Bailey's Cafe

by Gloria Naylor

  They finally notified me to report to the local induction center and I called Papa to ask what I should do. True to form, he gave me a long-winded speech that had something to do with Pushkin being thrown out of Saint Petersburg and running around in parts of Russia with unpronounceable names while coming out of the whole mess with some poems and a play. He got pretty upset that I kept referring to Boris Gudunov as only a play, but if it’s divided up into acts, what else is it? And what in God’s name did all that have to do with my predicament? Which only got us off the track and into how much my education had cost him with this kind of ignorance as the end result. In all this time, if I wasn’t prepared to make a persuasive argument for my beliefs in front of the draft board, I deserved to be in jail.

  Aunt Hazel wasn’t any more consoling, though a bit more down-to-earth. She heard me out and agreed with everything I said. Yes, it was unforgivable that we lived as second-class citizens in a segregated society and I was being asked to defend it all in a segregated army, but I should remember that refusal to go also meant a segregated jail. She left me with the words of Joe Louis: There’s a lot wrong with this country. But Hitler can’t fix it.

  After hanging up from them, I knew there was absolutely no point in calling any of my uncles. If anybody could have pulled some strings for me, it would have been one of them. But three of them were veterans from the last world war, and all of them would have thought I was just too yellow to fight. A good dose of the slammer would be about what I needed to straighten me out.

  Jail came up a lot in the conversations with my family, and it was just where I ended up. Three years in the federal penitentiary in Tucson. Papa told me I would have gotten more time if he hadn’t relented and written that letter to the draft board on my behalf; I truly don’t think so. My argument was to have been a simple one and unanswerable: If my blood wasn’t good enough for the Red Cross, why was it good enough to be spilled on the battlefield? But I walked into that hearing with them holding a copy of his letter, which had me talking to the exiled spirit of Pushkin about my belief in a people’s revolution to rid the human race of universal tyranny, where one part enslaved left all parts enslaved. It seems that I’d been mumbling this stuff in my sleep since I was twelve years old and rising out of my dreams to yell, Dnepropetrovsk! and Mkihaylovskoye! That went over really big with the draft board. And believe me, I thanked them for the three years.

  And, yes, the federal prison at Tucson was segregated. The cell blocks. The showers. The dining room. There was a Southwestern flavor to it, though: Mexicans, Yumas, Hopis, and Chinese were all honorary Negroes and in our group, while the various strains of Europeans, designated as white, went in the other group. But there was no distinction made with the slop we had to eat, or with the treatment from the guards. We were all worthless scum to them, even though, like myself, most of the other COs were educated and from good families.

  My second year, the admission of three new conscientious objectors, who were of Japanese ancestry, threw them into a tizzy for a while. They’d had no experience with this type before. Since they were evidently not Chinese, would that make them honorary Negroes or honorary whites? Third-generation Californians, they all held law degrees, which might have helped to elevate them above the Chinese narcotics dealers in there. But then again, they had to be shipped from that Japanese concentration camp in Wyoming because they were guilty of being even more anti-American by refusing to join the armed services. Irony isn’t a strong point in penal administration, but there must have been a pang of conscience somewhere, because they kept those three men in a holding area for a week until they decided. The warden finally made them honorary Negroes. After all, he told them, there are other good Japs out there fighting for this country over in Europe, and you agitators could have too.

  Regardless of what cell block you ended up in, the day began at dawn with the clanging of a huge bell that startled you from sleep with your heart pounding. If you weren’t out of the cot and at the cell door to be counted by the time the guard came down your row, that deafening bell would clang again and again until the count tallied up. It didn’t matter if that creep saw a man struggling to make it up to the bars, he had to be right at the door or he wasn’t counted. Line up for the cold shower. Line up for your breakfast of corn mush, coffee, and toast. Line up to go out on your work detail. I thought southern California was hot until I ended up with a pick and shovel in Arizona. They had to supply us with caps or they would have lost a lot of manpower from heat strokes. The caps didn’t help me; I would break out in rashes, even on the palms of my hands, that blistered and ran. Getting a pass to the infirmary was almost impossible if you were a CO. They’d already branded us as traitors or cowards and thought that any physical complaint was an excuse to get out of work.

  There were only a handful of COs in the entire population, and while all of us were there for different reasons—religious or political—we were all quite vocal and a general pain to the prison administration. We were paying a high price for our principles and so we certainly weren’t going to be quiet about them now. The COs formed a committee and told the warden that we wanted to eat together in the dining hall. He told us that it wouldn’t be possible because coloreds and whites weren’t allowed to do that. We told him to show us the law in the penal code stating that was the case. He told us there’d be no point because the light bulbs would be too dim in solitary confinement for us to read it anyway.

  We ignored his threat and organized a hunger strike. It went a lot better than I thought it would. Not that many of the convicted felons around us cared about our cause one way or the other, but it gave them a chance to be doing something that really put it to the screws. I learned that was what they called the guards, and I picked up other words in their language as well. To hear them tell it, there wasn’t a man in there who had done anything wrong. All the armed robbers, murderers, dope peddlers, forgers, and Mann Act violators were up on a bum rap. But since I was only doing soft time, I’d better peel ’em or one of the screws might make sure I took a box parole. Translation: Since I couldn’t be bullied with only a short-term sentence over my head, I had to be watchful about causing too much trouble or the prison authorities might decide to send me out of there in a pine box.

  To be honest, I was more afraid of my fellow inmates than of the warden. I understood bureaucrats, and without a rule book, they are totally lost. Our dissent was organized, nonviolent, and within our personal rights. We had to be in prison. We had to get up when that bell clanged. We had to be in the dining hall at specified times. But nowhere did it say we had to eat. It was exhilarating to watch them crumble as our hunger strike went into its fifteenth day. Men were fainting on work detail and overcrowding the infirmary. The medical staff was going into overtime and triple time. They were running out of IVs. Things were simply getting out of hand. Rumors spread that there might be an official investigation. Bureaucrats have nightmares about investigations. Rumors spread that there might be an official inventory of the food supplies and budget. And bureaucrats have nightmares about inventories. The warden was losing more sleep than we were losing weight. He finally called the committee into his office and announced that his facility would no longer enforce segregated tables, although it would surprise him greatly if any inmate—of any race—could swallow his food sitting next to a bunch of yellow-bellied Commie agitators. But his attitude hardly dampened our spirits.

  We COs marched into the dining hall victorious. Our country was born in dissent, built on dissent; and here was proof positive that there was hope in the American way. There were some diehards, colored and white, who still insisted on staying to themselves, but they didn’t dampen our spirits either. The COs would grin and give each other Victory signs up and down the tables. I found myself rubbing elbows at my first integrated meal between one man who’d scalped his mother-in-law, hoping to pin it on their Indian gardener, and another who’d run a mail order specializing in postcards of donkeys with naked redh
eads. Is this democracy or what?

  In spite of my tone, it is not my intention to make light of what we accomplished. COs don’t need another bum rap from me; they were all brave men who were willing to sacrifice their personal freedom for their ideals. I’ll dare anyone to spend just a single week in one of those prisons then return and tell me we chose the easy way out of the war. Winning that concession from the warden didn’t stop that damn bell from clanging each morning, the head count like cattle, the endless lines. And I haven’t spoken about the smell. I suppose because I want to forget it. The place reeked of fear. My own and everyone else’s. No one trusted anyone else, and for good reason. Caged up there together, a guard held your life in his hands, and you held his in yours. There was one inmate given a boot party and three guards knifed that I heard about while I was there—and you hear everything through the grapevine—and yes, one box parole. A Mexican kid who made the mistake of being too pretty and too unwilling.

  I was never raped, because I never resisted. And I bet you’re thinking, So that explains it. Well, you’re as wrong as Jesse. I’m not a homosexual, but I’m not stupid either. He was six-feet-two, as broad as he was tall, as ugly as he was mean, a repeat offender serving for three counts of murder with nothing left to lose. And he wasn’t a homosexual either. He wasn’t anything but something that could only gauge it was alive by watching other things die. They assigned me to his cell as a reprisal for helping to organize the hunger strike. The extra bunk had been left vacant by that Mexican kid. For weeks he never did anything but watch me as I read, as I wrote letters home, as I rediscovered my lost Catholicism. His oily tan face following me around that cramped cell. His hazel eyes burnt empty. And then for weeks I had to hear each night after the lights were out, I’m gonna fuck you or kill you. He never made a move. It was nothing more than that: I’m gonna fuck you or kill you. It does wonders for your sleep. I lost more weight than I had during the hunger strike. I broke out in hives, even without the sun, and spent a lot of time in the infirmary. But eventually I had to be returned to my cell, and eventually they had to call lights-out. I’m gonna fuck you or kill you. I wept for that Mexican kid. He had only been in for passing forged checks. And he’d only been eighteen. And I’m sure he’d read that choice as no choice at all. But I knew better.

  I received my walking papers fourteen months later and the Department of Corrections would have been happy to know that I was, indeed, a changed man. It was spring and the cotton stalks bloomed with creamy white flowers. The full sunlight made the tight petals glow, and to look out over the endless rows of them hurt my eyes. I blinked a lot when I returned home. I’d leave my bed and go no farther than the front porch, but there was nowhere to turn without meeting the brightness of it all, the space. It felt good to have the solidness of the house behind my back. I’d lean my chair against it, watching intently as the blooms began to slowly bleed into a deep pink. I only spoke when spoken to, but no one bothered me. Even my uncles knew better than to ask me any questions or to come by and lecture. Unlike my father, they weren’t the type of men to read my eyes, but they saw that my hair was now streaked with gray.

  I used all of that silence to think. V-E Day came that same season and I was glad that the war would be winding down. I had lost my cousin Tomaso and hoped I wouldn’t be losing any more. So endless, those rows. They had shed the pink petals and were green now. And those small green pods would grow fuller and fuller until they burst open, once again, into my grandmother’s dream. I thought a lot about my grandparents and what they might think of us now. Imperial Valley Enterprises. Was it about that for her? The sons and grandsons of her sons were already planning to diversify. The future was not in cotton. Yes, there would always be some of that, but the land itself was becoming more valuable than anything we could grow upon it. And we had so much land. I could spend the rest of my life right there, on my little piece of America, and lack for nothing.

  And I thought long and hard about doing just that. I had another year left before earning my doctorate, but I didn’t need to go back. I was more than equipped to take over our bookkeeping; my training in statistics could remain a hobby, something to amuse my children with. We could move from the toss of a coin to specifics about the crops. What are the odds that that far row of cotton bolls will burst open before the one in front of it? What are the chances that they’ll do it simultaneously? How much do you factor in the hours of sunlight for each? How much the amount of irrigation? Because I will have to train my children about this land. I will have to breed it into them that this was their great-grandmother’s dream. And I saw my sons, dark as the night, proud as the eagles, picking white gold from the land. And I must, above all, teach them that our dictionaries are totally useless when it comes to the definition of this dream. Look out there, I will tell them, and what you see is …

  Ha lúp. It was the first expression in Cuchan that Aunt Hazel taught me. Because, she said, it was the first one her mother had taught them all. Obviously, she thought it more important than their learning Mama or Papa or hungry or thirsty, this word for something that they, as children, would never see. And that her own mother had never seen, or the mother before her. Ha lúp. They were an ancient people of deserts and dry ravines, with heaven for them a land where the Great Spirit would lead you to rest, where the shade was good and the cacti sweet; so what possible need for the word snow? I know how I used it in prison. After they called lights-out and the pain soared beyond the reach of my Christian prayers, it became a mantra to replace all of the discarded reasons for my having chosen not to die.

  A lot of silence. A lot of time to think. The cotton bolls burst open a hundredfold and heavy, making it seem a small miracle for those slender stalks to hold so much. Horizon to horizon, the earth offered nothing that wasn’t soft and thick and full. The farm was always its most beautiful to me then. As a child I used to ask, Papa, when did God have time to get everything so clean? I started rising at dawn to go out with the field hands. I lived with a hoe, chopping weeds until the calluses on my palms opened and bled afresh. And when it became the season to harvest, I picked cotton, dragging those heavy burlap sacks between the endless rows, working until my legs stiffened and my back ached. Sweat stung my eyes and I refused to wipe it away. And still my family left me alone. I began to remember why I loved them. With the crop brought in, I told Papa I was ready to finish my degree at Stanford. And after that? he asked. Well, after that I would just have to see.

  I knew I wasn’t returning to the valley. My grandparents had taken us as far as they could in that direction. Yes, I would always hold their land, but east of the Colorado was my land too. I had paid dearly for the right to be an American, and so without malice, without fanfare, I was going out to claim what I had bought. When you keep things at their basic, life becomes so easy. My goal was to open my own marketing firm. The first step was earning my own money. And you earn money by seeking employment that you’re qualified to perform. It was that simple. From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, I applied at firms and industrial corporations that advertised for marketing analysts—no experience needed—and presented my credentials.

  I began this whole saga with the result of those interviews, but the issue here is the process. It was a growing field; qualified candidates were few; an advertisement would stay in the papers for weeks. And I kept returning. I researched the firm’s history in trade journals; the products, the customer demographics. But hadn’t they just told me … Yes, I know what they had told me, but the job I was most qualified to do was still available. They began to know my entire name by heart. That was important. I returned again with sales forecasts, impeccably drawn charts. I exhausted every possible avenue for their reservations—and mine—over their giving me the position. That was important. Whether they ended up calling the police or hiring someone else, I wanted to be remembered.

  I’m sure I was, in more ways than one, if this whole process took place over the course of the summer. And, yes, this is w
here we finally arrive at the reason for my present wardrobe. It wasn’t a gimmick, and I was out to embarrass no one, least of all myself. In fact, it was liberating to be rid of the bitterness I had carried with me. Each new opening in my field was an opportunity to prove that I could handle the job, and putting in the extra effort made me quite proud of myself. It had the opposite effect on the people who kept turning me down, and I was even able to feel pity for them as they avoided my eyes and wilted a little with each page of my impeccable sales charts. I could feel the desperation in the way they kept reading and rereading my college transcripts, flipping through the charts—God, how they could use someone like this, needed someone like this—and then the shattered hopes when they finally looked back up at me and a different man hadn’t materialized in front of them. Someday, one of the more tortured and honest VPs mumbled, we’ll bring ourselves to hire a Negro. You’ll be doing your company a better favor, I said, when you can bring yourself to hire the most qualified man.

  The scenario repeated itself (with slight variations) in six major cities a total of thirty-five times and still counting, when a massive heat wave hit the northern section of the country. By this time I was as far as Chicago and had accumulated enough experience to venture a few projections about my personal circumstances. My conclusions were grounded solely in my professional training, although they didn’t call for anything beyond the most elementary principles of statistics. I sat on the cramped bed of yet another rooming house in my boxer shorts with my feet in a basin of cool water; a slide rule, sheets of graphing paper, and pencils spread around me. Just walking to the general post office had made my flannel suit unbearable and it hung on a small hook next to a sweat-stained cotton shirt. But the trip had netted me four more enthusiastic replies to my query letters to breakfast-food companies in Grand Rapids and Detroit. If I met with no success in Chicago, I’d be moving on to Michigan, then Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. By this time I had also started targeting firms that could benefit from creating the position of a marketing analyst and sending them tailor-made proposals that demonstrated why. If the response was positive, I next telephoned and set up a meeting based on my arrival time for that city. I stopped disrupting my schedule for the excited Drop-everything-and-run appeals from company officials, because that had only meant backtracking and picking up where I left off.