The bourgie section nodded and turned to look at Abdul, but he stayed quiet, fingering his twig like a talisman.
Dean Walters moved on to the timeline of the buildings on campus. The plantation house had been built by Matthew Parson in 1856. The barn, no longer standing, had been built in the same year. The schoolhouse predated the college’s official founding year, built in either late 1871 or early 1872.
Keisha raised her hand. “Can I ask you something? I thought this was ’sposed to be a Black school.”
“Indeed, Miss Evans, this is an institution of higher learning for African Americans, though we have been an equal opportunity college since our founding. All are welcome here.”
“But if this is a Black school, how come most of those folks in the library pictures look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like they white people.”
The bourgie section gasped.
“Well, they are not white people, Miss Evans. You can be assured that those students are African American.”
“Well, they way too light for me.”
“That is a very rude thing to say. Now let me get back—”
I raised my hand. Roz poked me, but I leaned away from her.
“Why’s it rude? She’s only being honest.”
Dean Walters put the chalk in the board’s tray. “Your mother and father are both alumni, Miss Garfield. I believe that they were in the class of 1966. That is correct, is it not?”
From around the chapel, there were whispers.
I shifted in my chair. “Yes, sir.”
“And both of your parents are African American. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And each of your four grandparents are African American. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I would bet that the members of your family come in many different shades. Correct?” He perched so high on the toes of his wing tips I expected a plié. “Miss Garfield, I have met your father, and I was taught by Dr. Freeman Hargrace, your great-great-uncle. Would you want someone saying either of them was too light when God made him this way? No, you would not. Further, this kind of discussion creates discord within our African American ranks. And we don’t want that, do we?”
Dean Walters picked up the chalk and returned to the timeline of campus buildings.
Keisha placed her hand on my arm. She gave me a tender squeeze.
By the following afternoon, the campus gossips had anointed my roommates and me with a new nickname. They called us “The Too-Light Crew.”
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Goddamnit
From the time I was born, my parents had put aside money for my college, the same as they’d saved for my sisters. But my regular eavesdropping had informed me they hadn’t counted on Coco being a genius and requiring expensive private school, and then equally expensive Ivy League college and medical school. Nana had helped them with my tuition at Braithwaite Friends, but the cost that had hit them the hardest was Lydia’s rehab. They had been too proud to ask Nana for help. My parents hadn’t counted on spending so much money for my sister to recover in a safe environment.
In my last year of high school, I’d no idea what I’d study in college—now that Coco was in school to be a doctor, I thought I’d be off the hook for carrying on that particular family legacy. I’d been mostly concerned with earning high grades so I wouldn’t let those white kids I went to school with think they were smarter than me. I did know that whatever I finally chose as my profession, I wanted to spend time with books. Many, many books, but during a rare Saturday at Nana’s house, after my mother plied me with guilt to visit the woman, my grandmother hinted about my parents’ financial worries. What a shame. Truly, so sad, and these days, college wasn’t enough. Postgraduate studies were necessary in this new economy, but why borrow thousands in student loans when she would be happy to help? However, there was one caveat: I was required to attend medical school to secure her financial support. She wouldn’t be paying for my studies in any other field. And we needed to spend more time together, too, so that we could talk about my future plans in the medical profession.
Nana had taken a sip of Earl Grey and shifted the subject: There was a new Van Gogh exhibit at the City High Museum. She’d been wanting to see it for a week. She would call a taxi for us. Even though I didn’t want to be anywhere around her, I made a choice: I needed Nana’s money to pay for my education, or at least some of it. I couldn’t let my parents try to bear that burden alone.
I was exhausted my first semester at Routledge taking classes on the premed track. Physics, biology, biochemistry, calculus. Showing up for those everyday labs that somehow only earned me one hour of credit. I attacked my studies with vigor, but whenever Nana wrote me, congratulating me on my chosen profession, I didn’t write back. I’d open her letter, pull out the twenty-five-dollar check she’d included, and drop the letter in a shoe box under my bed. Whenever the box filled, I’d throw the letters in the trash can on my dorm floor.
Five days a week, Keisha, Roz, and I rose in the dark morning. One of us would heat water for tea on our forbidden hot plate. Then we’d throw on robes and go downstairs to the dorm lobby, where there would be other young women studying as well. Two hours of that, then breakfast in the refectory, where I drank several cups of cola before going to classes. At noon, I downed a caffeine pill with lunch.
Throughout the day, I’d silently repeat the facts of the body, but I was less interested in cells, systems, and connective tissues, and more in the backstories, as when my elderly anatomy professor entertained his students with tangents. A retired physician from Alabama, Dr. Turner told us about the Tuskegee experiment of the 1920s and ’30s, when the government refused to cure a group of Black men with syphilis, just to watch the disease’s horrible progression. Another tangent was about Dr. Turner’s white professor in medical school. He had reminded his students that it was a well-known, scientific fact that the colored race didn’t have the same filial affections as other races. They didn’t feel physical pain much, either, the white professor had said. You could cut into their flesh with a scalpel and they wouldn’t even flinch.
“Can you believe the nerve of that white man?” Dr. Turner asked. “Making up science like that?”
After classes were over, I ate dinner with my roommates and walked to the library alone—Keisha didn’t believe in late hours. I’d stay at the library until it closed at ten, then walk to my dorm and sit in the lobby with earphones on and study some more. On good nights, I climbed into bed around midnight and woke at five.
When my eyes popped open in the dark morning, I’d lie there as self-pity slithered through me. I had no passion for science, no care for the body’s gory pathways. I didn’t want to be a healer, but I thought about my parents and what they had gone through. My childhood hadn’t been perfect, but they’d done the best they could. I was sacrificing for them now, as they had sacrificed for me. I’d roll from bed and turn on the hot plate. I’d tell myself, yes, I was tired. And yes, I hated science, but at least I finally had girlfriends who weren’t my blood relatives. And true friends were important at Routledge, because the scrutiny of female students was ruthless.
Sisters had to be cautious with their reputations; each spring the guys released the annual “Dirty Thirty” list, which named the most sexually active sisters at Routledge. We had to be careful about what we did, what we said, when we checked into the dorm during the weekdays, and how many guys we’d been seen with during the academic year. Even if nothing sexual took place with any men, some young women would violate the sister code and turn on others: spreading gossip was the best way to knock out four or five females from that female-to-male ten-to-one ratio.
Keisha didn’t worry about gossip. Her reputation was sterling: she turned down frequent male invitations to the Rib Shack, explaining without any embarrassment that she was saving her virginity until marriage, as was required by her Christian faith. “Jesus is my h
usband,” she’d tell the guys who asked her out. She couldn’t date because the Devil never slept. Especially, he suffered from insomnia on Saturday nights, the hours before God’s faithful servants would convene.
Roz was bossy, but she turned out to be useful. She schooled me on the dating scene at our college, one of the topics Dean Walters hadn’t mentioned in Freshman Orientation. Not only was there one male to every ten females, that one dude might be country and ’bama, if he was a local. Unofficially, Georgia was number four in the ’bama category; the states of Mississippi, Alabama, and the entire city of Cleveland, Ohio, were numbers one, two, and three, respectively. And since the pickings for non-’bama mates were slim, female romantic anxiety ruled our campus. A few weeks into first semester, Dean Walters sentenced two young women to behavioral probation. They’d fought over the same homely guy who’d sported a jagged S-curl. Even if the fights weren’t physical, frequently, matters degraded into public shouting matches, which didn’t make sense to Roz. There was no need to fight.
“Because niggers ain’t shit. And white boys ain’t no better. You can’t trust a man.”
Roz didn’t tell anybody information about her vagina, but one might imagine it was made of platinum as much as brothers had begun to pursue her. On Sundays, brothers kept sitting on our pew during mandatory chapel service. They stopped by our table in the refectory, placing large candy bars on the table. They asked her to the movies in Milledgeville and left urgent pink message slips for her at the dorm reception desk. Curt Waymon, the president of Gamma Beta Gamma, was particularly insistent, marking his territory with daily takeout from the Rib Shack. When that didn’t help him get next to her, he gave her his fraternity pin. Sometimes she let Curt take her to the movies, though she only let him kiss her with tongue and touch her boobs.
There were dance parties in the small student union, but the music was hit or miss. Or you could admit your nerd status and go to the library on Friday or Saturday nights. The junior and senior women had warned us never to hang out in the apartments of guys who lived off campus, unless they were our official boyfriends. Because that’s how you got raped. Sets in one of the off-campus apartments were even less safe, because the college rules didn’t apply. That’s how you got raped. Under no circumstances were we to attend off-campus fraternity parties, and don’t ever drink hunch punch, which was a homemade concoction of pure grain alcohol, red or purple punch, and diced tropical fruit. Hunch punch was sneaky, and that’s how brothers got you blind drunk. And that’s how you got raped.
There were no warnings about Pat Lindsay, though. Just like every young woman on campus knew who the rapists were, every sister knew the identities of the gentlemen. Pat was the latter, and you were lucky to be invited to a set in his room. He was safe, sweet, and he shared his supply of weed. In the refectory, he sat with Abdul Wilson and Steve Jefferson. They were known as “The Three Amigos,” which seemed friendlier than the nickname my roommates and I had received.
The connection between the three wasn’t clear. Abdul was from Philadelphia, and Steve was from Harlem; both were engineering majors, but Steve was in his mid-twenties. He wouldn’t say what he’d been doing in the years in between high school and entering college, only that he’d gotten himself together. Pat was a sophomore and was majoring in French. Both his parents had graduated from Routledge, and he was the grandson of Robert “Rob-Boy” Lindsay, the late college friend of Uncle Root. In the refectory, he mostly ignored his two friends in favor of reading, usually Fanon or one of the Negritude poets. He put aside his book if a young woman stopped by the table, though, standing and kissing her cheek and hand.
There was speculation about who he was sleeping with, but Pat was secret with his sexual business. The sisters told it all, though: that he could control himself for hours in bed. He wasn’t a selfish brother, either: he not only accepted oral sex from a woman, but performed it quite eagerly. A story had circulated that he’d gone down on someone for so long, she’d blacked out on her fourth orgasm; when she’d revived, Pat was between her legs, still licking away. No one knew the young woman’s identity, and that only lent the story another layer of fascination.
* * *
One early October evening, Abdul let us into Pat’s room, then sat on a twin bed by Steve. Roz and I perched on the other bed, but when joints were produced, she stood. Without asking, she opened the window on the other side of the room. Roz had been invited by Pat, with whom she’d attended high school, though he was a year ahead of her. She’d asked Keisha and me to accompany her, though Keisha had demurred. There was no way Roz was going to a dude’s room by herself, even Pat’s.
Pat offered me a red plastic cup and a drink from his bottle of Chardonnay, because he didn’t play around with hunch punch. That shit was uncivilized. After he poured my drink, he sat against the closet, legs splayed on the floor. His curly hair was nearly the same golden color as his skin, and he was tall and on the heavy side. Freckles were scattered across his nose.
He was two drinks in and wanted to get deep, philosophizing on the uselessness of organized religion. I was relieved Keisha had turned down the invitation to the set.
“Black people, we need to ignore that Christianity shit,” Pat said. “I’m an atheist, myself. No—Wait—I guess I would say I’m an agnostic. But if there is a God, He’s not on his job, because this country is fucked up. So we need to stop praying and start thinking about the bigger picture.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like Reagan was the Antichrist. And now his former vice president is his satanic minion. Bush is destroying our communities.”
“Can I ask a question?”
“Sure, Ailey.”
“Aren’t you scared somebody is going to smell this weed?”
“Naw, I’m not pressed. My granddaddy’s name is on this building. What they gone do, give back his million dollars?”
He passed the joint to me. I took a long draw and passed to Abdul, who sucked in smoke and was quiet. Steve had joined my roommate at the window, and the two of them politely refused their turn.
“This country is about to crash,” Pat said. “Like, boom, goddamnit.”
“You really think so?” I called to the window. “Roz, what do you think about boom?”
“I think you’re high, and you don’t need to shout.” For the past half hour, she’d retained a bored expression as Steve whispered close to her ear, holding a hand to his chest as if defending himself.
“Are you sure boom means a crash, Pat?” I asked. “Are you absolutely sure?”
He put his hand on my arm, squeezing briefly. “Yes, baby. Can you lower your voice a little? If you’re afraid I won’t hear you, lean close all you want, ’cause you smell very good.”
I spoke in an exaggerated whisper: “I’m sorry. But wouldn’t boom sound like rumble, instead? I’m trying to get my onomatopoeia right.”
“This jawn pulling out the big vocabulary words and shit,” Abdul said. Of the three males in the room, he was the most handsome. He was dark brown and growing in an eighteen-year-old goatee. There was a crowding to his top front teeth, but the dimples made up for the imperfection. The muscles didn’t hurt, either, but his being a complete asshole ruined the aesthetics.
He snapped his fingers.
“Ay, ay, Steve! This jawn right here says the word ‘boom’ is an example of onomatopoeia. Can you tell me what that word means?”
“Can’t you see I’m busy over here?” Steve inclined his head toward Roz, widening his eyes. A lock of my roommate’s long hair was stuck to his face.
“Answer the question, Steve.”
“I don’t know, Abdul. And you better stop tripping.”
“Naw, that’s you, son. You know that’s Curt Waymon’s jawn you talking to.”
My roommate said she didn’t belong to anybody, but her would-be suitor announced he had a test the next day. Yeah. A test. So okay, bye. He slammed the door in his haste to leave.
Pat retur
ned his hand to my arm.
“The people won’t put up with Bush’s shit much longer. Liberté, égalité, fraternité, goddamnit.”
“So you’re talking about the French Revolution,” I said.
Abdul clapped. “Oh! This jawn really thinks she’s smart, don’t she?”
“I am smart. And why do you keep referring to me in the third person when I’m sitting right here? And what in the West Hell is a jawn?”
“It’s a person, place, or thing.”
“Abdul, that word is not in the dictionary.”
“It don’t have to be, Ailey. That’s what you call vernacular.”
“Well, I never heard of it.”
“You need to get out more.”
Pat interrupted our bickering. He put out a hand and nodded in an exaggerated fashion. Let’s have peace. Let’s make love and not war. “And be more polite to this beautiful young lady. Don’t scare her away. Because I want her to come back.”
“See, that’s your problem,” Abdul said. “You can’t be nice to these females. You gotta let them know who’s in charge.”
“Agree to disagree on that, my brother.” When Pat pulled another joint from the front pocket of his shirt, Roz told me I could smoke my weed five more minutes, and then we had to get back to our dorm. She wasn’t missing curfew.
In This Spot
In Dr. Belinda Olufunke Oludara’s classroom, a cone of incense burned on the desk. Her head was completely wrapped in blue-and-red printed cloth. She wore a dark-blue shift that skimmed over her very wide hips; underneath the shift, matching pants. Around her neck, several strings of chunky amber. There were gold earrings that hung nearly to her shoulders, matching the gold bracelets on her wrists. She sat down on the edge of the desk and waved her hands. Her cadence was dramatic, as if she were putting on a one-woman stage show. The bracelets clanged as she moved.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 23