Swimming Between Worlds

by Elaine Neil Orr

  “Everyone here who got arrested was out by afternoon. No one got kicked out of college. It’s brilliant. Peaceful protests can get so many people arrested it breaks the system.”

  Kate had heard about the sit-ins, first in Greensboro and then in Winston, but only vaguely. Tacker knew much more. For once she was understudied on a subject. She was not as good a person as she had been in high school and college, when she had been fully aware of the armistice that ended the Korean War and had followed Eisenhower versus Stevenson; even the Little Rock Nine, integrating that high school. She had admired those Negro students. Education was important. But she didn’t know lunch counter sit-ins. Right this minute, she didn’t want to know them. She felt like a bird in a hot attic, a small bird, brittle boned. “I thought there were lunch counters in town where Negroes could get a sandwich,” she said, aware again and again and again of how different her life would be if she had her father, who would have thought all these things out with her. Instead she had had to endure that loss and then her mother’s death, and how could Tacker not see that as apparently privileged as she was, she was a captain of a ship without a crew?

  “Those are counters where everyone stands up,” Tacker said. “Sitting is about dignity.”

  “It’s about Gaines,” she said, taking a step sideways. She liked the library of books behind her.

  “What do you mean?” Tacker said.

  “You’re letting him take advantage of you. Mr. Fitzgerald told me Gaines has been to college. He’s probably smarter than most of them. But he’s not from around here.”

  “What do you mean he’s smarter than most?” Tacker said.

  “I mean he’s smart.”

  “But you said ‘smarter than most of them.’”

  “I just meant he’d been to college.”

  “It didn’t sound that way. Gaines’s family is from around here even if he grew up in Pennsylvania. His aunt took care of me when I was growing up. She was our maid.”

  Tacker held his hands up as he made his point.

  “But don’t you see? You’re asking something of me that I’m not prepared for. You didn’t tell me.” She felt her voice getting shrill and she hated herself.

  “My dad put in a separate toilet for her off of our carport,” Tacker said, looking at his open palms. “She still uses it. It’s freezing out there in the winter.” He looked pained and she wished she had it in her to soothe him.

  But Kate had never questioned the half baths on all of her friend’s carports and back porches that existed for the very same reason. Tacker was making her think of things she didn’t want to consider. The net was tighter, her bones even more brittle. For some reason, she was immensely aware of her breasts, pinpricks of desire and fear mixed together.

  “Can we talk about something else?” she said, running a hand down her arm.

  He looked up, impassive, from the sofa. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  What exactly was he feeling? She believed she knew Tacker but his eyes seemed closed to her now and she wanted to hit him. He wasn’t being sensitive to her needs. It dawned on her that in her fantasy, Tacker was going to make a professional move. He was going to buy a car and get a new suit and some beautiful wing-tip shoes. Before long he was going to be a junior partner in a firm. He was going to build things. Of course his designs would be different and brilliant, modern and sleek. That’s what would make him so perfect.

  “I can’t believe you care so much about these sit-ins,” she said. She marched out of the room. In the kitchen she picked up the supper plates and ran water and rattled the silverware.

  “I’m worried for you. If you get mixed up in that stuff, you’re going to get hurt,” she threw back at him.

  Tacker laughed.

  “I don’t see what exactly all of this has got to do with you,” she said. “I think you should give it up.”

  “Of course it’s about me. It’s about all of us. And I won’t give it up.” In her peripheral vision, she saw him coming through the dining room. His voice told her he was feeling loose now. He had made his point. He had won. He was in charge.

  “What if there were places you couldn’t go into?” he said.

  She glanced at his form in the doorway, his hands on the doorframe as he leaned in, his body perfectly calm and whole and magnificent. “There probably are,” she said, viciously washing the pot that had held nothing but water for boiling hot dogs.

  “Like where?”

  “I don’t know. Okay. Like a strip joint.” She pressed her hair back and looked at him hard. If only she could talk about what was really bothering her. She hadn’t even had a chance to tell him about the Journal paying for her photograph and inviting more.

  “Honestly, Kate. You don’t want to go to a strip joint,” Tacker said, smiling.

  “How do you know? I might want to take pictures. It might be exactly what I want to do, to learn something about men,” she said. The net was so tight she was going to be strangled.

  “A girl like you could go into a strip joint,” Tacker said, sobering. “But a Negro woman couldn’t, except to clean up the mess early in the morning after everyone left.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever been to one?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Once.”

  The lid to the pot was in her hand and then she was slinging it at the doorway where Tacker stood. It clattered off the wall. Kate was mortified. She could hardly breathe.

  “I don’t want to hear any more about sit-ins or any of this,” she said.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Tacker said, running his hands through his hair. “I thought you would understand.” He was in the hallway, pulling on his jacket.

  “What are you doing?” She followed him. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I just don’t see the need for everyone to congregate together. We’re so different. They have their colleges, their own churches. They like it that way.”

  “Of course they do,” Tacker said. He stood at the door now, one hand on the doorknob, the other on his hip. “They like their churches because they can tell the truth there. The lunch counter at Woolworth’s should be integrated. And people should be free to walk on the sidewalks however they like.”

  “I never said they shouldn’t.”

  Tacker cracked his knuckles. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  He opened the door, checked to be sure it would lock, and closed it behind him. She heard him cross the porch. And then the Indian started up and she listened until the sound faded.

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHAT IF WE stop at the drugstore for coffee and a doughnut?” she said when Mr. Fitzgerald picked her up from the library on a cold, rainy afternoon. “My treat.”

  It was an old store, narrow, smelling of sugar candies and dust and coffee and with a beautiful punched-tin ceiling. Kate ordered two doughnuts and two coffees, with cream and sugar for Mr. Fitzgerald. As she turned to fold her coat over the back of the chair, she saw two silhouettes at the window. She knew they were colored boys because of their hair, because of the way they held themselves. Traveling to South Carolina one summer when she was seven and it was a thousand degrees in the car, her family stopped at a motel outside Spartanburg. It had a blue swimming pool not much bigger than Kate’s front porch, but it was water, and she and Brian ran for that pool as if it were the fountain of life. Her parents got in too. A fist of black children stood at the encompassing fence and watched them and that was just how the world was. Kate’s chin tilted toward her coffee. She breathed on the dark liquid to cool it. She’d first learned to drink coffee at Agnes Scott, staying up with Janet to study for exams. Every once in a while Janet would intone the Latin phrase Miserere mei, Deus. Have mercy on me, God. In the mirror behind the soda fountain, Kate saw her reflection.

  “What do you think about the sit-ins, Mr. Fitzgerald?”
r />   “Oh, I don’t know that we should get into that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Kate, you’re a bold young woman. I expect you will find your opinions evolving. In my day, we were debating how many Jews could be admitted to UNC.”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh yes. There was the case of this one boy who met all the requirements but accepting him would break the ten percent rule.”

  “The ten percent rule?”

  “No more than ten percent of the student body could be Jewish.”

  Kate felt a tug at her sleeve. It was one of the Negro boys who had been looking through the glass of the window.

  “You the lady that works at the library?”

  “I’m one of them,” she said.

  “You go in on Saturday?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ve seen you,” he said. “I was with my brother. He shines shoes on Saturday.”

  “I see. Well, what can I do for you?” The other boy was still outside.

  “Would you like for me to buy you a doughnut to take with you?” Mr. Fitzgerald chimed in.

  “No, sir, but thank you. My name is Arthur.” He looked back at Kate. “You have a nice car. I was wondering. Could you bring out a book for me to read?”

  Suddenly an older Negro girl entered the store.

  “Arthur, come here. Don’t you bother that nice woman.”

  Kate looked at the boy, his eyes burning into her. “Please,” he said, as he swung around and followed the girl out of the drugstore.

  At home Kate could find no comfort. Desperate, she opened James’s letters. In his first he apologized for his “passion.” But didn’t she know that he was “crazy for her”? From there he went on writing about his days and the weather and the beautiful streets with very small cars. In the second letter, he asked if she would consider a visit in the summer. Now she must ponder how to answer, though the idea of being with him in a country he had come to know and where she was a complete stranger did not sound safe or inviting. She would be happy to lend the Negro boy some of her own girlhood books. But how would she ever find him? And couldn’t someone take him to the East Winston branch in the Negro part of town to get books? As she was falling asleep, she thought for some reason of the picture Annie had taken of her in the library. Perhaps it was not a man she was waiting for but her own self. In the night, she woke with the troubling awareness that, of course, any boy would prefer to go to Main Library to get all the books he wanted forever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  FOR SEVERAL NIGHTS in a row, Tacker tossed and turned, waking to remember Kate’s clean girl face, her stubborn resistance, the impossibility of her claim and Gaines’s claim and his own heart like a wheel running on two tracks. Finally a letter arrived from Samuel. He’d gotten the ten dollars and wrote expansively about Tacker’s generosity. He went on to say that a missionary doctor at a nearby Baptist Hospital had donated a wheelchair to his brother, who now had a shop on one of the main throughways of an Ibadan market. The brother was making lots of money selling radios from Japan and Kodak film and English tea towels. Samuel went on to account for Joshua’s treachery.

  Joshua has been following a charlatan preacher in Ibadan. The preacher lectures against all of our traditional ways and promises abundant financial well-being to those who join his church and follow his teachings. He has made Joshua one of his deacons. Joshua is not a stable man. He will follow whoever makes him promises. A man so unsure of himself will try to bring other men down. I hope it does not trouble you so much. Do you think you might travel back to Nigeria? I will be very happy if you can come.

  In another paragraph he reported on the high school. The building is a great success, all of the students in their uniforms. We have running water and electric. I will take pictures and send them to you.

  In closing, Samuel reported that Chukwu had gone to England to study architecture and that everyone expected him to come back and be a professor at UCI. Tacker felt a burst of pleasure, thinking of Chukwu and of Samuel and the mere suggestion that he might go back.

  That night he slept dreamlessly.

  Way too early, someone knocked on his back door. It was a Negro fellow he didn’t know holding a used envelope. Composed on the back in longhand: Death in the family, Gaines. Must be Old Daddy. Tacker had time to ride over, give Frances a hug, offer to send a ham, and still get back to open the store. The Indian gave a kick starting up, like a hound ready to leap. At Frances’s house, Tacker bounded up the stairs, knocked twice, and let himself in. The front room smelled heavily of cloves. Several elderly ladies sat on the couch, their legs tidily resting beneath their skirts, their pocketbooks in their laps. They bobbed their heads briefly at Tacker, who started down the hall to the kitchen. Gaines sat at the table with Valentine, and some woman Tacker had never seen before was fixing their breakfast.

  “I got here as soon as I could,” Tacker said.

  Gaines half stood and then sat back down. “Man. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. My mom, you know. That I could believe. But not Aunt Frances.”

  “What about your aunt?” Tacker said. A cold hand seemed to cup his skull.

  “Left my mom’s house early this morning, dropped Valentine by here. Aunt Frances always makes breakfast. Ran an errand. When I got back she wasn’t in the kitchen and Valentine was sitting in here all by herself sucking her thumb.”

  “I was not sucking my thumb,” Valentine said.

  Gaines picked up his coffee but his hand shook and he set the cup down on the tablecloth. “I figured Aunt Frances had overslept. Knocked before I went into her room. She was still in bed. I’d never seen her in bed in my whole life. Went over to rouse her, you know. Called her name. Then I sort of shook her. Man. She was just gone. Gone. Maybe a heart attack. I never knew her to be sick a day in my life. Now Old Daddy is in his bed and I don’t know if we’ll ever rouse him.”

  As Gaines talked, the woman cooking breakfast started to hum.

  This isn’t right, Tacker thought. I’m in a dream and in a minute I’ll wake up and have to run to the grocery. But then Valentine looked straight into his eyes, none of that looking sideways most Negroes have learned by the time they’re eight.

  “You take your motorcycle and ride real fast and you might catch up with my aunt,” she said. “She’s lying in her bed but she’s not really there. She’s flying but still low to the ground. You could catch her feet and pull her back.”

  The woman turning the bacon hummed louder.

  Tacker turned to the wall and crossed his arms, leaning his head there. A cry came up from his center. In a moment, he felt Valentine against him. “You can have my chair,” she said and tugged at him until he followed her instructions. Tacker had forgotten his handkerchief and Valentine handed him her napkin. On the other side of the table Gaines leaned back in his chair, his head tilted forward.

  “I guess she took care of you just about as much as anyone in this world,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy about it.

  * * *

  • • •

  TACKER DROVE HIS parents to the funeral at Rising Ebenezer Baptist in Happy Hill. He wanted somehow to make amends, for the outdoor bathroom, for calling an elder “Frances,” for never considering—until Gaines made him aware—that she could not rest at a table and order a sandwich in Winston-Salem’s downtown. Rising Ebenezer was as brown as First Baptist was white. Gloved ushers shepherded folks through the main entrance and side doors. From the vestibule looking into the sanctuary, Tacker could make out Gaines’s head, way up front. An elderly man with a rose on his lapel—perhaps a deacon—found them some seats.

  Tacker sat between his parents. His mother clenched a handkerchief in her lap. When Tacker had called from the grocery to tell her Frances was dead, she had said, “It can’t be,” and handed the phone to his father. “Fifty-four years old,” h
is father had said. “That’s mighty young. I thought that woman was solid as a rock.”

  For the first time, Tacker knew her age.

  Then he remembered how she was that day he drove her home before Thanksgiving, taking her time on the stairs, letting him help her. She was already weak.

  There were lilies everywhere, infusing the air with a violently sweet aroma. Standing room only. Tacker wondered how many people would come to his own funeral. The service began with a prayer that competed with a Nigerian one for length. People called out, back and forth with the preacher. The choir swayed as it sang. Tacker thought about what he would say to Valentine and Gaines when he saw them after the service. He conjured Kate and his desire for her outstripped his body and he knew he would forgive her anything—thrown pot lids, conventional wisdom, her likely two-timing him—if she would turn in his direction. He put his arm around his mother’s shoulders. The minister began the eulogy. Like the prayer, it went on a good long time. Tacker learned that Frances had graduated from high school with honors. Her favorite subject was science and she had wanted to be a nurse. But “our plans are not God’s plans,” the preacher said, “and instead Mrs. Douglass gave her life to her community in different ways.” She had been a regular volunteer for a program to feed the housebound and she was an officer in the Winston-Salem Chapter of the Links, a Negro women’s organization committed to youth education. Tacker had never heard any of this.

  At the end of the eulogy, Tacker realized that the Frances he knew was not spoken of at all. Nothing in the service alluded to her working for his parents. Mrs. Douglass had been another person altogether. He felt full of straw and remembered a fragment of verse: for now we see through a glass, darkly. The preacher took his seat. Two boys lit candles surrounding the casket.

  The viewing began. The line was long and the wait was longer. Finally Tacker and his parents were there, in front of Frances, a woman they had never seen recline in a comfortable chair. Her face was tranquil, her skin smooth, palely glowing in the candlelight. She was dressed in a pink suit with a blue blouse, her hands folded at her waist. Arranged at her elbow was a black pocketbook with a silver snap clasp. Except for her hands, which looked swollen in their white gloves, she seemed perfectly natural, and Tacker bent toward her—because he had to say something. But he could not find the words. A stream of tears started down his face.