Sunday, July 13, 2008

Draft 2

Where Are You From?
Drafts 2 and 3
Julie


“Where are you from?” It was such an innocent, normal question, but a question I dreaded nevertheless. I really wasn’t a liar and I didn’t like to lie. “Sumter,” I answered. My new fourth grade classmate smiled, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been there. You can sit by me at lunch today.” Technically, I hadn’t lied. I was born in Sumter. I lived there until Daddy took Mamma and me home from the hospital. After that, I lived in Lamar.

Lamar, a tiny town in Darlington County, South Carolina, surrounded by cotton and tobacco fields, had been the greatest place on earth. One of my earliest memories is of being in church. I was standing on the pew in between my parents, holding the Methodist hymnal I wasn’t old enough yet to read. Instead, I was loudly singing Jesus Loves Me as everyone else sang the assigned hymn. I liked going to church, but then again I liked just about everything about Lamar.

One of favorite places to be was school. Red-bricked Lamar Elementary for grades 1-6 was connected to a matching Lamar High School by a cement breezeway. I had been walking those gray-green halls for as long as I could remember. See, Mamma was the kindergarten teacher, so I went to kindergarten when I was three, four, and five. Daddy was the high school principal, so after school I could walk over and see him. His sturdy rectangle of a desk was where, to my later dismay, I carefully printed, “Form, Julie” on twenty-eight of thirty cartooned Valentines. On the way to the office, I would stop by the library and say hey to my grandmother, the school librarian. The smell of library paste, the hum of a fan, and the crackle of a plastic dust jacket meant Nannie as well as books to me.

My grandfather, Daddy Dalt, was the district superintendent. His office was close by, and sometimes Nannie would take me over there. She would ask his secretary Miss Flowers if he were busy. “Mr. Bennington always has time for you two,” she would say. Daddy Dalt usually was busy and often looked tired and worried, but I understood. He had an important job. The stage next to Daddy Dalt’s office was where my dance recitals were every spring. The year my class wore red tutus I had to run to the bathroom in Daddy Dalt’s office to be sick right before it was my turn to dance. Only a little bit of throw-up got stuck in the red tulle, but nobody noticed.

The summer after I finished kindergarten for the third time, Mamma had a baby. Because Billy had to sleep a lot, I had to be quiet inside. I didn’t mind because I usually played in the back yard any way. The yard was where I tested my first pair of PF Flyers and played with our cat Bubbie until all the Dimetapp in the world couldn’t stop the sneezing and the hives. The swingset was where I was going to teach Billy how to pump his feet and swing to the tree tops. Our yard backed up to Donna-and-Kathy’s yard. Donna-and-Kathy were blond haired, blue-eyed sisters just a year apart who were my very best friends. One of our favorite activities was playing in my playhouse. I loved that playhouse! When I was very little, Daddy had built me a wooden sandbox, but once I got bigger he converted it into a snug little white and green structure with two windows, a door, and an actual front porch. We would play house on the inside and put on our own dance recitals on the porch. I couldn’t believe it was mine!

When I finally made it to first grade, I was thrilled. Soft, round Miss Olson, always smelling faintly of vanilla, taught me to read actual books. “Real”school turned out to be everything I’d hoped. I was a little concerned about second grade, though. There were two sections of each grade, and one of the second grade teachers was mean. Often during quiet time in our room we could hear Miss Neil yelling, berating her students for some infraction of the rules or for less than acceptable academic progress. The big kids said she spanked her students, and I was sure that was true. When her class was allowed to come out for recess, you could see fear in their eyes. I tried to ask Daddy about her one time, but he told me all of the Lamar teachers were good teachers. I wanted to believe him. School ended and I tried not to worry about second grade.

About midway through the summer, my parents told me they had some news for me. They had big pretend smiles on their faces. I was afraid they were going to tell me that I had to be in Miss Neil’s class. Okay, I thought, I can handle it. I will make sure I behave and do all my work. As my mother began talking, though, I almost wished that being sentenced to Miss Neil had been her news. Instead Mamma was saying something else. We were moving. Away from Lamar. Away from my school. Away from Donna-and-Kathy. Some other family would be living in our house. I didn’t even know anybody who had ever moved!

“No!” I said.

“Yes,” Mamma said. “Your daddy has a wonderful new job. He will be the Dean of Students at a technical school in Charleston. We are going to live in a very nice town called Summerville.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not going.”

“We will even take the playhouse,” Daddy said.

“I don’t even like the playhouse,” I said in my meanest voice, meaner even than Miss Neil’s voice.

The next day I woke up hugging my Chatty Cathy doll, happy for a brief moment. Then the feeling of dread washed back over me. We were moving. Soon. I thought and thought. I had a plan. I would remind Mamma and Daddy about Nannie and Daddy Dalt. We couldn’t leave them! They would miss us too much. Nannie hadn’t finished telling me the Peter Rabbit stories, and she had promised to make me a ballerina birthday cake. Unbelievably, my parents told me my grandparents were moving away too. Daddy Dalt was going to be a superintendent somewhere called Mount Pleasant. Instead of living five minutes from us, they would be living forty-five minutes away. I cried again.

How had all of these things happened without my knowing? My parents and grandparents had been having a lot of hushed conversations recently. I just thought they were being quiet because of Billy. Now I knew they were keeping secrets from me. I had heard strange words like “consolidated schools,” “integration,” “private schools,” and “desegregation.”

I was very confused. And sad.

It was time to go. I walked through every room of our now empty house, my footsteps echoing for the first time ever. “I’ll be back,” I whispered to each room.

We moved into our new house, only it wasn’t really new. Some other family had lived there. Just like some other family was now in our real house. My playhouse was in the backyard, but Donna-and-Kathy weren’t.

I started second grade at Summerville Elementary, and Mamma taught first grade down the hall from my class. The teacher, who smelled like coffee and wasn’t at all soft and round, was okay. She didn’t yell or spank anyone. Things were different for Billy, too. He had a new babysitter named Barbara. Only she wasn’t new either. She was old. He probably didn’t like her. He just couldn’t say so.

Every once in a while I would ask if we could go visit Lamar. Mamma and Daddy always said maybe. I knew what that meant. I just didn’t know why. One day after I’d asked again why we had to move, my mother had a different answer. She said we left Lamar because a lot of people were angry. She said the government said the boys and girls from the black school in Lamar could go to school with the white students. I paused. There was another school in Lamar? Mamma said it was old, and the desks and books were falling apart. She said some students didn’t even have books. I couldn’t imagine not having books! Well, what was the problem? My school—my old school—had lots of room and lots of books. Mamma said some of the white people didn’t want the black boys and girls to come and might cause trouble. Mamma must be mixed up. Everybody--with one notable exception-- in Lamar was nice. What a dumb reason to move away.

Second grade ended. I played with blond-haired, green –eyed Paula, whose backyard touched ours. We didn’t play with her sister, though. Janet wore makeup and had a boyfriend and told Paula and me not to touch her stuff. Ever.

When third grade came around, I had to admit I was starting to like Summerville. My new teacher was the best. We had a new girl in our class named Sarah. When her mother asked our teacher to choose a friend for Sarah, Miss Borden chose me! Sarah wasn’t very happy at first, but I told her Summerville was a nice place. I didn’t understand all the football talk, but all of the green and gold was pretty.

One day after school Mamma asked me if I still missed Lamar. I thought about it. Yes, I decided, but not as much. “I still don’t understand why we had to leave,” I added, as I always did. Mamma sighed and told me to sit down at the kitchen table. She handed me the front page of the newspaper. I looked down at the March 4, 1970, edition of The State. Above the fold was a large picture of a handcuffed man being taken away by two uniformed men. His head was down and he looked angry. Behind them were some school buses. My heart stopped. I recognized the Vitalis swept hair and the sloping shoulders. The man was Donna-and-Kathy’s daddy. “Read,” said Mamma. The day before 150 white parents had attacked three buses of black children. They used chains, bricks, ax handles, and baseball bats. They turned over two of the buses. In Lamar. At my school. Mamma held me as I cried.

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