“Well, he thought there was.”
“Yes, he did. He did he did he did.”
“How was he when he left?”
“He didn’t like it,” she said.
“It isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard a man do.”
“No, not the worst. Unless you regard futility as an offense. Or ignoring other people’s feelings. Or your own … your own sense of yourself. To destroy a part of yourself, what you are, what you have, in obedience … to some stupid …”
I wanted to say something to shock her. “How can you be so goddamned sure?”
It was then that she made the remark about romantics dead and dying, although as I look back on it now, that can be taken two ways. In any case, the senator was duly divorced, and Nora got her assignment abroad. I didn’t see her again for six years, when I was in London on a holiday and rang her up and we had lunch at the Ritz. It was an elegant lunch, and we talked about everything but that. I was waiting for her to bring up the subject and I suppose she was waiting for me. But there was nothing to be said about it, at that late date. Nothing useful or illuminating or constructive. But I could never tell her, then or later, that I’d seen him that night in the bar, hunched over the table, staring at the glass, clicking the ice cubes with his fingernail. In light of everything since, she’d been right as rain.
OUR BRIGHT TOMORROWS
BY LARRY NEAL
Georgia Avenue
(Written circa 1973)
Martin Luther King was dead.
A gloom descended upon me; and it was as if my body was outside of me like some kind of haunting shadow.
One night during that semester I dreamed I saw my ghost drifting across the campus toward me like a puff of stream. My face drifted above the stream. And although I knew it was my ghost, my face was without definition.
I followed the ghostly twin to a crossroads.
“On one side of this road,” I thought I heard her say, “there is a river of blood. On the other side there is a river of milk. Life could not exist without either. You will have to choose. But there is pain always …”
And now in the cool spring air, I made my way across the campus to the Arts and Humanities building. I liked this time of evening best. Now I would have access to the practice room where I could play what I wanted without the vulgar intrusions and comments of Dr. Reed, who was the chairman of the music department.
I would hang around the library and try to work on my paper on the history of the violin in the development of European music. Needless to say, I found all of that quite boring. Did you know that from 1600 to 1750 Cremona was the center for great violin making? And that Antonio Stradivari was Nicolò Amati’s pupil? Yes, it was boring like Dr. Reed, who must have been teaching this course since the days when this university was five shacks by a dirt road which later came to be called Georgia Avenue. His note cards were frayed and dirty, and he affected a kind of gay British accent.
I was never good at writing papers, but I somehow managed to get by with good grades. In my senior year, I found it harder and harder to work. I was feeling disconnected, a little batty even. And now the death of Dr. King, my hero. It was, nonetheless, my last year. I would have to bear down.
I tried taking notes from Petherick’s book on Antonio Stradivari, but after fifteen minutes into it, I found it hard to stay awake. I would doze off, and then suddenly jerk myself awake like one of these junkies down on U street. This can’t go on.
I played my scales and exercises. Then I worked on the piece by Schumann. I worked hard until I had built up a sweat. But I stumbled through the Hindemith, and finally gave up on the Bartók.
Outside, there was a large crowd of students clustered around the big oak tree just opposite the library. A notoriously controversial student by the name of Jennie Forman was speaking through a white bullhorn. The campus police were there almost in full strength. She wore a high bushy Afro; and she had on an army jacket with red, black, and green epaulets. She must have been quite popular with the male students, because there were a lot of good-looking brothers guarding her.
She shouted through the bullhorn. The sound bounced off of the buildings surrounding the campus green: “You call this education?! Think about it. What are these bourgeois Toms preparing us for? I’ll tell you … Have any of you heard of the Congo, or Vietnam … ?” She paused, waiting for an answer. “What about imperialism?”
“Tell it like it is, sister!” a male voice boomed out.
“Brainwash! Make you docile, afraid, and white-minded like them. We have to shake up this university. Find out which members of the board are investing in South Africa. We got to expose the running-dog lackeys in the political science department. The revolution must begin here because this is where we are.”
The crowd cheered her wildly.
“This is nothing but a nigger factory. Look around you. The world is changing. The dark world of Africa, Asia, and Latin America is coming into its own. Students all over the world are making the revolution … And what are we doing? Joining fraternities and sororities …” She seemed to look directly at me. I looked around somewhat self-consciously; there was no one there from either a fraternity or sorority. I shuddered a little, and for some reason I thought of the dream with my ghostly twin at the crossroads. The brisk evening air made me shudder again.
The moon seemed to rise over Douglass Hall now, casting a cool blue light over the tall oak tree under which she stood; that oak tree which was the traditional place for radical speeches on the state of everything from the politics of Reconstruction to the quality of the food in the cafeteria.
She wasn’t much bigger than me. Underneath the army jacket, her faded blue jeans were tight around her firm body. She was surely intelligent, but there was something of the tigeress about her. Even standing back on the edge of the crowd, I could feel her force. But I could never wear my hair like that. My mother would kill me. A disgrace to the race, she would say. And not proper by anyone’s standard of beauty.
“Let’s shut this mother down!” someone shouted. Then they started throwing bottles at the campus guards. Then two more campus patrol cars sped into the main gate. On one car there was a loud speaker: “This is an illegal assembly. All students are requested to disperse. Those failing to move on will be reported to the dean’s office.”
The guards began moving in on the students. But she continued to shout over the bullhorn as they dispersed. Who was she anyway? Her name came up all the time in our rap sessions. And I had seen her from a distance. She always looked determined, like she was mad in quest of something that was speeding ahead of her. One day I had seen her working in the reading room of the library. I watched her furiously taking notes as she went through several volumes of books piled high beside her on the long mahogany table. She was a top-notch student, but the men she went around with were always making trouble. They disrupted student council meetings with their crazy ideas. All that talk about blackness and black people. It was black this and black that. They should just be happy, I thought, happy to have the opportunity to get an education in this world. The crowd broke up. I went back to the practice room in the basement of Arts and Humanities.
It was dangerous to be out anyway. Maybe the District police would have to come on campus like they did last week when Stokely was here. They say that during the rioting and looting Stokely tried to get the crowd off the street. “Go home!” he said. “Go home! Get off the street … We’re not ready to fight!”
Ready for what? I thought … Did people like him really believe that we would ever be ready to fight these white people? It all made me feel very sick and strange. But I had cried for Dr. King. Yes, I had cried and that was that. There wasn’t any need to do anything else. I had done all I could; and hadn’t my roomie and I, with several other girls, wept for the man of peace, as we drank cognac and ginger ale the night I had my first puff of marijuana?
The Arts and Humanities building was semi-dark. But on the top
floors light shined from the windows of the art studios. Several of the painters would linger working and talking long into the night. I wondered if painters were more gregarious than musicians. What about me? Was I just one of the herd around here? Was Jennie Forman right when she attacked the lifestyles of students like me and my sisters in the sorority? Who the hell does she think she is, and why does she believe that she has to be right?
Wide dust mops shoved the day’s debris along the marbled corridors. Along the corridor walls were pictures of the founders of the university.
These old photographs showed some determined people. You could tell by looking at them intently and studying their faces, and then you would zero in on their eyes; their eyes looking straight ahead to the future at you! At me! I would shout in my head, and smile. But there they were beige faces, brown faces, yellow faces, black faces, red faces, and damn near white faces all looking forward at me, fine brown Linda Frazier who hasn’t even given up any pussy yet. Linda Frazier who fears the dark crossroads. They were looking at me sternly but sincerely. I was standing in the way of one of the janitors, who pushed a mound of trash along the wall beneath the photographs. I stepped out of the way.
I wondered whether these janitors ever picked up any of the trash and read it. Like if, say, a religious lady was cleaning the office of a professor of theology; and suppose she found a pile of notes on say the Eschatogical Vision in the Book of Revelations; or one on the Hermeneutics of Divine Providence. I wondered what that poor woman would think. I wondered how the God she lived by and prayed to would compare with the analytical abstractions of the theologians …
I set up the music and began working on my various scales and exercises. I went through the exercises automatically, remembering the dream of my ghost in the fog hovering above the crossroads near the rivers of blood and milk. Graduation was one month away. What would I do then? Enter the conservatory in New York? Graduate work? Then maybe a job in an all-white symphony orchestra? Maybe no job, just frustration and anger. I could always teach. I went from the exercises to a piece by Hindemith. I worked the first eight bars of the piece and then stopped. How come I wasn’t as dynamic as Jennie Forman? What made her so tough? I played the piece through. I liked the way it moved, especially the rhythm in the middle sections. It was beautiful, but as I played, it was as if I was drifting out of myself and hovering like a bird looking down on myself …
Next, I improvised on a blues song that my grandfather used to sing. I played the piece in A minor. I just played and played from my heart. I wept as I played and thought about my father and mother, both graduates from this university. I thought about how they were so unlike my granddaddy who died last winter, right before Christmas.
Granddaddy always made my mother mad singing and humming this old blues song. She used to say, “Daddy, you still singing those ole-time songs? Folks up north don’t wanna hear that stuff … It reminds them of slavery …”
Grandfather: “I was never a slave for nobody. I worked for myself all of my life, took care of your mother, and sent you to college. I’ll be singing this song until the day I die …” Then he would go back to humming. But neither Mommy or Daddy liked it. And Dr. Reed didn’t like it either.
Dr. Reed: “The department would like to discourage our students from playing such music as jazz and blues in the practice rooms. The time allotted for these facilities should be used constructively. The classical forms require dedication and discipline. You may, however, play that kind of material on your own, preferably off campus …”
Having said this, Dr. Reed posted a notice on the bulletin board outside of the department office that read:
ATTENTION
ALL MUSIC MAJORS
It is strictly forbidden to use the practice rooms for anything other than the study of music directly related to the concerns of the department.
DR. ARNOLD REED
CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPT. OF MUSIC
Needless to say, we constantly disobeyed this directive. No one was ever caught. But it was said that Dr. Reed had spies who reported on the activities of the music majors. Someone tapped on the door. I stopped abruptly. A pair of light brown eyes peered through the little window in the door. I opened it slowly; it was the tall ascetic student from the rally. Up close, he was very handsome, much more than I had previously thought. He was inside of the little room now.
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said, “I was passing this room when I heard your playing—beautiful.”
“Thank you. I thought you were one of Reed’s mysterious spies.”
“Yes, Dr. Reed … He’s one of our targets.”
“Targets?”
“Yes, he is a running-dog lackey. And we want him out of this university.”
“But why?”
“Because he’s not black enough.”
“Black?”
“Not physically, but spiritually … He’s one of those super-brainwashed Negroes who believes that we can’t be educated unless we become mentally and culturally whitened.”
“I see,” I said softly. There was a long pause. I glanced at my music stand.
“What is your name, Sister?”
I was taken back not so much by the word “sister,” but there was something special about the way he said it. A warm blue wave passed quickly over me; and in a flash I felt our future closeness.
“Linda.”
“My name is Eugene, but I’m thinking about changing it.”
“Changing it?”
“It lacks power.”
“Power? What does your name have to do with power?”
“I don’t know … That’s what I’m trying to find out … But—Linda what?”
“Frazier,” I said.
“Well, Linda, we must claim this century in our name. Do you understand … ?”
And then he sat down at the piano and played a variation of my granddaddy’s blues. I joined in, and we played together until the night watchman came to close the building. Then I knew it was clear, I had to fall in love with him.
Later, we walked across town and surveyed the burned-out stores in the riot corridor. “The people have spoken,” he said quietly, “but it is us and future generations that will make the revolution.”
“How?” I said.
“We must each find a way … I’m going in law … Jennie’s got her plan …”
“Any place for a violinist in the revolution?” I laughed.
We had crossed the street and were looking at the titles in the Drum and Spear bookstore: The Wretched of the Earth, Muntu, Don’t Cry, Scream, Black Fire, Toward the African Revolution, The Collected Works of Marcus Garvey, Song for Mumu, The Dead Lecturer, The Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung …
“We’re going to start by dealing with the administration.”
“What’s gonna happen?”
“Something that should have happened a long time ago.”
I certainly don’t want to be involved in any kind of mess, I thought, not now with only a month to go before I graduate … My mother would kill me.
“You should talk to Jennie.”
“I don’t know her, but she seems so hard.” I tried not to show any jealousy.
“Not hard. Determined. The Sisters will have to make the revolution also. Jennie is a poet and a committed revolutionary.”
From the tone of his voice, I could easily surmise that he really admired her. I had only known him for two hours, and already I was jealous of her.
“We’re having a meeting tomorrow. You should stop by … Stokely and Marion will be there. Plus some people from Philly … a group called R.A.M.”
“Ram?”
“The initials stand for the Revolutionary Action Movement.”
“If I get a chance, I’ll check it out.” I was lying. This was going too far.
It was a clear night. We lingered for a moment in front of the large apartment building that the university had purchased and converted into a dormitory. Then he walked m
e to the security desk as the armed night guard eyed him suspiciously.
Looking around the foyer, he said: “This place is an armed camp since the rebellion.” The guard wore what I later learned was a .38 caliber police special. Eugene grasped my hand and shook it gently. “Keep on pushin’,” he said and walked out of the door.
My heart was jumping like crazy when I got in the elevator. He was nice, but he was a little strange. I tried picturing him sitting with us back home at dinner. I strained to imagine how my bank executive father would talk to him. Would they clash, and ruin dinner? Or maybe they would just talk about sports and money like most men did. But what would they think of me?
I entered my room. My roommate was sleeping, but the radio was still on. I turned it off, undressed, and then stood before the mirror stark naked. I checked out my hips and thighs. I turned around sideways to check out my behind. I touched myself all over. My hands were very hot and moist. I massaged my face with cold cream. Then I turned off the light and sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, thinking …
As I dozed off, my ghostly twin smiled in the fog at the crossroads … Granddaddy’s blues echoed in the distance over the cool murmur of rivers …
* * *
We met for lunch the next day. That was nice. But then I didn’t see him again for several days. With a great deal of effort, I suppressed the storm that raged inside of me. After all, wasn’t I a senior—not just a senior, but a mature senior? I’m not a genius, but for the most part, with painful effort, I always manage, manage somehow, to pull through, sometimes with honors even. I guess I get my staying power from my father, who really wanted a son, but who, as my mother tells it, jumped with joy when I was born. I am not frivolous. I play to win.
It was mother’s wish that I major in music. She had wanted to be a classical pianist and concertize all over the world. She was a child prodigy, and depending on your point of view, that was either a curse or a blessing. It had all come to nothing. After a meteor-like burst of fame, it had suddenly all come to nothing. The novelty wore off. And against Daddy’s wishes she ended her professional career. And then they had me. And that was that.
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