A Fine Line: A Young People’s Novel

By Mary Satchell

Leola Jackson, born and bred in the Deep South, narrates her experiences as a black girl whose entire life was defined by Jim Crow boundary lines. These invisible lines, which were drawn and enforced by the authority of Southern laws and customs, told Leola and her friends where they could live, where they could go to school, where they could sit on a public bus, where they could sit and eat in a public place, where they were allowed to worship, and even how high their dreams and aspirations could take them. Leola never had many dreams. She always figured she’d grow up to become a housemaid just like her single-parent mom. However, in 1954 when Leola’s story begins, surprising things were happening in the nation, as well as inside Leola’s tiny world. The winds were whispering that changes, later known as the Civil Rights Movement, were coming that would soon transform the nation and especially black Americans’ lives forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512740158

Mary Satchell

Mary Satchell is a retired schoolteacher and playwright. She has published children’s plays about the lives of famous African-Americans. Recently, Mrs. Satchell has started writing fiction for young people. She says about her new book, “This novel is dedicated to all of my former students, from whom I learned so much more than I ever taught them.”

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Copyright © 2016 Mary Satchell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-4014-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-4015-8 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 3/7/2017

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Leola’s World

Chapter 2 Mamie Jo

Chapter 3 Miss June & Miss Julie

Chapter 4 A Landmark Decision

Chapter 5 Weir’s Cleaners

Chapter 6 Janie

Chapter 7 The Radio Play

Chapter 8 Beulah Baptist Church

Chapter 9 The Birthday Party

Chapter 10 The Sunday Bus Ride

Chapter 11 Papa

Chapter 12 The Map Game

Chapter 13 Wimpy and Jimmy Lee

Chapter 14 Hurricane Julie

Chapter 15 War Of The Ages

Chapter 16 Homecoming Events

Chapter 17 Family Disasters

Chapter 18 Standing Up

Chapter 19 Eviction

Chapter 20 Brotherhood Sunday

Chapter 21 A Lost World

Chapter 22 Hamilton Park

Chapter 23 Witnesses

About the Author

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CHAPTER 1

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LEOLA’S WORLD

I lived with my mama, Mrs. Pearl Jackson, in a city called Fort Brooke in Florida. We had lived upstairs in Mrs. Bower’s two-story house ever since I was two. In 1954, I was an eleven-year-old fifth grader––chubby, timid, and bullied a lot. I grew up in a Jim Crow world where black and white people had to live, by law, in separate neighborhoods.

Our house was on Lamar Street, which ran north and south, not far from the city’s downtown district. The Negro side of Lamar Street ended at Henderson Avenue. Henderson, a street busy with traffic, divided Lamar into two separate worlds. Houses located on Henderson and to the north for several miles made up the white neighborhoods. Houses south of Henderson all the way to the edge of downtown were for Negroes. Henderson Avenue was the main dividing line in my world.

Mr. Sam’s grocery store was on Henderson and the southeast corner of Lamar. Mr. Sam was an Italian. He sold groceries on credit to Mama and other people who lived on both sides of Henderson Avenue. Most of the families, both Negro and white, barely made ends meet from payday to payday. Mr. Sam let them buy things on credit, and they paid their weekly grocery bills on Friday.

Two elderly, white ladies owned a big, beautiful house facing Henderson on the southwest corner of Lamar. Their house had a wrap-around porch that Mama called a veranda with rocking chairs. I loved to eat and saw most things in terms of food. To me, this house looked like a huge cake with white icing. It seemed out of place among the drab, smaller homes in the area, many badly in need of paint and repair.

I really thought that grand house on the corner across Lamar from Sam’s store was a mansion. It was perfect, with pretty flowers blooming up close to the porch. The large yard was like a green carpet, always neatly trimmed and mowed. The old ladies sat on the porch every afternoon. Miss Frankie, their maid, told my mama they were identical twins. The two sisters were tall and skinny with long, wrinkled faces and white hair. Miss Frankie also said that the sister who always wore dark eyeglasses was blind.

My world went south for two or three miles from our house to Harlem Elementary School and Beulah Baptist Church. The school and church I attended were on the northeast edge of downtown. Henderson Elementary was just two blocks from Lamar Street, but racial laws would not allow Negro children to attend that school. Instead of walking two blocks to Henderson Elementary, I had to walk two miles to get to Harlem.

I hardly ever went outside my tiny world. I knew that in the larger world outside of mine, most folks thought Negroes didn’t count for much. The rigid boundary lines around my world had been drawn by lawmakers from somewhere far away. Timid and shy, I did everything possible to stay out of trouble and not ruffle anybody’s feathers. I made A’s in art because my pictures were very neat, carefully colored or painted. I always stayed inside the lines. It was clear to me and everybody else, I believed, that life always would be full of lines and walls of separation. Limits and borders were everywhere. But in the early days of May 1954, something was whispering in the wind that would soon turn my life and world upside down.

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CHAPTER 2

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MAMIE JO

M amie Jo Marissa lived in the first house on Lamar Street behind Mr. Sam’s grocery store. Her house was the nearest one to Henderson Avenue, at the end of our neighborhood. Mamie Jo attended St. Peter Claver Elementary, the Negro Catholic school located on Governor Street three blocks away. She lived with Mrs. Walden, her grandma, who never let Mamie Jo or her little five-year-old brother out of the lady’s sight. They couldn’t go any further than the sidewalk in front of their porch. Like most of the old people on our street, Mrs. Walden sat on her front porch a lot.

I felt sorry for the girl. She was ten, a Cuban Negro with long, wavy black hair. A skinny kid with big front teeth, Mamie Jo’s eyes seemed to be begging for either freedom or friendship. She just looked so lonely watching my friends and me play ball in the middle of our street. We usually played in front of my house.

Maybe I was the only person in the neighborhood who paid any attention to Mamie Jo. I suppose I knew a shy, timid, kindred soul when I saw one. She’d recently come from Miami to live with Mrs. Walden. In early May, the Lamar Street Gang, as we called ourselves, looked forward to the end of school. Summer was ahead. For most of us that meant play, play, and more play everyday from dawn to dusk. In Fort Brooke, summer school hadn’t been invented yet.

The major league baseball season was in high gear, and we had our own version of the game. Since there were more girls than boys in the neighborhood at that time, our game was a different kind of softball. There were no strict rules, except that players should get a hit each time they came to bat. Even if it took all day. I was always the pitcher for both sides because my hand-eye skills were perfect for our Lamar Street game.

I pitched directly at the two-by-four in the batter’s hands. Anybody could hit the soft rubber ball I threw. But if somebody’s broken arm was in a plaster cast, or the person weighed less than the batter’s board, I gladly left the pitcher’s spot and touched the board with the ball. That stood for a hit to first base.

So, when I got the idea to move our playground to the front of Mrs. Walden’s porch, there was no problem. Playing ball was the only time I dared to take charge. The pitcher’s word was law. We’d never played that close to busy Henderson Avenue before, but traffic was light on Lamar, where we were.

When I asked Mrs. Walden if Mamie Jo could play ball with us, she nodded with a stony face. She was used to seeing me stop and talk a little while with her granddaughter on my way to and from the grocery store. The lady even let Mamie Jo’s little brother stand at the curb to watch our game. The two white ladies were sitting in the rocking chairs on their veranda. The one who could see turned her chair to face Lamar after we showed up to play near her house.

Mamie Jo was overjoyed and, surprisingly, it didn’t take her long to get a hit. I was deep into the game, trying to get all the bases loaded. Wimpy and Jimmy Lee, regular visitors from Governor Street next to Lamar, were playing outfield. Janie was the shortstop. Brother, who lived downstairs from me, was the catcher.

All went well until Gladys hit a pop-fly. The ball sailed into the sisters’ yard and bounced in the flowerbed next to their porch. Fearless Wimpy darted after it, jumping right in the middle of some beautiful pansies. He threw the ball to me, and the white lady went quickly inside her house.

I sometimes wonder if what happened that Friday afternoon in May was just meant to be. Why we did not scatter and run from there at that moment can’t be explained. We kept playing our ball game without a care. Mrs. Walden was peacefully taking a nap, something I’d never seen her do in all my many trips to Mr. Sam’s.

None of us saw the black-and-white police car that stopped quietly in front of the mansion. Both sisters were still sitting on the veranda. They hadn’t said a word to us. The one with the dark glasses kept her head down as if she might be asleep. But the one who’d called the police got up, and went to the edge of her veranda the moment the police car drove up. Two white policemen dressed in black uniforms, with guns and Billy clubs at their waists, got out of the car.

That’s when Brother yelled at me in alarm. Here come the cops!

The men didn’t speak to the sister who called them. She folded both arms across her chest and frowned at everybody. One officer was much older than the other. Both seemed to be dragging their feet, taking longer than necessary to get to us. I remember thinking they really didn’t want anything to do with the sisters or us.

The older policeman beckoned. Y’all come here!

We inched toward them.

Leola got the ball, Janie muttered.

I dropped it at once.

Wimpy had the nerve to speak. He’d had many run-ins with the law, and was now between trips to the county reform school. We ain’t done nothing.

Y’all can’t play here, the policeman said, pointing at the sisters’ house. Don’t come near this place again. He glanced around at the group of young faces.

Mamie Jo’s little brother ran to his grandmother on the porch and shook her awake. When the old lady saw the two policemen, she got up quickly and grabbed the porch’s railing, but she kept quiet.

Don’t never come past that alley behind the garage there. He drew a horizontal line in the air with his finger. You got all the rest of your street to play on. The man’s face looked very unfriendly when he paused. That clear?

Everybody except Wimpy and Janie nodded.

Now, we don’t want to have to come out here about y’all again!

They turned and walked quickly back to the patrol car. The young policeman touched the brim of his hat as he passed the sister on the veranda. We didn’t move until the police car drove off fast down Henderson.

Mamie Jo! Mrs. Walden shouted shrilly. Come home!

The girl ran home fast. Wimpy, looking hurt, picked up the ball and gave it to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lady who called the police on us guiding her blind sister toward their front door. The game was over. Nobody felt like playing ball anymore. We slowly moved back down Lamar. Wimpy and Jimmy Lee ran into the alley leading to the street where they lived. I was certain that Mamie Jo would never play ball with us again.

I also knew that another line had just been drawn to push my friends and me further inside our small world.

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CHAPTER 3

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MISS JUNE & MISS JULIE

M amie Jo and her brother left town as soon as the school year was over, and they never came back to Fort Brooke. I didn’t have time to think much about the girl because Miss Frankie had told my mama about the ball game and the police. Mama thought any contact with the police came directly from law-breaking, which brought shame on any family.

She gave my ears a tongue-lashing after she came home from work.

Leola Jackson, why didn’t you stop playing ball and own up to the fact that y’all children was wrong! When that ball touched that old lady’s yard, you should’ve gone up to her house and apologized.

But, Mama, I whined, taking care not to sound like a rebel. I was pitching, and everybody was looking for me to keep the game going. I was wading in deep water, but I wasn’t just taking up for myself. She didn’t understand what those policemen had done to my friends and me. Janie said they treated us like ants to be stepped on. Honestly, I thought Janie might be going to reform school with Wimpy someday. They were both rebels, but Wimpy had sticky fingers.

That’s no excuse, Leola. And you’re going to make things right. I won’t have white folks thinking our children just a bunch of uncivilized outlaws.

When she said make things right, I knew Mama was serious about that apologizing. I’m sorry, I whimpered.

She nodded deeply. That’s just what you going to tell that lady Frankie works for, first thing tomorrow morning!

Mama turned her back to me and went into the kitchen. I almost wished she’d brought out her belt. Going up to that mansion to face the sour-faced sister who clearly hated us was too cruel. Yet, I knew better than to complain.

Pearl Jackson always kept her word. At exactly seven o’clock the next