She took her job seriously, scanning her zone of responsibility constantly—taking in the toddlers wading in as they held their parents’ hands; the grade-school kids leaping into the water as if they had been waiting all their lives for this day; the show-offy teenager who cannonballed off the lowest diving board, hitting the water like a depth charge. But the minute they moved out of her zone into Bunty’s or Hugh’s or Al’s, her gaze swept back to her own zone, as uneventful as it was.
All at once the smell of maple syrup from the waffle stand made her mouth water, and the sharp tang of lemonade made her thirsty. She even caught a whiff of French fries, carried across the midway from her dad’s stand. These were all familiar smells she had grown up with at the pool; but they seemed somehow different at this altitude, just three or four feet above the provinces of her youth. The whole pool looked different, as though she were seeing everything at once, all charged with the urgency of her attention to every detail. Just three or four feet, that’s all it was—but it was the difference, thrillingly, between being a child and being an adult.
* * *
Jack and Irving Rosenthal, determined to surpass even last season’s record take, increased the park’s promotion budget, opened a day nursery where parents could “park” their youngsters for a time, and geared prices for volume business. Adding to attendance that summer were two thousand children—white, Negro, Puerto Rican—from tenements in New York City, who on July 2 were brought to Palisades by the New York Tribune’s Fresh Air Fund and given full run of all the rides as well as free refreshments.
Thousands visited the Palisades pool each day, and in her first month on the job Toni was witness to the usual run of accidents and near-accidents: kids running, tripping, and taking a header on the sundeck; swimmers with stomach cramps, usually from a greasy lunch of hot dogs, French fries, and ice cream; and both children and adults who, having exhausted themselves on a dozen rides, jumped into the pool and wore themselves out faster than they had anticipated. There was only one serious rescue: a man in his forties who belly flopped off a diving board, the shock of hitting the water triggering a heart attack. Bunty saw him sinking, leapt in, and dragged him to shore, where he performed artificial respiration while Toni ran to the phone and called for an ambulance to take him to Englewood Hospital.
But Toni’s most satisfying moment came when the young mother of a six-year-old boy came up to her asked, “Could you teach my son how to swim?” Toni was flattered and pleased, instructing the boy in the basics of swimming even as Bunty had done for her … and for the rest of that day she sat a little straighter in her lifeguard’s chair, feeling on top of the world.
She was still happily sitting there—the only deficiency in her life being the absence of Slim, who was on vacation in the Poconos with his family for the week—on the morning of Sunday, July 13, when shortly after opening she heard some raised voices coming from the nearby ticket booth. It was only 9:30 A.M. and there were relatively few people in the pool, so Toni wandered over to the main gate of the pool to see what was going on.
What she found was a young, pretty Negro woman in her twenties, holding a pool ticket and saying to one of the ticket takers, “I don’t understand. This is a perfectly good ticket, it was just purchased—”
“Did you purchase this ticket?” the man asked.
“No, a friend bought it for me.”
“Are you a member of the Palisades Sun and Surf Club?”
“I—no, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Well, that’s the problem,” the man explained. “The pool is operated as a private club, you have to be a member to use it. A ticket’s not enough.”
The young woman sighed and said, “So how do I become a member?”
“Just go to the administration office, they’ll give you an application to fill out.” He gave her directions to the administration building, and the woman nodded, thanked him, and headed down the midway.
Thinking that was the end of it, Toni headed back to her chair.
Twenty minutes later, the same young Negro woman was once again standing outside the pool grounds, waiting patiently in the rising heat.
And waiting. And waiting. Another twenty minutes crept by, and occasionally a ticket taker would come up to her, saying something like, “Why don’t you just go enjoy some of the other rides?”—but the woman just smiled politely, shook her head, and said, “I’ll wait here, thanks.”
Toni told Bunty she was taking her morning break, walked to the lemonade stand and bought two lemonades, then walked back to the pool and up to the Negro woman.
“Hi, I’m Toni,” she said. The woman looked up at her, puzzled. “It’s pretty hot, I thought you might like something to drink.”
The woman smiled, surprised. “Why, thank you. That’s very thoughtful.” She took the lemonade. “My name is Melba. Melba Valle.”
“Nice to meet you. Are you still having trouble getting into the pool?”
Melba took a sip of lemonade and nodded. “Oh, yes. They had me go to the administration office and fill out an application to join their ‘Sun and Surf Club,’ then when I did that they said, ‘We’ll notify you by mail.’ I said, ‘I came all the way from New York City. I want to swim in the pool today.’ They told me, ‘We’ll notify you by mail. Why don’t you enjoy some of the other rides in the meantime?’ I said, ‘I’ll save you the cost of a stamp. I’ll go wait by the pool.’ So here I am.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll be along any minute with your membership,” Toni assured her. “You live in the city?”
“Yes. I’m a model at the Manhattan Art Students League.”
“A model? I should’ve known, you’re pretty enough to be one.”
“Well, thank you,” the woman said, disarmed by Toni’s earnestness.
“Did you always know you wanted to be a model?”
Melba laughed—a warm, open laugh. “Oh, I’m not sure now I want to be one. I just sort of fell into it. I also study ballet and flamenco. What about you? Did you always want to be a lifeguard?”
Toni laughed. “Not hardly. But I’ve always loved the water. I practically grew up in this pool. For a while I thought I’d like to…” She paused. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. People tell me it’s a silly dream—”
Soberly, Melba said, “Don’t do that—don’t let anyone tell you that. If you want to do something new, there are always people who’ll take that as, ‘Oh, she wants to be different. She thinks she’s better than us.’ When I talk about wanting to dance, some people in my neighborhood say, Oh, that Melba, she doesn’t want to be ‘just another Negro.’ But that’s not it. I just want to be Melba. Like you want to be Toni. Don’t you ever let go of that.”
Toni felt a sudden kinship with this woman she barely knew. But before she could say “Thanks,” a park security guard came up to the young woman and in a stern voice told her, “I’m sorry, miss, but you’re going to have to move along, people need to get through here. Why don’t you—”
“Go enjoy one of the other rides?” Melba finished for him.
Toni said to the guard, “Listen, maybe I can do something to help hurry along her application…”
Melba told the guard, “Fine. I’ll leave. Just give me a minute.” After he turned and walked away—though lingering at a distance to make sure she followed through on her promise—Melba turned back to Toni and put a hand, gently, on her arm. “Hon, don’t get yourself in any trouble on my account. They’re not going to give me any membership card. This whole ‘private club’ thing is just an old dodge to exclude Negroes.”
Toni was shocked at the suggestion. “Oh, but that, that’s not true—Palisades lets anyone in. Why, just a couple weeks ago there was a group of kids from the Fresh Air Fund…”
“Did any of them get into the pool?”
“Well, I … I didn’t notice. But when I was little, I rode on rides with Negro and Puerto Rican children all the time—”
“You ever swim with any?” Melba
asked.
Toni started to reply, then thought about it—and realized to her dismay that she couldn’t automatically say yes.
“Thank you for the lemonade, Toni,” Melba said warmly. “It was very kind of you. I enjoyed meeting you.”
“Nice meeting you too,” Toni said, still baffled. Melba Valle turned and walked away from the pool, and Toni watched her figure retreat down the midway until she turned a corner and was gone.
Toni went back to her station and looked out across the pool—really looked for the first time.
She saw people sunning themselves on the boards of the sundeck—their backs white, occasionally pink. She looked across the beach at families sprawled on towels or huddled under beach umbrellas—but not a brown or black face among them. The waters of the pool were packed with hundreds of bodies—pale bodies. A sea of white.
My God, she thought, blushing with her own shame and naïveté. How had she never noticed before?
16
SHORTLY AFTER NOON, Melba Valle returned, and she brought company: eleven men and women, both white and black, an uncommon enough sight in and of itself. When she tried once more to gain entry to the pool and was again denied, the members of the group lined up in front of the ticket booth in what they referred to among themselves as a “stand-in”—refusing to move until Miss Valle was admitted, even as they chanted in unison:
“Don’t get cool at Palisades Pool! Get your relaxation where there’s no discrimination!”
Upon hearing this catchy refrain, ticket sellers burst out of the booth in a panic and ran like startled chickens toward the administration building.
Toni saw a little of this, but first and foremost she had to keep her eyes on her zone of responsibility; so mostly she just heard the chants, as did almost everyone in the pool area.
“Don’t get cool at Palisades Pool! Get your relaxation where there’s no discrimination!”
After several minutes of this, a number of pool patrons, annoyed that their “relaxation” was being spoiled, began jeering at the demonstrators. One woman leaned over the gate and summed up the general feeling: “Why don’t you all go away and let us enjoy ourselves!”
The protestors did not stop chanting.
Toni decided to take her lunch break, getting to the ticket booth in time to see the arrival of a flying wedge of park security guards, headed by Irving Rosenthal, striding onto the scene like the potentate he was. “Who’s in charge here?” he demanded. A slightly built white man around thirty identified himself as James Robinson and informed him that they were members of an organization called the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE.
“You can’t just stand here and chant your Bolshevik slogans, disrupting my business,” Rosenthal told him. “You need to leave.”
“We’ll leave when Miss Valle is admitted to the pool,” Robinson said.
“The pool is a private club, and Miss Valle’s application for membership has been taken. We’ll notify her by mail of our decision.”
“We’d rather wait here until she’s been accepted.”
Toni could see Rosenthal’s jaw clench, his avuncular manner turning steely. He strode over to the pool gate, cast a perfunctory glance inside, then went to the ticket booth and announced in a loud voice, “The pool is crowded to capacity. Suspend all ticket sales for the rest of the day.”
Toni knew damn well the pool wasn’t anywhere near capacity.
Ticket window shutters came crashing down like a theater curtain in mid-performance—distressing not just the demonstrators but the many paying customers waiting to get into the pool.
“Hey! What gives?” one heavyset man shouted. “We came all the way from Parsippany for this!”
“There—no one else is getting in today,” Rosenthal told Robinson. “Now why don’t you all just leave?”
“We won’t leave until Negroes are admitted to this pool.”
Rosenthal’s face flushed with anger; he obviously wasn’t used to being contradicted here in his own dominion.
“In that case,” he warned, “I’ll have to have you forcibly removed.”
The CORE members were not intimidated and did not budge.
Rosenthal ordered his security guards to eject the demonstrators.
One burly guard, stepping forward eagerly, went straight to the heart of the ruckus: Melba Valle. He grabbed her roughly by the arm, yanking her out of line. “C’mon, lady, move it!”
“Hey!” Toni found herself calling out. “Leave her—”
Suddenly Bunty was at Toni’s side, laying a hand gently on her arm. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “It stinks, kiddo, but he’s the boss.”
Toni watched helplessly as the demonstrators appeared to let their bodies go limp as soon as they were seized, forcing the security guards to literally drag them like dead weights away from the pool. As he was hauled past Rosenthal, one CORE member promised him, “We’ll be back!”
Rosenthal, nearly popping a vein, shouted at the guards, “Put these Communist agitators on the next ferry back to New York!”
Toni wasn’t the only one watching this scene play out with astonishment and dismay. At the first sounds of confrontation, Eddie had left Jack in charge of the stand and hurried over to his daughter’s workplace. Now he stared at the park guards manhandling women, dragging Negroes away as if they were trash to be thrown out—and felt, uncannily, as if he had been transported to the Deep South he had traveled in his carny days.
He couldn’t believe this wasn’t Alabama, but New Jersey.
Things returned to normal at the pool though no one else was admitted for the rest of the day, doubtless damaging the park’s bottom line.
On the way home late that night, Toni and Jack peppered their father with questions: “How could they do that to people?” “Mr. Rosenthal always seemed so nice—” “Did you know colored people couldn’t use the pool?”
“I never thought about it,” Eddie said in answer to the last question, ashamed at his own ignorance. “I saw coloreds in the park, on the rides, in the restaurants, and I never thought about the pool.”
“There was a big brouhaha last year about Negroes in the dance pavilion,” Jack said, “but I thought it all blew over.”
“Really?” Toni said. “I hadn’t heard about that.”
“You were too busy scheming your way into Slim Welker’s—”
“Your next word better be ‘heart,’” Eddie warned.
“Melba’s such a nice girl,” Toni said. “It’s not fair she can’t get in.”
“Life isn’t fair. Especially if you’re born with the wrong color skin.”
“Can’t you talk to Mr. Rosenthal and convince him to let her in?”
Eddie reminded himself this wasn’t Alabama, it was Jersey, and even if cities like Trenton were segregated, others, like Newark, weren’t.
“I can give it a try,” he said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
* * *
The next morning, Eddie found Irving Rosenthal patrolling the midways, as usual, at the moment dressing down a hot-dog vendor over his wares: “These dogs are stale and tasteless,” he told the man. “How many days have they been sitting there? Redo the whole batch with fresh franks.”
“All of ’em?” There were thirty frankfurters revolving on his rotisserie.
Rosenthal said, “In thirty years I’ve learned that when a hot dog sours a youngster’s stomach, you’ll lose him as a customer no matter how many stupendous thrill acts and exciting rides you offer. I take no chances.”
Eddie had never worked for anyone more conscientious than Irving—he liked and respected him. But he sure didn’t like the side of him he’d seen yesterday.
“Mr. R.,” Eddie said, approaching, “can you spare a minute?”
“Sure, Eddie, what’s on your mind?”
Walking alongside him, Eddie said, “I wanted to talk to you about what happened yesterday. At the pool.”
Rosenthal winced. “That was uncomfortable for everyo
ne, wasn’t it?”
“Look, I don’t get it. If Negroes are allowed in the park, why not let them into the pool? What’s the big deal?”
Irving sighed. “Some white people—and I’m not one of them, Eddie, you know me better than that—have this idea that Negroes are … unclean.”
“What, they’re afraid the black is going to rub off on them?”
“Bathing is an intimate thing, Eddie. Whites are simply not ready to get that intimate with colored people. If I let Negroes into my pool, business would dry up. I can’t afford that. It’s strictly business.”
Eddie measured his words. “Y’know, I spent a lot of time in the South when I was a carny. One town we were playing, they hung a colored boy because he dared speak to a white woman. They just strung him up and lynched him—no trial, no lawyers, no waiting.”
“We’re not lynching anybody here,” Rosenthal said testily. “It’s our right to admit whoever we want to our pool.”
“It’s dangerous. You never know what this kind of thing can lead to.”
Irving thanked him, rather frostily, for his opinion, then reminded Eddie that he had a French fry stand to open.
Eddie swallowed his annoyance, thanked Irving for hearing him out, and went off to the stand.
The following Sunday, July 20, was a hot day that held the prospect of good pool attendance. The CORE demonstrators returned as promised, picketing the main gate on Palisade Avenue with signs reading PROTEST JIM CROW—FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS and DON’T GET COOL AT PALISADES POOL! GET YOUR RELAXATION WHERE THERE’S NO DISCRIMINATION!
But it was a peaceful protest, with the picketers scaring off few, if any, paying customers. Nevertheless park security guards watched them like circling hawks, as did the small contingent of officers that made up the Cliffside Park Police Department, including Chief Frank Borrell.
His family back from the Poconos the night before, Slim met Toni on her lunch break at the Grandview Restaurant overlooking the Hudson. It was a warm, sunny day, made more idyllic for Toni by Slim’s presence after what had seemed an eternity apart. After a welcoming kiss they sat down, ordered sandwiches and a couple of Pepsi-Colas, and Slim remarked, “So what the hell’s going on outside? All those picket signs?”