Flossie's Revenge

by Lubrican

Chapters : Foreword | 1-2 | 3-4 | 5-6 | 7-8 | 9-10 | 11-12 | 13-14 | 15-16 | 17-18 | 19-20 | 21-22
23-24 | 25-26 | 27-28 | 29-30 | 31-32 | 33-34 | 35-36 | 37-38 | 39-40 | 41-42 | 43-44

Chapter 1

Flossie Pendergast struggled, her arms full, to reach the doorknob and open the door to the old building. She hooked the knob with her fingers and twisted, pushing against the door with her shoulder and knocking off a few more paint chips. The door stuck, and she had to put everything down and then pull, twist and push in just the right order before the door creaked open. It was the same every day as she entered the decrepit schoolhouse where she was the teacher, teacher's aide, and janitor, all combined into one. In private, she called herself the Principal of the school, but she couldn't say it out loud. That would bring the kind of scorn and derision she was so used to, but which ate at her guts like a rat inside a dead possum.

She surveyed her kingdom, such as it was, her eyes falling on the scarred and tilting desks, with their built-in chairs that required a student to slide into the seat from the left side. There were fifteen of those desks, neathly lined up, facing the wall with the blackboard on it. One forlorn wooden, straight-backed chair, two slats missing out of the back, sat by the board. Other than that there was no furniture in the one room that made up the structure. There was no desk for the teacher. What few materials she had scraped together were in cubby holes that had been nailed to the wall, patched together from odds and ends of lumber that had been scrounged from the surrounding area. A former student had done the work.

The school was in a region of the United States that was south of the Mason Dixon line, and East of Texas - exactly where isn't all that important - and most of the reason that the school was in such poor repair was because the building had once been used to house thirty people who, in these modern days, would gently be called 'migrant workers'. In the old days, though, the workers didn't have the luxury of moving from place to place to pick the cotton, or tend the tobacco. If they felt compelled to move from one place to another, shackles took care of that.

Due to the 'unsettling conflict', as the locals called it, which had ended just under a hundred years earlier, that building could no longer be used for its intended purpose. It had housed 'employees' for another half century, and In roughly 1930, it had been converted to a school house when the plantation house it had been behind was destroyed in by a tornado. No one thought it was ironic that the storm had reduced the big house to splinters, while the old slave quarters had been untouched. It provided what most people thought of as an appropriate place for the nigger brats to receive just enough education so they could read.

Since then, of course, as towns grew, new schools had been built. One had been built in Catfish Hollow, in fact, but it was for whites only, and it had burned down, six years ago. This was the backwater of Calloway County, though, where, in 1960, the tax base was not only small, but poor as well. The people who had money didn't see the point in spending taxes on a new school, particularly since the only teacher they could draw to the area was Flossie.

Flossie was a black woman, and her students were a mixture of black and white children of sharecropper families. The Catfish Hollow Public School, though it had no sign on the front to proclaim it as such, was quite possibly the only integrated school in a six hundred mile radius.

Flossie was one of the few women of color who had the chance to escape Calloway County, and actually go to a four year college. That was the result of her bachelor uncle, a man who had seen the world, and who had seen that a better life could be had than what could be found where he and his only niece were born and raised. It was a struggle to pay her tuition, but he had made many sacrifices for other people already, and his personal needs were few. He had learned to live with very few amenities during the war to end all wars, and had saved his pay. He was used to going without, so to him there was little difference.

For Flossie, though, the difference was phenomenal. Almost all the faces around her at Spelman college, in Atlanta, had been as black as hers, but these were the cream of the crop, so to speak, and her imagination had been fired with the fervor of finding a place where she was not only considered equal as a human being, but was appreciated for her intellect, and given a chance to prove what she could do. Further, in her second year of college, when she met a man named Howard Zinn, she learned something about white people she hadn't really known before this. That was in 1956, when the white professor, hired for $4000 a year, came to Spelman to be the first white man to teach at the school. Upon his arrival, he had been ostracized by landlords and everybody else because he was white and was teaching blacks. His sacrifice, and that of his family in joining him, fundamentally changed the way a lot of black students thought about whites in general, and the state of racial equality specifically.

Her return to Calloway County had been intended to be triumphal. She was going to change things ... get respect ... make the little part of the world where she had come from a better place to live and work. Besides ... she had the full weight of the Supreme Court of the United States behind her ... right?

That she was installed in the same school as she had grown up in was no surprise. She had lived in Catfish Hollow the summer after the white school burned, and knew that no new school was planned. What ended up being the surprise was that, even though her students hadn't been to school in four years, and that she not only caught them up, but their grades were the best anybody had seen in twenty years, no one seemed to care. In the two years she had been teaching, the kids got excited, as she exposed them to learning, but that excitement was thoroughly squashed when they got home at night. Several parents, almost always white, had verbally abused her for "putting notions" in their children’s' heads, about making a better life for themselves.

Knowing there was a better world out there, though, kept her going, and kept the fire in her teaching. The children, over those two years, began to become less and less susceptible to the dark predictions their parents made about their futures. Two of the young men (one white and one black) who had graduated had gone off to join the service, learning from Flossie that opportunity (and escape) was possible.

That didn't endear her to the local population much. While everyone was proud to have a son in the military, it also meant the loss of strong backs and hands to help do the work that still had to be done.

Flossie soon learned that she had to choose her battles very carefully. One of the things she had argued for, for instance, was a new building, which was laughed at by almost everyone. She also argued for a full day of school, instead of the half day that let the children spend more time at home, working, alongside their parents, making the few wealthy people in the little town of Catfish Hollow richer. All she got was an extra hour while the weather was good. On days when no work could be done in the fields, she got to keep the children longer.

Her argument to start sending the children to school at age six, instead of the routine eight or nine, got blank stares, until she suggested that they would be able to read earlier in life. Because many of their parents couldn't read, that made sense to them and she got what she wanted.

Her plea for books got her nothing. She had a blackboard, and they bought her a box of chalk every year. That should be enough.

She got an indoor bathroom patched onto the side of the building by the simple expedient of claiming that the children wouldn't get sick as often, and require bed rest, which kept them out of the fields. That the commode in the leaky bathroom simply drained out into the field behind the school, about twenty yards away, was something she couldn't do anything about. There were times when she felt lucky that the water in the single spigot that jutted from one wall, and off which a branch was installed for the toilet, worked at all. The toilet, of course, was a hand-me-down from the town plumber, who had removed it from the store owner's house during a renovation. He donated it, in lieu of paying part of his county taxes.

While the men worked on the bathroom, she had managed to talk one of them into splicing an old extension cord into the single light fixture on the ceiling, and run it to another light fixture one of her students had proudly scavenged from a trash heap. That gave them two light fixtures. There were no outlets, of course. Why would something like that be needed?

She looked critically at one corner of the room, and arrived at the conclusion that the crack in that corner had widened a bit. She had stood outside, before, looking down one wall, noting what she was sure was a slight tilt. She didn't look along that wall any more, because it depressed her. The whole building was leaning to the North, and it was getting worse.

As she began to write the day's lesson on the board, Flossie felt that pang of sadness that had been returning more often lately. Her grand plans were not working out. Nothing would change. Catfish Hollow would remain the same, and she would probably grow old and die here with nothing to show for it. There wasn't even a man to lighten the burden by loving her. All the men her age were already mated with other women, producing babies as quickly as possible so that there would be more hands to do the work. Her father had worked himself to death and, while her mother was still alive and living in the shack Flossie had grown up in, she wasn't interested in life. Flossie still visited her regularly, but it was depressing. Her mother would never change either, and still claimed college had been a waste of good money.

Her wages just went in the bank, because her living expenses were so little. In a moment of weakness, the town fathers had provided a house that went with the teaching position. That was only because they couldn't get anyone to teach in the broken down school when the previous teacher left. That, and the fact that the property provided had been taken for back taxes, even though it had been bought and paid for, for years. The old black man who had owned it, but who had grown too old to work and pay his taxes, had moved in with one of his daughters, but had died shortly afterward.

Now, other than some that went to her mother, about all Flossie used her money for was buying things for her students to use in the learning process. She bought a new dress now and then, but she hated having to go into the store, where she had to enter in the back door, marked "Colored". The white owner ogled her, and the white women acted as if she wasn't even there. It was bad enough shopping for food. And every place she went, there were the hated "White Only" signs that she had taken for granted as a child, but learned to loathe as a college student. She couldn't even take a sip of water, or use the bathroom in most places in town. As a result, she tried not to go into town unless it was absolutely necessary.

She'd thought about leaving ... going North, where there might be an opportunity to live a better life. But she didn't know anyone up North ... didn't know where to go, or how to find a place to go, and a lifetime of being told where to go and what to do and even how to feel had settled into her bones much more deeply than she believed. Her uncle would help, of course, but he had given her too much already, and he wasn't far enough north to make all that much difference in how she would be treated.

She was writing, the chalk rasping on the board, when the door creaked open and someone came in. She expected one of the students, but when she turned her head it was a white woman, who stood, looking around in what was plainly horror.

"Can I help you?" asked Flossie.

"This must be the wrong place," said the woman. "I must have gotten turned around. I'm looking for a school."

"This is the Catfish Hollow Public School," said Flossie.

"I meant the white school," said the woman.

"This is only school that services Catfish Hollow," said Flossie, patiently.

"You must be joking," said the woman. She was suddenly pushed forward, and, as she stepped into the room, two girls and a boy followed her. They were in their mid to late teens.

The older girl stopped and looked around.

"This is the school, mamma? I don't want to go to school here!" There were murmurs of agreement from the other two youths.

"This has to be some kind of mistake," insisted the woman. "Where's the teacher?"

"I'm Flossie Pendergast," said Flossie with dignity. "I teach the children here."

"Damn!" snorted the younger girl. "A nigger teacher! Mamma, you can't make us go to school here!" She stomped her foot and shook her blond curls, an angry set to her face."

"Oh my," sighed the woman. "Oh, dear me." She looked at Flossie, and then at the room, and then back at Flossie. "My husband got transferred here by the bank. We just moved into town. Surely there's another school for the white children."

Flossie felt heat suffuse her face, and was glad her skin was so dark that her blush didn't show. "As I said, ma'am, this is the school for Catfish Hollow." She folded her arms under her breasts. "All of Catfish Hollow," she added.

"Mamma, this ain't right," said the boy. "They can't make us go to no school with no nigger teacher."

"Young man," said Flossie sternly. "It is plain that whatever school you have been going to hasn't taught you much. Your language is atrocious."

All four of the other people in the room stood with mouths open in shock.

"Mamma, that nigger just said Nathan is stupid," gasped the older girl.

The woman, who Flossie would later learn was named Marian Wilson, closed her mouth with a snap, and her brow furrowed. "Well I never!" she said. "We'll just see about that!"

She hustled her children back out the door, like a mother hen, and Flossie sighed. This would probably bring trouble. Then, with a wry smile, she wondered what kind of trouble anybody could make for her. They needed her in this town, even if they didn't admit it. The teaching position had gone unfilled for four years when it was vacated, and the children had missed that much school. Of course that didn't really matter to the sharecropper families. They just went on with life, working sunup to sundown, and the children worked right along with them.

Flossie suddenly wondered what the search for a teacher might have been like had children like those she had just seen been in the student body. THOSE children would be interested in going to college, or at least getting a good, solid High School diploma to go out into life with. Missing even one year of school for them would have been viewed as a disaster.

Her regular students began arriving, and the smiles on their faces, both black and white, gave her the shot in the arm she needed to get going again. Her students might be poor, and have no real prospects in life, but they had been bitten by the bug of discovering new things ... interesting things ... things they might never see or use, but were fascinated by anyway. They now loved coming to school, and they applied themselves when they got there.

Much of Flossie's teaching was done story-telling style. She hadn't been taught that in college, but it was the best tool she had. Not only had she grown up in a world where story tellers were common - she had sat for hours, entranced by a good story - it gave her a way to transmit information that should be available to the children in text books, which they didn't have. Flossie had her own collection of books, though, and by teaching what was in them story-teller style, and passing the books around so they could see the pictures, the job got done.

That style worked well for the children too, since story tellers were revered in their world. Story tellers knew everything - everybody knew that - so Flossie's credibility was taken for granted, at least by the children.

She was a couple of hours into a description of the history of the middle ages when the door banged open and a sweating white man in suspenders, with his suit jacket hanging limply from one arm, stomped into the room. He was a big man, probably weighing two-fifty or more, and his ample belly was topped off by a head that looked too small, and was bereft of hair on top.

As if they were all controlled by some machine, the heads of all the children turned toward the man. No sound was uttered.

"You must be this Miss Flossie I've heard so much about," boomed the man, his bow tie wiggling against his Adam’s apple as he spoke.

"I'm Flossie Pendergast," said Flossie, her voice carefully neutral.

"Asked around about you," said the man, looking for someplace to hang the cream colored woven hat he removed from his head. It had a stark red band on it that went with the red suspenders. It was clear he didn't remove it as a sign of respect when he wiped his brow with the back of his hand and then put it back on. "They say you went to college and everything."

"And you must be the new banker," said Flossie, confidently.

"Well, you're pretty smart for a ni-gruh woman."

The man smiled, and Flossie knew it was a professional smile that was supposed to make her comfortable. It didn't. His corruption of the word "Negro" was his plain attempt to let her know that, while he was "too cultured" to use the more common "nigger" he still considered her sub-human. His language went with his constant contact with the public. Despite appearances, there were people in the world who didn't approve of the use of "nigger" any longer.

"I am, in fact, Harvey Wilson, president of Farmer's Bank," he said proudly.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wilson," said Flossie calmly. "I believe I met your wife and children earlier."

"Don't this beat all," smiled Harvey, his smile as patently false as it could be and still resemble a smile. "Imagine a ni-gruh woman teaching school."

Flossie's smile was strained, and she felt like she was actually baring her teeth at the man. "I've been teaching for two years, Mr. Wilson. I don't have to imagine that."

"Uppity, aren't you?" said the man heavily. "But, I s'pose you'll just have to do ... until we can get a real teacher in here." He looked around. "You've let the place go to seed, I see." His head swiveled and he didn't give her time to respond. "We'll just have to do something about that too. My children deserve a real education in a real school."

Flossie knew there was very little she could say in this situation that would accomplish anything. Still, her anger wouldn't stay inside her, and she spoke almost automatically.

"I'm sure there are a number of private schools available ... Mobile? ... Atlanta perhaps? ... Maybe Charleston?"

Harvey shot her a dark look. He might be the president of a bank, but it was a bank in Catfish Hollow. Harvey Wilson was not going to live in the lap of luxury, regardless of what he thought should happen. He knew that, and the fact that this uppity nigger obviously knew it too, and actually felt like she could mock him, made his gut boil.

"I'd rather build a decent school right here in the community," he said. "With a decent teacher. But, until that happens, I suppose we'll just have to get by. You mark my words, though. My young'uns had better be taught well, or there'll be hell to pay."

"I teach all my students well, Mr. Wilson," said Flossie tightly. "If you've been asking around, you should know by now that the grade point averages of my students are quite impressive."

"That don't mean they know a damn thing," snarled Harvey. "All that means you give 'em good grades. You just actually teach my young'uns something while you're still here, and I might arrange to give you a half decent recommendation when you go looking for another job teaching trash like this." He looked triumphant, as his eyes raked over the sons and daughters of tenant farmers. His chin went up a little. "My kids will be here tomorrow morning. You make sure you're on time, and they don't have to wait outside. And they'll be going to school all day, not like ... these children here." He gave her a sickly sweet smile. "So don't plan on going off and lying in the shade in the afternoons. You hear me?"

Flossie could hardly keep a sneer off her face, but she managed. This man could cause her real trouble. She had her savings, but they were in his bank, and she still didn't have any place to go on short notice.

"I'll be here at seven," she said simply.

Chapter 2

Flossie spent the rest of the morning dealing with the negative atmosphere Harvey Wilson had left behind. Her students were well acquainted with racism, of course, both black and white. The white students "knew" they were better than the black ones, at least when Flossie first got there. Since then, however, her instruction, and the fact that she could identify almost as many people of Negro heritage, who had invented or done something important in history, as she could White, had slowly resulted in a condition where the children had begun to view each other as just ... other children. The racism wasn't gone, but it was much weaker. Each of her students had some kind of talent, and she encouraged all of them to recognize the talents in the others.

While she didn't know it yet, her efforts had already succeeded beyond her wildest hopes.

Three of her students were a girl, named Johnnie Sue, and two boys, named Luthor and Jesse.

Johnnie Sue was a thirteen year old white girl, who could best be described as a tomboy. She could fish and hunt as well as any man and her wiry body would stand the rigors of just about any job that didn't involve lifting anything too much over her body weight, which was eighty pounds. Johnnie Sue was, to her immense chagrin, developing the body of a young woman. Periods had been bad enough, but now she was sprouting breasts and hair and everything, and she was not impressed.

Luthor was also white, was a year younger than Johnnie Sue, and also a good fisherman and hunter. He was tall for his age, standing at just over five feet eight inches. Had one compared his body with Johnnie Sue's, the only real difference, other than the obvious sex differences, would have been that he grew less hair under his arms and between his legs than she did. Otherwise, their bodies looked remarkably similar.

Jesse was different in obvious ways from the other two. He was of the Negroid race. He was eleven, with a wiry underfed looking body. He was a couple of inches shorter than Luthor, and about the same height as Johnnie Sue. If his skin color wasn't taken into account, his muscles looked just about like those of his two best friends.

That was the secret Flossie didn't know about.

Johnnie Sue, Luthor and Jesse were best friends. They had taken that decision very seriously one night, when it was too dark to work, and their parents were resting, spent from a long day's labor. All three families worked land that belonged to Jasper Cummins, who owned the sixty acres planted in cotton, and twenty-five acres planted in tobacco that, together, they farmed. It was farmed on shares, Jasper receiving half. The other half was split evenly between the three families who actually did the work. Money only showed up when the crop was actually sold, so money was tight for most of the year. As a result, the children didn't have store-bought toys. They made their own fun playing with each other, hunting, fishing, and just dreaming.

The three youths had come together not so much by choice, but because they had to work together. Johnnie Sue earned the respect of both boys because she could work just as hard as either of them. The boys recognized, in each other, a determination to excel that almost, but not quite, led to competition. Even those whites at the bottom of the totem pole didn't compete with blacks in those days. The superiority of whites was just assumed.

But, as the young people spent time together, growing up, they recognized in each other the things they liked, and while, on the surface, they kept their places in the social order, in private, they did something unusual. They accepted each other as equals. That led to the sharing of confidences, and that led to friendship. During the last school year, once they learned of the practice from their teacher, they couldn't resist the romantic notion of engaging in the time-honored ritual of blood brotherhood.

The very night after they sat, rapt with attention, as Flossie described how the Indians of the old Wild West had exchanged blood oaths, they entered into their own blood oath. Using a piece of broken glass, each pricked his or her finger, and those fingers were pressed together with great solemnity, each swearing that they would be linked for life, and would give their lives for each other if necessary.

After that, the differences that society used to separate them, not only black from white, but male from female as well, seemed to make less and less sense to them. They still met secretly, to be sure, with Jesse coming and leaving by different ways than the two white kids, but that was only to preserve the secret. By the time in their lives that this story is telling, they had already decided that adults had some very strange and stupid ideas, which they planned on completely ignoring whenever possible. That did not mean they misunderstood how they had to act in public. In public, stupid adults made the rules. But they rarely believed what any adult said, black or white.

There was one possible exception. When Flossie Pendergast said something, they believed it. She was their idol ... a person who seemed to know almost everything, and never lied about it if she didn't. She was an adult they could trust completely. Even so, they were still too young to realize the irony of the fact that their idol was a social outcast in the world in which they lived. All they thought was that adults were too stupid to see what their children had recognized.

And it was for that reason, that they recognized Harvey Wilson for the bigoted asshole that he was. When Harvey left the building, he had three new enemies he didn't even know about.

So did his children, and they had never even met them.

The "war" as Luthor, Johnnie Sue and Jesse called it, began that very night. After their chores were done, they gathered, as they did almost every night. Their first act of war was to avenge being called trash by the new banker. There were old boards and bits of wood lying around all over the place, many with nails stuck through them. Such hazards were always carefully cataloged, if they couldn't be removed, since the threat of lockjaw - and death - was quite real.

The three located the weapons they would employ in this battle, and ran to town together.

These days, a twelve year old running four or five miles in the dark would seem strange in the extreme. For the trio of blood-brothers (these young warriors wouldn't consider naming Johnnie Sue a blood 'sister' - who'd ever heard of one of those?) it was something they did three or four times a week, and they were only slightly winded when they arrived at their objective.

It hadn't been hard to find out where the new banker lived. Five minutes after they found the place, a small chunk of wood, with a rusty nail protruding from it, had been wedged under the back of the right front tire of the station wagon parked on the street out front of the house. Another one was wedged under the front of the left rear tire ... just in case. No matter which direction the car went in the morning, it would suffer a flat tire.

The run back home was even easier, due primarily to an excess of adrenaline in the bloodstreams of the young troublemakers.

Class had been in session for two hours the next day, when the Wilson children arrived for their first day of school in Catfish Hollow. They were a bedraggled lot, their fine clothes dusty and sweat stained. These young people didn't run anywhere, and the two mile walk to school had taxed them heavily.

Flossie, of course, didn't know about why the three teens were late. She was surprised not to have heard a car deliver them.

"You're late," she noted, as they trooped in.

"That's because this stupid town has boards with nails in them lying around everywhere," said the older girl. "My Daddy got two flat tires this morning, before we even went a block!"

Apparently he had moved both forward and back while leaving the house. There were giggles from the line of students, seated quietly at their desks, but Flossie couldn't identify who had been so amused.

"Well, find a seat and introduce yourselves," said Flossie.

"I ain't gonna sit where no nigger has sat," said the boy belligerently.

Flossie looked at him, her face set.

"Well, then, I suppose you'll just have to stand, young man." Her eyes strayed to the girls. "You young ladies may either sit, or stand, as you wish. Now, what are your names, please?"

That the three Wilson children responded to her request, is a thing that is difficult for folks to fully understand in these modern days. This is because the social setting of the day was almost laughably convoluted. While many white women adhered to the belief that Negroes were lazy, stupid, untrustworthy, and even dangerous, they thought nothing of hiring black women to raise their children. Part of that was because, when one had servants, one felt like she was in an elevated social position. There weren't many white women who were willing to become servants, so that void was filled by black women, who not only bathed, fed and supervised their young white charges, they were often the primary source of the early knowledge that was put into those young white heads. What, today, is often done by Sesame Street and such television programs, was done primarily by Negro nannies back then.

So, white children were often well acquainted with the idea that a black woman could have authority over them. The Wilson children had, in fact, been raised by a middle-aged black woman named Annie - they never knew her last name, nor cared. But Annie's authority was convoluted as well. The children could (and often did) demand things from Annie, and she had to accede to their demands ... unless those demands contravened orders from the parents. What that led to were situations that were unclear, in which a child might demand something one minute, and get his or her wish, and then demand something else the next moment that was denied.

Everyone involved had to learn to walk that tightrope. Sometimes a cry of "I'm gonna tell my Mamma" was cause for the adult to quail, while at other times it might result in "You just go ahead and whine to yore mamma, child, and see what it gets you!" At the same time, Anna had been there to kiss the scratches, and soothe the hurt feelings, and nurture the children in ways that, without servants (or daycare) a mother would normally have done. Over the years, Anna had forged a relationship with the three Wilson children that was as complex as inter-office politics are these days ... on both sides of the group. As hard as it is to believe, that relationship was based about half on fear and intimidation, and half love and respect.

Anna, however, had not moved with the family She stayed in Atlanta, where she would, no doubt, take under wing another group of spoiled white brats, to earn her living. This left the Wilson children without the social support they had had all their lives. For another black woman to be placed in a position of authority over them, even if she was much younger, was something that wasn't, in one sense, strange. And for that reason, perhaps, her request was granted.

"I'm Nathan Wilson," said the boy. "And these are my sisters Bernadette and Hilda Mae."

His response was typical of a well-to-do white boy in that situation. It was a complex mixture of being polite - he introduced the females - mixed with an almost unimaginable lack of concern, when he didn't indicate which girl was which. That resulted from his arrogant expectation that the others in the room would somehow know.

"We are pleased you could join us," said Flossie politely. "Let me introduce the other children to you."

She started to do just that, but had gotten only through three names before she realized that none of the Wilson children cared what the names were, of the others in the room. Hilda Mae was carefully examining her dress to see if it was dirty. Bernadette had carefully sat just on the edge of one of the empty desk seats, and had removed her shoe to rub her foot. Nathan was looking around the room, with what might pass for a look of disgust on his face.

As luck would have it, the history lesson for the day dealt with World War II, and the role that aviation had played in the outcome of that war. All the children had, of course, seen airplanes flying about. The ones they were most acquainted with dusted crops, and dipped and weaved into and out of the fields in ways that Flossie was able to use to explain what dogfights must have been like.

And, as luck would have it, Flossie had even better information about the air war and the role fighters had played in it. The same uncle who had sent Flossie to college was also a Tuskeegee Airman, with three confirmed kills over Europe. As she spun the tale of the life of the fighter pilots, even the Wilson children began to pay attention. Both Hilda Mae and Bernadette had claimed seats, unwilling to stand while the others sat. Nathan stood for long minutes, until the ache in his feet drove him to sit on the very edge of a chair.

All went well until Flossie got to the part about her uncle, and described the fighting he did as he had described it to her.

"That's a lie!" shouted Nathan suddenly.

While those words had been heard in the school house before, they had never been directed toward the teacher. Not Flossie, at least. Every head in the room swiveled to look at Nathan, even those of his sisters, who looked on interestedly.

"What seems to be the matter?" asked Flossie calmly.

"There wasn't never no nigger who flew a fighter like that and killed a German. That ain't possible!"

"Why wouldn't that be possible, Nathan?" asked Flossie. The tone of her voice was carefully neutral.

"Everybody knows niggers can't use machines like an airplane," said Nathan, as if he were explaining something to a small child. "They're too complicated."

Flossie went to her bag, and pulled something out of it.

"I'm going to pass around this photograph," she said, ignoring Nathan. "It was given to me by my uncle, the one I told you about. It's a picture of him standing beside his fighter."

She started the picture out with the smallest child, as was her custom. Whenever pictures were displayed, the little ones got to see them first, and then the older children. It was one way of making the little ones feel important. The students, whether consciously or not, passed it among themselves, somehow never remembering to hand it to any of the Wilson children. There were oohs and aahs from some of the older students.

The last to receive the picture was Curtis Lee, a young black man who was the son of a woman who ran a laundry service in town. His father was dead, lynched when Curtis Lee was only four. It was said that his father had whistled at a white woman, embarrassing her in front of her friends. Men had come for him in the night, and his body had been found hanging from a lamp post where the incident was said to have taken place.

Because his mother performed a service in town that no white woman wanted to do, and was therefore relatively well off, Curtis Lee did not have to work in the fields. He had therefore received more instruction than the other children, and when he wasn't in school, he read anything he could get his hands on. He wasn't allowed to check books out of the tiny library that Old Miz Hopkins ran, but she didn't mind if he sat in the back and read the books that were on the shelves. Over the years, he had run a number of errands for the old woman, and she had become fond of him. He had also read almost everything the library owned.

Curtis Lee looked at the photograph carefully. "P-51" he announced. "I read somewhere that The Tuskeegee group painted the tails red, and that the bomber crews started asking for them to fly cover during bombing missions."

"My uncle said the same thing," said Flossie, beaming. If ever she was proud of a student, it was Curtis Lee. She would give anything to be able to get him into a college. She reached out to receive the photograph back from Curtis Lee, but Nathan jumped out of his seat and snatched it first.

"Lemme see that," he said. He looked at the picture and sneered. "That don't mean nuthin'. He prob'ly just put on that outfit and had one of his nigger friends take that picture."

Then, with great deliberation, he tore the picture in half, and threw it at Flossie's feet.

Flossie felt an almost explosive surge of anger, but controlled it.

"You shouldn't have done that, Nathan," she said, her voice tight. "That's an irreplaceable picture, and it belonged to me. You don't have the right to destroy other people's property."

Nathan wasn't moved an inch.

"An you don't have no right to show lies around to people neither!" His jaw jutted out.

Flossie kneeled and picked up the two halves of her uncle's picture and she put them in her bag. Things looked even more disastrous than she had imagined.

"Tell you what," she said quietly. "I'll write to my uncle. He flies a crop dusting plane for a company up in Missouri. If he can prove to you that he actually flew in the war, will you apologize to me?"

"Apologize to a nigger?!" Nathan's voice was incredulous. Then he snorted. "Sure ... why not? I know you're lying ... and him too. There ain't no way a nigger could fly any kind of airplane. I'll believe it when I see it!" He smiled a gratuitous grin and sat back down.

That afternoon, when the children left, and the Wilson children opened up the box lunches that had been sent with them to school, only they and Curtis Lee were left. Flossie generally spent the afternoons with Curtis Lee, talking about whatever he wanted to pursue. Sometimes that was something he'd read about, and wanted to explore in terms of the science or math that was involved. Sometimes they leafed through Flossie's few text books, purchased at great expense while she was in college, and saved as precious sources of knowledge.

Having the Wilson children there, though, changed all that. The first thing Flossie decided to tackle was English, in an attempt to improve Nathan's speech in particular, and that of the girls in general. To start, she handed a dog-eared copy of "The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz" to Bernadette.

"Have you ever read this story?" she asked.

Bernadette looked at the faded, but still colorful illustration on the front of the book and shook her head.

"It's a really wonderful story about a girl, maybe a girl like you, who has a fantastic adventure in a magical place called Oz," Flossie explained. "Please read from chapter one."

Bernadette opened the book, and began reading. She stumbled occasionally on this or that word, but did reasonably well. After ten minutes Flossie had her hand the book to her younger sister, who also read well. Hilda Mae's voice took on that special characteristic of a storyteller who is enthralled with the story as she read about the tornado, and how the house flew and circled in the storm. At the point where it was clear the house had landed on top of somebody, Flossie indicated that the book should be passed to Nathan.

"I don't want to read," he said. "Hilda Mae is a good reader. Tell her to go on."

"Hilda Mae is, indeed, a good reader, but the purpose of this is to let everyone contribute and learn. Please read."

It was clear from the very beginning that Nathan was far behind his younger siblings in his reading and English skills. Flossie had suspected as much from his language, but hadn't expected a privileged white boy to be as far behind as he was. After half a page he stopped, his face flushed with anger, and shoved the book toward Flossie.

"You read it!" he growled.

Curtis Lee's hand appeared from nowhere, and grasped the book, pulling it gently from Nathan's hand.

"I'll read for a while," he said softly.

"You can read?" asked Nathan, sounding skeptical.

"Sure," was Curtis Lee's quiet reply.

Curtis Lee read the same way that Hilda Mae read, his voice changing from the soft southern slur that was all any of them had heard, and taking on life as the descriptions in the story were read flawlessly. Flossie glanced at the girls, both of whom were wide-eyed, astonished at what they were hearing. Nathan's face was pale, his eyes dark with shame and embarrassment.

When Curtis Lee stopped and looked up, he slumped, becoming again the soft-voiced youth. He held the book out to Bernadette, but she just sat there.

"You read good!" she said, awe plain in her voice.

"Well," corrected Flossie. "He reads well."

"You knew what I meant," said Bernadette, stiffening.

"Of course I did. All I'm doing is teaching you proper English. You want to sound educated, don't you?" Flossie smiled.

"All right," Bernadette sighed. "He reads well. There, are you happy now?"

"It doesn't matter whether I'm happy or not," said Flossie. "I'm here to teach you things ... English ... math ... science."

"Why do we have to learn science and all that," complained Bernadette. "We'll never have to use all that stuff."

"Education helps us understand the world we live in," explained Flossie patiently. "Knowing science may help you understand a machine you need to use, or keep you safe from some danger. What are you going to do when you grow up and leave home? If you know science, you might invent something important."

"Me?!" laughed Bernadette. "Invent something? Women don't invent things!"

"They most certainly do," said Flossie. "Women have invented hundreds of the things that make our lives much happier."

"Like what?" asked Hilda Mae, leaning forward. "Bernadette doesn't care. She just wants to get married and have babies. But I like science."

Flossie went to a box, nailed to the wall, and opened the lid, reaching inside. She brought out one of her favorite books, written by a man named Henry Baker. Henry Baker, a black man, was an assistant patent examiner at the U.S. Patent Office in 1900 who was dedicated to uncovering and publicizing the contributions of Black inventors. It happened as a result of the Patent Office conducting a survey to gather information about black inventors and their inventions. Letters were written to thousands of patent attorneys, company presidents and newspaper editors, among others, to gather information about things that had been invented or designed by Negroes. There was legislation that addressed whether patents could be held by slaves, or freed men, and court battles about the same thing. Baker compiled his findings into four huge volumes, and then wrote a simple text book based on that. Even fifty years later, his information was still being used in ongoing court battles about patents and rights.

There was an entry in the book she had used before, and was prepared to use again now.

"Where did you get all those lovely curls in your hair?" asked Flossie as she leafed through the book.

"What?" asked Hilda Mae.

"Your hair is curled. Bernadette's too. Is that natural, or did someone have to curl it for you?"

"Mamma took us to the beauty shop with her," said Bernadette. "She says we have to set an example in our new town."

"And does your mother let you wear cosmetics?"

"Cos... What's that?" asked Hilda Mae.

"Powders and creams and lipstick ... things like that, that you put on your face?"

"We're not old enough for that yet," sighed Bernadette. "Mamma uses it and she's so beautiful it makes my heart burst."

"Here we go," said Flossie, turning the book around so the girls could see the grainy photograph of a woman in old fashioned clothing, wearing a flamboyant hat. The picture was of a Negro woman. Flossie didn't have to read. She knew the facts by heart.

"Madame C.J. Walker, born in 1867, worked for a woman in a beauty shop. She noticed that some women had a problem that made their hair fall out. She invented a scalp conditioner and healing cream. It was so successful that she opened her own business in Denver, Colorado, and then established schools for women to learn how to do all those things they do in that beauty shop your mamma took you to. She went on to invent all kinds of cosmetics. She also invented the machine they used to put all those lovely curls into your hair. When she died her estate was worth over a million dollars. Knowing something about chemistry is why she was able to do all that."

Flossie stopped talking. Both girls were staring goggle-eyed at the picture in the book.

"A nigger woman did all that?" gasped Bernadette.

"A Negro woman did that," corrected Flossie. "Let me ask you a question, Bernadette. How would you feel if I called you a whore, or a slut?"

Bernadette's eyes opened as wide as they possibly could, and her mouth gaped open. She was so flabbergasted by the question she couldn't even speak.

Flossie went on. "I'm not calling you either of those things, but if I did, it would hurt your feelings, would it not?"

"I'd kill any nigger who called my sister a whore!" shouted Nathan, standing up.

"Calm down, Nathan," said Flossie, hoping she could pull this off. "I'm making a point here. I'm teaching." She turned back to Bernadette. "Would that hurt your feelings?"

"Well of course it would!" the girl gasped.

"I am a Negro, or colored woman ... a citizen of the United States of America," said Flossie. "My ancestors were slaves, but I am not. I have a college education, and I teach children important lessons. The word 'nigger' is a word just like the word 'whore' - it is intended to make someone feel bad. When you call me a nigger, it is like you are calling me a whore or a slut. It hurts my feelings, and it hurts the feelings of any Negro person."

Bernadette looked shocked. "But it's just a word!" she said.

"So is 'whore'," pointed out Flossie. "I'm just trying to help you understand how what you say can affect other people."

"But everybody calls niggers ... niggers ..." Hilda Mae's voice sounded puzzled.

"And everybody calls a whore a whore," said Flossie. "Some people call a women a whore when she isn't, though."

"So are you saying that some niggers are niggers, and others are Ni-gruhs?" asked Bernadette, pronouncing it the same way her father did. "What's the difference?"

"I'm saying nigger is a word that hurts feelings. It's a derogative word that is meant to hurt, just like the word 'whore' is meant to hurt. No one uses the word 'whore' and means anything positive by it."

"Oh," said Hilda Mae. "I guess that makes sense." She looked puzzled. "Except that I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings. I don't really care what you think."

The innocent truth of that statement was what Flossie knew went to the core of racism. If you didn’t care what a person thought, you didn't care what happened to them either. And if you didn't care what happened to them, then your natural sense of right and wrong could get skewed so badly that you did things that would normally have gone against your conscience. While Hilda Mae would never think about calling a white friend a whore, because she would instinctively know that was wrong, because she had never cared about a black person, it didn't matter what you called one of them.

Flossie, though, saw the tiny crack she had just caused in the armor that was wrapped around Hilda Mae's racist upbringing, and went on ahead.

"And, while we're on the subject," said Flossie, "there are many other names for people that are meant to hurt. Has anyone ever called you a cracker?"

"Not to my face," snorted Nathan, like he was miffed at being left out of the conversation.

"Well, what I'm telling you is that, if you want to be polite, you just won't use those kinds of words. I'm not a coon, or a nigger, or a Sambo. I'm a Negro, or a colored person. And it's Nee-Grow, not Nye-Gruh, by the way."

"That's what Daddy calls them ... you," said Bernadette.

"Your father doesn't like Negroes, does he?" asked Flossie.

"No," said Bernadette easily. "He says they're lazy and stupid and we ought to send them all back to Africa, where they came from."

"That's a discussion for another day," sighed Flossie. "For now, let's just say this. You know that saying 'ain’t' isn't correct English, right?"

"Yes," admitted Bernadette. "Mamma yells at us all the time for saying that. She says it makes us sound common."

"OK, just like 'ain’t' is a corruption of 'am not' or 'is not', 'Nigruh' is a corruption of 'Negro'. It isn't polite, and it makes the user sound ... common."

Both girls looked pale at the thought that anyone, at least outside their family, might think they sounded ... common.

"So, what I intend to do, is teach you to speak properly, so you'll never sound common in your whole life. Isn't that something you'd like to learn?"

Both girls nodded, almost reluctantly. Nathan wasn't impressed, though. He snorted.

"And you, young man, are going to learn to read as well or better than Curtis Lee," said Flossie, reminding him that he fared very badly when compared to the performance of someone he called a nigger.

Before Nathan could explode, though, Bernadette sat up straight and she looked at Curtis Lee.

"How did you learn to read so good?"

"Well," prompted Flossie.

"So well!" said an exasperated Bernadette.

"I just practiced," said the boy quietly. "At first I read out loud because it was easier to say the words. After a while I didn't do that any more. And then, when Miss Flossie was teaching reading to the little ones, I helped, and started reading out loud again."

"So if I practice ... I can read as good ... I mean well," she shot a look at Flossie, who smiled, "... as you do?" she finished.

"I don't see why not. You read pretty well already," said Curtis Lee.

"Nathan will never read well," snorted Hilda Mae. "He's too lazy and stupid. Pappa even told him so last night." She jumped to avoid the blow she knew was coming from her brother, and put a desk between him and her.

"He did not!" shouted Nathan.

"He did so!" shouted Hilda Mae right back. "You told him you wanted to be a doctor at supper last night and he said you were too lazy and stupid to ever do that!"

"Your father is mixed up about several things, I imagine," said Flossie, interrupting the argument.

Nathan turned on her. "My Daddy is not mixed up about anything!"

"So," said Flossie quietly. "He thinks niggers are lazy and stupid ... and he called you lazy and stupid ..." She didn't have to finish. Nathan's face became pale as shock gripped him.

"I suspect you're neither lazy nor stupid, Nathan," said Flossie, standing up. "You just haven't been taught well, or maybe you decided not to pay attention in school. Either of those problems can be solved easily. If you want to be a doctor, you just have to decide to be a doctor, and then work toward that goal. There's no reason in the world you can't be a doctor, if that's what you want to do."

For the first time Nathan was speechless. Annie, his old nanny, had been another black woman who had sympathized with him when his father shouted at him when he was younger. He tried everything to win his father's approval, but nothing worked. Annie had held him as he cried into her ample bosom, telling him that he was a fine young man, and would grow up to do wonderful things. It occurred to him now that here was another hated nigger, who was doing close to the same thing, and that no white woman had ever said he'd amount to a hill of beans.

Nathan underwent a strange ... almost bizarre, if admittedly microscopic, transformation in those few seconds. He remembered Annie's comforting arms, and the softness of her bosom as he cried into it. He had hated her for seeing him cry, but she had always been there for him. Later, he had let her cuddle him just because it felt good sometimes. He had loved to press his face to the softness of her bosom. His eyes went to Flossie, and for the first time he looked at her as a woman, and not just another nigger. She was short and slim, and her breasts didn't push her dress out like Annie's had. Still, she was nice to him. He was old enough to know exactly what the word 'nigger' was used for. He used it intentionally, specifically to cause hurt. Yet, this woman was still civil to him, and not because she had to be. His father had already announced his intention to have her replaced, and his father always got what he wanted. His father was a powerful man, with the purse strings of the whole town firmly in his grasp. With something akin to horror, Nathan Wilson realized that this woman, and Annie before her, treated him better than his mother and father ever had.

It was an epiphany that would cause him many sleepless nights in the months to come. It would also redirect the anger he nurtured inside him ... anger that now would be less and less directed at those of lower station in life than his own, and more and more at those with power, who tried to deny him a share of that power.

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