine.

Before I could answer, Yolanda told me, “My pa says there are only colored doctors in places like New York City, and not many of them.”

What I didn’t tell Yolanda was that I saw a colored lawyer once — I actually saw three colored lawyers.

I didn’t see them for real, in person, walking around and talking. I saw their picture in the New York paper, along with the article about integration. I have un-pasted and re-pasted the picture part of that article here. The words under the picture say:

Those lawyers are sure smiling. They look real happy.

If there are Negro lawyers, there must be colored doctors and nurses, too.

I just
had
to write two letters today, one to Jackie Robinson, and one to some other people I probably won’t ever meet, but who I admire.

Everybody and their brother comes to Linden Park for a picnic on the Fourth of July.

I don’t know who decided to call Linden a
park.
The
park
is really just the back lot of Clem Linden’s Barbershop, a place rusty cars and dandelions call home. It’s home to us, too, one of the places in Hadley where white people won’t go. We can be free to do whatever we want, how we want. Clem’s got a small patch of collards growing next to his tomato plants, and a mess of pole beans coming out of the land like the legs of a giant.

Reverend Collier and his wife showed up at the same time we did. The reverend has the biggest car in all of Lee County. It’s a Pontiac, with fenders so shiny, you can look into them and clean the corn kernels from your teeth.

Somebody had already set up tables of food. There were heaps of coleslaw and mac-and-cheese. And I had to wonder if there was a chicken left alive within twenty miles of Hadley. The tables
were covered with drumsticks and thighs.

Yolanda’s pa and Daddy played horseshoes with Clem Linden and Reverend Collier. All they talked about was this integration business.

Daddy said, “It’s about time. But this is not going to be an easy fight.”

Yolanda’s pa said, “If integration means whites and blacks are supposed to go to school together, white children can come to Bethune. Let
us
teach
them
a thing or two. Let
us
show
them
how the other half lives.”

Clem was quick to point out, “They’re going to make our lives miserable. White folks can’t stand knowing we’re getting something they have. I’m not throwing my kids into that hornets’ nest. My children are staying at Bethune.”

The reverend said, “This is a time of hope for our children. The best way to make that hope into something real is to rise and meet it. ”

Soon it seemed everybody was discussing integration. If collards could talk, they would have been debating with Clem’s tomatoes.