No Crystal Stair by Eva Rutland Read Free Book Online Page B

visit the place, but in the next block stood the shiny new sandstone structure of the Negro Atlanta Life Insurance company, founded by Herndon, where Ann Elizabeth had once had a summer job. Nearby was the office of Atlanta’s Negro daily newspaper, the
Atlanta World. On the corner was Big Bethel, the imposing edifice that housed the largest colored Baptist congregation in Atlanta. She had spent many hours in Bailey’s Royal Theater, the only white-owned business in the area that catered exclusively to colored. Farther up Auburn at the colored branch of the Carnegie Library she had immersed herself in The Five Little Peppers , the Secret Garden and many other children’s books. On her way to the library Ann Elizabeth passed Ebenezer, another Baptist church, not as large as Big Bethel, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. preached the gospel.
    This was Sweet Auburn, the center of Atlanta’s bustling black business district, on a Saturday night in late June 1942. Prominent Atlanta Negroes in formal attire took the elevator to the top floor and climbed the few remaining steps to the Odd Fellows Roof Garden for the debut.
    Debut. Beginning. But this was no beginning. Ann Elizabeth thought. More like an end. An end to nineteen years of organized girlhood. The debutantes, all twelve of them, had been just out of the toddler stage when their mothers organized the Doll Club. Carefully selected girls from families of similar backgrounds, they had come to those first meetings clutching their mother’s hands and dragging their porcelain dolls with blond curls. They ate cookies and sipped chocolate from tiny china cups until they tired of playing ladies. Then the dolls lay abandoned while their owners rollicked in games of hopscotch, jump rope and hide-and-seek. In high school they called themselves the Sophisticated Ladies and played bridge at their meetings, and danced to popular record music with specially chosen young males at Saturday-night socials under the watchful eyes of chaperoning parents. Now they were debutantes and this was their debut.
    The Roof Garden, usually quite bare, really looked like a garden this evening, with branches of flowering dogwood and
banks of flowers. The hors d’oeuvres table featured a centerpiece of summer blooms, set under the flickering light of tapered candles. In one corner two younger girls presided over a crystal punch bowl and a couple of waiters served champagne. The debutantes, looking like a rainbow in their different-colored formal gowns, stood in line from five-thirty to seven to be presented to people they had known all their lives.
    Helen Rose, in a green crepe-de-chine dress that cleverly camouflaged her plump figure, surreptitiously slipped her foot out of the green satin pump and whispered to Ann Elizabeth, “How long, dear Lord? How long?”
    Ann Elizabeth glanced at the tiny watch on her wrist. “Take heart, fellow sufferer. Only twenty minutes more.” Then she stretched out a white-gloved hand to Colonel Dalton. “How nice to see you. I’m glad you could come.” Had he really been a colonel? she wondered. An honorary title because he was lawyer? A trick to confuse those who would never address him as Mr.? Funny, she hadn’t thought of that before.
    The receiving line was thinning out now. People were gathering in small groups to talk and sip their champagne. The band had arrived and instruments were being set up. The dancing was to begin at seven.
    â€œThere’s Randy!” Helen Rose said.
    â€œOh, good. I was starting to worry that he wouldn’t get here.” Ann Elizabeth looked toward the door. Randy, his drab green officer’s coat standing out against the black tuxedos, was bending over his mother.
    â€œHe’s so handsome.”Millie, on Ann Elizabeth’s left, had also noticed his arrival.
    â€œYes . . . He’s changed.”This was the first time Ann Elizabeth had seen him in his