By Jina Bacarr
Published by Awe-Struck E-Books
Copyright ©2004
ISBN: 1-58749-429-9
Electronic rights reserved by Awe-Struck E-Books, all other rights reserved by author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law.
The 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles
Two girls.
One white. One black, passing for white.
It was the summer that would change their lives forever.
- - -
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
--Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
- - -
"Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
This diary belongs to: Louise Pardue
This diary belongs to: Ms. Louise Pardue
July 2, 1960
Dear Diary,
I've got a secret and I'm bustin' to tell you. This is the truth. A journal. My journal. I don't know where to begin. Begin with the worst, I guess. It hurt me bad. But I have to start there, in the beginning.
The first week of July, one year since my Grandma Eldoris and I came to California, found me in the registrar's office at the local college checking on my application for the fall semester. At first, the secretary was real nice to me, telling me how pretty I was and I shouldn't have any problem catching a husband. The only reason most girls go to college, she said, was to get a "Mrs. Degree."
A petticoat degree, I call it.
I want to be a lawyer, I told her. I believe our country is beginning a whole new era, what with the Civil Rights Act being passed a few months ago to help Negroes register to vote. I want to embrace these times and be part of them, seeing how civil rights law is on the cutting edge of change in the South. That's where I'm from, I'm proud to say, Summer Bend, Alabama.
She looked at me over her plain, plastic frame glasses like I was crazy, advising me that her college offered proper classes for young ladies like English literature and Art History, then she went to get my application.
When she came back, she was as cold as an Eskimo Pie. She said there was a problem with my application, that it was too late to process it for the fall semester because my high school transcript hadn't arrived from Jefferson High. My stomach clenched with fear. I knew she was lying because I could see the envelope from my old high school sticking out of the file, the Alabama address dark and clear against the white paper.
What was wrong with my application? I asked her, trying to keep my voice steady. Check it again, please. Louise Pardue. Good grades, Honor Roll, though I don't have any extracurricular activities listed under my name. I didn't want to explain why, that back home in Alabama I wasn't allowed to take part in school plays or be in school clubs because I'm, well, I didn't want to tell her. Instead, I told her I had to work after school to support my grandmother and didn't have time for stuff like that.
She turned her back on me, dismissing me like I was a sugar fly buzzing around her face. I know why. I checked the little box on the college application that said "Negro."
I stuffed my pride in my back pocket and held up my chin. This wasn't the first time it happened to me. I was turned down last semester, too, when I tried a different college and they also "lost" my transcript. Oh, they didn't come right out and say they don't want me because I'm colored, but I know that's the reason. What else can it be? I've got the grades to get into college and the secretary was nice to me when she didn't know I was a Negro.
I asked her again what was wrong with my application and she got uppity like white folks do when they're in charge and they've got the power, like they expect you to lick their boots. She said her college was real particular about who they admitted and I just wouldn't fit in.
I felt like crying but I kept my emotions to myself, just as I have most of my life.
"Don't show folks what you're feeling, Louise, especially white folks," my Grandma Eldoris always says, "because then they's got you, child, like a mouse caught by its tail in a trap. You're still kickin', but you ain't going nowhere."
Well, I am going somewhere. And here's where my secret comes in.
On my way out of the registrar's office I saw a notice on the bulletin board. A notice for volunteers to work as Golden Girl hostesses at the Democratic National Convention coming to Los Angeles next week. Golden. As in white, Anglo Saxon blondes. Not a light-skinned Negress from the South like me. So many times I wish I was white 'cause white girls have this invisible aura around them, a kind of permission slip that allows them to go through the front door of department stores, sit downstairs, not way up in the balcony in the movie theaters, eat lunch at restaurant counters, and use restrooms virtually unnoticed.
So I started thinking. The secretary at the registrar's office thought I was white before she looked at my application. It happens to me a lot, seeing how I'm light-skinned and my hair is long and straight. I've learned not to say anything. I give them what I call "the smile" and get on with my business, like the time I took the bus to downtown Los Angeles by myself and sat down at the lunch counter at The Pantry. No one noticed me. No one.
So--
I took the application home and checked the little box that said "Caucasian," then sent it back to convention headquarters. I requested to work for Senator Kennedy, seeing how I think he's the best man for the job. In case you didn't know, Jack Kennedy stood up to the Mississippi Republican chairman during his re-election campaign to the Senate in '57 when he challenged the Senator about his views on integration and Kennedy said that he believed in integrated schools.
'Course, not much has happened in integrating the schools where I come from. Alabama is still one of five states without mixed public school classrooms, so when Grandma Eldoris and I came to California to be with Mama, I thought I had a chance to get into college.
I'm gonna keep trying. You see, I've got a plan. I'm scared, 'cause if I fail I could get arrested like civil rights activist Rosa Parks did for not giving up her seat on the bus back when I was in junior high. I remember it so well. It was right before Christmas in '55, and this seamstress, her arms filled with holiday packages, paid for her fare at the front of the bus, then she had to go around to the back door where Negroes got on. When the bus got crowded, they told her to give up her seat to a white person. She wouldn't. Couldn't, she told them. Nobody cared that she was a hardworking woman, her eyes red and tired behind her square glasses from doing so much close work. No, they told her that she was breaking race laws because she wouldn't give up her seat on the bus. So she went to jail.
I pray I have her courage.
Nervous, I waited for the mail today, knowing I couldn't back out now. Then it happened. I received a letter with the official stamp of the Democratic National Convention Committee telling me how pleased they are to welcome me "as a Golden Girl hostess for the upcoming Democratic National Convention to be held at the Los Angeles Sports Arena." And I should report to the Biltmore Hotel for orientation on July 9th. That's the day Senator Kennedy arrives in Los Angeles. (Do I dare go to the airport, Dear Diary, and join the crowds meeting his plane?)
The letter also said if I needed a place to stay close to the convention area, I should send them back my request for accommodations. Which I just mailed, thank you.
So, Dear Diary, here is my plan: If I can pass for white at the convention next week without anybody knowing, why can't I check the little box that says "Caucasian" the next time I apply to college? 'Course, the only thing worse than being passed over for college because I'm colored is telling my grandmother that I'm passing for white. Grandma Eldoris is gonna holler like a cat skinned of every one of its nine lives when she finds out what I've done. She's always saying that she never believed little brown girls could go to college.
Well, I'm brown on the inside but I can pass for white on the outside, and going to college is the most important thing in the world to me. My mama would be so proud. She didn't have the chance to go to school, seeing how the school calendar revolves around cotton-picking time back home and most colored folk quit school as soon as they can read and write. I want to do it for my mama. She was also light-skinned like me and tried to live her life in black and white America, but she discovered that it was impossible to align those two worlds. In the end, neither one came to her aid.
I shiver. The feeling I get when I think about her, the feeling that gives me strength, is happening again. The memory or hurt or mood or whatever it is that haunts me, also drives me forward. I can handle anything, including racism, prejudice as I know it, if I stay strong and remember what Mama taught me. They can't beat you unless you give up.
I am not giving up. I turned eighteen two weeks ago. I'm a woman now and I know what I want.
I want to be a Kennedy Girl.
* * *
P.S. I'm all nervous inside right now. Very nervous,
wondering what will happen at the convention next week. For now, though, I can't help but wonder what the other Kennedy Girls are like, where they come from, what their dreams are. Are they all scared like me?
AFTON
The Fourth of July, 1960
Huntington Beach, California
Sister Mary Celestine said it was a sin to hate my father, but sometimes I can't help myself.
Like today. It's the Fourth of July and I want to go to the beach. Hang ten or twenty or whatever they call it, but no, my father says I have to come home early for a family barbecue so I can meet his new partner's son. Just what I need. Another date with a boy who cares only about hot rods and football scores.
My father digs picking out boyfriends for me, especially when it also helps his business out. He also picked out what college I'm going to in the fall (I graduated high school less than a month ago) and he tries to pick out what books I read. I've got a trick for that. I put the plastic book jacket from Bartlett's Quotations on whatever novel I'm reading (I've already read Irving Wallace's The Chapman Report three times) and he doesn't know the difference. Yeah, if my father could get into my head and tell me what to think, he'd do that, too.
Not today. The beach is, as the song goes, where the boys are and my father isn't.
I zip barefoot over the hot sand, trying my best to catch up to the boys racing ahead of me. It's not happening. They don't want me anywhere near them. They treat me like a piece of taffy sticking to their sandals when I show up. C'mon, give? I ask them, wanting to know. I find out why real fast.
They're surfers.
I'm a chick.
"Girls don't surf," they snarl at me, "they watch."
I shoulda known that's why all the girls are lying on the sand in their cute two-piece bathing suits, pretending to read their dog-eared copies of Return to Peyton Place while they drool over the guys. By the looks of their dry bathing suits, I bet the closest these girls ever get to water is their own perspiration.
Not me. I wanna surf. I wanna fly over the waves and be free like a bird. Yeah, free.
That's a dream of mine. Sometimes I don't think I'll ever be my own person, what with my father always making decisions for me and watching me all the time. He's what we call an overseer. A super strict parent. Can you believe?
Good thing I got my driver's license last year so I can get around on my own. You wouldn't believe it, but they don't even have busses out here in Orange County, though we're only forty-five miles south of Los Angeles. My mom hated leaving L.A. and we'd only been there for a few months, but my dad is a building contractor and there's so much home development going on in this area (a new three bedroom, one and three-quarter bath tract house sells for about sixteen thousand dollars), so here we are.
And here I am.
Surf's up.
I race out into the ocean and jump into the first wave I see. I shiver all over as the spray of the cool Pacific hits me in the face. My mouth is open and I can taste the salt water, but I don't care. I dig it. It's boss.
"Hey, you, watch out!" I hear a guy yelling as he whips his board around and starts heading toward me.
"My name is Afton!" I yell back, then quickly submerge my head underwater when I see this humongous surfboard with this guy standing on top of it coming straight at me.
I open my eyes underwater but I can't see a thing. It's all green, like looking through a glass Coke bottle. My ears fill up with water fast, but I'm cool. I'm a good swimmer. I've been dunked in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans by more than one gord.
When I hit the surface, I see surfers everywhere. It's like the ocean is alive with a new kind of sea creature wearing colorful swimming trunks. Five, six, maybe seven guys on surfboards are either paddling out or zipping over the waves on their longboards, their lean, bronze bodies poised like bows on a ship. Outta sight.
I start treading water, my head bobbing above the ocean surface. I feel like I'm spying on them in their private guy world--a world where girls aren't allowed.
Why not? I ask. How come there are so many rules about what guys can do and what girls can't? I figure it's like we're all assigned seats in the bus on the road to life.
My question is, why can't we change seats and see the view from the other side?
I start swimming faster, raising one arm, then the other, kicking my feet hard. No more time for second-guessing these dudes. They're right behind me. It's obvious they'll run over me if I don't stay out of their way. I turn and start swimming in another direction, letting the coolness of the ocean glide over me like a pleasant dream. Ummm, that sounds good. And that's what I do for a few minutes. Dream.
Dream that I'm one of the regular kids on the beach and they ask me to sit on the Pier with them and share what they call strips and sauce (that's fried tortilla strips covered with hot sauce). Then they ask me to go to see the fireworks at the high school later. As if.
I glide over the crest of a wave, then another and drift farther out to sea. It's not gonna happen. Nothing's changed for me. Another July 4th in another strange town. It's really hard to make friends when you're always moving because of your father's work. I went to three different high schools last year. I'm lucky I graduated with grades good enough to get into the nearby state university. Yeah, I agree. It's shink, sho, huh? That's what we used to say at the last school I went to when we were cheezed off about something.
How did I end up in this little beach town away from all the action in Los Angeles? What do people do in Orange County besides grow lima beans and oranges? What am I going to do for the rest of the summer? When we lived in the Midwest, there were always state fairs with stock car races and dances during July and August. I'm not the type to sit around and watch summer re-runs of Wagon Train, though I dig Twilight Zone. Rod Serling is my favorite writer. I like to write stories and I thought about majoring in journalism in college, but my father says writing is not a real job.
So, here I am. It's too late for me to sign up for summer school and get a leg up on college courses (not that I want to vegetate in a slave cave over the next couple of months), and I read all the books in the little library on Main Street. Guess I'm stuck in rewind until school starts.
Make that unwind. I close my eyes and let the ocean waves rock me back and forth, relaxing me. Oh, yeah, and I also filled out this form I saw posted on the community board at the library, asking for volunteers to work at the Democratic National Convention in L.A. next week. I didn't tell my dad. Are you kidding? He's a Nixon supporter and doesn't believe there's a change coming in the political arena. He about went through the roof when Congress said the public schools should be mixed, and that colored people should be able to ride at the front of the bus, not the back.
The truth is, I don't think my dad has been within ten feet of a Negro, let alone ever talked to one, except for the boy who shines his shoes at the little stand next to the barbershop. My dad moves in this world of white shirts and ball-point clip-on pens, a new Dodge in the carport every three years, and pinochle on Thursday nights.
I don't feel the same way about the races mixing. I guess it's because I know what it's like to have kids make fun of you because you talk or dress differently than they do. I can't imagine what it must be like to have people not like you because of the color of your skin.
That's why I want to work at the convention. Everybody says (everybody being Sister Mary Celestine at my last school before this one) that Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts has a good chance of being nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention. He's a fighter for civil rights, the Sister said. I like that, seeing how I'd like to get some civil rights for myself.
It's not easy living in my house.
My mom and dad go at it all the time, what with my Mom always wanting to buy something for the house and my dad yelling we can't afford it. Just yesterday my mom was bugging my dad to get her an automatic dishwasher, seeing that he's in the building business, and he kept saying we just got an electric clothes dryer and that should be enough for her. Next, he says, she'll be wanting two TVs.
My dad doesn't think much of gadgets for the house, though he did get himself a fancy, new electric barbecue. That's what we're doing for the Fourth. Barbecuing. My parents are having my dad's new business partner over for grilled burgers and my mom's creamy potato salad.
We have it lucky, my father says, with all this new fancy stuff. It's not like the old days. He tells the same story every summer, about how when he was a kid his father would heat up a pit in the ground for ten, twelve hours, then let the meat
with onions rolled in old sheets (left over from Halloween, I bet) cook overnight.
One thing never changes. It takes him forever to get the coals just right. Anyway, I'm not in any hurry to get home. Have you ever sat around and listened to a bunch of adults giggling over Mai Tais and listening to Martin Denny tropical paradise albums in stereophonic sound? You know, that bongo drum, jungle-style music? Well, I have. And trust me, it isn't pretty. Just loud. Anyway, I keep thinking about that volunteer job at the convention, though I know my father wouldn't let me go. He wouldn't even hear about me going to college in L.A. But I can dream, can't I?
"Hey, stupid, watch out!" I hear someone yell.
He couldn't mean me, I'm thinkin', not reacting to his put-down. I may be a girl, the new kid, and not the coolest chick on the beach, but I am not stupid. I read.
I'll show them.
I paddle off in another direction, though my arms are aching and aching, like they're gonna fall off. I ignore it. I'm feeling really cool, alive with a new sense of myself, especially when I see one surfer bail off his board and the long yellow surfboard comes floating my way. A lightbulb goes off in my Little Orphan Annie head. Yeah, I'll show them what I can do. Don't get your hopes up. This isn't going to be a Cinemascope production like Spartacus. I'm not gonna all of a sudden stand up and surf like a cool wahine, showing everybody how to do it. What I am gonna do is bring this board in under my own power.
Girl power.
Something nobody wants to talk about, but I know someday girls will get the chance to be more than just dancing legs in an Old Gold cigarette commercial. That's what my Aunt Jeanette says. She's my father's sister, though you'd never guess they were related.
He voted for Eisenhower.
She volunteered for Stevenson.
He thought women working in defense plants during the war was stupid.
She drove an ambulance for the Red Cross in England and shook hands with Eleanor Roosevelt.
See what I mean?
Zippity do da. I swim over to the wandering surfboard, reach out, and try grabbing onto the smooth wood. Can't do it. I keep at it until I pull myself onto the board like I've seen the guys do it and sit astride the surfboard while I get my bearings. Geez, where is everybody? I didn't realize how far I swam out. I rev up my mental engine, you know, putting my brain mettle to the pedal like a compact taking a corner on two wheels, and get up on my knees. I feel the solidness of the surfboard underneath me, then I begin paddling overtime, lurching backward then forward as the board hits the crest of the wave, then another, and another until I swear my arms are gonna fall off. I'm going to show these schmoors what I'm made of.
I look back at them, as if they care.
When I reach the shore and slide off the surfboard, I stand up and watch the long, yellow submarine of a board float to a landing pad on the wet shore by itself. Within seconds I see the board surrounded by a bunch of wet, hairy-legged surfers checking it over for damage.
I know when to exit. Head held high, I pick my towel up off the sand and start walking home.
"Hey, you!" I hear someone yelling. "Wait up!"
Could the hey, you be me? I wonder, turning around and looking back at the guys grumbling and groaning about something. They're all looking my way. I feel cool. Yeah, it is me he's yelling at.
I shade my eyes from the hot sun with my hand. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"Yeah, uh..." one of the surfers says, stumbling around for what I think is my name.
"Afton," I say. "Afton Leigh."
"Yeah, Afton, well, me and the guys want to say we're sorry about what we said earlier. I mean, the girls around here never go in the water, never even try to surf."
Another surfer comes up to me, shakes the water from his shaggy hair. "What Corky is trying to say is that you were bitchin' out there."
"Thanks loads," I say, smiling at them, forgetting I'm the new kid. I'm feelin' fab.
Bitchin', he said. Need I say more?
* * *
I can never figure out how my mom gets through doorways in those big, full skirts she always wears when we have company. Especially when she keeps going in and out of the house to the patio in the backyard. Doin' her Loretta Young Twirl I call it, after that television star she loves to watch. My mom's really into fashion and used to be a model, but when she married my father, well, we move around so much, she had to give it up. I often wonder how she feels about that.
Anyway, you'd think she was entertaining movie stars by the shindig she puts on. Background music, including tropical birdcalls, is blasting from the stereo set and everybody is in their assigned place as per barbecue etiquette. The adults are sitting in the patio on those awful green tufted, canvas outdoor cushions everybody has, sipping their exotic drinks with the little plastic animals hanging on the side, while my little brother and a coupla kids I don't know are in the television room watching Rawhide. I cruise in for a second to get a quick glimpse of the guy who plays Rowdy Yates. Clint Eastwood. My dad says he'll never make it as an actor. I don't agree with him. I think he's cute.
Speaking of cuteness, I see a tall guy about my age sitting with my dad and another man. Got to be his partner's son. He's chowing down a double burger and my mom's gooey potato salad and not paying attention to the two older men engaged in a heated conversation.
Curious, I listen in.
"...believe me, Frank, every house should have a bomb shelter," my dad is saying, sipping his drink through one of those dumb, transparent red straws. I smile. He looks so funny doing that. "You can't trust these pinko commies."
"Speaking of that, Harry, I heard some Democratic committee is backing a move to build movie theaters underground to provide ready-made bomb shelters."
"Only the Democrats could think of a stupid idea like that to cut costs and put us out of business."
"Maybe, but if Senator Kennedy gets the Democratic nomination for President, Harry, this country will be bigger in the space program than the Soviets and nobody'll give a damn about bomb shelters."
I grab a pickle off the relish dish of my mom's Lazy Susan and sit down near them. My father doesn't look too pleased at his partner's comment, but he doesn't say anything. I bet this guy is in tight with the bank and my dad doesn't want to jeopardize his next building loan application. Instead he says to the kid eating the burger, "What are your feelings about Kennedy, Pete?"
Pete mumbles something with his mouth full, then his dad says, "Aw, these kids today don't care about anything but hot rods and Elvis getting out of the Army."
I put down my pickle and stand up. Hey, I dig El, but I also dig being part of what's happening in this country even if I can't vote yet, so I blurt out, "I think Senator Kennedy could do a lot for our country. Have you read his views on civil rights--"
"Did I hear your mother calling you, Afton?" my father butts in, putting his drink down on my mom's brand new TV trays and making a wet ring. She's gonna flip.
"No. Mom is loosening her Jell-O mold before she serves it," I say casually.
"Is this your daughter, Harry?" his partner asks, smirking.
"Don't listen to her, Frank," my dad says quickly, flicking his cigarette ashes on the TV tray. Yuk. "She's just repeating what those liberal nuns taught her. What does she know about politics? She's a girl."
I put the sour pickle in my mouth and suck on it. It can't be any more sour than how I'm feeling right now. My stomach turns over a few times, reminding me how I felt earlier out in the ocean, paddling around, surrounded by all that male testosterone. It's one thing to fight for equal turf with a bunch of guys my own age, but this is my dad talking. I love my father, but I want to think for myself.
I got interested in the upcoming Presidential election in Sister Mary Celestine's social studies class. Once you get past wondering if nuns have hair underneath their wimples (you know, their headpieces), you find out they do have brains. The Sister talked in class everyday about how our country is changing, how people should have the right to be who they are, no matter what their race, color or creed.
I can identify with that, seeing how in my own house my dad tells us what we can think, what we can eat, even what we can watch on TV. He believes he's helping my brother and me. He's not. If we don't question things, I tell him, how can we learn? He won't listen to me.
"You ready for a game of pinochle, Harry?" my dad's partner asks him.
My father is all too happy to change the subject. He pulls out a deck of cards, then calls out to my mom in the kitchen for another round of Mai Tais.
"Can't we talk more about the election, Dad?" I ask, not wanting to let the politics discussion drop like a bowling ball.
"Go help your mother, Afton," he says in that I'm-the-parent-you're-the-kid voice I know so well. I swear if I walk by him he'll pat me on the head. I let out a deep sigh. Won't he ever see me as a person and not his little girl? I'm grown-up. I'm eighteen.
Something simmering in the back of my brain makes me ask him, "Why don't you like Senator Kennedy, Dad?"
"Because he's too damned liberal, going to Mississippi like he did and speaking on civil rights," my father says quickly, shuffling the cards.
"That's because Kennedy is going after the blue collar and liberal vote, Harry," his partner says.
"That's true, Dad. Sister Mary Celestine says he's concentrating on getting new voters," I say, eager to stay in the conversation. I cringe as my father shoots me the look he used to give me when I was little before he sent me to my room.
"It's a good thing you're too young to vote, Afton," he says with relief. " 'Cause no kid of mine is ever gonna vote for a Democrat while they're living under my roof."
I take a sip of pink lemonade and make a face. It's sour, too. Or is it because the sour taste from my dad's comments lingers in my mouth?
I let it go. I can't let his dumb comment bother me, not when I'm feeling pepped up and proud of what I accomplished today by bringing in that surfboard under my own power. I'm not going to let him ruin it for me.
A new kind of courage overtakes me.
"Dad, I...I've been thinking about getting a job for the rest of the summer before college starts."
He smiles at me, then winks at his pinochle buddy. "She's a good girl, my Afton." He looks at me and asks, "You got a job at that new food place, whatchamacallit, McDougal's?"
"McDonald's," his partner's son answers. I shoot him a look. Who knew he could talk?
"No, Dad. I...I signed up for a volunteer job."
"The ole community spirit. Yes, sir, that's my girl."
I blurt out, "I volunteered to be a Golden Girl hostess at the Democratic National Convention."
"The Democratic what?" my father sputters, dropping his cards on the floor. You'd think he just threw up on the linoleum by the shocked look on his face.
"The Democratic National Convention comes to town next week, Dad. It's a cool job," I answer, "you get to be a guide for out of town conventioneers--"
"So that's what the letter was all about," my father says, smirking, satisfied with himself. Something in his voice hits a nerve in me. A kind of electric spark tingles down my spine. Something's up.
Calmly, I turn down the stereo then face my dad. I perceive something unpleasant in the air and I want to hear it without birdcalls in my ears. "What letter, Dad?"
"The one from the Democratic National Convention Committee," I hear my mother say. I spin around and see her standing there in her pouffy skirt, holding a tray of tropical drinks and Jell-O. She's frowning. "The letter was addressed to you, Afton, dear, but your father saw it first and opened it."
I confront my father.
"Where's my letter, Dad?" I ask, stuttering. I'm afraid my voice is gonna crack, but I don't back down. "Where is it?"
My father picks up the playing cards off the floor and shuffles them without even looking at me as he says, "Where the Democratic Party belongs, Afton."
"Oh? And where is that?"
"In the trashcan."
AFTON
The Fourth of July, 1960
The Patio Party
Half the new tract houses in the beach town where I live are a one-story stucco design with boring colors like gray or light blue or eggshell white. Ours is one of the few houses in this seaside suburbia with any color at all. Yellow. Pale, lemony yellow. It makes me think my father likes to be different, raise the ante in everything he does. I'm certain that can be a good quality in someone, but he's messing with my life now and I'm not going to play the cards he's dealing me.
Although I realize he thinks he's looking out for my interest, I've never been able to embrace his way of thinking. My father is a racist, pure and simple. He regards all people of another color as something lower than spiders and bugs, and the scary part is he thinks he's right. He's very opinionated, but he'll tell anybody who asks him what he thinks. He's always quoting President Eisenhower about school segregation, that white Southerners are not bad people but all they're concerned about is "that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big, overgrown Negroes."
And this from the Republican in the White House? No wonder we need a new President.
I am confident that my mother understands my feelings, my attitude toward people of other races, and is not offended if I don't think like my parents' generation. 'Course, I haveta admit I don't know any colored people. Even when we lived in Kentucky, I never met any Negroes, never saw anybody of color at school, downtown at the movies or the library, shopping at Lyle's Market, or eating soft ice cream at the Foster's Freeze. I don't know what I'd say if I did meet a Negro kid, afraid I might say something that would offend them.
I do remember watching television when I was a freshman in high school when they desegregated the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. I saw the colored girls going to class wearing cute little sweaters, full skirts, and saddle shoes. Ribbons in their hair. And I thought, hey, they're dressed like me. Like my friends. They were laughing and smiling until they saw the shadow of a soldier in his uniform with his helmet, his gun in that perpetual position poised between the earth and the sky, like he's ready for trouble, almost begging for it.
The colored girls didn't smile much for the cameras with him following them around. I wouldn't smile either. I realized then these girls by virtue of their race alone were automatically judged to be less talented, less capable, and less deserving of anything that a white girl was entitled to have.
That was when I decided I should overlook what my father says and listen to what other people were saying about segregation and make up my own mind. Going to the Democratic National Convention is one step in that direction.
Although I feel wrapped up in the silky yellow sunshine of late afternoon, I can't let the stuffy heat stop me from doing what I have to do. Even if it smells worse than my father's political thinking.
A stray, tawny cat makes a quick dash across the front lawn, nearly knocking over the two ugly steel-gray trashcans sitting outside on the curb. I can see him licking his whiskers, but I'm not going to let him make a meal out of my mail. I make a beeline to the bent-up old cans and start rummaging through the trash, praying to find my letter from the Democratic National Convention Committee.
I try to hold my breath. Even when well maintained, these steel-barrel cans can't contain the putrid smell that comes from decaying food that should have gone to feed the poor in India, as Sister Mary Celestine reminded us everyday so we'd eat the awful cafeteria food. What I'm smelling is not your ordinary, day-to-day trash, like Swanson TV dinner trays with those cruddy green peas nobody likes, or percolated coffee grinds, or cereal boxes with the boxtops missing. That's gross enough.
This is barbecue trash.
Blackened hot dogs, half-eaten corn on the cob smeared with red lipstick, smelly mayonnaise jars, and worst of all, bones. Rib-bones, steak bones, pork chop bones. You'd think a bunch of cannibals got loose from my dad's Martin Denny albums and had a feast at my house.
I feel like puking, but I don't. I know the rumblings in my stomach are coming from how I'm feelin' inside rather than the smell of trash. It makes me sick to think about what my father did. I feel like my life is a plastic pop-it necklace. They come in all colors and you can shorten them from waist-length to a small choker by snapping off the beads.
I feel like my father is snapping off bits of my life every time I try to do something and show him I can think on my own. That's why I had to stand up to him like I did. I'm not sorry about it, either.
"You had no right to open my letter, Dad," I said to him, trying to keep my voice down, knowing we have guests.
"I'm your father, Afton, and that gives me the right."
"That was personal mail, Dad, addressed to me."
"As long as you live under my roof, Afton Leigh, you'll do as I say. No daughter of mine is getting involved in politics. It's a dirty business, and besides that, it's a man's business. If they let women get involved in politics, we'll end up with a bigger recession than the one we've got," he said, then added, "Anyway, your mother needs you to help around the house this summer."
"That's what it's all about, isn't it, Dad?" I said hotly. "You don't want me out of your sight, just in case I might do something on my own. That's why you talked me into going to the state university in Long Beach. It's close to home, you said, a good school. You'll make lots of friends. It's close to the nest, you mean. Well, this bird's gonna fly."
"You're out of line, young lady," my father said, trying to light his already-lit cigarette. His hand was shaking and his face was turning red. I knew then I had overstepped my place. I can't lay out the situation in plain words, because of the fact I had never challenged my father before. In our house, we practically live in a police state so seamlessly imposed on us that it's invisible to anyone on the outside.
But tonight I had busted that seam wide open, exposed my father's archaic ideas to everyone in the room and I was glad I did. What he did to me was more than unfair. Opening up somebody else's mail is against the law and I had to say something. Sister Mary Celestine says we have to stand up for our rights like that Alabama minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, who led the boycott of the transportation facilities of Montgomery, Alabama to further the cause of civil rights (I memorized that bit of information for our final exam).
From what I remember, Dr. King went to school up North in Pennsylvania not only so he could be free and sit where he wanted in a restaurant or in a movie theater, but most important of all, so he could get an education, something he saw as a way up out of poverty.
I shake my head. The good Sister only has to answer to God for her sins. Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Saturday catechism classes are nothing to fret over. I have my father to contend with. Believe me, dealing with the Almighty is a whole lot easier than dealing with a racist like my father. I remember when he took a construction job in South Carolina for a short time and he said white folks down there wanted to fly the Confederate flag over the state capital and he was all for it.
Call him Mr. Bigot.
"Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle, anyone for J-e-l-l-O?" my mom said brightly, singing the popular commercial as she brought in her famous vanilla ice cream and strawberry Jell-O dessert. A smile started to turn up the edges of my mouth but I caught myself in time. Even though the situation was now bordering on a bad Milton Berle skit, I didn't want to laugh. My mom is a Jell-O nut and serves some form of gelatin concoction at every party.
I remember when she tried that awful Concord grape flavor. I had purple lips for two days. And the fourth Thursday in November wouldn't be a holiday without her cranberry-and-nuts Thanksgiving Jell-O salad. She digs the stuff and pooh-poohs the old rumor that gelatin is nothing more than processed collagen found in the connective parts of animal tissue. When I was in second grade she laughed when I told her the kids at school said Jell-O was made from, in their words, horses' feet.
At that moment, I wasn't thinking about horses' hooves; I was thinking about saving my butt. I didn't dare say a word to my mother about what I had said to my father, not even in a nice way. My voice might crack, revealing the intensity of how deeply I was hurt by what he had done to me.
"C'mon, everybody, this is a red Jell-O event, dig in!" My mother sounded so cheery I couldn't say anything. Neither could my father. He just grunted, eager to close the discussion.
"I'll have a little Jell-O, Mom," I said.
"I'll pass, Irene," my father said.
"You never turn down my Jell-O mold, Harry. Here, have some."
My mother shoved a big helping at him along with a spoon, then she proceeded to serve her other guests.
I ate my dessert quickly and was about to go up to my room and hang out with my new Teen magazine featuring Justine Corelli and Kenny Rossi (the cool dancers from Bandstand), when my mom leaned over and whispered to me, "Since today is a holiday, Afton, they didn't pick up the trash. Your letter from the Democratic National Convention Committee is in the trashcan outside."
"Are you sure?" I whispered back to her.
She nodded.
Recently, I have learned a great deal about my mother, not only that she's cool with things I never thought any mom would be cool with, but she knows how to handle my father.
In spite of this new image I had of my mother, which is more perplexing for me to understand why they're together, I had difficulty taking action. My father was finished with his dessert and he was staring straight at me. I'd have to wait until the right moment to go on my trashcan hunt.
"Afton, I want to talk to you--" he began.
"Harry," my mother sang so sweetly she sounded like one of those mechanical birds in the Tiki Room at Disneyland. "I was telling Ethel about the new dishwasher you're going to buy for the house."
"I never said anything about a dishwasher, Irene."
"Yes, you did, darling. For our anniversary."
"Our anniversary was six months ago."
"Oh? Well, that means we only have six months until our next anniversary."
My father didn't want to be cornered, so he said, "When Frank and Ethel get a dishwasher, so will we."
My mother and Ethel winked at each other. Something was up.
"They ordered a new dishwasher last week, Harry."
My father shook his head. "Too bad you didn't go to college, Irene. You would have made a brilliant politician."
My mother smiled. My father smiled back. I couldn't figure out what they were doing, possibly because I'm not a parent.
I put down my Jell-O dish when my father started talking numbers with Frank, knowing this was my moment, and excused myself, leaving the two of them discussing how much electricity a dishwasher would use compared to how much time it would save my mother. Then I was off to the trashcan.
Thank you, Sister Mary Celestine, for teaching me patience.
I don't know how many steak bones later, I'm still looking through the debris in the trashcan for a letter addressed to me from the Democratic National Convention Committee. Now, I know that in the scheme of things it really isn't going to matter whether or not, I, Afton Leigh, go to the Democratic National Convention, seeing how the United States has been gripped in the hold of the U-2 incident since May when spy Gary Powers was shot down over Russia. Or that some Cuban guy named Fidel Castro is getting into bed (my father's words, not mine) with that fat, bald-headed Russian dude, Khrushchev. And Eisenhower had to cancel his goodwill mission to Japan because of rioting in Tokyo against the U.S.-Japanese security policy.
What I do know is the Democrats need seven hundred sixty-one votes to make a majority of the delegates to choose a candidate. It's a magic number, they say, and maybe, just maybe, one of those delegates attending the convention that I serve coffee and give a Kennedy button, might be that one magic vote.
My enthusiasm won't save me, however, if I don't keep looking through the steel-drum trashcan, declare my outrage at the arrogance of my father's wrongdoing, and toss garbage over my shoulder until I find that letter.
And this is what really irks me: My father wouldn't tell me if they accepted me as a Golden Girl hostess. Yeah, he's inside the house, sulking like a little kid, which doesn't surprise me. Have you ever noticed that's what parents do when they don't get their way?
Then I get a fluttery feeling in my chest as another thought hits me. If the Democratic National Committee had turned me down, then my father wouldn't have gotten so mad and blown his cork, right?
A sudden squealing causes me to jump at least a foot before I realize it's the same stray cat come back to check out the leftovers. I must have stepped on its tail, but its stomach must be in worse shape because it doesn't run away. It keeps sniffing the garbage on the grass, poking its nose and whiskers into an empty hot dog plastic wrapper.
"If you find the letter before I do, kitty, I'll trade you for it," I mumble stupidly. I'm past being reasonable. I'm determined to find that letter. Peering into the bottom of the trashcan, I'm unable to spot anything more than a bunch of gritty, empty Jell-O packages, crumpled-up potato chip bags, and smelly, sweet pickle jars. Then I see it. An envelope with an official seal and a potato peeling hanging onto it. I let out a squeal rivaling any cat and before you can say Mr. Potatohead, I reach into the bottom of the trashcan and pull out the envelope.
"Democratic National Convention Committee Headquarters," I read out loud, the words bouncing off my tongue like a Slinky toy, then I eagerly look inside the envelope. It's empty.
I shake my head, disappointed.
I fold the envelope in two and continue looking in the trashcan, when I hear movement behind me. This time it isn't merely the antics of a hungry cat.
It's a hip cat.
"Are you busy, Afton?"
I turn around. It's Pete, the son of my father's partner. He's nice-looking, I guess. Not dreamy. His hair is too short and those black stovepipe pants he wears make him look skinnier than a flagpole. He looks embarrassed.
"You offering to help me?" I answer, trying to be nice, but I can't keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I'm not giving up my trash quest for him or anybody.
"Not exactly," he stammers. "I was wondering if you want to go to the fireworks show at Huntington Beach High with me tonight?" he asks in a shaky voice.
I don't blame this guy for hating having to do this. If I were in his position, I'd hate having to ask me out, too. However, I'm not digging going to the high school and sitting in the hard bleachers and watching fireworks after what happened at my house tonight. I want to stay home and write in my journal.
And while pitying him, I can turn him down without hesitation because I know my dad made him ask me. You develop a radar for this kind of thing when your father entertains business associates all the time who have kids your age. I don't know why parents always think their kids have to be friends if they're friends.
"I don't dig fireworks," I answer casually, bending over the trashcan, determined to get out of this arranged date. "They're too noisy."
Abandoning caution, trying to shake my disappointment at finding the empty envelope, I fish out a bunch of paper plates swimming in barbecue sauce. Sick.
What's this? I ponder, when I see a folded-up piece of paper sticking to the bottom of the plate. In spite of the smelliness of the situation, my heart is beating wildly as I pull the folded-up white paper off the paper plate and open it carefully.
It's my letter from the Democratic National Convention Committee.
"If you change your mind about going tonight, Afton, let me know," Pete says, relieved I don't want to go with him. He continues to stand there, waiting for I don't know what.
"You want something?" I ask him, smoothing out the wrinkled up piece of paper.
"I was wondering if I could have some more of your mom's Jell-O dessert," he says. I don't answer him. How can I? My hands are shaking as I open up the letter. It's stained with grease and bits of lettuce but I can read it.
" 'Dear Miss Leigh, We received your request to be a Golden Girl hostess and we have carefully reviewed your application...'" I read, then skim through the letter quickly. It's filled with the usual stuff, advising me that the Democratic Party is excited about holding their 1960 convention in Los Angeles at the Memorial Sports Arena during the week of July 11-15, and that it's important to "the ramparts of freedom that we guard" that the convention is a big success because the eyes of the world and our own country, the "people who look to us for leadership," are going to be watching every move through the media and the young ladies chosen to be Golden Girl hostesses are held to the highest standard. It seems forever until I get to the part that says, " '...and we are pleased to inform you that you have been chosen as a Golden Girl hostess.' "
I close my eyes. And dream. I'm in. I'm going to be a Golden Girl--
"You're not going, Afton."
I spin around fast, so fast I knock over the trashcan. I can't move. My mouth is too dry, my eyes too filled with tears, and my body too rigid to allow me to move. I stand there as garbage spills onto the grass, making an awful mess. I'm stunned. My father is standing behind me with a lit cigarette in one hand and a green plastic tumbler in the other, looking like your worst nightmare of a middle class suburban businessman, telling me I can't follow my dream.
I fortify myself with the argument that I've gone this far with this Golden Girl hostess thing and to give it up now would be like sacrificing my integrity once and for all.
Can't do, won't do.
"I'm not a kid anymore, Dad," I begin, my voice shaky. "I'm eighteen and I'm going to start college this fall. I don't understand why I can't go to the convention and serve my country. It's not like I'm going overseas to war. It's only for a week," I plead, knowing that arguing with him is going to make me lose the keys to the car for the rest of the summer but I've gotta try, seeing how being stuck in Orange County with or without the keys to the car is like being without wheels anyway.
"I said no, Afton, and I mean no. You're not volunteering for any Democratic Party free-for-all. You're a girl. You don't know what kind of shenanigans go on at these things," my father answers firmly, figuring he doesn't owe me any further explanation.
"You're wrong, Dad, the convention is not some frat party. It's an important historical event, like the signing of the Declaration of Independence," I say, figuring since this is the Fourth, maybe he'll listen to me. "You're always telling me how lucky I am to be young, to be part of these good times. They're also important times, Dad, and I don't want to have to only read about that in a history book someday. I want to live them."
I know my historical rhetoric had no effect on him as he starts going back to his backyard patio party, then he changes his mind and turns toward me. "It won't work, baby. It's almost fifty miles to L.A. and there's no direct freeway. How are you going to get to Los Angeles? We only have one car. Your mother can't drive you up there everyday."
Still holding the letter in my hand, I feel my body stiffen. If he was ever going to change his mind, he would have done it then. He doesn't say anything more and I'm tempted to blurt out it's his fault we moved to these out-of-the-way suburbs. Somehow I can't say it. I might hate my father at times, like now, but he is my father and I respect him.
"Afton could stay with the other Golden Girl hostesses at an apartment house on North Rossmore," I hear my mother say softly. I didn't hear her coming down the walkway, didn't hear her high heels clicking on the new cement, didn't smell her perfume mixing with the garbage. I was too busy in my own world, never taking the time to realize that my mother is caught in the middle of all this. I feel like a jerk.
"What apartment, Irene?" my father bellows, upset there's a solution to all this.
"If I remember correctly, Harry, the letter says the out-of-town girls can be accommodated at the North Rossmore apartments in Hancock Park near Hollywood owned by that famous actor in the Wizard of Oz," my mother says. Then she adds wistfully, "I think he played the Tin Man, or was it the Straw Man?"
"I don't care if he played the Wicked Witch," my father shoots back. "Afton is not going to that convention and shacking up with a bunch of munchkins."
Ignoring my father's comment, I glance down at the letter from the Democratic National Convention Committee. I see what my mother is talking about at the bottom of the page. It's true. One of the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party is footing the housing bill for out-of-town hostesses during the convention. I'm supposed to report to a Mrs. Greenfield at Kennedy Headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel. I can't believe it. This is so boss. I get to stay in a fancy apartment with the other girls and my father's telling me I can't go?
"This solves everything, Dad. Now Mom won't have to drive me to Los Angeles every day."
"Imagine all the people Afton will meet, Harry," my mom says, trying to help me. "Delegates from every state in the union will be there."
"That's right, Dad. Sister Mary Celestine says the problem with this country is that we all live racially isolated lives, that we don't really get to know other people, and our most meaningful personal relationships are with people who look like we do--"
The world stops at that moment, just like in a Twilight Zone episode. I can almost hear the eerie music. I shouldn't have quoted the good Sister, shouldn't have opened my big mouth. This was a strange conversation even before the catastrophe of me running off like that. It gets worse.
My father takes his cigarette and dumps it into the plastic tumbler, then he throws them both into the trashcan to purge himself of what I said. He takes advantage of the moment to spew forth a hatred so deep, a hatred I never knew was there.
"You are not going to that convention and hobnob with a bunch of nigger lovers, Afton, and that's final," he says, then without another word, he walks back to his friends and his stupid patio party.
I suck in a breath deep enough to blow up my lungs like party balloons, and blow it out. Imaginary bugs crawl up and down my skin as I hear his words over and over again in my head and I feel sick to my stomach. I had no idea how to answer him, so I didn't respond to his words.
"Your father is a hard-working man, Afton," I hear my mother say. I turn to face her. Her face crinkles as if she can still feel the pain of his horrible words coming at me. "Too hard-working sometimes. He loses his temper and says things that he doesn't mean."
I nod. I don't want to contradict my mother, see her hurting anymore than she already is, but I know my father meant every word he said, though I don't understand why he feels the way he does. What has the world done to him to make him feel like that?
I glance around at our front lawn, the trashcans, the mess on the grass. I get the feeling that every window in the neighborhood is open, every neighbor is listening, some of them agreeing with my father, others shocked at what he said.
Ashamed, I bend down and start loading the trash strewn about on our neatly clipped, green suburban lawn back into the trash cans. As my eyes sweep over the dirty plates and empty bags, the first twinkle of twilight casts shadows on everything and they form weird-looking shapes, changing an empty pickle jar into an ominous-looking creature. Is that what prejudice is? I ask myself. Seeing something that isn't there?
"I think it might be a good idea if you go to the fireworks show with Peter," my mom says, bending down, her pouffy skirt flaring up around her as she helps me pick up the mess.
"Geez, Mom, I don't want to go. We've already had enough fireworks around here for one night."
"Please, Afton, do as I ask you."
I look into her eyes and I'm surprised to see a light mistiness wetting her cheeks and wiggling down to her red lipstick. My mom is really upset. Why doesn't she stand up to my father?
Certain that my mom can't be persuaded to change her mind about me going to the fireworks with Peter, I nod. I'll go, I tell her, but I'm only doing it for her. Then I dump the rest of the mess into the trashcan.
"You must try to understand your father," my mom says finally.
"He never tries to understand me, Mom."
"He's a proud man who was raised by a proud father."
"What does that have to do with me working at the Democratic National Convention?" I want to know.
"Your father's people were Southerners, honey. From Virginia."
"Did they own slaves?"
"Yes. And when the Civil War was over, they had lost everything."
"That was almost a hundred years ago, Mom. This is 1960. Why does Dad dislike colored people so much? Sister Mary Celestine says the Negroes didn't start the war. How could they? Runaway slaves weren't even classified as people. They called them contraband."
"Some things die slowly, Afton. Prejudice is one of them. Your father has not yet realized a new day is coming."
As I walk with my mom back into the house, I hear my father putting on another Martin Denny album. The sound of birdcalls and xylophones fill the air, along with the clanking of plastic tumblers and the smell of cigarette smoke.
The decision was made.
What I'd felt in bones all along was confirmed. There was no way I was going to be a Golden Girl hostess.
AFTON
The Fourth of July, 1960
Night
Three hours later finds me sitting in the back of a '57 Chevy Bel-Air yellow and white convertible at the Warner Drive-In, grappling with the overly eager hands of a varsity football player I met at the concession stand over hot french fries and a Coke.
He thinks I'm a biology experiment but I'm not about to roll over like a frog and play dead. I'm alive and kicking. And pushing. His hands off my breasts. His lips off the back of my neck. His knee squeezing my legs apart. Hey, I like making out as much as any girl, but I am not a Susie Knickerbocker. That's what we called girls at my old school who let boys go all the way on their first date.
I've got a hunch there are going to be a lot more Susie Knickerbockers in the world with this new birth control pill everybody's talking about. They say it's ninety-nine percent effective for the Miss Perfects of the world who never miss a day. It's a round, pink plastic pill box with twenty-eight pills tucked inside. The box is shaped like a roulette wheel, except you can't lose. You take one little pill everyday and you can't get pregnant. Sounds cool, but I haven't been able to convince my mother I want to spin the wheel. Not yet.
In any event, this football player has tackling on his mind. Putting on my sweetest smile, I say, "C'mon, stay cool. Let's watch the movie."
He gives out a low whistle. "Are you kidding? This is finger-poppin' time."
I shake my head, roll my eyes. He's referring to the hot new 45 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters.
I say, "I'm not popping anything tonight."
"Then what are you here for, baby?"
I shrug. "I don't know. Honestly."
He smiles at me. "I get it. You're playing hard to get. Okay, I can dig it."
He lunges at me, all two hundred pounds of him, calling out a bunch of numbers. Football plays. I know now what a pigskin must feel like as I duck, wishing I were home, curled up in bed with my journal so I could write down everything that happened today. Record for posterity how my father is destroying my life by not letting me become a Golden Girl hostess at the Democratic National Convention. I always thought my father and I were close when I was growing up, fixing my dolls' heads when they came off and riding bikes together. I'll never forget the time he entertained my friends at my tenth birthday party with his new reel-to-reel tape recorder. He was a scream.
Now I feel so distant from him. He doesn't care about anything in my life. My friends, my teachers, the music I like, what I want to major in at college. The only time he's in my life now is when he's interfering with my life.
A heavy breathing, like a panting dog, seems to rise from the corner of the convertible, then escalate into a roar that frightens me. This guy is turned on. Big-time. I'm not attracted to him, though most girls would be. Tall with broad, muscular shoulders, he's everything you'd expect in a varsity lineman but with the instinct of a shark grabbing at bait on a hook.
Me.
I sink down into the seat. What a night this is turning out to be. I shoulda known the evening was going the way of a Dobie Gillis rerun when Pete cruised by the high school without stopping. Seems that fireworks of another kind were on his mind. A five-foot-four blonde firecracker with dimples.
It didn't take a high SAT score on my part to figure out that Pete lied to his parents about where he was going so he could get the keys to his dad's Lincoln Continental and stretch out in the back seat with Miss Firecracker.
That didn't leave much room for me, so I headed over to the concession stand with Pete's friend, who just happened to be parked next to us at the drive-in. He introduced me to this football player who has more of a line than any lineman I've met.
I keep pushing him away, not wanting to go there with a guy I don't know except that he's a friend of a friend of my father's partner's son Pete. That's not much of an introduction in my book.
"Hey, what gives?" His brown eyes flare. It finally registered in his brain that I'm not an easy mark.
"I don't give. That's what."
"Listen, Afton," he mumbles, trying to get under my sweater with his greasy french fry fingers and into my psyche by calling me by my name instead of baby. "You're hot. I mean, you're the best-looking chick I've been out with all summer."
I smile, scooting to the other side of the convertible, thinking about reminding him the summer's barely started. I look up at the drive-in screen where Betty Hutton is making goo goo eyes at Charlton Heston. I remember seeing this circus movie when I was a little kid. This is a bummer. Not only am I stuck with a date that isn't a date, but an old movie as well. I guess the people who run the drive-in figure the kids who come to the purple passion pit never look at the screen or turn on the speakers, which I discover don't work when I try to turn up the volume to tune this guy out.
"Yeah, I'm hot," I answer him, rolling down the window.
"C'mon, Allison," he says, smooching my face and blowing in my ear. "Gimme a kiss."
"My name is Afton. You had it right the first time."
"Yeah, sure, baby. C'mon, let's make out."
"You make out," I answer, crossing my arms over my chest. "I want to watch the movie."
"Why do you want to do that?" he says, grabbing me and slobbering all over my face. "Nobody'll bother us."
"Wait a minute, whatever-your-name-is, you're rushing things too fast," I say, pushing him away with more force this time. "I don't even know you."
"What's to know? You're a chick and you're at a drive-in," he says, smirking, "You hang with me, baby, and we'll have a blast and a half."
I open my mouth to answer him. I can't. I doubt if he would listen to me anyway. That's not what's bothering me. In the deep, dark night air, I put my head in my hands. The football player is counting out loud again, wiping his sweaty face on his Pendleton shirt. Is that what it's all about? I ask. That because I let myself be talked into coming to a drive-in, it automatically gives him the right to assume I'm easy and he can do what he wants with me?
I keep staring at him as the creepy red and green lights from the nearby concession stand flicker over his face, making him look like a swamp creature. Who does he think I am? A female prize to be carried off to his lair?
No way, JosÈ. I'm splitting.
"Excuse me, but I just remembered I left the water running in the girls' bathroom," I say with a twinkle in my eye and a grin on my lips.
"Yeah, sure," he says, giving me a pat on the leg. "Don't be too long, okay?"
I nod, wondering where this guy gets his brains from. Then I open the door. He casts a sexy look my way and I get out of the car without another word.
I'm going home.
* * *
Less than an hour later, I'm home, my feet hurting and I'm nursing a slightly sprained ankle from cutting across the vacant lot behind the drive-in.
I shuffle toward the kitchen back door, where, late as it is, I hear my parents talking loudly. Arguing.
"For the last time, Irene, no daughter of mine is going to work for a bunch of nigger-loving liberals," I hear my father say when I stop at the back door. I cringe when I hear that word. A heated flush creeps all over me, but I feel the cool draft coming at me through the open door. I don't close it.
"I wish you wouldn't push your biased views on the children, Harry. They live in a different world than the one you and I grew up in."
"What are you jabbering about, Irene?"
"Negroes only want their civil rights, to do what other people do without being pushed to the back of the bus every time. You have to admit, they're going about it the right way with their peaceful protests."
"It's not going to be a different world, if people like me have anything to do with it. It's these damned liberals and their civil rights nonsense that's bringing this country down. If they get what they want now, who knows, someday we'll have a nigger President. Then what will you say?"
I could hear my mother breathe out deeply, followed by a deep sigh. I know what she's feeling.
"The children and I have put up with a lot from you these past few years, Harry. Especially me," my mother says as I carefully close the backdoor so they don't hear me. I see them in the kitchen, my mom in her quilted robe and slippers and my father smoking a cigarette and wearing striped pajamas. I hang there a few seconds, knowing kids aren't supposed to sneak around and listen to what their parents are saying when they're not around. You know, like parents may actually have a sexual moment or two and if you catch them doing something weird, well, they won't look at you for a long time after that.
Sex isn't on my parents' agenda tonight. It's my future they're discussing and I have a right to know what's going on.
I position myself in the dark hallway, glad that my dad didn't fix the hall light, and listen to what they're saying.
"What are you trying to say, Irene?" my dad asks, putting out his half-smoked cigarette. This is serious. He never does that.
"I am not going to stand by anymore and let you talk about colored people in those awful racist terms. The world is changing, Harry, and if you don't change with it, you're going to be left behind."
My father's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe I'm hearing this from my wife. Where did you these ideas, Irene?"
"I read the newspapers, Harry, and I watch television. Whoever wins this next election will lead the country into the last part of the twentieth century. He's got to have the backing of everyone, not just the white vote, but the Negro vote as well."
"Niggers don't deserve the right to vote."
Again, my mother sighs. Again, the deep breaths.
"I wish I didn't have to say this to you, Harry," my mother says, "but I was ashamed of you tonight."
"Ashamed? Why?"
"Not only because you embarrassed Afton in front of your guests, that was bad enough, but because you made a fool out of yourself and me."
"Because I have the guts to say what most people won't?"
"No."
"What then?"
"Because you have the brains to know better and you don't use them."
I can see my father twitching with fury, breathing shallow breaths. He's struggling with some inner emotions I don't understand.
It is at this moment I realize my father may not be the monster I believe him to be, but a by-product of the Eisenhower administration, and only God knows what other things in his life, that are completely foreign to me. Glancing at him, I feel sorry for him. His hair is tangled, his glasses sitting lopsided on his nose. He looks lost.
"What do you want from me, Irene?"
"I want you to start acting like a father and do what's best for our daughter."
"What do you mean?"
"Teach her not to be afraid of the world. Don't make her hate, Harry. Trust her to make her own wise decisions."
"What are you asking me to do, Irene?"
"Let her work as a Golden Girl hostess at the Democratic National Convention."
"Have you totally lost your mind? I meant what I said--"
"Do you remember when you left home for the first time?"
"Of course I do. I was nineteen when I went overseas to fight the damned Nazis."
"Well, we're at peace now, Harry, but you're at war with your daughter." My mom serves my dad a cup of coffee. Then she puts her arms around his shoulders and hugs him. I feel weird watching them doing stuff like that, but I feel warm inside, too. "Why can't you give in, for your daughter's sake?"
"Give in? I can't change who I am, Irene, the way I was raised, what my family fought and died for and lost. You might be right about a change coming in this country, but people like me will never change."
"Change a little, Harry, for Afton. Please."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you're going to lose her. For good."
My father shakes his head. "But letting her work for the Democrats, it's--it's--"
"It's a chance for her to be a part of our country's history, something she'll never forget. Besides, I talked to Jeanette today and she's flying in for the convention. She can check on Afton."
I raise my eyebrows. So my Aunt Jeanette's gonna be there. Cool. She's different from other adults. She thinks Senator Kennedy is cute and she likes rock'n roll.
My dad is quiet for a long time as he stirs his coffee, thinking. I don't dare breathe, but I have the feeling my mom knows I'm standing here because she looks over at me in the dark and smiles as if to say, Don't say anything.
Finally, my dad turns to my mom, smiles at her and says, "You got any cream, Irene? I don't like my coffee black."
"Then she can go?"
"It's only for a few days. I only pray those liberals and my sister don't mess up her head too much," my dad says, pouring a lot of cream into his coffee. I can barely keep from yelling out loud. Then I hear my dad say in a confident voice, "For the record, I don't think Kennedy has a chance in hell of getting the Democratic Presidential nomination."
I smile big when I hear my mom say, "Don't be too sure, Harry. I think both Senator Kennedy and Afton will surprise you."
I must be dreaming, hearing my mom saying that, but I don't want to wake up. I feel like I'm making a perilous climb and I can't look down: I'm going to the Democratic National Convention and that's all that counts. I refuse to dwell on the fact that eventually I will have to come to grips with my father, that the riff between us isn't healed yet.
LOUISE
July 9, 1960
Saturday
Grandma Eldoris and I never see eye to eye. For instance, take how I wear my hair. Long and flipped up at the ends is in style, I tell her. She says all colored girls have nappy hair (which I don't, because somewhere in our family we have Cherokee blood) and I should stick with braids. I don't think so.
Or how long to boil the New Year's black-eyed peas. I say until they're soft and mushy. She likes them firm. Year after year it's the same old argument, as normal to me as the sound of her snoring at night. And just as loud.
So, it was only reasonable I knew we weren't going to agree on something as radical as my becoming a Kennedy Girl.
"Kennedy Girl?" my grandma bolts out in her rich, molasses-thick voice. Sweet but it sticks to you, like she wants it to do. "What in tarnation is that, Louise?"
"The official title for the volunteers at the Democratic National Convention is Golden Girl hostess, but the young ladies working for the Senator from Massachusetts are called Kennedy Girls."
"Humph, I don't care how you fix your hair, child, you can never be a real Kennedy Girl. You're colored, even if you do have grey eyes," my grandma says to me this morning before I leave home, before I get ready to hop onto the bus going downtown.
I'm going to sit right behind the driver, thank you, not in the fifth row like we had to do back home in Alabama. I'll be turning my head right then left, looking at everything on the winding trip from Glendale through the streets of Los Angeles to the Biltmore Hotel, knowing I'm as good as everybody else on this bus.
"We've gone over this before, Grandma Eldoris," I remind her. "No matter what you say, I'm going to follow my dream and be a Kennedy Girl."
"You don't know that for sure, child. What if they change their minds?"
"They won't. It says so right here in black and white, Grandma Eldy," I say, using my nickname for her. I wave my letter from the Democratic National Convention Committee in front of her wrinkly, coal-shiny face. "'Louise Pardue is a Golden Girl hostess.' "
Grandma Eldy waves the letter away. "It don't mean nothing, Louise. You're not like the others. Do what your ole grandma tells you and put down your bag and stop your foolishness."
"No, Grandma Eldy, I can't. Don't try to stop me or scare me with your stories about burnings and beatings back home when you were a girl. How they buried colored folks in unmarked mass graves, how they broke down doors yelling, 'You got a gun, nigger?' then burst inside and set fire to more than a thousand homes, burning them to ash."
"You shut your mouth, girl!"
"It's all true, Grandma Eldy, you said so. How they tried to steal the land after they forced the Negroes from their homes, how colored folks were hunted down by whites shooting at them from their cars. It's time we stood up to them, showed them that we have rights. That's why I want to be a Kennedy Girl," I say, holding tightly onto my tiny suitcase.
It's my Mama's suitcase, the tan one with the pretty stickers pasted all over it. Detroit. Philadelphia. New York. Places she'd run to after she left Alabama, places where she'd used her pretty face to get work as a model. Soap ads, record album covers, magazines. She did them all.
My Mama also worked at the Cotton Club in New York as a cigarette girl, then in the chorus. Although the colored performers were prohibited from mingling with the all-white audiences, Mama used to tell me how everybody thought she was so pretty they'd ask her out anyway. They didn't care she wasn't white-white.
I run my fingers over the peeling corners of a sticker on the suitcase, careful not to tear it. That would be like tearing at her memory and my grandmother has already done enough of that.
"I've gotta catch the bus, Grandma Eldoris." I check my ticket. I have to transfer a coupla times before I get to downtown Los Angeles, but I'll get there.
"Don't you never listen to me, child?" Grandma Eldy insists, waving a crooked finger at me. "I said you're not going."
"Mama wanted me to go out into the world," I argue back. "I can't let her down."
"You're letting me down, Louise, running off and leaving me all alone in this place. It's not like back home where folks know a body and help them. Here everybody stays behind their door like they's afraid someone's gonna git them."
Grandma Eldoris rants on and on about how she doesn't know anyone in the neighborhood, though we both know she needs no one to take care of her. She's stronger than a team of mules and just as stubborn, too. She's been my family since my Mama left me with her when I was a little girl. I love her. But I'm eighteen now, and I've gotta make my own way.
What to do about Grandma Eldoris?
"I'll only be gone for a few days, Grandma Eldy," I say, grabbing my purse. "The convention will be over before the end of the week."
"Maybe, but you won't never be the same, Louise. Once you taste that white world, you'll be different. Like your mama was. She told me they had a saying up North that the only free people in this country were a good-looking brown-skinned woman and a white man. Well, your mama was a beautiful brown-skinned woman. She was exotic looking and so very pretty it opened doors. But not wide enough. She come back home different," she said, then she added more to herself than to me, "but not different enough, and in the end that's what killed her."
I shake my head, turn away. I can't listen to her. Won't. I know what killed my Mama. Grandma Eldy says it was because she was a beautiful Negro woman who was used by the system and then thrown away, that she couldn't stand up under the pressures and she turned to drugs, then alcohol.
That's not gonna happen to me. I'll be smarter. Mama said I was smart. She wanted me to pass. She said I could get away with it, but I'll never have the chance if I stay here. I've gotta be out there where people look at you and make instant decisions based on one thing. What you look like.
And I look white.
"I'm going to the convention, Grandma Eldy," I said. "Please try to understand."
"You're taking the easy way out, Louise."
"You're wrong, Grandma Eldy. It's harder for me to stay here and do nothing. Oh, I know what people say about us. I've seen the smirks, heard the whispered questions passed from house to house behind closed doors when you and I first came to live with Mama. How Mama had to tell everybody you were her servant because the people here don't like Negroes living in their neighborhood, that they could make us move because of some outdated covenants about colored folks living here. Well, I survived that and I'll survive this, too."
For the first time all morning a breeze drifts in through the open window, a gentle flow that brings to us the faint but lingering scent of orange blossom. Grandma Eldy looks at me and I know what she's thinking. It was my Mama's favorite scent. Still, that doesn't make it any easier for me when I hear my grandmother's next words.
"Your mama's dead, child. Ain't nothing gonna bring her back."
Her words sting my cheek like hot tears, but I'm not going to spill any more. I'm through with crying.
I say, "Nothing is going to change for us colored folk unless we stand up and make them see us."
"See us? Who you fooling, child? They see you as one of them, not what you really are--"
"And what am I, Grandma Eldy?" I ask her hotly. "There's no box on any form that says what I am, that my folks are Negro and white and Indian, that I come not only from dark folks standing in a field holding string beans in their leathery hands, but that my other people were white immigrants and brown-skinned warriors. When am I going to start carving out my own identity? When?"
"If you do this thing, child, your own people will call you a traitor, an instrument of the enemy. It's a question of race--"
"No, Grandma Eldy, race isn't the subject, people are. I've made my choice. I'm going to pass for white and you can't stop me."
I turn away, sorry I said that. But then again, maybe I'm not sorry. Yet I'm not brave enough to take the cold stare I know is coming at me. I don't want to lose my footing, I want to be strong and keep my purpose. Oh, I don't mean to be disrespecting my grandma, but this moment between us had to come sometime.
Grandma Eldy sits quiet for a moment, rocking back and forth in her old chair, her backless slippers slapping against the bare wooden floor. When she finally speaks, her voice is calm, yet I can feel the intensity of her emotions reach out and grab me so hard my chest hurts and I can't breathe.
"You're my granddaughter, Louise Pardue, and I don't want to see you get your heart broke like your mama did. Why, you don't even know who your father was, girl. Negro or white, your mama wouldn't say and I didn't ask."
I nearly flew across the room, dropping my suitcase at the same time.
"And what about you, Grandma Eldy?" I accuse her angrily. "Didn't you do the same thing? Didn't you take up with a white man when you were my age?"
I regret the words as soon as I say them. My grandmother bolts up out of her chair so quickly the old rocker takes on a life of its own, springing back and forth. Back and forth.
"Don't you never speak about your grandfather in that manner!" she yells at me. "Yancy Denmore was the prettiest white man I ever saw. He played the piano with hands that flew across the keys like tapping feet." She hesitates, then: "And he was the finest man I ever knew."
"You mean the finest white man, don't you, Grandma?"
Silence. No more words are said, tossed around like the holiday memories you dig outta your mind when you're sad to make you feel glad.
I'm so shook I'm feelin' plain miserable.
Finally my grandmother speaks. "Well, I see there's no stopping you, Louise," she says, easing her large, round body back down into the familiar comfort of her rocking chair.
I can see she's in pain, but it's a pain I don't understand. I do know she ran away from her folks to be with her white piano player, but Alabama law prohibits a Negro or any descendant of a Negro from marrying a white person. So he took her to Summer Bend, where colored folks lived across the river from whites and nobody bothered them. And then my Mama was born. Grandpa Yancy died of the fever sometime after that and my grandmother never married.
She says, "You got so much bottled up in you, child, like a powerful storm that can't be stopped. I pray you don't destroy yourself."
"I can't stop what's gonna be, Grandma Eldy," I blurt out, making fists with my hands, then holding them tightly together, as if in prayer. "Just like you couldn't stop Mama and your mama couldn't stop you. There's a whole white world out there where you can be anything you want if you can pass. And I wanna be part of it 'cause it's the only way I can have my dream and go to college and be somebody."
"Maybe, Louise. But white folks think different from you and me."
"What do you mean, Grandma Eldy?"
"It's simple, child. When they needs a colored to do their work, they invite you into their world. But when they finished with you, they push you out the back door. And if you're walking in the street and a white person is coming your way, then you git off that street. No questions asked. They know you're colored and these things are expected of you. But if they find out you're passing, girl, they'll turn on you. You'll see."
"Do you remember what you once told me, Grandma Eldy? About crossing the river?" I ask her, my eyes begging her to remember the story she used to tell me when I was a little girl about the river that separated the white folks from their former slaves.
"I don't recollect anything like that, child."
"Don't you look at me like a fly nesting on a honey cake. I know you do. You said when the time comes to cross your river, you don't ask questions. You cross. Well, my time has come, Grandma Eldy, and I gotta cross."
Silence. Rocking. Rocking. My grandma's round body sways in a timeless rhythm that shakes me down to my bones. I clench my fists, shake my head in frustration. Oh, she's so stubborn sometimes I can't stand her. But I have to smile. If she wasn't so pigheaded, we wouldn't have come out to California to be with Mama after they tore our house down in Alabama, making way for new development for the white folks. And I wouldn't have been here when my Mama got sick. Wouldn't have been here to hold her hand during her last moments. I'll always have that.
Grandma Eldoris says, "Things have always been tough for us, child. I grew up using back doors and restrooms marked 'colored.' That was the easy part. My folks were religious people and they thought the blues was the devil's music. When I met your grandpa with his blue eyes and white skin, they said I had the devil running through me like heat. Heat put there by a white devil one hot night on a river crossing in exchange for my soul."
"You loved him, Grandma Eldy, didn't you?" I ask slowly.
She nods. "Until the end. Like I loved your mama."
I lean forward over her, squinting at her wonderful, old face through the bright sunshine. I can't bear to leave her like this, so I say, "Will you be here when I come back, Grandma Eldy?"
She looks at me, kinda uppity-like; then she says, "I was here for your mama, child, wasn't I?"
A flood of emotion hits me, then kicks me in the stomach. I wipe my cheeks free of old tears and rush into her arms and snuggle into her warmth, thinkin' I must be crazy to make her mad at me, thinkin' I musta lost my mind, wanting to leave everything I know. Grandma Eldy always says you can only trust family and she's the only family I've got. She is right about one thing. There's something bottled up inside me, bottled up so tight I feel like I'm gonna explode if I don't go and see for myself.
"I'm sorry, Grandma Eldy. I didn't mean to hurt you. I love you."
"I know you do, child."
I don't look back when I walk out the front door. I don't have to. I knew she's sitting in her chair, watching me through the window, rocking back and forth, her backless slippers flapping up and down on the wooden floor.
But something's changed between us. I know now Grandma Eldy is afraid of losing me like she lost my Mama. What if she's right? I wonder. What if they find out I'm passing for white? What if I like that white world and I don't want to come back? Do I have the courage to face that?
That's why I get off the bus at the International Airport, an itch making its way up my spine so slow-like it's almost painful. Everybody on the bus is talking about how Senator Kennedy is flying in to Los Angeles today on a commercial airliner. I have to see him. See if the dream is real. 'Cause if it is and he is the man I'm thinkin' he is, then he can change things for colored people like me, like my Grandma Eldy.
And I can have my dream.
AFTON
July 9, 1960
Los Angeles International Airport
Cars cruise the arriving and departing areas of the International Airport, going round and round in circles like ancient Roman chariots speeding around the Colosseum. The airport is big and round with an upper and lower deck, like the famous structure in Italy.
My father parks our Dodge in front of the American Airlines terminal, switching off his engine and putting on his hand brake. He's resigned to stopping here, making my mother happy, though I'm still not sure what happened between them the other night. Whatever it was, it worked. My mom talked him into driving us to Los Angeles and stopping at the airport on the way.
I think my dad is curious about what all the fuss over Kennedy is about, so he didn't put up much of a protest about driving us. I've never been to International Airport. When we came to California, we drove across country in my dad's green Dodge with five pistons instead of six and pulling a trailer.
My father looks just as unhappy now. Creaking his neck out the window, he says, "Let's go, Irene. I don't see anything interesting going on here."
"You will, Harry," my mother says confidently, looking into her mirror and checking her lipstick. She looks cool and confident in her black sheath dress. Me, I'm sweaty and scared. And my feet hurt. I'm wearing new pumps. Summer white.
"Look, Mom, there's a bunch of people over there," I point out, seeing what must be at least three thousand people standing in the hot sun out on the tarmac. I see an army of placards moving and swaying like waves in a human ocean. An American Airlines jet is on the runway. "Do you think they're waiting for Senator Kennedy to arrive?"
"Bunch of crazies," my father mumbles, pulling up his shirt collar. I think he's hoping no one will see him.
"No crazier than we are, dear," my mother says, smiling and putting on her wrist-length white gloves. My father grunts, but he doesn't make any more comments.
"What time is it?" I ask, getting out of the car, eager to join the throng of Kennedy supporters.
"Nearly one o'clock," my mom says, looking around, then she asks a colored porter if the Senator's plane has arrived and he tells her that American Airlines Flight #1 arrived at 12:30 p.m. and the rally will be held on the south side of the airport. He tells us we have to move our car and park in a public lot.
"Why don't they make up their minds?" my father grumbles. "All this commotion about Kennedy."
A reporter hears us talking about Kennedy and starts walking over to our car, his professional hat on, his notepad in hand, his mind already making notes. I have to smile as I watch my father put on his sunglasses, then pull up his collar and sink down lower into his seat. I know what's rattling him. He's afraid he'll end up as a photo opportunity and an on-the-spot interview about Senator Kennedy and it'll get splashed across the front page of the Herald Examiner.
He'd never be able to explain that to his business associates, fuddy-duddy Nixon supporters all the way, who tell everybody Nixon is going to get the Republican nomination for President because he's the man with the most experience. He doesn't like it when the Democrats call Nixon "revolving Richard" because he's changed direction so many times he doesn't know where he's going. Though if my father did get interviewed by the reporter, I know what he'd say, "Every time the Democrats get in, we have war." Not with Kennedy, I'm sure.
My father is only too happy to start up his engine as he tells my mother he'll be back in an hour to pick us up, then he takes off, though I swear he forgot to take off his hand brake as our mean green machine bucks several feet on the asphalt before he jets outta there like Ben Hur in search of a chariot race.
My mother and I leave the cool, afternoon shade of the terminal and seek a sunnier place. We join the three thousand or so supporters standing out on the tarmac, waiting for the Senator to arrive, the noise of the bands filling our ears. I'm suddenly caught up in the frenzy of the crowd when I hear everybody, and I mean everybody yelling, "There he is!" "Oh, he's so handsome!"
"Let's go!"
I first see Senator Kennedy during one of those theatrical, goosebump-like moments in the newsreels, a splendid view of him in his big, black open convertible. He looks exactly like what all the newspapers are saying, like a young Lochinvar from Boston. Sporting a tan from a week in Cape Cod, he's dressed in a dark, lightweight suit and he's hatless, his wavy hair blowing in the breeze, and his big, white, toothy smile in place. He's a doll. The photographers are all yelling for him to wave at the crowd and I don't know if he heard them or saw us, but he starts waving wildly. He's wonderful. Magnificent.
And I'm here to see it all.
The press are all saying that Kennedy is trying to jump not one generation but two, that he's defying not only the opinions of Truman (I don't remember him seeing how he was President when I was a little girl), and that the former President wants this guy named Symington, and Mrs. Roosevelt wants Stevenson. Me, I like what I read in the Los Angeles Times, calling Kennedy the new hero of the freshman class. Like me. I'll be a freshman in college in the fall.
The newspapers are also saying that Kennedy has appeal to the labor union and the Negro leaders. That's it. He's in. I know it.
I'm so excited I don't care if my new high heel pumps are too tight. I'm not gonna let that bother me. My mom and I are right in the thick of the crowd, enjoying the excitement, watching the banners waving, jumping around to the music (I don't know how many bands are here) and holding our ears every time everybody starts screaming "Back Jack!"
A long line of bodyguards surround him as the Senator gets out of the convertible and makes his way through the wall of people to a speakers' stand studded with microphones tagged with the call letters of television and radio stations from across the country. A gruff and raspy voice comes over the loudspeaker, leading the crowd in a cheer of "We want Kennedy! We want Kennedy!"
The yelling crowd sounds like fireworks erupting and it only gets louder. All around me, people press against me and I swear I can feel the asphalt tarmac quivering beneath my feet. I gasp when a man carrying a "Stick with Symington" sign bumps into me and mutters, "When Kennedy grows up, he'll be a good candidate."
Startled, I push away from him, and once again focus my attention on Kennedy waving to the crowd from the grandstand. I can see a guy wearing a brightly-printed flower shirt rush up to the Senator and give him a lei. Got to be a delegate from Hawaii.
And is that a girl with a bouquet of red roses for the Senator that I see right behind him? Then I can't see anything as several supporters push in front of everybody else with their signs proclaiming, "Kennedy for Courage" and "Labor for Kennedy."
"Stay close to me, Afton," my mom says, taking off her white gloves and putting them in her purse. I blink, then look at her funny. Seeing my questioning expression, she says, "If we get to shake the Senator's hand, it wouldn't be polite to wear gloves."
I jerk back in surprise before I comprehend what's going on here. Can you believe? My mom is just as excited as I am about being here to greet the Senator from Boston. Although I strain to catch the slightest glimpse of Kennedy, my mother tries harder.
I wonder what would have happened if she had found the letter from the Democratic Party before my father did? If, for even a moment, I thought she wouldn't have shown it to me, I'd be wrong. She never let on to my father that I heard their entire conversation that night. She pretended I wasn't there and signaled me to come in when my father wasn't looking.
My dad mumbled and grumbled when my mom told me I could go to the convention. After all that happened that night, what with the barbecue and the patio party, the scene out on the front lawn at the trashcan, and the flaky guy I met at the drive-in, I was no longer inclined to make my father feel any worse about letting me go. I told him I would prove to him that I'm responsible enough to earn their trust.
To my surprise, my father admitted he was wrong to throw away my letter. He kept saying that someday when I have a teenager, I'll understand. I don't know about that. When I'm a parent, I told them, I'm going to be cool and let my kids do
whatever they want.
My mom smiled when I said that. She must know something I don't. Later I asked her why she stood up to my dad for me, and why she didn't share his views on Negroes. She told me that she grew up as the only Irish red-headed kid in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. She knows what it's like not to fit in and hear people talk about you. Not that being colored is the same thing, she said, but she can understand how all mothers, whatever their color, want what is best for their children.
That got me thinking. In a few hours in one night, I had seen more and learned more about my mother than I could process and analyze in my entire teen years, things that made me see her in a whole new way. I would have preferred to avoid growing up this fast, but until I'm out on my own, duty requires me to contend with this strange new process of seeing my parents as people.
Weird.
Everything went like a snap after that. I checked on the arrangements for the convention and packed my clothes. My mom talked me into taking nice, conservative skirts and blouses to make a good impression. I picked out colors like Firebrand red and Kodiak brown and a Highland tweed skirt. I also threw in a sun-set with Jamaica shorts, a sweatshirt, and some sneakers.
My mom insisted I take along extra nylons in case I get a run. (I was surprised when she let me borrow her favorite EstÈe Lauder Sizzling Scarlet lipstick to go with the red-white-and-blue official convention dress I'll be wearing like the Golden Girls I see here at the airport. They're all dancing around in a conga line and holding placards saying, "We Want Kennedy.")
Early this morning, I was packed and ready to go, ready to take my place in history. Under milk-blue skies, we headed up the coast to Los Angeles. Passing by El Segundo Boulevard, my mom put on her sunglasses and looked out the window, checking the sky overhead. She said we should stop at the airport before checking in with the coordinator for the Golden Girl hostesses at the Biltmore Hotel. (The out-of-town hostesses selected for special assignment are staying at an apartment house in Hancock Park, not too far from the Sports Arena. Ultra-cool.)
My mom glanced at me, winked, and returned her attention to the wide boulevard off to the right. "Turn here, Harry."
"What for, Irene?" my dad asked.
"It's important for Afton's job," my mom says, fiddling with her nails. She casually mentioned that some of the Golden Girl hostesses were part of the greeting party for the Senator from Massachusetts. My father grumbled, but he'd gone this far, he said, so a pit stop wouldn't hurt.
Although my father has been acting like a superstrict parent for years, ever since the night of the barbecue he's changed. (Did my mother have something to do with it?) Before that, he wouldn't listen to any opinion but his, especially if someone disagreed with him.
Today, his attitude is different. He seems more inclined to look beyond his usual world of one-story tract homes in suburbia. The last outpost of democracy, as he calls it.
Now as I stand breathless on the hot tarmac, shoved in with a bunch of Kennedy supporters screaming on cue, I grab my mother's hand. It's sweaty. I smile up at my pretty mom with her red hair pulled back in a French twist, her dark sunglasses contrasting with her big pearl earrings. She smiles back at me. She looks like a European film star in her black sheath dress and spike heels.
My mother is a practitioner of good grooming, a self-proclaimed modern woman rather than a feminist. She says they're totally different, that a modern woman has a mystique that intrigues men, while a feminist can turn men off if she's not careful. She's basically a quiet person, if a little conservative, and the only time she got really angry with me is when, with overt enthusiasm, I declared I wanted to be a writer, hopefully a reporter. She says reporters smoke and drink too much.
Anyway, that's in the past, though I still want to be a writer.
"Let's go, Afton," my mom calls out, grabbing me and pulling me along with her as everybody, and I mean, everybody breaks into a run, jamming across the airport tarmac to follow the Senator when he gets down off the speakers' platform. I've never seen anything like it as the crowd overwhelms him. You'd think all these people were greeting a relative coming home from a long vacation. Women in high heels, girls in loafers and saddle shoes, reporters, little kids, all rushing toward the handsome man shaking hands as he greets the crowd surrounding him. A claustrophobic feeling closes around me, as tight as a plastic tent coming down over my head. I can hardly breathe.
My mother twists her head left then right, trying to see through the crowd. "Can you see him, Afton?"
"I think so. There he is, Mom. Senator Kennedy's over there," I cry out, trying to keep up with the crowd engulfing him. Pushing, shoving, elbows in my face, people stepping on my feet, it's crazy, the kookiest scene I've ever seen in my life, wilder than the time I went to see Fabian at the state fair. My dad woulda died if he'd known I went to see him. He hates it when I watch El or any bands on TV, what he calls rock-n'-roll yellevision. I dig it.
"Where are you, Afton?" I hear my mom calling me and it's then I realize that the crowd is pulling us farther and farther apart. She's somewhere up ahead of me, but I can't see her. All I can see is Senator Kennedy's head and shoulders. He's hemmed in by his supporters, but somehow he's able to reach over heads to shake hands.
"I'm over here, Mom," I call out to her, trying to push through the crowd when suddenly I feel a wave of people whamming into me and I bounce backward. I feel the bones in my neck pop as I jerk my head from side to side, and before I can stop myself, I fall backward, bumping into someone behind me and bringing them down on the hot tarmac with me.
"Oh, geez, I'm sorry," I cry out, scraping my knee, tearing my taupe nylons, losing my shoe, and just barely avoid twisting my ankle in a hole in the asphalt. As I regain my balance and put on my shoe, I turn around to see a girl about my age sprawled on the tarmac, her long legs laid out straight in front of her, her full, white skirt spread around her like cool snow, her long, dark hair flying over her face, covering her features. A quick glance at a small suitcase split open on the ground near her, its contents scattered everywhere, reveals exactly how much damage I've done.
Plenty.
I feel like such a gord. With a capital G. I help her pick her things up off the ground before the crowd tramples all over everything, muttering how awful I feel.
"Somebody pushed into me--" I stammer.
"It wasn't your fault," the girl says, gathering up her white skirt around her and brushing off specks of asphalt as she gets to her feet. She picks her plain white blouses and navy skirts up off the tarmac. I wonder if she goes to an all girls' school.
"Here's the rest of your stuff--" I begin, quickly handing her some white slips and underwear. I'm sure she must feel embarrassed about what happened, so I try to make her feel at ease with a joke, telling her this could be an I dreamed I went to the Democratic National Convention in my Maidenform Bra ad. Curious, I look over to see if she's laughing, but I'm the one feeling embarrassed, staring at her like I do.
She's beautiful, not like the perky models with the flip hairdos and pouty mouths you see in Teen magazine, but like you'd see in a portrait by a famous artist from another era. Like Shakespeare's Juliet. She has pretty, pale skin. Shiny dark hair, heart mouth. Big grey eyes. She looks scared. I wonder what she's doing in this crowd carrying a suitcase?
"Did you miss your flight?" I ask her, craning my neck, looking for my mom, but I don't see her. I am acutely aware of the interplay of the crowd and the excitement all around us, which for me is something I can't ignore. I can't hang back here for long but I don't want to split until I make sure the girl is okay. I feel responsible for what happened to her.
"No, I was on my way to the Biltmore Hotel and--"
I spin around. A big smile is on my lips when I ask her, "Yeah? Me, too. Are you a--"
"Kennedy Girl?" she asks, her grey eyes opening wider. By contrast, she bites down on her lower lip, pressing her lips together tightly, as if waiting for me to answer the $64,000 question.
"Kennedy Girl?" I repeat, the words singing sweetly in my ears. I like the sound of that. Yes, I tell her, I'm a Kennedy Girl.
Her name is Louise Pardue, she says, and she's eighteen like me, but she doesn't have a car so she had to take the bus. I ask her why her parents didn't drive her, but she keeps looking down at the ground. She says only that she's from Glendale. I've never been there, I tell her. She nods and seems relieved that I don't ask her any more questions.
"I wasn't supposed to get off the bus when it stopped here," Louise says, then she adds wistfully, like a leaf falling from the tree but never believing it will touch the ground, "but I had to see the Senator."
"Yeah, me, too. I'm here with my mom," I tell her, not wanting to explain why my dad is waiting in the car. She'd never understand my father who thinks the whole convention is rigged anyway. "Oh, look, there's Senator Kennedy!" I start running after the crowd.
"Hey, wait for me!" Louise calls out, following me and holding onto her suitcase.
I can't believe I'm running like a screaming chickie at a Ricky Nelson personal appearance, but I am. Louise is hot on my heels, yelling as loud as I am, as the crowd, girls mostly, burst through the Senator's cordon of bodyguards, swamp the Los Angeles police and overwhelm Kennedy, trying to get too close to him, shake his hand, anything.
"Can you see Senator Kennedy?" Louise asks, standing on her tippy toes in her ballet flats.
"Yeah, he's waving to the crowd. Oh, what a cute smile he has," I answer, not only grateful that I wore high heels, but that I'm tall. I gotta give that to my father. At least I inherited his height and not his politics.
"Yeah, he's the living end," she says, swooning, and I look back and see a dreamy smile on her face. I don't know why but that look strikes something in me and I can't turn away. There's something special about the look in her eyes. "He's going to change this country," she says, "and then everybody will be free to follow their dream."
"I hope you're right," I say, trying to smile. I feel strangely moved by her words, as if she knows something I don't. Then I understand what she means. This convention comes down to the personal appeal, the determination, and the brilliant strategy of Kennedy to keep our country on course.
"What's happening now?" Louise asks as I crane my neck to see over the bunch of people in front of me. Short ones, I'm happy to report.
"He's shaking everybody's hand--omigod, there's my mom!" I cry out, my mouth dropping open when I see the Senator grab my mother's hand and shake it firmly before moving on to the next person. Something flutters in my stomach. I hold my hand over my mouth, trying to keep from grinning too big. I feel proud, so proud when my mom smiles big into the cameras as a bunch of reporters snap her picture. I am almost reduced to my childhood game of pretending with every ounce of imagination that my mother is a famous movie star. I can't believe it. This is so ultra ultra. My mom and the Senator. What's my dad gonna say?
"Hey, Kennedy Girl, let's go this way," my new friend calls out to me and points out what looks like a hole in the crowd just waiting for us to sneak through.
"Super idea," I say, grabbing her hand as we push our way through the crowd toward the Senator. With band music blasting in our ears, the crowd overwhelms him, pulling us along with it when all sudden-like we're just a coupla feet from the handsome, smiling Senator. I rub my hand on my dress to dry it off. No perspiration, please, when shaking hands with Senator Kennedy, I can hear my mom telling me.
"Hang onto me, Louise, and we'll soon be shaking hands with the next President of the--" I start to say when suddenly a big, burly man in a brown suit pushes past us, shoves us actually, and jams right toward Senator Kennedy. Before anyone can guess what he's about to do, he grabs onto the Senator's suit lapels. He's aggressive, scary. I stop dead, my heart pounding, my instincts pushing me to jump this crazy person. Louise is feeling the same instincts amping through her.
"We gotta help Senator Kennedy!" she cries out, her voice panicked. We lunge forward and try to grab this jerk when seconds later, not any longer I'm sure of it, two Los Angeles police officers slice through the crowd and seize the big man in the brown suit, pulling him off the Senator. They secure him with handcuffs and lead him away. I feel a funny shiver wiggle up and down my spine, like a small electric charge. I'm curious about this guy, but reluctant to get any closer.
Louise and I look at each other, realizing that something changed in that moment, not just in us but in the whole atmosphere around us. Absolute confidence no longer reigns. People start falling back, giving the Senator breathing room. He's still smiling, but I think he knows it, too. He's not just the senator from Massachusetts anymore. He could be our next President and must be guarded and shielded. It's kinda like how you feel when you find a shiny new penny. There's a sparkle about it that's different from all the other pennies and you don't want to see that shine spoiled.
"Did you see what happened, Louise?" I say, wiping my hands on my dress. When I glance down, I realize they're sweatier than before and I can see my dirty fingerprints smudged on my light khaki skirt.
"I can't believe someone would try to do that to Senator Kennedy," Louise says, wiping her face. I'm not alone in my nervousness. She's perspiring like a beauty contestant during the last round.
"Geez, Louise, we were only seconds away from shaking hands with the Senator until that nit-wit messed it up for us," I say, putting down her suitcase, end up. It's sturdy-looking with lots of stickers on it. I don't read them. Instead, we both sit down, our heads in our hands and our dreams in our laps.
"Do you think we'll have another chance to meet the Senator and shake his hand during the convention?" Louise asks, trying to smile. She looks more disappointed than I am.
"We'll get to meet him," I say softly.
"How can you be so sure?" she asks.
"You said it yourself, Louise. We're Kennedy Girls."
"Yeah, we are, aren't we?" she says, winking at me.
I wink back.
In ordinary times, before I understood about Democrats and Republicans, before civil rights and sit-ins, before Red China and Russia and bomb shelters, I would have said good-bye to Louise and gone on my way. I would not have asked her to ride with us to the Biltmore Hotel, seeing how I can never be sure my father is not going to act like a jerk and go into his "the world is living on a banana peel" speech and embarrass the heck out of me.
These are not ordinary times.
LOUISE
July 9, 1960
The Biltmore Hotel
I have no idea I'm walking into the line of fire when I accept a ride with the girl who bumped into me at the airport. Afton is nifty, grabbing my arm and helping me with my suitcase, and so is her mom.
It's her daddy who scares me.
"What did you think of Kennedy, Louise?" Afton's daddy asks me again 'cause I didn't say much the first time he asked. The late afternoon sun beaming through the car window bathes my face in shadow. He can't see me clearly. I'm grateful for that. To overcome my nervousness and prove to him I have nothing to hide, I lift up my head, wet my lips with my tongue like my Mama taught me, and smile.
"He--he's dreamy," I say, careful not to say anything more, especially about the Senator's politics. That would be like setting off a leftover July 4th firecracker. I have to admit I was shook up when I got into their car and the first thing Afton's father asked her mom was if there were any Negroes in the welcoming crowd, seeing how Kennedy's been playing up his civil rights sympathies on his stops through the South. He won the West Virginia primary a few weeks ago, so why not?
"Yeah, Kennedy is dreamy," Afton echoes, winking at me. She's smiling, but I can tell she's uncomfortable with the conversation. She keeps taking her shoes on and off. They're too tight, she says, grimacing, but it's kinda strange that every time her father starts to say something about Kennedy she takes off her shoes and tries to change the subject, like are we going to stop to eat at a place called Phillippe's?
"I think we have time to stop for lunch," her mom says, turning around in the front seat and smiling at both of us.
I can't help but notice how pretty she is. And not a red hair out of place. She looks pleased with herself. Afton whispers to me it's because she had her picture taken with Senator Kennedy, though she didn't take the opportunity to explain this to her husband for fear he would turn the car around and take everybody home. Regardless of that, I have to agree with Afton that I think it was cool.
"Have you ever been to Phillippe's, Louise?" her mom asks me.
"Uh, no, Ma'am," I answer, biting on my lower lip, hoping I don't bite so hard it bleeds. I do that sometimes when I'm nervous.
I look over at Afton. She's still fiddling with her shoes. Putting them on. Then taking them off. She seems nervous, but I know she doesn't have the same fear that I have about going to a restaurant. No one is going to stare at her and wonder. Whisper behind her back. Like all the way over here I saw her daddy checking me out in his rear view mirror, squinting his eyes, tilting his head as if trying to get a better look at me.
I know that look. My Grandma Eldy stares at people like that when we go shopping on Honolulu Street in Glendale, checking out all the folks with dark hair and light skin and guessing who's passing. Afton's daddy is looking at me like that. I don't get it. How is it that two people who sit on opposite sides of the fence can share the same look on their faces?
He's not sure about me, I keep telling myself, pulling back, wishing I could disappear into the dark green fabric seat so he can't see my face clearly. My name is Louise Pardue, is all I'm gonna say. I'm eighteen and I live in Glendale with my grandmother. That's all anybody is going to find out about me.
I will not break my vow of silence.
* * *
"How many in your party, sir?"
"Four," Afton's daddy says, dabbing his face with a handkerchief. It's hot in here. I resist the urge to wipe my face. I might wipe off my light skin and they'll see I'm a colored girl underneath. What's wrong with me? I gotta stop getting so shook about everything, plucking out every word, every nuance and examining it, but I keep thinking about a story Grandma Eldy told me about the time she dared to take a drink from the white folks' water fountain back home in Summer Bend. She was mighty scared, she said, seeing how the sheriff in those parts had a reputation for hunting quail and tormenting Negroes; he was so nearsighted, folks said, he couldn't tell the difference between the two. Grandma Eldy was lucky, though. No one saw her. I asked her if the water tasted any different and she said no. But it was colder, she finished with a big grin.
Surveying the room, I wish I had her courage now. Once more I'm overcome by the feeling I don't belong here as I sit down at the long wooden table with Afton and her mom. This is most definitely crossing the line. Sitting with a white family, I mean. But my empty stomach kicks out my fear as the smell of frying onions, garlic, and roast beef fill the air and mix with the pungent scent of sawdust on the floor. Seems Phillippe's is famous for their French dip sandwiches and I've never been hungrier.
"Where do you go to school, Louise?" Afton asks me as her daddy goes to the order window to get French dip sandwiches for all of us.
I mumble something about graduating from Glendale High School. I don't even know if there is such a school. Before Grandma Eldy and I came out to California, I graduated early from Jefferson High School back home in Alabama. I never told anybody that 'cause they don't believe me, seeing how we only got old textbooks from the white schools, but I studied hard and went to summer school. I found out that white folks can't or won't understand how a Negro girl could skip all those grades and graduate before everybody else, so I learned to lie and make up a school.
"How about you, Afton?" I ask her, sipping Coke through a straw. It's frosty cold. I smile. Grandma Eldoris would like that.
"Oh, I went to three different high schools last year, but I'm starting college this year at Long Beach State," she answers, not looking at anything in particular, but it's the way she says it. I get the feeling there's a sadness about her that I don't understand. What is it? She's got everything. A nice, pretty mom, a dad, even if he is a racist. More than once he uses the "N" word when he refers to Southern voters. I cringe every time.
I didn't tell him I was born in Alabama. I expect then he would ask me questions about my family. Back where I come from, it's suspected that people might be aware of whites mixing with slaves, but you don't talk about it in polite company.
"Are you going to college, Louise?"
I snap to attention, clear my throat. It's Afton's mom asking me the question. What am I going to say? They don't want me in college out here because I'm colored, so I'm working alongside your daughter to see if I can pass for white?
I smile instead. "Yes, Ma'am, but I haven't decided which college yet."
Thankfully the conversation ends right there as Afton's daddy comes back with a trayful of French dip sandwiches. He keeps staring at me in a funny way, making me uncomfortable. Like he knows something about me that I don't.
Turning my eyes away from his, half expecting him to say something but he doesn't, I forget about the strange feeling he gives me as we all dive into our sandwiches, talking between mouthfuls of beef and onions dribbling down our chins.
The conversation seems stuck on politics, which I find neat, seeing how everybody's talking about the convention in town. The mayor's calling it hospitality week, Afton says, and asking everybody to be on their best behavior.
I join in the conversation, telling them about the convention souvenirs we've been selling at Faye's Department store. Like the "ballot bonnets," hats with cardboard elephants or donkey cut-outs pinned to the crown, and carryalls with decorative badges of red, blue, and white ribbons with streamers spelling out the names of the candidates or the words "vote time."
Afton's mom tells us about the new radar ranges they've installed in the Sports Arena that can cook beef and bake potatoes and vegetables in a minute and ten seconds. She says they'll need them, seeing how they figure there are almost five thousand delegates in town for the convention.
I start to ask her more about the fast ovens but when I open my mouth to speak, I feel Mr. Leigh's eyes on me again, asking questions. I bite into a big, soggy onion instead. I've already said too much.
After we finish our sandwiches, Mrs. Leigh puts on her lipstick and I think about how much she reminds me of my mama. Mama loved pretty lipsticks. Reds and corals and pinks. I drift into the past, seeing her face in my mind. Oval-shaped, perfect, pointy chin, elegant black brows, big eyes like dark moons, sensual, full mouth. That was my Mama. She had a sense of style nobody in Summer Bend had. She knew how to sit, walk, fix her hair, and wear long gowns with white gloves like she was on stage.
I musta let my guard down thinking about Mama, 'cause when I blink I notice Mr. Leigh is still staring at me. Staring hard. A restless fluttering settles over me. My throat is tight. My palms are moist. I wipe them on my dress but I can't shake the feeling that he knows something. He'll probably burst out with telling me I have no right to be sitting here with his wife and daughter and I should go back home where I belong. I won't. No, sir, Mr. Leigh. I won't.
"I've got it!" her daddy says triumphantly, wiping the grease off his mouth and finishing his Coke. "I know who you remind me of, Louise."
"You do, Mr. Leigh?" I ask, my appetite suddenly gone. Here it comes, what Grandma Eldy warned me about. Somehow he's figured out I'm passing for white, not that I'm ashamed of being colored, but I've known nothing but pain because of it. Like the time in school when the teacher said I didn't really have a last name 'cause all black folks were given the surname of the last slaveholder who owned them.
Or how Grandma Eldy taught me to patch our old slave quilts with rags to keep us warm in winter and stuff newspapers into the cracks of our small house to keep out the wind. I remember one day when I was about twelve and a white man came to our house and saw me reading an old newspaper. He said for me to go home, that I shouldn't be hanging around there. I said I was home and he said I couldn't be a "nigrah," 'cause monkeys can't read. I swore that day I would read everything I got my hands on and I have.
I keep holding fast to my dream of going to college, talking myself into believing that I can do it. I realize now how hard it is and how desperately I want it, though it might never happen.
"Who does Louise remind you of, Harry?" Mrs. Leigh asks, curious-like. I sink down into my seat. She's staring at me, too.
"That girl in the photo on my Martin Denny album," Afton's daddy says. "You know, the one with the long dark hair who looks like Linda Darnell."
I grin big, knowing he means the beautiful actress.
The beautiful white actress.
Afton rolls her eyes at me and I grin back as I pick up my sandwich and bite into it. I'm glowing all over. It's not just because her daddy thinks I look like the beautiful actress with the pale light skin and long dark hair. Abruptly, everything is changed. I know that record cover.
I've got one just like it hanging in my room.
Over my bed.
That dark-haired girl in the photo he's talking about, the girl wearing the flower-printed sarong and big jade earrings with her pretty smile looking out at you--
--that girl is my Mama.
* * *
The Biltmore Hotel could pass for a fairy tale castle, where all the knights and their ladies are touched not with a magic wand, but with the more significant magic of money and politics by which all happy-ever-after stories are judged.
As if we're also touched by that magic, Afton and I walk through the revolving doors of the Biltmore Hotel and into the fantasy. With an admiring glance and a bit of a wink, the colored doorman tips his hat and smiles at me. He doesn't say, "You don't belong here, girl, go around to the back door." No, he ushers me right into the white world.
I stand up taller, walking on tippy toes in my ballet flats. A tickle of a chill passes through me. I did it. I passed for white. The colored doorman never guessed we share a bond woven together like the slave quilts of our ancestors with their vivid colors and visual patterns of African culture handed down through the generations. A bond of common experiences we share because we're colored, from the degradation of the humiliating Jim Crow laws that forbid Negroes from mixing with whites, to the vibrancy of the days of Harlem in the twenties and the thirties, through today and our fight for civil rights.
I smile back, hold my head up high, feeling confident, playing this incredible game of what my grandmother would call "putting on the Massa." Pretending to be something I'm not.
I'm a Kennedy Girl, my eyes tell him, but I think he already knows 'cause he points to a bulletin board in the lobby leading delegates to the elevators and upstairs where the Kennedy headquarters are located.
Cruising slowly, taking in everything at once, Afton says, "Are you digging this cool shindig?"
"Yeah, it's so neat." I look around, glowing all over like a shiny new doll looking out at the world through a plastic package. The lobby and Galeria of the Biltmore are seething with political workers and the press, sporting their candidate's badges, drinking Pepsi-cola, eating taffy, and opening fortune cookies, all trying to catch each other off guard.
"Did you see the doormen in their posh duds," Afton whispers, "and how they looked at us?"
Why do I keep thinkin' they're checking me out? I want to ask.
Instead I blurt out, "Oh, I bet they stare at everybody."
"Everybody stares at you, Louise," Afton says without missing a beat. She grabs my hand and squeezes it. "My dad's right. You're as pretty as a movie star."
I let a relaxing quiver roll down my arm as I squeeze her hand back. Me, a movie star? I don't know. A colored woman would be lucky to get through a casting agent's door, Mama always said, and then the only part she'd get would be carrying a tray and playing a maid, being little more than background for white stars. But if you can pass for white, I'm seeing firsthand, you can do anything. I knew Grandma Eldy was wrong.
I keep walking through the hotel lobby, my head zipping from left to right. "This is so cool, Afton."
"I wonder where we report, Louise?" Afton whispers in my ear, holding my arm.
Like a sister. It feels good. I never had any brothers or sisters. A crooked smile sneaks onto my face before I can stop it. What would Grandma Eldy say to that? I don't want to squash the illusion, even if I know it can't last. "How 'bout we try the Kennedy headquarters?" I say, trying to keep up my confidence. Everywhere I look somebody is staring at us, flashbulbs popping, reporters hastily giving us the onceover, asking us who we are. We're Kennedy Girls, we tell them, not sightseers collecting buttons and badges from everybody they see.
"Look, Louise, is that the Senator?" Afton whispers to me, nudging me and pointing to a tall, handsome man stopping traffic in the lobby and signing autographs.
"It sure looks like him."
"C'mon, let's go see."
"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin', that he owes us a handshake?"
"He owes us two handshakes, Louise."
"I'm right behind you, Kennedy Girl."
If, in fact, we had not been among the supporters greeting the Senator at the International Airport earlier today, if we had not pushed through the crowd to get close enough to see him, I think we would have also been fooled by the amazingly similar toothy grin, shock of unruly reddish-brown hair, and easy personality of the look-alike brother sheepishly signing autographs for confused conventioneers and telling them his name was Ted Kennedy, not Jack.
"Next time," Afton says.
"Next time," I agree.
Putting our false alarm behind us, the big question is: where do we report? I point to a row of six elevators. Busy, slow, and filled with excited people.
"Hey, we've got enough people in here for a caucus," jokes one delegate. Everyone laughs as the door closes and the people are all pushed together. Rubbing against each other, their scents mixing. I get a chill thinkin' about what could happen when I get on the elevator if they find out I'm colored.
Will they push me out?
I stand there. Thinkin'. Don't I act the same as they do? I don't go around with white girls my age 'cause if they came to my house Grandma Eldy might say something about Mama being her daughter. What then? People in the neighborhood talk about me, wondering if I'm a light-skinned Negro or a Mexican, but they don't know for sure. Even if they're liberal white people and they say race doesn't matter, it's not true. It does. All people haveta know is I work at Faye's Department store, wait on them, and smile at them through my white teeth until the day I get accepted to college.
There's only one thing stopping me. That funny, little box at the top of the application. Race. A four-letter word if you're colored. If I can pass, I'm going to check the box that says "White."
I feel my heart lift at the thought, but my exhilaration is dampened by the continuing feeling that my whole future depends on what happens to me this week.
My whole future. I squeeze my toes. That scares me down to the bottom of my ballet flats.
I'm afraid to move as the crush of delegates, alternates, and press seems to swell all around us as we crowd into the elevator. Eleven stories high, the Biltmore Hotel dominates the green triangle of Pershing Square and pulsates with the smell of curiosity everywhere.
When the elevator door opens on the main floor, people flood out, running around with a sense of urgency as if they should be someplace else but they don't know where. I have never seen so many reporters rushing from one end of the floor to the other, following prominent-looking, older men. They must be important, seeing how the reporters shove microphones into their faces and throw questions at them in rapid-fire double talk. I see TV cameramen everywhere, filming anything that moves.
"Everybody cheer for the candidate of your choice!" yells a reporter from NBC, "I need an introduction."
"Kennedy, Kennedy!" Afton and I cry out, and a small group of delegates takes up the chanting, drowning out several Symington voices.
I hear a small band start playing the Senator's theme song, "High Hopes," and we all start singing the words. The reporter from NBC can't get a word in, but the TV audience is getting an earful. Several choruses later, Afton and I take off for Kennedy headquarters, our suitcases in hand, our dreams in our pockets as we rush through the main corridor.
"Look, Louise," Afton says, pointing upward. I twist my neck to see an enormous sign hanging from the ceiling.
" 'Let's Win with Kennedy,' " I read. "Let's go."
We head down the corridor and see another sign and this one says, Unite with Symington.
"Wrong turn," Afton says, grinning at me.
I smile back. We turn around and I feel the heat of bodies pumping, vibrating. The air is filled with crisp static, popping in my ears in the form of bits of dialogue from people rushing all around us, like how I felt when they tried to bus students at my old school to a white high school. They said segregation was unconstitutional. Not in Alabama. They stopped the busing soon afterward, but that was the first time I knew I could pass. I'll never forget hearing white folks say I didn't belong on the bus with the other Negro kids because I was white. Their words were like little seeds planted in my mind. Little seeds that grew. And grew until--
"Hey, Louise, look over there," Afton says, pointing to a group of delegates from Puerto Rico wearing beautiful Latin costumes and singing and dancing to the sounds of steel drums and guitars.
I say, "Cool mamba."
"The coolest."
"Like us," Afton says.
"OlÈ, Kennedy Girl."
Taking my cue from the dancers, I join the conga line. One, two, three, kick. Then I break away and do a coupla fancy steps. Grandma Eldy says I have my Mama's natural rhythm, that I coulda been in the chorus at the Cotton Club like my Mama. Everybody claps. From the bottom of my heart, I laugh. A soul-freeing sound I didn't know was in me. I'm feelin' so good, so free. For the first time since we got here a gentle wind of air conditioning springs up, a chilling blast that brings to us a scent of expensive perfume. French in origin, but East Coast packaging.
I see a girl watching us. A blonde-haired Golden Girl. She's so pretty she makes me feel like a black spot on a clean, white sidewalk. She has private finishing school written all over her. Standing outside the Kennedy headquarters with her hands on her hips, her pouty pink lips set in a determined line, she tosses her head as if to dismiss us and goes back to what appears to be an unpleasant conversation with a prominent-looking man.
That's not all that makes me notice her.
She's a Kennedy Girl.
Wearing an official red-white-and-blue striped dress and a blue cummerbund around her small waist with the name Kennedy stitched on it, she bites on the tip of her white glove, pulls it off, then tosses it into a nearby ash can as the older man leaves her standing there. She looks pretty miffed. Afton grabs my hand.
"C'mon, let's ask that Kennedy Girl where we should report," she says and I double blink at her.
"She doesn't look very approachable," I say. Something about the girl makes me wary, like her nose is turned so high up she can't see us. Mama told me about girls like her. Girls who can do anything they want and let you know it. When they look at you that way, Mama said, you know your freedom boat is in dry dock and you're going nowhere.
" 'Course, she'll help us, Louise," Afton says with a confidence I don't feel. I double blink at her again. "We're Kennedy Girls, too, remember?"
I keep my eyes down when we walk over to the girl, not wanting to give myself away, but that itch gets to crawling up my spine again and I can't resist looking at her. She notices us at the same time and a bright smile lights up her face. Like we're old friends. I smile back. Guess I was wrong.
"I know what you girls are going to ask me," she says, smiling and checking us out from head to toe. "You want Kennedy badges, n'est-ce pas?" She smiles and hands us each a badge.
"Yeah, sure," I say, agreeing with her like Mama taught me. If you want to pass, Miss Louise, she always called me that, never give anybody a reason to look at you too closely.
Afton doesn't take the badge. "We're Kennedy Girls, too," she says, asserting herself in a way that impresses me.
"Oh? Well, you're late," the blonde says, taking the badge out of my hand with a quick jerk.
Afton doesn't look embarrassed, but I am. Somehow I don't think we should tell her we're late because we stopped at the airport to greet Senator Kennedy.
"We ran into a lot of traffic getting here," Afton offers instead, daring the blonde to say something.
"Both of you?" she asks with a question in her voice that sounds like an announcer on one of those big money quiz shows. Obviously, she doesn't believe us. I'm getting nervous, watching the two of them.
"Yeah, both of us," Afton says, irritated. "Now, if you'll tell us where we can find Mrs. Greenfield so we can get started--"
Ignoring her question, the Golden Girl hostess fiddles with her other glove, toying with her words. "We did lose a couple of girls to the Johnson headquarters this morning. House Speaker Rayburn swayed some delegates over to their camp with his speech about how the White House needs a man with experience," she says. "I guess you two will have to do."
"Excuse me," Afton says, her brows crossing. Something I'm beginning to recognize as a sign that she's not going to let that remark go unchallenged. "What do you mean, we'll have to do?"
"If you want to be Kennedy Girls, there are certain rules you must follow."
"Rules? Whose rules?"
"Mine, silly. I assign all the girls to their posts--"
"What are you talking about? Where is Mrs. Greenfield?"
The blonde cocks an eyebrow. "Mrs. Greenfield does what I tell her to do."
"Oh, really?" Afton says, tossing the blonde's uppity attitude right back into her lap. I wish I had her courage. "And who are you?"
"Gillian Young from Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill," the blonde says with the air of a princess asking her servant to wipe the mud from the hem of her gown. "Anyhoo, my father, Stanmore Young, is paying for everything, so if you two insist on being Kennedy Girls, I suggest you learn right now I'm in charge."
Without another word, Gillian stomps off, swishing her striped skirt behind her and joining a trio of other Kennedy Girls. I notice how tall she is. No wonder, I'm thinkin', looking at her shoes. Her high heels are higher than the other girls. I snicker. I wonder if she has a rule against someone having higher heels than she does. Afton is also wearing high heel pumps. All I have are ballet flats. I don't like to be taller than everyone else, stand out. Who wants to stand out when you're trying to blend in?
"What pompous Democratic ass did she ride in on?" Afton whispers to me.
"We'd better do what she says, Afton," I say quietly, trying to smile. The hotel seems hot and stuffy. Who turned off the air conditioning?
"Says who? Let me tune you in, Louise," Afton says, leaning toward me, her eyes blazing with green fire. "This is my chance at having some freedom and to taste the world without my overseer father watching my every move and criticizing every new thought I have. And no peroxide blonde from Philly is going tell me what I can and cannot do."
I want to tell her it's my chance at freedom, too, but I'm still shaken by the third degree her daddy put me through. My mouth goes dry. Like the old watering hole near our house back home in Summer Bend when the sun swooped down like a hungry chicken hawk and gobbled up the rain clouds. I have a funny feeling crawling inside me. The hairs on my neck are standing up like fuzzy caterpillars out of step. Kinda shaky. Like I did something I shouldn't have.
It is that fear that makes me bite back the words I wish I could say. The words that would let Afton know I'm colored. I wish I could stand tall, look her in the face and say, "I'm different than you, Afton. You're white, I'm colored."
I can't. She wouldn't understand. It's not her fault. The mistake that society has made is making anyone like me who is descended from white folks and Negro slaves to mean "not white." There is no defining test for what colored should be because there is as much diversity among colored folks as there is in the white world.
I keep quiet. The official opening of the convention is little more than two days away. I can't take any chances. I have not yet completed my mission to help Senator Kennedy get the Presidential nomination.
I see a large woman carrying a clipboard hurrying toward us. She peeks at us over her pointy, black-rimmed spectacles and even before she begins her spiel in a very decidedly Bostonian drawl, I know this must be Mrs. Greenfield.
"Welcome to the Democratic National Convention, young ladies," she says, smiling and looking us over.
Afton turns to me and winks. I wink back. Forget Gillian, she's saying to me. Who needs her?
"I'm Mrs. Greenfield," the woman continues. "Miss Young told me that you two want to be Kennedy Girls."
"Excuse me, Mrs. Greenfield, but we are Kennedy Girls," Afton says with confidence, pulling out her letter. I open my purse and grab my letter, too.
"Here's mine," I echo, waving the paper in the air.
Mrs. Greenfield shakes her head, waving the letters away as if she has no time for paperwork. "You must be the two missing girls on my list," she says, pushing her spectacles up on her nose, "I suppose you want to room together--"
"Yes!" Afton and I say at the same time. We roll our eyes, not wanting to think about having to share a room with Gillian.
"I have both your names here. Afton Leigh from Glendale--"
"I'm Afton, but--" my new friend says.
Mrs. Greenfield continues with: "And Louise Pardue from Huntington Beach--"
"I'm Louise, but--" I start to answer.
"Don't confuse me, girls," Mrs. Greenfield says, cutting us both off, "We don't have much time. Senator Kennedy is expected to arrive at the hotel at any moment." She writes something on her clipboard, then she looks nervously at her watch. "Go change into your Kennedy Girl dresses--"
With a note of insecurity, I say, "Mrs. Greenfield, you got us mixed up."
"You are Louise Pardue?" she asks, though she doesn't bother to look up at me.
"Yes, I'm Louise, but--"
"That's good enough for me, dear. The important thing is both you girls are here and you fit into the dresses," she says, grabbing two red-white-and-blue striped dresses off a nearby rack and a couple of plastic straw skimmers.
I run my fingers over the red-white-and-blue dress that she hands me. The colors of our flag. The colors of freedom. I see Afton looking for the zipper on the dress, eager to put it on, not knowing what's on my mind.
I, on the other hand, can't help but think about what Mrs. Greenfield said. That it's more important I fit into the dress than who I am. In my mind, the colors start to blur. Then the lines blur. Blurring the colorline. That's what I want, isn't it? To change colors? To pass for white? Sure, I know that being with whites isn't going to make me a better person, but it can open doors for me that are closed.
Or am I what they call in political terms, a mugwump? An independent voter straddling the fence.
I don't know why that thought bothers me so much.
I grab my suitcase and follow Afton into the ladies' room to change. I recall other times back home going to the restroom, to the dirty, smelly outdoor toilets for colored folks. I suck in my stomach, putting that behind me. I've got to seize this opportunity, wringing from it all it has to offer. I can't dwell on the fact that a little voice inside my head keeps telling me it takes more than a red-white-and-blue striped dress to be a Kennedy Girl.
LOUISE
July 9, 1960
The Biltmore Hotel--Kennedy Headquarters
As though I have crossed into the world of Grace Kelly look-a-likes without the charm school training or the good breeding of an Irish thoroughbred, I button up my dress, seeking some sign of acceptance from the mirror. I'm not alone.
Afton is also caught up in the princess fantasy.
"How do I look?" she asks me, holding onto her full skirt and twirling around in a circle.
"Really snazzy duds," I say.
Afton laughs. "You're the wildest, Louise. Real cool."
I guess it's the way I said it, drawing out my vowels slow-like, in what she calls my honeyed accent. I'm trying ultra hard to fit in. Afton says I shouldn't worry about sounding cool and I should be myself.
Myself.
How can I when I find myself on a scary emotional ledge? Colored folks back home in Summer Bend often said to me that I was different and didn't belong. Where do I belong? Yet the threat of being found out troubles me far more than I care to admit, because ever since I was a little girl I've been taught that colored girls don't use the same restrooms as whites, especially in a big city hotel.
Except if you're wearing a hotel maid's uniform.
I watch the colored woman in the black and white uniform tidying up, folding clean, white hand towels and stacking them up so neatly. She keeps to herself, putting up that if-you-don't-look-at-me-I'm-not-really-here attitude. I know it well. Although white folks never mention it, Grandma Eldy says there's a deep undercurrent of bias against coloreds that's always there.
The maid gives Afton and me the onceover, then quickly averts her eyes when she sees us changing into Kennedy Girl dresses. Afton doesn't notice the woman's stare. I do. Like she's watching me.
I put down my purse on the counter and open my suitcase. I feel like I'm opening up my soul for everyone to see. Gotta be in my mind. Mama always said that when people back home give colored folks what Grandma Eldy calls the "hate stare." It gives me the creeps thinkin' about it.
I turn my back, close up my suitcase and move my things to the other side of the restroom, then push my stuff into the corner where no one can spy on me. I can't help it. I don't like that woman staring at me. Afton doesn't notice. She's too busy chattering about how she wishes she had a push-up bra.
"My mother says young ladies don't need to push up what nobody sees, but I think it's important to feel confident about yourself," Afton says, looking around for something on the black marble counter. "Have you seen my gloves, Louise? I thought I took them out of my overnight case."
"There they are," I say, pointing to a pair of short, white gloves lying on the floor.
"Oh, I must have dropped them," she says, bending down to pick them up. I peek out of the corner of my eye and notice her looking at me. She gets up slowly. She sees me looking her way and quickly drops her eyes to the floor. I wonder what's on her mind? I sense she wants to say something to me, but she doesn't know how to say it.
I turn around, hoping she'll forget it, whatever it is.
"We'd better hurry," I say quickly. "We don't want to miss anybody. I mean, anything." I feel perspiration bubbling over my lip. I wipe my face. I'm nervous, even around Afton. What's wrong with me?
"I hope you won't be offended, Louise, if I say something," Afton says quietly, letting her thought hang in the air like a racial slur that's made with the eyes instead of the lips, something I'm all too familiar with
My heart starts thumping in my chest. It's beating so fast I can't speak. This is the moment I've been dreading. Somehow Afton has figured out that I'm passing for white and she doesn't want to go around with me.
I lift my head up. I can take it. It's just that I didn't expect it from her.
My voice is barely a whisper. "Say what's on your mind, Afton, please."
"Well, I noticed that you're different from the other girls--"
I squeeze my eyes tight. Here it comes.
"I mean, 'cause you wear flats. And since we're all supposed to look alike, well, I thought maybe you'd like to borrow my new high heels," she finishes, taking off her white pumps. "They're too small for me."
I let out a giggle. Then another. This is so nifty. She wants to loan me her shoes and I thought, well, I guess I shouldn't do so much thinkin', like Grandma Eldy says, let things lie, like a catfish fried in honey and grits.
"Yeah, sure, but what will you wear?" I ask her, slipping a slim, new high heel on my foot. I smile. It's a perfect fit. Like Cinderella.
"I have another pair of white pumps. Older, more comfortable ones," she says, then she smiles at me. "I think we should stand up as tall as possible, if you get my drift."
"I do," I say, knowing she means Gillian and her stilts. I see that we share the same opinion of the Junior Miss from Philadelphia. Afton says she's a frat. Somebody who copies college styles. Straight out of Seventeen, I bet.
I look at myself in the ladies' room mirror. A warm flush sweeps over me. I can't believe it. I do look different. I feel so different in the sleeveless red-white-and-blue striped dress, my full skirt bouncing from side to side. The stiff crinoline sewn inside the full skirt makes me feel so glamorous. It reminds me of all the times Mama helped me stiffen her worn-out, old petticoats with sugar water. But it's the name Kennedy stitched on my waistband that stares back at me in the mirror that makes me feel proud. I smile confidently. The letters are in reverse. That's how I feel. Like I'm in reverse. I was colored and now I'm passing for white.
"Do you feel special like I do?" I ask Afton.
"Like we're part of something important?" she asks me, serious-like. She's not smiling. I see a different emotion on her face. A kind of reverence that wasn't there earlier. I feel it, too. We both sense this isn't just a convention, but the beginning of change. Not just in us, but in the whole country.
I remember reading in a big library book there are no miracles in history, only the sudden recognition by people of what has been going on, what was unclear. What is clear to me is a passing of power from one generation to the another. Our generation. It's like we're lighting a candle to guide us out of the darkness of the past, to bring new freedoms to every American. I take a big breath. I want to suck up that feeling and let it overwhelm me.
"Here's to John F. Kennedy, the next President of the United States," I say, giving her a thumbs up. She does the same. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the colored maid staring at us. She doesn't take her eyes off me. I jut out my chin, confident-like. I'm a Kennedy Girl, my eyes tell her. Nothing can stop me.
"If you two late-comers are finished primping, I could use some help out on the floor."
We spin around. It's Gillian. Sticking her pretty, blonde head into the restroom and taking a moment to check out her appearance in the mirror. She pushes some stray hair behind her ears, then flips her bangs and adjusts the height of her beehive hairdo, then moistens her lips with her tongue.
I step back to let Gillian take centerstage, then it hits me. I don't have to do that anymore. I'm passing.
I smile at Afton. She grins back, shakes her head.
"We're ready, Gillian," Afton says, picking up her overnight case.
"Yes, we're both ready," I echo her words, gathering up my clothes, my shoes, and whatever else I can find and quickly toss everything into my suitcase. I don't have time to think about anything else as Gillian hustles us back to Kennedy headquarters.
As I check my suitcase in the coatroom, Gillian hands me a basket overflowing with Kennedy badges and buttons and plops a plastic straw skimmer on my head, keeping me so occupied I don't realize my purse is missing.
* * *
The noisy out-of-towners cast a wild, crazy mood over the Kennedy headquarters, like little kids at a birthday party. Downing punch by the gallon, munching on white cake and scooping up candi-date ice cream, and ignoring the soft music in the ballroom as a crush of what I'm guessin' is at least two thousand people eat, drink, and cheer every time someone on the loudspeaker mentions the name "Kennedy." Afton said she counted at least twenty policemen trying to maneuver the crowd, but even they couldn't keep the delegates under control.
If that's what they are, I wonder, seeing how only fifteen hundred name tags were given out. I think some people drifted into the hotel just to see what was going on. They're as eager as movie fans intent on getting a look at Marilyn Monroe or Frank Sinatra. At times it's so crowded, much to the distress of the firemen, you can't see anything but the back of the head of the head in front of you.
It's insane.
A madhouse.
It's divine.
But I'm not interested in cake and balloons anymore. A more imminent situation than little kids singing "Adlai's our man!" or someone pushing "Magoo for President" buttons has forced me to come to a sudden halt, stand fast to the wooden floor at the precise moment that I reach into my suitcase to look for my lipstick.
I can't find my purse.
I don't hold my breath or tense up, because I'm confident it's only a matter a seconds before I'll wrap my fingers around my clutch bag, feel its soft, plastic leather, its peeling golden clasp.
It doesn't happen. My purse, and everything in it, is gone.
"Are you sure it's not in your suitcase?" Afton says.
She puts down a tray of empty coffee cups and comes to my aid when I tell her. I can see by the cloudy mist in her eyes she's just as worried as I am.
"I looked through my suitcase again. It's not there."
I want to cry. I can't help it. I didn't have much money in my wallet, just my school ID card from back home in Summer Bend and my house keys and little stuff like that, but I'm tired. And thirsty. My body aches from standing up for hours, handing out coffee and cinnamon buns to anybody who stopped by the Kennedy headquarters. Oh, don't misunderstand me. I loved it. It was as sublime as homemade vanilla ice cream.
But that was before I lost my purse.
With all this craziness, and considering the crush of people flowing through Kennedy headquarters, I may never be able to think clearly again. Let me tell you what it's been like here all afternoon.
After Gillian introduced us to the other Kennedy Girls, she strutted around on her high heels, checking out everybody's badges to see if they were somebody. I knew something was going to happen when this huckster tried to get some free advertising on TV and kept waving his car dealer sign in front of a television camera.
Gillian saw him and rushed by Afton to get in front of him. We all agreed she wanted to get on television. Anyway, she bumped into Afton and made her drop a whole tray of cinnamon buns. The tray landed on the floor right in front of the TV camera. I jumped in and helped Afton pick them up and all three of us got on live TV. Kinda like The Three Stooges. Me, Afton, and Gillian, although I don't think Gillian liked the comparison to the comic team made by the TV commentator. She told him the stooge was the one holding the microphone.
Then we got more cinnamon buns and Afton and I gave out hot coffee to go with them to anybody who came by Kennedy headquarters for the rest of the day. We finally set up "enter" and "exit" signs to keep the crowd flowing. And what a crowd. Men wearing day-off slacks and shirtsleeves, women in sun dresses or capri pants. It was a blast and a half.
While their hands were filled with coffee and buns, we pinned a Kennedy badge on all of them, from delegates to local sightseers. It was easy to get their attention. Everyone walks around like they're in a state of perplexity, total confusion, trying to talk to reporters about their candidate. We got asked a lot about where people could buy Senator Kennedy's books, Strategies of Peace and Profiles in Courage, but we heard that Pickwick Bookshop is sold out.
Through all this, I noticed something real boss going on that I hadn't expected to happen. It was us. The kids, the new generation, talking to the old generation. About Kennedy, I mean. How we believe he's got new ideas and high hopes for the future. And get this, I think the older generation is starting to listen to us.
Oh, sure, there's a bunch of them like Afton's daddy who don't want to change, who think there are three cardinal problems in American life, and that besides peace-and-war and the economy, the mingling of Negroes with whites is the biggest problem of all. And that Negroes should thank the white man, because had there not been slavery and they had been born in Africa, they'd be living in the same poverty and horrible conditions that today's Africans live in.
These men take off their Stevenson badges and sneak into Kennedy headquarters to get a cinnamon bun and flirt with the Kennedy Girls, calling them cupcakes, then go back and report that Kennedy's camp is a bunch of kids.
But I've met other delegates who listen real carefully when you talk to them about freedom and change, that the convention is crowded with energy, crowded with talent, crowded with style. And how everybody here is blessed with a wonderful optimism. They realize this new young generation is going to be something powerful in the future. Change a lot of things, like civil rights.
I was surprised to hear Afton explaining to a delegate from Georgia about Senator Kennedy's views on the sit-in last February in North Carolina. How he believes in the right of everyone to be free, especially the Negro, whose freedom and restriction have encouraged a development of style and substance in their contribution to the American way of life, especially music.
I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I never thought of it that way. I haveta admit I'm kinda ashamed about that, keeping my mouth closed and not speaking up for my people. I guess I'm paying for it now, as Grandma Eldy would say, by losing my purse. Afton says we should report it to the police officer we saw in the corridor outside Kennedy headquarters.
"A purse, you say, young lady?" the officer says, not bothering to write down the information we give him. I look away. I was hoping, really hoping, he would help us.
"Yes, Officer," Afton says, holding a tray of fresh, hot cinnamon buns under his nose. She sways the tray back and forth, hypnotizing the officer with the sight of the sweet rolls. "A beige, leather clutch purse. Right, Louise?"
I nod, letting Afton do the talking for me. What's wrong with me? Why can't I speak up for myself?
"If someone finds it, could you bring it by Kennedy headquarters, Officer?" Afton continues, then adds, "We've got plenty of fresh, hot cinnamon buns."
"Seems to me some colored gal reported she found a purse stuffed into the trashcan in the ladies' restroom," the officer says, pushing his cap back and scratching his head.
"It must be my purse, Afton," I say quick-like, not believing my luck.
"Surprised me, too, young lady," the officer says, reaching for a hot cinnamon bun. "Who would believe a colored maid would bother to report it instead of keeping it for herself."
Shame crosses my face like the shadow of a telltale moon casting a glaring light over a cold, dark lake. I don't say anything. I can't. I'm biting on my lower lip again. Hard. I can't let his remark get to me. What's worse is I don't say anything about his racist statement. I stand there like a piglet eyeing a slab of bacon frying in a pan, as Grandma Eldoris would say, knowing my hide is next for the hot fire. Worse yet, Afton does the talking back for me.
"Not every Negro is a thief," she says, pulling the tray away as he reaches for a cinnamon bun. He misses, she doesn't. Her remark hit him square in his racist paunch. "I think you should apologize for that remark."
"Apologize? You watch your pretty mouth, young lady, and don't go spouting off about what you don't understand," he spits back at her before stomping off without a cinnamon bun. He can't resist turning around and smirking, "I still say the colored woman stole your purse, Miss. Down in Texas where I'm from, they lynch Negroes for stealing."
"Some people have their brains in their--" Afton says, gritting her teeth, then she smiles. Weakly, but it's a smile. For my benefit, I'm sure.
"Don't say it, Afton, though I agree with you."
"I never thought I'd run into that kind of racist talk here, Louise," she says, putting down the tray of cinnamon buns on a cart outside the ladies' room. "I thought all the Republicans were on their way to Chicago."
"You showed a lot of courage, Afton, saying what you did."
"It's easy for me to say, Louise. I don't have to put up with that kind of thing. Imagine being colored and having to deal with ignorant people like that every day of your life."
"Yeah, imagine," I agree, not considering that she's talking about walking in my shoes. My old shoes. The flat ones. I'm wearing a white girl's shoes now and there's no way I can go back.
The storm isn't over yet. Not by the feathers of a red-tailed hawk. It's as if the Negro hotel maid is waiting for us when we enter the restroom. She's sitting down in a folding chair, grinning, her hands crossed. I see my purse sitting in her lap.
"I've been expecting y'all," she says, not making any effort to stand up when we come in. She taps her fingers in an off-beat rhythm on the side of my purse. Eerie.
"The officer outside said you found a purse, Miss," Afton says, not understanding the woman's cocky attitude. A little tickle of fear wiggles down my spine. I know what's going on in her mind under her white lace cap. She knows I'm passing and she hates me because I'm light-skinned and people classify me as white when I'm not.
"Yes, ma'am, I found a purse," the maid says, drawing out her words slow-like, like sticky taffy that gets you all tangled up. Like how I feel at this moment. "Let me guess which one of you young ladies is Miss Louise Pardue--"
"I am," I cry out, holding out my hand for my purse. I want to take it and get outta here. Why do I feel like that? I'm not a thief. Why am I acting like a woman who just came in from the cotton fields?
"So, you're Miss Pardue...from Summer Bend, Alabama," the maid says, triumph in her voice. I freeze. She must have looked at my school ID card. Every Southern Negro who's ever traveled to Alabama knows Summer Bend is a colored section with homesteads sitting along uneven rows of red dirt lanes with only a post office and a general store. This woman knows. She stands up and glares at me. I know what's in her mind. She's thinkin', You're colored and you're passing.
"May I have my purse...please?" I ask, holding out my hand, praying she won't say anything. She makes no move to give it to me.
Her voice is a lazy Southern drawl as she says, "My late husband had relations from Alabama. Good, clean colored folks who lived not too far from--"
"My purse, please," I say loudly, nearly shouting. Afton looks at me strangely. I make a move toward the woman, ready to tear the purse out of her hand if she gives me any trouble. I won't let her give me away. I won't. She has no right to act like this toward me. I'm not doing anything wrong. I have to pass for white or I won't get into college. I can't afford to go to a Negro college, seeing how most of them are located in the South. Why doesn't anyone understand that? How can I explain how many times I've been told I have the grades for law school and it's too bad I'm colored? Even if you get into a school, they won't let you stay in the dorms and nobody'll rent to a colored student close-by to the college.
I take a long swallow, ready to grab my purse, when--
"What's going on in here?"
I swing around, choking on my own saliva. It's Gillian, standing at the door, hands on her hips. "Why aren't you two out on the floor?" she asks.
I was so engrossed in getting my purse that I didn't hear her come in. I shut my eyes. Oh, no, this is the worst moment of my life. I feel like I'm facing a lynch mob. I remember when I was in high school and a boy was lynched in Mississippi for merely whistling at a white woman. I'm passing for a white woman. Is that a worse sin? Or does it matter? However it's looked at, I'm breaking the law of challenging white supremacy and that's what is at stake here. Somehow, I know Gillian would never tolerate a Negro Kennedy Girl in her group.
"We were just leaving, Gillian," Afton says, plucking my purse outta the maid's hand as easily as a bird nibbling at the crust of Grandma Eldy's peach cobbler. No fear, no backtalk. No accusations. The sweetness of the moment lingers on my dry tongue, giving me a great deal of satisfaction. Why couldn't I do that?
"I left my purse in here, Gillian," I say, nodding my thanks to Afton as she hands me the purse. She smiles, but the maid isn't finished with me.
"Before you go, Miss Pardue, you should know someone took the money outta your wallet," the colored woman says, flicking her tongue against her front teeth, making it sound like corn crackling. "Is everything else there?"
"Yes, I think so," I say, looking inside my purse. She's right about the money missing. The two dollars that Grandma Eldy gave me is gone.
"Don't worry, Louise, I have enough pin money for both of us," Afton says easily. She opens the door and we walk back into the hotel corridor. Back into the world I created where no one knows who I am. I feel the sweat dripping down my back.
"Thanks, Afton. I-I'll pay you back," I promise, but Afton shakes her head.
"Forget it, Louise, you'd do the same if it were me," she says, dismissing that thought as if it were as longlasting as holding a cotton candy cone over a hot stove.
But it wouldn't be you, I want to say. At the thought of what Grandma Eldoris would say if she knew what a coward I'm turning out to be, a coldness closes around my heart, and it comes as no surprise to me that I can't breathe. I don't say a word. As usual, I keep quiet, let out a big sigh. The worst is over.
Or is it?
Gillian is right at our heels, like a pesky butterfly that flaps its wings in your face, daring you to reach out and grab it. I want nothing to do with her. Neither does Afton, I can see, by the rolling of her eyes. Gillian doesn't get the message and keeps talking.
"You can be sure that colored woman took your money, Louise," Gillian says with assurance, following us. Who needs her opinion? Not me. She doesn't quit, however. "Damn Negroes, you can't trust them, my mother always says. It's no wonder they set the police dogs after them, stick them with cattle prods, and turn the fire hoses on them on those pro-integration marches. As for me, I don't pay attention to it. It's not my concern."
I haven't spoken a word, but Afton seems to have her own agenda.
She stops outside Kennedy headquarters and faces off to Gillian, like a general attacking before dawn. "What is it with everybody around here?" she accuses. "First the police officer suggested the colored woman was a thief, and now you. What's wrong with you people? You all act as if this is the Old South and slavery, with its horrible, despicable violation of human rights, is still a way of life. I thought times were changing and we don't judge people by the color of their skin anymore. Obviously some of you haven't gotten the message."
Gillian's mouth drops open. It's obvious she doesn't take well to being challenged, especially by someone she considers to be beneath her social status.
"Everybody knows that colored people aren't the same as we are," she says evenly, her voice sounding cultured and perfect, like she's delivering a speech to the Philadelphia Garden Club on pruning petunias. "My mother says Negroes don't have the same intellect or work ethic. Why, they even smell different."
"You're right, Gillian, it does smell," Afton says. "Like rotting fish too spoiled to feed to the hounds."
Gillian narrows her eyes. "Don't forget where you are, Afton. This is Kennedy headquarters and we won't stand for that kind of liberal talk."
"Liberal? I'm talking about basic freedoms, like when Senator Kennedy stood up for civil rights in Mississippi," Afton states flatly. "He said that he accepted the Supreme Court decision as the supreme law of the land, meaning he believes in integrated schools."
"Oh, I get it," Gillian says, twisting her red lips into an ugly scowl. Who woulda thought someone so pretty could look so ugly. "You're one of those crazy civil rights radicals my mother's always talking about. I know your type, with your nonviolent protests, following the tactics of Gandhi in India. You think that's going to work here in the United States? Think again, you can't change people's hearts with protests. You'll see."
Afton takes her on. "What if I am willing to fight for civil rights? Senator Kennedy believes in equality for everyone and that's good enough for me," she says. "C'mon, Louise, we're Kennedy Girls, and we've got a job to do."
I look back at Gillian. She doesn't try to hide her anger. Instead she flaunts it. She rips off her skimmer hat and stomps on it with her high heel. Afton grins at me. I shake my head. I feel more ashamed of my own actions than those of the blonde Democrat with the word prejudice written across her pretty brow. I'm gonna have a heap of explainin' to do to my grandmother about what happened here today, how I lost my money and my pride. I don't think the situation is amusing. Gillian won't give up trying to get rid of us. As Grandma Eldoris would say, you're in a mess of trouble now, child.
Fear returns to me in a rush, and with it comes a dangerously fierce determination so intense it rattles my brain, a sense of determination which I must reaffirm at this moment or I will be lost: I will help Senator Kennedy get the Presidential nomination and those who try to stop me will pay the price.
The only question is, how many will get hurt along the way?
GILLIAN
July 9, 1960
The Biltmore Hotel--The Eighth Floor
I don't believe that girl cornered me, insulted me, and put me down like that, but she did. Obviously she was not only expressing her distaste for what most people think is true but she had the nerve, or should I say the courage, to say it out loud. I'm sure she's a liberal white sympathizer. She was in a rage, a madness reserved for protest marches, like the one I heard that Negro leader from Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, is planning for tomorrow after a rally at the Shrine Auditorium.
Anyway, I ruined a perfectly good set of high heels because of her. Scratched the white leather on the heel completely off. Do I care? I'll just run over to J.W. Robinson's and buy another pair of shoes.
That's not what's bothering me. It's a deeper cut that's got me all upset. Imagine her thinking she could tell me, Gillian Young of the Philadelphia Chestnut Hill Youngs, a society deb and recipient of the Young Democrats Award for Student of the Year, how to run the Kennedy Girls.
This is my gig. I'm the leader here. How dare she challenge that?
I push the thought of that little nobody out of my mind as I open the door to my father's suite. A residue scent of tobacco smoke and aftershave greets me as I note the blue and lavender color scheme with touches of pink here and there, even in the fresh flowers on the cocktail table. There's a fireplace at one end and a big television set, as well as an elegant mahogany table and chairs and a huge bathroom. It's the coolest. The eighth floor of the Biltmore Hotel is where all the political bigwigs hang out, though I had to bribe the maid to tell me that Senator Kennedy's suite is on the ninth floor. Number 9335. He's not in, she swore. His personal secretary, Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, keeps shooing everybody outta there.
I smile. No one's in here either. My father and his cronies must be holed up in the hotel bar, arguing over whether or not to offer Lyndon Johnson the post of Vice-President when Kennedy gets the nomination. I don't care much for that big Texan with his slow drawl and sweaty handshake, but as my father says, Kennedy is weak among Southern Democrats because of his Catholic religion and background, and he needs someone to help him take the South. As for me, I don't care if they give the VP job to Ed Sullivan. Nothing changes anyway. They talk and talk and talk and do nothing. Kinda like my mother's bridge club.
I toss away my plastic straw skimmer, ripping off my Kennedy badge, then lie down on the divan and close my eyes. I open them again when I see that Afton and her sneer replayed in my head.
It took all of my proper Philadelphia manners and a few I've not yet acquired not to send her and her impertinent attitude flying across the room. I don't need her and her saucy manner defying me. The shaky tightrope I've been walking on seems more perilous than I thought, the opportunity to reach the other side more doubtful, and the pit below more ominous.
The pit, better known as my life, is always there, ready for me to take a dive. Sometimes I feel like jumping off and letting my so-called life consume me, then I change my mind when I see what's waiting for me on the other side. Freedom to be who I am. Gillian the Artist. A giver of souls, not the one who takes them away.
Like my mother.
Oh, God, I don't want to conjure up her face now. Not when I need time to get my composure back. I had to get out of there after that girl insulted me. I needed some fresh air, even if it was canned air. I splash cold water on my face. There's something about that Afton that bothers me. She's too free with her thoughts, standing up like she did for Negroes. No one does that except for white sympathizers.
I ran into some of them not too long ago. Mother didn't want me to take the train to New York City after those four colored students in North Carolina staged that counter sit-in, but I went anyway. It was awful. Everywhere I went I saw white sympathizers picketing the branch stores in protest against the failure of chainstore owners to desegregate. Some went so far as to raise money to pay the bail of the arrested "sit-inners," as my father calls them. I found the entire situation off-putting since it curtailed my shopping trip.
I've never spoken to a colored, except as kitchen help or a Pullman porter. I wouldn't know what to say to them. "Hi, y'all," or "Bye, y'all," is the limit of my Negro vocabulary.
A dribble of cold water slides down my neck, between my breasts. A strong, sensual need slowly sweeps over me, reminding me that I haven't met one cute guy since I've been here. I smile. Thoughts of "pre-marital intimacy" invade this private conversation I'm having with myself. (That's what my mother calls making out.) It's certainly a topic I would never discuss with her. Physical surrender isn't in her vocabulary. A bridge table is more important to her than a bedroom.
I have other ideas about bedrooms, seeing how chemistry was one of my best subjects at school. And do I know how to mix up the right formula to attract men. I can imagine how that Afton is around men. She probably doesn't know how to tease, you know what I mean, like always straightening a boy's tie or taking his hand in yours and telling his fortune. Old tricks, but they work.
Oh, do they.
Forget Afton Leigh, I tell myself, dabbing my face dry with a big, fluffy towel. As if I care about her. She's no competition, though her little mousy-mouthed friend, Louise, is pretty. Rich, dark hair. Big, grey eyes. And flawless skin. She looks like a lost kitten. I pucker my lips, fixing my lipstick, dismissing her. I'm sure she'd run all the way home if a man looked at her twice.
I grab another white plastic straw skimmer out of the box of extra hats and adjust it at just the right angle on my head. Saucy. That's what the men like. A girl who knows how to flirt. How to sway her hips, tilt her head to the side. Not one of those prim debutantes my mother fusses about constantly.
"Don't make eye contact with a gentleman first, Gillian," she's always lecturing me. "Keep your legs crossed when you sit down, and never talk to a strange gentleman without being introduced by a reputable source."
I stopped listening to my mother years ago.
The harridan, I call her. That means shrew. A horrible woman and that fits my mother to a "T." She's rich, thin, and her nail polish never chips. And she'll tell anybody who asks her that God wrote the Blue Book of high society people before he wrote the Bible. According to her, Philadelphia bluebloods follow their own rules, most of them made by my grandmother. A tall, not so thin, but feisty woman, she survived the Titanic with her mother's jewels and her reputation intact and went on to marry one of the richest men in the country. My mother married an even richer man, and before I was born my mother and my grandmother had already picked out the man I'm to marry. I clench my fists, hold them to my sides. This is the thought that paralyzes me when, if I'm not careful, I'm going to find myself wearing nothing but a 24-karat gold ribbon and sold off as prime stock to the highest bidder on the New York Stock Exchange. I'm determined to show my mother that I can find my own husband sans her and her silly rules.
I haven't told them yet but I'm not marrying anybody. First I want a career in art. I'm a painter. Oils, mostly. Portraits. My grandmother loved to collect art, mostly the painters she met in Europe like Picasso and Matisse, but she also bought nineteenth century portraits. Gainsborough, Sargent. When I was a little girl, I would stare at the faces on canvas and wonder who they were, what they were like, these gentry folk in their satin and velvet.
I like to put down on canvas what's underneath the skin of the people I paint. Who they really are. The essence of their souls. I applied to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and got accepted, though my mother thinks I'm going to Pitzer Women's College in Claremont, California. (I graduated from Miss Porter's School in Connecticut and I have no desire, intention, or thought of going to an Eastern college. That's why I chose California.) There's something both elegant and gritty about San Francisco that makes me know it's going to be an interesting place to be in this new Kennedy era.
And there's another reason: San Francisco is about as far away as I can get from my mother.
Why do I want to get away from her? Simple. I have no freedom. Never have. Not since I put on my first pair of white gloves and perfect pearls.
"Wear this outfit, Gillian, it suits your coloring," she'll tell me. "You're going to this private school, not Bishop Newmann High. You must vacation in the Hamptons, join the Society of Liberty Belles. As the daughter of Stanford Young, it's your duty."
Duty, she calls it. I call it slavery.
But not this week.
This week belongs to me.
I almost didn't get to the Democratic National Convention and I wouldn't have if Mother had her way.
"You are not going out to California and soil your pretty hands or your reputation with those people, Gillian," my mother hammered into my head for weeks. "Politics is a dirty business."
"But I want to get a suntan, Mother," I said, not hiding my sarcasm. As usual, she ignored me. Whatever I do, good or bad, I exist only in her mind as the eligible-to-get-married daughter of Mrs. Stanmore Young. Nothing more.
"If you're insisting on ruining your skin, Gillian, we can go to St. Tropez," she continued. "However, I forbid you to go to the Democratic National Convention."
"Daddy says I can go."
"Humph, your father has no idea what can happen to a young girl in an arena like that. All those two-legged liberal males spouting the blight of McCarthyism, not to mention the cold political fish who run around calling themselves do-gooders for democracy," she argued. "Besides, you can't stay in a hotel all alone with an assemblage of politicians."
"You mean delegates, Mother."
"Whatever they call themselves, they're still men."
I had to smile. What does my mother know about men? I think the first time a boy kissed her was the last time. She has no concept of the word, intimacy, other than to warn me how to avoid it and how dangerous it can be. As if I listen to her. I've had my own experiences with dating. Men usually tend to classify women with the line, "will she or won't she?" With my mother, the line goes "did she ever and in what century was it?" I call her the old purple prune eater. She and my father have had separate quarters for years.
I didn't give up trying to convince her to let me go.
I said, "Daddy said he would rent an apartment for me."
"An apartment by yourself?" my mother said, horrified to think I might actually function without her daily lectures. "That's absurd, Gillian. You'll do nothing of the kind."
I let out a deep breath, stalling. Then it came to me. "We could rent a house for the Golden Girl hostesses. Then I wouldn't be by myself."
That didn't satisfy my mother either. What did I expect? This is a woman who doesn't know how to be satisfied, in or out of the bedroom.
"I don't like it, Gillian, you never know what type of girl you might attract--"
"All of the Golden Girls are carefully screened, especially those working for the Kennedy camp. We could invite only Kennedy Girls to be our guests. It would be like a big sorority house," I said. I hesitated a moment, then I played my trump card. "I forgot to ask you, Mother, did Chace call today?"
Chace Randolph III is my mother's hot prospect for a future son-in-law. I don't know which impresses her more, his name or his family's millions. Made in ketchup, yet.
"No, he hasn't called, dear," she said innocently, though I could tell her mother-in-law antennae were all the way up. "Was Chace supposed to call?" Her voice was a bit shaky. I was secretly pleased that she might for a moment have heart palpitations, thinking something was amiss with her carefully made plans.
"Oh, he's probably been too busy to call. He and his mother are traveling with Mrs. Roosevelt from her Compobello Island summer home out to California. She's scheduled to make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention."
I smiled as big as I did when they snapped my picture after I was crowned Deb of the Year for 1959. That was the pink icing on the wedding cake. Gaughin pink. The favorite color of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, our soon-to-be next First Lady. My mother, however, is a big fan of the former First Lady and when she heard that Mrs. Roosevelt and Chace and his mother were coming to Los Angeles, she couldn't say no to my plan.
She loves the idea of me hobnobbing with important Democrats like Chace. I don't. A dwarf in an Ibsen play has more panache than he does. He's short, has greasy, dark hair that's forever tangled, and he has pimples, even though he's in college. Princeton, pre-law. Who cares?
And he's filthy rich, according to my mother's snooping into his family's New York bank accounts. It also doesn't hurt that he has family connections, like the Archbishop of Canterbury. Can you imagine me sitting around in a cold and dreary London cathedral drinking tea out of a china cup and debating over whether to have milk or lemon with it, while dabbing my mouth with a monogrammed napkin and sneaking a biscuit (I mean, cookie), and making conversation like, "It looks like rain, Archbishop, and I didn't bring my brolly."
Oh, please.
I don't care who Chace Randolph III drinks tea with, I like men who are tall, broad-shouldered, and have a swagger to their walk and to their talk. Dangerous men. With interesting ideas about how to have a good time. Like the college boys I met last month at the Hamptons. (I did listen to my mother about where to vacation. For once she was right.)
A curious thrill wiggles through my toes, even in my high heel pumps. I'll never forget the Phi Kappa Psi boys who took me to Greenwich Village in New York City when my mother had one of her female spells and couldn't get out of bed. I had the most wonderful time. All night we hit divey dives in the Village, listening to jazz and beatniks spouting poetry and watching colored acts.
We did other things, too. Things I never do with the stuffed shirts my mother picks out for me. Like drinking cool, tropical drinks and warm brandies, and inhaling dreamy, brown cigarettes that give you the ultimate high. A buzz. And then everything seems so wonderful. No problems. Just wonderful.
Like I wish I were feelin' now. I've got to get over my bad mood. As much as anything I have yet experienced today, this down feeling, which won't disappear, fills me with a heightened awareness of where I am in my life and how I must change it.
I close the door to my father's suite and the sound of voices makes me look down the hall. Though the light in the hotel is dimmed, the sunlight coming in through the end window is bright enough to cast a golden spotlight on everything in view. My eyes quickly find what I know instantly is something I don't want to miss. The young man coming out of suite 8315. He's so handsome. More so than the man with him. I recognize that man as Ted Kennedy, the youngest of what some delegates have started calling the Kennedy Klan. Everybody thought he was his older brother earlier today.
I thought it was a bit gauche of him to shake hands and sign autographs, but everyone knows the Kennedys are new money and people are still getting used to them. My father says that's why the Senator's been touring the country nonstop, making himself better known to the electorate. Those opposed to Kennedy say he did so to avoid spending time in his Senate seat so he wouldn't have to deal with major controversial issues.
They don't know what they're talking about. What could be more controversial than all this civil rights talk that Kennedy's gotten himself involved with?
I know Jack Kennedy, if only by seeing him at my mother's fund-raising galas for the Democratic Party. My father is a prominent attorney and a good friend of the Senator's late brother, Joe. Let me tell you, Jack is the living end.
Am I jazzed that my father's room is near the Kennedys' suite. The nerve center, they call it. Everyone says Kennedy and his staff are breaking all the rules, doing things fast and doing whatever it takes to get the Senator from Massachusetts elected. With the help of his large, active, and wealthy family, according to my father, Kennedy has developed a very efficient and effective political organization.
It doesn't hurt that he also wrote a Pulitzer-prizewinning book, Profiles in Courage after the last convention in '56.
So who is this dreamy-looking guy that I don't know coming out of the Kennedy suite?
"Hi, I'm Johnny Kingsley," he says when I sashay over to him and ask him his name outright, breaking my mother's number one rule about talking to a guy until we've been properly introduced. Umm, that felt good, Mother.
"I'm Gillian Young," I say, offering him my hand. I know I'm being forward, even going so far as to tilt my head to one side and raise and lower my Maybelline lashes. He shakes my hand, then I break the rules by holding onto him longer than I should. I see his eyes pop open wide, then he grins. I smile. So, he's a little shy. I like that, Mr. Kingsley.
"You don't mean the Youngs of Chestnut Hill?" he asks.
I nod, wetting my lips with my tongue. "I do."
"Then you must be Stanmore Young's daughter," he says, impressed. I smile big. Who wouldn't be? My father is one of the biggest supporters, as in financial contributors, to the Democratic Party. Sometimes I think it's because it gives him an excuse to get away from my mother for two weeks every four years. Although my parents have been married for what must seem like a century, they have always lived separate lives. That includes from their kids as well. I hadn't seen my brother in years. He's an aide to some ambassador in the Far East.
"Do you work for the Kennedys?" I ask him.
"Yes," he answers. Then checking me out, he says, "How do you like being a Kennedy Girl?"
"I adore it," I answer quickly, raising my eyebrows to the top of my head. I brush my hand against his shoulder.
Enjoyed it.
He knows it.
He takes my arm by the elbow and leads me toward the elevator. "Going my way?"
"Yes, I'm on my way back to Kennedy headquarters downstairs," I say, turning on the tease. Wetting my lips again, tilting my head. Pulling up my bust.
"I've gotta get this walkie-talkie to one of our guys on the floor."
"Oh, really?" I say, wondering who this handsome guy is, knowing only that he works for the Kennedy camp, but who is he? A cousin? One of the Shrivers? A Bouvier?
"Yeah, we're in constant contact with the nerve center with these walkie-talkies. They're so sensitive and so powerful, at times we get lucky and we can monitor the Stevenson camp as well."
He smiles big, proud of that fact. I smile back, but not for the same reason. He has the most adorable dimple on his left cheek when he smiles. I prattle on for the next few minutes about all the excitement of the convention.
I find out he's what they call a delegate-shepherd, young men who keep track of the delegates and who they're going to vote for on the first ballot on Wednesday. Everyone's saying that Kennedy has six hundred committed votes and if he can sway the big states of California and Pennsylvania, he can win the Presidential nomination on the first ballot. (Johnny told me the Senator needs seven hundred sixty-one votes to win the nomination.) I doubt it, seeing how the delegates I've met seem more interested in going to Disneyland or Grauman's Chinese Theater or the beach than anything else.
Johnny tells me his job keeps him hopping, checking on the delegates and their votes. I ask him why it's so important to keep checking and he says it goes like this: Even if the Senator has won a primary, like in Maryland, it doesn't mean their votes are bound to him in the voting process. I say that's like shopping for a new dress and changing your mind when the salesgirl is writing up the saleslip. He laughs at that as we get into the elevator.
Afterward we chat about the usual dumb stuff you talk about when you meet someone new. Where he goes to school. USC. The University of Southern California. Nice. He's on the football team. Mother will approve, but I won't hold that against him. He just got his pilot's license. Mmm, he's going places. And he drives a T-bird with portholes. A little small for parking and making out, but we'll manage.
We chat for a few minutes about the Truman controversy and how the former President said he wouldn't attend the convention because Kennedy wasn't even dry behind the ears. I think more about nibbling on Johnny's ear, but I keep my sexy desire to myself. I don't find out anything more about Johnny Kingsley as we waltz back into Kennedy headquarters, but I will. The night is still young. As in Gillian, no pun intended.
The convention doesn't officially open until five o'clock Monday afternoon with the keynote address by Senator Frank Church of Idaho. I don't think all that information is important, but it doesn't hurt knowing it if I can impress Johnny Kingsley.
Anyway, I intend to go slowly with my planned seduction of him. I have all day Sunday to find out more about this dreamy guy.
Silly me. I didn't count on something called chemistry.
Johnny's eyes move quickly around the large ballroom, searching for his teammate, when suddenly he pulls on my arm.
"Wow, who is she?" he whispers in my ear. I lean in closer to him. His hot breath sends me tingling, but his question leaves me cold.
"She who?" I ask.
"That beautiful girl over there by the flagpole. The one with the big smile and dark brown hair. I've got to meet her."
Echoing in my mind is his voice--I've got to meet her--and I cringe. My pursuit of this handsome young man goes into high gear. I can beat any competition. I learned from my father you've got to be tough if you want to succeed and get them before they get you.
I spin around to see who caught his attention.
I don't believe it. This is ridiculous. An insult. He's pointing to that little bigmouth, Afton Leigh.
I tear the skimmer off my head. Only a deep breath and my pride make me catch myself before I stick the heel of my shoe through my hat. Again. Why would he want to talk to her when he has me? Didn't I come out in society when I turned seventeen at Mother's insistence to get a leg up on the competition? I routinely get my picture in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the Society Page, and last week I had a quarter-page lay-out wearing a cute bathing suit with the caption "Splash Session" under my name.
And I don't go around shooting my mouth off about political issues I know nothing about. Like the Negro question. Imagine, her telling people that coloreds often are refused credit and have their mortgages foreclosed, and that White Citizen Councils routinely boycott their places of business. Who cares? They're just Negroes.
I look back at Johnny. He's still gawking at that Afton girl like she's a 3-D production in Cinerama and stereophonic sound. Seeing her and not me, and I'm standing just a kiss and a breeze away from him. I feel the blonde hairs on my head standing up, exposing my dark roots. My dark side.
I pull off my gloves and bare my red nails. Or should I say claws. I'm ready for action. I've gotten rid of the competition before and I can do it again.
Oh, can I.
* * *
"Afton, this is Johnny Kingsley," I say, garbling the words like my mouth is full of marbles. If it was, I'd spit them out at her. One by one.
"Hi, Afton," Johnny says, smiling at her.
"Hi," she says.
I do a double take, roll my eyes upward. That's all she can say is hi? What is it with this girl? One minute you can't shut her up talking about civil rights and coloreds and the next she's a one-syllable chick.
"Johnny works for the Kennedys," I say, looping my arm through his. "Their suite is down the hall from my father's."
Johnny turns to me, smiles briefly, though I swear he's looking at Afton again while he's talking to me. "Are you staying with your dad, Gillian?"
"No, we, I mean, the Kennedy Girls, have our own apartment on North Rossmore," I say, though now I wish I hadn't come up with that dumb idea. First of all, I don't need Afton and her mousy friend Louise hanging around me, and second, who knew such a dreamboat would be hanging out so close to my father's suite?
"Are you staying at the apartment, too, Afton?" he asks. She nods. He smiles big at her. "That's the wildest."
"Yeah?" she says.
I lift my eyebrows. What is going on? No one's paying any attention to me. Have I disappeared? The two of them act like there's no one else in the room, though the Kennedy headquarters is bursting with delegates and curious sightseers and it's almost ten o'clock. I lift up my shoulders, stand taller. I'm not diggin' this scene and I'm going to do something about it.
"Excuse me, Johnny," I butt in, though I'm careful to keep my voice sweet and low, "but don't you have to go find Ted Kennedy?"
"Yeah, in a minute," he says, then to Afton, "Nobody knows it, but Senator Kennedy has a penthouse hideaway on North Rossmore at number--"
He looks around, then bends down and whispers something in Afton's ear. Her eyes open wide.
"No kiddin'?" she says.
He nods, smiles at her.
I let out a deep breath. This is it. I've had enough. I found him and I want him.
I start to make my move, but before I can pull Johnny away from Afton we hear a call coming in on his walkie-talkie filled with static. He excuses himself and takes the call, then with a worried look on his face, he heads out into the crowd to deliver a message to one of his shepherd-delegates. Something about the Stevenson camp making headway with delegates from New York and whittling down Kennedy's expected hundred votes to less than eighty.
Who cares? I can't wait until he comes back. Sometimes there is nothing to be done but to make a move quickly. I've got to get rid of this girl.
"No more chit chat, Afton. Back to work," I say, asserting myself with more confidence than I feel. "You and Louise grab some coffee and buns and go and win over those delegates coming in. They look hungry."
Afton shoots me a look that clearly says she's no fool. I don't like this girl. She's bold, brassy, and reminds me of the kind of girl at school who gets good grades without cheating.
"I don't think they're the only ones who are hungry, Gillian," she says, ready to add something until her friend Louise grabs her by the arm.
"Be careful what you say, Afton," Louise says in a low voice. "We don't want to lose our jobs."
"We won't," Afton says, glaring at me. "The Queen needs her worker bees so she can make honey with the delegates."
That did it. I let her have it."If you know what's good for you, Miss Leigh," I say in a crisp voice, "you'll keep your political comments to yourself when you talk to Southern delegates."
"Just like you intend to keep Johnny Kingsley to yourself?" Afton shoots back.
I dislike her more by the minute. Her smart talk, her pretty face. Her courage to say what she thinks. I don't often do that, especially around my father. He's Irish, he's tough, and he talks about the gross national product as if it were his own personal grocery list. He makes his living by analyzing other people's problems with a high degree of success. His law office handles corporate law, mostly big company mergers and takeovers. He works so hard the lights never go out in his offices, so I've never gotten to know my father very well. In the end he pays the bills, so I do what he asks.
When he's not around, I use his money and his influence to get what I want. It's a Philadelphia thing. Like the Liberty Bell, hoagies, and soft pretzels. We're unique.
I say, "I'm not going to repeat myself, Afton Leigh. As Kennedy Girls, we are representing the Senator from Massachusetts and I expect all the volunteers to be held to the highest moral standard or else I shall have you sent home."
Afton glances over at Louise and I see a look pass between them. In spite of my anger, I can see my words have had the effect I wanted. Louise looks so upset at the thought of being sent home that Afton backs down off her soapbox and assures her she will do nothing to jeopardize their jobs, least of all her attitude. I am not surprised by her sudden change in attitude, but that's not what's bothering me. I feel a tinge of jealousy. I never had a friend who would go to bat for me like that. Sure, I know a lot of girls, but when you have as much money as my family does, friends are as easy to get as tax write-offs. And as phony.
I shake off the feeling of loneliness, because that's what it is. Loneliness. I never realized it until now. That's why I paint, why I look for the truth in the faces I paint, hoping to find someone who cares for me, Gillian, and not the girl on the society page.
"You don't have to worry, Gillian," Afton says finally, "I'll do my job. One thing I won't do is keep quiet about civil rights. Senator Kennedy supports freedom for everybody, even you."
Then she takes off, leaving a trail of unspoken arguments that have me believing it's not over between us. Not by a long shot.
"Don't worry about Afton," Louise says quietly, trying to smile at me. "She's a good worker. All the delegates like her." I don't look at her. She's too pretty for her own good.
"Tell your friend to do her job and keep away from me." I walk away, leaving a bit of my pride there as well. I look for Johnny Kingsley through the crowd of people jamming together in Kennedy headquarters. I don't see him anywhere. He probably went back to suite 8315, the Kennedy nerve center.
I head for the elevator, thinkin' I should check to see if my father is back in his suite. He can have one of his aides find Johnny for me.
I get into the elevator and before the door closes, I see Afton Leigh and her mousy friend Louise talking to a tall, beautiful woman in a black dress. Who is she? By the flash of the red rose on her expensive suit, I predict she's someone my mother would invite to her tea and crumpet parties. The Queen of Hearts. I ignore the woman. She's not important to me, but my curiosity about this Afton in Wonderland is making my snoopy rabbit's nose twitch. There's something about that girl that doesn't sit right with me, and if I have to dig myself into a hole, I'm going to find out what that something is.
AFTON
July 9, 1960
The Biltmore Hotel, then the Santa Monica Pier
A perfectly shaped nose. A full, pretty mouth. Red sateen lips. Blush and smoothly-applied powder. My eyes sweep slowly around her head to the smoothly braided French twist held in place by what must be Parisian bobby pins. It could only be my father's sister.
Aunt Jeanette.
"You're the most, Aunt Jeanette," I tell her, admiring how stylish she looks in her black silk suit adorned with a fluffy red rose on the jacket. "Cool outfit."
"Italian silk, my dear, and it cost me a fortune. Ninety-eight-ninety-five," Aunt Jeanette whispers, her head bouncing, her body standing tall and elegant, her eyes noticing everything and everybody around us. "On sale."
I look at Louise, smile big. I know what she's thinking. Nobody except movie stars and my Aunt Jeanette would spend that much money on a suit. I can't imagine my mother paying that much for her entire fall wardrobe. I don't think Louise can either, but she doesn't know my Aunt Jeanette. If you ask her, she'll tell you she's a self-styled adventuress on a budget. I know she works hard at not letting anybody know she works at all. She's a private secretary to a bigshot with a major real estate corporation and she travels around the country overseeing his charities. According to my mom, her boss's favorite cause is the Democratic Party. That's why Aunt Jeanette has met just about every Democratic bigwig since Roosevelt.
Including the former First Lady.
"Is Mrs. Roosevelt coming to the convention?" I ask her as Louise fills up my aunt's coffee cup. Aunt Jeanette rolls her eyes when I try to give her a cinnamon bun. She says she's on something called the grapefruit diet.
"She's already here, Afton, though Mrs. Roosevelt is not happy with your boy, Jack," Aunt Jeanette says, sipping her black coffee and raising her eyebrows up and down, making them dance with amusement.
"You mean Senator Kennedy?" Louise asks, her eyes wide and disbelieving. She looks disturbed.
"Yes, and you know what a tither she gets into over things like that. Why, I remember back at the convention in Chicago in '56 when she wanted Jack Kennedy to acknowledge the damage that lunatic McCarthy did to the whole country with his blacklisting campaign and not just to the Senate. Jack wouldn't do it. Well, that did it. Now she's supporting Stevenson."
"Why wouldn't Kennedy talk about McCarthy, Mrs. Houston?" Louise asks, biting on her lip nervously. "He's got to get the nomination and I know he'll do anything to get it."
"The Senator lives by a set of strict rules and that meant not denouncing a man already long gone from the political scene. Try telling that to Mrs. Roosevelt, though I don't know why she doesn't run for office herself. Everyone knows she turned down a chance at the Vice-Presidency back in '48 when Truman asked her...Louise, isn't it?" Aunt Jeanette asks, putting the young girl's face in her mental card file for future reference.
An awareness that life is an interesting journey is at the core of my sudden realization that something fascinating has just occurred. Between my Aunt Jeanette and Louise, I mean. A meeting of two very different minds and that, I know, intrigues my aunt.
"Yes, ma'am," Louise says. "My name is Louise Pardue."
I notice that Louise's hand is shaking as she puts down the coffee pot. She's tired. So am I. We've been working at Kennedy headquarters since we got here this afternoon and it's nearly ten o'clock.
"Mrs. Roosevelt has her hopes set on Stevenson getting the Presidential nomination," Aunt Jeanette says. "She doesn't understand Kennedy and his views. But she will. Mark my words, she's been coming to conventions for forty years and she'll see the light. With my help, of course."
My Aunt Jeanette lives by the philosophy that life is a passing parade of change. They come and they go, according to her, change names, but not desire or need. When one character reacts negative to another, it is Aunt Jeanette's motto to get in the middle and change it.
"Dad said you were good at charming the pants off everybody you meet," I can't resist telling her, knowing she likes hearing stuff like that.
"Thank you, dear, and how is my brother, better known as the Ralph Cramden of suburbia?" she asks, smiling, and referring to the loud-mouthed, chauvinistic character on the Honeymooners television show.
"Dad never changes," I say.
"That's the problem, Afton," Aunt Jeanette says, scouting the room. "He never changes. I don't know how your mother can stand him."
"She says she's happy, Aunt Jeanette."
My aunt ponders that thought for a moment, then she says, "I think she is, Afton."
I blink. That surprises me, then I hear her say something I never expected. "Your father is a good man, Afton, even if he is...well, you know what he is. A racist who thinks the Negro vote is a threat to him and his business partners."
I tune that thought out of my mind (I've had enough racist talk for the day), and think about what she said about my mother being happy in her marriage. I don't understand what she means, but then again I don't always understand Aunt Jeanette. She's beautiful, independent, and sassy. I smile as I watch her charm a couple of delegates from South Carolina with a Southern drawl that impresses Louise.
"What are two handsome men like y'all doin' by yourselves?" she says, smiling like a tulip dancing in the sun. She drops compliments like they were hankies and the men pick up every one of them.
"Your Aunt Jeanette is what my grandmother would call a fine lady of the house," Louise says, smiling.
"She's the spiffiest," I say, marveling at how she has the delegates charmed and hog-tied in less than two minutes.
"Pin a couple of Kennedy badges on these two delightful gentlemen from my home state of South Carolina, will y'all?" Aunt Jeanette says, returning arm-in-arm with two smiling men.
"Sure enough, Aunt Jeanette," I say, smiling and pinning Kennedy badges on the two delegates. However, there's a new shindig about to take place and I shoulda known Aunt Jeanette would be right in the middle of it.
"Oh, there's my favorite Senator over there," she says, pulling down her suit jacket and adjusting her red rose. We see Kennedy coming into the headquarters and it's like a newsreel of El on a promotional tour with girls jumping up and down and screaming and squealing. I can see Kennedy going out of his way to go through the crowd shaking as many hands as he can.
I feel my hand itchin'. I wish we could get closer to him so I can shake his hand, but the crowd is overwhelming.
"It is Senator Kennedy," Louise whispers to me, straightening her straw skimmer. "Isn't he wonderful?"
I smile to myself. The Senator has that effect on every woman, including me. I stand up taller.
"He's the most..." I say, peering into the crowd pushing in front of me. I'm unable to get through and before we know it, the Senator's gone, hustled into the press room so reporters can get a hint of what he's going to talk about on Meet the Press tomorrow. Then I see someone waving to Aunt Jeanette and rushing toward us. Oh, no, it's--
"Johnny, come here and meet my niece and her friend," Aunt Jeanette says, bringing Johnny Kingsley over to us.
"We've already met, Mrs. Houston," Johnny says, smiling big at me. I melt. I gotta take a time-out and explain why everybody calls my aunt Mrs. Houston, though she has never been married. She uses a married name because then she can "get away with anything short of murder," or so she says. If I'm lucky, she tells me, I'll see the day when women aren't judged as "Miss" or "Mrs."
"Hi, Afton...Louise," Johnny says to both of us, but he keeps his eyes on me. Fabulous baby blues that sparkle in the light. Is he the living end or what? I never thought I'd meet anybody like Johnny Kingsley at the convention. He's not just cute, but smart and ambitious. And get this, he works for the Kennedys. Wow, can you imagine what my father would say about that? I'm not gonna let that stop me. I'm here for the week and I'm gonna do what my heart tells me. I can't believe my luck.
Until Gillian butted in. I'm used to dealing with girls like her with their fancy backgrounds and uptown attitudes, but she really got to me with her racist talk. I get enough of that at home. I thought things would be different here.
Boy, was I wrong.
"Hi, Johnny," I say. He's still smiling at me.
"Afton is a very smart girl, Johnny," my aunt says, "first in her class at three different schools last year, right, Afton?"
"Johnny's not interested in my GPA, Aunt Jeanette," I stammer, embarrassed.
"Yes, he is, Afton, dear. Men like women who are intelligent," she says, moistening her lips, then adding, "among other things."
"Have you seen my father yet, Mrs. Houston?" Johnny asks her.
"Not yet. He's probably holed up in some silly caucus with the other delegates from Wyoming, tossing names of candidates around like they're playing poker," she says, motioning to Louise for more coffee, "which they probably are." She sips her coffee and looks at us as if to say, listen to this. "Johnny's father heads up the Wyoming delegation, girls, as well as the ten thousand head of cattle on his ranch." She pauses. "Though sometimes I think the four-legged creatures are the ones who show more sense."
"I tend to agree with you, Mrs. Houston," Johnny says, then he turns to Louise and me. "Unfortunately, I haven't yet convinced my father that Kennedy is the man for the nomination."
"You mean you haven't persuaded those hard-headed cowboys there's only one candidate worth voting for?" Aunt Jeanette accuses him in a teasing manner.
"I'm trying my best, Mrs. Houston," Johnny says, "although I think your charming niece could help me influence them."
I feel my face redden as I pull down my straw skimmer so he can't see my flushed cheeks. "What can I do to help?"
"Besides being the prettiest Kennedy Girl here, along with Louise," he says diplomatically, "your aunt has told me you're quite a Kennedy supporter."
I shoot a look at my aunt that says I can't believe it. She simply smiles as if to say, It's true, isn't it?
"How about having coffee with me so we can discuss our political strategy?" Johnny asks. "We can head out to the Santa Monica Pier. Nice ocean air. Good strong coffee."
"Sounds divine, Johnny," I say. I see Gillian walk by us. Obviously, she's been listening to our entire conversation. Her nose isn't so high in the air this time. "I'll check with our coordinator, Mrs. Greenfield, and see if I can leave the floor."
"I'll wait for you by the entrance," he says, saying goodbye to my aunt and Louise.
"Oh, there's that darling Pierre Salinger," my aunt calls out, spotting someone in the crowd who's obviously very important. "I've got to talk to him about Lyndon Johnson and the number two spot. See you girls later."
My aunt rushes off, her red rose bouncing up and down on her chest. I swear the crowd parts for her like waves of grain blowing in the wind. Sometimes I think she knows more about what's going on here than anybody, including the Senator himself.
I locate Mrs. Greenfield, up to her pointy black-rimmed glasses in paperwork as usual. She checks her schedule and says Louise and I can ride with her to the North Rossmore apartment after they clear everybody out of Kennedy headquarters. Around midnight, she says.
That's boss, but I'm wonderin' if I should leave Louise here by herself. I can see she's upset about something, has been all afternoon, though she won't talk about it.
"I hate to leave you here with that preppie blonde bombshell," I tell her, pointing out Gillian giving orders to anybody who will listen to her.
"She doesn't bother me, Afton," Louise says, tidying up our corner, throwing out paper coffee cups and sticky papers. "Go to the pier with Johnny. He likes you."
"What about you, Louise?"
"Your aunt says I can go with her," Louise says, smiling. Then in a hushed voice she adds, "She's going to teach me how to act like a woman of the world."
I double blink at her. "Are you sure you want to learn that?"
Louise nods. "Oh, yes, I want to be just like your aunt. You see, I want to study law at college and your Aunt Jeanette says she knows a lot of politicians and how they think."
I shake my head. "I guess you know what you're doing."
Louise smiles. "Go on, Afton. Johnny's waiting for you."
I take off my hat and grab my purse. "He is dreamy...and nice."
"Don't forget," Louise calls after me, "be back at midnight."
"I'll be back," I say confidently, then I'm off to meet Johnny. Minutes later, I see Gillian give me a dirty look as I walk out of Kennedy headquarters with Johnny Kingsley, arm in arm.
I don't care.
I've got nothing to hide. What can she do to me?
* * *
"So after I heard Kennedy speak at the '56 convention when he lost the Vice-Presidential nomination to Kefauver by a narrow margin, I knew I had to be part of his organization," Johnny says, finishing his hot dog.
We drove to the Santa Monica Pier, parked his cute little T-bird under a palm tree, then walked out to the Pier. Bright, colored lights are strung everywhere and intertwined with Kewpie dolls hanging on wires from game booths of every description. It's loud, noisy, with popping in my ears every two minutes from the shooting gallery. I don't notice. I'm with Johnny.
"What's the Senator like? Close-up, I mean," I ask him. I haven't touched my hot dog. I love listening to him talk about Kennedy.
"I couldn't believe how calm he was after he lost the nomination for Vice-President. He was so close to victory, but it was like he had done his best and he could take anything. Even defeat."
"I wish I could have been there."
Johnny smiles at me. "Me, too."
"Yeah?"
"Then I would have met you sooner."
"I was still wearing braces back then."
"Me, too."
We laugh at that. I breathe in the sea air, feeling happy. Everything has been so dreamy, what with Johnny and me walking on the pier and munching on hot dogs and hearing him talk about how excited he is that he got his pilot's license.
Then Johnny gets serious again, his blue eyes shining with a look I've also seen in Louise's eyes. It strikes me hard. I feel goosebumps visit me, running up and down my bare arms. I can't look away from his face.
"I knew something special happened that night at the '56 convention, Afton," he says, "not just to Kennedy but to the country."
"What do you mean, Johnny?"
"It was like he reached out to everyone who saw him, registering his face, his mannerisms, his strength to their memory. I never forgot it. I knew then I had to do whatever I could to get the Senator nominated for President."
"I felt the same way after he talked about civil rights in Mississippi," I say, enjoying the warm, summer evening breeze on the pier. "It was after Little Rock and I remember thinking how the colored girls integrating Central High were no different than I am with the same problems, the same wants, the same fears. And here was Kennedy telling everybody that even if we didn't agree with integration, most people do agree we have to uphold the law. That's when I knew he had to be President."
"It was a powerful campaign speech, Afton, filled with his strong beliefs about civil rights," Johnny says, walking closer to me. I can feel my stiff crinoline bouncing into his leg. If he notices, he says nothing. "It took a lot of courage for Kennedy to speak his views on integration." He looks out into the swelling ocean. I sense a sudden tenseness in him. I know it has nothing to do with me, but he surprises me when he says, "I know a lot of men see that courage as a stumbling block."
"You mean the civil rights issue?" I ask him outright.
"Yes. It started when the New York Times ran a piece called 'Profile in Cowardice' ridiculing the Senator's stand on voting on the civil rights bill in '57. Kennedy knew he had to play by the rules, even though Humphrey and Symington wanted things done quickly with no regard to the future of the party. Kennedy has the future of all fifty states in mind, knowing that civil rights is a volatile issue that's gonna tear this country apart," he says, still looking out to sea. "And families, too."
I don't know why, but I get the feeling Johnny is grappling with something that has nothing to do with me, something he doesn't want to share. The lightness I felt earlier is gone, but I see a strength in him that draws me closer to him, a strength that makes me want to know him better.
"Kennedy's staff is determined to see him win on the first ballot, especially since they all agree he has six hundred certain votes," Johnny continues, stopping in front of the ferris wheel. Our hands are so close I can almost feel his fingers brushing against mine. I shiver, though the air is warm.
"That's gonna be tough, seeing how the California delegates haven't made up their minds yet," I answer, remembering what my Aunt Jeanette told us earlier. I stare straight up to the top of the ferris wheel, but I can feel Johnny's eyes on me. He's impressed.
"You're right, Afton, but Kennedy is an honorable man, a war hero who saved his men after their PT boat was torpedoed by the Japanese and they swam to an uninhabited island until they were rescued," he says as if he's memorized the story by heart. "I never forgot what his men said about him afterward, that he lacked the airs a millionaire ambassador's son might have been expected to have. I know that feeling myself, since I'm also the son of a hot shot millionaire."
I smile. "Yeah, I know what it's like having a difficult father." I don't want to elaborate. Instead, I say, "I guess the world of politics is like a ferris wheel." I let some cotton candy melt on my lips, kinda like a sugar kiss. I wish Johnny would kiss me.
"What do you mean?" he challenges me, a smile returning to his face.
"Well, the same issues go round and round until somebody has the courage to stop the wheel and get off and do something about it. Somebody like Senator Kennedy."
Johnny takes my hand. "I like that, Afton," he says, then his voice drops, low and husky, when he says, "and I like you. Most girls I know don't use their brains to think about important issues like that."
"Oh, and what do they think about?" I ask, trying to catch my breath, the hum of the ferris wheel mixing with the constant pounding of the surf. Or is that my heart beating faster?
"You know, girls' stuff. Shopping for clothes or getting their hair done," Johnny says, leading me down to the end of the pier where the ferris wheel casts deep shadows on the pier, away from the red and green and blue neon lights, where no one can see us. I hear him say, "You're something special, Afton."
"This is a special week," I begin, not knowing what else to say. "The whole history of our country is changing. I wrote an essay about it last semester. I called it The New Frontier."
"I like that concept, Afton. I'll pass it by the Senator, if that's okay with you," he whispers and before I know what's happening, he bends down and brushes his lips against mine. Soft, tender. I close my eyes. I must be dreaming when I feel him hold me closer, pressing my breasts up against his chest. His kiss becomes more urgent and I don't hold back when he kisses me deeply. I kiss him back, letting the moment sweep me away to a new place where I've never been before. The sweet hunger I felt earlier erupts into a raw desire that shoots down to the pit of my stomach and I don't want him to let me go.
Johnny responds to my need, not in the crude, ugly way so many guys do, moving their hands everywhere at once so you don't know what to feel, but in a warm embrace that makes me feel protected. And special.
The moment ends, although I don't want to let him go, when a coupla kids shoot by us on bicycles, nearly running us over. Johnny scoops me up into his arms and holds me close to him.
"You okay?" he asks me, his mouth again so close to mine I can feel the warmth of his breath mixing with his concern.
"I'm feeling terrif," I say, meaning it, and he looks like he's gonna kiss me again but he doesn't. I can't help but feel disappointed when he puts me down.
"I wish we could continue our political agenda," he says, teasing, then looking at his watch. "But it's almost midnight."
"I'm gonna be late," I say, my heart beating faster. "I don't want Mrs. Greenfield leaving without me."
"C'mon, I'll take you back to the Biltmore."
We jump into his little T-bird and he puts pedal to the metal, but we get caught in Saturday night traffic and it's nearly one a.m. when we pull up in front of the hotel. I wait in the car while he checks with the colored doorman. I already know the answer when he gets back into the car and speeds off. Mrs. Greenfield and her station wagon left an hour ago, he says. I know what he's thinkin'. So am I. I'm gonna be in big trouble.
We don't talk as Johnny weaves in and out of the maze of downtown streets and heads toward the Westside. I don't get to Los Angeles very often and I find myself enjoying the ride through the streets with block after block of pastel-colored houses, though my nerves are eating at me. He turns off his lights when he pulls up in front of the three-story North Rossmore apartment house in the middle of the block.
"I'll go in with you and explain to Mrs. Greenfield why you're late," Johnny says, holding my hand.
"No, I don't want to get you into trouble," I tell him.
"I don't care, Afton," he says, "it wasn't your fault."
"No, Johnny, you have an important job to do this week working for the Senator and nothing is going to stop you," I say firmly. Then before he can protest, I start up the walkway. But not before he grabs me and kisses me. Urgent yet sweet. I'll never forget it.
"You're one superboss girl, Afton," he says, then he jumps into his little T-bird and speeds off, not turning his lights on until he's halfway down the street. I stand there a moment, still trembling from his kiss. Then before I lose my courage, I run up the front steps and knock gently on the door. I don't see anyone. I wait another minute, then I can't believe it when the front door opens slowly. I peek in. It's dark. I don't see any light in the hallway.
"Is that you, Teddy?" I hear a man's voice with a strong Bostonian accent ask in the dark.
"No, it's me, Afton," I say, my heart beating so fast I start stuttering. "I'm--I'm looking for Mrs. Greenfield. Is she here?"
Silence. Then the sound of feet rushing into another room and a door closing. Quietly.
"Over here, Afton!" I hear someone calling me and I'm relieved to see Louise waving me over to a side door.
"Louise, did you see--"
"See who?" she asks me.
"I thought I saw...no, I guess it was my imagination," I say, going upstairs with Louise, knowing I did see him. The Senator. And all of a sudden, this whole week just got a lot stranger.
And more exciting.
The fairy tale has begun. All this jostling about, everyone trying to get something from somebody. And in the middle of it all is a young king trying to claim his kingdom. It reminds me of the new play I've been hearing about that's opening soon on Broadway.
It's called Camelot.
GILLIAN
July 10, 1960
Sunday Morning
I keep on my dark sunglasses as the doorman makes a path for me through the crowd of spectators hanging around the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, hoping to see somebody important. I heard one delegate tell his wife to stay put near the revolving door to avoid the crush.
"Somebody will come by," he said.
I shake my head. Delegates. You can't live with them, my father says, and you can't live without them. I'll live without them, at least for awhile.
Amid the shouts and hurrahs and the occasional boo and catcall, the police patrol the hotel, trying to keep order. It's obvious a lot of people are just collecting buttons and hats. They don't know one candidate from the other. If you ask me, it's stupid. I did hear a rumor that Lyndon Johnson was seen earlier checking out the room in the Galeria where he's holding a reception later. Kennedy and Symington are also holding receptions in the Galeria today, but no one's seen them this morning.
I can't help but smile. I know where Senator Kennedy is because I saw his personal secretary, Mrs. Lincoln, when I arrived at the hotel very early and very anxious. I didn't sleep well. Actually I didn't sleep at all, but that's not my fault. It's because of that Afton Leigh. I'm determined to get rid of her and I think I know how. First, I had to check in with my father this morning, so I looked in the Kennedy nerve center. He wasn't there, but guess who was?
Senator Kennedy is here in his suite, Mrs. Lincoln whispered to me, greeting so many governors from different states she could hardly keep track of them all. His brother, Robert (everybody calls him Bobby), arrived at the same time I did, but I didn't get to see the Senator except for a brief glimpse of him before he left for a breakfast given for the California delegation. Then I heard he and Bobby came back to the suite and were holed up in the sitting room, planning their strategy before the Senator's television interview with Edward R. Murrow.
I'm planning a strategy of my own. In spite of my rising frustration, I remain calm enough to know I must put everything aside and go through with my plan.
First I've got to get rid of this headache.
It's an awful one. I would have thought I'm imagining the increased clanging in my head from this monstrous pain I'm feeling, but I'm not. (A migraine? I hope not. My mother gets them all the time and if my mother gets them, I don't want them). I rub my forehead with my fingers and I feel overwhelmed by a frantic urge to rip off my sunglasses and rub my eyes over and over again.
Pressure.
From my father. My mother (that never stops). The convention.
A loud banging of metal-like cymbals seems to arise from every corner of the lobby, then gets louder as I keep my head down and get into my father's limousine, careful not to let anyone see me. It must be those Puerto Rican delegates again with their rumba music. Good. It will take the attention away from me. For once I'm not going to protest that. I don't want anyone to know I'm leaving the hotel. I'm not wearing my red-white-and-blue striped dress and blue Kennedy cummerbund, but someone might recognize me. I did see my photo this morning in the Los Angeles Times with the caption "Beauty and the Ballot," showing me in my Kennedy Girl dress handing out cinnamon buns and coffee to Minnesota delegates. Even if the picture was a bit blurry and they spelled my name wrong (Jillian instead of Gillian), it was fun. So a reporter could stop me and ask me what I think about the convention hullabaloo or if Kennedy has a chance to get the nomination on the first ballot like everybody's saying he can.
Nobody stops me. I pout.
Okay, so I wish they would have asked me for a quote, even if it meant I'd have to come up with some stupid excuse about why I'm not working in Kennedy headquarters this morning. I told my father I had a headache when I found him in the bar, nursing a double gin and tonic with his eggs, and I needed the limousine to get some aspirin. He told me to get a whole bottle because Mother called and said that Chace and his mother have been looking for me. (My father and I are united in my I'm-not-marrying-Chace campaign). Another reason for me to split the hotel for awhile.
Chace or no Chace, I'm not feeling very appreciated at the moment, which is why I'm sporting the sunglasses, though it's overcast (from the smog) and humid outside. I put them on to hide the dark circles under my eyes. Lack of sleep and excitement about the convention, I'll tell anybody who asks me, but it's not the truth.
I couldn't sleep last night, not after I saw Afton kissing Johnny Kingsley. That little tramp. Coming back to the apartment on North Rossmore late and with him. How dare she, I mean, how dare she move in on my territory? I want Johnny and no one is going to stop me from getting him.
I've wanted other boys before and I've gotten them, but Johnny is ultra special. I can see it in his eyes when he talks about politics. He's full of excitement and possesses a spirit, a kind of sexual energy that makes his shoulders seem broader, his chin stronger. His whole body talks power and that excites me, makes me want to paint him, capture that emotion on canvas.
I admit I have more than a casual interest in him, though that's nice, too. No, it's more than that. He fuels an artistic need in me that I can't ignore. I don't often feel that way about anybody, though sometimes a certain face will intrigue me.Like that other Kennedy girl. Louise Pardue. She's as pretty as a movie star. I would guess her roots are French and Irish and probably American Indian. And she has a vulnerability about her that enhances her prettiness. I thought about asking her if I could draw her, but I decided against it. She's Afton's friend and I want nothing to do with that other girl.
Which is why I had my father call his chauffeur and tell him to pick me up in front of the hotel this morning. I have an errand to do that has nothing to do with buying a bottle of aspirin and I don't have much time to do it. Senator Kennedy's reception begins at one o'clock and as the leader of the Kennedy Girls I have to be there. My father says all the influencing is really done in the back rooms with liquor and all the ballyhoo is for the television cameras. When I asked him why they even bother with the headquarters and the Kennedy Girls and the cinnamon buns, he chomped down on his cigar and bit off a piece before answering me. (I noticed he wore a button that said simply, "Relax." It was upside down.)
"It keeps the blood hot, Gillian, girl," he said, pressing a 14k gold Democratic Convention souvenir charm into my palm, "and allows them to let off steam."
I threw away the souvenir charm. I don't want it. I want a souvenir of another kind. One with bulging muscles and a handsome smile with a dimple in his left cheek.
First I'm gonna get the scoop on this Afton Leigh, find out who she is, where she comes from. My father always says that everybody has a skeleton in their closet, especially in this coagulated glob of humanity known as the Democratic National Convention. All you have to do is shuffle through their dirty laundry until you find something that smells.
So I'm heading out to Glendale this morning with Afton's file, tucked all nice and neat inside my souvenir carryall. It took some doing to get it. I thought for sure Mrs. Greenfield was going to catch me shuffling through the Kennedy Girl files while she looked for her glasses. Which just happened to get conveniently lost for about ten minutes.
"The newspapers are full of convention news about Kennedy picking up labor delegates," I said to her earlier this morning, reading the headline on the Los Angeles Times sitting on her breakfast tray, "and new information on that U-2 plane the Russians shot down. It says here the United States is flirting with war with Khrushchev because of continued reconnaissance flights."
I kept stalling for time as I tucked Afton's file into my carryall. Then with a wistful surprise in my voice, I finished with: "Oh, Mrs. Greenfield, look, here are your glasses."
"My word, how did they get there?" she asked, slipping them on her face. She looked funny in her pointy, black-rimmed spectacles and big, pink plastic hair rollers. Somehow, I never thought of a woman like her wearing pink hair rollers. I never thought of a lot of things before, like how a girl like Afton with no money and no background could take a guy like Johnny Kingsley away from me.
According to the notes Mrs. Greenfield made from the girls' original applications, Afton lives in Glendale with her grandmother and works at a department store. Nothing unusual about that.
I pull out her file and look it over again as the limousine gets off the freeway and drives slowly along a tree-lined street. I roll down the window. Nothing out of the ordinary, I'm thinkin', disappointed. I see a few kids playing with hula hoops or riding bikes. Housewives chatting with each other over a fence. A nice, white middle-class neighborhood.
This is going to be more difficult than I thought. I try to come up with a new scheme as the limo pulls up to number 348. Afton's house, according to her file. Or is it? I can't read Mrs. Greenfield's handwriting. She jotted down the information on each girl so quickly I don't know if the house number is 343 or 348.
I tell the driver to stop, then I get out of the limousine. Adjusting the sunglasses on my face, I check the house number on the worn, brick facade. Number 348. The broken numbers, the old quilts hanging in the front window, should have warned me something was amiss in this little house. Instead, I think nothing about it, telling myself I should forget the whole thing and go back to the hotel. I don't. Something, call it gut instinct, makes me walk up to the front door and knock. As I look to the side, I glimpse someone from the corner of my eye peeking from behind the quilt in the window. I smile. Someone's home. I'll ask them if I have the right house, then I'll know for sure.
No answer. I knock again, louder this time.
I look again to the side, but this time I see no one. Instead I hear the sound of shuffling feet making their way slowly to the door. I suppose it's Afton's grandmother. Hopefully she'll tell me something unflattering about her, like she dropped out of high school. I scrape my high heel back and forth on the cracked cement step. That would be useful information, something a certain quarterback from USC would find distasteful in a girl he wanted to date.
The door opens slowly. Very slowly, as if the woman behind the door is used to being cautious.
"Good morning, ma'am," I begin, putting on my best Kennedy Girl smile, "I'm calling on you regarding your granddaughter--"
The door opens wider and I can't speak. My throat tightens and I haveta take off my sunglasses, blink my eyes, because I can't believe it.
Afton's grandmother is a Negro.
I mumble something about being from the Democratic National Convention committee, in full-on denial of what I'm seeing in front of me.
"My granddaughter's not here," the old colored woman tells me, glaring at me. "And you'd better skedaddle outta here if you know what's good for you, young woman."
"I'm verifying the girls' home addresses for our files," I say, stumbling over my words. "It will only take a minute -ñ "
"I ain't got nothing more to say to you, missy." The old colored woman spits out the words. "And I don't need the likes of uppity white trash like you coming 'round here and interfering with me or my granddaughter. Now you git!"
She slams the door in my face. Hard. She's a feisty one, a lot like Afton.
I was so surprised by what happened that everything I should have asked, I didn't. I never expected this, never. It's too extraordinary to be true, but I'm seeing it with my own eyes. Afton is colored and passing for white.
I smile broadly. Why am I so upset? This is exactly the kind of information I need to make certain Afton Leigh regrets the day she tried to take Johnny Kingsley away from me.
I race back to the limousine, a smile on my face as long as a summer day. All that keeps me from telling the driver to break all speed limits is the certainty that I've got that girl right where I want her.
She's not interested in politics or the heavy issues of this convention. Nothing could have made her leave her little house in this sleepy town except for one thing: The idea of passing for white in a white world would bring her instantly to the caucus. Once she saw that she could indeed pass for white--in this case, attract the attention of the very handsome Johnny Kingsley--she would neither surrender nor retreat.
Likewise, I will not surrender nor retreat. It is my duty to bring this information to the right people. The right people indeed. I lay back on the elegant leather seat of the limousine, thinking. The dull, aching pain in my head and neck, is gone. I know someone who will be very interested to find out that Afton Leigh is a Negro.
Very interested.
* * *
I close the hotel room door behind me, trying to keep from smiling, but I can't help it. I let a big grin shine all over my face. I was right. I can still see the shocked look on Mr. Kingsley's face when I told him that his son is dating a Negro girl.
"Are you sure about this, Miss Gillian?" Mr. Kingsley asked me, rubbing the day's growth on his chin. I know he's been up all night (talking strategy with the other delegates from his state of Wyoming about the upcoming Presidential nomination, how their vote is divided, some for Kennedy, some against), but when I told him I had important information about his son, he agreed to meet with me in the private sitting room of his suite.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Kingsley," I said carefully, repeating how Mrs. Greenfield asked me to do a background check on the Kennedy Girls so I went to Afton Leigh's house. Personally. I can still see the heels of his cowboy boots digging into the plush carpeting of his fancy hotel room when I told him what I found out. "Her grandmother is definitely a colored woman. I'm certain Afton Leigh is passing for white."
"I knew things like this were going to happen when the Senator started poking his nose into civil rights. He's supposed to speak at a meeting of the NAACP later today and that Martin Luther King fellow is threatening to march in the streets afterward. I bet Kennedy put him up to it." Mr. Kingsley stopped to take a sip of coffee, then he continued, "I like what Kennedy stands for, but I don't want my son dating a colored gal. No, indeed, young lady. We'll see about that, you can be sure."
I didn't know what to say so I said nothing 'cause Mr. Kingsley had said it all. He was so livid his son Johnny was involved with someone of another race that he banged his hand on the coffee table and broke it. The coffee table, not his hand. It was an antique from Italy but that meant nothing to him. He's rich. Very rich. My father says the Kingsley Triple J Ranch is the biggest spread in Wyoming and is getting bigger since they started mining uranium on the ranch.
I haveta admit that kind of money and power appeals very much to my mother and her bloated view of the kind of boy I should become involved with and eventually marry. I usually run the other way when that situation comes up, but this time I'm in the driver's seat.
Johnny's not the preppie type. He's got a vision for the future that has nothing to do with the old boys' network. He's interested in the space program, concerned about Russia, yet sensitive to civil rights. He's the kind of guy whose tie hangs down far below his belt, but he's so handsome it only adds to his cavalier appearance. Also, I sense that he's trying to cram as much as he can into every hour and every minute and that intrigues me. There is an aura of danger around him that excites me. Makes me want to find out more about him.
I'm going after Johnny Kingsley with all I've got.
Or should I say, all Mr. Kingsley's got.
Not intending to leave, wishing merely to enjoy my triumph a moment longer, I headed toward the door. In a few steps, I stopped. I heard Mr. Kingsley pick up the phone, mumble a few excited words into the receiver, then hang up with a loud bang. Regaining my composure at that precise moment, I scurried out of his suite in my high heels, as though I hadn't heard what he said. But I did. Something about "taking care of the Negro girl as soon as possible."
Oh, my, I can't imagine what's going to happen to that little tramp, Afton Leigh, when he gets through with her.
I can't imagine.
But I can hope.
LOUISE
July 10, 1960
Sunday Afternoon
I know something is wrong the minute I see the look on Mrs. Greenfield's face. She has a round, angelic face with full, bouncy cheeks that make her eyes seem smaller than they are because she's always squinting behind her pointy black-rimmed glasses. Her eyes have the fixed, cold stare of a wild animal's eyes, and her mouth is a round circle of red lipstick from which words spill forth that send a rolling cascade of shivers down my back.
"Miss Pardue, Miss Leigh, can I see you girls for a moment, please?" she asks. I wouldn't say it was a command, but close to it.
"Sure, Mrs. Greenfield," Afton says easily, putting down the coffeepot. She's smiling, but then again I'm sure she'd smile at anything today. She lit up earlier when Johnny Kingsley cruised by our booth, bringing her a cold bottle of Coke and a bunch of violets. They talked for a few minutes and I saw him hold her hand for a moment. It was nice. Boss, as Afton would say. I don't know what happened between the two of them last night, but Afton fell for him. He likes her, too.
I feel Mrs. Greenfield staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I nod, don't say anything. I feel my new confidence oozing out of me faster than moonshine leaking out of a cracked bottle.
"I have something important I want to discuss with you two girls," Mrs. Greenfield says, checking her clipboard as methodically as some women check their lipstick. "Finish up here and meet me in front of the press room in five minutes."
Then she's gone.
I look at my watch. It's twelve thirty. Senator Kennedy's reception is scheduled to begin in a half hour and all the other Kennedy Girls have been assigned to either working in Kennedy headquarters, handing out badges at the Democratic Party reception, or showing the delegates the sights, like the tour at MGM Studios. Afton and I look at each other. There's only one reason why Mrs. Greenfield would have singled us out.
Gillian.
Before the convention got underway, Gillian didn't like us and she's still sufficiently angry with us to cast the first stone, the only stone needed to have us sent home. I lift up my chin, straighten my plastic straw skimmer on my head. I won't go. They can't make me. I'm as good as Gillian, even if I am passing for white. Play-acting, Mama called it, imitating the white women I've seen, like Afton's aunt.
And I was feeling so confident about myself when we arrived at Kennedy headquarters this morning, practicing what Afton's Aunt Jeanette taught me last night, how to layer lightweight skirts and blouses and sweaters, how simple and loose-fitting dresses can also be elegant. She showed me a hooded jersey dress she's wearing to Kennedy's acceptance speech later this week. It was so cool.
"What if the Senator doesn't get the Presidential nomination?" I dared to whisper, running my fingers over the silky-fine, red jersey dress.
Aunt Jeanette smiled at me through her lacy, black eyelashes and said with all seriousness, "I paid fifty dollars for this dress and it wasn't on sale. Senator Kennedy wouldn't dare disappoint me by not getting the nomination."
With my rib-cage held high, I remember what she taught me as I walk over to a couple of delegates, cinnamon bun tray in hand. Always enter a room with your head up, Aunt Jeanette said, as though you have a purpose in life. I like that. It makes me feel like I'm somebody. And I am. I'm a Kennedy Girl and everybody I meet treats me with respect.
Everybody.
I bite down on my lip. I wish Mama could see me. She'd be so proud.
Would she, Louise? I can almost hear Grandma Eldy whispering in my ear. You done crossed the river, child. Now you'll see what happens.
I get a shiver between my shoulder blades. Grandma Eldoris is spoiling everything. Sometimes I wish I never listened to my grandmother and her old superstitions. Never sit on a log or you'll soon be disappointed about something, she says. Don't travel at night with whiskey in your pocket or the dead will follow you on your heels. Eerie sayings that make you know you'll never leave the old farms and slave quilts of Summer Bend behind. They're always in your mind. Like Grandma Eldy's warnings.
That was before I became a Kennedy Girl. Before I proved to everybody I'm as good as they are. Didn't Aunt Jeanette spend hours with me last night and this morning, teaching me how to lower my voice, how to speak with intonation, rounding my vowels. Charm, she said, is the honey that makes people think you're something special.
"You, Louise Pardue," she told me, "are something special."
Thinking those words now, I can't help but smile as Afton and I pin badges on a couple of delegates from Alabama. My home state, I tell them. They smile big at me, tell me I do the Kennedy Girl name proud. I turn my eyes away from them. I wonder what they would say if they knew I was colored. They have different rules for Negroes down in Alabama, like you can't touch the same Bible as a white person or go through the front door of a white person's house.
I was known as a "good" colored back home in Summer Bend because I followed the rules, did what white folks told me to do because I didn't want any trouble, didn't want anyone to hurt my grandmother like they hurt my Mama with their harsh words. Come Sunday mornings on the way to Church, somebody would bring it up, asking Mama if she ever had it for a white man. Since I'm light-skinned, folks said Mama was raped by a white man and left Summer Bend because as the saying goes, "the rape of a Negro woman is no more important than the pipes rusting."
I asked Mama about my father once, when I was eight. She held me close to her breast and I could feel her heart beating quickly, like a tiny bird flapping its wings. She said someday I would understand that letting folks believe what they wanted was better knowing than the truth. And the truth was whatever I wanted it to be. Still, I wish I knew who my father was. Mama would only say that he hurt her bad. I used to hate him, knowing deep in my heart he was a white man.
How radically different my thinking is now that I've experienced this white world. I face the day without carrying the weight of being a Negro with our history of slavery, the tragedy of our past, the hopelessness of our future. It is so liberating to be without that burden.
I have crossed the river, Mama, and I'm not crossing back.
* * *
Two Kennedy Girls--Afton and I--walked, then ran to the waiting limousine, rode to Beverly Hills, got out, smiled, laughed, pinned on Kennedy buttons, laughed some more, kept on smiling, drank orange juice (wondered what was in it 'cause it tasted funny), giggled a lot, then ran back to the limousine, got in, drove around Los Angeles, sat in traffic, took off our shoes, stopped at a roadstand burger joint for a Coke, got back into the limousine and drove out to the Sports Arena.
Exhausted.
And loving every minute of it.
Mrs. Greenfield sent us in Mr. Stanmore's personal limousine to bring extra Kennedy buttons and badges to the Kennedy Girls already at the Democratic party reception to hand out to the crowd. It was peachy keen. A real blast.
I can't believe that I, Louise Pardue, spent the afternoon rubbing elbows with so many delegates, their families, and members of the press. Just about everybody taking part in the convention was there. Close to six thousand people.
White people.
And me.
They were all drinking and eating and listening to the music of Johnny Boudreau (I don't know who he is, but I haveta admit I stood up taller when he played "Dixie") and his twenty-five piece band.
Everyone was saying it was one of the largest cocktail receptions held all year in Los Angeles and wouldn't you know only the Democrats could pull off a party with a hundred-foot long double bar. No one was asking how much it cost and I don't think anyone cared. The party was so big it had to be held outdoors on the J.W. Robinson's Co. parking lot. A ritzy department store, I found out, when I saw Gillian coming out of the front double glass doors with a coupla packages. Shoe boxes. Anyway, she didn't see us, although I'm still reeling somewhat from the talk Mrs. Greenfield had with us earlier, loading our arms up with boxes of Kennedy badges and telling us not to drink anything alcoholic (we heard later the orange juice we drank was spiked with vodka), and by the way, did we know anything about a missing file? Seemed that Afton's application and her file had disappeared. Nothing to worry about, she said, but I was worried. Why would someone want to steal Afton's file?
Or did they think it was mine?
On a hunch that I was right, I asked Mrs. Greenfield if my file was also missing and she assured me she had seen it earlier. Louise Pardue from Huntington Beach.
Wrong address.
I tried not to think about it. It was just a small mix-up. No big deal. If I got through the week, everything would be okay. My dream of becoming a civil rights lawyer and changing the way things are back in Alabama reminds me that what I'm trying to do is an honorable endeavor and not a low-down cowardly thing to do.
Somebody has to help change the spartan conditions Negro lawyers or for that matter, white lawyers who come down and volunteer to help, are forced to live in. No dictating or transcribing machines, only the barest furniture necessary, and not even a complete set of the Alabama Code.
Yet I still hear Grandma Eldoris saying in my head, If they find out you're passing, child, you's in a heap of trouble.
I think about that for a long time. All through the reception in the parking lot. Riding in the limousine (the driver is a white man and I can't help but smile). If the disease of trying to put down civil rights is spreading out here into the wide-open spaces of California, I'm at greater risk now than at any moment since I left Alabama. The worse possibility isn't that I'll be found out or sent home by Mrs. Greenfield. Worse, if the wrong person discovers who I am, as already happened when the colored maid look through my wallet back at Kennedy headquarters, I'll be forced to face my fears and know the truth.
I wish I were white.
* * *
The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena hosts ice shows in the winter, boxing matches in the summer, and a home show or two just about any time of the year, but it has never seen the likes of the party the Democrats are putting together this July. It's a political spectacle like the city has never seen before and it has left the multi-million dollar arena shaking to its foundation.
Shaking.
Shouting.
Sawing and hammering.
Workmen stampeding in a frenzy. Banging, sawing, dragging wooded beams, pushing carpets rolled up tightly like chocolate swirls.
When we arrive at the Sports Arena, Afton looks up at all the confusion and says, "I wonder why Mrs. Greenfield gave us this assignment."
I say, "Because Gillian wasn't around to tell her not to give it to us."
She laughs. "I think you're right."
I laugh, too.
We head over to the west ramp of the Sports Arena where the trucks are rolling in and depositing tons of programs, soft drink syrup, carpets, and hot dog buns. Our job is to check and make sure the boxes of Kennedy badges, buttons, and streamers have arrived for Monday's opening of the convention and don't get mixed up with the stuff for Symington or Stevenson or Johnson. An electrician with stray wires hanging at his feet points us in the right direction.
"Watch where you walk, girlies," he says not too politely, "or you could get hurt."
"Thanks, we'll be careful," Afton says casually, but I don't like the sneer he gave us. Weird, sleazy-like. He's dressed like the other construction workers in dirty overalls with a leather belt hanging from his waist and filled with tools, but his eyes are curious, too curious for me. His face is knotted with wrinkles, his smile fixed and somewhat frightening. He appears to spend more time watching us than fixing the wires around his feet.
That bothers me, but I say nothing to Afton.
He keeps looking at us as we check off the boxes from the list Mrs. Greenfield gave us, making me hesitant to wipe off the sweat creeping down the side of my face. I want to take off my skimmer, but I can peek at him better without him knowing from under the brim of my straw hat.
Afton has no idea what's going on. She finishes up the counting quickly, puts the list away in her purse, then links her arm through mine.
"C'mon, let's get a preview of what the arena's going to look like tomorrow before the delegates do."
"Shouldn't we get back to Kennedy headquarters?" I look around. The electrician is gone. I let out a sigh, feeling relieved.
"Sure, but first we should check out the rest of the arena and report back to Mrs. Greenfield, right?" she says, smiling at me with such a grin, who could convince her otherwise?
"Okay," I say, getting into the mood. "I can dig it."
It's exciting to be out on the arena floor before the delegates get here tomorrow, about four thousand five hundred of them, especially with all the television crews racing around like trained monkeys, their cameras slung over their shoulders, monitors popping up everywhere, and TV microphones and cables called "creepie peepies" that remind me of aliens from another planet. Afton and I strike a pose in front of a camera, figuring it's not turned on, and are we surprised when a crewman yells, "Great shot, Kennedy Girls, thanks."
"Do you think Mrs. Greenfield will see that?" I ask, kinda nervous she might think we're goofing off on the job.
"No, she's too busy to see anything but her clipboard," Afton jokes, then she points out, "Hey, Louise, look at that!"
I crane my neck to see what she's talking about and the essence of what this week is all about strikes me hard. It's a multi-decked platform sixty-three by twenty feet, a workman is proud to tell us, with a device to adjust to the speaker's height and with three prompting machines so the speakers can read their speeches facing any direction except backwards ("I bet Kennedy could do that," Afton jokes). There's also a hand-rail to steady the speakers ("I think I need a hand-rail to steady myself from all this excitement," I joke back).
I can't help but let out a big sigh of surprise. "Can you believe we're here, Afton, before all the noise, the electricity of the crowd, the excitement, and the big moment when the candidate accepts the Presidential nomination? That candidate being Senator Kennedy, of course."
"Yeah, there's something magical about this whole convention, like somebody put a spell over everything," Afton says slowly, taking off her skimmer and wiping the sweat off her brow. It's hot in here. The air conditioning isn't turned on yet.
"What do you mean?"
"I never thought I'd say this, Louise, but it gives me hope for the future, makes me believe in the American Dream, that I can be part of it."
"Yeah, the American Dream exists for you and for...me," I say, stumbling over the words as we work through the main arena. It's costing half a million dollars to make sure the delegates get their piece of the dream. I don't want to tell her that before I came here I didn't believe in the American Dream because it didn't believe in me.
I keep my thoughts to myself. Instead, I point out a bunch of workmen bringing down some scaffolding that will be used to hang the traditional red, white, and blue bunting angled out in four giant streamers from the arena's electric scoreboard. It will hang high above the convention floor and form a patriotic "X."
"Look at the flag, Louise, hanging over the spectators gallery," Afton says, counting, "it's a new flag with fifty stars. Fifty states, enough for everybody to have their dream."
"What about the people of color in this country? To them the American Dream is the American nightmare."
I don't know why I said it. It just came out. I immediately regretted it.
"What made you say that, Louise?"
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I was just noticing there aren't many people of color at the convention, and with so much emphasis being placed on civil rights by the candidates, the very people who need help aren't even here."
Afton looks at me and smiles. "I know why you're saying this, Louise."
My heart starts amping like a cartoon character caught in a maze and he can't get out. "You do?"
"Yeah, that incident with the colored maid and everybody saying she stole your purse made you think, didn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Me, too. Sometimes I'm ashamed to be white, especially around my father. I try to understand his racist views, why he hates anybody who doesn't like everything he does, but I can't. Is your grandmother prejudiced?"
I haveta laugh at that. If Afton only knew. "Yeah, but only against anybody who doesn't like her Alabama-style peach cobbler. The world outside may be black and white, but inside my grandmother's kitchen, my world is golden. A golden peach. The soul-melting aroma of her home-made peach cobbler makes my mouth water. Soft pulp melting on my tongue, brown sugar, cinnamon, and gooey crust. Mmm...delicious."
"I thought you were from Glendale?"
Oh, oh, here comes trouble. You's done it now, child. Set yourself up for the big fall, Grandma Eldoris is saying in my head.
I say, "I am, but we came here from Alabama to be with my Mama before she died."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know your mother was dead," Afton says. I bite down on my lip. Hard. I wish I could tell her the truth. She'd understand. I know she would. Her green eyes reveal no hatred when she speaks about Negroes; the expression on her face now is questioning and concerned.
"Look over here, Afton, each delegation has its own microphone and private telephone," I say, trying to change the subject, trying to get up my courage to tell her the truth about myself. I can't. Not yet.
"Johnny says that during the convention a Kennedy Girl will be assigned to each delegate to keep track of their vote," Afton says, her voice soft and wanting.
"I don't suppose you want to be assigned to a certain delegate from Wyoming, do you?"
Afton raises her eyebrows and grins. Big. Like a little girl who's found her lost Teddy bear. I take a big breath. I know I can trust her. She's the kind of friend who sticks by you no matter what the Lord has in store for you, as Grandma Eldy would say.
"Afton, there's something on my mind--" I begin in a low voice as we walk toward the electric scoreboard high above the convention floor.
"What did you say, Louise?"
I clear my throat. It's noisy right here, very noisy. Besides the hammering and sawing, I hear the sound of voices outside, people singing. It's getting closer. Closer still.
"I said, there's something I want to tell you--"
It happens so suddenly that at first I don't know where the whooshing is coming from, loud, clamoring, like a fierce wind kicked up without warning. Then everything goes dark, or so it appears, and it's at least ten, twenty seconds before I realize that the red-white-and-blue bunting has come undone from the scoreboard up high above the arena floor and is flying through the air like a trapeze without anyone on it.
It's heading straight toward us.
"Duck, Afton!" I yell, but before the words are out of my mouth I push her with all my strength to the floor. We hit the floor with a loud thud. Me. Afton. The heavy bunting cracks so hard against the wall I can almost hear the vibrations echoing in the arena. It barely misses us. I'm getting up even as I'm going down, my hand reaching for Afton, who's lying next to me. I can hear her breathing hard, but thank the Lord she's not crying out in pain. It turns out someone else is already coming to our rescue.
"You two Kennedy gals all right?" I hear someone ask and I choke back my amazement when I see the face of a colored man lifting the heavy material off us. He's about my height, five feet seven, big of face and slight of body, but there's a mystique about him that you immediately identify, get in sync with, as if he's a biblical character come to life. Commanding, polished, strong. My analytical mind quickly calculates all these adjectives to describe him, while at the same time my heart is pumping madly. My instincts know who he is. I just can't believe it.
"We're okay," I say, keeping my distance. He's the kind of Negro you can be sure no white man would dare call "boy."
"I'm fine," Afton says, getting to her feet. She's a bit shaken, her knees wobbly, but okay. She doesn't know who he is. Not yet.
I look around and the television crews are all over the area, taking pictures, asking questions, interviewing workers, making a major news event out of all this.
"Let's get outta here, Afton," I say, looking over my shoulder as a newsman bears down on us. I don't want to be caught anywhere near a camera.
"If you girls need help," our rescuer is saying, "I'd consider it my pleasure--"
"Dr. King, can you come over here for a minute?" someone calls. A white man, I see. Afton shoots me a look that says she can't believe what she heard, and is it who she thinks it is? I bite down on my lower lip and nod, not stopping a big smile erupting all over my face. Her mouth drops, her eyes pop open like yo-yos bobbing up and down, then she grabs my hand and before I can take another breath, we're following Dr. King outside the Sports Arena.
It's pandemonium. Wonderful pandemonium. And we're in the thick of it. I haveta say I'm amazed at what I see on the streets. Negroes and whites demonstrating together, picketing outside the Sports Arena, holding placards and banners admonishing candidates to take a clear stand on integration.
"Bunch of niggers and white sympathizers," says a workman standing near us. He estimates the crowd is close to five thousand people. Afton starts to open her mouth to say something but I nudge her, shake my head. She blows out a breath, struggling to keep her thoughts to herself. Just barely.
"Yeah, can you believe they marched all the way over here from the Shrine Auditorium?" his pal adds.
"He did say, 'Dr. King?' " Afton questions, moving away from the undesirable workmen and their racist talk and stretching out her neck to look closer at the man who helped us. He's talking to the group of demonstrators, advising them to stay peaceful and nonviolent.
"Yes, it's Dr. Martin Luther King, Afton, and his Convention Movement for Freedom Now. I can't believe it."
"Neither can I. Sister Mary Celestine told us all about him and how he raised issues of racial unfairness down in Alabama--" She stops, looks at me, then continues, "Didn't you say you were from Alabama, Louise?"
"Yes, but I've never been to Montgomery, where the protests started," I say stupidly, trying to cover up. What's wrong with me? This is the time to tell Afton I'm a Negro. I was going to do it before the scaffold fell down near us, Why can't I say anything now? What changed? I know the answer to that when I recall seeing someone out of the corner of my eye before the scaffolding gave way, dragging the bunting down with it.
"We're marching back to the Shrine Auditorium to hear Senator Kennedy speak," a colored demonstrator comes over to tell us, then he points to the man leading them. "Dr. King would like to invite you two Kennedy Girls to join the march."
Afton looks at me as if to say, Why not? I don't know what to say. A fear runs through me, a fear I can't put into words. I'm as scared as a rabbit poking his cold nose near a trap. So far, up to this point, I've only tried passing with white folks. I've never tried passing for white with colored folks. Will they see through my Kennedy Girl disguise?
Will they know I'm colored like they are and hate me for what I'm doing?
Afton doesn't give me the opportunity to think, to plan, to say no.
"We have to march with them, Louise."
"What about the limousine?"
"We'll tell the driver to pick us up at the Shrine Auditorium."
"But Mrs. Greenfield is waiting for us--"
"This is more important."
"She'll send us home."
Afton shakes her head. "Senator Kennedy is speaking at the Shrine and somebody has to represent the Kennedy Girls. Us, naturally. She can't send us home for that, Louise."
"But it's late...and oh, I don't know, Afton." I'm losing my cool. I feel so stupid.
"Is something wrong, Louise?" she asks me, blinking at me.
I take a deep breath. "No, nothing's wrong," is all I can say.
"Then come with me. Seeing Senator Kennedy and Dr. King in the same day is something we'll never see again in our lives."
"What will your daddy say?"
She smiles big. "Who cares what he says? I'm a big girl now, Louise, and I make my own decisions. Are you coming with me?"
I do want to join the march. I'm just scared.
Before I can change my mind, I nod.
Afton says, "Good, let's go."
We retrieve our plastic straw skimmers, polish the Kennedy badges on our hats with a little spit, dust off our dresses, and get ready to join the marchers. Although I understand the significance of this historical moment, finding out what happened to us at the Sports Arena and why it happened, is an even bigger priority.
It doesn't take me long to find what I'm looking for. Not when I see the electrician I'd seen earlier rush out of the Sports Arena through a side door and get into a waiting car that speeds away. I ask a crewman who he is, but he shrugs and walks off. I start to ask someone else, but the streets around the Sports Arena are filled with demonstrators stretched in a six-block column picketing the convention headquarters, people shouting, someone speaking to the group from a small platform, organizers calling for the marchers to keep order.
No sound is louder than the beating of my heart trapped in the belief that whatever happened to us was no accident.
* * *
"The next President of the United States cannot stand above the battle, engaging in vague sermons on brotherhood," Kennedy is saying when Afton and I take our seats in the huge Shrine Auditorium. We're tired, our feet hurt, our faces are streaked with dirt and sweat, but we marched all the way over here and that's what counts. "The place to begin is in the house that belongs to every American--the White House."
Cheers. Heavy applause. A scattering of boos.
"Who's booing?" Afton asks, her head spinning around in every direction.
"Some Negroes over there, in the corner," I answer, sliding down in my seat. I'm ashamed of what they're doing.
Afton shakes her head, her faith in the Senator undaunted. "They'll come around and support Senator Kennedy."
"How can you be sure of that, Afton?"
"Because Kennedy isn't afraid to admit past mistakes in dealing with civil rights. I read in the newspaper how he admitted he had only limited experience with Negroes. I can understand that. I've never spoken to a colored person except for a few words here and there. How about you, Louise?"
I swallow hard, try to listen to Kennedy's speech calling for action against racial discrimination until finally I blurt out, "I don't know any Negroes either."
I shut my eyes tight. There, I've done it. Planted the Judas kiss that stings like a rattler, Grandma Eldoris says. She reminds me every Sunday at Church to be a good girl or I'll end up like that snake with the poisonous bite. A little voice nudges my brain, a voice that sounds not surprisingly like Grandma Eldoris, reminding me now.
"You remember the story of how the rattler got its name, child?" I can remember her telling me when I was about seven and had almost been bitten by a snake.
"No, Grandma Eldy," I said, sitting crossed-legged, my face wide-eyed and fascinated.
"All the other animals kept stepping on the snake 'cause they's didn't know he was there. So he asked the Lord to help him and the Lord said he would give him a rattler to warn the others that he's around." Then I remember her laughing so hard her rocking chair nearly tipped over. "Now everybody knows he's around, but the snake ain't got no friends."
My shoulders slump, my mood drops, my courage fades. If they find out I'm passing, they'll stay away from me, too. I'll have nothing. No friends, no job as a Kennedy Girl. No chance to go to college. I can't let Afton see me like this, a hopeless mess of confusion, doubt, and I don't know what else.
I summon up what little courage I have left and join her in the cheering, the clapping, and listening for the next several minutes as Kennedy continues talking about how the next President must fight for the rights of minority groups in every section of the nation. When a politician named Chapman takes the stand to speak in Johnson's behalf, Afton and I look at each other as if to say: It's time to go.
I can't believe our luck when we find the limousine waiting for us at the curb. We jump in, take off our hats and shoes. I feel like I've lived a lifetime of historical memories.
Everything would have been all right, if the limousine driver hadn't decided he was bored waiting for us all day and wanted to talk.
"They're paying me double today," he says, heading uptown toward Pershing Square and the Biltmore Hotel.
"That's cool," Afton says, staring out the window, but I don't think she's looking at anything. Her eyes are closing.
She's tired.
"Yeah," I say, not knowing what else to say.
"Good thing I filled this baby up with gas this morning. Twenty-seven point nine cents a gallon. A bit steep, but, hey, they're paying." I see him look down at his dashboard. "I think we can make it back to the Biltmore. Wouldn't be sweating it if I didn't have to drive all way out to Glendale this morning--"
My heart stops, just like that. No warning, no premonition of what he was going to say. It just stops. Dead. Cold. And buried.
Like me. Like my future.
"Did you say you drove out to Glendale?" I ask timidly, hoping Afton is too tired to listen. Her eyes are closed and she's resting her head on the seatrest.
"Yeah, the old man's daughter wanted to drive out there. I don't know why. She didn't do nothing. We stopped at a house, she went up to the front door, didn't even go inside, then she came back, smiling like a pretty, little mouse who ate the whole cheesecake. That was the end of it. You know how these rich guys' spoiled kids are..."
I don't listen to the rest of what he's saying. I don't have to ask him what street he drove out to in Glendale.
It's all so crystal clear to me.
It was Gillian who stole the missing file from Mrs. Greenfield's office with my address in it. She went out to Glendale to check up on Afton. What could she possibly find out?
Nothing. Unless she saw Grandma Eldy and she thinks that Afton is me and she's passing for white.
A combination of anger and fear erupt inside me, fuel my need to succeed, show Gillian that she's not so clever, that her racial prejudice is the thing that can bring her down.
AFTON
July 10, 1960
Sunday Night
In the confusing and bustling maze of the Biltmore Hotel, I move through the line of delegates, smiling, talking, and handing out cinnamon buns. I'm still excited from the day's events, but I'm also on the edge of exhaustion. I want to rest and take all this in, then divide it into safe, little compartments in my memory bank that I can conjure up years from now and remember everything that happened today:
Senator Kennedy speaking in front of the NAACP at the Shrine.
He looked so handsome, so confident, with a charisma that fell upon the audience like a sprinkling of magic dust. I'm still tingling from the experience.
Dr. Martin Luther King helping me after the scaffolding fell and crashed near Louise and me at the Sports Arena.
His kind face, his strong voice, not judging, not asking for anything, only helping. I'll never forget that moment when I looked up into his eyes and saw the future he's working toward. It was a different world from the one I know today, a good world, where all men, whatever their color, are free.
Louise and I marching with the demonstrators to show our support of civil rights.
The push of the crowd, the energy, the underlying current that we were part of something special this country has never seen before and it's only the beginning.
Louise taking in everything happening around her.
Her demeanor, her face, all lit up with hope, and the way she came across, her spirit, touched me deeply. Something about her made me see her in a new light, especially when she explained to me how her mother taught her that if she wanted to do something, education was the way to do it. That was why she was at the convention, she said.
There was something else she wanted to say, but she held back, though I don't know why. As if she were about to take the next step and she couldn't. I sensed a fear in her that puzzled me, a yearning to embrace everything we saw, but pulling back because if she didn't she was going to get hurt in some horrible way I couldn't understand.
Unconsciously, I feel a shiver come over me at that unnerving thought and a spiral of fatigue spins through me. Though it's late and everybody is shutting down for the night, cleaning the coffee pots, throwing away the trash, washing the bun trays, I cannot walk out of Kennedy headquarters until I find out what's on her mind.
I don't get that opportunity, at least not now, because when I spin around a familiar hand touches me on the shoulder. I see the smiling, grinning face of Johnny Kingsley, a walkie-talkie in one hand, a cold soft drink in the other. Suddenly all my fatigue is gone as my heart lifts up to a higher plane. I smile at him.
"Hey, where have you been all day?" he asks, offering me the cold, frosty Coke. I take it from him. It tastes sweet.
"You know, around, doing things."
"You missed the reception and seeing Senator Kennedy."
"I didn't miss seeing the Senator," I tease him, then I tell him about marching with Dr. King and hearing Kennedy speak at the Shrine. An instinct in the back of my brain that I don't want to acknowledge keeps me from telling him about the accident at the Sports Arena. I don't want to spoil the smile on his face.
"Sounds cool. Listen, Afton, after I go with Senator Kennedy to his meeting with his chief strategist, Ted Sorensen, I'm free. I'm not going to the Democratic Committee dinner at the Beverly Hilton."
"Oh?" I say casually, wondering what's on his mind.
"Yeah, I leave the financial purse string pulling to my father and his staff. So how about going to a movie with me? The Time Machine with Rod Taylor is playing not too far from here."
"I'd love to go," I say, especially since I'm a fan of the H.G. Wells novel. Then a different mood hits me. I'm reluctant to leave Louise in her strange mood. "I don't think I can, Johnny."
"Why not? I'll get you home early tonight. I promise."
Johnny stands in front of me and stares at me with obvious disappointment, but he tries not to let it show.
"I wish I could go, but I'm worried about Louise. She seems upset about something."
"Then bring her along, too. What guy wouldn't want two pretty girls to take to the show?"
As if this moment is already scripted, Louise comes up behind me. She's smiling.
"Who's going to the show?" she asks, though I sense she heard our conversation and is only trying to be polite, her Southern manners very much in evidence. I wonder why I didn't notice that uniqueness about her before she told me she was from Alabama. I get the uncanny feeling there's a whole lot more to Louise Pardue than the fact she lives in Glendale with her grandmother. Maybe she's not everything she seems to be. Yet I'm convinced that some strange power--call it destiny--threw us together at the airport, drawing us together, and I have no choice in the matter whatsoever.
I turn to answer her question.
"We're all going to the show. Johnny asked us--"
Louise shakes her head. "I hate to disappoint you two, but you'll have to go without me. I have a date."
"Oh, great!" Johnny says quickly, too quickly. He realizes his answer might make the wrong impression on me so he recovers with, "It's too bad you can't come with us, Louise."
I'm curious, so I say, "C'mon give, Louise, who is your date?"
"It's not exactly a date, Afton, but your Aunt Jeanette wangled an extra invitation for me to go with her to the Beverly Hilton tonight to attend the Democratic Committee dinner with Senator Kennedy. Mrs. Roosevelt will also be there." She lowers her eyes. "She thought you might have other plans."
I turn to give Johnny Kingsley a piece of my mind, laughing as I do so, "You had this figured out all along, Johnny, didn't you?"
He smiles. He is handsome, but he's also clever, I'm finding out.
"You don't mind, do you?" he says.
"Mind? I'm flattered you went to all this trouble."
I don't know what else to say, don't want to struggle with an answer that sounds dumb. I feel relieved when Johnny gets distracted by someone in the ever-moving, ever-changing sea of people cruising through Kennedy headquarters.
"Can you excuse me for a minute, Afton? I see Governor Lawrence from Pennsylvania over there and I've got a message for him from Ted Kennedy." He leans in close to me, so close I can smell his aftershave. Woodsy and masculine. It smells good. "Don't tell anybody, but the Governor spent over half an hour this morning with the Senator talking about his delegates' votes. The Senator's younger brother told me that if he releases his state's votes to Kennedy, it will put him over the seven hundred mark."
I gasp. "Then it is true Kennedy can win the nomination on the first ballot on Wednesday."
Johnny nods. "That reminds me, did Mrs. Greenfield tell you that a certain party from the Wyoming delegation requested a certain Kennedy Girl to be his state delegate liaison?"
"No, she didn't. What does that mean?"
"It means you won't be very far from me when the balloting starts on Wednesday."
"Oh, really?" I tease, trying to concentrate on what he's saying and not his baby blues. Johnny explains that he talked Mrs. Lincoln, Kennedy's personal secretary, into giving him a mimeographed copy of the state delegate liaison assignments and he changed the name of the girl assigned to his state of Wyoming to my name.
"In fact, I intend to keep you within my sights for the rest of the convention, starting tonight. Dig it?"
"Dig it."
"I'll pick you up at the North Rossmore apartment at eight."
Then he's off, his walkie-talkie blasting with a bunch of garbled voices, his head bobbing from side to side, checking out everyone within his range, and in a matter of seconds he's lost somewhere in the crowd of delegates, convention volunteers, and Kennedy Girls cleaning up for the night.
The girls are all busy, working hard, tired but feeling good about putting in another long day.
All except one.
"Hold onto to your cinnamon buns, Afton, look who's coming this way," Louise whispers in my ear. I turn around to see Gillian bearing down on us, her blonde hair pulled up in a becoming beehive even higher than yesterday. She pushes damp strands of hair off her face, but that doesn't hide the fact she's perspiring and pumped up about something.
"She's probably gonna make sure we don't sit next to her at the Sports Arena tomorrow," I say, trying to laugh. Gillian made it clear to us yesterday we weren't allowed to mix with "her" group of Kennedy Girls when the convention formally opens tomorrow at five p.m. with Senator Frank Church from Idaho making the opening speech.
Louise says, "I don't care where we sit, as long as it isn't under that electric scoreboard."
Her voice trails off and I know she's thinking about what happened today at the Sports Arena. I want to ask her what's on her mind, but this isn't the time or the place with the blonde bombshell bearing down on us with an immediacy that used to make me cringe. Not anymore. I'm feeling energized and excited about what we've accomplished since we've been here. And, yes, I'm sailing smoothly on that blue ocean of warm, tingly feelings that I get when I'm around Johnny Kingsley. I refuse to let that girl knock me off course.
"Forget her, Louise," I tell her confidently. "Johnny fixed it so I can be down on the convention floor next to the delegates from Wyoming."
"Oh, cool, Afton. You'll be right in the middle of--"
"In the middle of what?" Gillian says, tilting her head to one side. I swear that hairdo of hers is going to topple over. "Another mess, I suppose. Well, it doesn't matter because I have a job for you two that I'm certain will please you."
"Doing what?" I toss out. "Picking up the garbage you leave behind?"
Louise elbows me, but Gillian just grins. She likes nobody but herself, fussing with her face, fixing her powder and lipstick. That's why I'm surprised to see her looking like someone ruffled her proper Philadelphia feathers. She yelled at Louise earlier this morning for serving cold coffee to a delegate from Minnesota, then she disappeared on an errand for her father, or so she said. Now she's back and looking like she won Queen for a Day. She hasn't stopped smiling. I wonder what she wants from us now?
"Mrs. Greenfield needs help tomorrow in passing out Kennedy badges to the delegates arriving at the Sports Arena," Gillian purrs, pursing her lips. "And that includes you two."
"Sorry, Gillian, but we've been assigned to other jobs," I say, making a note to ask Johnny to include Louise on that list of delegate liaisons.
"Yeah, on the floor of the Sports Arena," Louise adds, getting my drift.
"Doing what?" Gillian demands.
I blurt out without thinking, "Why don't you ask Johnny Kingsley?"
"What does he have to do it?" she wants to know.
Too late I realize my mistake. I shouldn't have said anything about Johnny, but I've done it now. I suck up my breath and make the best of it. She's bound to find out anyway.
"We've been assigned to be the liaison for the Wyoming delegation."
Gillian grins. "Does Mr. Kingsley know about this?"
I nod my head. "I guess so."
"I doubt it or he would have told me," she says, fiddling with a loose bobby pin in her hairdo. I think she's got a loose screw in her head because she doesn't make any sense when she says, "I wouldn't count on being around here much longer. Your little game is about to come to an end tonight when I see Johnny Kingsley at the Democratic Committee dinner and tell him--"
"He's not going."
"What?"
"I said, he's not going to the dinner at the Beverly Hilton. He's going out with me. Goodnight, Gillian." I turn to Louise, who hasn't said a word and can't seem to catch her breath. I swear she's melting right in front of me. That worries me. "Are you coming, Louise?"
She nods, stilted-like, and with her head lowered, she falls into step behind me. Ignoring Gillian's very loud, very obvious gasp of disbelief, I strut through Kennedy headquarters, out the door marked "Exit," and into the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel.
"You'll regret this, Afton Leigh," Gillian squeals, calling behind us. Her shrill words are loud and clear, her pretty face twisted into an ugly mask of civility she's only barely holding onto without breaking.
"She doesn't like you, Afton," I hear Louise say softly.
"I don't think she ever did," I say, gritting my teeth tightly together.
* * *
"I can't go to the Beverly Hilton tonight, Afton. I can't."
"You have to go, Louise. Aunt Jeanette is counting on you."
"She hardly knows me."
"You don't know her, Louise. She likes you, I can tell."
"She wouldn't like me, if she knew."
"Knew what?"
"I can't tell you, Afton. Not now. I need time to think, time to figure out how I got myself, how I got you into this awful mess." She's shivering. "I should have listened to my grandmother, but I didn't. I'm stubborn like Mama was, she said, and she's right. I hope she's not right about everything."
I open my mouth to speak, but I don't ask her what's on her mind. We've been going around in circles for the past hour or so, ever since we got back to the apartment on North Rossmore. Lucky for us we hopped a ride with a couple of other Kennedy Girls who have their own wheels. Louise was strangely silent on the ride over here. She wouldn't talk then and she won't talk now. I guess it's the look on her face, like she's scared out of her wits, that keeps me from pressing the subject.
There's something serious going on here. I feel in my gut there's more at stake here than she's willing to tell me. She glances up at me, then immediately runs into the bathroom and bursts into tears. I feel a great darkness is descending slowly over the bright light I felt earlier. I don't like that feeling.
* * *
"They have delicious pistachio shakes here," Johnny is saying, looking over the plastic menu the car hop handed him. We're sitting in his little T-bird, hardtop off, at Stan's Drive-In located in Hollywood not far from the North Rossmore apartment. I love this little place with its red-and-white candy cane on the roof and big, neon red-white-and-blue sign featuring a car hop holding a tray with a shake and a sundae.
"She almost looks like a Kennedy Girl," I say, tossing my head back and affecting the sexy pose of the girl on the sign. "You're prettier than she is," Johnny says in a low voice. Husky. He squeezes my hand. "So, how about that pistachio shake?"
"Pistachio sounds dreamy," I say, smiling.
I know that's not brilliant, wildly intelligent political talk, but this is one night I want to leave the convention in the capable hands of my Aunt Jeanette and Louise. A half box of tissue and gobs of mascara later to hide her red-streaked eyes, I convinced her to go to the Democratic Committee dinner with Aunt Jeanette, especially when my aunt showed up, ready to go, sporting something she called a "summer poncho," a lightweight wrap that floated around her like a cape.
They may be dining at the Beverly Hilton, but I feel like a movie starlet on a night like this, out with a guy I think is the marviest, his hand holding mine, a warm, starry night overhead. I swear I can feel goosebumps on my bare arms, my heart beating wildly, and I don't think I'll be able to eat no matter what I order.
He says, "You want a burger and fries with that? Or grilled cheese?"
"Burger."
"Good choice. They're delish here and a lot tastier than the hotel food your aunt and Louise are stuck with tonight."
"Even dessert? Aunt Jeanette told me, and don't ask me how she finds out these things, they're serving Flaming Baked Alaska at the dinner."
"I've got a flame burning in my heart and it isn't for Alaska."
I pretend not to understand him, play the game, and oh so innocently ask him, "I wonder how many delegates from Alaska are voting for Kennedy?"
Johnny slides over on the seat closer to me. "I'm only interested in how a certain Kennedy Girl is going to vote."
I smile, move closer to the car door. I'm not trying to get away from him. Just the opposite. I wish he would take me in his arms, hold me tight, kiss me. But not yet. You have to play the game, though I'm not good at it. I don't want to be the kind of girl who acts dumb just to be popular. Or worse, the girl whose name is scribbled on notes and passed along, with dirty little laughs, among the boys.
What price popularity? I wonder, though I'm tempted to kick the rules of common sense tonight and let it ride. There's something special about this week, about Johnny. Golden and special, like a summer sun on its lazy descent into the horizon. You want to grab onto it a little longer, let its warmth seep under your skin so you can bask in its glow. I sigh. I may never see Johnny again after the convention, so why am I playing hard to get?
I decide it's time to bend the rules.
"I'm not old enough to vote yet, Johnny," I say, flirting just a little at first, lowering my eyes, then shifting my body position so my skirt rides up over my knees. It's so hot tonight I decided to be daring and not wear nylons and a garter belt.
"I've already cast my ballot, Afton."
"And?"
"I think we should see a lot more of each other after the convention is over."
I pull my skirt down over my knees. He's serious. Something I never expected. Plan two is in order.
"That won't be easy," I tell him, backing off with the flirting. "I'm going to school at Long Beach State."
"So? I'll jump into my car and drive down to see you."
"Isn't it far from USC?"
"Not when they get the new freeway system built. They're already talking about linking Orange County with Los Angeles with a whole series of four-lane freeways."
"I don't think that will ever happen. My father is a building contractor in Huntington Beach and he says--"
Johnny looks at me curiously a second, then he says, "I thought you lived in Glendale with your grandmother?"
"No, that's Louise."
Johnny takes a moment to think over this new information. "That's strange. Gillian said that you--"
"Do we have to talk about her?" I ask cautiously. I don't want to jinx this night with visions of that blonde bombshell and her beehive coming between us.
He grins. "You two don't get along, do you?"
I shake my head. "It's not that, Johnny. Gillian tells everybody she's a Kennedy Girl, but she doesn't hold true to the standards the Senator has set up. I hate to say this, but she's prejudiced against anyone who doesn't think like she does or look like she does."
"You mean she doesn't like Negroes."
"Yes. I still can't believe how she treated that colored maid when Louise lost her purse in the restroom. She actually accused the woman of stealing it. Louise was horrified and so was I."
"My father mentioned something to me about Gillian telling him about a problem with a colored girl, though I didn't have time to talk to him about it. The Senator is keeping me hopping. I've got this new duo-com walkie-talkie, and besides the convention floor, I'm also hooked up to the communications control at the cottage beside the Sports Arena."
"Cottage? What's that?"
"It was a model home at the last home show, but they assigned it to Kennedy as a liaison post."
"Sounds cool. I couldn't believe how big the Sports Arena looks when it's empty, even with the balcony filled with the shields and mottoes of every state."
"Did you hear the place was bugged?"
"Bugged? What do you mean?"
"Before I left the Biltmore, I got a memo saying the four caucus rooms built under the podium were 'bugged' for sound. They think somebody disguised as an electrician did some artistic wiring in the building. Don't worry, they'll have it de-bugged before the convention opens at five o'clock tomorrow."
"Boss."
What more can I say? I'm not sure if I'm relieved or alarmed at this news. I keep my thoughts to myself as Johnny turns on the radio and the song "Alley Oop" by the Hollywood Argyles fills our ears. This bugging incident brings up a new possibility that triggers several questions in my brain. What if what happened to Louise and me was no accident? What if somebody wanted to cover up what they were doing and we got in the way? Getting an answer to these questions is of increasing urgency. I have to tell Louise about it, although I don't want to worry her with any more problems.
I hope she's having a good time with my Aunt Jeanette. When they left, my aunt was rambling on about how she hoped Mrs. Roosevelt wasn't going to wear a flat, dumpy hat like she usually does, and the former First Lady should get some style. Then, according to Aunt Jeanette, Mrs. Roosevelt would clearly see this country is ready for a change with a man like Jack Kennedy to be President. If he's elected, no, when he's elected, she corrected herself, he'll be the first President born in the twentieth century.
I mention this fact to Johnny after the car hop takes our order. Pistachio shakes, fries, burgers. Special order on my burger. Mustard only, no ketchup.
"Kennedy will also be the first President to make the Civil Rights Commission a permanent body," he says.
"If the Southern delegates don't veto the civil rights plank drafted by the Democratic platform," I add firmly, making my point.
Johnny takes my hand in his, holds it tightly, but in such a way that sends a different kind of chill down my spine. It's a warm feeling, a binding of our thoughts, our souls.
"The civil rights issue is important to you, isn't it?" he asks.
"Yes. Very important."
I don't elaborate. I can't. How can I tell him my father is a racist? I'm too embarrassed to say the word in front of him, which is why I'm so surprised when he makes a comment about his own father.
He says, "My father is more stubborn about the race question than anybody I know."
"Why is that? I thought you were from Wyoming?"
"Yes, but my father is a transplanted Texan who didn't want to share the Lone Star State with anyone, so he bought himself a big piece of Wyoming. I've been working on him to cast his uncommitted votes to Kennedy, but he's still not convinced. Though he worked on that civil rights plank you mentioned, it's going to be very difficult to get him to come over to the Kennedy camp."
I smile. "I'll bring him some extra cinnamon buns tomorrow. Maybe that'll work."
"Hopefully you can succeed where I've failed, Afton," he says, leaning over me, his lips brushing my cheek. "You won me over."
"Order's up, you two," I hear a cheeky voice announce loud and clear. I look over Johnny's shoulder. It's the car hop, smiling at us and carrying a tray filled with food. "Plenty of time for dessert after your burgers."
"Speaking of dessert," Johnny says to the carhop, never taking his eyes off me, "Leave a menu in case we want to order something else."
"Teenagers," the car hop mutters, shaking her head and attaching the aluminum tray to the side of the car then tossing a plastic menu on top of our burgers. "They're always hungry."
We laugh and then dive into our food, though I don't take more than a small bite. I'm too busy watching Johnny take the lid off his pistachio milkshake and drink it down quickly. He catches me watching him, puzzled why I'm not eating, although I'm not about to say I enjoy watching the way his hair falls over his left eyebrow, his dimple puckering up in his cheek, his strong shoulders outlined against the red leather seat.
I take a drink, smearing my lipstick with milkshake. It's cold and delicious. I look back at Johnny. He looks cool and delicious, too. What have I been missing?
As if he can read my thoughts, he smiles, raises his eyebrows. Then, after taking a bite of his burger and washing it down with some pistachio milkshake, he checks his watch.
"I've got to call into Kennedy headquarters for messages," he says in that business-like voice of his that is so sexy. "I'll be right back. Don't you go anywhere."
"I'll be right here when you return. I promise."
He grins at me, then gets out of the car and goes into the drive-in restaurant to use the phone.
I turn up the radio. I love this song, "See you in September" by the Tempos. I hope I'll see Johnny in September. He said I would, and that thought sends a thrill through me. My appetite suddenly returns and I bite into my burger. Special order, mustard only, no ketchup. The burger tastes funny though, like paper. I take another bite but I can't chew it. It is paper, I discover when I take the bun off the top. Nestled between the lettuce and the bun is a folded up slip of paper with the corner bitten off. To my horror the rest of it is intact when I open it up and read:
Why don't you go home? Things could get rough for you if you don't.
"I don't want to disappoint you, Afton," I hear Johnny say, "but I've got to get back to the cottage for a late night session with Bobby Kennedy to make sure all the communication networks are ready for tomorrow."
I didn't hear him come back. How could I? My mind was steeped in this new development, staring at it so long I forgot where I was. Quickly, I crush the note in my hand so Johnny doesn't see it.
"It's so late now, when will you sleep?" I ask him, trying to keep my voice light.
"When the Senator sleeps."
"When is that?"
"After the convention," he says, laughing. "Anyway, we've got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow. The Senator is scheduled to make nine state caucuses, starting with the Nevada caucus at the Alexandria Hotel at eight thirty in the morning." Johnny looks up from the scribbled messages in his hand and meets my eyes. He seems to want me to understand. I do. "I'm sorry about the movie, Afton."
"It's okay. Besides, I have my own time machine right here," I say, my voice shaking as I slip the folded up note into the plastic menu and put it into my purse. "Every time I look at this menu, I'll remember tonight." I never forget it.
"Every time I have a pistachio shake, I'll think of your green eyes."
I roll my eyes. "How romantic."
"You want romantic?" he teases. "Try this on for size, Kennedy Girl."
I see it coming and I don't stop him. Whatever somber mood I'm feeling is washed away if only for the next few minutes as Johnny kisses me. Softly, tenderly, then more demanding he pulls me to his chest, crushing my breasts against him. I shudder, then begin to tremble. I cannot pull away from him. I want him to hold me and never let me go. The last thing I want to do is ruin the mood, but I can't stop shaking. He doesn't understand my fear and slowly releases me.
"I'd better get you home, Afton, before I do something we'll both regret."
I nod. I hardly say another word on the way back to the North Rossmore apartment. I pride myself on my generally cool demeanor, but I cannot remember being as frightened about anything as I am with whoever sent this note.
Why don't you go home? it said. Things could get rough if you don't.
I can't go home. I won't.
LOUISE
July 11, 1960
Memorial Sports Arena
Monday afternoon. After talking for hours to delegates and handing out more cinnamon buns in one morning than the previous two days combined, I crossed the parking lot to the front of the Sports Arena, stopping three times to look at the demonstrators and picketers surrounding the convention headquarters. I drown in their chanting, their singing. I once heard Grandma Eldoris say that colored people are closer to the Lord because their voices are bigger-sounding than white folks and can travel faster to heaven.
Being a Negro is no guarantee that a person can sing loud, but I'm beginning to believe it helps. Their melancholy chanting rises above the roar of the crowd piling into the arena entrances, glistening with its glass panes and ceramic tile. I inhale deeply, but not too deeply. I heard from a delegate who was interviewed by a KTLA-TV reporter that the smog is so bad this week the newsmen were given a bottle of Visine with their media packets.It's going to take more than smog to quiet this crowd picketing slowly in front of the arena entrances for civil rights. I want to sing, run, twirl, whoop and holler with them, but these are things that a colored girl passing for white cannot do.
Behind me, Afton also stops, looking at the crowd. "I'll never forget this moment, Louise, the energy, the excitement. It makes it all worth it, no matter what happens."
"You mean that horrible note someone slipped into your burger?"
"Yes."
"Do you have any idea who could have done it?" I ask, walking by numerous hawkers selling Democratic Party pennants and canes. And Confederate flags with fields of red and a star-studded blue cross. A symbol of Southern pride and heritage, I heard South Carolina delegates state proudly. I see it as a hurtful message that reminds me of slavery. Whoever sent that note also harbors a hateful attitude toward Negroes that's unsettling to me. I think I know who it is.
"Gillian has to be behind it," Afton says, reading my mind. "She's hated me since the first day, although I don't know why."
"I do. Johnny."
Afton grins and grabs my arm, squeezing it affectionately. "I thought so at first, but there's something else fueling her hatred. Something deeper."
"Have you told anybody but me about the threatening note?"
She shakes her head. "Nobody is going to chase me home, Louise. Our country is setting a new course for the future, our future, and I have to be a part of it."
"But your life could be in danger, Afton," I say, not wanting her to leave but I'm afraid for her safety. I called Grandma Eldy and she told me a young woman came to the house asking about me. She ran her off her property, just like she got rid of "uppity white trash" back home in Alabama who come poking around our place with their phony promises. I don't understand why Gillian hates coloreds so much. I do understand that white children are only exposed to what they hear or see. Or read. I remember the poem I saw in a book in the Glendale library. It went like this: "Nigger, nagger, ragger, tagger/Going to the mill/Up the hill." If the words didn't hurt enough, it was illustrated with colored folks wearing only rags and sacks and looking shiftless and lazy. It was horrible.
A sea of moving placards surrounds us as we walk across the concrete toward the Sports Arena entrance, leaving the rush-hour traffic behind us. I wonder if the demonstrators and paraders know they are also shaping minds with their words.
Desegregate now reads one sign. It's only Jesus that will save us, says another, followed by a woman carrying a banner demanding Freedom now.
"They don't look like fanatics," Afton whispers to me, giving them the thumbs up. I do the same.
"It's almost five o'clock. Let's go inside."
She nods. We go through the brand new entrance, show our tickets, and look around inside the arena. The Sports Arena is awe-inspiring with its rows and rows of half-moon seating, high, high dome ceiling, huge hanging lights, and every imaginable sound echoing off the walls like tiny historical moments bouncing through space. Reporters, delegates, visitors are everywhere. Sound checks. Talking, laughing, hustling, questioning.
Afton told me about someone bugging the Sports Arena for sound. I told her about the phony electrician I saw yesterday right before the scaffolding crashed near us. A coincidence? I don't think so. It was too much of a coincidence not to be taken seriously. I don't want to reveal my distress to Afton so I avoid talking about it.
I have another thought on my mind.
"Did you see this morning's newspaper?" I ask.
"I know what you're thinking, Louise," Afton says quietly, walking through the mess of television cameras, stopping to notice television personality Betty Furness standing next to a washing machine waiting for her cue to do a live commercial. "I saw the article about the murdered girl."
I nod. The front page of the Los Angeles Times ran a story this morning about a young female college student strangled to death with her underwear a few miles from our North Rossmore apartment. I mentioned it to Afton and she confessed she wasn't as frightened as she would have been if Johnny Kingsley hadn't told her that Jack Kennedy is staying in the penthouse. (I'm sure that was the reason I saw heightened security around the apartment building this morning.) She swears she heard him call out to her in the dark the night she came home late. That makes everything twice as exciting. Grandma Eldoris would say that's like finding a two-headed frog. You don't know which direction it's going to jump.
Fortunately for the Senator, the press hasn't discovered his secret hideaway yet. I smile big when I see newsman Walter Cronkite whip by us on his way to his anchor studio. I dig knowing something nobody else does. At least for the moment.
I try to convince Afton to tell Johnny Kingsley about the threat, but she's set against it.
"He has so much on his mind, Louise. I can't worry him with my problems."
"But he likes you." I sigh for effect. "You said he kissed you."
She shifts her weight slightly from one foot to the other, still standing erect but craning her neck in such a way that I know she's looking for Johnny in the crowd of delegates and young men with walkie-talkies trailing right behind them.
"I wonder if he's here yet," she says, ignoring my comment. "He's been running from one caucus to another with Senator Kennedy since this morning, especially after Pennsylvania Governor Lawrence switched sixty-four of his state's eighty-one votes to Kennedy."
"These delegates switch votes so many times, it's like trying to count corn husks in a field. You can't."
"That's a funny thing to say, Louise." She smiles at me.
"My grandmother says that all the time when she can't understand people changing their minds."
"By the way, Louise, Johnny thought I lived in Glendale with my grandmother," she says, still smiling at me. "I explained the mix-up. No harm done."
"Yeah, no harm done." Yet, I finish silently. Who knows how far Gillian will go to remove her competition? Competition she believes is a light-skinned Negro passing for white. Not me. Afton.
I let my thoughts trail into another dimension, pondering how I am going to tell Afton the truth about myself. Everything is so surreal, so red-white-blue at this moment with hundreds (thousands?) of balloons ready to be dropped on cue and tall, white, rectangular state standards, bobbing up and down seemingly all by themselves in a sea of funny hats. I feel dizzy, confused, and so shallow living this dual identity, being one person here at the convention, and knowing I'll have to be colored again at home when it's over.
"We'd better report to our assigned Wyoming delegate enclave before the convention begins," Afton says, looking at the mimeographed floor plan Johnny gave her, showing where each state's enclave is located.
The spectator seats in the Sports Arena are only a little more than half filled as we make our way down to the main floor, looking for the Wyoming delegates. As I notice large gaps in the delegate enclaves on the floor, organ music plays in the background, the kind they used in silent movies.
I realize I'm not listening to what Afton is saying and she's aware of it. Her gaze drifts over to me.
"Are you still worried about that note, Louise?"
"Afton, what would you think about someone if they said they were something they're not?"
"Huh?"
"It's been on my mind a lot, and seeing how things are heating up, I'm afraid something is going to happen--"
"Don't say anymore, Louise, because I'm not going home, no matter who makes threats against me. And, no, I don't think you're a coward for being worried. If I had any brains, I'd be scared, too." She breathes out in frustration, looks away from me, takes off her skimmer and wipes the perspiration from her forehead. "I can't let something like a little note stop me. I want to be a reporter, Louise, and that takes courage and perseverance. Though from what I've seen here today, news reporting is not high on the list of female job openings."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I asked a CBS newsman where the Lois Lanes were, he told me the control room was manned, get that manned, by fourteen men and a girl answering the phone, his emphasis, not mine." She hesitates, then: "There are one hundred million Americans at home in front of their television sets waiting to see what goes on here at this convention, Louise, and I haven't seen one female reporter. It's up to you and me to change things like that. That's why I'm not going home."
A warm, pink blush is on her cheeks. She's so determined to stay, forget the threat hanging over her. I can't penetrate her excited, determined veneer. She's in touch with an inner self that defies anything but what she has set out to do.
With dismay, I realize she has misinterpreted my confession. Apparently Afton thinks I'm embarrassed because I'm upset over the threatening note. I'm more embarrassed by my charade, a charade that has turned very dangerous.
I draw from her courage, but I will have to wait for the right moment when I can tell her that I'm passing for white. I see a man walk up to the main podium on the speakers' platform with a gavel in his hand. I look at my watch. It's five fifteen.
"The thirty-third quadrennial convention of the Democratic Party of the United States is now called in session," announces Paul Butler, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, pounding his gavel three times, and urging the delegates to take their seats.
"There's the Wyoming enclave," Afton whispers loudly, pointing to a section in the corner of the arena. It isn't easy getting there. The aisles are congested with delegates and visitors moving in no particular direction when they're moving at all. Some just stand there, especially when Johnny Boudreau, dressed in powder blue and standing under a blue canopy flecked with white stars in back of the speakers' platform, starts warming up his official convention band. Someone calls upon the sergeant-at-arms to clear the aisles, nobody moves, then we see the imposing figure of Cardinal McIntyre reflected on the high screen flashed to spectators as he calls for spiritual guidance. Next is the presentation of the colors with the roll of drums and bugles.
"Afton, Louise!" I hear a female voice calling our names. I know it's not Aunt Jeanette. She's back at the Biltmore Hotel attending a press conference with Mrs. Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. I don't know where that woman gets her energy and her stick-to-itiveness, but every time I looked around last night at the Democratic Committee dinner she was talking to someone. Especially Mrs. Roosevelt. (The dinner cost the Democrats plenty, Aunt Jeanette said. The Beverly Hilton took in more than fifty thousand dollars from food and drinks alone.) Whatever she said last night to the former First Lady, it worked. Mrs. Roosevelt is still not totally convinced that Kennedy should get the nomination, but she's telling everyone that the strongest ticket the Democrats could have is Stevenson-Kennedy.
So who's calling us?
It's Gillian. Who can miss her tall blonde beehive?
"Let's ignore her," Afton says, grabbing my hand.
"I'm for that."
Ducking down low, holding our skimmers in front of our faces, we try to get lost in the sea of humanity known as Democrats. When I pop up for air, I see Gillian on the other side of the arena, twisting her neck from side to side, trying to find us. We easily separate ourselves from her, but in doing so, we also miss the Democratic Party chairman introducing a number of film and television stars and sending the audience into wildly enthusiastic sighs of pleasure and whistling.
"You'd think El was here," Afton whispers, edging her way (with me right behind her) to the Wyoming enclave.
"At the very least, Ricky Nelson," I joke.
The entire audience, more than four thousand five hundred delegates and as many press, gets serious when conductor Johnny Green, leading the Boudrou orchestra, strikes up the National Anthem followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. It's a proud moment for me, standing tall, my hand clasped over my heart, reciting those wonderful words "...with liberty and justice for all."
For all.
That statement is about to be put to the test when we arrive at the Wyoming enclave and report to their chairman.
"Here's our latest count," he's saying to us while various politicians make speeches and addresses to the convention delegates. "As of today, young ladies, Wyoming has committed one vote to Johnson, one and a half votes to Symington, and seven votes to Kennedy. Five and a half votes are uncommitted."
"Thank you, Mr. Chairman," Afton says, checking with me to make sure we have the information properly recorded on a sheet of paper. Our instructions are to phone in that information to Kennedy headquarters.
Everything would have worked out, Afton and I would have found seats in the visitor's section, enjoyed the rest of Monday night's speeches and addresses, if Johnny didn't come by at that precise moment, wearing his heart on his official convention jacket and holding his walkie-talkie in his hand.
"I've been looking for you everywhere, Afton," Johnny says, putting his walkie-talkie into his back pocket. I smile when I see him grab Afton's hand and squeeze it before letting it go. "Hi, Louise."
"Hi."
"I've been looking for you, too, Johnny," Afton says, her gaze lingering on his handsome face. Even in this crowd of noisemakers and whistling, I feel like I'm intruding on their private moment.
"I was hoping I could see you later tonight," Johnny says. "We can catch that movie we missed."
Afton nods. She looks at me, as if to say she'd like me to go, too. Before I can say anything, I sense someone staring at us. A tall man, wearing a big, ten-gallon hat on his head, cigar hanging out of the side of his mouth. Good-looking man, older, probably balding under the hat. Johnny notices my stare.
"That's my father, Camden Kingsley."
Although I am, on one level, here to do my job at the convention, I fall into a different tempo. A sudden queasiness in my stomach makes its presence known and I nosedive into feeling uneasy about this whole situation. Why, I don't know. Call it colored instinct, like the look you get from white folks when you get a little too close to them when you're walking down the street. Or when you go to school to better yourself. They call you an "educated nigrah" and they don't like it.
Mr. Kingsley puts into play a series of events that turns everyone's life upside down, especially mine.
"Hey, you two Kennedy Girls, come on over here," he bellows so loudly we can hear him yelling at us over the speeches.
"Yes, sir," we both answer at once, walking quickly to where he's sitting. Johnny is right behind us.
"Do you girls realize I control those uncommitted five and a half votes?" he asks, baiting us.
"We do now, sir," Afton says, smiling. "How can we convince you to vote for Kennedy?"
"You can't. I believe Kennedy's fighting a losing battle by supporting civil rights."
"The fight has only just begun, Mr. Kingsley," Afton says proudly. "Before it's over, there'll be lots of anger, sadness, and pride before victory comes."
I agree with her. "All anybody wants, Mr. Kingsley, is the chance to get an education so they won't have to tolerate being humiliated by somebody looking down on them."
Mr. Kingsley looks at both of us, Afton first, then me, then back to Afton. He can't seem to make up his mind about something, then he looks directly at Afton.
"I saw you talking to my boy, young lady, and holding hands with him," he accuses, spitting out a piece of tobacco near our feet. "You must be that colored gal I was warned about."
Before I can take another breath, before I can confirm or deny my heritage, before I can stumble forth with some excuse why I started this whole thing, Johnny grabs Afton's hand and stands up to his father.
"What has gotten into you, Dad?" he asks. No one moves. Can't. No one around us hears the Mayor of Los Angeles giving a speech. All eyes are watching us. Watching Johnny. He doesn't back down, neither does his father. Two bulls facing off, and neither one is gonna give an inch.
"I have it from a very reliable source, Johnny my boy, this Kennedy Girl that you see fit to keep company with is a Negress passing for white."
Johnny throws his head back and laughs. "I know what all this foolishness is about, Dad. You've been getting on me for weeks, challenging everything I do because I choose to support Kennedy."
"That Kennedy is a smart-aleck."
"You're wrong, Dad. He's aggressive, dynamic, and outspoken, and he believes as I do that this country has to change to make the freedoms it was built on available to every American. The keystone of the Democratic platform, the platform that you worked on, is the rights of man."
"What has all that got to do with you fooling around with a colored gal?"
"Nothing...and everything. I make up my own mind about my politics and my personal life. I can't believe you would stoop as low as this, but I should have guessed it when I saw your man following us last night. This is one time your Texas bloodhounds are smelling up the wrong tree."
"Why should it matter what color my skin is, Mr. Kingsley, if Johnny and I like each other?" Afton says, speaking up, her mouth set in a determined line.
"You don't have to explain anything, Afton," Johnny says. "I don't care if you are a Negro. I dig you for who you are, and my father has no right to say these things to you."
I choke down the roiling ball of emotion threatening to overtake me. My nerves are wound up so tight I feel like I'm gonna explode from the inside out. So many feelings race through me, so many things I want to say. I can't believe Mr. Kingsley is saying these things about Afton, saying she's colored. I can't believe Afton doesn't deny it, that's she's standing up for me, for my people. I can't believe Johnny said it doesn't matter to him if she's colored. I can't stop the tears welling up in my eyes. I wish I could reach out and hug him, thank him for being who he is. I can't. I'm frozen, rigid, I swear my blood has stopped flowing through my veins because I say nothing. Do nothing.
I'm a coward and Grandma Eldoris knew it all along. She didn't want me to leave home because I'm not strong like my Mama was, strong enough to cross the river.
A thunderous applause as if on cue brings us out of our own drama, snapping each of us to pay attention to what is happening on the speakers' platform. Embarrassed they've been listening to us, the other Wyoming delegates join the wild clapping. I take a breath, grateful the moment is over.
I relax too soon.
About three rows away, I see a tall blonde with her skimmer cocked to one side of her head moving toward us. It has to be Gillian. She's the last person I want to see.
Putting my hand on Afton's arm, I say, "Gillian's coming."
"Good. I can't wait to give her a piece of my mind. This is all her doing."
It's not the answer I was hoping she'd say. All Gillian has to do is tell Afton she met my grandmother and she's colored and it's over for me. The dream shattered. And worse than that, my friendship with Afton shattered as well when she realizes I've been lying to her and she's the target of racial hatred because of me.
I look up, see our new flag flying over the speakers' platform with its fifty stars. Stars upon stars upon stars. I suddenly remember why I'm here, the new world I want to help build. I'm fighting not only for my own self-interest but so that the freedom movement will grow and grow and have a ripple effect, setting all men free, colored and white. With a renewed sense of urgency, I pray to the Lord for a miracle, something that will forestall what I know is going to happen and what I can't yet face. I must own up to who I am, what I've done.
My miracle comes.
Not from Kennedy.
But from Stevenson.
All heads turn, all eyes search, all minds wonder what's happening as everyone in the Sports Arena is aware of a great rumble outside. Whispers. Loud. Curious voices. Word spreads quickly among the delegates on the floor that a gathering of Stevenson demonstrators outside is taking on a new proportion unseen up to this moment.
The interest of the crowd shifts in the arena with several delegates more curious about what's going on outside than the speaker on the platform. They push each other one way then the other, changing the course of anyone stuck in the already congested aisles, including the diligent Miss Gillian Young. People are shoved to the back of the arena as curious delegates crowd toward the exits. I sigh deeply, relieved as I see Gillian and her beehive disappear into the crowd. Johnny grabs Afton's hand, then she grabs mine, and I hold onto my skimmer as we join the throng of people.
It's a sight I'll never forget.
Well over a thousand Stevenson supporters, an endless chain of people, yelling, chanting, singing, We Want Stevenson, begin winding their way around the rim of the Sports Arena. A double-decker bus pulls up and more Stevenson supporters get out, some wheeling baby carriages, some in casual clothes, others in business suits, all of them carrying signs as they march endlessly around the perimeter of the Sports Arena, waving placards and chanting loudly We Want Stevenson.
"This is more than a demonstration," Johnny yells above the din of the crowd, "it's an explosion."
"They seem peaceful," Afton says.
"You can never tell with a crowd this size," Johnny says, his head darting from side to side, sizing up the situation.
"We can't let the crowd stop us from phoning in our delegate vote information," I remind Afton.
"I'll drive you both back to Kennedy headquarters," Johnny offers. "Then you can deliver your information in person. Afterward we'll grab something to eat, then take in that movie." He leads us to the parking lot. "I want to apologize for my father, Afton. I don't know where he gets these crazy ideas."
"Don't worry about him. I'm not. I know other people who share his way of thinking and it will take a miracle to change them," Afton says, getting into his little T-bird. I squeeze in next to her on the end. "I want you to know I'm proud of you, Johnny, for standing up to him."
"I meant what I said, Afton," Johnny says, looking at her with affection. "I like you for you. Don't you ever forget that. It took a lot of courage for you to do what you did."
I sit silently for a few moments as Johnny jumps into the driver's seat and starts up the engine. I start fidgeting, pulling my skimmer off my head, fixing the streamer ribbon on my Kennedy badge. I'm stalling, pushing aside that little voice inside my head that's telling me what I have to do, what I must do, if I'm ever going to have any self-respect. I can't let him drive out of here without saying what's on my mind.
How to do it? A whole kaleidoscope of scenes, hurts, and dreams flashes through my mind, making my heart race faster, pumping up my adrenaline, pushing my emotions to the maximum.
I see the ramshackle, unpainted house on the unpaved street where I grew up in Summer Bend. I see my young face peeping through a hole in the slave quilt hanging in the window, looking for my Mama to come home.
I see Grandma Eldoris swaying back and forth on her rocking chair, greeting me everyday after school with her going-to-church smile, a big hug, and her homemade peach cobbler.
I see the other girls at school calling me a "black white" because I'm light-skinned. Then I see the secretary at the college telling me I'm morally and intellectually undesirable because I'm colored and I don't fit in.
I don't fit in.
Oh, but I did fit in here. My heart swells at the thought. I was a Kennedy Girl, just like all the others girls in my crisp, cotton red-white-and-blue dress, my white skimmer, and my white pumps.
I look down at my feet. I forgot.
I'm wearing a white girl's shoes.
As though I tempted fate merely by stepping into her shoes, my hand shakes as I take off my white high heels. I am aware it's time for the Cinderella dream to end.
Then, without fear, without thinking about anything except I have to do this, I look both Afton and Johnny straight in the eye.
"There's something I have to tell you both."
"Can't it wait until we get to Kennedy headquarters, Louise?" Afton says, anxious to leave the crowded parking lot. The Stevenson demonstrators seem to be growing in number by the minute.
"No," I say, "it can't wait any longer."
Afton says, "What is it, Louise?"
"Yeah, Louise, what's on your mind?" Johnny asks.
"I can't be a Kennedy Girl any more," I tell Afton, handing her back her shoes. I'm not as calm about this changing circumstance as I appear to be. The shroud of deception in which I've been living is about to be stripped away.
"Why not?" Afton questions, not understanding why I'm doing this.
"Johnny's father was right about one thing," I tell them. "He has been seen with a colored girl."
Confused, Afton asks, "What are you talking about, Louise?"
After sitting up straighter, tucking my crinoline skirts under me, determined not to betray my heritage any longer, I clear my throat.
"That colored girl--" I say calmly, "--is me. I am a Negro."
GILLIAN
July 12, 1960
Tuesday
The second day of any political convention, anywhere, anytime, is boring. After the first day of excitement, everyone has lost their voice from yelling for their candidate, eaten too much free food, and spent too much money trying to cram a vacation into a few frenzied days.
This convention is no exception. I can't sit here another minute listening to these delegates giving speeches, looking like overweight farmers hog-tied with a red-white-and-blue ribbon, reporting on this committee and that committee.
No wonder thousands of seats are empty in the Sports Arena.
Where is everybody?
I know one thing, by not showing up they're smarter than I am. They're at Disneyland or at the beach. I'm stuck here, listening to some pompous-looking woman in a ridiculous hat with a horrible midwest accent reporting on the workings of some committee. Who cares about the Committee on Resolutions or the Committee on Credentials or the Committee on Permanent Organization?
I ask you, who cares?
Next, Southerners argue for an hour about the civil rights plank. So many delegates yell "no" that when the Florida Governor puts the question of adopting the plank to the delegates, he pretends not to hear them (who can hear anything amid all that yelling, music, and an occasional balloon popping in your ears?). The platform passes anyway.
Who cares?
I wouldn't be sitting here if I weren't looking for Johnny Kingsley. He's not here, a Kennedy runner tells me. I should have known. He's probably trailing behind Senator Kennedy and making his rounds to different state caucuses. Mr. Kingsley isn't here either, I found out, seeing how it's his state of Wyoming holding a caucus with Senator Kennedy. So I'm stuck here. I wouldn't dare intrude on the sacred male tribal meeting known as a caucus. I know my limits. Socially, I can work a room in a courtly, pleased-to-meet-you kind of way better than anyone. I might drink too much at one of mother's fund-raising galas, or bribe a Philadelphia Mainline hostess with a Christian Dior silk scarf for a list of invited guests to her next party, or pay off the valet to make certain my car is parked prominantly out front. When it comes to politics, I know better than to pull any tricks. It's dangerous to cross the political boys or get in their way. They work hard, play hard, and drink harder.
That's why I bolt out of the Sports Arena, ignore the winding line of Stevenson supporters marching around the perimeter of the arena, still chanting We Want Stevenson and holding placards. (Did any of them go home last night?) All I need is for my mother's pet bachelor of the month, Chace Randolph III, to find me, though I doubt Chace and his mother would be picketing even if they are tight with Mrs. Roosevelt and are staunch Stevenson supporters. (Lucky for me, I've avoided them all week since they wouldn't dare be seen anywhere near Kennedy headquarters.)
I look around the parking lot. My father must be using the limousine because I don't see it parked anywhere. I take a taxi back to the Biltmore. Ten dollars it costs me. I don't care about the money. What bothers me is I should be riding around with Johnny Kingsley in his little T-bird with portholes. I'm not.
I storm into the Biltmore Hotel, gasping for breath, stupidly trying to tell myself I'm not upset, I'll get my edge back. No one, and I mean no one, has ever taken a guy away from me. Me, Gillian Young of the Philadelphia Youngs. All my friends are going to laugh me right out of the Liberty Belles when they hear how a colored girl bested me. I hate her.
I hate Johnny Kingsley more. I heard what happened on the convention floor yesterday, how Johnny stood up to his father, then grabbed Afton and jammed out of the Sports Arena. He said he didn't care if she was a Negro.
As if trying to scourge his shocking words from my brain, I rip off my skimmer and toss it into a trash holder. My carefully coifed beehive comes undone and wisps of hair float in front of my eyes. My shoulders slump, along with my ego. Suddenly, I don't care what color she is. I hate her because Johnny likes her. Not much of a reason to hate someone, especially after I listened to the Committee Chairman explain the Democratic platform for the 1960 campaign. They want to integrate all schools by 1963. I have to smile. That galled the Southern delegates. It would choke my mother. I think it's an interesting idea. Maybe if I had gone to school with colored kids I wouldn't be judging Afton so harshly now.
"The time has come," said the Committee Chairman to the delegates earlier tonight at the Sports Arena, "to assure equal access for all Americans to all areas of community life, including voting booths, schoolrooms, jobs, housing, and public facilities."
Everything that's happened to me in the past coupla days sets me thinking: Have I been wrong all along? Should I break away from the stereotypical deb image I strive so hard (at my mother's urging) to keep up? Am I a drama queen who's been cast in the wrong play?
Instead of picking on a colored girl who's trying to better herself, maybe I should be paying more attention to the Golden Girls I met here this week who call themselves hostesses and activists.
What's an activist, I ask them? A girl, I'm told, who describes herself as independent, uncompromising, egocentric, and unconventional. A student of the philosophy of Sartre, Camus, and Kierkegaard. New thinkers. I make a mental note to check into this activist thing, especially when I find out there's a group of college student activists at UC Berkeley in San Francisco, exactly where I'm headed for college. I'm beginning to think it's time I opted out and escaped the overinflated values of the society I was born into, the society that has made me miserable for nearly all of my life. In my imagination, I've already self-resurrected into a new woman and become something that an entire bar filled with men can't resist. A rebel with a cause of her own.
I switch on my finishing school charm and dab on a whiff of activism, then cruise by the bar of the Biltmore Hotel. I'm looking for a familiar scent. Men. Earlier I heard that several delegates never made it to the Sports Arena (hence the thousands of empty seats inside the arena and another thousand people without tickets outside trying to get in) because so many of them decided to stay at the Biltmore and catch the Kennedy-Johnson debate, televised live from the Grand Ballroom. All the while, everyone is talking about the California delegates, still undecided, still uncommitted. Which way will they vote? Will they split?
Who cares?
I need a drink. A stiff one. Tall and cool. I can't order one for myself since I'm underage. That's never stopped me before. It doesn't now. I stand next to the bar in full view, and survey the crowd around me as I sway my body in time to the constant music coming from a band playing somewhere close-by. My bare shoulders swaying provocatively. Hips moving from side to side. Breasts held high, pushed up and pointy.
"Can I buy you a drink, Ice Princess?"
"What did you call me?" I spin around and see this guy with a boyish grin on his face, holding a beer bottle in his hand and leaning his foot on the bar rail. I should be angry with him, but I'm not. He's cute, in a working class, muscular kind of way. I can tell by the snug fit of his suit jacket, like his biceps are bursting through the seams. I like strong men.
"Everybody around here calls you the Ice Princess, what with your pretty little nose so high in the air you never see what's crawling at your feet."
"I see it now," I shoot back, looking him up and down, running my fingers along his big, strong shoulders, "and I like what I see. Too bad I didn't meet you sooner. Think of all the time we've lost."
"I noticed you the first day I got here, giving out your cinnamon buns with a smile that's as phony as your hair color."
I back off. The nerve of this heathen. I look into his eyes, teasing me, challenging me to do something that intrigues me, tempts me. I want it. Then I laugh. I can't help it. No one ever talked to me like that before tonight. I like it. I like him.
"You mean you've been hanging around Kennedy headquarters all week and you never approached me?" I ask him.
He nods.
"Are you a Kennedy supporter?"
"Why don't we go somewhere where we can talk politics privately?"
"I have the key to a suite upstairs if you'd like to come up and order drinks." Trying to quiet my breathing, I dangle the key to my father's suite in the air.
He looks around the bar and I see him cock his head toward a couple of buddies, not bad-looking, then back to me. "Okay if my friends join us?"
As satisfying as it is to think about inviting a trio of men to my father's suite, I'm also somewhat apprehensive about the situation. I don't know these guys. I smile. But this one is so cute. And dressed in a suit. Pin-stripped. Well, why not? This is the new me.
The free me. Free to do what I want, when I want, with whomever I want.
Gillian the Activist.
As far as I recall, none of us say anything until we're upstairs and I'm turning the key to suite 8305. Perhaps we didn't talk about the convention, but I think they did make it clear they're drinking delegates. I put on some Frank Sinatra records (these guys are older, at least thirty) and call room service. Rum and coke, vodka and orange juice, come the requests fast and snappy. And a bottle of Jim Beam. Sure, why not? I say, let's invite everybody. I smile at my own joke. They look at each other and smirk. Okay, so I'm not funny. I'm trying.
"You want a smoke?" the tall, good-looking delegate I met at the bar asks me, pulling a cigarette case out of his breast pocket.
"Filtered, please," I answer nonchalantly, sitting down on the big, white sofa in the sitting room, taking off my heels and tucking my stockinged feet underneath me.
"These smokes don't have a filter," he says, winking at his two friends.
"Yeah, they're special smokes," says his buddy. "For a special girl."
His other friend starts poking around the suite, looking for an ashtray. He picks up a piece of sculpture and nods to his friend to come over and take a look.
"Careful with that," I say, not wanting to sound prudish, "That stuff's rented."
"Sure, we'll be careful," he says and I wonder if perhaps I made a mistake letting them come up here with me. I can't keep my eyes on all three at once, but they're delegates at the convention, so they have to be cool. I hope.
Room service arrives with a knock and a questioning look by the waiter. I smile wide while I sign my father's name to the bill, careful to add a big tip. That will silence any questions from the waiter. My father never looks at his hotel bill when he checks out and the last thing his secretary will question is a big liquor bill.
"I'll take over the bartending duties, Ice Princess," the cute delegate volunteers. Before I can say I'll be a Democratic donkey's whatever, he's mixing up exotic drinks with some of this and a lot of that and I'm putting my lips to the edge of the glass, tasting the hot, bittersweet liquid. It sets me on fire as it goes down my throat. Then I drink the little shot glass filled with liquor.
"What is that called?" I ask, trying to smile. It's not easy. I start feeling a weird buzz in the back of my head. Getting bigger. Bigger. I can handle it. This is Gillian the Activist, I keep telling myself.
"Double rum and Coke with a shot of vodka."
"Bottoms up, everybody," I say, having another, then another, until my head is starting to feel like the entire Democratic convention is holding a caucus inside my brain.
I feel cool. And soooo good. Every time somebody says something I laugh. Then I laugh again, even if it isn't funny.
"Take a toke, Ice Princess," my guy says (I call him that since I don't know his name. He didn't bother to introduce himself or his friends).
"A toke?" I ask, suspicion arcing in my brain, then taking a long downward slide as my brain stops functioning. I double blink, trying to kickstart my gray matter. Ah, I remember where I heard that expression before. The Phi Kappa Psi boys I met in New York last month.
"Well, what do you say, Ice Princess? You wanna try it?"
I laugh again. "Sure, why not?"
The scene that follows is distorted, partially by my constant giggling and partially by that section of my brain that controls cognitive reasoning shutting down. I force myself to concentrate and watch what this guy is doing as he pulls out a small mixture of what looks like dried-up weeds and smells fruity. He spreads it on little squares of thin paper. After he licks the paper he seals it up, then he hits it a couple of times before he passes it to me.
I try to act like I've done this before, show them I'm cool. I slowly take what I know is a marijuana joint, place it to my lips, and take a long drag. The first drag is the worst. I start coughing so hard I feel for sure I'm going to cough myself to death. Naturally I try to stop coughing by downing another drink.
Then another.
Am I having a good time?
I don't think so.
"How about a kiss, Ice Princess?"
It's him. The cute one. He starts nibbling on my ear and yeah, it feels good, but the rest of me isn't having such a great time. Headache. Nausea. And I'm hungry. Why didn't I order something to eat?
A knock on the door. I have to answer it because it can't be my father. He has a key. Oh, that's silly, isn't it? Why won't my head stop spinning?
"Is this where the party is?"
I see two more men, standing in the hallway.
"Come on in," I say, holding the door wide open and letting in two more delegates. They're from some state in New England. Who cares where they're from? They're men. And cute, too.
I hear more noise coming from the other end of the hallway as the elevator door opens. I hear someone say, "Kennedy's suite is at the end of the hall."
Who is it? More delegates? More men?
I never expect to see Afton and Johnny and that mousy Louise walking down the hallway toward the Kennedy suite. I can't help but be struck again by Louise's beauty, especially today. She looks vibrant and happy, as if something wonderful happened to her. A new confidence exudes from her.
I'm jealous.
Laughing, giggling, smelling vaguely of marijuana and vodka, and barefoot, my hair coming undone and flying about on my face with strays landing on my nose, I face them head on.
"Well, if it isn't Afton Leigh and her Johnny boy," I say slurring my words. "And Louise, too."
I can see by the way he holds her hand Afton has Johnny hog-tied like a Southern delegate on voting day. I'll show her. I pull the two delegate cuties into my father's suite.
"Are you Kennedy Girls lost?" I ask Afton and Louise.
I can't resist digging it in. Just a little. I try to say something else to them, but I can't think of anything else to say. I shouldn't have had that last rum drink.
"We're not lost, Gillian," Afton says quickly, looking at me, then shaking her head. "We know where we're going."
I wish I could spit at her, but I can't. I don't have any saliva in my mouth. It's dry. My throat is dry. I look down at my glass. It's dry, too. I mean, it's empty. I giggle. That makes me laugh.
"I have something I want to say to you, Gillian, but I'll save it for another time, when you're not entertaining," Johnny says, holding his voice steady but I can see that he's angry. "You and your meddling--"
"Forget it, Johnny," Louise says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It was my fault, too."
"Don't blame yourself, Louise," Afton says. "If it wasn't for people like her..."
"Thanks, Afton, but I have to take responsibility for my part in this whole charade."
Charade? Responsibility? I feel sooo dizzy. What are they talking about?
"We don't have time to waste here with her," Johnny is saying, ushering the two girls down the hallway. "Senator Kennedy and Ted Sorensen are waiting for us to help man the phones while they work on the speech."
"What speech?" I ask, not wanting to be left out. I'm half out the door in my bare feet (I don't remember taking off my nylons but I guess I did).
"They're working on the Senator's acceptance speech," Johnny says, turning his head and calling back to me. "Kennedy has seven hundred forty three committed votes. He only needs eighteen more votes. With a little luck, he's going to take the nomination on the first ballot tomorrow."
"Don't count Stevenson out," calls out a delegate behind me. Where did he come from? I don't remember bringing him upstairs. "He's building up steam."
"Yeah, he's hot," says the guy with his arm around my waist, squeezing it.
I turn to him. "I thought you were for Kennedy?"
He smiles. "I just said that to get you to bring me upstairs." He holds me tighter around the waist, kisses my neck, nibbles on my ear. "Disappointed?"
"I'll let you know when the night is over," I say, teasing him.
"You're the wildest, Ice Princess."
I throw my head back and laugh, closing the door to my father's suite at the same time. I don't need that sorry little trio out there watching my every move. Let them go and help Kennedy write his speech.
Like I said before, who cares?
* * *
Minutes later, an hour maybe, I don't know because time has stopped, I feel a cool breeze briefly shake me, then the sound of a door opening. Someone goes out. It doesn't stir my hair because my hair is wet and damp, and plastered to my head. For an instant I thought the breeze would blow away the cramps and aches I'm feeling in the lower half of my body. I can't move. Someone is on top of me, breathing heavily, slobbering all over my face with his breath that smells like whiskey. Kissing me. It doesn't feel like kissing. It doesn't feel like anything but what it is.
Lust. Passion. And Jim Beam bourbon whiskey.
"You're so beautiful, Ice Princess. I want you."
I hear his voice but it sounds so distant, though he's only inches away from my face, his hands working his way up and down my body, pulling up my dress, pulling at my panties.
How did I get into this situation? How did I let it go this far? I don't even let boys kiss me until I get a Dunn & Bradstreet on their parents. And what do I know about sex? Not much. My mother thinks the closest girls should get to understanding "it" is to read the mating habits of South Bayou fruit flies.
"Society debs say 'no' lightly, gracefully, and emphatically," I hear my mother quoting to me on a daily basis since I got my first lipstick and string of real pearls.
Say no? I don't remembering him asking me. I must have passed out after my fifth or sixth drink. And that awful cigarette. I feel like throwing up. Why did I ever let these guys in here? And then I find out they're Stevenson supporters?
Forget Gillian the Activist.
Enter Gillian the Fool.
"C'mon, Ice Princess, give me a little loving."
"I'm not giving you anything," I insist, beating on his chest with my fists. He thinks I want to play, be dominated. He laughs.
"So the Ice Princess is hot after all."
He grabs at me again and my blue Kennedy cummerbund whirls through the air, spinning around the room. I'm confused, shocked, when I realize he's trying to push my legs apart. My body jerks from his probing hands, but I keep my legs tightly squeezed together.
"Help, somebody, help me!" I scream, yell, hitting him harder this time. I grab onto his tie and pull myself half up from the white sofa. My vision is hazy, blurry. I don't see anyone else in the suite. We're alone except for Frank Sinatra singing about the "Summer Wind" on the stereophonic record player while I fight to keep my integrity, not to mention my virginity, intact. Yes, it's true. For all my talking, I've never done it with anyone. And I'll be damned if I'm going to do it for the first time with a Stevenson supporter.
"Be quiet or someone will hear you," this guy says harshly. Then more to himself, "Norman left the door open. Damn him."
Thank God for Norman. Maybe someone will hear me if I yell loud enough. I start yelling at the top of my lungs, calling for help. I never dreamed help would arrive wearing red-white-and-blue striped dresses.
"What's going on here?" I hear Afton's voice demanding. Right behind her is Louise.
"Gillian's over there on the sofa," Louise says, then she gasps loudly, "Omigod, that guy is--"
"Leaving," he says, jumping off me and grabbing his suit jacket. "I should have known better than to play in the sandbox." He splits so fast I feel the breeze of his departure hit me like a slap in the face.
I don't care. I want to close my eyes and die.
"She's bleeding, Louise." Afton grabs a napkin and stops the blood oozing on my arm. A broken glass, its contents spilled all over the rug and smelling like vodka, lay nearby. The cut on my arm isn't deep, but it bleeds freely. Like my tears. Hot and running down my cheeks.
"Hurt bad?" Afton asks me.
"Only my pride."
"It could have been worse."
"Yeah, it could."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Sure?"
I turn to face her. "I only wanted to have some fun. I had a few drinks and then he--"
I don't have to tell her what almost happened. My disheveled appearance, red-lined eyes, and I suppose, skunk-like breath say it for me. Yeow, my head hurts. I couldn't ache in more places if I'd jumped off the top of the Sports Arena and landed on the Stevenson demonstrators below.
I lay back, close my eyes, and think about how to avoid taking responsibility for what happened here tonight. I can't. Not this time. This time I'm fenced in by my own stupidity, foolishness, and pride. Something stronger than any barbed wire.
"This place smells worse than the rabbit tobacco weed the kids smoke back home in Alabama," Louise says, turning up the air conditioning. "Where did you find those guys?"
"In the bar masquerading as Kennedy supporters," I admit, checking the bleeding on my arm. It stopped.
"Not exactly what Gillian's father would call a good catch," Afton says, nodding to Louise. "After all, Kennedy Girls are held up to the highest moral standards."
I lower my eyes, ashamed. I uttered those same words. Was it only a few days ago?
I say, "I guess I deserved that."
"You did."
She's right. I should want to make her take back her words, but I don't. The funny thing is I don't feel like the same Gillian, the girl who's never made her own bed or done her own laundry, whose mother has operated as her personal alarm clock for eighteen years, rousing her from bed each morning, making all her decisions. I feel different.
Or is it only the after effects of the liquor and drug making me think so?
No, I have changed.
"I've seen their type before," Louise says, picking up an empty bottle and tossing it into the trashcan. "I remember the time my Grandma Eldy ran off a bunch of crooked peddlers from our place. She called them uppity white trash."
Where did I hear those words before?
I pick up my discarded nylons, run my fingers over their silky sheerness, trying to figure out the puzzle. Then it hits me. I pull out the memory of a big, old colored woman saying those same words to me.
"That Negro woman in the house with the quilt hanging over the window, telling me to get out, she called me uppity white trash."
Louise looks at me, her pretty face glowing. "I'm not afraid to tell the truth anymore, Gillian. That woman is my grandmother. I'm colored."
"You? You're colored? I thought Afton was...I mean, you, you've been passing for white. Why?"
"My grandfather was a white man, a good man, my Grandma Eldy says, but I never knew him." Smiling with a new courage, Louise pushes aside her fears and continues. "I felt a need to connect to a part of myself that I've been separated from all my life. I thought I could change things by passing for white." She looks at Afton, then back at me and says in a clear, confident voice, "I can change things only by being what I am. A Negro."
And though I find it difficult to believe Louise is a Negro, listening to her story puts skin and bones and a pretty face on something I've never experienced.
The sting of racism.
My hand shakes so badly when Louise puts her hand over mine. Her hand is pale and white like mine. No difference. I want to tell her I understand how she feels. I know all about that unbearable longing, that driving force to be what you can never be.
My heart pumps faster. The realization of what I've done to both Afton and Louise reveals such profound pain I can't respond to them. We haven't been friends and I don't know if we ever will be, but I am overcome by my immediate need to not only thank them for saving my butt, but hammering some sense into my head.
The hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life--harder than watching my parents drift farther and farther apart, harder than having to live with my mother's refusal to accept me for what I am--is to admit I was wrong.
I look at Afton, mumble my thanks, and with remorse as heavy as a hammer hitting my heart, I tell them how I feel. She doesn't say much, but Louise perks up when I say I'm sorry for what I did.
It's not a lot, but it is a beginning.
AFTON
July 13, 1960
North Rossmore Apartment
Wednesday is balloting day. A hot California day, full of sunshine, smog, and promise until members of the press discover Kennedy's hideaway at 522 North Rossmore.
Without warning I find myself cornered in the downstairs kitchen answering questions from reporters between bites of a cheese sandwich and sips of cold milk. Nothing much else is in the refrigerator. A couple of eggs. Some grape jelly.
I keep stalling them, eating with my mouth full so they can't understand me, trying as much as I can to protect the Senator's privacy and not give away anything as the reporters fire questions at me in rapid fire succession.
How long has Senator Kennedy been using the penthouse as a hideaway?
Where is he now?
Will he watch the balloting on the two television sets here at the hideaway?
Is he confident about winning the nomination on the first ballot?
I answer them only with "I don't know," except I do answer "yes" on the last question. At that moment Mrs. Greenfield bursts into the breakfast nook, her pointy black-rimmed glasses sliding down on her nose, clipboard in hand, demanding to know what's going on. The reporters descend on her, thinking she's Mrs. Lincoln, the Senator's personal secretary, and run after her when she tries to flee the kitchen.
I slip into a corner with my cheese sandwich, munching but not tasting, not believing what I'm seeing. Will it always be like this wherever the Senator goes? Then I shall fear for him. I suppose I'm clinging desperately to the belief that the fairy tale isn't over, that the gremlins haven't descended on our castle and taken away our handsome prince. I hope I'm wrong. Some questions are better left unanswered. Knowing the future is not one of the endeavors of the human mind, but I can't help but wish I did.
I finish my milk and peek through the kitchen door leading into the main receiving hall. I can see the hoard of reporters milling around, dragging their television equipment from room to room, crossing wires over wires. Loud and growing in numbers.
I close the door carefully, stepping back inside the kitchen. I'm stuck here until they leave. If they leave, which seems doubtful. Feeling stressed at that thought, I try to busy myself by cleaning up and rinsing the dishes in the sink with hot water. To be honest, it makes me think about my parents, makes me wonder if my mom got her dishwasher this week. I forgot to ask her when she called last night to say they saw me on television hamming it up in Kennedy headquarters with Louise and Gillian.
I guess I did act like a brat, throwing a tantrum like I did about working as a Kennedy Girl. I am not what Sister Mary Celestine would call adequate material for sainthood; I am also not totally selfish. I want to make my parents proud of me, and although my father consistently raises doubts about my ability to do anything mental in this life, after what I've experienced this week--both on the convention floor and in the very private world of the Kennedy Girls--I am vain enough to believe I have what it takes to be a writer.
Who knows, maybe someday I'll write about this experience. About how I experienced racial hatred firsthand, something my father would never understand. I'll never forget that moment when Mr. Kingsley told me to stay away from Johnny because he thought I was colored. Johnny held my hand tightly, but I was unable to speak at first because this sharp pain tore at me. I was baffled by the shame I felt for not knowing what to say.
Yet, now in retrospect, I believe I knew it was wrong to blurt out I was white because if I were different, it shouldn't matter. In the end it did matter. It mattered because I had no idea then Louise was suffering more pain than I could ever feel, remorse choking her because she couldn't say anything. So she hid her declaration of who she is until she found the courage to speak out.
I hold fast to that moment in my heart. It is a precious moment to me. A sacred moment. I thank the good Sisters for teaching me tolerance and understanding so I didn't turn away from her. I will be there for Louise whenever and wherever she needs me.
I know I'm emotional, which at times causes great distress to my father. From what I've seen, men, especially fathers, don't know a whole lot about emotions.
What I do know is that I'm going to work for the civil rights movement, even though I can already hear my father saying that racism will never disappear. It will just go underground.
We can't let that happen. I am reminded again that the keystone of the Democratic Party's platform is the rights of man.
And women.
I was shocked to find out that less than six hundred of the more than four thousand five hundred delegates here are women. It's time to change that. Whether we're white or Negro, I believe the coming of a new dawn in politics is evident to all Kennedy Girls.
When I told Louise and Gillian how I feel about this earlier this morning, Louise attempted to protest. By habit, she blamed herself for not standing up for her rights until now. Over the years she has learned to take a step backward to cope with what she perceives as the enduring myth of being inferior. I can never completely know what it feels like to be in her skin. Injustice is a part of everyday life, but racial injustice is something I haven't lived with all my life. Evidently Louise thought long and hard about passing for white before she actually did it. Which makes me question our society. If a beautiful and intelligent girl like Louise can spiral so far down into a kind of self-betrayal and desperation, how much farther does racial discrimination have to go before anyone starts listening?
I wonder where our discussion would have gone if Mrs. Greenfield had not come into the kitchen at that moment and asked us to come upstairs to the penthouse and work with Mrs. Lincoln on the press releases for Senator Kennedy. Louise and Gillian followed her to the private elevator, while I lagged behind to grab a sandwich.
No sooner had I neatly cut my Swiss cheese sandwich into two perfect triangles when the mass of reporters burst into the kitchen, completely overwhelming me. I knew then life as we Kennedy Girls had known it this week immediately ceased to exist. We were all fair game for the press from then on.
I jump when the phone on the kitchen wall rings, burdening me with the responsibility of having to answer it. Another reporter? I'll tell him what I've already told the others. Nothing more.
As I grab the phone I look out the small window facing the street. I see police all over the front of the building, trying to keep the people from getting too close to the apartment house as another press van pulls up in the driveway and the onslaught of more flashing of press badges begins. The patio is crowded with people, shouting into microphones, shouting at each other, and just shouting. Period.
"Hello," I whisper into the phone, holding the receiver to my ear, careful not to speak too loudly. I don't want the reporters coming back in here.
"Is that you, Afton?"
"Oh, Johnny, I'm so glad it's you," I say, greatly relieved. His voice sounds wonderful. "You wouldn't believe what's happening here. The press found out Kennedy is staying here and they're camped out everywhere."
"Yeah, I heard one of Kennedy's press secretaries got hold of the address. Are you okay?" he asks and I hear genuine concern in his voice. I take a breath. That makes me feel good.
"I'm fine, though the reporters are badgering poor Mrs. Greenfield with questions."
"It's crazy over here, too. The endless chain of Stevenson demonstrators is still chanting We Want Stevenson."
"I'm glad they're not over here."
"Yeah, you're lucky. We've been up all night talking to delegates," he says, his voice heavy with fatigue. "North Dakota revolted against the Senator last night."
"That's horrible, Johnny. How many votes did he lose?"
"Eleven. Don't worry, we got them back this morning after staying up all night and talking about the Senator's plans for the future with the delegate carrying the swing vote."
"That's cool, Johnny. I'm so proud of you."
"When are you coming down to the Sports Arena? The balloting starts soon."
"I'll be there later this afternoon."
"Good. Listen, I gotta go. Bobby Kennedy is going over the final numbers now to see how many committed votes the Senator has." Johnny hesitates for a moment, then he asks: "How's Gillian?"
"Shaken up, but okay."
None of us has completely recovered from seeing the image of Gillian lying helpless and alone, without pride, without hope. She admitted afterward she did a dumb thing. She also said she wanted to be something more than the perfect deb and leave her mark on the world. I think she will.
That night, Johnny called a taxi to take us back to the North Rossmore apartment. Then he took off in his little T-bird for a bar near the hotel where he found the Stevenson delegates who had taken advantage of Gillian. The plan was for him to give them a piece of his mind for as long as they could stand up. The cowards took their hides and their votes and left town in a hurry.
Logic argued that Gillian should be more distant than before after what happened last night.
Wrong, I'm happy to say.
For someone who lives on the cutting edge of high society, who seems fearless in moments of high drama on the political scene and is always in control, Gillian is a remarkably, admirably changed girl since last night.
I'm beginning to like her.
"I'm proud of all you girls," Johnny says. "This convention would never have run as smoothly without the Kennedy Girls."
"Can I quote you, sir?" I joke.
"You can quote the Senator. He said it this morning at the Virginia caucus."
After all that has happened during this Democratic National Convention, this prelude to the November craziness, I am no longer inclined to discount my contribution to the nomination process as a schoolgirl's fantasy. This time I will take the compliment, not knowing the most important moment in our role as Kennedy Girls has yet to take place.
"Thanks, Johnny," I say.
"I miss you, Afton," he says so quietly into the phone I'm not sure if I heard him correctly. I smile. He must be calling me from the cottage across the concrete rim from the Sports Arena. I imagine he's not alone.
I feel my face blush. "I miss you, too, Johnny."
I don't know where this relationship is heading, but if, in fact, we were a few years into the future, if we were dating on a warm summer night instead of the hot July days when we began our strange adventure, I think I would feel some permanence within myself. A singing in my heart, a fever from remembering his touch, a sense of a continuing romance. I feel instead like my life is a book and in the course of flipping through the pages I've stopped on this page. I don't know for how long, but I feel like I've been reborn on a different page in history.
"Afton, can you come up to the penthouse?"
I turn around. It's Gillian. Her blonde hair flows freely around her face. No more beehive. Soft bangs fly wistfully over her forehead, hiding her bloodshot eyes still swollen from crying as well as her bruised ego. To protect Gillian and her reputation, we three girls made a pact not to say anything to anyone.
She keeps looking over her shoulder, making sure the hoard of reporters doesn't see her. A solid oak door affords us no substantial privacy against the curious and potentially destructive force of the media if they decide to descend upon us and grill us with more questions. I ask her how she got through the reporters without them seeing her.
"I came through the back door near the fire escape," she says, winking at me.
A curious feeling creeps up and down my spine. Fire escape? "Johnny's on the phone," I tell her, and she smiles. That smile stays with me because I know it is genuine. Gillian is determined to become a self-committed activist of this new Kennedy era and understands the bargain she made requires her to accept what she cannot change. Consequently, I am amazed she has altered her thinking about Johnny and me.
"Something's up, Johnny," I say into the phone. "I'll see you later."
He says goodbye with words more casual than romantic, though I sense the warmth of his feelings in those few words.
"What's going on, Gillian?" I ask, putting the phone back into the cradle, then following her out the side door and into the backyard, closing the door quietly. Very quietly. No one hears us.
"We've got to get back to the penthouse," she says, "but we can't use the private elevator. I saw a bunch of press parked right in front of it."
"How are we going to get upstairs?" I joke. "Fly?"
"Close enough," Gillian says, lifting her head up and pointing to the fire escape. "After you."
I roll my eyes and tuck my dress around my legs, then slowly make my way up the fire escape. Holding on to the thin railing, I don't look down. I count ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen steps. Second floor. The same routine until we reach the third floor. The outside door leading into the third floor penthouse is opened by a man I don't know. He's smiling and introduces himself as Chuck Roche. I find out he's one of Senator Kennedy's press secretaries.
I get a chill. Not a little, tingly one, but a major chill. I can't believe I'm in Senator Kennedy's penthouse.
"The Senator needs our help, Afton," Gillian says, "so he can slip away from the apartment unnoticed by the press."
"What does he want us to do?"
"Simple. We'll sneak out to the Senator's special VIP limousine waiting at the end of the street and give the driver this message to take off." She shows me a folded up note. "No one will recognize us leaving the apartment, so when the press see the limo pull away, they'll think the Senator is inside the car."
"I'm ready. Let's do it."
I look back at the Senator's press secretary then at Gillian. She's smiling, but it's a serious smile. I smile back at her. Nervous-like. Whoever thought being a Kennedy Girl would be this exciting?
With the late afternoon sun flaring in through the half-opened window blinds, I look around the penthouse. The first thing I see is a massive baby grand piano with a bar one step up from the living room. I peek inside the barroom and I see a television set, then a second one. I assume this is where the Senator plans to watch the balloting. I walk into the dining room and I see Louise talking on the telephone.
"No, I'm sorry, the Senator is not here," she says, hanging up the phone, then wiping her brow. She's perspiring, and by the exhausted look on her face I know she's been fielding all the calls from the reporters downstairs checking every five minutes to see where the Senator is. She sees me, smiles, then nods toward someone sitting in the corner, away from the window. I see newspapers strewn everywhere, and in the shadows, a man is making notes on bits of paper.
I stop, gazing at him, transfixed.
That man is Jack Kennedy.
He's a serious, driven man, and I soon realize the press fascination with calling him a matinee idol is purely on the surface. He confers for several minutes with his press secretary and Mrs. Lincoln as they go over the organizational and technical aspects of the next phase of the convention: the balloting. He doesn't refer to his notes. He has them all down to memory, down to half-votes.
I sit down on a dining room chair. Thanks to the heated discussion going on they're not paying any attention to me, so I can seize upon the smallest, fascinating observation and from it commit to memory something that makes me smile. Something I'll never forget.
The Senator's socks don't match.
In that moment he becomes more than a hopeful Presidential candidate to me. He becomes a human being who is not immune to making a mistake. I know he is also a man of action who can lead our country into a bright future, a man where none of the usual labels fit, but a man with what I hear his press secretary call "humanism." He embraces both economic welfare and civil liberties.
Although I've never known a moment like this in my life, seeing the man who could be our next President is so disturbing to me, though in a pleasant way, I feel completely choked up. I struggle to clear my throat, get my breath. I realize then I've been holding my breath since I saw him. I let it out, blink a few times. I want to have a clear head to remember this moment, but after all that's happened today, I can't think of a word to say to him, to anyone.
I don't have to worry about remembering this as an opportunity lost because the phone rings. Again. Louise picks it up.
"Hello," she says, then: "I'm sorry, the Senator is--oh, yes, Mr. Kennedy, he's right here."
Without hesitation, she holds the phone out to Jack Kennedy and he smiles at her before taking the receiver. Into the phone, he says, "It's Jack, Bobby."
Louise looks at me and I look at Gillian then we all look back at the Senator. His quiet manner is unnerving without implying anything is seriously wrong. Judging by the controlled excitement on his face, the news is good and not so good.
"Got it, Bobby," the Senator says, "The current count is seven hundred thirty nine and a half votes." Pause. "Yes, I'm on my way."
He hangs up the phone. From somewhere down below in the street comes shouting. More reporters, spectators. No one moves.
His press secretary gets up and closes the drapes, adding to the eeriness of the moment. "What is it, Jack?"
"It doesn't look good. Bobby said that Stevenson has decided to fight for the nomination. Even the evening papers are proclaiming his possible victory with the headlines KENNEDY BANDWAGON FALTERS and KENNEDY TIDE EBBS."
Someone sighs deeply. I think it was Louise. Her hand goes to her mouth. Gillian clenches her fists together. I'm stunned, not a muscle moving in my body except my heart beating so loud I swear everyone else in the room can hear it, too.
The Senator runs his hands through his wavy hair, then looks at each of us. Meeting his gaze with such intensity, I am surprised that my fear and desire to show strength can coexist with a mix of emotions: anger at the Stevenson demonstrators, hope that we can overcome whatever they throw in the Senator's path, and the desire to do everything I can to make certain he doesn't lose the nomination. It's a tense moment and I swear everyone leans forward, trying in the same way I am to let him know we're with him to the end.
Finally, his press secretary asks, "What about the New Jersey caucus, Jack? Are they with us?"
"We won't know until the balloting begins if we were successful in breaking New Jersey open and getting their votes," the Senator says simply.
I keep silent a little longer. I'm not certain I can fit all the pieces of this puzzle together, but I have an idea and I'm scared to act on it. My behavior might be out of line, certainly, but not a meaningless show of bravado. There's calculation in what I'm about to say. With my voice energized, I rattle out what seems like a crazy idea in a few rapid-fire syllables.
"What about Wyoming?" I ask, effecting a weak smile. I haven't forgotten Johnny's father controls five and a half uncommitted votes. With a little luck and those votes, it could put the Senator over the top and push Stevenson out the convention door.
The Senator looks directly at me then at his press secretary. I hold my breath again until he speaks.
"Interesting thought," he says, then he asks the man standing by the window, "What's the latest on Wyoming, Chuck?"
"Teddy's with the delegates now," his press secretary says. "The last time he checked in, he said he couldn't convince them to sway all their votes your way, Jack."
Louise looks at me and I look at Gillian and we're all thinking the same thing. They give me the thumbs up.
"Excuse me, Senator Kennedy," I say, hesitating but not too long. I have to say this quickly before I lose my nerve.
"Yes?" he asks.
"I have an idea how we can help you secure the Presidential nomination."
* * *
I expect to see a police car or a television newsvan or both with their headlights trained on us and anxious reporters waiting for us when the three of us jump off the final step of the fire escape and onto the ground. Fortunately. I'm disappointed. I look around. The alley is deserted. The press, the police, the spectators have clogged up the street in the front of the apartment building with their vehicles and equipment, their mass of bodies flowing in and out of the building, waiting for the Senator to come out. They're not looking for three girls in red-white-and-blue striped dresses, white skimmers, and white shoes.
"What do we do now?" Louise asks.
"Find the VIP limo and give him the Senator's message to take off," Gillian answers, carefully looking around the far corner of the apartment building.
"Over there," I say, keeping my voice low. I point out a car parked down at the end of the street. It's a brand new Chevy with fins and sporting a special license plate displaying the figure of a donkey and saying "Democratic National Convention 1960."
The night is pleasantly warm but not humid, so I'm surprised to feel perspiration drizzling down the side of my neck. My heart is amping as we try to mesh with the reporters and spectators parked outside the front door. I glance at the crowd, then return my attention to the waiting car down the street. I see the driver poking his head out the side window. Louise and Gillian are right behind me, so close I can hear their quick breathing in my ears.
"Let's make a run for it," I whisper loud enough for them to hear me. Louise nods. Gillian nods. Holding hands, we slip past between the mass of reporters, spectators, and police. I swear I feel the sharpness of a badge scrape up against my bare upper arm. Press or police, I'm not stopping to find out. We keep going, secure in the fact they're not looking for us. The man they are looking for is making his way down the fire escape. I find out afterward the Senator and his press secretary had to leapfrog over the fence and into the neighbor's backyard to get away from the crowd.
As we approach the car, the extraordinary brightness of the setting sun bounces off the windshield, blinding us with a secret signal. The white Chevy is parked in front of a non-descript apartment building. The long fins give it the appearance of a space ship. I wish it could fly.
I go around to the passenger side and the door magically swings open. I hop in, landing on the front seat as the driver jumps out and opens the back passenger door. Louise and Gillian hustle inside the car just as quickly and Gillian gives him the Senator's message. Before I can catch a glimpse of more than the driver's tanned young face and UCLA blazer, he starts up the engine, puts the car into gear, and jets down the street, burning rubber and leaving serpentine black streaks all over the asphalt. I look over at him and I can see he's enjoying this ride.
"Just following Senator's Kennedy's orders," he says, grinning.
"Afton, look!" Louise says, pointing out the back window.
I whip my head around. A block away, several television news vans race to catch up to us, squealing their tires like racecars trying to knock each other off the straight-away. Their driving requires stunt-like effort; screeching, honking, yelling, they keep after us as we weave in and out of the late afternoon rush hour traffic. We did it. They can't catch us. The plan worked. They think Senator Kennedy is in the car.
"This is like Mr. Toad's Mad Ride at Disneyland," I say, holding onto the door handle as the car swerves around a curve on two wheels. In the backseat, Louise and Gillian are also clinging to the door handles, laughing and giggling like old school chums. This is another one of those moments I don't want to forget. Did I ever dream Louise and Gillian would be sitting together, laughing like best friends?
Finally we approach the Sports Arena, the television news vans getting stuck in the heavy traffic behind us. We drive into the craziness of the convention, only our official VIP status allowing us to get close enough to see the seemingly endless stream of Stevenson demonstrators making a human chain around the convention headquarters.
A bright flash from the sun hits me in the eye. From the rearview mirror dangles a sterling silver key chain with the head of a donkey (a "vote getting" chain according to our UCLA driver), reminding me that our mission is not impossible. But regardless of our cleverness, our greatest challenge is yet to come.
LOUISE
July 13, 1960
Late Wednesday Afternoon
The Los Angeles Sports Arena can pass for a battle zone with the uniformed police amazingly outnumbered by Stevenson demonstrators easily identified by their Uncle Sam type top hats. It is where warring soldiers clash and fight each other, not with sharp swords or automatic weapons, but with a different kind of weapon that cuts just as deep.
Words.
I know how much words can hurt. Nigger, whites only, no colored, pickaninny, ho. These words have been a part of my life since I was old enough to know that when white folks look at you too long, give you the "stare," something is seething in them that makes them hate you for no other reason than you are different.
I sought to banish these words from my soul by passing for white at the convention. I remember what my Mama told me, that if you don't leave the block, your view of the world is small. My world is much larger now, filled with so many new experiences, but I will have only succeeded in changing who I am if I can help get Senator Kennedy nominated for President.
As if we are engaged in a fight-to-the-death finish to secure the Presidential nomination for the Senator (and with my eyes smarting from the heavy smoking of the delegates), Afton, Gillian, and I fight our way through the congested aisles (clogged with Stevenson demonstrators), to the floor of the Sports Arena with our mission clearly in our minds.
To take the state of Wyoming.
And those five and a half uncommitted votes controlled by Johnny's father.
I bite down on my lower lip so hard this time it does bleed. I can't help it. I'm as nervous as a beaver with a toothache, as Grandma Eldoris would say. I can still see her wonderful, old black face looking at me with tears in her eyes and pain in her soul the day I left home. She knew all the time it wouldn't work, that I couldn't pass for white where it counts the most.
In my heart.
"What are you going to tell Mr. Kingsley to sway him to vote for Senator Kennedy?" Gillian asks, her face sweaty, her eyes looking everywhere at once.
"The truth," I say quickly. "That I'm a Negro--and that he can't let himself be fooled twice. Kennedy is the best man for the job."
"Are you sure you want to do this, Louise?" Afton asks, laying her hand on my arm.
I nod. "Yes. I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
We three Kennedy Girls continue walking, holding hands to keep from being separated. Gillian walks next to me in silence as we head down onto the convention floor, then she says: "This is all my fault, Louise. If I hadn't been so jealous and opened my big mouth--"
"If you hadn't, Gillian, I'd still be living a lie, a big white lie," I answer. "What I didn't know then was that no one can lower my self-esteem unless I let them."
Our attention is drawn to the speakers' platform as the nominations begin with the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, nominating Lyndon Johnson.
"You're the bravest girl I know, Louise," Afton says minutes later as the Speaker finishes his speech to loud applause.
"Ditto for me," Gillian says.
I feel my face blushing as Governor James Blair of Missouri nominates Symington.
"Look, everybody, the Wyoming delegates have gathered over there on the far side of the arena," I call out, pointing to a sea of Wyoming state standards waving back and forth on the convention floor. I see Mr. Kingsley talking and smoking with his state's delegates, a ten-gallon hat on his head and a ten-dollar cigar in his mouth.
"We don't have much time before the balloting begins," Afton says.
"Where's Johnny?" I ask her.
"He's watching all the action with Bobby Kennedy from the cottage command post."
Next, as Governor Orville Freeman of Minnesota nominates Senator John F. Kennedy, we make our way over to the Wyoming delegation enclave. It's only a few minutes before I find myself standing next to Mr. Kingsley. I watch his face as the Governor speaks. He keeps chewing on his cigar, trying to act nonchalant, though he looks very interested in what the Governor is saying. He could be persuaded to commit his votes to Kennedy, I'm sure of it.
I'm almost prepared to question my instinct when I see another delegate come up to him and he turns away from the speakers' platform. He pats the man on the back and laughs at whatever the delegate said to him. He ignores the rest of the speech as the Governor spouts forth an endless, mechanical stream of phrases interspersed with coughing, pausing, drinking water in the middle of a sentence, then going back over it again, all this stretching the patience of the crowd. When he finally finishes, a band strikes up "Anchors Aweigh" and the crowd starts cheering "We Want Kennedy."
I look behind me and see Ted Kennedy talking to the Wyoming delegates, including Tracy McCracken, the chairman of the Wyoming delegation. I wonder if the youngest Kennedy has spoken with Mr. Kingsley yet? There's so much commotion going on in the galleries, I can only hear part of what's he's saying, that what we need now in this nation most of all is a constant flow of new ideas.
Before I can say anything to Mr. Kingsley, someone shouts "We Want Stevenson" from somewhere high up in the gallery. Then other voices chime in with the same refrain, only louder, "We Want Stevenson."
I crane my neck to look high up into the galleries and I see them filling up with demonstrators holding Stevenson placards and banners. I can also see a huge net filled with golden balloons hanging from the arena ceiling and held up only by the thinnest rope, as if at any moment it will break and the golden balls of air will descend on the crowd like giant soap bubbles. I can't hold back my surprise when I see Afton's Aunt Jeanette rushing up behind Mrs. Roosevelt as she makes her way down to the convention floor from the gallery.
"The police are calling for reinforcements," a Wyoming delegate says, dropping his cigarette butt on the floor near me.
"Mr. Kingsley, can I talk to you for a minute?" I ask, ignoring the smoking butt next to my foot and standing up as tall as I can.
"Not now," Mr. Kingsley says, barely glancing at me. To the delegate, he says, "What's happening in the galleries?"
"Thousands of Stevenson demonstrators are invading the arena," the delegate reports, "marching and chanting 'We Want Stevenson' and there's more of them outside, threatening to storm the convention."
I try again. "Mr. Kingsley, it will just take a minute--"
"How did the Stevenson people get in here?" Mr. Kingsley says, this time totally ignoring me. "Only a certain number of tickets were sold."
"Somebody's been either smuggling tickets to them or selling them counterfeit ones," the delegate says, " 'cause there are more and more Stevenson supporters coming and nobody can stop them."
Mr. Kingsley smirks. "This man can."
I look to see who they're talking about and I see Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota take the speakers' platform. With his full, rich voice, he goes into a long and eloquent speech, catching the audience up in the rhythm of his words about how the delegates should not "reject this man who has made us all proud to be Democrats." Stevenson. The audience is spellbound.
Including Mr. Kingsley. He's listening, really listening. The short stub of his cigar hangs out of the corner of his mouth and his eyes follow the Minnesota Senator's every word, every gesture.
"We're losing him, Louise," Afton whispers to me.
"Talk to him, Louise," Gillian urges. "Now, please."
I open my mouth to speak, but before it all comes rolling out of me faster than a swollen river rushing toward land when it's set free, so many emotions race through me, fueling the words bottled up in me for so long.
I remember the long, hot July months in Summer Bend without running water and the drought of '54 when the soil was dry and cracked. I remember the old Negroes sitting around talking about how things never change, how the chains of slavery are just as strong now as if they still bind us to our white masters. How voting is for white folks, and schoolin' is the only way out for the young people.
I close my eyes and pray to my Mama to help me. I feel her presence within me, energizing me with her spirit. Yes, Mama, I can do it.
I open my eyes. There isn't anybody who can stop me now.
"Mr. Kingsley, you have to listen to me--"
"Not now, young woman."
"Please, it's a matter of personal concern about the future of our country...and your son."
He glares at me. I smile. Now I've got his attention.
Eyeing me with suspicion, he says, "What do you want?"
"I want you to cast your votes for Senator Kennedy."
He smirks. "Since when did Kennedy send girls to do his campaigning for him?"
"It's important to the future of your son and to all the young people in this country, Mr. Kingsley. Senator Kennedy is the only man who can effectively take on the leadership of the people. He's an idealist without illusions, a leader with new ideas, economic reform, and civil rights--"
"You talk like a lawyer."
"I hope to become an attorney someday, Mr. Kingsley. For now, my commitment is to Senator Kennedy and that's why I'm here. I believe in this country. Don't you?"
He snickers. "You doubting my patriotism, young woman?"
It's my turn to smile. "No, sir, it's just that I'm certain if you understand how important it is for us to move forward in giving freedom to all people, especially now, seeing how the Democratic platform is based on civil rights--"
Mr. Kingsley jerks his head from left to right, looking for someone. He doesn't find them, but he does see Gillian, then Afton. He hesitates, then slowly he chews on his cigar before spitting out the tobacco. "I remember you, young lady. You're the friend of that colored gal my son has been seeing. Well, let me tell you, I don't know what you want, but your folks must be crazy, letting you socialize with a Negro--"
"Someone made a mistake, Mr. Kingsley. Afton is not colored." Pause... "I am."
"What? I don't believe it. This is a Kennedy trick. You're not a Negro."
"Why is it so hard to believe I'm colored? Because I'm light-skinned? I'm still descended from slaves, Mr. Kingsley. Children stick out their tongues at me or roll their eyes. Their parents set the dogs on me. My people have been cussed at, spit at, and locked up because we're different. You've made up your mind what you think we are because of the color of our skin. You've never look beyond that."
"That's not true, young woman. I was one of the delegates who wrote the civil rights platform, though of course, our main objective is to put our man into the White House."
"Yet you were willing to dislike Afton because you believed she was a Negro, going so far as to try to scare her away from seeing Johnny. Why, Mr. Kingsley? Why?"
He pushes his ten-gallon hat back on his head. "She was dating my son."
"I see. It's okay to have civil rights for the other fellow, but not in your own family."
"Hold on, young woman. You're putting words into my mouth. I never said that."
"Maybe not. But your actions speak for you loud and clear."
Suddenly all the Wyoming delegates are paying attention to our conversation and not the Senator from Minnesota on the speakers' platform.
"I don't know why you're doing this," Mr. Kingsley says, acutely aware his delegates are listening in, "but you have my word on one thing."
"Yes, Mr. Kingsley?"
"You have more courage than anybody else I've heard speak here today."
I smile. "I thank you for that, Mr. Kingsley. I remember the man who gave me that courage when I was in grade school and I needed something to believe in. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King said, 'Don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate. There is an element of God in every man.' I believe there is an element of God in you, Mr. Kingsley, and you will vote with your heart. You will vote for Senator Kennedy."
With that, I turn and walk away.
"Miss, wait--" I hear him call after me. I'll never know what he was about to say because it is at that moment Senator McCarthy from Minnesota finishes his speech and the floor erupts into a stampede of Stevenson demonstrators. They pour in through all the doors, rocketing down the aisles, yelling, chanting, wiggling in long lines like snakes, congesting the floor en masse as someone in the gallery pulls the cord and thousands of gold balloons drift downward over everyone's head, popping loudly.
Paper banners reading "We Want Stevenson" unfurl as if touched by a magic wand and stream down from the galleries, landing on delegates standing on the floor of the arena. Demonstrators grab state standards from California, Nevada, then Montana, holding them high up in the air, then bobbing them up and down as people chant "We Want Stevenson."
With a purpose I could not foresee, they shriek and march all around us, demonstrating unchecked into every delegation enclave, hitting the floor with their stomping feet. I feel as if I'm being pulled along with the river, rendered into a swirl of red-white-and-blue melting into the larger sea of pulsating bodies.
My comfortable world of handing out cinnamon buns and coffee and chatting with delegates is eroding around me, and I'm powerless to halt the change. I can neither decide whether to join the mass of demonstrators or risk being trampled in their mass exodus, or is it more like a protest march?
It's unbelievable in a fantasy-like way, especially when a huge papier-mâché ball bounces up and down over the mob in the same rhythm as their chanting and marching. It is as if the demonstrators are so focused on thrusting their energies into this one moment in their lives, they've let go of their civilized emotions and are no longer controlled by anything other than the frenzy of this moment, releasing all their pent-up energy like a great river rushing down the mountainside.
The tenseness inside the Sports Arena builds and builds and nothing can stop it, not even Governor Collins of Florida, the convention chairman, as he raps for order again and again with his gavel, calling for an end to the demonstrations. The pounding of his gavel becomes a marker by which the demonstrators keep time, stamping their feet on the floor of the galleries, tramping up and down.
Senator McCarthy tries calling for order. Chanting, marching.
The convention band plays louder. Louder. Chanting, marching.
Someone turns out the lights. Chanting, marching.
Still the chant goes on: "We Want Stevenson."
Because they appear to be ordinary people, I wonder what internal change takes place in their minds to make them act as they do. They believe so duly in their cause, they're willing to step out of their everyday shoes and march for what they believe in.
I also know that feeling, know what it's like to stand in somebody else's shoes. No, I cannot fault them for putting forth this display of passion for their candidate. I, too, have the same passion for mine.
Beside me, I feel Afton grabbing my hand, then Gillian grabbing the other as the lights go back on. I hadn't been aware of them coming up behind me.
"You were wonderful, Louise," Afton says with a choke in her voice.
"Not even the Senator himself could have done better," Gillian says, then she adds: "I'm proud to know you, Louise, and prouder yet you're a Kennedy Girl."
I smile at them. I'm plumb out of words, as Grandma Eldy would say. I check my wristwatch. The balloting is starting in a few minutes. I take a deep breath, ready to accept whatever happens in the balloting process because I know I've done my best, and I've done it proclaiming my Negro heritage.
Thank you, Mama.
* * *
"Ala--bam - a!" begins the roll call at 10:07 pm.
"Alabama casts twenty votes for Johnson, one half for Stevenson, three and a half for Symington, and three and a half for Kennedy."
I sink back down in my seat, wipe my sweaty hands on my dress. Oh, Lordy, Grandma Eldoris must be saying if she's watching this on television. My home state only gave Kennedy three and a half votes.
"Too bad we didn't get over to the Alabama delegation so you could give them a pep talk, too," Afton teases me, hugging me, trying to make me feel better.
"I should have given them a piece of Grandma Eldy's peach cobbler," I quip. "That would do it."
"The balloting is just starting, Louise," Gillian says. "There's plenty of time for Kennedy to get enough votes."
"Bobby Kennedy told us earlier we're to be ready at the call of the state of Washington," Johnny says, joining us in our seats. He sits next to Afton, takes her hand, then assumes his role of delegate-shepherd again. "If the tally passes seven hundred at Washington, we've got a chance to take the nomination tonight."
The balloting continues as the numbers light up on the screen on the electric scoreboard. We hold our breath as Illinois puts Kennedy over the one hundred mark.
Then Iowa makes it over two hundred.
We mark the three hundred mark with Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts.
"I bet they're saying back in Massachusetts he's one Boston Bean that made good," Afton jokes.
The delegates from New York surprise everybody by making the count just short of five hundred.
"Where did the Stevenson demonstrators go?" Afton asks, looking up into the galleries. There are so many empty seats in the second gallery we all wonder if they were held by Stevenson supporters who gave up and went home.
"Yeah, they're gone," I say, "as if someone casts a spell over them and they disappeared in a puff of smoke."
"Maybe they're buried in balloons," Johnny jokes.
"Pennsylvania's vote is next," Gillian whispers, grabbing my hand. I miss the count because I feel a pair of eyes on me. In this madding crowd of thousands of eyes, I know who's watching me. Mr. Kingsley. I look over at the Wyoming delegation enclave and I can see him puffing on his cigar, staring at me. I nod, then smile. He hesitates, then he tips his ten-gallon hat to me, making my heart race faster. Was that a nod of approval? I'll find out in a few minutes.
"The Senator has more than six hundred fifty votes, thanks to Pennsylvania," Gillian says proudly.
The balloting continues with the Rocky Mountain states, then Washington brings the total up to seven hundred ten votes.
"From the way our numbers have been running," Johnny says, checking his tally sheet, "we can count on West Virginia and Wisconsin to bring us up to seven hundred fifty votes."
I look at each of them. Afton, Johnny, and Gillian. The shining glow from all the photographers' flashbulbs is reflected in their eyes. They don't look away from me, but they don't say anything. This is the moment we've anticipated all week and no one can say a word.
"That means Kennedy only needs eleven votes to win the nomination," I blurt out.
"Wyoming committed seven votes to Kennedy earlier this week," Johnny offers, checking his tally sheet again. "And they added two and a half votes earlier today,"
Afton says, "Which means if Mr. Kingsley swings his votes to Kennedy--"
"This is it," I call out. Every pair of eyes in the Sports Arena is focused on the Wyoming enclave. "Wyoming is next!"
I feel the fluttering in my stomach, then in my chest and along my spine. I close my eyes, tell Mama I love her, and then I pray, sending one last prayer up to her.
Quiet. The Sports Arena is so quiet not even a whisper can be heard. Not for long. I open my eyes and see the Wyoming chairman, Tracy McCracken, stand up, throw his shoulders back. He's ready to speak.
"Wyoming casts all fifteen votes," he says in a clear voice, "for the next President of the United States, John F. Kennedy!"
"Yes!" I cry out, jumping up and down in my seat, standing on my seat, jumping on the floor, going crazy, wild. Before I know it, I'm caught in the middle of the crowd, yelling "We Want Kennedy!" I sort of remember running down to the convention floor and grabbing a placard that says "Kennedy for President" (where did it come from?) and hold it up high above my head as I jump around like I'm riding on a pogo stick.
"Kennedy's in," Afton says, hugging me. "He's in!"
"You did it, Louise," Gillian says, grabbing me, hugging me.
Johnny gives me a kiss on the cheek. "You are one amazing young woman, Louise. I heard how you convinced my father to swing his votes for Kennedy. How'd you do it?"
Laughing and crying at the same time, I say, "It wasn't easy, but remember, I'm a Kennedy Girl!"
* * *
If you can believe it, and I don't know if I can, the evening gets crazier still. Several minutes ago, Senator John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for President and the entire convention hall heaved a huge sigh, as if this mass of human beings all let out their breath at the same time. Those in the know, the party bosses, reporters, and pundits who know their politics, darted through the exits of the Sports Arena as quickly as nervous rabbits late to a tea party.
That included our shepherd-delegate, Johnny, who grabbed Afton, then the two of them hightailed it over to the cottage command post, where several political bosses drank Coca-Cola and beer and waited for the news: Would Senator Kennedy put in an appearance tonight?
Now, as then, I float through the crowd in the arena on my own invisible cloud, not wanting to leave all this excitement. I have no idea how I'm getting back to the apartment on North Rossmore. I start to ask Gillian if we should look for Mrs. Greenfield and her station wagon, when Gillian spots her father heading for the rostrum, along with the governors from California and Michigan.
"My father must know something about what's going on behind the scenes, Louise," she says, straightening her skimmer.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. He has enough people on the payroll to inform him when something big is about to happen. I'm going to find out what it is."
I watch eagerly as Gillian approaches the rostrum. The raised platform on the stage is emblazoned with the words "Democratic Convention 1960" and flanked by a blue canopy filled with stars behind the speaker. Then I see Bobby Kennedy--and is that Johnny walking up on the stage right behind him? Yes, it is, and there's Afton talking to a lady in a pink dress, white hat, and pearls.
"Who's the woman in pink?" I ask the delegate next to me waving a Kennedy placard.
"That's Rose Kennedy, the Senator's mother."
"Maybe Senator Kennedy is going to speak," I say out loud.
"I don't know, Miss, but the whole Kennedy clan is here. There's his sister Pat and her husband, Peter Lawford, and I saw his sister Eunice and Ted Kennedy over yonder a while ago."
I start cheering with the rest of the crowd when word spreads quickly on the floor the Senator is on his way to the Sports Arena. I try to step back, get my bearings. This convention, this incredible night, is so thrilling that inevitably it inspires me to be bold, and in that boldness is the courage I will need in the coming years to complete what I have only begun.
I still have to get into college, I still have to fight for my place as a colored person, and I still have to overcome whatever prejudice lies ahead of me. I know now that the rude stares, ignorant questions, and racist remarks have only begun. It's going to be a tough fight, but I'll make it. I feel my heart lift at the thought of what I have already accomplished here tonight.
The mob of delegates grows and grows, pushing me farther back from the rostrum, blocking it from my view, and leaving me with only the chanting of "Kennedy, Kennedy" filling my ears. Finally the crowd breaks free of whatever police force is present, exploding into one big voice, "We Want Kennedy!"
Before I can stop the wave of pushing, pulling, shoving, and more pushing, I find myself outside the arena, caught in another mob waiting for the Senator to arrive.
I double blink when I see a woman with a big red rose bobbing up and down on the front of her suit.
It's Aunt Jeanette. (She insists I call her that.)
She sees me and I swear she pushes half a dozen delegates out of her way to reach me.
"Louise, darling!" she calls out.
"Aunt Jeanette," I holler to her.
"I haven't seen a madhouse like this since I went to Queen Elizabeth's wedding to that Phillip person," she says, adjusting her rose.
"Isn't it wonderful? About Kennedy, I mean?"
"Oh, yes, my dear, and I hear you're the girl who helped the Senator secure the nomination," she says, hugging me over and over.
"Me?"
"Yes, you, Miss Louise Pardue. I ran into Afton and Johnny and they told me all about it. You're a brave girl, my dear. How did you ever sway that overfed cattle rancher to vote for Kennedy?"
"I learned it from you, Aunt Jeanette."
She throws her head back and laughs. "Bravo! Remind me to include that in my memoirs."
"Is it true what they're saying, Aunt Jeanette, that the Senator is on his way over here to speak to the crowd?"
"Yes. Oh, wait until my brother Harry hears about this. He'll never believe it."
"Neither will my grandmother," I say.
"Don't you worry, Miss Louise, Senator Kennedy is going to change both their minds about a lot of things."
Choked up, I stumble for words. No one but my Mama ever called me "Miss Louise." I miss her so, but I know she's with me and will continue to guide me in my dream.
"I hope I see you again, Aunt Jeanette," I say, meaning it.
"I'm sure you will. There's the '64 convention, and who knows where we'll be in '68," she says, making me wonder the same thing.
"Aunt Jeanette..." I begin, thinkin' about asking her for a ride back to the apartment on North Rossmore.
"However, this convention isn't over yet," she interrupts me, holding to her agenda. "I've got to go back to the hotel and check on Mrs. Roosevelt. She left about half an hour ago, still holding her Stevenson sign. She's a dear, but a little slow in coming over to our side." She kisses me on both cheeks. "Goodbye, Miss Louise, and good luck."
Then she disappears into the crowd. Still standing outside the Sports Arena, I glance around me along the side street at the growing string of flashing red lights undulating along the boulevard, weaving in and out of the night like red-bellied fireflies. Screaming sirens from police vehicles escorting an official VIP car announce loudly, even louder than the crowd chanting "Kennedy, Kennedy," that the Senator is here.
I crane my neck to see what's happening. Motorcycle police signal the traffic to ease off to the side of the street. That doesn't stop people from honking their horns wildly and poking their heads out of their car windows to see what's going on.
"There he is!" someone yells. "There's Kennedy!"
I can't see the Senator, but I can feel the shift of body weight on the concrete outside the Sports Arena as the mob runs toward the street, racing toward the winking, blinking, flashing train of red lights as the police cavalcade sets up camp in a circle. They look impressive, but they're doing nothing at this point, just waiting to do the whole thing over again in the opposite direction when the Senator finishes his speech.
Only a few hundred feet separate the command post cottage from the Sports Arena, but it looks like a battlefield. The police presence is everywhere. No one can get close to the Senator after he stops for a few minutes at the cottage. (Are Johnny and Afton among the lucky few who have the chance to greet the candidate?) Dark-suited men, men like Mr. Kingsley who have the money and power to command such a position, guard their Presidential candidate all the way into the Sports Arena.
I can't determine whether it's because the crowd seems to be getting bigger every second or because someone grabs my skimmer, but I spend the next minutes trying to get it back. I don't get inside the convention center until I hear the band finishing a chorus of "Toora-Loora-Loora," then going into "Happy Days Are Here Again" as Senator Kennedy mounts the platform.
I can't hear what he's saying (the crowd cheers at what seems like every word), and I can't see him (what seems like every state standard on the floor bobs up and down in front of the Senator), but I know in my heart he's speaking to all of us. Before I can get any closer to the podium, it's over and the crowd gives out a thunderous roar.
Settling into a different emotion, the band plays the national anthem and we all face the flag. It is at that moment I realize I've made my way over to the aisle where the Senator will come down from the speakers' platform. I direct my attention to the men clearing the stage. The Senator waves to the crowd and walks briskly down the path cleared for him by the plainclothesmen escorting him out of the arena. He grasps handshakes to a lucky few delegates along the way.
I lean over and try to grab his hand as he passes by me, but he moves by me quicker than a flash of history and I miss shaking hands with him again. I notice he's wearing a navy polka dot tie as the flash of unnatural white radiance from the many photographers' cameras lights up his face in gray and white, making patterns on his face so I seem to be looking at him through constantly changing black-and-white snapshots.
John F. Kennedy, the Senator.
John F. Kennedy, the Presidential candidate.
John F. Kennedy, the man.
I don't know which one of the three I like the best.
* * *
It's after midnight. Way after midnight, and the party is still going on. Inside. Outside. People are laughing, talking loudly, singing, and a few are scouring the convention floor for souvenir buttons and badges, anything to remind them of this
night.
I've got my own souvenirs tucked away in my heart:
The three of us, Afton, Gillian, and I, handing out cinnamon buns and coffee in Kennedy headquarters, and getting on live TV.
Me. Losing my purse and the colored maid seeing through me. Whew, that was tough.
Afton nearly being killed at the Sports Arena because they thought she was a Negro. I never knew people could judge other people so harshly.
Me. Standing up to Mr. Kingsley for who I am. I still shake remembering that moment.
And Senator Kennedy receiving the Democratic nomination for President, the best souvenir of them all.
In the outer corner of the Sports Arena a path is roped off. I see several people milling around, but the police are gone. Senator Kennedy left as quickly as he came. Either intuition is guiding me, making the walk easier on my feet (I haven't been able to find Afton or Gillian, and I heard Mrs. Greenfield and her station wagon left an hour ago), or there's a pumpkin around the corner just waiting to turn into a taxi. I'm not placing my faith on the pumpkin.
This Cinderella missed the bus.
I'll have to walk. What am I complaining about? If Dr. King can walk miles and miles for freedom, then I can walk back to the apartment on North Rossmore.
At the moment, it hasn't hit me yet that a ten-minute ride by car constitutes a much longer walk on my very tired feet. While I straddle the lighted side of the street leading away from the Sports Arena, trying to imagine I'm already soaking in a big, white bathtub, I start humming the Senator's theme song "Happy Days Are Here Again." Even that happy tune doesn't stop my feet from feeling like two heavy bricks.
I stop, take off my high heel shoes, take a big breath, then keep going. I can no more retreat from this moment of feeling happy than I can walk any faster. I'm ambling about so slow it's a wonder I don't notice the white Chevy with fins coming up alongside me and slowing down.
"Get in, Kennedy Girl," I hear someone say inside the limousine.
At first, I don't realize he's talking to me, then I recognize the same UCLA college student driver who helped Afton, Gillian, and me escape from the apartment. I smile. My pumpkin has arrived. I remind myself this whole week is part of the fairy tale and I never should have doubted that.
The front passenger door opens and before I can think about it, I jump in. Inside the car I recognize Mrs. Lincoln in the front seat. She introduces me to the woman behind her, the Senator's cousin. I say hello, then I see the Presidential candidate himself also sitting in the back seat, writing notes. I take a seat in the corner of the limousine and smile. I feel like I'm riding in a royal carriage with the handsome prince.
With sirens squealing all around us and red lights flashing through the windows, the ride back to the apartment on North Rossmore is without incident as the motorcade snakes through the streets of Los Angeles, though now the driver is not tearing rubber around the corners. He only takes his eyes off the road to occasionally glance into the rearview mirror at the Senator sitting behind him. No one says a word. It's as if we all want to commit these moments to memory. I know I do. Later, when I'm marching for freedom and my feet hurt, I want to remember the time I rode home with the man everybody's hoping will be the next President of the United States.
For more than five days, I've wished, prayed, hustled, and done everything I can but hurl myself at this man to shake his hand. During the few brief seconds after we reach the apartment and we all climb out of the VIP Chevy, I have no idea things could move so quickly, so smoothly, when the Senator reaches over to me and warmly shakes my hand.
Glory, halleluia.
* * *
The true story of how I made breakfast for Senator Kennedy is one committed to my memory as surely as if I wrote down everything I did when we got back to the apartment on North Rossmore.
It's two a.m.
The Senator says he's hungry. Although everyone is enjoying the sweet taste of victory, we're also giving way to the fatigue we all feel as well as the hunger.
Indeed, even with Kennedy Girls talking and partying downstairs, my invitation to come up to the penthouse with the Senator, his cousin, his secretary, and his best friend, Dave Powers, would not have been possible without Mrs. Greenfield's permission. My ability to convince her the Senator is hungry and needs someone to cook for him outdoes even my own expectations and she says yes.
Upstairs in the third floor penthouse, everyone is in a happy mood. Mrs. Lincoln sits down at the baby grand piano and plays "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" as Dave Powers starts opening a stack of congratulatory telegrams from everybody on the Who's Who list of political pundits and the Senator reads them out loud.
I take fresh eggs out of the refrigerator, along with butter and milk. The crackle of the golden omelet bubbling in the frying pan makes a fitting accompaniment to the crisp, staccato words on the telegrams.
The Senator reads one congratulatory telegram over and over again.
"LBJ now means Let's Back Jack," he reads. "Signed: Lyndon B. Johnson."
I serve up the scrambled eggs on a fancy china plate along with toast, grape jelly, and milk. The Senator eats quickly, saying little except to ask for a second glass of milk, then he goes into the bedroom and starts making one phone call after another. Mrs. Lincoln goes back to her hotel and I start to leave. Mr. Powers asks me if I can play the piano and I say, a little. He asks me if I can stay a few more minutes and play something. Everybody is too tired to celebrate much, he says, but the Senator likes music.
I sit down and play "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" like Grandma Eldoris taught me, singing the words in my church voice. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.
The Senator comes back into the sitting room and asks me where home is. I tell him Summer Bend, Alabama and how it lies within the great bend of the river, and about our small, unpainted house with a gable roof, two rooms, and a kitchen. How it was overgrown with weeds and Queen Anne's lace and blackberry vines before they tore it down. I tell him about Mama and Grandma Eldoris and how all the folks back home, colored and white, need a President like him who understands Southern folks and the freedoms we're fighting for down there.
Silence. Senator Kennedy keeps staring at me as if he's seeing all my people in me and our struggles to be free.
I wait. Sometimes I know there is nothing to do but wait. Especially at a moment like this. I think the Senator is mulling over something in his head that weaves together all our futures. I know it in my bones, as Grandma Eldy would say. When he finally makes up his mind, he acts quickly, but first he tosses his famous grin at this colored girl from Alabama before he picks up the telephone.
He calls his secretary's hotel and dictates a telegram to her husband. I'm still sitting at the piano, but I can hear what he's dictating. The telegram says that Presidential candidate Kennedy wishes to see Lyndon Johnson the next morning.
I grin. I think he's going to offer him the number two spot. I remember Johnny saying how Kennedy said if he couldn't be President, then Johnson was the best-qualified alternative. I know in that moment Kennedy is a skilled politician and not a dreamy-eyed amateur. He wants to win. He needs the Southern vote and I'm not going to fool myself into believing that Southern Democrats are going to embrace the Democratic Party's civil rights platform. It's going to be a long, hard fight. Only Johnson can bring in those Southern votes.
I close up the piano, then run my fingers over the beautifully polished wood, barely taking a breath. In all human endeavors, something usually goes wrong. Not tonight. It was a golden moment in my life, as delicious as Grandma Eldy's peach cobbler.
Then, although I haven't moved or made a sound, the Senator must believe I've left because I hear the bedroom door closing. Quietly I leave the penthouse, knowing my part in this drama is over. I have done what I had to do, but wait until Grandma Eldoris hears I made scrambled eggs for the next President of the United States.
Oh, Lordy, just wait.
AFTON
July 15, 1960
Friday--Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Through the entire speech I watch him from my seat high up in the Coliseum bleachers. The Senator rarely refers to his notes, even to take a breath or respond when the crowd cheers. One time I think he looks out into the crowd in our direction as if looking for someone, but I can't be sure.
I smile big. Earlier today at a special closed session at the Biltmore Hotel with Negro Democrats, Kennedy introduced Louise to the group, telling them of her courage and determination to come to the convention. I was so proud of her. Like a sister. And I think of Kennedy as being a knight and this entire week as a fairy tale. Every fairy tale has a happy ending and ours is no exception. Except for the heat.
It's ninety-two degrees.
The Senator gives his acceptance speech during the late afternoon near sunset in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Several spectators have been complaining of fainting spells and nausea, and there's a rumor going around at least a hundred people have been treated for heat prostration.
I am still struggling with the heat at the same time a wild enthusiasm is surging in me, a thrilling feeling, yet a sadness as well. This is the final time we'll all be together. Louise, Gillian, and me. And Johnny. He's here somewhere with the Kennedy lieutenants, who are already planning the Senator's campaign. They're calling for complete mobilization of voters, especially minority group registration (their goal is seven million unregistered voters). According to what Johnny told me last night, they intend to concentrate on the industrial regions and the Democratic South. But first, everyone is waiting to hear Kennedy's acceptance speech.
Earlier when the Senator arrived, he passed through rows of Golden Girls in white skirts and blouses and white hats with long, black ribbons flanking the route to the speakers' platform. It was a sight to see. All the Kennedy Girls are wearing their red-white-and-blue striped dresses and sitting together in a special section in the Coliseum with Mrs. Greenfield fussing over us like a sorority mother. She said she's going to miss us. We're going to miss her. After the Senator's speech, everyone is going home.
We're not the only ones assigned special seats. Kennedy insisted all the leading Democrats (including Stevenson, Symington, Humphrey, and Johnson) sit on the platform during his acceptance speech. I see all eyes are on the Senator and he seems even stronger, more knightly, than last night. I know he's a man who will not forget the voters who support him. Maybe I'm not able to see past this moment to what lay beyond this convention, but those of us who have been here this week have a good idea where this country is heading: education, civil rights, and freedom for all Americans, and that knowledge excites us.
For a moment, as I sit pondering these issues with the Senator's speech making a lasting impression on my brain, I dare to hope it is more of a reality than a fairy tale. One thing I know for sure, after the Senator finishes his speech, the 1960 Democratic National Convention will be nothing more than old newsreel footage and funny buttons and badges. I'm not ready for that yet. I want these final moments to last and last and last.
"The problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won..." the Senator is saying.
Eighty thousand spectators huddle together on the backless bleachers. I heard they expect thirty-five million Americans to watch the speech on television. As the sun sets, Kennedy faces west and speaks to his audience. I am reminded of the many pioneers who came west looking for better lives, looking for freedom. Imagine my surprise when I hear the Senator say: "...we stand on the edge of a new Frontier--"
Johnny said he was going to pass along my idea to the Senator about a new frontier. I smile to myself. A subtle warmth hugs me. How cool.
The Senator continues, "Now begins another long journey, taking me into your cities and your homes all over America. Give me your help."
The crowd cheers wildly.
"Give me your hand."
More cheers, louder than before.
"Your voice and your vote."
The crowd gets up and every last person is on their feet, cheering and cheering and cheering.
He has just sounded the starting gun.
* * *
"You know what impresses me most about Senator Kennedy," Louise says, stepping ever so carefully down from the bleachers, over the stone walkway and trying not to get caught up in the push-pull-push mentality of the people mobbing the Senator.
"He likes your scrambled eggs?" I quip.
She grins. I was coming in last night with Johnny when I saw Louise coming out of the private elevator from the penthouse. I listened to her half the night, telling me over and over again how she made scrambled eggs for the Presidential candidate.
Louise says, "He's the same man as he was before he got the nomination."
"I wonder how he feels about the Stevenson demonstrators," Gillian offers, falling into step with us.
"He did have Adlai Stevenson introduce him today. That says a lot for him in my book," I say, feeling the crush of people ebbing away from where we're walking. Indeed, the mob of spectators is, so to speak, on the march. They begin to move in a steady stream toward the speakers' platform, hoping to shake the Senator's hand. Louise and I look at each other. We have already been there, done that. (Louise told me the Senator shook her hand last night after she got out of the limo. He shook mine when I went with Johnny to the cottage command post.)
"He never said one word against any of his political running mates," Louise adds. "He's a true Southern gentleman."
"By way of Boston," I add.
Gillian says, "Too bad we Philadelphians can't claim him."
"He belongs to everybody, Gillian," I hear Louise say, "that's why he's going to be President."
"Well said, Louise, for a future civil rights lawyer," I tell her, shading my eyes with my hand. "Speaking of the City of Sisterly Love--"
"I like that, Afton," Louise says, "You should be a writer."
I smile, then turn to Gillian. "Are you heading back to Philadelphia tonight on the red-eye express, Gillian?"
I noticed before we left this morning Gillian had her bags packed and left them in the hallway of the apartment on North Rossmore.
"No, I'm heading up to San Francisco before my mother gets wind of my plans. Once I'm there, she can't do anything about it."
"San Francisco, how exciting!" Louise says. "What are you going to do there?"
"I've already been accepted at the Academy of Art, but now I'm thinking of also taking classes at UC Berkeley. There's a big change coming in politics. I met some people here who told me the students up there are starting the Free Speech Movement on campus, and are talking about rejecting big business, calling it 'economic imperialism.' They're saying it's leading to technological slavery for all of us."
"You're talking my language, Gillian, when you talk about slavery of any kind," Louise says.
"I wouldn't be going straight to San Francisco if it weren't for you, Louise."
"Me? What did I do?"
"You showed me freedom comes with a price, and if we're not willing to get into the fight ourselves, we don't deserve that freedom."
Powerful words from a girl who previously only thought about getting her picture on the society page. I hold fast to thinking this is one Kennedy Girl who's going to carve out her own new frontier.
"Do you need a ride to the airport?" I ask Gillian. "My parents are coming to pick me up."
"Thanks, but my father's taking me in the limo. I might as well enjoy it while I can. Once my mother finds out what I'm doing, I'm on my own. But I don't care. I'm not going to be a pawn on her society gameboard any longer."
I have something on my mind and I'd better say it now before it's too late. "Gillian, I don't know how to say this--"
"Don't tell me the very verbal Miss Afton Leigh is at a loss for words?" she teases me.
"We didn't get off to a good start, but I want you to know that, well, I think you're cool."
"It's not how you start, Afton, it's how you finish that counts. And we finished first." She looks at me, then Louise, her eyes filled with genuine warmth for both of us. "I wish I could get to know you better. You, too, Louise. You two make a powerful team."
"Make that three on the team," Louise says. "We're all Kennedy Girls, remember?"
"Write to us, Gillian."
"Yeah, we want to hear all about Berkeley."
"Well, nothing newsworthy is happening up there yet."
"It will, Gillian, once you hit town."
We arrive at the parking lot, filled with cars, buses, motorcycles. A few people. Most of them are still following the Senator on his way back to his motorcade. Gillian scouts the area, then sees what she's looking for.
"Well, there's my father and the limousine. Gotta split, you two," she says, then she turns to face Louise. "By the way, Louise, with all this traffic it's going to be a long drive to the airport. I intend to make it very clear to my father that a certain young woman living in Glendale is in need of financial assistance to get into a good college. He can introduce you to the right people who can help you get into law school when you're ready. So watch your mail for a letter."
"Oh, Gillian, I don't know what to say," Louise says, biting down on her lower lip. She's so happy she can't stop the tears edging down her cheeks. This is a precious moment in my life, one I never thought I'd see.
I get choked up, too. And to think it all started with a letter. One to me and one to Louise from the Democratic National Convention Committee. Whoever would have thought it would lead to this?
Gillian waves to us as she gets into the limousine, her blonde hair flying free in the wind. Free. That's what we wanted when this week began. But we got so much more.
And I got Johnny Kingsley.
"I've been looking everywhere for you, Afton," Johnny says, coming up behind me and trying to pull me into his arms. "Hi, Louise."
"Hi, Johnny," she says. "You just missed Gillian."
"I said goodbye to her and her father earlier. He's helping finance the Senator's campaign," he says.
"I'm glad I got to see you before I go home, Johnny." I turn and hug him. Warmly. "It's been a fabulous week."
"Who says it's over? I'll zip on down the freeway to see you before the fall semester starts."
"The freeway doesn't go that far--"
"Then I'll fly down to your place. I'm a licensed pilot, remember?"
"I'll remember everything about this week."
"I hate to say goodbye like this, Afton, but--"
His words confuse me. I look down at my red-white-and-blue striped dress and then back at him. Goodbye? There's a need in my eyes, the need to touch the fairy tale once more. It is so clear to him that I feel it deeply. He reads my eyes and answers me in a way that says more than words.
Still holding me, Johnny leans down and kisses me warmly. I close my eyes, keeping them closed, until he lets me go.
"I wasn't sure until today, Afton, but I'm joining the Senator on the campaign trail."
"Oh, Johnny, that's wonderful! I'm so proud of you."
"No prouder than I am of you, Afton. And I will call you and come down to see you before I leave for Washington. I promise."
He kisses me again, this time lightly on the lips, then he's gone. He turns for the last time and blows me a kiss. I blow him one back. Then I watch him join a group of smiling, older men, shaking hands, giving orders, their minds on nothing but the upcoming Presidential campaign.
My eyes blur with tears that I struggle to keep from running down my face. I feel someone touch my arm. I turn and see Louise, her eyes filled with concern.
"Are you okay?"
I nod, sniveling like a kid. "I like him, Louise. A lot."
"He'll call you. There are some things you just know."
I grab her hand. "Thanks."
"I'm sorry to run off like this, Afton, but I've got a bus to catch."
"A bus? No way, JosÈ," I say, getting the snap back into my voice. "We'll give you a ride home."
"But I live in the opposite direction from where you're going."
"We've been through too much this week for you not to know once I make up my mind to do something I won't take no for an answer."
"My Grandma Eldoris is like that. Once she gets something into her craw--oh, Afton, your father. What will he say about me being colored?"
I think a moment, make my decision quickly when I see a green Dodge pull into the parking area where we're standing, knowing I don't want my father to ruin this friendship.
"We'll cross that color line when we get to it."
* * *
To be honest, I should have said something to my parents when I asked them if we could give Louise a ride home to Glendale. I've reluctantly arrived at the realization that although my parents are good people--and I know my mother does not share my father's racist views--what love they have for me does not transcend the fact I said nothing about Louise being a Negro.
Nothing.
Instead we talked and talked about the convention as my dad's Dodge got snarled in the traffic leaving the Coliseum. My mother was glued to the television set every night, she said, looking for me in the crowd. She swore she spotted me a few times after that live bit we did at the Biltmore. It wasn't until nearly an hour and half later that we drove down the tree-lined street in Glendale where Louise lives.
With her grandmother.
"Do your parents know you're coming home today?" my mother asks nonchalantly as my father pulls up in front of her house.
"I live with my grandmother, Mrs. Leigh. My Mama passed on last year."
I can see genuine sympathy in my mother's eyes. I realize how much I cherish having my own mother, treasure her, and how desperately I want her to understand the closeness I feel with Louise, to think only well of her and not judge her because she's colored.
"Do you think your grandmother is home, Louise?" I ask, keeping up our pretense that nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong, I tell myself.
"Grandma Eldoris doesn't go out much. She says her arthritis is like bad weather. It keeps her inside."
My dad laughs at that as we all get out of the car. I don't know if this is a good idea, but it is the first time he's uttered a sound since we left the Coliseum. I think he still feels embarrassed hanging around anything to do with the Democratic National Convention, though my mom said he did watch some of the speeches on television. She thinks he actually listened, instead of commenting on something every five minutes like he usually does.
"Where's your father, Louise?" my dad asks casually, walking with us up the stepping stone pathway toward the front door. It's nighttime and, although it looks like a safe neighborhood, he's quick to add, we should make certain she gets inside okay. I grab Louise's hand, shake my head. She doesn't have to say anything if she doesn't want to. She looks at me as if to say she's through with being something she isn't.
"I never knew my daddy, Mr. Leigh. I stayed with my grandmother back home in Alabama after my Mama left to come to California--"
"Alabama?" he says, "Why, there's a whole lot of new building going down there, what with the new Redstone Arsenal space center in Hunstville--"
"We lived in Summer Bend, Mr. Leigh, near the river. We planted cotton and corn on our land, rented land. You see, my family is..."
Before Louise can tell him she's colored, before I can say something, anything to make this moment not such a shock to my parents and redeem myself, beyond the sweep of the trees shading the front door of this humble house, a porch light goes on. Then the front door opens and like the light is an artificial moon, it shines boldly on the dark face of the older woman shuffling outside in her sleeveless housedress and backless slippers.
"Louise, is that you, child?" she calls out, trying to see who got out of the car parked in front of her house. "I got some warm peach cobbler for y'all--"
"Good God, the woman is a Negro."
It's my father's voice, ringing out loud and clear in the warm summer night. I can't tell you how relieved I am he didn't say the "n" word. I don't think I would have survived this moment if he had.
I hear my mother clear her throat, then say, "Louise is colored, Harry. That's all."
I wouldn't be surprised if my father got back into the car and jammed on the gas and burned rubber down the street, leaving us all standing here, but he doesn't.
Instead, he says, "I'll wait for you in the car, Irene."
My dad goes back to the car, gets in, lights up a cigarette and continues to watch us standing on the front porch. Louise's grandmother keeps her eyes on him. Brow furrowed, dark eyes narrowed, lips pressed tightly together, she gazes at me, then at my mother with such fierce attention that she seems to be trying to decide if she wants to talk to us.
"Grandma Eldy, this is Afton," Louise says, putting her arm around me, "the girl who stood up for me at the convention."
Her grandmother's face breaks wide open into the biggest smile with the whitest teeth I've ever seen.
"Oh, Lordy, Louise, why didn't you say so! Come in, child, all of you, and have some peach cobbler. I made some fresh, knowing my baby Louise was coming home and she just loves my peach cobbler."
My mother looks at me and grins. I grin back.
I don't look back at my father waiting in the car. I can't. It's too painful.
We walk into the small, neat home and Louise leads us into the kitchen, where such a loving atmosphere prevails. I feel I have known Grandma Eldoris, as she insists we call her, all my life.
The smell of peaches and sugar and cinnamon wafts through the air as Grandma Eldoris slices up big pieces of warm, gooey cobbler onto some plates and sets it down on the round, wooden table. She serves us some ice water (she loves ice-cold water, Louise tells us) and with that we are simply four women, two white, two colored, enjoying the most delicious peach cobbler I've ever tasted. Laughing, joking, as women do, with Grandma Eldoris wanting to know if Senator Kennedy is as handsome in person as he is on television.
"Handsomer," Louise says.
"Wait 'till Louise tells you the story, Grandma Eldoris, about how she made scrambled eggs for the Senator--" I begin, when there is a knock on the front door.
I freeze. My mom freezes. We look at each other, not daring to hope.
Grandma Eldoris says with a twinkle in her eye, "I think we have company, children."
She opens the door and I see my father standing there, no cigarette his hand, but with a sheepish grin all over his face. He hesitates a moment, then he says to Grandma Eldoris, "Do you have any more of that peach cobbler?"
I look at Louise, then at my mother, then at Grandma Eldoris. She smiles.
"C'mon in," she says, "there's plenty for everybody."
A summer night breeze rolls in through the open window, bringing in a whiff of fresh air. Somewhere a newscaster is talking about what happened at the Democratic National Convention this week, somewhere a weary Presidential candidate is getting on an airplane to begin his campaign, but nowhere is the effect of the convention felt more than it is here in this kitchen.
All the people I love, coming together, in a shining moment. My father laughing with Grandma Eldoris over something she said, my mother shaking her head as if she can't believe what she's seeing, Louise smiling at me. Me smiling back. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. It feels good to be free.
August 25, 1968--Chicago
Dear Diary,
So much has happened to me since 1960 when I wrote to you I was going to the Democratic National Convention to pass for white so I could get into college. What happened to me at that convention was so extraordinary it gave me the opportunity to go to college, then on to law school.
And now, on the eve of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, I feel compelled to write down the things that remain in my memory to this day because once again I am going to the convention, and once again I will have the opportunity to revisit that time, if only in my mind.
What remains forever etched in my heart, Dear Diary, are the people who were so much a part of that golden time in my life. So you can relive that time with me, here is what has happened to us since that second week of July in 1960.
Afton, my dearest friend. We've stayed in touch through the years. She went to Long Beach State that fall then she transferred to UCLA and moved to Los Angeles. She graduated with a degree in English, but she's turned her love of writing and dramatics into a career as a journalist. She's a reporter with the Los Angeles Examiner. She started out at the paper as a secretary, though she'll tell you she was the worst secretary they ever had. She can't type without making a mistake, but they liked her stories so much they made her a news reporter. She'll be covering the convention for her newspaper before she leaves for Vietnam. More about that in a minute.
Gillian is going to be at the convention, too. She'll be flashing peace signs and protesting the convention. She's part of an organized activist group calling themselves the SDS, "Students for Democratic Society." She did go to art school in San Francisco and graduated, and since then she's become a well-respected artist up in the Haight-Ashbury district. She also went to UC Berkeley and got a degree in political science. She says the activists coming to the convention here in Chicago don't want to cause any trouble, they just don't want to be ignored. By the way, her mother hasn't talked to her in years, though she tells me her father is secretly proud of his daughter. She says, however, he hasn't been the same since Kennedy was assassinated in '63.
None of us have. I still can't think about that day without feeling tears well up in my eyes. Then this year, we lost Dr. King in Memphis on April 4th. I remember the day he helped Afton and me when the scaffolding in the Sports Arena nearly hit her. I am so grateful to have known him. And when we thought nothing else could happen, Bobby Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles on June 5th.
We got more bad news when we heard Johnny Kingsley was shot down over North Vietnam. He's listed as missing in action. That's why Afton is going over to Vietnam. To find Johnny. They were supposed to get married in the fall, but she wanted to get her career on track. She regrets not marrying him before he left.
And me, Dear Diary, where am I? Gillian kept to her promise and her daddy introduced me to some people who gave me the opportunity to apply for a scholarship. After a few tries, I got a scholarship to USC, where I'm finishing up my last year of law school. I'm going to be a civil rights lawyer and the firm I've been interning for is active in the Democratic Party. They sent me here to Chicago to work for an attorney on Hubert Humphrey's staff.
Afton's parents and Aunt Jeanette will also be at the convention. As for Grandma Eldoris, well, she's still uppity when it comes to white people talking about civil rights. If she could she'd join the Freedom Riders, but her arthritis keeps her in bed a lot these days. She's never hurting too much, however, to make me a peach cobbler when I visit her.
It's hot and humid in the windy city as I write this, a city filled with electricity. I'm looking forward to seeing Afton and Gillian tomorrow. I can still see us as Kennedy Girls in our red-white-and-blue striped dresses, white skimmers, and white gloves. So much has changed since that summer, but not everything. We're still fighting for civil rights, but we're also fighting a war that has taken the lives of so many of our young men, and we've lost some of the greatest political leaders of our time.
The world is different today than it was back in 1960, and yet at the same time, it's eerily still the same. But we three--Afton, Gillian, and me--we'll never give up. We'll always be Kennedy Girls.
Peace, sistas.
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