The Ada Decades Read online

  Her predecessor, Miss Gladdie Johnston, had left a handwritten checklist so the new librarian wouldn’t neglect any tasks, and by 7:50 a.m. on the first day of school, Ada had accomplished each one, in order. The newspapers were on display, the encyclopedia volumes alphabetical, the books neatly shelved, the card catalog drawers flush with the cabinet, the oak tables set with eight chairs each. Ada ran a finger over a carving on one of the tables—“JB + FT” with a pierced heart—wondering how long ago the student had left the mark.

  Giving a final pat to her bun, Ada swung open the library door. A barrage of epithets immediately met her ears—ugly words she had heard plenty of times in her twenty-two years but had never herself uttered.

  Principal Norris had given the faculty and staff a briefing about integration during in-service day the previous week, and admitted he did not know what level of resistance they would face. “Superintendent Garinger says this is the right thing to do. Those were his exact words,” the principal announced.

  Just down the hall from the library, the building’s front doors were wide open, and Principal Norris was ushering Mary Burney, the school’s first enrolled Negro student, into the building. Hostile white students and adults had created a human barrier across the entrance. A few boys spat on the ground in front of the girl and the principal as they attempted to pass. On the sidelines, photographers from the local papers snapped rounds of shots, while reporters scribbled in notebooks. Two police officers stood at attention on either side of the door with poker faces.

  Mr. Norris shoved the throng aside and steered Mary through the doors with one hand on her left shoulder. Then he turned and spoke to the crowd at the top of his voice: “Students, report to your classrooms immediately! This is a school, not a circus tent. The rest of you, I will call on the help of these officers if you don’t disperse.”

  Ada stood in the library doorframe, half in, half out of the hallway, where more students and some faculty members had gathered to witness the event. Mary was petite for an eighth-grader and could have easily passed for eleven or twelve. Her tailored blouse and full skirt were meticulously pressed, her straightened hair held back with a stiff plastic headband. Ada couldn’t tell from the girl’s impassive face how she felt about being plunged into the fracas. She had read in the paper that Mary’s father, a local civil rights activist, petitioned for her transfer to Central Charlotte Junior High on the grounds that it was more academically rigorous than the all-Negro school she had been attending, and that Mary’s ambition was to go to college.

  Ada felt like she was onstage in a play but had forgotten her lines. She took a step toward Mary, thinking she could improvise: I’m new here, too. But Ada was neither a Negress nor a transfer student, so the gesture seemed silly to her and she inched back.

  A statuesque young woman not much older than Ada came forward at that moment and extended a hand to Mary. With her blonde bob and printed neck scarf, she had the casual look of someone who’d just gotten off a horse. She reminded Ada of the girls she’d attended college with in Chapel Hill.

  “Mary, I am so pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said. “I’m Miss Lively, and you are in my homeroom and also my

  second-period English class. Won’t you please come with me?” The principal handed Mary off to the aptly named Miss Lively, who glanced unexpectedly toward Ada and nodded recognition.

  Back inside her domain, Ada could feel her heart doing double time. She hadn’t realized integration by a single student would entail such ugliness. The white folks she knew were all decent people; why would anybody torment such a little girl? But when it came right down to it, Ada had little in the way of real life experience. Principal Norris had guessed as much, but took a chance on hiring her anyway.

  “What makes you think you can handle this job?” he had asked at her interview. “Your only experience seems to be as a library assistant while you were at Carolina.”

  “I am passionate about helping young people discover books and develop their mental ability,” she said immediately—a statement she’d rehearsed, but which she believed to her bones. It was what she had learned at the feet of Miss Ruthie.

  “Negroes, too?” the principal pressed.

  The question caught her off guard. She knew integration was likely to start—it had been a full three years since the Brown decision, and the city couldn’t hold off much longer—but the schools enrolling students were still unannounced when she interviewed for jobs. Principal Norris was the only one to suggest Central might be among the test cases.

  Ada’s voice sounded tinny in her own ears. “Yes, sir, absolutely,” she answered. “My mentor, Miss Ruth Mitford . . . maybe you have heard of her? She was fired from her job as a public librarian right here in Charlotte for supporting Negro literature of a pro-integration slant. Back in 1950.”

  “I remember that incident.” Mr. Norris looked like he had taken a bite of something sour. “Miss Shook, the school librarian need not be an activist. In fact, it’s better not to be. You just need to serve all the children.”

  Aside from Miss Ruthie’s influence, nothing in Ada’s background had prepared her to serve Negro students as well as white, and she doubted she was alone in that among the faculty members. She had grown up in a segregated cotton mill community, been educated in whites-only schools, ridden on buses with demarcation lines for Colored Passengers. She still attended a church whose pews were bursting with people who looked just like her. Her daddy, who had grown up poor on a farm, still sometimes used the word nigger, although her mother called him out when he did. His souvenir postcard of a lynching was still seared in her brain. It was something no one in her family had ever acknowledged or discussed.

  “Folks have to want to change, that’s the long and short of it,” Miss Ruthie had said as she was packing up thirty years of belongings to leave the public library for good. “We Southerners are just too headstrong to acknowledge our sorry history for what it is.”

  At the time, Ada hadn’t really understood Miss Ruthie’s meaning, or her choice of words. Why We? Why our? Now it felt like change with a capital C had come and occupied a seat at Central.

  § § §

  Ada was scheduled to supervise the first cafeteria period with the assistant principal, but when she was in the hallway she could not quite remember which way to go. She stood staring dumbly at her feet, as if they might instinctively find the way, when she heard whistling behind her, a tune she couldn’t place. Except for hymns, Ada could not keep music or lyrics in her head. She glanced back and saw Miss Lively, walking toward her with a smile that suggested trouble.

  If it had been a man whistling and smiling mischievously, she might have thought it fresh. She’d had plenty of experiences in college with boys who whistled at her, stared her up and down, or even touched her like they had bought the right. There had also been the distasteful matter of the professor who taught cataloging. He was a married man with at least three young children, but that hadn’t stopped him from stroking Ada’s hair during a visit to his office when all she had come for was clarification about her final project. “Such a lovely color,” he had said, letting some strands fall through his fingers. “Not brown and not red. Russet, I think.”

  Ada forced herself to come up with a friendly remark for Miss Lively. Sometimes people mistook her shyness for being snobby and aloof, and her goal in her new job was to be liked as well as respected. “That sure is a catchy tune,” was all she could muster on the spot.

  “Do you know it?” Closer up, Miss Lively was even taller than she had looked at a distance. In loafers, she towered a good six inches over Ada in her smart heels.

  “Popular music is not my forte.”

  “What is your forte?” Miss Lively asked with one slightly raised eyebrow.

  “Books, I guess,” Ada said. She never really thought of herself as having a particular skill. She was certainly not the quick mind and passionate observer of life Miss Ruthie had been.

  “
That makes perfect sense for the school librarian. You are Miss Shook, aren’t you? I noticed you on in-service day and again in the hallway this morning. I must say, you’re a big improvement over that old fossil, Miss Gladdie. I thought the woman would never retire!”

  “And you’re Miss Lively.” She forced herself to say what she was really thinking and not just what was polite. “I . . . truly admired how you took charge of the . . . situation this morning.”

  Miss Lively’s smile spread across her cheeks. “Call me Cam,” she said, reaching out a hand browned by the sun. Ada’s looked small in hers, as if Cam could snap it like the bones of a finch. “English and girls’ basketball.”

  “That explains why you’re so tall!” Ada knew the second she spoke that it was impolite to call attention to someone’s unusual height. She felt her cheeks flush, but Cam swooped in for the save.

  “Yes, indeed. My daddy stretched me out on a rack when I was little so I’d be the absolute best height for coaching hoops.”

  Ada laughed again. These quips reminded her of the finest days at college, when she was most at ease in her own skin. Now living back home with her parents, she missed her best friend, Natalie, who was with her new husband at Fort Bragg. The pain of Natalie’s absence was an actual ache sometimes, like part of her had been cut out. Ada had never admitted that to anybody, because she knew she wasn’t supposed to feel so strongly about another girl.

  “You’ll excuse me, Miss Lively, but I have cafeteria duty in—” with a glance at her Timex “—seven minutes, and I am not even sure I remember where it is.”

  “Down the stairs to the left,” Cam said. “Just follow the unpleasant smells. This is my third year, and I have yet to eat there.”

  “I guess we’ll be seeing each other again soon.” Explain yourself, you fool, Ada thought. “I mean, you being the English teacher.”

  “I shall require your services before you know it,” Cam said. Was something in her eye, or did she actually wink? “Oh, and by the way, the song is called ‘Marian the Librarian.’ I’ll have to sing you the lyrics sometime.” When Ada looked blank, Cam added, “From The Music Man? It’s about a man trying to woo a librarian, but the joke is he can’t talk to her in the library.”

  “Oh!” Ada said, surprised that someone had taken the time to write a song about a librarian. “Yes, I would very much like to hear that.”

  § § §

  Ada’s first week was a haze of cataloging, placing book orders, checking out and re-shelving books, and answering requests from teachers for an introduction to the library for their students. The two ladies who had been volunteers under Miss Gladdie made it clear they knew more than Ada about running a school library. “Let me show you how Miss Gladdie did it, dear,” the one named Mrs. Pierce said.

  On top of the work, there were calls from reporters sniffing around for a faculty or staff member to comment on Mary Burney’s enrollment. As instructed, Ada referred them to Principal Norris. The faculty lounge was abuzz all week about the “situation” of integration—both locally and in faraway Little Rock, Arkansas, where the National Guard had been brought in to protect the nine Negro students. The chatter gave the lounge the feel of a bunker. Ada deduced from overheard snippets that a number of incidents had taken place involving Mary and other students. Cam Lively had apparently broken up some intimidating pushing during second lunch period on opening day and told everyone she was keeping track of infractions against Mary.

  “Should get herself a job with the NAACP, if you ask me,” Ada heard a teacher complain to a colleague.

  At home, too, Ada couldn’t get away from the issue. “So they let that colored girl in?” her father asked at supper after her first day. Her curt reply of “It’s the law, Daddy” was met with a rant about federal judges sticking their noses into folks’ business. He had already made clear that he would pull Ada’s younger brother, Foster, out of any school that enrolled colored students.

  When Saturday rolled around, Ada wanted nothing more than to lose herself in a movie, with a bag of popcorn she didn’t have to share. The afternoon was temperate and dry, so she walked to the Plaza Theater, close to a two-mile hike and the most exercise she’d had all week, if she didn’t count trekking up and down the school stairs for cafeteria duty.

  At the movies, she picked her spot carefully, six seats in from the aisle and toward the back (but not so far back as to be sitting close to any lovebirds). She settled down in the dark with her popcorn and the Coming Attractions, savoring the prospect of the meaty drama The Three Faces of Eve. But then two women entered the theater noisily and plopped down in the row in front of her, partially blocking her view when they leaned their heads into each other to whisper back and forth. She wanted to ask them to be quiet and considerate of others—and to keep their heads apart, for goodness’ sake—when the one woman’s distinctive blonde bob caught her attention.

  Should she say hello to Cam and risk being asked to join them, when she had so looked forward to watching the movie alone? And if she said nothing and Cam turned around, would she get the reputation of being a stuck-up so-and-so?

  You can do it, Natalie would have coaxed. She was naturally outgoing and always tried to urge Ada out of her shell. Just tap her on the shoulder and say hello.

  But Natalie wasn’t there, so Ada quietly moved herself and her popcorn back several rows. It was farther from the screen than she liked, and uncomfortably close to a bobby-soxer and her attentive crew-cut boyfriend, but she felt she had dodged a potentially sticky situation.

  Her decision carried a price tag. She couldn’t focus on the movie because her eyes kept traveling away from Joanne Woodward and Lee J. Cobb and toward Cam and her companion, especially when their heads almost touched. They must be fast friends, Ada thought, as she and Nat had been. Ada and Nat had eaten most of their meals together, taken many of the same classes, gone to mixers where they talked to no one but each other. Some people thought they were sisters, they were that close, but with Natalie’s porcelain skin and coal-black hair, there wasn’t even a faint resemblance.

  “That was one dumb movie,” the crew-cut boy remarked as the credits rolled. Ada considered dashing out of the theater before the lights went up, but instead she forced herself to stay put and try to catch Cam’s eye. Cam’s head was bent as she walked down the aisle listening to her friend. They’re discussing the movie already, Ada thought with a pang of jealousy. They’re going for

  coffee now to hash it all out. Which was exactly what she and Natalie would have done. Ada didn’t interrupt them, but instead sneaked out of the theater as soon as she could and caught a bus home, where she began her weekly missive to Natalie:

  Dearest Nat, what a whirlwind week for yours truly!

  § § §

  “And which of Eve’s faces did you like the best, Miss Shook? Eve White or Eve Black? Or maybe the sweet Jane?”

  The voice behind her in the faculty lunchroom sounded as if it might be making fun of her. But when Ada turned and met Cam Lively’s eyes, she knew she had read something into her tone that wasn’t there. Cam’s head was tilted, waiting for Ada’s answer with a look of genuine interest.

  “That was you at the Plaza on Saturday, wasn’t it?” Cam asked. “I caught you out of the corner of my eye, but you’d vanished by the time I said to my friend ‘I know that girl!’”

  “Oh, you were there, too?” Ada said, as innocently as she could muster.

  “I made the mistake of bringing my college friend Lu, and she was positively horrified by the whole thing. She kept whispering all through the show, ‘What in the world did you bring me to?’ She’s as close to me as a sister, but sometimes I wonder why! I was going to invite you to come along for coffee. I was hoping the two of us could enlighten her. But no such luck.”

  Ada smiled shyly at the words the two of us, and at her own incorrect assessment that Cam and the other woman were best friends.

  “So what did you think?”

  “I tho
ught Joanne Woodward was perfect,” Ada said, deeming that a safe conclusion to draw about an acclaimed performance. “The movie adhered pretty close, um, closely to the book. Except they did make the two doctors who treated her into one man. I guess that was just easier.”

  “You must have an eclectic taste in books,” Cam observed.

  Ada didn’t explain she had borrowed it from the library and returned it unfinished. She thought she might seem more worldly and mysterious if she just nodded vaguely, and less like the scholarship girl who still occasionally struggled with grammar.

  “Do you go to the movies much?” Cam asked.

  “Every chance I get.”

  “Well, we will have to go together some time. I love the movies and absolutely hate to go alone. There’s no one to talk to about it after it’s over.”

  Ada nodded, unable to think of anything to reply but “Yes, let’s do that.” She left it purposely open, aware that she was both drawn to Cam and scared of the possibility of her friendship at the same time.

  § § §

  The following Thursday, Cam brought her eighth-grade English students for library class. Ada had practiced her presentation several times; it had earned her an A+ at Carolina from a favorite professor who called it “strong and informative, yet accessible.” But delivering it in the mirror at home was different from standing in front of twenty young faces—and Cam.

  The students filed into the library for second period. Mary Burney was next to last into the room, her eyes scanning for a spot. She took a place at the table farthest from the front of the room, where only two other students sat.

  “There’s a seat up here, if you’d like,” Ada offered, but Mary plunked her books down in the back anyway. Cam sat next to Mary with an encouraging smile on her face, but instead of being put at ease, Ada felt a rush of intimidation.

  “Now please pay attention to Miss Shook,” Cam said. “She’s going to divulge secrets that will help y’all this term. And there just might be a quiz.”