The driver, a man who looks to be in his thirties, rolls down his window and calls out to me, “Hey! Where you going? Want a ride? Hop in.”
Over the years, Spence and I have accepted lots of rides, especially when the weather’s bad. After all, we grew up in Grangerville, a small farming community where everybody knew everybody. Even though I don’t know this guy, he seems pretty friendly, so I cross over to the pickup’s passenger side and climb in.
He looks over and smiles at me. “Hi, I’m Jake. What’s your name?”
“Lissa,” I say. “I’m just going to my bus stop at the intersection. Not far.” As usual, I’m toting an armload of books. Jake has short-cropped reddish hair and a plump pink face. He drops me off at the stop sign beside my bus stop, smiles and waves, makes a right, and drives away.
Two mornings later, Jake stops for me again on my way to the bus stop. I climb in, and he starts up a conversation. “That’s a lot of schoolbooks you got there, Lissa. What grade you in?”
I tell him I’m in eleventh grade. Again, he drops me off at my bus stop, waves, and drives off. He seems very pleasant. The next morning, his truck passes my house just at I’m coming down the driveway. He spots me, throws his truck in reverse, backs up, and waits for me at our mailbox at the end of the drive.
“We seem to be on the same schedule,” Jake says. “I pass by here every morning on my way to work.” He drives for a moment in silence, then reaches over to hold my hand and says “I’m married.” Taken by surprise, I draw my hand away, feeling embarrassed. I don’t know what to say. He releases my hand, and we continue on, in silence.
Then he looks at me and says, “You know, you’re a pretty girl. Anybody ever tell you that?” I turn my face away. I can feel fear creeping up my spine like the thick mercury surging up a thermometer held to the radiator. As a kid, Spence used to warm up a thermometer that way when he wanted to play sick and stay home from school, but Spence could never fool Nurse Jimmie!
When Jake stops the truck at the bus stop, I jump out quickly and slam the door behind me. I don’t look back, and am relieved to hear the pickup drive away.
I sit by myself on the school bus, scrunched up next to the window. I’m not sure what just happened, but it doesn’t make me feel good about Jake or about myself. I don’t feel safe. To soothe myself, I start counting the telephone and electric poles as the bus passes them along the winding roads to school.
All day, my mind goes over and over what Jake said and did in the pickup. I am miserable. In class, my focus on conjugating French verbs or listening to the English teacher lecture about Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is interrupted by the incessant, infernal echoing of Jake’s words in my head. “I’m married. I’m married.” The words continue with increasing intensity, like Poe’s “tintinnabulation” of the “bells, bells, bells,” throughout the day. “Married, married, married,” pulses in my head, a broken record. I decide I must talk to Daddy this afternoon when I get home from school.
The words spill out quickly. “Daddy, there’s this guy in a pickup truck who’s been giving me rides to the school bus. But today he tried to hold my hand. He said he’s married. What should I do?”
I watch as slowly, from somewhere deep inside Daddy, I see tension and anger mount. His lips begin to quiver, then move. At first, no sound emerges, but then, like molten lava from a volcano, the words erupt from Daddy’s mouth. Obscenities, superlative expletives I’ve never heard him use before, spew out, vilifying Jake, a man he’s never met. “I’d like to get my hands on that mother****ingest son of a b****.”
Fuming, Daddy makes his way to the black wall phone in the hallway and calls the police. Within fifteen minutes, a county police car pulls into our driveway. Two uniformed officers rap on the back door, and Daddy lets them in through the back porch into the kitchen. Daddy tells them what I told him, adding in a few choice swearwords to convey what he thinks of this man Jake.
When I come into the kitchen, one of the police officers, who looks pretty young, is sitting at the kitchen table, writing up a report. The other officer looks older. He’s overweight and balding, and stands facing Daddy. As I enter the room, the older policeman looks me over. I realize I’m still wearing my school clothes. I can feel his gaze sweep over me, top to bottom, bottom to top. It makes me self-conscious. I feel the makeup on my face exhibiting to him something unintentionally provocative. I feel betrayed by the tightness of my form-fitting dress as it follows the contours of my body, by the sheer hosiery clinging to my legs. I am ashamed of my appearance.
“Pete,” he calls out to his partner and tilts his head sideways in my direction. The partner responds to the signal, takes a long look at me, snaps closed the notebook he’s been writing in, stuffs it in his uniform pocket, and scrapes his chair back from the kitchen table.
“Not much we can do without a license plate number,” says the senior partner. “Lots of men in pickup trucks around here.” With that, both officers leave abruptly.
Friday passes, and no sign of Jake. I’m thinking maybe the police caught up with him. The weekend passes quietly, but on Monday morning, just as I leave the house, there’s the pickup, rocking back and forth at the bottom of the driveway. Jake is gunning the engine. He rolls down his window all the way and rests his arm on the sill, his elbow sticking out.
“Mornin’, Lissa. I saw you at your bedroom window a couple nights ago. You had your light on.”
Now I’m really scared. Did he really see me at night? How does he know which room is my bedroom? Then, behind me, from the front porch, I hear a strange, loud bellowing sound. For some reason, it reminds me of the sound I once heard coming from a young bull while it was being clamped and emasculated on Mr. Clay’s farm. The sound is coming from Daddy. He’s at the front door.
Now Daddy’s running down across the front lawn. He’s flailing his arms, shaking both fists at Jake. I’ve never seen him look this angry. He stands right next to the truck, glaring at Jake. Daddy’s face is red and contorted; the veins protrude on his neck. “You get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch. You stay away from my little girl.”
Jake draws his arm back inside the truck, steps on the gas, and the pickup roars away and disappears around a bend in the road. That’s the last I ever see Jake, and we hear nothing more from the police. But now, Daddy seems to watch me more carefully than ever. And I retreat again into the safety of his world.
In English class, I sit next to my friend Ben. Ben is a fullback on our high school football team. He’s so big and heavy, his teammates call him Big Bad Ben, or BBB. But he’s really a nice guy. He calls me a “soul sister” and makes me laugh. His smile spreads wide across this face, and his teeth flash white against his dark brown skin. During class, he sneaks candy bars from inside his desk.
Our English class is still studying The Scarlet Letter.
“The scarlet letter A that Hester Prynne wore, what did that scarlet letter stand for?” asks Miss Fogarty, our English teacher.
Ben’s hand shoots up.
Miss Fogarty calls on him. “Ben?”
Ben chuckles. “It means,” Ben pauses for effect, “she was A-vailable.”
The class erupts in laughter. I find myself laughing right along with them as Miss Fogarty struggles hard to keep a straight face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ON THE VERGE
IT’S 1968, I’m a senior in high school, and the world is turning upside down.
At the end of January, communists launch the Tet Offensive.
Televised footage of this initiative invades American living rooms night after night on the evening news. Spearheaded by Viet Cong elite forces, sapper-commandos, Tet is backed by wave upon wave of supporting troops that wage local battles in more than a hundred South Vietnamese cities and towns.
Tet is a human tragedy. It kills 37,000 of the Viet Cong troops deployed, leaving many more wounded or captured. It creates more than half a million civilian refugees. With Tet, America loses 2,500 of
its men, and those of us who thought the Viet Cong guerillas were a weak opponent, an enemy we could drive back easily, begin to have our doubts about this war.
At the end of March, President Lyndon Johnson stuns the country with a televised speech from the White House, announcing, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” He recoils from persisting with the war in Vietnam, predicting that “many men—on both sides of the struggle—will be lost.” He warns Americans to “guard against divisiveness, and all of its ugly consequences.”
On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot in Memphis, Tennessee. He dies at 7:05 P.M., and shockwaves spread across the country in newspapers and on TV. I flip from channel to channel—we get three major channels here. I see a photo of him collapsed on that motel balcony. I hear excerpts of his sermons and speeches. There’s something about him—a soft sadness in his eyes, a pulsing power in his voice, a ring of truth and prophecy—unlike anything I’ve seen or heard before. His people mourn for him.
Feelings run deep and raw. Unspeakable anger, suppressed far too long, erupts like a festering abscess in black communities across the country. In Baltimore, the riots rage for four days and three nights. Stores go up in flames, looting spreads like an epidemic along York Road, Harford Road, and Edmondson Avenue. Police and firemen are pelted with bottles and stones. Groups form on street corners, taunting each other, alienated by the color of their skin.
On North Avenue, kids run from store to store, setting off fires with lighted torches. Sidewalks become harsh passageways littered with broken glass. Buildings smolder. More than 1,000 city police officers, 400 state troopers, and more than 5,000 National Guardsmen are mobilized in Baltimore, some of them just startled kids behind their fearsome gas masks.
When the riots end, and the city rouses herself like a wound-weary beast, the reporters begin to compare her devastation to the Great Fire of 1904. Massive, unprecedented ransacking and arson, six dead, more than 700 injured, 5,800 arrested. More than 1,000 businesses looted, vandalized, or destroyed by fire.
It’s not for some weeks after the riots that Daddy and I venture downtown on the number eight bus. The bus crawls south on York Road, groaning heavily as it stops to pick up passengers along the way. We pass 42nd Street, and York Road becomes Greenmount Avenue. We cross North Avenue and pass Greenmount Cemetery on our left. Besides the driver, Daddy and I are the only white people on the bus. We pass block after block of boarded-up shop windows. A teenaged boy takes the seat across the aisle from me. I stare at him warily out of the corner of my eye. I guess he must be a couple of years younger than I am. I wonder what he’s thinking. He stares straight ahead, his jaw set tight. I am afraid to smile at him. I feel so conspicuously white. Does he hate me for it? Even worse, does he have good reason to hate me?
Daddy sits beside me, leaning against the window. His breath leaves a smudge of white mist on the pane. With his pocket handkerchief, Daddy wipes the window clear, takes another look, then turns to me and whispers in my ear, “Destruction—block after block of it. As with Sodom and Gomorrah, God has delivered his divine judgment upon us.”
As we approach the corner where we get off, the bus lurches to a stop. Daddy and I are thrown forward. Daddy has to clutch at the nearest seat handle to keep from falling. He’s eighty-nine now, and loses his balance pretty easily.
In English class, my friend Ben smiles his big wide smile and asks me if I’m going to the senior prom.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“How would you feel about going with a soul brother?”
I look down at my desk and say, “I don’t think I’ll be going.” I’m thinking that Daddy won’t let me go. He’s only let me go to one school dance, and that was back in ninth grade, when Paloma’s mother convinced Daddy that everything would be okay, that she would take me and Paloma safely to and from the class dance. I’m also thinking about the black-white thing. There’s no cross-racial dating at our high school. I just know Daddy would hit the roof if I went out with a black guy! I’m feeling more and more how different my world is from the world Daddy grew up in. I am sad and ashamed and confused—all at the same time.
Even though Paloma goes to a different school now, she and her mom keep an eye out for me. When I tell Paloma I really do want to go the senior prom, she tells me, “You don’t want to miss your senior prom, Lissa. My mom says this could be a rite of passage for you. It’s kind of like a coming-out party. Lissa, you gotta go!” I convince Daddy that this is a very important, one-time event. Daddy finally gives in, and I wind up accepting my friend Seth’s invitation. Seth and I sit next to each other in Civics class. He’s smart and funny, and has a way of making me laugh in spite of myself. Also, Seth is white, so going with him to the dance won’t raise any eyebrows. Besides, rumor and innuendo have labeled him as “queer.” Homosexuality is considered to be something shameful. It’s not openly discussed, but I know I’ll be safe with Seth.
On the afternoon of the prom, Paloma and her mom take me to a hairdresser where I have my hair teased, piled high, bobby-pinned, and lacquered with hairspray into a chic bouffant at the top of my head. I wear a sleek white satin dress with an empire waistline, lace bodice, puff sleeves, and long white gloves. Paloma’s mom made the dress for me. I picked out the pattern and material myself. I want it to look like a gown Audrey Hepburn wore in War and Peace.
Seth doesn’t have a driver’s license, so his father picks us up in his huge white boat of a car. Seth and I sit apart in the roomy back seat. I see Daddy peering out the window of the back-porch door as the big car rolls down our gravel driveway. During the ride to the prom, Seth presents me with a purple orchid in a fancy box. He grins and watches, but he doesn’t touch me as I fumble, trying to pin on the corsage.
When we enter the prom together, Seth says, “You look gorgeous!” I’m wearing my first high heels, white pumps. Now I’m pretending to be Audrey Hepburn making her entrance at the embassy ball in My Fair Lady, passing herself off as royalty. I really do start to feel like a princess. It’s a heady feeling!
But in the middle of our first dance, Seth breaks away and wanders off, chatting with other friends. I stand alone, feeling abandoned on the dance floor.
The prom is held in the gym, and far across the room, I spot my friend Ben huddled with some of his black friends under a basketball hoop that’s decorated with streamers in our class colors. Ben seems to be looking my way. Maybe he’s even catching my eye. And suddenly, I don’t feel like a princess anymore. In my imagination, Ben’s face swims and blends with other faces, now memories. I see the defiant, yet innocent face of young Jamal at summer camp. I feel shamed by the firm set of the black teenager’s jaw opposite me on the number eight bus. The truth comes to me—hard and real. I didn’t go to the prom with Ben because he is black. I am prejudiced!
Then, suddenly, the gym begins to spin around me. I stand alone at the center of a whirling vortex. The band plays in slow motion, the streamers blur, the prom queen on her throne smiles as she and her court swirl past. Something vibrates up my spine, explodes in my head. I see a blazing red X, hear a voice saying, “We need more light about each other.” Then I feel my knees buckle, and everything goes dark.
The next thing I hear is one of the chaperones, Miss Fogarty, saying, “She needs more air.” At first, her voice seems to come from a distance, but then it’s right here, and I can see Miss Fogarty bending over me, fanning me with a cardboard poster, offering me a glass of water and telling everyone to step back.
“Are you okay, Lissa?” I’m sitting on a metal folding chair now at the edge of the gym, sipping water. I nod, more embarrassed than anything.
Seth’s dad picks us up after the dance, and I ride home in silence next to Seth.
Daddy’s gone to bed, but I stop in to say goodnight and tell him about the vision I had when I passed out. “Clairvoyance,” is all he says, and I remember his story about his cousin Urchie. “
Urchie’s dead.”
I keep thinking about the red X and the voice saying, “We need more light about each other.” What does it mean? Where did it come from? The next week at school, I search in the library for the quote and finally I find it, buried in a letter Malcolm X wrote in 1964 to the Egyptian Gazette, the year before he was assassinated. His letter opens by saying:
… racism has rooted itself so deeply in the subconsciousness of many American whites that they themselves oft-times are not even aware of its existence….
Well, that hits home with me! But later in the letter, Malcolm X goes on to say:
We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity….
I can only hope that Malcolm X and Ben and Jamal and all the rest of black America will not shut the door on me and other white Americans against the possibility of overcoming the prejudice we have been raised with.
In June, I graduate from the stage at our high school. Daddy sits proudly in the audience next to Aunt Essie. Daddy doesn’t drive at night, and Spence says he prefers not to go back to his old high school. So, even though he still doesn’t like Jimmie’s sister, Daddy accepts a ride from her.
I stand onstage in my white cap and gown, accept my scholarships—a small gift for college textbooks from the PTA and a four-year senatorial scholarship—and my high school diploma. Afterward, Aunt Essie drops Daddy and me off at the house, and I go to sleep excited about the future.
The next morning, Daddy lets me sleep in and fixes his own breakfast. Finally, I make my way downstairs, still foggy and dreamy about my new status as a high school graduate. The first thing I do is turn on the TV. Instantly, my daydream is ruptured. The screen is flooded, on every channel, with reports of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968.
At the Far End of Nowhere Page 17