Grant Park

by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

  King went on. As Malcolm watched, King seemed to change. Some new light came into his eyes, some new urgency rose in his voice. He invoked a Biblical parable about a rich man named Dives who went to hell for ignoring the pain of the poor man who lingered every day outside his gate.

  “And I come by here to say,” said King, “that America, too, is going to hell if she doesn’t use her wealth. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she, too, will go to hell.”

  His voice rose on a righteous wind. The crowd was fully with him, talking back to him.

  “Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!”

  “We can all get more together than we can apart,” said King. “This is the way we gain power.” The word made Malcolm stand up straight. “Power,” continued King, “is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change. And we need power!”

  Power, he explained, was defined by the labor leader Walter Reuther as the ability to make General Motors say yes when it wanted to say no. “That’s power,” said King. “And I want you to stick it out so that you will be able to make Mayor Loeb and others say yes, even when they want to say no.”

  Malcolm was surprised. There was confrontation in those words.

  Then King surprised him yet again. Indeed, he even seemed to surprise himself. “Now you know what?” he said. His voice had gone quiet, and his face took on that speculative, thoughtful expression that comes over a man when he finds himself speaking an idea even as it is still coming to him.

  “You may have to escalate the struggle a bit,” said King. “If they keep refusing and they will not recognize the union…I tell you what you ought to do, and you are together here enough to do it. In a few days, you ought to get together and just have a general work stoppage in the city of Memphis.”

  And all the cheering and all the thunder and all the shouts that had come before were as nothing to what came now. King’s words detonated the crowd like a bomb. People stomped. Their hands jackhammered. They screamed exultation, adoration and yes, Lord, yes.

  A work stoppage? Yes.

  Show ’em we mean business. Yes.

  Demand our rights. Yes.

  I AM A MAN. Oh, yes. Hell yes.

  Malcolm watched from a distance as the crowd went wild. He felt like a stranger. He felt as if he were marooned on a raft in an ocean of other people’s ecstasy.

  Shocked. That’s what it was. The realization came to him as if through a dull haze. He was shocked.

  But De Lawd had delivered. Say that for him. Martin Luther King had said exactly what needed to be said. Now, Malcolm watched as the men behind King hurriedly deliberated with him about this sudden inspiration of his. He saw hands chopping the air. He saw heads huddling together. He saw consensus reached.

  King returned to the podium. March 22, he said. Friday. That would be the day. No Negro would work. No Negro would go to school. They would demonstrate instead. He would return and lead them himself.

  At that, the pandemonium renewed. In all the tumult, Malcolm checked his watch. He was surprised. It was after ten. And he still had to catch the bus home before he could grab his bike and cycle over to the river. He was going to be so late. He had not expected the meeting to go this long.

  His mind already working on an appropriate excuse for his tardiness, Malcolm shouldered his way through the crowd, through the cacophony. Voices from the podium below were still banging off the low ceiling. People next to him were yelling in his ear.

  Down stairs that were choked with people. Through a lobby that was clogged with people. Out a door that was thick with people. Finally emerging into a courtyard that was thronged by people.

  The air, warming up as spring came on, was sweet to Malcolm after so long in the stifling room. It tasted of possible rain. He gulped it greedily, glad to be out.

  Eddie came out of the building just a moment later, still wearing his shades even in full darkness. He was scowling as if greatly displeased. Then he saw a brother standing between two parked cars and approached him, a hand with one of the red fliers in it leading the way. The brother took the flier and studied it grimly.

  Black power is the key, it had said. And so it was. Malcolm believed this, knew this, with every molecule of his being. At some level, Martin Luther King must finally know it, too. What was it he had said? “We need power.”

  And who could disagree with that, who could disagree that black power was necessary, when even King had come to see it? Not just to see it, but to embrace it by calling for action that went beyond speeches, marches, and platitudes. A work stoppage, that was something real, something tangible, something whitey could not ignore. But why stop with that? Maybe there was even more they could do.

  Malcolm took off at a trot, driven by the clock, but also by the stunning thing he had just experienced. Martin Luther King himself had spoken of power, admitted that Negroes needed power. And in four days, he was coming back to Memphis. Anything could happen now.

  thirteen

  Stymie’s was only two blocks from Grant Park, which was where the Obama people would hold tonight’s rally. Bob had chosen it for convenience—Janeka probably already knew the area.

  But he realized as he came through the door that at some level, he had also chosen it to send this woman a message. Stymie’s was an old-fashioned steakhouse done up in wood the color of dark chocolate, with high-backed booths and brass fixtures. Its menu depicted a drawing of a cow seen in cross-section, with the various cuts of meat delineated. Its owner had contributed heavily to the doomed effort to defeat the state smoking ban that had gone into effect on January 1. If a building could vote, this one would vote—it would scream—Republican.

  Not that Bob was a Republican—or, for that matter, a Democrat. A registered Independent, he didn’t identify with either party. But if Janeka was still spouting the hippie rhetoric of their youth, if she now embraced some Left Coast, free-range, organic food ethos, or if, God forbid, she had gone vegan on him, then walking into this temple of red meat and cholesterol would tell her emphatically that times had changed. That he had changed.

  At his request, the maître d’ seated him in a booth in the back where he took a seat facing the front door. As the server was pouring his water, Bob opened his menu and asked, “What is your fish of the day?”

  It was salmon, seared over wine-soaked cedar planks, served with grilled asparagus and pine nut couscous.

  “Sounds good,” said Bob.

  “Will you be eating alone?” the server asked. He was a lanky kid with long hair.

  “No,” said Bob. “I’m meeting someone. I’m a little early.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Bob was, in fact, early by design. He had not wanted to walk in and find her already sitting there, scrutinizing him while he stood in the doorway waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, searching the lunchtime crowd for her. To allow that would be to surrender a tactical advantage, like a general who allowed an enemy to seize the high ground. No. He wanted to see her first.

  Hearing himself think these things, Bob was mildly appalled. Was Janeka really his enemy? Was that how he thought of her now?

  He had certainly not regarded her as such in that sweet fall and winter of ’67 and ’68. No, she had been his deepest friend. She had been his future. Or at least, this was what he had very soon come to believe.

  They made love for the first time three weeks after they saw In the Heat of the Night together. He was her first and she was his and they had agonized over the decision, both of them being good Christian kids from good Christian homes whose parents would be hurt and mortified at the thought that their son and daughter were down here breaking commandments and sinning their fool heads off. Plus, there was pregnancy to worry about.

  In the end, however, reluctance and good intentions had been overmatched by simple lust. And dawning love.

  Once the
decision was made, they had to figure out where they would do it. The dorms were out. They were strictly segregated by gender and the monitors were known to be humorless and incorruptible. No visitor of the opposite sex was allowed past the front desk, period, ever, end of discussion.

  So they settled on a hotel near campus—the only hotel near campus, this being Mississippi, where a ten-minute drive in any direction put you in the middle of cotton fields.

  Bob had gone to the registration desk that afternoon, carrying an empty suitcase to make it look real. He registered, then went to the room and called Janeka’s dorm. When she came on the line, he said simply, “254,” feeling not unlike a spy in some Cold War novel. She said, for the benefit of the dorm monitor, “Jim! How good to hear from you, little brother. How’s mom and dad?” He could picture her standing in the hallway leaning against the cinderblock wall, smiling so the monitor could see there was nothing out of the ordinary here. He wondered if she were as nervous as he was.

  Two hours later, there was a knocking at the door of Room 254, two hours having been the amount of separation they felt was needed between his arrival and hers so that it would not look suspicious. Bob had been sitting on the bed with the television on, half watching a rerun of I Love Lucy. Now, feeling almost as if he were in a dream, he opened the door and there she was and he could hardly believe she was real. She came in and he closed the door and there was an endless moment. Then Bob swept her into his arms, and by God, she was real. Indeed, he was overcome by the realness of her, the thereness of her, and they kissed with a passion and an abandon, all the while going at buttons and hooks and clasps in delicious haste. And they fell into bed…

  …and what happened next was, of course, an unmitigated disaster, as how could it be otherwise with two kids who had never done anything like this before and had only the vaguest idea of how it went and had to read the helpful instructions on the box even to get the condom on? All that was bad enough. Then it got worse. She lay down, she opened herself to him, and Bob pushed eagerly inside her. He shuddered, his eyes rolled, and it was over.

  Just like that.

  Over.

  Mortification made him very still. His cheeks flamed. And a second later when she asked, “Did you…did you…finish already?” his humiliation was complete. Bob groaned with unutterable self-loathing, buried his face in the pillow and prayed very fervently that God allow him to tunnel through the floor, through the crust, mantle, and core of the Earth and out the other side in China where he could flee to some hinterland village and live under an assumed name for the rest of his life.

  “It’s okay,” she said, realizing now what had happened, trying to be helpful.

  “No, it’s not,” he said, his voice muffled by the pillow.

  “It’s okay,” she insisted.

  He rolled off her and lay there staring at the ceiling. This was the worst moment of his entire existence.

  Janeka placed her head on his chest. After a moment, he put an arm around her.

  They lay together for a few minutes and then, somewhat to his surprise, Bob felt…a stirring. Janeka saw. “Do you want to try again?” she asked. After a moment, Bob nodded.

  So they tried again. And later, they tried yet again.

  And by the end, it was glorious.

  And Bob and Janeka became inseparable. They also became increasingly bold about showing their feelings, race be darned, walking around campus hand in hand, even going across the street together to the launderette to wash their things, or to the burger joint next to it with the clean rectangular spot above the door where the Whites Only sign had hung until just two years before.

  Some older white woman with cat’s-eye glasses stared at them one day as they sat across from one another in the cracked vinyl booth, Janeka idly poaching French fries from Bob’s basket. Finally, she came up to them. Ignoring Janeka, she addressed herself to Bob and spoke without preamble. “You’re such a fine-lookin’ boy,” she said in a voice of tender, grandmotherly concern. “I’m sure you could have any white girl you wanted. Why would you want to date outside your race?”

  Bob had always been proud of how he responded to that. He smiled sweetly and spoke in a placid voice. “Ma’am,” he said, “my race is human. What’s yours?”

  The woman colored. She clutched her purse tightly and walked away, her steps pinched and quick. He looked at Janeka. Janeka looked at him. They managed to wait until the door closed behind the old woman before they broke out laughing.

  “There’s this girl,” Bob told his mother.

  This was a few days later and Mom was calling long distance, wanting to know why he wasn’t coming home for Christmas.

  “Girl?” She pronounced it like a word in some exotic foreign language. He could all but hear her eyebrows arching.

  “I’ll write you about her,” he said. “This is probably costing a fortune.”

  “Never mind that,” she said, and her voice mingled curiosity and concern. “Tell me about this ‘girl.’”

  Bob sighed. He had been standing at the wall phone in the hallway next to the dorm monitor’s desk. Now, resignation pushed him down to the floor, where he sat cross-legged. This earned him a sympathetic smile from the monitor.

  “Her name is Janeka,” he said. “Janeka Lattimore.”

  “Janeka? What an odd name. Tell me more.”

  So he did. He told her how Janeka was from California and her family couldn’t afford for her to come home for the holiday and he didn’t want her to have to spend Christmas here by herself.

  “That’s very sweet,” said his mother, her voice measured like baking powder. “This girl is obviously special to you, Bobby. What’s she like?”

  Bob heaved another sigh and told her still more. He told her Janeka was majoring in political science. He told her Janeka was about the smartest person he knew. He told her Janeka and he were working together on a voter registration project. And he told her, when she pressed him on it, that, yes, Janeka could indeed be The One.

  He didn’t tell her Janeka was black.

  Even when his mother asked him what she looked like, he said only that she was petite with brown hair and dark eyes and was just about the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “She sounds lovely,” said Bob’s mother.

  “She is,” said Bob.

  On Christmas Eve, five days later, Bob walked out of his dorm into a biting winter afternoon to meet Janeka. She was standing out front waiting for him. They kissed, he took her gloved hand in his, and they were about to set out for chapel, where there was to be a holiday service. Then a woman’s voice called his name, but made it a question.

  “Bobby?”

  He looked up and there they were at the curb, his mother and father, Mom holding a tin of her famous Christmas cookies, both standing stock still with mouths agape. And there, behind them, were his three younger brothers grinning behind their hands and punching each other in the shoulder.

  “Dad? Mom? What are you doing here?”

  “We came to surprise you,” said his mother. There was a helpless note in her voice. The surprise was on her.

  The next three seconds took an hour to pass, the longest, most excruciating hour of Bob’s life. Finally, his father recovered his power of speech, reaching for Janeka’s hand. “I’m Robert Carson,” he said, his big fist swallowing her tiny one and pumping it. “I’m Bobby’s father. These are my other boys, Sidney, Reed, and Stevie. And this is my wife, Estelle.”

  It was right then that Estelle Carson finally recovered her own power of speech, to Bob’s everlasting regret. “You’re black,” she said. She said this in a tone that suggested Janeka would find it as much a surprise as she herself did.

  “Yes,” said Janeka. She looked at Bob. “All day long and seven days a week.”

  They all laughed at this, relieved at how artfully she had defused the moment. Janeka smiled, but there was ice at the edge of it that only Bob saw.

  “I’m sorry,” his mothe
r said, embarrassed, “but we didn’t know. Bobby didn’t tell us.”

  ‘I see,” said Janeka.

  His mother shook Janeka’s hand. “Do you watch I Spy?” she asked. “We’re all crazy about that Bill Cosby.”

  “Yes,” said Janeka, “we like him, too.”

  If a truck had come barreling down the street just then, Bob would have stepped calmly in front of it and thanked God for sending it.

  His mother clapped her hands together. “Well,” she said, and her voice was brighter than a klieg light, “who wants dinner?”

  She had made reservations at a swanky restaurant in Memphis. Memphis was an hour away. They drove toward it in a rented station wagon, Estelle Carson filling half the drive with questions until Bob was sure Janeka must have felt like a suspect in an FBI interrogation. She wanted to know where Janeka was from (San Diego), what her parents did for a living (her father published a black newspaper, her mother was a housewife), if she had any siblings (a brother who was older and two sisters, both younger).

  Panic coursed through Bob’s veins. He wished his mother would shut up. His mother had ruined everything.

  Halfway to Memphis, thankfully, the interrogation ended and his mother started telling stories about her oldest son as a child, beginning with the 26 hours of labor it took to bring him into the world, and going on through such family favorites as the time Bob opened a lemonade stand and charged $50 a glass on the theory that he might not get many customers but at that price, wouldn’t need many. Ordinarily, Bob would have preferred death by firing squad than to have his mother telling a girl these hoary, embarrassing tales.

  But given the alternative, he was happy to have her dredge up the misadventures of his childhood. Even if she whipped out the second-grade picture of him when his teeth looked like the New York City skyline, he was willing to take it, so long as she didn’t mention Bill Cosby again.