by Barry Wolfe
“Well, you look like you were thinking of someone,” she continues to tease.
“I just love this song, that’s all,” I say, trying to divert her from her mocking tactics. Her eyes sparkle when she teases me, and I fall deeper into my love fantasy.
“Liar!” She counters triumphantly. She mocks, jeers and teases me into a confession.
“Okay, I was remembering someone I thought I was in love with,” I replied, even though it was she I was thinking of.
“Finally, Izzy White tells the truth,” she says as if she were giving a closing argument to a jury.
“Tell me more. What was she like?” Desirie seems to warm up to the prospect of learning about the girl who broke my heart. I tell her about Sophia, the endless nights I pined for her, and the devastating way in which she had humiliated me last New Years Eve. When I tell her how Sophia and Sonny Henson began making out in front of me, Desirie’s eyes grow big. She cups her mouth with her hand and squeals out her unique form of shocked laughter. She can’t believe this bizarrely ludicrous ploy of the girl of my dreams. “Oh Izzy, I am so sorry to laugh, but never in my born days have I heard of such a cold, cold play. You were the victim of some rare, creative bitchery, I’ve got to tell you. And you loved this girl?”
“I thought I did,” I feel my face flush once more. “Okay, enough about me. It’s your turn. Tell me about your love life. Have you ever had your heart broken?” She hesitates for a moment, gives me a searching look to see if there are any traces of ridicule in my expression and then says, “Yes. Just once.”
“Go on,” I prompt.
“Have you ever heard of Oak Bluffs?”
“No. Where and what is it?”
“It’s one of the little towns on Martha’s Vineyard.”
“That doesn’t help much because I know next to nothing about Martha’s Vineyard.” First she gives me a history/geography lesson. Oak Bluffs was a resort town on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod. Originally known as Cottage City when it was incorporated in 1880, its name changed to Oak Bluffs in 1907. Although most of the people who lived in this seven square mile area were white; by the 1930s, a small area of the town had become a popular summertime resort for very well-heeled Black people. (I had no idea such people existed). The white part of town had been a Methodist retreat. Ironically, but not surprisingly, the inns and hotels were segregated until the 1960s, including the Methodist-owned 100 year old Wesley hotel.
The Black elite play on a narrow strip of the beach in Oak Bluffs that they named the Ink Well. As much as the whites disdained the Blacks, the older and richer residents in the Black community developed their own form of within group snobbery towards more recent arrivals or less well-off Blacks who were coming to the island in increasing numbers to vacation.
“Last summer,” Desirie continues, “my father was invited to spend two weeks at his brother’s place in Oak Bluffs. My uncle is a very successful lawyer in New York who then made a fortune off his real estate investments. Even he isn’t completely accepted by the oldest Black residents of Oak Bluffs, but he charmed his way into being one of the more popular new arrivals. He used to host these grand parties and invite virtually every black family in Oak Bluffs. I spent most of my time on the beach. I loved the Ink Well and met so many interesting people there. And the young Black men were so fine! Anyway, my first day there I was lying on the beach when this light-skinned man with a thin moustache came up to me. He knelt down on one knee and said, ‘Hello my gorgeous sister that’s some fine tan you have there.’ I looked up at him, and I noticed he had the sweetest smile on his face. And it did not escape my attention that he was built like a brick … well you know what I mean. I was a good bit darker in hue than he was and I felt a little sensitive about it in this neighborhood. ‘Are you making fun of my color?’ I asked him. “No ma’am,’ he says, ‘I luuv chocolate. In fact, chocolate is my favorite flavor.’ All the while he’s grinning like somebody placed a juicy steak in front of him. It was obvious that this man did not lack for self-esteem, but he was too fine to be sent on his way. Still grinning, he says, ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Carter Woodson Wyatt. My father idolized Carter Woodson and that’s how I ended up with my name.’ Well, Izzy, I know I should have known who Carter Woodson was, but I hadn’t a clue. His smile transformed into shock when I told him I didn’t know who Carter Woodson was. ‘You don’t know who the father of Black history is? He was a great historian who started the Journal of Negro History. He was only the second one of us to get a Ph.D. from Harvard. And in 1926, he founded Negro History Week, which takes place every year during the second week of February.’ I’m sure he thought I was an ignoramus, but he asked me out anyway. And that began a wonderful two weeks of romance and adventure. I had never met anyone like him and I confess I fell for him hard.”
“What happened?” I begin to feel inside the first gull squawk of jealousy.
“We spent many days at The Inkwell. At night, we would go dancing or walk for miles on the beach. And on one moonlit night as we walked hand in hand on the beach, he told me he wanted to make love to me. Much to my surprise, I heard myself say yes. He took me home and there I lost my virginity. By the end of the night, I was so in love with that man, my mind was in a fog for days.”
Desirie had told me the very thing I did not want to hear-- that I hoped I wouldn’t hear. Throughout her monologue I try my best to be matter-of-fact about what she’s telling me. But I can feel the jealousy squawk becoming a lion’s roar. “And then what happened?” She begins to tear up. She takes a moment to pull a wad of tissue from her purse to dab her eyes. When she is able to continue, she tells me how Carter wanted her to meet his parents; how the four of them had dinner at the Wyatt’s palatial beach house. She begins to cry when she describes his mother’s shocked expression when she first laid eyes on Desirie.
“She didn’t even have to say a word,” Desirie says plaintively. “I could see it in her eyes. I was too dark for her son.” More tears pour out of those breath-taking eyes. Her expression changes instantaneously to a flash of anger. “She looked at me like I was a geechee nigger,” Desirie cries out.
“Whoa, what is that?” I am taken aback by her use of such a derogatory term.
Desirie looks at me puzzled at first, a look that suggested that of course I should know what that means. Then a look of recognition comes over her and her face turns crimson. “I’m sorry Izzy, that’s the first time I have ever used that phrase with a white boy. For a moment, I forgot who I was talking to.” I feel like a door has been slammed in my face. I am enjoying the warm sense of closeness that I have been feeling with Desirie, and then I was suddenly cast into the category of the Other.
“You know, Desirie, you make me feel like I’m from another planet.”
“In a way, you are, Izzy. I mean, I look at you and I see the white slaver, the overseer, the oppressor of my people. Now I might be willing to try to get past that because I can see that you seem to be a sweet boy, but it is hard work. And I believe you must have the same problem on the opposite end. Tell me that you don’t.” The challenge in her voice throws me a little, and I shift uncomfortably in my chair.
“I see a beautiful girl,” I finally offer.
“Sweet words, Izzy, but is that all you see?”
I look down at my trembling hands because the truth is it’s not all I see. I see Aunt Jemima, Sapphire from the Amos and Andy Show, and Ethel Waters, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. I also see Beulah, the maid of radio and TV fame, but I also see the very real black maid we had when I was five years old and whom my mother blamed for my TB scare that turned out to be a false positive. I see all of the caricatures of black women perpetrated by radio, TV, and the movies. To tell her that, however, not only feels rude, but also like a capitulation to everything that I hate--in society and in me. I desperately want to get past that.
“Well, Izzy?” Desirie asks, waiting not so patiently for my answer.
> “You’re right, Desirie. I have work to do too.”
“Okay, then. Look Izzy, I like you and I sense that you like me. If we are going to do this—to spend time together, we need to do it with our eyes open and we need to be totally honest with each other. Lord knows I don’t need to add any more trouble to my life. I can already hear the disapproving glares and smirks of people on my side of the fence when they learn I’m taking up with some cracker boy. And I don’t want to hear that you won’t get the same treatment from folks on your side the fence.”
“Different words, same message,” I respond in depressed tones as I contemplate the reactions of my family and friends.
“Well I hope you have some cojones, Izzy,” she warns.
“What does that mean?” I ask. “I’m unfamiliar with that Spanish term.”
“It means you better be a man about this.”
I smile and look at her with apprehension and with an indescribable feeling of admiration.
She gets up to leave and I follow her lead. “By the way, what is a geechee nig…you know…what you said?” Desirie smiles at my efforts to avoid the slur. Her eyes suddenly get big and soulful and in her best impersonation, she exclaims, “Oh dat a nigger fun de Sout who don’ speak de langwedge so good.” As I look at her with astonishment, she’s bent over double with laughter.
Chapter
8.
Devil or Angel
As I make my way toward Georgia Avenue to begin once again my annoying quest for a ride home, I’m in a state of complete befuddlement about Desirie. Her easy ridicule of a certain sub group of Black people disturbs me. Her constant ability to surprise charms me. Despite my ignorance of--and alienation from-- the experience of Negroes in America, I find myself increasingly drawn to this beautiful Black woman. But who is this woman from another world?
Yet I am most befuddled by the color prejudice among Negroes. It makes no sense to me that a group of people that has been hated, demeaned, insulted, and denied their basic rights as Americans because of the color of their skin also engages in this form of color-based human diminishment. The only reference point I have for understanding this is Jewish self-hatred. I am painfully aware of my own fear that I might inadvertently display tendencies that Jew haters around the world have proselytized and continue to proselytize as self-evident truths. I fear being too loud, pushy, or aggressive. When in the company of gentiles, I constantly monitor my behavior for any signs of being overly concerned about money.
But this within group color prejudice feels different to me. I become even more perplexed when Desirie tells me, as we make our way together toward Founders Library, of her painful quest to join AKA. She was rejected when she failed the “paper bag test”. Once again she is too dark to be accepted. She is now pledging the “Deltas” and seems happy about it, but I can see that the shame of rejection still pains her like an unlanced boil. Where does such prejudice come from? What is it about? I need answers. When a familiar green Chevy Impala pulls up and I recognize the driver’s Fats Waller grin, I hope to get some of my questions answered by Miles Taylor.
“Greetings, Master White, “ Miles greets me with no intended irony.
“Hi Miles,” I return the greeting in an emotionally flat voice.
“You seem preoccupied today, Izzy. What’s happenin’?”
‘I’m so perplexed. I met a girl…” And before I can continue, Miles jumps in. “Oh, I bet she’s fine. There are so many fine looking women at Howard, I can hardly keep my mind on the road whenever I drive by the campus. “ Miles finally sees that I have my mouth open and correctly observes that I’m in mid-sentence. “Sorry I interrupted you, Izzy, What demon’s eating at your soul?”
“This girl, this beautiful brown girl told me a story that really blew my mind. I just don’t understand it.” I told Miles the whole story that Desirie had shared with me about her time in Oak Bluffs and how Carter Woodson Wyatt’s parents rejected her because she was too dark. “How can Negroes discriminate against other Negroes because of the color of their skin after all the prejudice and hatred that all Negroes experienced and still experience at the hands of white people? This makes no sense to me.” Miles looks at me earnestly and pulls on his imaginary beard with one hand while driving with the other. “To understand this, Izzy, we have to go back to slavery times. You remember I told you that the meanest people on earth are Anglo Saxons?” Without waiting for me to answer, he continues. “Well, one of the meanest things that Anglo Saxon plantation owners did was to rape their female slaves. I mean an attractive African woman was at the mercy of her owner and mercy was the one thing a slave owner never showed. The slave owner would rape whoever he wanted whenever he wanted. And the result was a growing population of mulatto children. The lighter skinned children of the slave owners were definitely favored by their white fathers. They would get more and better food, easier jobs, and often were educated and allowed to travel. The darker slaves worked the fields. And, by the way, the dark slaves were the ones that were beaten, burned, and hanged, the ones permanently condemned to being low man on the totem pole in the great United States of America. It was even illegal for these folks to get an education. The light-skinned slaves began to look down on their darker brothers and sisters. Sometimes plantation owners would deliberately sow discord between lighter and darker slaves as a way of preventing unity and therefore the possibility of a slave rebellion. This was a real ‘pigmentocracy,’ for Negroes, a caste system based on color. In Charleston, South Carolina, a group of free Negroes started the Brown Fellowship Society in 1790. This group allowed only brown men of good character to join and they had to pay an admission fee of $50. Darker skinned Negroes actually formed their own business organization called the Society of Free Dark Men.
After the Civil War, light-skinned mulattoes further disassociated themselves from darker skinned Negroes by forming elite clubs like the Bon Ton Society right here in DC and the Blue Vein Society in Nashville. If you wanted to join the Blue Veins, you had to be fair enough so the blue veins on their skin were visible. Fraternities and churches would use the paper bag test. If your skin was darker than the bag, you couldn’t join.” At this point, I interrupted Miles and told him how Desirie explained to me the paper bag test and how she failed it trying to join AKA. Miles nods his head and continues. “And it’s not just about skin color. Hair texture is critical too. So-called good hair is straight and finely textured. Bad hair kinks up and is easily tangled up in a comb. Sometimes sororities would use the “comb test”. A fine-toothed comb was hung at the door. If your hair got caught in the comb, you were not allowed in the sorority. This kind of in-group prejudice, which is now called Colorism, is a cancer on the body of the black community. It is our dirty little secret that has caused so much pain to our darker-hued brothers and sisters. And the pain is both physical and emotional. Many of our sisters have suffered great pains at the hands of their own mothers who have tortured them with hot combs in an effort to straighten their kinky hair or with skin creams to lighten their skin tone. Our darker brothers have been shamed by many light-skinned Negro parents, who tell their daughters not to bring home any dark meat.
“This is all too depressing,” I intone.
“Look at me. In case you haven’t noticed, I am intensely brown. Guess where I fall in the pigmentocracy. Don’t you think I’ve been victimized by this bullshit. Even today, my lighter skin brothers and sisters look down on me because of my skin tone just like those mulatto bastards—and I do mean bastards literally—two hundred years ago looked down on their darker brethren who were slaving their lives away in the cotton fields of their father’s plantation.” I can see tears welling up in Miles eyes. I don’t know what to say. All I can manage in a pathetically weak voice is “I’m sorry.” My apology does not have its intended effect. It seems to anger Miles.
“You’re sorry? I’d say you’re lucky. Most white people consider you Jews white and you get all of the advantages of being white. Now I know there
’re many white people, particularly in the South, who don’t think Jews are fully white and as far as white people go, Jews are probably low man on the totem pole. I mean I heard some Jews and some non-Jews talk about the Jewish race as if it were something separate from the Negro race and the white race. But whether being a Jew means you’re a member of a different race or a different religion, you are still white to me, and that means you are more favored in this world than I am. Do you realize that you are white, Izzy, and what that means?” Miles seems to ask me this with sadness, curiosity, and a whole lot of resentment. I’m stung by his referring to me as “You Jews” as if I have become another enemy. I don’t know how to respond. When I see that we are approaching my usual drop-off point, I can only manage to say,“I’m gonna have to think about that question, Miles, but here’s Eastern Avenue where I get off. I hope I see you tomorrow.” Miles looks at me pensively for a long moment and finally says, “Me too, Izzy,” I’m not sure I believe either one of us.