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Authors: Louise Shaffer
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The idea pleased her.
But not Mama. “All you’re doing is encouraging poor Lottie to get above herself. It’s not fair to her.”
Maggie thought about giving Mama a list of all the things Lottie could do better than she did, but it would only make Mama lecture even more. So she smiled her sweetest, which could be very sweet indeed, and she and Lottie went on as they always had.
Until Mama lost all patience. “Maggie, I told you to stop this,” she said. “I won’t have people talking about my daughter and saying she’s strange.”
“It’s nobody’s business what I do.”
“Of course it is. Your family has a reputation in this town. People watch us, don’t you forget that. And for a young lady your age to have no friends but one little colored girl doesn’t look good. If you don’t stop, I’ll have a talk with Charlie Mae, and you know what she’ll do to Lottie.”
So Lottie and Maggie took their friendship underground. On a thirty-acre farm with numerous outbuildings it wasn’t hard to duck the adults. And every once in a while, to appease her mama, Maggie brought schoolmates home to play. She thought she and Lottie could go on forever with their life.
But they were growing up. Their bodies were racing toward a maturity she wanted no part of. In the course of one summer, Maggie developed a porcelain prettiness that caused Mama’s friends to cluck and say she was going to be a regular little heartbreaker. And Lottie became beautiful. Years later Maggie would still remember with an ache Lottie’s transformation from a skinny girl into a tall slender creature with high cheekbones, brown satin skin, and huge dark eyes. Maggie stayed childishly petite, but Lottie blossomed into a classic hourglass. She carried herself proudly, even when Charlie Mae punished her for being vain.
Lottie had a dream. She was going to be a doctor. The boldness of it awed Maggie. They had never heard of a Negro, male or female, being a doctor. But there was a supervisor who visited Lottie’s school, a young Negro woman sent around by the state, who took a special interest in Lottie. Miss Monross told her there were colored colleges she could go to, and schools where Negroes learned to be doctors. Miss Monross threw around names like Spelman and Bethune-Cookman—names Lottie wrote in the diary she kept under her mattress. When the time came, Miss Monross said, if Lottie worked hard at her studies and prepared herself, she, Miss Monross, would see to it that Lottie got to one of these schools. But she warned Lottie that she would have to study on her own. The education she was getting was not adequate for a future college student.
This was not a surprise to Maggie and Lottie. It hadn’t taken them long to figure out that the Negro school was inferior to the one Maggie went to. Lottie’s school was held in the church; the children sat in pews and worked on their laps. There were subjects the Negroes weren’t taught, because they didn’t have books or supplies. While Maggie was learning fractions and the capitals of Europe, the kids in Lottie’s school were struggling with basic reading and writing. By the time they were in high school, most of the Negro children had already left school to work.
So Maggie and Lottie began studying together, as they had done before when they learned to read. There was an old barn on the property that no one ever used that had become a storage place for unused junk. It was perfect for them. At night they waited until everyone was asleep; then they put on coats over their nightgowns and sneaked out. Lottie brought an oil lamp from the cabin, which they lit and put on the floor so they could see enough to read, and Maggie brought her school textbooks and spread her worksheets on a blanket on the floor. Lottie worked her way through the books, asking questions when she didn’t understand something, and Maggie would have to remember what she had learned in class and explain it. Later, she
But not Mama. “All you’re doing is encouraging poor Lottie to get above herself. It’s not fair to her.”
Maggie thought about giving Mama a list of all the things Lottie could do better than she did, but it would only make Mama lecture even more. So she smiled her sweetest, which could be very sweet indeed, and she and Lottie went on as they always had.
Until Mama lost all patience. “Maggie, I told you to stop this,” she said. “I won’t have people talking about my daughter and saying she’s strange.”
“It’s nobody’s business what I do.”
“Of course it is. Your family has a reputation in this town. People watch us, don’t you forget that. And for a young lady your age to have no friends but one little colored girl doesn’t look good. If you don’t stop, I’ll have a talk with Charlie Mae, and you know what she’ll do to Lottie.”
So Lottie and Maggie took their friendship underground. On a thirty-acre farm with numerous outbuildings it wasn’t hard to duck the adults. And every once in a while, to appease her mama, Maggie brought schoolmates home to play. She thought she and Lottie could go on forever with their life.
But they were growing up. Their bodies were racing toward a maturity she wanted no part of. In the course of one summer, Maggie developed a porcelain prettiness that caused Mama’s friends to cluck and say she was going to be a regular little heartbreaker. And Lottie became beautiful. Years later Maggie would still remember with an ache Lottie’s transformation from a skinny girl into a tall slender creature with high cheekbones, brown satin skin, and huge dark eyes. Maggie stayed childishly petite, but Lottie blossomed into a classic hourglass. She carried herself proudly, even when Charlie Mae punished her for being vain.
Lottie had a dream. She was going to be a doctor. The boldness of it awed Maggie. They had never heard of a Negro, male or female, being a doctor. But there was a supervisor who visited Lottie’s school, a young Negro woman sent around by the state, who took a special interest in Lottie. Miss Monross told her there were colored colleges she could go to, and schools where Negroes learned to be doctors. Miss Monross threw around names like Spelman and Bethune-Cookman—names Lottie wrote in the diary she kept under her mattress. When the time came, Miss Monross said, if Lottie worked hard at her studies and prepared herself, she, Miss Monross, would see to it that Lottie got to one of these schools. But she warned Lottie that she would have to study on her own. The education she was getting was not adequate for a future college student.
This was not a surprise to Maggie and Lottie. It hadn’t taken them long to figure out that the Negro school was inferior to the one Maggie went to. Lottie’s school was held in the church; the children sat in pews and worked on their laps. There were subjects the Negroes weren’t taught, because they didn’t have books or supplies. While Maggie was learning fractions and the capitals of Europe, the kids in Lottie’s school were struggling with basic reading and writing. By the time they were in high school, most of the Negro children had already left school to work.
So Maggie and Lottie began studying together, as they had done before when they learned to read. There was an old barn on the property that no one ever used that had become a storage place for unused junk. It was perfect for them. At night they waited until everyone was asleep; then they put on coats over their nightgowns and sneaked out. Lottie brought an oil lamp from the cabin, which they lit and put on the floor so they could see enough to read, and Maggie brought her school textbooks and spread her worksheets on a blanket on the floor. Lottie worked her way through the books, asking questions when she didn’t understand something, and Maggie would have to remember what she had learned in class and explain it. Later, she
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