Read Online No Crystal Stair by Eva Rutland - Free Book Online Page B

wrong place.” Pete Peterson, Rob’s best man, had cracked open the door of the pastor’s study and was peering out into the chapel.
    Rob stared at the back of Pete’s head, at the sweat pouring down his neck, glistening on that red hair, so typical of his type, usually called “merino niggers.” Pale skin, pale eyes, red woolly hair.
    â€œWhat the hell do you mean, wrong place? This is the First Congregational Church, isn’t it?”
    Pete turned, a glint of mischief in his catlike eyed, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Take a look. Nobody but us white folks here.”
    Too nervous to appreciate the joke, Rob obediently took Pete’s place at the door and surveyed the elegant chapel with its stained-glass windows. A world away from the converted clapboard house back home that the deacons had fashioned into Shiloh Baptist, the church he had reluctantly attended as a boy. He strained his eyes trying to glimpse the few dark faces among the many fair-skinned wedding guests rapidly filling the church. There. That was Mrs. Smith. She’d given a party for them. And the big-shot Colonel somebody. He turned back to Pete.
    â€œOh, there’s a few of us darkies here. Just us rich and powerful ones.” He made a gesture, classing himself with Dr. Carter
who was pacing the floor a few feet away and glancing at his watch every now and then. Probably wondering, Rob thought, if he’d have time to escort his daughter down the aisle before rushing off to the hospital to see some patient.
    The pastor’s study was warm and stuffy. Rob took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. His full-dress uniform did nothing to repel the heat. He looked back into the chapel and saw another dark face, his mother’s. Thelma Metcalf, neatly but plainly dressed, seemed strangely out of place amidst this throng of sophisticated Atlantans. She hesitated at the entrance, apparently confused, until Randy stepped quickly to her side and slipped her hand through his arm. He bent to whisper something in her ear that made her smile as he ushered her to a front pew.
    Rob, seeing her settled, relaxed. His mother had been uncharacteristically silent all week. She was a bit overwhelmed by these rich Atlanta Negroes. Frugal by nature and necessity, Thelma was suspicious of colored people who lived “too high on the hog,” who drove expensive cars and dressed “fit to kill.” All her life she had contemptuously dismissed such people as “nigger rich.” It was Thelma Metcalf’s thrift, after his father died, that had saved the family home and seen Rob through high school and college.
    Rob had been more than a little concerned about how his mother would be received by the Carters. They weren’t exactly jumping with joy at the prospect of him as a son-in-law. But he’d been pleasantly surprised. Old Mrs. High-and-Mighty had been most cordial to Mama, installing her in the guest room and carefully shepherding her thorough the bridge parties... “No, Mrs. Metcalf doesn’t care to play, thank you”... the showers, and Lincoln Country Club dances—the social swirl naturally attendant on the nuptials of Julia Belle Washington Carter’s only daughter. And not by word or gesture did she ever
betray to the outside world how deeply disappointed she was by her daughter’s choice of husband.
    Rob blew his mother an unseen kiss, mopped his brow again and turned back into the study. Damn! He wished this thing was over. Wished he had Ann Elizabeth in Tuskegee away from all this. Alone. Thinking about Ann Elizabeth, he felt his heart skip a beat, stop, then tumble on rapidly. Pulsating, full of excitement, desire . . . apprehension.
    Away from all this? To Tuskegee? Away from that ten-room mansion with its large acreage and towering trees to a tiny bedroom in Mrs. Anderson’s shabby little house. Life on a lieutenant’s salary of one hundred and ten dollars