Yankee Girl Read online

  “This is Alice Ann Moxley.” Jeb hoisted himself onto a tall stool.

  “Hold still, Mama,” said the girl. “You’re smearing your mouth.”

  “Hey there.” Mrs. Mateer blotted her lipstick with a tissue. “You the new girl next door? Name’s Moxley? Any kin to the Moxleys from Corinth?”

  By now I’d figured out that “kin” meant relatives, so I said I didn’t think I was, since I had never heard of Corinth, except the one in the Bible. I was pretty sure she didn’t mean that one.

  Mrs. Mateer laughed and patted her hairdo. “That’s right. I forgot y’all are Yankees.” She pulled a can of Aqua Net from a pink purse the size of a mail pouch and gave her head a couple of quick blasts. “I’m off to bridge club,” she said. “There’s pimiento cheese and colas in the refrigerator, and chips in the cupboard. Don’t call me unless the house burns down. Make yourself to home, Alice Ann.” With a click of high heels on linoleum and the lingering smell of hair spray, she was gone.

  The girl in the white shorts looked me up and down. After a morning of bike riding, I felt sweaty-nasty next to her. And young. With her white lipstick and eye make-up, she had to be at least sixteen.

  “That’s Pammie.” Jeb kneeled on the breakfast bar and dug into a cabinet. He emerged with a can that said Charles Chips and hopped down. Potato chips in a can? “She’s in the seventh grade and a cheerleader. She thinks she’s it with a capital I.”

  Seventh grade? Seventh graders down here wore lipstick and eye goop?

  Pammie wrinkled her nose and waved her arms. “Rah, rah, rah.”

  “Alice is in sixth grade, too.” Jeb rooted around in the refrigerator. “Pammie, did you drink the last Nehi?”

  “What if I did?” Pammie flipped her perfect hair over her ears.

  “Mama’ll have a hissy, you drinking her grape Nehi’s.”

  “See if I care. It’s not like there isn’t a Tote-Sum right down the road.”

  Jeb pulled bread and a Tupperware bowl from the refrigerator. “Anybody goes to the Tote-Sum, it ain’t gonna be me. I went last time.”

  I opened my mouth to tell Jeb that there was no such word as “ain’t” but didn’t. I was learning that things were different in Mississippi – a lot of things.

  Pammie pried open the Tupperware and scooped out a perfect mound of something orange with her knife. You just knew that she did everything perfectly. I bet she had perfect handwriting, never erased holes in her math workbook, and that her hair looked as perfect in the evening as it did when she took it out of jumbo curlers first thing in the morning.

  “So, Mary Alice,” she began.

  “Alice Ann,” Jeb corrected her. “’Cept she don’t go by both names.” He stuck a finger in the orange stuff and popped it in his mouth.

  Pammie thumped Jeb on the head with the knife handle. “Mama catches you sticking your nasty old fingers in the food, she’ll wear you out. So, Alice, you met anybody round here yet?”

  “Just got here last night,” I said, helping myself to what I guessed was pimiento cheese. This didn’t look like Kraft Pimiento Cheese Spread. This looked…lumpy.

  “Y’all have pimiento cheese up North?” Pammie watched me pick the lumps out with my knife.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t look like this,” I admitted. “It’s smooth. Comes in a silver package from Kroger’s.”

  “Oh, that’s store-bought cheese,” said Pammie. “Inez made this. Today’s her day off, so she always leaves us food.”

  “Who’s Inez?” I mashed the leftover lumps into the bread. I didn’t care who made it; I didn’t like lumpy food.

  “The maid,” said Jeb around a mouthful of Charles Chips. He caught my surprised look. “Don’t y’all have maids up North?”

  “Not anybody I know. Only rich people have maids.”

  “Well, everybody round here has one. Mama says as long as nigras work for nothing, she ain’t about to scrub her own floors,” Jeb said.

  Pammie nibbled around the edges of her sandwich. “There’s lots of sixth graders in this neighbourhood,” she said. “A lot of nice girls. I’m sure you’ll like them once you meet them.” Pammie sounded like somebody’s mother, trying to be polite and interested when she really wasn’t.

  “I did meet some girls this morning, sort of.” I took a bite of sandwich. This slimy, lumpy stuff didn’t taste like Kraft Pimiento Cheese Spread, either. “A Cheryl and a Mary Martha and a Debbie and some other girl. Saranne?”

  “How did you meet them?” Pammie looked interested now.

  I told her, and as the story went on, she looked less and less impressed.

  Pammie frowned. “Those will be the most popular girls in the sixth grade.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Jeb, digging into the potato chip can. “I think they’re a bunch of drips.”

  His sister ignored him.

  “I hope you didn’t make them mad,” she said.

  “I don’t think they care one way or the other about me.” I shrugged. “They’re not the only girls in the sixth grade.”

  Pammie looked serious. “You better hope Saranne Russell likes you, or you’re going to have one long year in the sixth grade. Those girls have power.”

  “Oh, lay off.” Jeb flicked potato chip crumbs at Pammie. “Sixth grade is the greatest. We’re boss of everything. You couldn’t mess up sixth grade if you tried.”

  I looked back at Pammie.

  She just shook her head and repeated slowly, “One long year.”

  Chapter Two

  JACKSON DAILY JOURNAL, Friday, September 4, 1964

  CITY SCHOOLS TO INTEGRATE

  School Opening Delayed

  Mississippi was hotter than hot. Kids hardly ever went outside, unless they were biking down to the Tote-Sum for ICEEs. So Jeb and I played a never-ending game of Monopoly we left set up in the Mateers’ freezing den. That was how I met Inez.

  Jeb had been at my house, looking at my stamp album. “I didn’t know girls collected stamps,” he said.

  “They do in Chicago,” I said. “I like American stamps best. Lots of history stuff on them. Social studies is my best subject.”

  Jeb wrinkled his nose. “You can keep that old history stuff. I like the foreign ones. Come on over and see. We can play Monopoly after.”

  At the Mateers’, a tall coffee-coloured woman in a white uniform stood at the kitchen counter, mashing something in a mixing bowl.

  “Y’all wipe your feet,” she said without turning around.

  “Inez, you got eyes in the back of your head,” griped Jeb, but he went outside and wiped his feet. Me, too.

  Back in the kitchen, Jeb boosted himself up on the countertop and peered into the mixing bowl. “Pimiento cheese!” he said, sticking a finger into the bowl.

  The Negro woman batted his hand away.

  “Mr. Jeb, you just take your nasty self offa my clean countertop,” she said. “Then we can talk about some pimiento cheese.”

  “Sure thing.” Jeb jumped to the floor and opened the bread drawer. “Alice, you want a pimiento cheese sandwich?”

  “No, thanks.” I watched Jeb slap together a lumpy orange sandwich.

  “How ’bout a soda?” He poked his head in the refrigerator. “RC or Nehi? We got Sunrise orange, too.”

  “Sunrise, please.” I waited for Jeb to introduce me to Inez, who was now getting herself a glass of water at the sink. But Jeb was busy with the bottle opener. Finally, I tapped her arm.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m Alice Ann Moxley from next door.” Mama would be proud I remembered my manners.

  The woman turned around, looking startled. Then an almost smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “Well, Miss Alice, you must be the Yankee girl I’ve heard about. I am Inez.”

  “Pleased to meet you, uh Missus…” What was her last name?

  Again, the woman looked surprised, before she said, “Green. Inez Green.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Green,” I said.

  A f
unny look flickered across her face. “You just call me Inez, like Mr. Jeb and Miss Pammie do.”

  I wasn’t supposed to call adults by their first name. It was disrespectful.

  Jeb made a rude sound. “Here, take your Sunrise.” He thrust the open bottle at me. What was eating him?

  “Hold the phone there, Mr. Jeb,” said Inez Green. “You ain’t drinking soda outta the bottle like trashy folk. Get you some drinking glasses.”

  “Oh, all right,” he grumbled. “You’re as fussy as Mama.” He plunked down a glass tumbler from the cabinet, poured his Nehi, and wandered off to the den.

  “Mr. Jeb don’t have no manners.” Inez shook her head.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Boys up North wouldn’t even think of pouring your soda for you.”

  “Let me get you a glass,” said Inez, reaching into the cabinet Jeb had left open.

  “That’s a pretty one,” I said, pointing to a purple tumbler.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Alice, but that one is mine. I brought it from home.”

  Why would she bring her own drinking glass? The Mateers had a cabinet full of glasses.

  “Hurry up out there, will ya?” Jeb called from the den.

  So I hurried into the den. Jeb sat cross-legged on the floor, watching the Three Stooges on TV, eating his sandwich. He looked away from the screen when he heard me come in.

  “I know you don’t know no better, so I’ll tell you. First off, you don’t introduce yourself to nigras.”

  “Why?” I put my glass down on the coffee table and plopped on the couch.

  “I don’t know,” said Jeb. “It’s just the rules, okay? And you don’t call ’em Mister or Missus. You call ’em by their first name.”

  “But she called you Mister Jeb and me Miss Alice. That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Does to me.” Jeb took a slurp of Nehi.

  “But why?”

  “Because that’s the way it’s always been,” said Jeb, sounding annoyed.

  This discussion was going nowhere fast, so I asked the question I meant to ask Inez.

  “How come Inez brings her own drinking glass from home?”

  Jeb thumped open his International Stamp Album. “’Cause she ain’t supposed to use our glasses. She has her own plate and silverware, too.”

  “But why isn’t she supposed to use your eating stuff?”

  Jeb looked confused. “I don’t know. She just does. All the maids do. They ain’t supposed to eat off the white folks’ plates and stuff.”

  “But why?” Was Jeb incredibly dense or what?

  “I don’t know.” Jeb sounded mad now. “That’s just the way it is. That’s the way it’s always been. Now, do you want to see these stamps or not?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Mississippi was turning out to be one weird place.

  Every day I discovered something new about living Down South.

  I learned the Negro grass-cutter didn’t live in my neighbourhood.

  “He’s a yard boy,” Jeb told me. “Lives over in Tougaloo with the rest of the nigras. Works for nothing. Good thing. I hate cutting grass.”

  Each day was hotter than the one before. There wasn’t any place to swim. The city had closed the public pools rather than integrate. I flipped through my current-events scrapbook. Yep, there it was: MISSISSIPPI POOLS CLOSE IN FACE OF INTEGRATION. When I cut that out of the Chicago Tribune three months ago, I felt sorry for those poor kids burning up down South, with no swimming pools. Now I was one of those poor kids.

  I learned about city buses.

  “A bus stop right on our street,” I told Jeb. “Neat! I can go downtown by myself.”

  “Are you crazy?” Jeb looked downright shocked. “Only nigras ride the bus. The bus stop is so’s the maids can get to work. Buses ain’t for white people.”

  I learned that Daddy was never going to be home. At least not while I was awake. It was a rare night that he ate supper with us. I couldn’t go to sleep until I heard the Chrysler pull into the carport. When he was really late, I worried. What if somebody shot him? Or the Klan kidnapped him?

  When he was home, Daddy acted strange. I’d always hugged him when he came home from work. Now, if I was up when he arrived, he brushed me off.

  “Give a man a chance to change his shoes,” he said, then went straight back to his bedroom. I could hear the door lock click, then drawers and doors open and close. In a couple of minutes he was back, his suit replaced with a sport shirt and sloppy pants.

  “How about that hug now?” he’d ask.

  Why did he have to change clothes to hug me?

  Just another weird thing about Mississippi.

  It seemed like Daddy worked all the time. Not that I saw that much of him in Chicago during the week. But Saturday was our special day, when Daddy took me for my allergy shots.

  I used to cry about those shots, until Daddy taught me “the mind trick” when I was little.

  “You know how Shari Lewis on TV makes Lamb Chop and Hush Puppy talk?” Daddy said. Dr. Davis stood by patiently, needle in hand.

  “No,” I snivelled.

  “It’s a trick called throwing your voice. Shari Lewis throws her voice so it just seems like her puppets are talking.”

  “So?” I quavered.

  “So, what if you could throw your mind someplace? Then you’d be there and not here getting a shot.”

  “Like where?” I swiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands.

  “Anywhere you want, Pookie.” Daddy smiled, eyes crinkling behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Disneyland?” Only rich kids went to Disneyland.

  “Why not?” said Daddy. “Or Niagara Falls, or the White House to see the President. You pick.”

  “Disneyland.” I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the opening of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Colour on our black-and-white TV. Tinker Bell shooting over Sleeping Beauty Castle, trailing sparkly fairy dust.

  “You can have your sucker now, Alice,” said Dr. Davis.

  I hadn’t felt a thing! It was a handy trick whenever I found myself someplace I didn’t want to be.

  Now Mama took me to Dr. Warren for shots. He didn’t have Saturday office hours. Not that it mattered; Daddy worked seven days a week.

  “It’s just until things settle down,” he explained.

  “When is that going to be?” demanded Mama.

  “I don’t know,” sighed Daddy. “Bombings, shootings, church burnings. The Klan is keeping busy.”

  Mama jerked her head my way. “Let’s talk about this later.” Like I didn’t know what was going on from Walter Cronkite. Mama watched Walter Cronkite, too. Only she got up and checked on supper during the bad news.

  I hadn’t run into Saranne and her bunch again, which was okay with me. I had Jeb. We had lots in common. Monopoly. Stamp collecting. The same favourite TV shows. He wasn’t crazy about the Beatles, but I could overlook that. Someday I might need a boyfriend. But until then, Jeb was my new best friend.

  I told him so as we hiked down to the Tote-Sum one afternoon for ICEEs.

  Jeb looked away. “Gee, Alice. I’ve been meaning to tell you.” He kicked a pinecone ahead of him in the road.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Well, uh…I can’t talk to you at school. Least not when anyone’s around.” The pinecone skittered into the weeds by the roadside.

  “Why not?” Suddenly my stomach hurt. “Is it because I’m a Yankee?”

  Jeb grinned. “Heck no. I don’t care if you’re a Yankee. It’s ’cause you’re a girl.”

  “I’ve always been a girl. How come it’s bothering you now?”

  “My friends Skipper and Andy, they’ve been gone all summer and…”

  “And I was good enough to hang out with while they were gone,” I finished for him. “All right for you, Jeb Stuart Mateer.” I took off, my sneakers raising puffs of road dust.

  Jeb caught up and snagged me by the elbow.

  “Now, hold on. You didn’t l
et me finish,” he panted. “You’re okay, for a girl. It’s just that guys don’t have girls for friends.”

  “So we’re still friends…just not when anyone’s around?”

  “Yeah.” Jeb sounded relieved. “Now you’ve got it!”

  It was stupid, but I got it.

  There was so much I didn’t get. Living in Mississippi was like living in a foreign country. Jeb’s accent was hard to understand. He could make three syllables out of the word “on”. He called adults “ma’am” and “sir”. No one talked like that up North.

  Then there were the other neighbours. We never saw them. Not one person came over to say “Welcome to our neighbourhood”.

  Only Mrs. Mateer was friendly. She’d come over and visit while Mama ironed. She perched on the den couch, shoes kicked off, feet tucked under her while she smoked. Mrs. Mateer never left home without her cigarettes and lighter.

  “Why don’t you have a girl do your ironing, like I do?” Mrs. Mateer flicked her lighter.

  “A girl?” Mama wrinkled her brow. “You mean Alice?”

  “You are a caution!” laughed Mrs. Mateer. “I meant a nigra maid, like Inez.”

  “But Inez isn’t a girl; she’s a grown woman.” Mama flapped a blouse across the ironing board and dampened it with water from the sprinkler bottle.

  “Oh, that’s just what we call nigra women down here. Don’t mean nothing by it. Why, Inez is like family. Anyways” – she waved cigarette smoke away from her eyes – “Inez is always looking for work for her kinfolk.”

  “No, thank you,” said Mama, not looking up from the blouse. “I enjoy ironing.”

  That was a big, fat lie. How many times had Mama said, “Lord, I hate ironing. I’d rather scrub toilets.”

  “Suit yourself.” Mrs. Mateer shrugged. “Sometimes Inez is more trouble than she’s worth. I almost let her go last week.”

  Mama thumped down the iron. “Really? Why was that?”

  Mrs. Mateer blew smoke out of her nose like a lady dragon.

  “Some nigras was on the local news, registering to vote. I could’ve sworn I saw Inez signing up, bold as you please.”