Those from her neighborhood would always tease Josie Beth about her name, saying it didn't sound like a black name—and then again, what is a black name? Perhaps, a Barbara Jean or Betty Maye or maybe even a Linda Sue would suit them just fine, but never a Josie Beth. To her school-aged friends, the name Josie Beth rightfully belonged to the daughter of some Texas rancher who roped cattle for a living and rode bulls as a pastime since it came as no surprise that Texas produced many Mary Janes and Leslie Fayes and Mary Beths.

Even her grandparents believed that one's birth name stood as a symbol of one's race; it was a right of birth—so what would possess her mother and father to name her Josie Beth? Wasn't it obvious that the Africans had African names, that black folk were supposed to have black names, and that the white people, well, they had names like Lyndon or Franklin or Allison or even Josie Beth? But not this little seven-year-old who always carried around with her the tattered white doll with the blonde hair singed from standing too close to the space heater.

After the revolutionary sixties, the seventies followed as a decade still at social unrest. Black people were still uptight, still frustrated, and still cursing the government for the unjust treatment of their race because their faces were different. To the white populace, blacks were and would always be "no good negroes" who endangered the streets and cluttered the alleyways. And, though there were still a number of revolutionaries whose voices expressed the frustrations of a "colored many, but acknowledged few," over time even their uproar silenced because their spirits could take no more.

Josie Beth's mother and father were among those who could no longer return stinging jabs against the "white fist." They went on living in the rat-infested hole, drinking from a rusted faucet, urinating on a leaky toilet, and barely eking out because her father found so little work. These were simply the times in which she lived. They had not chosen this kind of life for themselves, but it was all they had.

They were forced to settle for the caving roof and for the contaminated water in which they bathe, cooked, even drank and for the broken soles under their shoes. They lived this harsh reality and dreamed of a better life every minute of it. It was the dream—the thought of one day enjoying equality and liberty and the pursuit of happiness—that kept many of them. And while they kept hidden in their closets pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Malcolm X, both of whom fought for that same dream, little Josie Beth both proudly wore the name of the white race and paraded under her arm their model of "beauty." With her head always raised and nose kissing the sun, she strolled the broken sidewalk of her dilapidated ghetto surroundings, seeing neither color nor race nor difference, understanding neither hatred nor prejudice, and seemingly unaware of her part in the society in which she lived. If there was ever to be change, she would be the little one to initiate it. After all, what is a black name to the innocent?

***

The screen door—with its punctures and rips mended with gray electrical tape to keep the flies out—squealed shut as Josie Beth stepped out to take a squat on the front step. To those who didn't have to live there, the projects were nasty and filthy and over-crowded with people who didn't deserve better. For Josie Beth, however, living in the projects was quite entertaining.

Every Saturday, she'd sit out on the steps to watch the neighborhood and its folks entertain her as she might one of those fancy color televisions she once saw in a Sear's catalog. Her street was a playing field for the twenty or so kids engaged in broomstick baseball. Johnny Lee, who lived down the hall from her, was pitching; he was working on his second out that would have to wait until after Linda Ann's at-bat. Of the gazillions of times that Josie Beth had watched these same children play this game, Linda Ann never once disappointed her fans.

Johnny Lee looked back at his outfielders. "All y'all spread out back there," he ordered. "Y'all know she thinks she's playing Yankee Stadium."

Johnny Lee wound his arm, getting it ready to throw a humdinger of a pitch. "Are you ready, Baby doll Ruth?"

"Yeah, bring it on, Pee Wee," she said, rubbing into her palms a healthy glob of spit she'd just coughed up.

"Here goes nothing," he said, throwing the pitch.

What looked like a white blur torpedoed down the line towards Linda Ann. She drew back and swung with everything in her, releasing a loud grunt. Johnny Lee's eyes followed the ball as it whizzed through the air straight into Mr. Henry's window.

"Linda Ann," he said, folding his arms, "you did it again!"

Linda Ann tossed the bat down. "Yeap, I guess you know what that means," she said, smiling. It was another homer for the baby girl with the power arm.

These were the days that Josie Beth looked forward to seeing, even though the kids wouldn't let her play. To them, she was such an odd one, parading around with that hideous white baby doll, its hair singed from standing too close to a space heater. And it would have suited the neighborhood just fine if that wretched thing had burned completely up so that they didn't have to look at it. Didn't she know that even though she played with their toys and had one of their names written on her birth certificate, white people still hated her kind? At seven, these things didn't seem to matter to Josie Beth. She only knew what she knew—that she loved that doll and that she was proud of her name, a name given to her by the kind white doctor who brought her into the world.

The story behind her name was just as interesting as the name itself. The mid-sixties may have granted many a Alice her Wonderland and many a Dorothy her Oz, but for blacks these were hard times. These were not times set back in any imaginary land occupied by munchkins and lions and dwarfs and little dogs named Toto, where everyone got along and those who didn't were simply melted out of existence by cold water. No, these were times where being different prompted racial war and disarray—dogs and cats fought, dwarfs struggled against giants, and blacks fought for the same equality the white enjoyed (civil unrest). For blacks, there was always that line of separation, and they would have to go through life living on the other side of that line, sharing separate and less adequate facilities from the whites, separate water fountains and bathrooms, even hospitals. How Josie Beth got her name could only have been devised by God himself.

Her parents called Josie Beth their miracle baby. Their pastor agreed after hearing the story of how Josie Beth got her name during testimony service one Wednesday night. He told the congregation that the Lord obviously wanted this little girl around to fulfill some grand purpose in life, that God certainly wasn't going to bring this child into the world just to take her right back out, so He sent a messenger, an angel, the good doctor.

The day Josie Beth was born, her father, Henry Williams, was out looking for work while her mother Ruth remained at home tending to two young ones who were a little less than a year apart. Had it not been for a young white doctor who made it his mission to frequent the ghettos and give free check-ups and examinations to those less fortunate, Josie Beth and her mother may not have been so fortunate. It just so happened that when Mrs. Williams was hit with a series of labor pains, Dr. Creswood, who was only two years out of medical school and already running a small, but thriving practice left to him by his father, had approached the neighborhood. Ruth fought the pain long enough to call out her window for the doctor before crumbling to the floor as her two babies were crying. As a means of gratitude for coming to her aid and saving her and her baby's life, Mr. and Mrs. Williams asked the doctor to name the child. He gave her his grandmother's name, a woman he described as a lover of all people, someone whose spirit was liken to Christ.

Sometimes Josie Beth would sit on those steps for hours and play with her doll and watch the cars pass and fade off into a world that she'd never known, had never even seen. All she knew was what was right in front of her, and it entertained her so.