Sounds Like Home: Growing Up Black and Deaf in the South

10. The Old and the New

10 BAC K at school there were changes. Our housemother, Mrs. Mallette , did not return; she had either retired or quit. We had Mrs. Holbrook from New Jersey, the very opposite of Mrs. Mallette. Mrs. Holbrook was young and slim with a short, boyish haircut and she wore bright red lipstick. She didn't know how old I was and put me back on the first floor. Here I was, twelve years old and still with the babies. Another new teacher, Miss Susie Morton, replaced Emma Bembury, a partially deaf student teacher who had gotten married. Miss Morton was also young. She dressed very stylishly just to go to the classroom, with never a hair out of place. She set about starting a campus club. She named it Dream Girls, and began to make plans for parties with both boys and girls, tennis games, and a drama department. We laughed and told her to wait until she ran into Reverend Williams's ironbound school rules and regulations. Miss Morton lasted for a few months, then she was gone and another took her place. In the meantime, I'd been desperately trying to get transferred upstairs to the junior department. Maybe Mrs. Holbrook was trying to spare me some of the pains of growing up, but she finally 134 The Old and the New 135 gave in. One evening after school I came in to find she'd had another bed set up for me on the south side of the upstairs floor. Oh my! In no time I had one of the girls help me drag my trunk and other belongings up to my new quarters. After making my bed, I sat on it, bouncing with joy and smiling at whoever passed by. I was welcomed by Helen and Elizabeth and a few more, but mostly I was ignored. There was one senior girl across the hall whom I admired. She was small and brown with beautiful shiny black eyes and very deep dimples, but what one noticed most was her neatness-her clothes always a perfect fit, pressed and spotless. She had a knack of staying out ofarguments and fights with the others. She mostly kept to herself and tended to her own business. This was Dolly. Another senior I liked was Minnie Keaton. The opposite of Dolly, Minnie was strong-boned and very light complexioned, with shoulder-length brown hair that seemed to always be blowing in a breeze. Minnie always seemed to be amused about something. Upstairs was very different from downstairs: More was happening since our housemother was down with the babies. She checked the second-floor rooms often, but someone always spotted her on the stairs and warned the others. After 9:00 inspection and lights-out, she was gone for the night. That's when the fun started. Someone would sneak food in from the kitchen-bread, wieners, sometimes twenty-five-pound cans of jelly and peanut butter. The food was only for a certain bunch who made up the "in" crowd. The rest of us weren't supposed to see or know anything . The older girls could also talk to their boyfriends across campus . They'd turn a light on at a certain window in a corner. The boys would do likewise. A girl would stand in front of the window making signs to whoever was her guy. After they signed each other good night, another couple went through the same routine. This 136 A NEW KIND OF LIFE was done in the room I slept in since it faced south and the boys' dormitory. Never one to hide my curiosity, I lay wide-eyed, watching them. When they noticed, they told me to shut my big eyes or look the other way. I was new and they didn't know how trustworthy I was. I let them know my eyes were mine and I'd do with them what I pleased. Soon my presence in that room and on that floor became a sore point for certain of the big girls, Hazel Gregory in particular, who was tall and quite pretty when she wasn't looking mean and sour, which unfortunately was most of the time. Sometimes I'd come on a bunch of them discussing me. They would say that they wished I'd stayed on the first floor with my short, big-eyed self, and some more names...