No Crystal Stair Read Free

actually prompted herself. She clearly remembered the morning they’d been driving to her private school and had witnessed a fight near the public high school. She’d been frightened when her father drew to the curb and jumped out of the car. He could get hurt! But Dr. Carter, in his commanding way, had stopped the fight and dispersed the crowd. He’d then tended the wounds of the two combatants, somehow managing to resolve their differences as he did so.
    She’d observed the motley group of youngsters and, with the insight of her twelve years, made a hasty judgment. “They’re bad,” she’d said when her father returned to the car. “Not our kind of people.”
    She’d never forgotten the look her father had given her. And that he hadn’t called her by his pet name “Kitten.” All he’d said was, “People are alike, Ann Elizabeth. Some just have more advantages than others.”
    That night had marked the beginning of a long series of bitter arguments between her parents. Dad won. The following
autumn, both she and Randy had been enrolled at Washington High, the one public high school for colored kids in the city of Atlanta. To her surprise she’d enjoyed those four years. She’d liked the homeroom devotional, where she first heard the beautiful old spirituals never sung in the Congregational Church. She’d liked being on the debating team and dancing in the operettas with her new school chums. Of course, Mother had seen to it that she maintained a tight connection with her old group, but as Dad wished, she’d made many new and different friends. In high school Sadie Clayton had been her best friend. Mother hadn’t liked that because Sadie’s father was a garbage man, and they lived in Beaver Slide, a far less genteel neighborhood.
    Ann Elizabeth climbed out of the tub, toweled off and went into her room to dress, all the while reflecting that her friendship with Sadie had been her only rebellion against Mother. Unlike Randy, her brother, two years older and never as compliant. With him there had always been ripples of discontent—getting home late, making the wrong friends. And, come to think of it, Sadie. Randy had been immediately attracted to Sadie, and for a while they’d been pretty close. But neither she nor Randy had seen much of Sadie since she’d started nursing school.
    Now Sadie’s a full-fledged nurse, she thought, and I’m still wondering which way I’m going. I must remember to call her. I’d like her to see the play I’m in, show her I’m still performing. Lord. What fun we had, all those hours rehearsing operettas! I want her to come to my debut.
    She hoped Randy would make it from Tuskegee. She smiled. Another rebellion. Randy’s fascination with airplanes, like a bolt from the blue, had disrupted their parents’ plans for him. Despite his disagreements with them, Randy had been following their chosen path. He’d completed his college requirements and was already registered in medical school. Pearl Harbor and
the U.S. entry into the war hadn’t disrupted these plans, since medical students weren’t being drafted; it was Randy himself who rebelled.
    Ann Elizabeth sat on her bed to slip on her pumps, remembering the day Randy had come in waving that newspaper with the headlines in bold type: ARMY TO ATTEMPT TO TRAIN NEGRO PILOTS. He read the article aloud. “Disastrous mistake... some Army planes fly at two hundred miles an hour, and it is well-known that Negroes can’t think that fast.”
    They had been indignant. Not Randy. He had howled with laughter, his eyes bright with challenge. “We’ll show them!”
    â€œWe?” Dr. Carter’s question had been an apprehensive gasp.
    â€œI’m enlisting, Dad.”
    â€œBut what about medical school?”
    â€œSaving you a bundle, Dad. The Army will pay for medical school... after