She said, “Good-o, meet me halfway. Come along the footpath on Alexander Street.”
He said, “Footpath?”
She said, “What do you call it—sidewalk?”
They met as he walked along the paved footpath on Alexander Street, and they walked together through the soft Queensland night, they walked silently most of the time, hand in hand, lost in their separate thoughts. It was a time of the month when her life always stood precariously on the edge of a deep yawning abyss. She seemed to be walking forever on quicksand and she would never reach the solid ground. It was a couple of days before her menstrual period. They were the awful anxious irritable days when she died a thousand deaths a day and she lost her mind a million times and she was a stranger in an unfriendly world and nobody understood her, nobody loved her, and nobody gave a bloody damn. Nobody found any beauty in her and she hated the image she made for the world and felt sorry for herself, she who despised self-pity. She was young but overly concerned with growing old and dying old and leaving no footprints in the swiftly shifting sands of time. This night she could not take rejection, especially from Solly. Please I Love me—care about me—see some beauty in my life.
They sat down in a park and she leaned her happy head against his shoulder and they listened to the night wind singing love songs to the flamboyant eucalyptus trees and the poinsettias gleaming even in the darkness and the poincianas and hibiscus. She was aching with romantic feelings. She was leaping with them.
He was thinking of golden-brown leaves falling and he was a boy walking barefoot with the cool earth under him. Playing football and basketball, and squirrels running quietly through new fallen leaves in autumn time. And Mama with the tough and tender strength, and Solomon the Third, who was six months old already and who had never seen his mother and never known his father. His face filled up. One day I’ll make it all up to you, my baby, and we will change this world together.
She said, “A tuppence for your thoughts.”
He didn’t even hear her. He was in Ebbensville with Fannie Mae. Holding her sweet face in his hand close to him now, and he was growing warm all over, and seeing her lying on the floor of a Philippine shack with the baby in her arms and man’s best buddy at her feet, and Madonna’s face was Fannie Mae’s—her face—just like his Fannie Mae’s.
He pulled his hand from Celia’s without knowing, and to her it was like pushing her away from him, out of his thoughts, out of his sensitivity, out of his life, and she knew the awful feeling of it deep inside of her. She took his hand again and squeezed it. “All right then, a quid for your thoughts. How’s that?” She laughed half-heartedly.
He came back for a moment and looked around and down into her face and took her face gently in his hands and he smiled for her, but she knew the thing was still there between them, always there, forever there and there and there and growing larger there, and she wanted him to love her, not to patronize or pity her. She pulled away from him and got up from the bench. “Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
He said, “What’s the matter, Celia?”
“Nothing. I’m just knocked up, that’s all.”
When they got to her door she turned to him. “Good night, Sergeant Solomon Saunders Junior, and good-bye and cheerio.”
He said, “What’s the matter? I mean, how about a nightcap? Unless of course you’re fresh out of slop. I mean I’ll go get some if you want—”
She looked up into his face and shook her head. “We’d better say aroo and cheerio.”
He said, “But why?” If it were not for his overactive guilty conscience he could have himself a ball. If it were not for Fannie Mae.
She said, “And why not? Why not, as you Yankees say, why not have one for the everlasting road?”
They went inside and he sat wearily down and she got the slop and poured the drinks. He didn’t need or want a drink. Why in the hell had he insisted? She held her glass toward his and said. “Here’s to unrequited love, the bitterest wine in all the world. And here’s to racial animosity. And here’s to me, a stupid sheila—” She stopped. Her eyes were growing wide and glassy.
He shook his angry head. Don’t bore me with this crap tonight!
“It’s true, isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You have an edge against me because I’m white—that’s it, isn’t it, Sergeant Saunders?”
He should say, “You’re mother-hunching right!”
He said, “No. It isn’t true, and you know bloody well it isn’t true.”
She said, “You’re lonely and you’re a long ways from home and I’m just a good sort that you can put the hard word on whenever you feel the sexual hunger, but you despise me because I’m white!” Her voice choked off again.
He should have said, “You’re goddamn right—so what?”
He went and sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. She put her head upon his chest and she wet his shirt with her tears. He said, “You know I don’t despise you.” He massaged her head and shoulder and the middle of her back.
“You make me feel like a lowheel—like—like a prostitute, like a thing for you to have your pleasure with, but you have no other feelings for me, and I offer you everything, all of me, but you hate all white people, and you make me hate all white people. You even make me hate myself. Sometimes it all crowds into my head and it grows and grows and grows and it collides and I feel my head is going to explode, and I feel like screaming, I think something is going to go pow and I’ll go completely out of my mind and never return. You don’t know—”
He massaged the middle of her back with tender strokes and she moved restlessly and restfully underneath his strong and gentle touch. Sometimes she really frightened him. “It’s—it’s—it’s been more than six months since—since—” She lost her voice. She was treading on shifting sand and sinking sand and even maybe very quicksand. “It’s been over six months, almost seven, since it happened and time enough for you to make your mind up. Time for you to live in the present and for the future.”
He kneaded her skull with his fingers and it felt so good, so damn good, so bloody good, she almost grunted like a puppy. All through her it felt good good good. She was grateful. He said softly, “No, there hasn’t been time enough yet.”
Suddenly she pulled away from him and stood up over him. “You and your superiority! Your black smugness! Your righteous indignation. I’m sick and tired of feeling guilty and feeling white and dirty and responsible for every bloody evil the black man ever suffered at the hands of the whites since time began. I have nothing against your people—I never did anything against them—I—”
He got up and laughed and it was like spitting in her face. “I know, baby. One of your greatest lovers is a black man. It seems to me I’ve heard that song before. Well it’s bloody tough, you know, and my heart bleeds for you. I mean you have it so much rougher than us colored folks, and you want this black man to make it easier for you. I told you once—I don’t hate white people, Celia. Love and hate are profound emotions, and I’m stingy and particular. What is it? You want me to hate you? Would that make you feel better? Make you feel important? Is that the therapy you need?”
The hurt was there deep deep in her eyes and in the quivering roundness of her mouth. “Look,” he said, “you want me to overlook entirely the fact that you are white. Can you overlook my color?”
She said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“You’re a liar,” he said. He paused, breathing heavily, and then he said slowly, deliberately, “And besides, why should my color be overlooked?” He put his index finger on his face. “This is me. Black me. Proud me. Proud black American me, whose ancestors came from great Africa. Not arrogant, but just beginning to be proud of the specialness of black me. No bleaching powder no hair slick-em-up. No trying-to-be-like-you. Just the me I see in the mirror when I shave. So you would overlook the color of my skin? What else? How about my eyes? Do you know what color they are? And suppose my name were Dobbsy, would
it be all the same to you? Suppose I were redheaded, bowlegged, Australian, would it be all the same to you? What about my height? It would be all the same to you if I were four feet tall or seven feet? Why is color suddenly of no significance? Do you ignore the color of a red rosebush? Would it be a rose if it were a greenish blue? Do you overlook all those colors out there at the Great Barrier Reef?” He walked over to her phonograph records and found the album he was looking for. “When you listen to him sing, do you forget he is a black man? Part of his strength and conviction is his blackness. Robeson, black man Afro-American.” He thought of Richard Wright’s Twelve Million Black Voices, the great black faces in that book, some weary faces, some without hope, most of them indestructible. He put the Robeson album back in its place and turned wearily toward her. He was tired of the whole damn business. It was time to go.
She said, “What I meant was, I don’t hold your color against you. I love your color.”
He said, “If the peoples of the world have to ignore each other’s color in order to get along, then we are in a hell of a fix.”
She said, “I don’t want to ignore your color. I love your color. I love your color.”
He said wearily, “And you and I cannot solve the problems of the world just by loving each other’s color.”
She shouted softly, “But I don’t want to solve the problems of the world. I just want to solve the problems of Solomon and Celia.”
“But I definitely do,” he said. “You’d better believe me. I can’t live without wanting to solve them. I can’t breathe without wanting a new dialogue in the place of all this goddamn clichéd obsolescence. If you don’t understand this about me, then you know an image that has no relationship at all with Solomon Saunders, Junior.”
She said, “I understand. I understand.”
He said, “I wish I knew the words to make you see where I am in time and space. Your people are the mistreaters, mine are the mistreated. Your magnanimity comes a little late and easily, since yours is the guilty conscience. Your people are the malefactors, the offenders against the majority of the human race. It’s easy for you to say, ‘I forgive you for being black, and therefore you should forgive me for being white.’ What are you forgiving me for? For living?”
She said, “Solly-Solly-Solly!”
He said, “So you personally haven’t done anything against colored people, so you should be accepted by them. But almost every colored person in the world can say truthfully he’s never done anything against white people. So what? Does this ipso facto wipe out white supremacy? Does it guarantee they won’t lynch my boy in the state where I was born?”
She shook her head. And could not answer.
He put the glass to his mouth and took a long protracted swallow till every drop was gone.
He reached for his garrison cap. “And now that we’ve had one for the road, now that we understand each other, I’ll be saying so long, it’s been good to know you—”
She went to him again and put her arms around his neck. “Don’t go, darling! Don’t go yet! Please don’t go!”
He said, “Celia—”
She said, “Do you like me?”
“Yes, I like you.”
She said, “Did you like the love we made together?”
“All right—I liked the love we made together.”
“But you would not waste your profound love on me? You would not even stoop to hate me?”
He said, “You are a lovely tender sensitive women, intelligent and—”
She laughed and took his cap from him. “Let’s have just one more for the road, and maybe the road won’t look so dim and bumpy. Let’s have one for loveliness and tenderness and sensitivity.”
She poured two more drinks and gave him one and took a sip of hers. “Tell me—what’s wrong with me besides being a paleface? Do you not like my brown eyes? I’ve been told they’re nice and warm.”
“You have the nicest warmest eyes in all Australia.”
“And how about my mouth? Is it not full and shapely? My lips are not thin and stingy like most Australians, are they? Pam says a spook must’ve put a hard word on my mother.”
His hand went out automatically and sharply up against her mouth almost before the words came out, and he reached for his cap in her hands but she backed away from him.
“Why? Why?”
“You won’t get another chance to insult this particular colored man,” he said almost calmly, “you may rest assured.”
She stood there shaking her head unbelievingly.
He said, “And now if you’ll kindly give me my garrison cap, I’ll be on my way. The first time I ever hit a woman in all my life. My most humble apologies. But then maybe you’ll think twice the next time you feel the urge to call a Negro man a spook in order to put him in his place.”
“But-bu-but we heard the soldiers call each other spooks many many times when they roomed at Steve’s house. My-my brother’s—the colored soldiers—we-we thought it was a term of affection.”
He took his cap from her and went toward the door. She put her arms around his waist. “No, Solly, no! No, my darling. You know I didn’t mean to hurt, you know I didn’t mean to slur your people. I love you—love you. Oh my darling—”
He stood helpless with her arms around him and stared down into her face, and he didn’t know how he felt or what he felt. He thought, why am I here? What am I here for? Why was I born in the first-damn-place?
She said, “Go ahead—slap me again. As many times as you want to slap me—slap me for all the times you’ve been insulted by the people of my race—slap me for all the times that you’ve been slapped. Slap me—slap me—I am guilty! I am guilty!” She broke off into sobs again as they erupted from the middle of her, her entire body shaking now. He took her tenderly to the couch and sat down with her.
“All right,” he said, hating his softness. “All right—all right, I know you didn’t mean to insult me, and I’m sorry I slapped you.” He kneaded her skull and massaged her shoulders and her back as she writhed and whimpered like a purring puppy dog, and he hated himself for being so goddamn tenderhearted. He said, “All right—all right, I’m sorry. What else can I tell you?”
She said, “You can tell me you love me.”
He said to her out of his deep and tender feelings for her, “Fats Waller, used to sing a song back in the States—Be sure, I mean people should be sure before they say the word so damn glibly—I mean it’s a hell of a commitment—I for one can’t—I don’t want to make it now. I told you in front—”
She said, “Yes, I remember, darling. But you do love me. In my heart of hearts I feel deeply that you love me. I know you love me. It’s this thing that stands between us. It—it’s the color of my skin.”
He said wearily, “Listen to me, Celia. It would be easy for me to say, ‘Yes, I love you—love you—love you,’ and—”
She said, “Go ahead and say it and see what happens. See how it tastes and see how it feels.”
He said, “I’ve seen too much pain and unhappiness and I’ve had enough myself to last a couple of lifetimes. The war will end one of these days we hope and then what happens to love? I go back to that other world where I have a son, and he and I will build a life together out of the ruins, and you’ll build your own sweet life right here in Queensland.”
“When you go back you can send for me.”
“Look,” he said, “I’m black and you’re white. And Little Solly is black. The color of your skin does make a difference. Believe me.”
She shouted softly, “It makes no difference—it makes no difference!”
He said harshly, “In my country you better believe it makes a difference. It makes all the goddamn difference in the world!”
“No! No! It doesn’t—not with me!”
He said, “Let the facts hit you in the face, baby. The bloody MPs threw me out of two places today right here in your precious City of the Winding River. Not in Mississippi or Georgia—right he
re in dear old darling Queensland.”
She said, “Solly! Solly! My dearest darling angry Solly!”
He got up quickly. “You’re goddamn bloody right, I’m angry! But you’re not angry, are you? You—you’re just uncomfortable, that’s all. You’re not angry like I’m angry.”
She said tonelessly, “I know how you feel. I don’t blame you.”
He said, “That’s a lie you didn’t have to tell. You can’t know how I feel. And blaming or not blaming me makes no difference to me whatever. Don’t give yourself so much importance!”
It would make things easier in his mind and heart and in his guts if everything were black or white—if tears, if blood were black or white, if dying, crying, poverty, or even death—And everything was black and white. He moved to the door and opened it and turned to her sitting lifeless on the couch. And said good night. She hardly heard him.
She didn’t know that he had left. He knew she didn’t.
Every day he rode the trams and buses all over Banana City. He didn’t see her for a few days and he missed her, there was no doubt about it, he missed, he almost relished missing her. He enjoyed missing her, and he did not write to Fannie Mae, and whatever would be would bloody well be! Then one evening Celia came to her brother’s for Solly and they went out on the town in her beat-up bomb with Solly driving, and a couple of places they went, the Yankee MPs put them out because the cafés were “off-limits” to American GIs. One of the “off-limit” places was a quiet sensitive cabaret off to itself and across the river into South Bainbridge, and as they left and got into the car and started to drive away they saw a gang of drunken GIs stagger gaily and boisterously into the club past the MPs, the Yankee MPs grinning at their drunken comrades.
Solly said, “You see—it’s suddenly ‘on limits’ again. That is the essence of Yankee morality. The American Way of Life, like hot dogs out at Coney Island and the KKK in Mississippi. And the spirit of Eugene Talmadge. That’s what we’re fighting and dying for.”
She lay her head against his shoulder. Sometimes she was frightened by his overwhelming bitterness. “Things will be different after the war, darling. Don’t you worry.”
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 48