Civil War? You’re not a day over eighty.”
Some of the kids sniggered and right off I was in the modern equivalent of school bully beating up the new kid at recess just to prove who’s toughest.
“I’m not even eighty,” I said back in as close to her tone as I could pull off. “I just figure Mark Twain knew more about how Negroes around him every day talked than you do.”
Stebbins opened his book, then shut it again. He cleared his throat. “We know Mark Twain was one of the great proponents of equal rights for all. We appreciate that here in the Equality State.”
I said, “Yeah, but he couldn’t stand a Jew.”
Stebbins looked surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Twain blamed every problem he ever had on Jews.”
A girl up front I hadn’t noticed before spoke up in a semi-Southern accent. “Are you Jewish?”
“No, I’m not Jewish.”
“How do you know Mark Twain hated Jews then?”
“I can read.”
A general murmur circulated the room. Natives were turning ugly. I might go through this and still get beat up at recess.
Maurey’s face had these two white spots on her forehead and her hair bounced when she talked. “How can you say that when you hate Negroes.”
“I don’t hate Negroes.”
Stebbins finally made it to his feet. “But you’re from the South.”
“So.”
“Everyone in the South hates Negroes.” That’s from the teacher. Can you believe it? For a moment I was struck dumb.
“You can’t deny it,” Maurey said.
I looked from face to face. They all looked the same. I had an inkling of what a black person sees in a white world. “Have you ever spoken to a Negro?” I asked her.
Maurey didn’t answer.
“How can you say anything about Negro speech if you’ve never spoken to one?” Mr. Stebbins started to say something, but I cut him right off. “Have you ever seen a Negro, Miss Smarty Pants?”
The smarty-pants deal took things too far, but this was junior high war. If I didn’t shut her down now, I’d spend the next six years in the coat closet.
“Of course I’ve seen Negroes,” she said.
“Where besides TV?”
Teddy spit in his can. “I seen ’em in Denver when we went down Christmas.”
“Did you speak to any?”
Teddy grinned and let juice run down his chin.
The girl up front came to the class rescue. “My daddy knows plenty niggers back home and we hate ’em all.”
“Does every Caucasian in the South hate Negroes?” Maurey asked her.
“I don’t know ’bout Caucasians, but ever’body in Birmingham does. Daddy moved here ’cause niggers got his job.”
Stebbins knew better than to try to control Maurey or me— we were smarter than him—so he tried to pull off some dignity on the little Dixie racist. “We do not call them niggers out West, Florence. They prefer to be known as Negroes.”
“Huck Finn calls the guy Nigger Jim.”
“That’s because Huck is an ignorant hick,” Maurey said. “Hicks talk that way.”
“They’ll always be niggers to me.”
“See.”
Stebbins shut his book with a pop. “Polite people say Negroes.”
I corrected the Marine washout one more time. “Actually, in North Carolina, the younger ones are calling themselves Afro-Americans.”
The whole class busted up at this. Don’t ask me why. What some people think of as funny has always been a mystery to me. Even Stebbins chuckled. “That’s a bit far out, don’t you think.”
I just shrugged. I snuck a look at Maurey and got the scowl to end all scowls. I crossed my eyes at her. She turned around to face the front.
About then the bell rang. Stebbins shuffled up his papers and books. He stared out at the class—not at me, mind you, just vaguely in the air above the third row—and said, “Sam Callahan, I’d like to see you here after sixth period.”
Great. First day of school and I’m being held over to clap erasers.
Next came Miss Flanagan and geography, then Mrs. Hinchman and citizenship. She showed us on the chalkboard how to write a check. I’d been writing checks since the third grade.
At lunch hour I skipped the post-cafeteria baseball game. Figured I’d blown that one yesterday; they’d have stuck me in right field again anyway. Hardly anyone under sixteen can hit to the opposite field, and since there aren’t many left-hand batters, right field in junior high is like let’s-get-rid-of-this-guy-so-we-can-talk-about- him.
Instead, I sat on the cafeteria steps and watched Maurey play volleyball. She was pretty good. She was the only girl out there who could serve and didn’t squeal like a stepped-on cat every time the ball came near. The blue thing I’d seen from the back in Stebbins’s class was a pullover-sweater deal. She had on an off-white skirt that came about mid-knee and rose up when she jumped at the net.
Somewhere in there, she realized I was watching. She glanced over a couple of times, then after a bad serve, she turned and stared right back until I looked off at the Tetons.
After lunch came history taught by Miss Barnett who I knew was senile as those old black guys who sit on their porches in Greensboro with Ping-Pong-ball colored eyes and catheters. I supposed they kept her on because she’d been with the school since Wyoming was run by Indians, and no one had the heart to make her stay home.
I didn’t concentrate much. Mostly because I didn’t have to—everyone in class seemed to be taking naps—but also I was somewhat concerned about this after-school discussion with Howard Stebbins. What if he was weird?
Maybe he was just pissed because I knew more about Mark Twain than he did. Or it could be that thing about Twain blaming his problems on the Jews. Maybe Stebbins was Jewish. We had Jews in North Carolina but you couldn’t tell them from anyone else except when they made a big deal out of a holiday or something. Nobody— unless you count a few Klansmen that I don’t count—cared anyway. Lydia’d been to New York City to see her mama’s mama, and she said there you could tell the difference and it mattered for some reason.
