INK FIST blog

The College Era

Info

Angela Robinson

1925-1999

She sat up
with a start, her bifocals slipping off her ears. They skidded on a bare spot
of her desk—so littered with letters and knickknacks—and clattered a few feet
across the museum’s checkered tile floor. The historian rose and waddled a few
steps from her desk, bending over with great effort as her breasts—victims of
gravity and childbirth—hung low in her blouse.

A boy skipped diagonally across
white tiles and snatched up her glasses. He handed them to Angela—still bent
over, chest heaving from labored breathing—and beamed at her with a grin that
would be toothy had he not lost both of his front teeth.

Angela
stood up slowly and mustered a smile at the boy as a teacher—dressed in a drab
black dress, faded from age—caught up with them, the rest of her class
following in an ant line.

“Why, uh,
thank you young man,” Angela said. “What is your name?”

“My name’s
Billy Barnes!” he said. “Do you like my new shoes?”

Billy’s high-tops
blinked a fast pattern of red light as he jogged in place, his striped swishy
pants keeping a steady beat.

“My apologies, Mrs. Robinson,” she
said. “I suppose the children are still on a sugar high from last week’s
Valentine’s party.”

Angela
chuckled, plunked back down in her chair, and wiped her glasses with a tissue.

“Oh, it’s
no problem,” she said. “You must be Mrs. Pringle from Wood Creek Elementary Sch—”

“Miss Pringle,” she said. “Yes, we’re
here to learn about Piasa
Heights for Black History
Month.”

Angela
withheld a wince; the teacher’s quick correction and pronunciation of “black” lingered
on the vowel sound. Malice emanated from Miss Pringle’s wiry brows and stern
figure made rectangular by her dress’s shoulder padding.

Though she didn’t want to, and it
made her stomach ache to do so, Angela could not help but picture Miss
Pringle’s thin lips forming less friendly synonyms for “black” outside the
classroom.

“Well good!” Angela said after a
moment of silence. “I’m glad you and your class came today.”

She mustered up a smile for her
audience. Even on the worst of days, children raised her spirits. Class tours
were her favorite.

“I hope you all brought your
thinking caps with you, because there’s so much to learn in so little time!”

Angela stood up again, this time
with less strain, and began the tour. Two decades earlier she would have toted
an outline of the Piasa
Heights History
Museum to help organize
her thoughts, but by this time, she had long since cemented her routine. She
had more than memorized the old stories of the Abraham Lincoln and Stephen
Douglas debating on slavery law downtown, the Underground Railroad stop just
across the street from the museum, the famous jazz musician born three blocks
away in a tiny house, the history of Elijah P. Lovejoy and his abolitionist
newspaper. She often played them out in her imagination in her free time,
dreaming of new episodes and conjuring alternate endings.

A few
minutes after beginning the tour, one student’s question jolted her attention
from the comfortable routine.

“Ooh, ooh,
Mrs. Robinson!” Billy said. “I have a question!”

“Sure,
Billy. What is it?”

“Mrs.
Robinson, did you escape to the North on the Underground Railroad?”

Miss
Pringle hushed Billy and scowled at him, and her class took that as a signal to
remain quiet.

The
question did not exactly come as a surprise to Angela. She had answered it
several times before, usually with a joke about how she was “old, but not that
old” while holding back a tinge of anger at the children’s understandable
ignorance.

But this time, something was
different.

This time, she took in Billy’s
eyes—framed with a girl’s long lashes—his Power Rangers sweater, Mickey Mouse
watch, light-up shoes, the gap in his teeth—then shot a look at Miss Pringle, a
blue vein pumping in the teacher’s forehead—and was not shocked or frustrated
with Billy, but instead felt for him a deep pity.