Brothers (and Me)

by Donna Britt

  After the party’s near fight, I thought: What if he risks himself?

  Such idle fears didn’t consume me for long. In August 1969, Darrell left for Indiana University. Bloomington was “only” three hours away, but it may as well have been in Greenland.

  Yet amazingly, the emotional cataclysm I feared never came. Darrell’s frequent trips home and my fascination with watching him transform his basement room into a hippie haven, complete with a water bed and a parachute suspended from the ceiling, softened the blow. Besides, Bruce quietly slipped into the brother-confidant role. Another funny, sensitive brother had my back.

  I would survive.

  Date Rape 101

  Donna in her Hampton Institute dorm room, 1973.

  The doctor, whose darkness isn’t just a matter of pigment, looks contemptuous as I sit before him, naked except for an office-issued gown. He thinks he knows me: another foolish, knocked-up girl home from college. His questions are brusque; his examining hands worse, squeezing my breast hard like it’s a rubber dog toy and he’s locating the squeaker. Scowling at my grimace, he says, “If you’re old enough to have sex, you’re old enough to handle that.” My terrible need of him doesn’t keep me from thinking, If you knew me at all, you’d know I’m not supposed to be here.

  When I think back to that sunny, wish-I-could-take-it-back day, it’s the white ceiling that surprises me. I couldn’t have known the countless ceilings I would gaze at, occupied but disengaged, from my back. This was the first, the one whose blankness engrossed me as something unsalvageable was ripped away. You’d think its details would be seared into memory, but they aren’t. That I even noticed what was above my head—with so much pain and disbelief and no!no!no! distracting me—was a miracle. Yet like millions of ceiling-struck women, I just observed.

  Women can tell you about ceilings. How absorbing they can be when your spine is smashed under the weight of a man—a man you love, or tolerate, or don’t even know, but whom you wish was anywhere but inside you. How lazily time passes as your eyes sweep their expanses, how transfixing their slenderest cracks become. Such ceilings are as intimate and as unknowable as the body pressing yours, whose panting urgency and smothering heft can’t be denied—and yet are so unfelt, the whole business could be happening to another woman. A woman who wants him there.

  This man, my first, had no idea who I really was—and cared as little as the ceiling that had swallowed me.

  It was 1974. Two years earlier, at the height of collegiate affirmative action, I had been a black, urban, working-class National Merit semifinalist, the type of high school graduate who wasn’t just welcomed at prestigious Ivy League schools but who received substantial tuition assistance.

  I wasn’t interested. Without exploring my options, I accepted a partial scholarship from the historically black Hampton Institute and boarded a train to a Virginia campus I’d never visited.

  Was I insane?

  Not entirely. I wanted to be a writer who explored the complexities of race and culture, and neither Darrell nor Steve, who was studying art at Indiana State University, seemed especially enamored of their majority-white universities. A black college could help me wrap my heart more completely around my blackness, allow me to engage in fiery debates about Malcolm X’s and Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacies, and tutor kids at a school that a century earlier had taught former slaves in defiance of Jim Crow. I knew nothing about my worth on the college-freshman market, but well-regarded Hampton wanted me. That was enough.

  Until I arrived. Hampton’s campus seemed ancient and threadbare next to the sparkling structures and emerald lawns I’d seen at Indiana and Purdue. Freshman girls were housed at century-old Virginia-Cleveland Hall, a medieval, turreted dorm that seemed the perfect castle for imprisoning a Disney princess. My sweet Atlanta-born roommate, Debbie, was a delight, but hardly seemed the type to discuss W.E.B. DuBois’s musings. Why was I here?

  Then Debbie and I stepped outside. Scores of male students had gathered at Virginia-Cleveland to ogle the new talent. Everywhere I looked, crowding the lawn and perched two-deep along the stairway, were men: Men with sandy, inky, and loosely curled Afros. Men whose tight T-shirts snaked over broad shoulders. Men of every height, weight, and shade “fine” came in. My head spun back and forth with a speed that invited whiplash.

  I’d been hasty. Hampton deserved a chance.

  I never found the activists I’d envisioned. At Hampton, being late for lunch was a radical act. Or maybe I overlooked the philosophical set while stuffing myself at Hampton’s all-you-can-date buffet. Still looking for helium love, I fell “in like” with three guys before Christmas. But the buffet went both ways. Most men were less interested in romance than in sampling every dish.

  I wasn’t alone in adjusting to changes. At Indiana State, Steve stunned everyone by marrying his winsome—and pregnant—girlfriend, Irene. Steve… married? Miles away, I tried to believe it.

  Bruce, who had made faces and cracked jokes as he waved good-bye to me at the train station as I left for Hampton, had returned home, shut himself in his room, and cried. Weeks later, he unexpectedly broke up with his first girlfriend. It wasn’t enough that I had abandoned him to Gary’s dreariness. Now he was really alone—and the only kid left at home to satisfy Mom’s need for connection. Taking refuge in the basement and FM radio, he listened to underground rockers like Alice Cooper (“I’m eighteen… I gotta get out of this place”), practiced his guitar tirelessly, and dreamed of a rock career.

  Then there was Darrell. The aspiring actor took advanced acting and stagecraft classes at Indiana and pledged Alpha Phi Alpha, moving into the homey brick frat house’s biggest $63-per-month room. In a letter to Mom, Darrell called himself “penniless,” asking for $35 for burgers and pizza, as well as curtains and paint to spruce up his “pitiful” space. Social life at I.U. was pretty nice, he wrote, though he wouldn’t bore us with his “feminine conquests.” Apologizing for the letter’s brevity, he wrote finally, “Tell Donna I’ll write later when I get more time.”

  Soon afterward, he shocked us all by earning a spot on Indiana’s junior varsity basketball team. Darrell—who at five ten had never made high school varsity—walked on during tryouts for the Big 10 squad and went instantly into “the zone,” defending taller opponents, making impossible shots, outplaying even future NBA star George McGinnis. Making the squad was thrilling. But Indiana’s team had just come under the direction of the soon-to-be-infamous coach Bobby Knight. Darrell hated him.

  When he didn’t make the varsity team the following year, Darrell quit playing hoops for Indiana. A year later, he left college altogether. The university wanted him to declare a major; Darrell just wanted to make people laugh. He was working odd jobs in Gary when a friend asked him to share the driving on a trip to California. Finally seeing his chance to pursue stardom, Darrell moved in with our aunt Hortense in Los Angeles. I could hardly believe that my beloved brother was living in a city I’d never visited, his life a complete mystery. One day soon, I told myself, we’d pick up where we’d left off—maybe after he became a star!

  Back at Hampton, I finally fell in love—with my school’s bottomless diversity. My fellow students included midwestern badasses, southern belles, swaggering urbanites, and flat-out nerds from across the United States. But my closest new friend was—big surprise—a man: a funny, drug-loving introvert who told me everything.

  A voracious reader, fellow Mass Media major Jeff Rivers had grown up on Philadelphia’s tough streets, where he’d developed fascinating theories about African-American invincibility (“After a nuclear blast, ten thousand brothers will be hanging onto one hanger in space”), black people’s real purpose (“God keeps niggaz around to make Him laugh”), and death (“Rich, white people never die; they fake their deaths and move to a posh hidden island when life gets too deep”). My own ideas were so comparatively lame that my role in the friendship seemed to be dragging the reluctant Jeff to class and praising his humor and creativ
ity so much he called me his “cheerleader.”

  Of course, having just one close male friend to coddle was unthinkable. I soon became the unofficial female mascot for an entire group of trash-talking young men, unthinkingly re-creating what I’d had at home—emotional intimacy with several very different guys. Insightful Philly Dog, probing Slim, cynical Marty, and goofy Dr. J became the “brothers” to whom I gave—pomading their scalps, encouraging their romances, rubbing their shoulders even after they’d engaged in such questionable behavior as a spirited cafeteria debate over which is better for a woman to have: a great ass or big boobs. Outnumbered but unbowed, Dr. J leapt on a table and shouted: “I am a TITTY man! And proud of it!”

  Once again, I was surrounded by men. Yet sex remained a coming attraction. By late sophomore year, I was twenty—and increasingly aware that I still hadn’t “done it.” Plenty of guys would have gladly cured my “problem.” An unidentified male once shouted, “Give it up, Donna Britt!” from a men’s dorm window. But I was, as Jeff put it, a “closet square” whose tight jeans belied her clamped-together knees and who was so romantic I could sing entire Broadway scores. Lovemaking, I still felt, should wait for love.

  Yet I was looking forward to sex—glorious, poetic, earth-shattering sex—as soon as I found a man worth sharing it with. After passing on intimacy with Gary, I felt that my first time had to be magic.

  Among the guys who’d stop by my room to chat or offer me a lift to McDonald’s was a thickset Baltimore senior whom I’ll call Ted. Because he never said or did anything to suggest his interest was more than friendly, I assumed Ted, a member of a popular fraternity, saw me as a baby sister. One bright day, he invited me for a ride. Stopping at a park, Ted gave me slices of bread to throw to ducks circling a pond. How sweet, I thought. But it wasn’t until Ted asked to show me his apartment that I felt his interest might be romantic. I wasn’t terribly attracted to him, but why not share a few kisses with a guy nice enough to take me duck-feeding?

  At the apartment, Ted introduced me to his roommate, a popular senior. In his room, we sat side by side on his mattress on the floor. He kissed me. I kissed him back. By now I was an expert at corralling my desire while keeping a guy’s at a safe simmer. But Ted kept probing, pushing me into the mattress, fumbling with my zipper. When I realized he was actually trying to have sex with me, I said, “No! Stop!” sharply, vehemently. “Really. Stop!” He didn’t. Stunned that he was ignoring me, I shifted beneath his strength, insisting, “No! No!” Why didn’t he stop? Finally he did; we both lay panting.

  But again, Ted’s lips sought mine. Grateful that my friend had come to his senses, I accepted what I thought would be a light, concluding kiss. Emboldened, Ted pressed harder. Disbelieving—hadn’t this ended?—I struggled more. Crushed under his weight, his hands everywhere, I started to feel like we’d been tussling forever. But I didn’t scream. What if his roommate told people about the hysterical sophomore who thought Ted wanted her for more than a fuck?

  How could I have been so stupid, misreading Ted’s intentions, putting myself in this ugly, desperate situation after years of waiting for magic? Overwhelmed by shame, weariness, hopelessness, and self-recrimination, I finally stopped struggling. When he tore inside me, I muffled my own scream.

  I don’t remember whether I moved or lay frozen as Ted finished. What I do remember is staring at the ceiling, feeling myself being absorbed by it. Its emptiness seemed as involving as the intensity roiling in Ted. Then it was over.

  I got up, walked dazed to the bathroom. Wiping the scarlet from between my legs, I stared out of the bathroom window at a green field. Words swooped like restive birds around my mind: I’m not a virgin anymore. Not a virgin… Had I been standing there ten minutes? Twenty? Rousing myself with a new thought—maybe it was dumb to have waited for… this—I emerged. Ted, stunned that the woman he’d forced into sex had been a virgin, seemed subdued. He patted my back—a tentative, brotherly pat—as I got out of his car. Lying on my bed, I stared at the ceiling in my own room too. Not a virgin.

  I wasn’t outraged or angry. I just felt flattened. It never occurred to me to tell the police. “Date rape” had yet to penetrate the public consciousness. Besides, wasn’t it my fault?

  My fault that a near stranger whom I’d stupidly trusted had stolen what I’d been saving for years. My fault that I hadn’t run away when I could have, and that my lame attempts to stop him were ineffective. My fault that I didn’t scream out of worry about what he—a liar, a manipulator—and his roommate, whom I didn’t even know, might say. My fault that I’d be the one left to weigh and relive, cry and beat myself up, about this violation for years to come.

  My first impulse was to tell myself, and a few friends, that the incident was no big deal. To prove it, I had protected sex with a guy I’d dated for most of the semester. Afterward I snickered about how cool I was, having sex—yes, I’d reframed the rape that way—with two guys in a month. Back home for summer vacation, I tried to forget that duck-feeding afternoon as I waited for the monthly period whose appearance had never been a concern but that now was stubbornly absent. Finally, I told Mom everything. When a doctor verified my fears, she asked, “What do you want to do?”

  My honest response—“Go back two months and lock myself in my dorm room”—wasn’t helpful. Abortion had recently been legalized in the United States, but issues of legality hardly affected my inner battle. I wanted nothing more to do with Ted, whom I’d phoned to inform of the pregnancy and who spoke vaguely about being supportive. I neither believed nor wanted him.

  I was being punished—for having gone to Ted’s apartment, for letting the ceiling take me. Whatever I chose, I would suffer. I didn’t want a baby, especially one conceived like this. I didn’t want to kill a baby, either, no matter how often I asked myself why I should pay—interrupt my schooling, bear the stigma of unwed motherhood—for an act I’d neither wanted nor enjoyed. I recalled how much I adored Steve’s and Irene’s baby; surely I would love my own. But would I resent a child who stunted my dreams and made me look like just another careless, unwed black mother? I imagined carrying and bearing an infant and giving it to strangers—a black child whose adoption wouldn’t be assured. Back and forth I went, replaying every argument I’d heard: Abortion was murder. A fetus wasn’t a real baby.

  It was real enough for me to feel devastated by the thought of destroying it. If all I would be destroying was this tiny being’s potential, that potential deserved my acknowledgment, my concern. There was no escaping my heart’s yes-no swirl; every thought was a reproach or a prayer. Mom—ever the abandoned child picking at the scab of her unwantedness—wasn’t conflicted. It’s your decision, she said. But if you have a baby, it will change your life forever.

  At the time, I didn’t know Mom-Mommy’s story. But Mom did. She knew that fifty years later, I’d unwittingly repeated her mother’s—and her own—misfortune: pregnant after my first, unwanted sexual experience. The prospect of me giving birth to a baby like her must have raised the specter of her own rejection.

  I asked my mother what she thought I should do. When she told me the truth, I asked her to make the appointment. The doctor was haughty and sullen, but I was grateful when he said I’d be unconscious for the procedure. Before I fell asleep, I stared at another white ceiling and begged my baby and God for their forgiveness. After the procedure, I awoke feeling relieved—unaware of the hundreds of nights I’d lie awake, certain that I’d removed myself from the circle of God’s love. A decade of prayers later, I knew: God had forgiven me long before I forgave myself.

  Although I doubted Ted had trouble pardoning himself for what had happened, I sometimes wondered how he’d processed that bright afternoon. Years later, I described my first sexual encounter to a street-smart male friend. He said it’s not uncommon for certain men to physically push a woman toward sex until, overwhelmed, she stops struggling. “They’re waiting for you to relax,” he said. “It’s part of the seduction.” Would Ted
somehow remember our encounter as something that I’d wanted? Did he have any idea that he’d taken something irreplaceable? That I saw him as a rapist?

  All I know is this: Almost twenty years later, I was a mother of two and a columnist at the Washington Post when I opened an envelope with a Baltimore postmark. Inside was a note from Ted. “You may not remember me,” it began. “If you have a free night, maybe we could have dinner…”

  I never answered.

  For years, I told myself that my sex life’s painful beginning had no lasting effects. Human beings are survivors. We keep walking, talking, working, laughing, and behaving as if everything’s fine when we’re a crumbling mess. I was too shrewd and hip, I decided, to be thrown for long by my girlhood fantasies ending on a frat boy’s mattress. So what if my dreams about this once-in-my-lifetime moment had been shattered? All I could control, all that mattered, was now. Now I was free. Now, unburdened by naive expectations, I could be like other women my age and enjoy sex with whomever I pleased.

  The truth was that I was neither shrewd nor hip. I hadn’t just lost my virginity to Ted; some measure of my sexual confidence, and my trust in men’s basic goodness, went with it. It was impossible to feel like the liberated woman I presented to the world when I doubted most men and my very soul’s worthiness. No wonder “sex with whomever I pleased” often wasn’t pleasing.

  I fell into bed with a couple of men in the following year, including one I’d adored as a freshman who’d dropped me when my “sex must wait” rule proved nonnegotiable. I hardly enjoyed any of it. I wasn’t sure why. After all those years of refusing to give myself completely to a man who gave equally back, Ted had happened. That experience was all about him—his intention, his desire, his taking. Giving had nothing to do with it.