The French Doll

****This was written to be fiction, but it's more historical fiction, since some of it is true****

Before Roy had shipped off to France to fight in World War I, he’d finally focused on one girl—the boss’s daughter.  Vivian Maupin wasn’t as pretty as the other girls but she was kind, fun to be with and came from one of the best families in DeSoto, Missouri, a small town outside of St. Louis.  DeSoto had two industries—the shoe factories and the round house for Missouri Pacific Railroad where the engines came for repairs.  Vivian’s father was the superintendent of the round house where Roy had worked as a boiler maker.

Private first class Roy Long had just arrived in France and was looking for something to send Vivian whose ancestors had been French.  He walked through the market and wondered what he could send her to let her know he was thinking of her.  She was just a few years older than his sisters—what would they like? 

He felt drawn to a  booth with trinkets and dolls.  His sisters would love a doll from France, maybe Vivian would, too.  He picked up one with red hair, pouting lips and big flirty eyes that seem to be beckoning him. Her hat tilted to the side was certainly different from the bonnets worn by his sisters.  He hoped Vivian would know by this gift that he loved her and would stay by her side.

“How much is this doll?” he asked the small, mustached merchant.

“Parlez vous Francais?” 

Roy spoke English and a little German but no French. He repeated, "How much is the doll?"

The merchant shrugged his shoulders, unable to understand.

Roy then heard a small voice speaking to the merchant.  The merchant listened, smiled and nodded.  Roy looked around for a child but didn’t see one.  The merchant held up a coin and indicated with his hands that was what Roy needed to pay for the doll.

Roy found the coin in his pocket and paid the merchant.  As the merchant began wrapping the doll in paper, Roy asked, “What is her name?”  He had forgotten the merchant couldn't speak English.  The merchant leaned toward the package, listening to a muffled murmur before he responded, “Vivienne.”

My Evolving Views on Race, Part 2

In the mid-1950s, we moved from our South St. Louis City flat  to a new North County house in a subdivision where all of the houses looked alike.  It was a great place to grow up because I had 4 sets of aunts and uncles that lived in the same subdivision.  My school was very new with a real cafeteria which served hot lunches and everything was very clean and white:  the houses, the class rooms, the people.  I no longer "rubbed shoulders" with people of color, but that didn't mean I wasn't influenced by the Black culture.

When I was in junior high school, I began to discover Black entertainers.  Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis were favorite singers of mine.  They opened the door for me to spend many hours listening to The Temptations, The Supremes and other Black singing, syncopated groups. I spent hours singing and imitating that dancing style in front o the television.   I also loved musicals with two of my favorite songs from Showboat:  "Old Man River" and "Fish Got to Swim and Birds Got to Fly". I even translated Porgy and Bess's  "Summertime" into German for fun. The depths of sadness in those songs reached out to my teenage angst.

Television and Films were also beginning to feature Black performers--- Bill Cosby in "I Spy" and Sidney Poitier in "Lillies of the Fields" a role which earned him an Academy Award.  Locally, we had several wonderful Black broadcasters:  Julius Hunter and Fred Porterfield.  But we were especially proud of Dianne White who was the first Black female weather broadcaster in the country.

Riverview High School in the 1960's was mostly white, but we did have several Black students---2 were siblings Lois and Morris.  Morris played football and was often seen laughing and socializing with the other football players.  His yearbook photo shows a confident and happy young man.  His sister Lois had a more difficult time without the athletic connections opening the social doors.  Her yearbook photo shows an anxiety I don't recall her having or maybe I am better at interpreting facial expressions, now.  I would have said, she was stand offish, but now I see what a difficult role she had as a Black female teen in an almost all white school.

We also had a Black teacher---Mrs. Neal.  Technically she didn't teach any of us and the yearbook calls her a "visiting teacher" which was usually more like a substitute.  She had a degree from Sam Houston College but worked more as a truant officer.  She worked all day in a small windowless room on the phone, calling to see why each student was absent.  I volunteered in the office as a runner who collected the attendance and she was on my regular run.  She was always friendly, cordial and took lots of notes with each phone call.  I didn't think it was odd that we had a Black woman on the staff, nor did I think it odd that she was hidden away in a windowless room.

I could now see that some Blacks could be successful through entertainment or athletics.  The most successful were often those of lighter skin, had special talents or those who were well educated.  But, the vast majority of the Black population still weren't accepted by  everyone or were hidden away in windowless rooms working at jobs below their level of education like Lois or Mrs. Neal.  Athletes like Morris had some social doors opened for them.  He was friends with those on the football team but wasn't selected as an escort for the Homecoming Court, an honor for the Senior football players.  With an all white court, a black male escort was still unthinkable.  But there was a crack in the door.

Battles

Like a knight going to battle,

Each piece to protect me from the enemy,

Each piece to equip me for the fight.

Teeth in.

Hearing aids in.

Glasses on.

Bandage on knee.

Mask on.

I am ready for my day.

I am ready for my life.

Photo by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash

My Evolving Views on Race, Part 1

My first memory of people being different from me and all of my friends and family, was going shopping with my mother and grandmother.  I would see Black people in the store and was very curious about them.  On several occasions I would leave my mother's side to get closer to them.  What I really wanted to do was touch them to see if the color would come off.

I was a very curious child asking lots of questions and I'm sure my parents and grandparents tired of my questions and just gave me random answers.  Once, on a car trip to DeSoto, I saw a man with a fishing pole near a pile of rocks, "What's he doing?"  "Catching rock fish".  Another time on a city bus, I asked, "Who makes curbs?"  "Negroes".  I can remember I was constantly on the look out for black people making curbs---until a few years ago, I had never seen anyone make curb.  I can now report I saw them being made on Henry Rd. by white men.

When I was a little older, my mother got black women to come to our house to iron.  I remember one I liked really well---Beulah, a large woman who laughed a lot, but then there was one I was not so fond of, Lizzie, who was very tiny.  We had a lot of friends in St. Louis and De Soto who worked for the shoe factories.  The sample size shoes were very small and I had them in my "dress-up" clothes, clothes for me to play with. Lizzie spotted those brand new shoes and suddenly I didn't have any of them in my dress up clothes.  I don't know if she asked Mother if she could have them, but I was indignant that she had "stolen" my shoes.  That resulted in my mother explaining that Lizzy was poor and didn't have nice things and wasn't it better that the shoes were being used and not just sitting in my play clothes?  NO, I wanted my shoes back!

Another event I recall was going with my dad to the Mill Creek Valley in St. Louis (click here for

For more maps of the area, click here.

more on this area---home to 20,000 Black people).  I don't know if this was after my discussion with mother about Lizzy and my shoes or if it just happened.  It seems to me Dad was going there to pay the rent on our South St. Louis flat.  I had never seen such poverty before or so many black people in one place. It was dark everywhere:  the buildings, the people, the streets, the yards.  I was afraid and I couldn't put my finger on what made me so afraid---just the darkness of it all.

One year, I went to Memphis with my grandparents to visit my great aunt Ruth.  While driving around, I saw the zoo and asked if we could go there. Uncle Everett said, "We can't go today, it's Negro Day at the zoo.  You have to be a Negro to go to the zoo on Fridays.  Whites can go all of the other days."

So, by the time I was 8, I had a pretty good idea of what black people were:  poor, worked for white people, were to be feared, lived in horrible places called slums, are to be segregated  and they steal. It was better to be white with green grass, shoes, having black people work for you and getting to go to the zoo 6 days a week.  Sadly, this is where many white people stop.  But I continued to evolve..  . ..