White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation

The Buses Roll

52 I remember my mother walking me to the bus stop—August 30, 1971, the first day of busing in Richmond, a few weeks before my eleventh birthday. I was glad that she had made special arrangements to go into work late, but I was embarrassed, too. I tried to talk her out of walking with me as I ate a bowl of cottage cheese for breakfast. “C’mon, Mom,” I said. “You can go to work. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” “No, I want to walk with you,” she said, taking a sip of her tea with milk. “I want to get you off to a good start.” “Oh, really!” I said. “I’m not a baby.” “Just let me this once. I want to. It’s your first day of middle school and all.” Beneath the table, our dog, Cinderella, thumped her tail. She waited under the table every morning, hoping that we might drop a crumb for her to lick up. “Here, Cindy,” I called, using her nickname. She skittered across the linoleum and jumped up into my lap, scratching my bare legs with her toenails. I hugged her and patted her head. Half poodle and half terrier, her black fur stuck together in clumps all down her back. She had white eyebrows, a white chin, and white paws. “She doesn’t have to ride the bus,” said Mom with a smile. “She’s already integrated.” We both laughed. “All right, all right, let’s go,” I said, gathering up my blue, looseleaf notebook and my handbag. We walked together, our feet scuffing the sidewalk, pale sunlight sifting down through the crape myrtle trees that lined the street. In an hour or two it would be hot enough for my sleeveless blouse to stick to my back, but right now it was cool and the asphalt street was still slightly damp from the dew. “Hurry up,” said Mom, as I trailed behind her. “You don’t want to miss the bus.” The Buses Roll 53 “Mom, I’ll be fine,” I said. She nodded, and we continued walking in silence. Maybe she was worried that people would be carrying “No Busing” signs and yelling at us when we reached the bus stop, but nobody was. The rush hour traffic whizzed along Patterson Avenue, the drivers oblivious. We were just a group of kids milling around at the corner. When the bus pulled away, Mom waved to me through the window. That was the only day she ever walked me to the bus. It was her way of telling me that she wanted me to go to this school, that she’d help me face any protestors who showed up that day. Maybe my father would have helped bring the lawsuits that led to desegregation in the first place, and then he would have proudly escorted me into the school. Maybe he would have sat beside me on the living room couch at the end of the day, patiently reading the newspaper or playing cards with me until I was ready to tell him how strange it all felt. I had no doubt that he wanted me to go to a school like this, but now it was up to my mother to see me through it. Nobody was outside yelling or waving posters when my bus pulled up to Binford’s main entrance on Floyd Avenue. There were about 650 students at Binford. The racial percentages, the subject of so much debate, were right within the range set by Judge Merhige: 70 percent black and 30 percent white. The gray bricks of the school building rose three stories. It looked like a medieval castle. It had a granite arch over the front entrance, second-story bay windows with beveled glass panes, and Gothic letters announcing “Binford School.” I walked up the granite stairs and into the assembly hall, where the entire school convened. From the podium on the stage, Mr. Harper, the white principal whose no-nonsense voice matched his iron-colored hair, boomed forth instructions for us to be orderly. I peered back into the auditorium and saw row after row of black faces. I didn’t recognize any of them. I shivered with the strangeness of the whole situation. I looked down and fidgeted with the handbag my grandmother had given me. It was made of cloth woven with signs of the Zodiac. I rubbed my hand across Virgo, then Libra...