‘It was nice to meet your friends,’ Diane says, beaming at me. It’s the same beauty-pageant grin she gave me outside. Too excited. Almost frantic. Like if she let it drop, her face might fall off. It makes me nervous.
I told Connie I wanted to stand up for Diane. I wanted to be there for her. But that was easy to say in the park, away from the rules and stares of everyone at Eastside. Here, with Diane next to me, I’m not sure exactly how to do that.
‘Sure,’ I say, gazing toward the front of the classroom, ready for this conversation to be over. ‘I’m glad you met them.’
‘And I can eat lunch with y’all?’ she asks. ‘It’s all right?’
My stomach sinks. It’s what I promised, and at the time I thought it would be the best way for the girls and Diane to get to know each other and figure out what to do next. Even Connie gave it the green light. But here on a Monday morning in the rows of desks, in the sea of faces that judge and stare and categorize, that idea seems as silly as going to the moon.
But I just mutter, ‘Yeah, of course you can.’
Miss Odeen asks us all to take out a piece of paper and a pencil for a writing exercise. I have neither, but Diane leans over and quickly puts a fresh piece of composition paper and a pencil sharpened to a point on my desk when she realizes I’m without. She smells like soap and something floral and sweet. Maybe it’s that Evening in Paris perfume I saw on her vanity. A boy behind me chuckles and says something about my new friend as I wince in embarrassment. I nod in begrudging thanks, and she whispers, ‘It’s no trouble.’
‘Class,’ says Miss Odeen, ‘I’d like to read a portion of a speech to you and have you respond to it. How many of you have heard of a woman named Fannie Lou Hamer?’
I smile, glad for the interruption. Miss Odeen is always doing stuff like this. By that I mean introducing us to names and ideas she knows we don’t know much about, even if she always asks us first if we do, I guess just to be polite. Like the other week when she told us about Jerrie Mock, the first woman to fly around the world. Miss Odeen assigned us a composition from the point of view of Mrs Mock after she made it all the way back to Columbus, Ohio, last spring in her Cessna airplane. Some of the boys refused to write it because they said a boy couldn’t write from a girl’s point of view, but they changed their minds after Miss Odeen threatened to fail them.
None of us answer Miss Odeen, who perches on the edge of her desk and crosses her legs at the ankles. She’s so stylish and put-together, I bet Grandma and Mama might wonder why she hasn’t found herself a husband yet, but something about Miss Odeen makes me think that’s not the first thing on her to-do list.
‘Fannie Lou Hamer is a Negro woman from Mississippi, fighting for her rights,’ Miss Odeen begins. I shift in my seat and peer around me. I can tell from the smirks of some of the students and the nasty comments they mutter under their breaths that they don’t like that Miss Odeen has brought up civil rights. Like every other high school in Houston, Eastside is only for white and Mexican kids. The Negro students in this part of town go to Jack Yates High. Juanita explained to me once that at some point the grown-ups in charge decided Mexicans counted as white, which she didn’t particularly like. She gets her fair share of sideways looks from the fuzz and cruel comments from the kids at school, but I know she’s always been proud to be Mexican.
Up north I know they have integrated schools, and everybody goes to school together, and I think that’s the way things should be everywhere. But it’s hard to imagine that ever happening here in Houston, even if a few years ago the city did integrate the buses and lunch counters and movie theaters. It doesn’t seem right that a bunch of white grown-ups get to decide the when and the how of who gets to go where. I lean forward in my seat to focus on what Miss Odeen is saying.
‘This past August, Mrs Hamer spoke at the Democratic National Convention all the way up in New Jersey,’ she continues. ‘And I want y’all to listen to this speech that she gave and write a response.’
Miss Odeen begins to speak, repeating what Mrs Hamer said. I peer over at Diane, who sits up straighter, listening to everything coming out of Miss Odeen’s mouth.
In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, Miss Odeen talks about not being able to vote in Mississippi because of the color of her skin, and of even being arrested and beaten just for trying. Some of the testimony makes me wince. What she had to go through was horrible.
‘“I question America,”’ says Miss Odeen, and her voice grows louder as she reads Mrs Hamer’s speech. ‘“Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave …”’
After she is done reading, Miss Odeen takes a deep breath. ‘Those words surely did make an impression on me,’ she says. ‘And I’m sure they did for you, too. So I’d like you to write a response to this speech. Reflect on it and write a brief composition explaining it in your own words.’
I bend over my paper, thinking about how to get started.
Fannie Lou Hamer is very brave. I think she is definitely braver than me. I pause, chew on a thumbnail, searching for a word. Fannie Lou Hamer seems fearless, but she must have been afraid. Maybe it’s not that she is fearless. It’s just that she is courageous in the face of fear.
Diane scribbles away next to me, humming softly as she completes the assignment. As we write, Miss Odeen starts making her way around the desks, checking on our work. That’s another way you know she’s new. The older teachers just yell at us from the front of the room.
I spy a few kids off to the side, their papers blank, the expressions on their faces ones of disgust. Miss Odeen goes over to quietly encourage them to get started on the assignment, but she doesn’t seem to have much luck. I wonder how long before some parent complains to the school administration about this lesson.
Toward the end of class, Miss Odeen collects our papers so she can review them, and we spend the last few minutes going over our weekly list of vocabulary words. As we repeat caterwaul and perspicacity, I hear Diane cough. A sort of notice-me cough, not a real one.
I glance toward her desk, where I see she has a new piece of paper out. In careful script at the top, she’s written I’m so scared.
I look up and meet her eyes. They’re glazed over, wet with tears. She’s still trying to smile. Something in me softens for this girl, and I feel bad about how I acted at the start of class. All I can think to do is quietly mouth back, I am, too.
She nods, blinks hard, and two tears snake down her rosy cheeks. She presses them away with her fingers, then turns her attention back to Miss Odeen.
I watched as Diane composed herself and tucked away the piece of paper with her secret message just to me, hoping she’d be all right before the bell. When it rings, I expect her to want to walk out with me, hover nervously, and ask about lunch. Instead, she gathers her books and says, ‘I have to go. But I’ll see you in the cafeteria. I promise.’ Like the tears and the note never happened. And with that she slips down the hall, lost in a crowd of ponytails and crew cuts.
I have one more class before it’s time to eat, but I’m in no mood to go. I’m feeling unsettled and uncertain, and that moment with Diane just made something in me crack a little. I don’t like it. How I wish I could blink my eyes and find myself back at Winkler’s before I decided to head to the bathroom. How I wish I could reach out and stop myself from going.