Swimming Between Worlds

by Elaine Neil Orr

  “You’re really good with people,” she said. “I’m not.”

  Tacker considered her comment. It wasn’t what he had dreamed of a girl saying. But her unshielded face was exactly what he imagined. He looked at her unsocked feet, her ankle, the arch of her foot implied in her flat shoes, the architecture of her Achilles tendon. He moved to circle her ankle with his thumb and middle finger. Immediately she went still. He stayed just so, feeling his heartbeat, registering her tension, imagining her head bent down looking at him.

  “Please stay right here,” he said.

  “If that’s what you want,” she said.

  Her ankle was firm and tender at once. He rubbed it, then stopped and just held it. “I really like you,” he said. He pressed into the soft area between her ankle and the tendon.

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  He let go of her foot, stood all at once, reached for her hands and pulled her up. Her head tilted back, and she looked up at him. He bent to her mouth, and she kissed him for a long time.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I NEED SOME water,” Kate said at last.

  She held his hand and he followed her, barefoot, to the kitchen. She pulled the lever back on an ice tray, took one square of frozen water, picked up her hair, and wiped the back of her neck with it. Then she put the slip of ice into Tacker’s mouth.

  She reached into the refrigerator and brought out the Forelle pear and they stood next to the sink as she fed him lopsided half-moons of the fruit, sliced from the skin to the center, leaving only the core. Tacker left Kate’s house enormously grateful for Sweden, which, with any luck, would swallow James whole.

  * * *

  • • •

  TACKER’S MOTHER WANTED him to go with her to hear the Reverend Bobby Ransom at First Baptist on Sunday night. “Next month he’s going on a world tour. He’s going to Nigeria, that town where you were.”

  “Ibadan, Mom. It’s a city. Where did you hear about this?” Tacker took the last bite of his mother’s chicken potpie. “We’re not Baptist.” He wondered if she hoped to curb his political activity.

  “There might be a chance to talk. You could tell him about the college there. Some of your friends might go see him.”

  “Mr. Ransom’s not going to want to talk to me.”

  “Reverend Ransom. Well, I wish you would go with me,” she said. “Your father won’t.”

  So she wasn’t trying to redirect his extracurricular activities. She just wanted company. “I’ve been wanting you to meet a girl,” he said. “I’ll bring her. Satisfied?”

  Her eyes sparkled.

  * * *

  • • •

  TACKER HELD KATE’S hand. His mother walked on his other side with her hand looped through his arm. The church was lit up like a ship. People streamed in from every direction.

  “Goodness,” Kate said.

  Tacker had no idea this guy was so popular.

  “I told you we should have left earlier,” his mother said. “I hope there’s a spot left in the balcony.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Tacker said.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE ORGAN STARTED up and the space took on an amber glow. Tacker thought of First Baptist, Lagos, Samuel explaining: Everything for constructing that church was sent here by boat after your civil war. Would Bobby Ransom be preaching there? Maybe even staying in the hostel next door, the whites-only hostel? Independence still had not come. That would be October, eight months away. Tacker could imagine the pomp and circumstance of independence: flags unfurling, chiefs and traditional rulers in voluminous robes, grade school children bearing flowers, youths in sunglasses riding their bicycles in parades of their own making. He felt the nagging guilt he always felt when he remembered Samuel. He hadn’t heard back from him yet.

  The organist stopped. A man in the row behind them cleared his throat. Tacker looked at Kate’s hands in her lap. Someone was playing the piano. Reverend Ransom was going to Nigeria. Samuel might indeed hear him. Suddenly Ransom mounted the steps to the pulpit. The piano music reached a crescendo. When the well-known preacher reached his seat behind the pulpit and turned to look out on the congregation, a huge smile across his face, Tacker was surprised at how tall and handsome he was. Ransom looked like Charlton Heston, with his jutting chin, tanned face, and enormous white teeth. The music minister lifted his arms and they stood to sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” Reverend Ransom seemed to grow taller. Tacker let his hand graze Kate’s skirt. He felt as he did before a football game when someone sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After the hymn and a prayer, they all sat, including Ransom, while the minister of First Baptist extended a welcome. Ransom strode to the pulpit.

  Tacker heard the man’s cadence more than the words, though certain passages seemed to fire the preacher up. “My friends, I am going out as Paul taught us . . . So many in darkness . . . childhood to old age . . . never hear of Jesus.”

  Reverend Ransom came to the end of his sermon. He was returning to his seat behind the pulpit when a man in the third row stood.

  “Reverend Ransom, if I may.”

  The music minister stood for the last hymn but the man persevered.

  “Reverend Ransom, surely you will allow me a question. You’re going to be gone several months. There are things here that press on us.”

  The movie star preacher moved back toward the pulpit. “Yes, go ahead,” he said.

  “Reverend Ransom. What should we do about the Negro problem? All this activity going on here; sit-ins and such. What do you think about it?”

  “Well, that’s a good question,” Ransom said. “I’ve gone to God about it. After all, I’m getting ready to go to Africa. Folks may ask me about this very thing. We’re hearing some demands from our colored brethren about rights. The right to sit at lunch counters. To gain employment in white-owned establishments. There’s talk of desegregating public amusements. I respect Negro people for their desire to better their lives. But we have a special situation in this country. We have learned to get along in our separate communities. Negroes have created some fine colleges. Certainly colored folks have their own beautiful churches that preach the word of God. But in social situations, I don’t condone integration, especially where young people are concerned. I see a lot of danger there.” He paused as if he were waiting on God for an update. “I’ll be praying with you about all of this on my travels. I’ll carry it with me.” Reverend Ransom lifted his head so that his gaze seemed to depart the church and aim straight at heaven.

  “Thank you,” the man in the third row said.

  A collective sigh went up from the congregation. Tacker felt a chill at the back of his throat. His mother was turning to a page in the hymnal. He stood.

  “If I may,” Tacker said, projecting his voice from the balcony.

  “Now, we can’t keep the reverend here all night,” the minister said.

  “It’s all right,” Reverend Ransom said. “One of your fine young men here wants to say something.”

  Someone—was it Kate or his mother?—was tugging on the back of Tacker’s jacket.

  “I’ve been to Nigeria, sir, for a year and a half, on a building project. I was welcomed there like a brother. I’ve never known smarter, more industrious, or kinder people.”

  “What a witness,” Reverend Ransom said. “I appreciate that word from you.”

  “My point, Reverend Ransom, is that Nigerians treated me as they treat one another, or better. I am not a Bible scholar as you are. But I do know the Bible tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Why doesn’t that include Negroes? Why not show them the courtesy of sitting next to you at a lunch counter? Jesus ate with everyone. I remember that from Sunday school.”

  “My Lord,” a lady to Tacker’s left said.

  Tacker’s hands were shaking and he put t
hem on the pew in front of him and held tight.

  “Son,” Reverend Ransom said, “there is a time for every season under heaven. But as a man who seeks to know the will of God in all things, I must tell you that what is good is also complex and getting there is more complex. The ultimate good is to lead people to salvation. I’m sure you can agree with me on that. God bless you.”

  As they bowed their heads for the prayer, Tacker kept his eyes open. Reverend Ransom was intoning the prayer, full of high-flown phrases. As the evangelist reached a high point, Tacker let go of the pew in front of him and looked at his palms, turning his hands over. He observed his skin and considered it as he never had before, not even in Nigeria. What did skin mean really? What was the difference?

  Tacker’s mother nudged him. He was still standing while those about him had sat down. The offering plates were passed, a love offering for Reverend Ransom. Tacker’s mother put in a five-dollar bill. Then there was the call to join the church or rededicate your life and half the church went forward. Fortunately Kate did not.

  On the way down the balcony stairs, Tacker took Kate’s hand. He hadn’t looked at her or she at him. Tacker’s mother made a point to speak with several people she knew.

  “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about the sit-ins,” Kate said when he dropped her off at her house.

  “You do know that Wake Forest students went to one of those sit-ins, right?”

  “It could be dangerous,” she said.

  “Don’t you want a man to stand up for what he believes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I just don’t want to lose what we have.”

  “What do you think we’ll lose?”

  “A lot of people are angry, Tacker. They might not come to your store. People are angry enough to cause damage.”

  “I went to the sit-in the day those students were arrested. The officer let me off. Another time and he might not. I think I know what I’m dealing with.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you might not be ready to think about it.”

  “What if I’m not?”

  * * *

  • • •

  TACKER WOKE AT two in the morning, the room seeming to tilt sideways. The “social situations” to which Reverend Ransom referred would include swimming pools, of course. He felt certain that swimming pools would be the worst place to integrate according to the preacher and most of the good white folks of Winston-Salem. He recalled Vaughan-Richards’s plan for his house on the Lagos lagoon, the jutting veranda attached to circular rooms, the cornerstone of the Nigerian high school, goats in the field, Samuel’s face with its three lines on each cheek. The plans they drew on the large tables in the classroom block, the pink and blue pencils they purchased at UTC in downtown Ibadan, the Ponies he and Samuel rode to get there, the clatter of rain in a sudden storm. He saw himself with his mother in the library checking out books, pictures of the Roman aqueducts they studied together, his Schwinn New World, the windmill they constructed in the garden. The classrooms in college. Long blackboards, scrolls of paper like a highway, working late into the night on his senior design: a solarium for the new NC State arboretum. The design got him hired by Clintok. And then there was Kate. Tacker searched for his headboard to bring the world back to order. He couldn’t find it. He’d fallen out of bed.

  It was five o’clock. He showered. In his living room, he pulled out the Vaughan-Richards–inspired sketch he’d done and almost tore it in two. Then he thought better of it and slipped it into an envelope and stuck it in a book. He needed to get on with an architectural firm, do some renderings like he’d meant to do earlier. Now was the time. He got out the Yellow Pages and made a list and then he wrote five identical letters:

  Dear Sirs,

  Allow me to introduce myself. I finished the five-year degree in architecture, School of Design, State College, in 1957. Among other honors, I was selected by the Clintok Corporation for a project in Nigeria, serving in the capacity of a graduate teaching assistant to produce a prototype for high schools to be built all across the country. For family reasons, I am currently employed as manager of my father’s store, Hart’s Grocery, on First Street. My intention is to seek licensure as soon as I can, and to that end I would welcome an opportunity to work with your firm producing renderings on a part-time basis. Please see my résumé attached and let me know if it would be suitable for me to call your office for an appointment. If you contact my references, I believe you’ll learn that I’m good with a pencil. Being a Winston-Salem native, nothing would please me more than to be working as an architect in this city.

  Cordially,

  The letter was true if the truth was slightly bent; his languor following his “release” by Clintok was the reason he was working at his father’s store. He just had to hope no one would feel a need to dig too deep into those lost months.

  At lunchtime he took the Indian to the post office and dropped the letters off.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE SECOND WEEK of March, Kate heard the mailman on her front porch and when she opened the mailbox, two envelopes gleamed within like slender gloves full of fireflies. She pulled them out to discover the most beautiful Swedish stamps. Kate steeled herself, thinking of her last time with James, his anger, her initial willingness, his aggression. She felt bound to him yet filled with dread. Inside, she placed the unopened envelopes on her mother’s dressing table. What might they offer, or not offer? Whatever secret they held, they would not redirect her course since she was not moving to Sweden. She was in Winston-Salem and she must find her way here. Furthermore, she wasn’t about to abandon Brian. Tonight she had a date with Tacker.

  Out of nowhere, Kate wondered if her mother had had a fling after her father died. Because of her inheritance, she had not had to work even when she was widowed. She had stayed at home all those years while her children were in school. Their mother could have seen someone. In this very bedroom. The phone rang in the hallway and she picked it up before the third ring. It was Tacker.

  “I may be a few minutes late,” he said. “We were really busy this afternoon.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Why don’t we just fix hot dogs here,” she said, feeling the need of sturdy walls around her. She stretched the phone cord so it reached into her mother’s room, opened the dressing table drawer, and slid the letters in among white and flowered handkerchiefs.

  “Can I bring anything?”

  “Nope.”

  In the backyard, the crocuses were coming up, the purple before the yellow. She walked up and down the flagstones in the diminishing light. Finally it was too chilly. She plucked a single purple crocus. It seemed to shiver as she plucked it and she took it immediately to her nose to smell the life of it, smelling not the blossom but the broken base, where it was wet and open from the breakage. It smelled of green water and deep pools of rock beneath water. She went into the kitchen, selecting a slender clear vase with a small mouth, filled it with water, and slipped the crocus into it. And now she inhaled the blossom’s scent, but it was not nearly so urgent as the broken stem. Kate turned on the oven, got out the buns and hot dogs, decided on Boston baked beans, and pulled open a bag of potato chips. Part of her was still on the flagstones, among the trees and the green cold world of rocks under cascades of water.

  She looked up and Tacker was at the threshold of the kitchen door. “You left your front door open,” he said. “Anyone could come in. It’s dark outside.”

  “Oh,” she said. She had forgotten because of James’s letters.

  “Hey. I didn’t mean to scold,” Tacker said. “Just looking out for you.”

  What was on her face?

  They fixed supper and she saw Tacker there in his wholeness, his rough blond hair rushed up like it used to be, his face just a bit off-kilter. His hands on hi
s hips, his beautiful fingers that had circled her ankle and held her face, the fingers of a man who could build things, but also draw a finger decidedly down the center of the book to hold it open.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER DINNER, THEY sat in the library on the sofa. Tacker seemed happier than she had seen him all winter, talking of Gaines and the sit-ins and students getting arrested. It might take all spring, into summer, before something changed at the Woolworth’s or any other lunch counter.

  This was why Tacker was so complete in himself when he came into the kitchen as though spurred by some divine force. It was all about Gaines, how he had learned civil disobedience at Fisk, how Reverend King had written a book teaching people about nonviolence. She thought of the white patrons of Main Library. Well, what could she do? She was trying to find her own ground. “This is all rather sudden for me. You know I’ve had a lot of changes all on my own, without a whole national movement to think about,” she said.

  “I get it,” Tacker said. “I’m just telling you about something I find important. I want to share it with you.”

  Her mind shifted to James’s letters glowing in her mother’s dressing table drawer, breathing their own life. She pounced to smother the thought of them.

  “There must be a law or something,” she said. “Or why did those students get arrested?” She was more flippant than she might have been if she hadn’t been so confused by Tacker’s exhilaration. He was different than he had been when she first saw him back in the fall.

  She stood and moved to the bookcase, running her fingers along the book spines. “What if you did get arrested?” she said, shifting to look at him, imagining the cost of such a turn to her own well-being if Mrs. McCall found out or other family friends who expected social niceties from her.