My Mother the Cheerleader Read online

  She dabbed her forehead once and handed it back.

  I poured three glasses of lemonade.

  “I hope you’ll be joining us for dinner, Mr. Miller. I’m known far and wide for my paneed chicken and creamy garlic greens.”

  Of course, she meant to say that she was known far and wide for Charlotte’s paneed chicken and creamy garlic greens.

  “Well, I’m planning to drop in on my brother and his family this afternoon,” he said. “But they don’t know I’m coming, so maybe it’d be a good idea to have dinner plans.”

  “Wonderful,” my mother said. Then she noticed me taking a seat on the edge of the couch.

  “Aren’t you meeting your little friend Jez Robidoux this afternoon?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied flatly.

  “Well then, it’s probably a good time for you to check the larder to see what ingredients we need to pick up for tonight.”

  Reluctantly, I slunk off to the kitchen. Once inside, I pressed my ear hard up against the door.

  “When was the last time you visited New Orleans?” she asked him.

  “It’s been more than twenty years.”

  “Twenty years! Why, you must hardly recognize the place.”

  “Hasn’t changed much, from what I can tell so far.”

  “Well, if you’d like me to show you around…”

  “I might take you up on that,” he said. “But right now I think I’m gonna try to catch up with my brother.”

  “Of course. I usually serve dinner around seven.”

  “That suits me fine.”

  I heard them rise and move to the door.

  I reacted quickly, bolting out the back door and grabbing my bike out of the shed. I had a light-blue 1955 Schwinn Spitfire that I used for surveillance missions. As I mentioned before, I was a first-class snoop, and Morgan Miller was worthy of my highest level of observation.

  A small path ran from the shed along the side of the house to the street. I ran with my bike to the edge of the front of the house and peered around the corner just in time to see Morgan get back behind the wheel of the Bel Air. I waited for him to pull out before emerging from my hiding spot. The car drove toward St. Claude. I heard my mother calling for me from inside as I pedaled with all my might in hot pursuit.

  CHAPTER 5

  After a few weeks of the school boycott, most of the white parents in our ward started sending their kids to alternative schools. My mother seized the opportunity to have me working full-time around the house. Her political stand on segregation allowed her to pawn off nearly all her housework on me. By the third month of the boycott I was pretty much doing anything and everything having to do with tidying and cleaning the house and tending to the guests.

  Besides housework, I didn’t have much to do with myself other than snoop. As a result, my snooping skills became finely honed during the first few months of the boycott. J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men loomed large in my imagination, rooting out Communists and other evildoers. I fantasized about becoming the first girl agent in the FBI. I even fashioned myself a pretend identification card and badge out of an old toy sheriff’s star.

  I learned how to eavesdrop from every nook and cranny in our house, locating through trial and error a set of key surveillance points. For instance, by lying on the floor of the third-floor closet, I could hear everything that went on in the second-floor bedroom at the front of the house. From the roof of the shed in our backyard I could peer right into the third-floor bedroom in the back. Sometimes I even used binoculars. Best of all, in the bathroom on the second floor there was a removable ventilation grate that allowed me to listen and look down into the Music Hall below without being observed.

  One of my favorite activities was something I called “search and record” missions. While cleaning a guest’s room, I would meticulously take out and examine every item they had brought, marking down articles of note in a series of pocket-size spiral notebooks that I called my Spy Logs. I always kept at least one in my back pocket with a sawed-off pencil. You learn a lot about people by looking at what they pack for a trip. But I had to be extremely careful not to get caught and to return every item exactly as I had found it. I also became an expert at trailing people. If a guest interested me, I might follow them for hours, dutifully recording their movements in my Spy Log.

  After pulling away from our house, Morgan’s Bel Air made a right on St. Claude and headed toward downtown. I raced after him on my bike. St. Claude was the main commercial drag of our area. Sad little stores dotted the blocks, providing basic services to the community—Laundromats, pharmacies, po’boy shacks, and of course bars and liquor stores.

  I believed that tracking Morgan’s car would be slightly easier than others I had tried to follow because it was perhaps the only car in our ward sporting New York license plates. Yet I quickly fell far behind in my pursuit. I furiously pumped my legs, sweat pouring out of me, but I kept losing ground. I was certain I’d lose him, when he suddenly slowed and pulled to a stop. While he parked, I slid my bike to a stop behind a parked car a block away.

  Morgan stopped the engine, but he didn’t move to get out of the car. I left my bike and edged up to get a closer look, crouching behind the bumper of a beat-up Ford truck parked just a few spaces behind him. Morgan stared across the street at a small grocery store. A weathered sign above the door read FRIENDLY MARKET. EST. 1915. The building featured a second story that I assumed was used as an apartment. Morgan lit a cigarette and took long, pensive drags as he watched the store. I edged forward so I could see through the front window. Inside, a tall, thin, balding man stood at the cash register, ringing up a customer. Bananas. A box of soap flakes. Toilet paper. Canned tuna. A five-pound bag of rice.

  The man at the cash register wore a thigh-length white topcoat over a shirt and tie. Morgan watched from his car for nearly an hour. In that time the bald man rang up ten customers, swept the aisles once, and in between read the sports section of The Times-Picayune. I noted every movement in my Spy Log.

  4:05 PM—Bald man reads paper.

  4:16 PM—MM lights another cigarette.

  4:31 PM—Fat lady buys several packages of dried prunes.

  4:46 PM—Bald man blows nose into handkerchief.

  Morgan never budged. After about forty-five minutes and six cigarettes, he started the engine and drove off toward the French Quarter. I didn’t follow. I knew I’d never catch him, so I gave myself a new surveillance assignment: Infiltrate Friendly Market and observe the bald man from close range.

  I retrieved my bike and leaned it against a telephone pole; then I crossed the street and boldly entered the store. It’s strange to be in close proximity to someone you’ve been spying on from afar. It’s almost like seeing a movie star in the flesh. The bald man barely looked up as I walked through the door, triggering a small tinkling bell. The newspaper he read partially hid his face.

  “Need help finding anything?” he asked from behind the front page.

  “Penny candy,” I replied.

  “Top of the first aisle,” he said, gesturing with his head but still not really looking at me.

  Typical groceries packed the three tight aisles that ran the length of the store, organized into broad categories: baking supplies, jarred and canned vegetables, boxed cereals and oatmeal silos. A large refrigeration unit toward the back held bottles of fresh milk, Dr Pepper, Tahitian Treat, and orange juice. There was no meat counter or fancy dairy section, just the basics. I stopped in front of the penny candy shelf, which boasted a decent selection: Pixy Stix, candy buttons, Slo Poke suckers, jawbreakers, licorice pipes, chocolate cigarettes, wax lips. Good surveillance work often involves spending money to create a viable cover. So I chose two pairs of wax lips, one with a mustache, one without, and three fireballs, and made my way back up to the counter.

  I placed the items on the counter to get the bald man’s attention. He lowered the paper to reveal Morgan’s sharp blue eyes.

  “That it?” he ask
ed.

  “Yeah,” I said, handing over my five cents.

  “Well, I won’t be retiring on this sale,” he said with a small grin, revealing that he also had Morgan’s pattern of crow’s-feet stamped into the corners of his eyes. I studied his face and noticed that, unlike Morgan’s, the bridge of his nose and his forehead also bore deep lines, giving him a slightly strained and tired expression.

  He popped my collection into a small paper bag and I exited the store. I placed the wax lips with the mustache between my teeth and held it for a moment, admiring my ridiculous visage in the side mirrors of cars as I walked back to my bike. Slowly I chewed, letting the strange sweetness run down my throat as the wax became a huge amorphous wad at the back of my mouth.

  CHAPTER 6

  When I got home, I found Charlotte Dupree ironing my mother’s Southern belle dress in the kitchen. Made from soft brushed turquoise-colored cotton with sassy white polka dots, the dress was an exact replica of a real gown from the antebellum period. It even came with a matching polka-dot parasol. Charlotte hated ironing in general. And ironing the Southern belle dress drove her to distraction.

  “She thinks she’s Scarlett O’Hara on a plantation or something,” she grumbled. “Blasted bodice is impossible to get flat. I don’t want to be the one to tell her, but this place sure ain’t no plantation and she ain’t no Scarlett.”

  My mother loved playing dress-up, and the blue polka-dot Southern belle dress was her most prized possession. She wore the costume at fund-raising trips aimed at financing a segregated school for the Ninth Ward. The segregated South took great interest in seeing the Ninth Ward stay segregated. So, dressed as Southern belles, my mother and some of the other Cheerleaders would make trips to towns all around Louisiana and Mississippi. Once there, they’d roam the main streets collecting donations in white wicker handbaskets. Whenever a man plunked some coins in a basket, they would stay in character and demurely curtsy, bat their eyelashes, and purr, “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

  My mother never took me along on her fund-raising trips. That was her time to be alone with the girls. Unfortunately, I did have my own matching Southern belle dress, which she would force me into for local parades and other neighborhood events. I loathed dressing up in general, and my Southern belle dress was particularly uncomfortable to wear. When I complained, my mother would respond with genuine astonishment.

  “Most girls like dressing up in beautiful gowns. I would’ve been thrilled if my mother had included me in something that was so much fun.”

  “Well, you and me aren’t the same,” I’d retort.

  “You’re right about that,” she said.

  “I hate it.”

  “This isn’t about what you like or hate,” she said. “Having a little belle is the ultimate accessory. It’s cute. And everyone thinks so.”

  “I don’t. So not everyone thinks so.”

  “Fine. Everyone but you.”

  We always had to wear our dresses to the Citizens’ Council events. The Citizens’ Council of Greater New Orleans was a civic group dedicated to opposing school integration in the city. Looking back, people tend to think that there were two sides of the line on the segregation issue in the Ninth Ward, but there weren’t, at least not where I lived. Not at the beginning, anyway. Just about everyone in the Ninth Ward believed in segregation, including the Negroes. It was one of those things that you just assumed everyone agreed on or you didn’t think much about. I was in the latter category. I never thought to think any other way.

  Every so often the Citizens’ Council had big meetings with lots of pageantry and featured guest speakers. A few days before Morgan’s arrival there was a big council function at the Municipal Auditorium. Nearly eight hundred people packed the hall. A brass band played on a riser beside the stage.

  After the singing of the national anthem and the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, the head of the council, Mr. Amos Bovell, called forward a group of mothers and daughters from William Frantz and McDonogh No. 19 elementary schools. My mother and I were part of the group that paraded down the aisle in our plantation dresses, carrying our parasols and placards that read DESEGREGATION IS A SIN and PRESERVE THE SOUTHERN WAY OF LIFE. I hated being on display with every fiber of my being. My mother basked in the attention like she was strutting down the red carpet at the Academy Awards.

  Once we reached the stage, one of the ladies presented Mr. Bovell with a check for $1,647.17, the proceeds of their most recent fund-raising trip, payable to the Ninth Ward Educational Association. Mr. Bovell raised the check high over his head as the crowd cheered, and we exited the stage to the tune of “Dixie” and took our seats toward the back.

  It was time for the guest speakers. The air in the hall heated up and got stale, causing me to try to fight off an escalating series of uncontrollable yawns. All I wanted to do was change out of my costume. The bodice made me itch like a crazed hound. I nudged my mother and begged her to let me go home.

  “It’s poor form to leave before the speakers,” she hissed.

  “You never really listen anyway, so why do we have to—?”

  “Hush!” she cut me off, giving my hand a small sharp swat.

  First to speak was a judge from Jackson, Mississippi, named Barton Floyd. A stout bald man with a thick layer of flabby skin hanging over his shirt collar, he waved his hands and pointed for emphasis with his stubby little index finger. Judge Floyd spoke at length about the “Black Monday” Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, that declared segregation of the races in public schools was unconstitutional.

  “That ill-conceived decision triggered a racial revolution,” he explained, “spearheaded by the N.A.A.C.P. and abetted by Communist subversives.”

  The crowd grumbled in distress. One man shouted, “We won’t let it happen!” Judge Floyd wiped his brow with a folded handkerchief and then held up a newspaper.

  “This is a copy of the Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper printed by Jewish publishers in New York City. It says, and I quote, ‘The Communist Party considers it as its duty to unite all workers, regardless of color, against its common enemy—Capitalism. Racial desegregation is an essential building block to achieving our goal of a Communist society.’ Unquote. Now, are we going to let the Daily Worker tell us how to live?”

  “No!” shouted several audience members.

  “Heaven forbid,” another chimed in.

  Judge Floyd quieted the crowd with his hands.

  “It’s important to remember that the Negro is not your enemy,” the judge continued. “The Communists. The Jews. And other Northern manipulators. They are the ones stirring up this trouble and financing the N.A.A.C.P. The Supreme Court of this great land cannot rewrite our precious Constitution and revoke our most precious freedoms. I applaud and support your efforts here in New Orleans. You must do whatever it takes to maintain the separation of the races. Hold the line, people. Hold the line. We will win this fight, because we must win this fight.”

  The band struck up “Dixie” again, the crowd vigorously applauded, and with that the meeting was adjourned. My mother stuck around to gossip outside the hall. With the show over, I was free to go home and liberate myself from the confines of my itchy dress.

  CHAPTER 7

  After Charlotte finished the laundry, we set off to buy groceries for that night’s dinner.

  First we stopped at a poultry store in the Negro section called Antoine’s Pick-a-Chick. There was a white butcher right around the corner from Rooms on Desire, but Charlotte refused to patronize that establishment. “Oh, I tried giving them my business,” she explained. “and they were more than happy to take my money. But somehow whenever I’d go in there, I’d always wind up with maggots in my meat or a chicken that had been lying around for days and turned sour.” There was no risk of getting spoiled meat at Antoine’s. The store was just a one-room shack with a counter, a cash box, and not much else. Antoine himself took up a good amount of space inside the room. He stood about si
x foot six and must have weighed close to three hundred pounds. He had chalky, coal-colored skin and wore a big droopy mustache that never failed to bend up into a smile when Charlotte walked in. Inside the shack, behind the counter, dozens of live chickens roamed freely. A makeshift coop lined the side wall of the back of the building. The back door of the shack always stood open, and the chickens walked out at will into the yard, where Antoine would scatter feed throughout the day. “I like to keep dem chickens fat and happy,” he explained.

  Antoine allowed his customers to come behind the counter and select their own chickens. When we arrived, he grandly gestured with a wave of his arm—“Right dis way, my ladies”—and bowed to Charlotte as we passed behind the counter. Charlotte took her time observing the chickens before making her choice. “You don’t want one that’s moving too fast or it’ll likely be too gamey,” she instructed. “And you don’t want one that’s moving too slow or it’ll likely be too fatty.” She pointed out a large chicken with white feathers that to her eye seemed to be traveling at a moderate speed.

  Antoine nodded. “A fine choice, as always, Miss Charlotte.” Then he scooped up the chicken, put it under his arm, and carried it behind a crude wooden wall in the backyard that hid where he kept the chopping block. We met him back in front of the counter, where he returned with the headless but unplucked chicken in a paper bag. “Antoine’s finest for Antoine’s finest,” he said, handing over the bag and taking Charlotte’s money. He gave her a wink that she pretended to ignore, and we left.

  Next, we stopped to buy crabs from Antoine’s son, Jermaine, who sold them by the side of the road just beyond the chicken shack. Jermaine couldn’t have been much older than me. He wore faded overalls and no shoes, but his hair was always neatly styled with a sharp part line dividing his tight curls. He barely said a word to us beyond “yes,” “no,” and “thank you kindly,” and he never looked me in the eye. He sat on a small wooden stool beside an old metal washtub filled with live crabs in water that he kept shaded by an old umbrella. He caught the crabs himself in the early morning using a long piece of string with an old chicken neck tied to the end. One of the few times I heard him speak more than single words, he boasted that he had pulled up six crabs on one dip, more than any other kid in the city. “And I can still get dem to come up when near all the meat has been picked off da neck.” Unlike me, he seemed to be proud of his labors, which I could never quite understand. You would never catch me bragging about how many floors I could clean or beds I could make in an hour.