By the Six of Spades

When I was in eighth grade, I hated acting. I had horrible stage fright, and couldn’t stand talking in front of people. I hated the fact that whites got more rights than blacks; I really hated the whites for that. When I was in Eighth grade, I hated lima beans and milk, I hated cleaning the house, and I hated the fact that my father was in jail just for eating in an all white restaurant and refusing to move. But most of all, I hated Eighth grade history class.

On September first, 1949, I walked into my first day of eighth grade. First period – math. Second period – geography. Third period – science. The day was going like any other first day of school, and as I walked out of the cramped geography room, I looked at my schedule. Fourth period – history.

When I got to the history room, the door was locked and the room was dark. There were a few kids outside, leaning against the peeling wallpaper, waiting for – I looked at the name painted on the door of the classroom – Miss R. Hemmingway. After a minute, I heard my name.

"Joshua!" I turned around and saw someone grinning at me. His skin was really dark, darker than mine even, and his head was shaved bald. One of his two front teeth was gone – knocked out in a fight last year against Louie Williams. It was Freddy Jackson.

"Hey Freddy!" He had been in my class in seventh grade, and I hadn’t seen him all summer. I guess people could say he was my best friend. We talked a little while, mostly just about what we did over break, but then, ever became quiet, so we did, too.

A tall, slim woman was strolling down the hallway towards tour classroom. Her hair was separated into what seemed like hundreds of tiny braids that fell all the way to the small of her back, but the top of her head and her shoulders were covered with a shawl that looked as though it was once brilliantly colored, but was so well worn that it had faded over the years. She wore a loose dress that fell to the floor and past her wrists, with tan beads lining the hem. This also seemed to be in the old age of bright colors. Her face was nearly the only flesh you could see on her, but her skin was a light brown – like the color of tea when you add a spoonful of milk to it. And her eyes were an astounding, spectacular green.

And then, when she opened her mouth, I expected her to say something generic like, "good morning, class," or "hello, everyone." But what actually come out of her mouth was different.

"If any man approaches my house in search of a slave… and I do not lay him lifeless… at my feet I hope the grave may refuse my body a resting place." She stood there, and no one spoke. But then, a voice rang out, and I knew that it was good old Freddy.

"But there ain’t no slaves today!" Miss Hemmingway grinned.

"I know. Martin Delany said that a long time ago, when there were slaves. He was a free black paper editor.

"Oh," said Freddy sheepishly, as the teacher opened the door. I took a seat in the back row, between Freddy and a girl named Louisa Carter.

Miss Hemmingway told us very quickly about who she was, and what we’d be learning this year. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, but I did hear that we would be constructing everything we learned into a play. Did I ever hate that. I hated acting so much, and this teacher was starting to become a little annoying.

I was walking home that day next to Patty Douglas, who lived next door, and we started talking about History class.

"I really can’t stand Miss Hemmingway," I said to Patty. She looked surprised.

"Really?" she said, "I think she’s really nice. And we get to put on plays this year! She told us that the past couple of years, the plays were so good that white folk even came to see them." I gave her a look that said ‘be quiet,’ so she stopped talking about how great Miss Hemmingway was. I knew she was thinking about it, though.

Days passed, and then they turned to weeks, and before long, it was the beginning of December, and every day, I was dreading fourth period history class more than ever.

For about two and a half weeks, we had been working on lines and costumes and anything else that goes into a play. The next play that we were going to do was our third. The past times, I had little parts, like a slave in the background or something. But this time, Miss Hemmingway said that I was the only one who hadn’t gotten a lot of speaking parts, so I got to be Abraham Lincoln – it was, according to her, really great. To me, it wasn’t.

Freddy was coming over to my house after school one day, so Patty and the two of us were walking the three miles home.

"I can’t wait until we put on the play next week," said Patty. She was supposed to play Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd. I still didn’t want to be Lincoln.

"Sure," said Freddy. For some reason, he liked the plays, too. He was going to be Jefferson Davis in the play. He always liked to get speaking roles – I think he liked Miss Hemmingway ever since the first day of school.

"I can," I said glumly.

"What?" Patty sounded annoyed.

"For the millionth time, I hate acting, and I hate history. There’s no point in it, really." Patty just glared at me.

It was the night of the play, and I was in costume backstage. Looking out the window, I could see my mother sitting in the back row to the far left next to David Crane’s parents. She had to sit back there – all of our parents did – because of all the whites that came to watch it. They got to sit in the front seats, like always.

"Joshua!" It was Miss Hemmingway. I turned around.

"What?" She came towards me.

"Are you ready? We’re starting in –" she looked at her watch – "Four minutes." I nodded my head, and I could feel sweat drops forming on my forehead. "Good."

Before I knew what was happening, I was out on stage, saying those stupid lines in front of all those people. I know that there were probably only about fifty or sixty people, but it seemed like thousands to me. My voice was squeaking. I was sweating more than I had when the seventh grade held the sprint last year, and I felt like my fake beard was going to slip off any minute.

And then, when I was saying my line about the evils of slavery, someone in the audience stood up, and yelled something at me. I stopped in the middle of my line to listen.

"What’re you talking about – slavery’s evil?" I turned to look at him.

"I said, the evils of slavery are such that –" he cut me off again.

"Slavery’s not evil! It’s the best thing there ever was in this country, and the worst thing ever written was the Emancipation Proclamation!" I started to feel the blood rising to my cheeks.

"It was not! You really like making other human beings work more than they can? You like the fact that people were tortured and beaten every day just for some stupid southerner’s money?"

"That’s not slavery! Our peculiar institution was a boost of the economy! It was the best thing for all of us!" I’m not really sure what happened after that, but a whole lot of my friends joined in with me, and we were into a heated argument. He was as mad as I had ever seen anybody before in my life – madder than my father was when they hauled him off to jail without a trial, and madder than my mother when they wouldn’t let us visit him. And that’s really saying something. The man and all the other whites stormed out of that building and we never finished putting on our play.

The next day, Miss Hemmingway explained to us that for some southerners, the war never ended, and one of those men was what caused the disruption last night. I put my head down in my hands – I was really embarrassed about the whole thing.

But soon, only a week and a half later, we were back up, writing lines for our next performance. Fortunately, I was just cast as a minor role – I only had two lines. I think this was because of what happened last time I was the lead.

Mid-January, the night of the play arrived, and, as usual, the room was crowded with whites as well as blacks, but I didn’t see the man who yelled at me there. I didn’t figure that I would.

It was the middle of the play, I had finished saying my second line, and was standing in the back, and my character was watching Abraham Lincoln, played by Jim Roberts, sitting down to watch ‘Our American Cousin’. I looked towards stage right, and saw Miss Hemmingway. But she wasn’t looking at the play. She was looking over at stage left, looking horrified. I turned my head to where her eyes were pointed, and froze. There, in the darkness, was the man from last time. And even through the shadows, I could see he was holding a gun.

And he was aiming it right at me.

Without warning, Miss Hemmingway burst from stage right, and everyone stopped talking. Halfway between the curtains and me, the man on the far side of the stage fired his gun. I could see my life flashing before my eyes, but I suddenly saw the faded colors of Miss Hemmingway’s dress in front of me.

I could hear the bullet hit, and Miss Hemmingway was falling. She fell backwards on top of me, and I could see out of the corner of my eye the man with the gun move away swiftly.

I stood up and pushed Miss Hemmingway off of me. Then, Louisa Carter’s father, who’s a doctor, ran up on stage and took her pulse.

A week later, I stood around my eighth grade history teacher’s coffin, dressed in my best black clothes. I was listening to the preacher talk, but I wasn’t really hearing what he was saying. I was giving her my own private eulogy inside my head. I thought about how she always pushed all of us to strive for our best. I thought about how she always tried her best to help us understand things in our own way. And I thought about how she loved theatre, and loved her black heritage.

And as they lowered her coffin into the ground, I promised myself that when I grew up, I would be an Eighth Grade History Teacher. And I would put on plays.