The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  Belle turned the stroller and pushed it outside, but within a few steps, Zulu caught up. It was too dark for her to walk alone, he told her. At the apartment, he held her sleeping toddler and followed as Belle walked the stroller up the stairs.

  “Sister, you are such a good woman,” he said. “My brother’s so lucky to have you. The movement’s so lucky.”

  “Ain’t no revolution ’round here,” Belle said. “It’s just me and my child.”

  “I get that, sister.”

  “Do you? Would you want somebody treating your real sister like this? You knew what Geoff was doing, didn’t you? Don’t you lie to me!” Her chest expanded. She was feeling mighty and righteous and much taller than her sixty inches.

  “I don’t want to get in between the two of you, Belle. I’ll only ask, will you forgive me? I sure wish you would.”

  Holding the baby between them, he leaned down, kissing her cheek. When he moved back, he hovered, his face only inches away. Looking at her. Waiting for permission, and it felt like he was Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun and she was Ruby Dee. It seemed he was sincere, picturing a future that included her.

  Belle sympathized then with Zulu’s three common-law wives. How they could discard their pride for a few unsatisfying morsels. She recognized the feeling, because she really wanted this man.

  She could invite Zulu into the apartment and make him wait while she laid Lydia down in her crib. He could put a record by Aretha on the turntable. That would calm their sin as he took Belle on the couch, which needed the springs replaced. All night long, and maybe her husband would catch her with her legs wrapped around Zulu. And Geoff would understand what it felt like to be made a fool of, all while you were trying to keep a family together. To give a home some semblance of contentment.

  But Belle couldn’t invite Zulu inside, because she was pregnant again. Her freedom was dead. Her girlhood had soared away, without a voyaging word, and she pulled her child from Zulu’s arms.

  VI

  The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have knowledge. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood; not by guarding the weak in weakness do we gain strength, but by making weakness free and strong.

  —W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

  The Debate

  In the City, my mother had been a nuisance. Separated from her, I moved into deep affection. I ached for her voice, her questions about whether I was eating right and her urging me to take those vitamins she’d mailed, because I was a young woman and had to take care of my body for later, when the children came.

  She sent me weekly letters—sometimes twice a week—filled with emotions I hadn’t known she possessed. Lengthy missives about her staying in the house all day while my father was gone to his practice. She wanted to teach school again, and she knew it was wrong, but she was so jealous of Aunt Diane’s counseling job. And my mother wrote to me about Lydia. Was she dead? And if so, shouldn’t she feel it inside? Something ripping her open to steal her child’s soul? But that feeling hadn’t occurred, and not knowing what had happened to my sister was so hard.

  I waited all week for my Sunday evening call from my mother, for the concluding endearments at the end of our fifteen minutes.

  “I love you, baby.”

  “I love you, too, Mama.”

  Afterward, I’d stare at the phone.

  That first year of college, I haunted Chicasetta, driving my car up 441 to Miss Rose’s or to knock on Uncle Root’s door after my afternoon classes. I never called to alert them. I was the descendant of countrywomen who showed up at the door and hollered through the screen. With the egotism of youth, I expected my kin to be thrilled, and they never failed me: they dispensed ardent kisses and hugs. After eating the meals my granny cooked or playing chess with the old man, I’d get back in my car and drive back to Routledge, feeling cheated and unsettled, only to return days later looking for a trace of home.

  Miss Rose didn’t detect my homesickness. To her, Chicasetta was my real home. Uncle Root told me outright he knew I missed my mother, but he liked having me to himself. He gave me extra gas money for my highway voyages. He assured me daily visits would be a joy. Maybe he was lonely, too. He was eighty-four that year, and many of his contemporaries had died, like Pat Lindsay’s grandfather. Those who remained had progressed into fragility.

  Uncle Root looked a younger man, but his vision wasn’t as sharp, his reflexes not as spry. I became his chauffeur on Saturday road trips to Atlanta to the High Museum, or to his favorite art-film house in Buckhead, where he escorted me to my first Spike Lee joint. He dressed in a collared shirt, tie, and suit for these occasions. We’d attend the first matinee, and when the film was over, I’d drive us to Phipps Plaza. Most of the items in the stores were shockingly expensive—fur coats and leather suits—and we never bought anything, but the old man preferred walking in the tranquility of the empty, costly stores in Phipps as opposed to the push-and-shove of Lenox Square, just across the street.

  “Look at this blouse, sugarfoot. Olivia would have loved this.”

  He’d hand over a piece of clothing, and I’d dutifully stroke the material, while a white saleslady looked anxiously in our direction. Once, a blond woman who’d followed us around Saks for twenty minutes asked Uncle Root if his “nurse” wanted to try on something, just for fun.

  “I beg your pardon. This young lady is my niece.” The saleslady’s expression of confusion as she looked from Uncle Root’s pale face to my brown one tickled him, but he was kind enough not to laugh openly. He waited until we reached the car.

  In late afternoon, our faux shopping would end, and the old man and I would sit on the bench outside the stores and chat until it was time to drive back to Chicasetta, where I’d spend the night at his house and make grilled cheese sandwiches, with sweet tea to go along.

  That summer, I decided that I would stay south. Uncle Root and I made great roommates: he was entertaining enough when I wanted company, and when I didn’t, he did not seem bothered. He always had a book that he could read, or he would call my mother’s brother and ask him for a ride out to the farm.

  Mrs. Cordelia Rice had arranged for a summer job for me in the office of a doctor who was her late husband’s kin, Dr. Rice. His assistant was Nurse Lansing, a heavyset sister with a baby face, who had attended the old colored high school with my mother. My labor at the practice was easy, only light filing, but it would add fat to my future medical school applications. My employer was a sociable gentleman with a boisterous comb-over, and sometimes he brought in cinnamon doughnuts, my favorite. One July afternoon, when I returned from work, David James was sitting on the claw-foot settee, drinking a cup of coffee. He’d changed so much since I’d seen him the previous summer, at my family reunion.

  In Uncle Root’s living room, I sat in the wing chair farthest from my ex-boyfriend, cutting my eyes in his direction. His haircut was neat as always. His handsome, chocolate face was smooth-shaven, but he was no longer skinny. His chest was broader, his arms thicker. He looked almost like a grown man. Even his voice had deepened.

  “You didn’t bring what’s-her-name with you?” I asked.

  “It’s Carla, and she’s been my girlfriend for a while.” David paused and looked away. “Ever since you kicked me to the curb.”

  “Whatever.”

  “She’s in Atlanta. She’s at Spelman now. She has a summer job there.”

  “Negro, I don’t need this information! I really don’t care. And why are you here?”

  “I’m visiting Dr. Hargrace. And why you always so mean?”

  “’Cause I can’t stand you, that’s why.”

  The old man interrupted us: a snack was called for. He’d always been hungry when he was young. He would warm up slices of the pie he’d made, and could I help him? In the kitchen, he put the pie
on china plates with white linen napkins covering them.

  “I make excellent desserts,” he said. “My pie is much better than Miss Rose’s. My pound cake, too.”

  “But y’all both use Dear’s recipe.”

  “That’s not true. I add some special, secret ingredients.” He poured coffee into a cup for me, splashing in some cream. Then a bit more. “You don’t need your coffee black. You’re already high-strung, and Ailey Pearl, could you please stop picking on that young man every time you see him?”

  “I do not—”

  “—yes, you do. But if you hadn’t noticed, no matter how cruel you are, he never fights back. I’d like you to consider that beating up on a defenseless person makes you a bully.”

  He held the plates and backed out of the kitchen door. I leaned against the table, sipping my coffee. My granny had scolded me about how I treated David, too. She’d told me that I was mean as a snake to him.

  When I went back out to the living room, the old man was telling his story about meeting the great scholar. When he came to his negative feelings about Booker T. Washington, I was curious: Why did everybody seem to despise that man?

  “There was this dude in my Freshman Orientation class,” I said. “And he called Mr. Washington an Uncle Tom.”

  “Indeed, that young man was right.”

  David put his plate on his lap. “Is it okay if I disagree with you, Dr. Hargrace?”

  “Certainly, you may. You’re entitled to your own opinion.”

  David flashed a smile: his teeth were sparkly as ever. “Well then, respectfully, I disagree. I think Mr. Washington was only looking out for poor Black folks. I mean, back in the day, white people didn’t want us to go to college, right? My history professor told us they would punish us during slavery for even holding a book. Sometimes kill us.”

  I didn’t want to agree with David, but even crotchety Dean Walters had defended Washington. That had to count for something. Still, I didn’t want to seek peace with my former boyfriend. I wanted to hold my spear high, hopefully at throat level, since David not only had put on weight. He’d grown taller, at least two inches.

  “Why aren’t y’all talking about women?” I asked. “Weren’t there any sisters who were concerned about Black folks?”

  My ex-boyfriend said nothing. He cut into his pie with his fork, as the old man told me, I already knew there were Black women doing important work. Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and so many others. As he remembered, I’d written a paper on this, back in high school.

  “In Brother David’s defense, I don’t think he’s trying to exclude women. I just think he’s curious about why I have animus toward Washington. And that’s because my mother didn’t like him. You see that picture? That was taken in 1895, twelve years before I was born.”

  He pointed to the framed photograph of Lil’ May, Big Thom, and Tommy Jr. on the credenza. I’d passed by that photograph so many times, I no longer paid attention to it.

  “That picture was taken on the day Booker T. Washington gave his most infamous speech at the cotton exposition,” Uncle Root said. “When he was still the Head Negro in Charge of the Race. Before that speech, he was a god among our people. His white patrons gave him money to fund Tuskegee. He even had dinner at the White House, but whenever a Negro man, woman, or child was killed, he was silent. He kept his peace, and that day at the Atlanta exposition, the event was segregated. They wouldn’t even allow the rest of us into the event. The only reason my mother was allowed to hear Washington speak is because she was a servant tending to a white child. She was holding Tommy Jr.’s hand.

  “My mother had a memory like nobody’s business. It was miraculous. She could recall every word that someone spoke, and when I was little, my mother would repeat what she heard Booker T. Washington say to those white folks. He started out slowly, but then his message started getting good to him, like a preacher, don’t you know, and when he came to the crux of the matter, the white folks cheered him on.”

  Uncle Root closed his eyes and folded his hands in his lap.

  “He told them, ‘You can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.’”

  Uncle Root opened his eyes.

  “Can you imagine that? Here Booker T. Washington had the opportunity to change the hearts and minds of these vicious white southerners. He could have truly helped our people that day, and those despicable words are what he chose to deliver! He told those crackers that not only was segregation of the races perfectly all right, but he agreed with segregation! My mother didn’t understand everything in that speech, but she got the gist. She didn’t agree with what Washington said, not one bit, though naturally, Big Thom was just skinning and grinning, like he had seen Jesus move the Rock. My mother said, Washington was a well-spoken, well-dressed, red-nappy man with light eyes, and all he proved that day was he was a white man’s nigger. Not because he was forced to be, either. But because he just loved pleasing the white folks so much. He just loved to kiss the white man’s hind parts.”

  He held up his index finger.

  “And now, Ailey, you ask me about women? My mother was the wisest individual I have ever known! And I have learned through much experience that when a wise Negro woman tells me something, I pay close attention. And now, Brother David, I hope you understand why I do not think much of Booker T. Washington. I don’t even like giving him the respect of calling him ‘mister.’”

  “All right, I get it, Dr. Hargrace. You won today, but I’m going to be ready for you next time.”

  “And I eagerly await that opportunity.”

  Uncle Root rose from the couch. It was time for more pie, and he would bring out more coffee for us youngbloods, but not for himself. It was mere hours before his bedtime. Even though I hadn’t yet gotten past my anger at David, I talked and laughed with them for another hour, until Uncle Root decided it was time for us to drive out to the country. David needed to visit my granny, and besides, the old man was missing his pecan tree.

  * * *

  I heard from Abdul only once, the summer after our freshman year, though I’d given him all possible contact information. One Saturday, he’d called the old man’s house, asking me to meet him at a motel close to the exit near Madison.

  When I left the house, I’d lied to the old man that I was driving to Atlanta to spend the night with Roz. In the motel parking lot, Abdul asked for my half of the room fee. Then we spent the day making love, in between watching cable TV and eating cheeseburgers and French fries. Sunday morning, I drove back.

  In the fall, there were changes, as our public relationship had shifted. Now Abdul acted sometime-y. When I did see him, he’d call me after midnight, to come to the apartment that he now shared with Steve. He and Steve no longer sat at the table with us in the refectory, and whenever I saw Abdul, I held my breath, waiting. Would he speak? If he did, would there be a smile? Or would he ignore me entirely?

  Pat’s behavior had not changed, though. He kept sitting with Keisha and me in the refectory, smiling and making us laugh at his corny jokes. He and I kept meeting for our tutorial sessions in the library, and he still flirted shamelessly with me.

  “Girl, you are so sweet. And beautiful, too. How come you’re still single?”

  “I’m not. I got somebody. I guess.”
I looked toward the stairs, nervous. I wasn’t going to mention Abdul’s name. In the library, the gossips hovered around each corner. They were worse than the rodents.

  “Oh, that. But, girl, does that really count as a relationship?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I do.” He touched my head. Let his fingers drag back and forth. “Um. Your hair is so damned soft.”

  I moved my head. “Pat, come on. You need to figure out these equations. You don’t want to fail this class.”

  That fall, the Betas and the Gammas chose their new members. In the past the process had been called “pledging,” and had been a public spectacle. Applicants wore identical outfits that they were required to purchase. My sister Lydia had worn those years before, when she’d pledged. All told, my parents had paid twelve hundred dollars for Lydia’s fees. So much money in order for her to “cross the burning sands”—what the process of joining a Black Greek letter organization was called. Because of several legal suits that had been filed against the Betas and Gammas, “pledging” had become “intake,” and hazing was supposed to be out. However, the Betas and Gammas just moved into underground mode, as they began to abuse their aspirants.

  When Abdul became a Gamma “Rock,” he stopped calling me for our late-night assignations. Pat was pledging Gamma, too; sometimes, when we met in the library, Pat was limping, though he claimed he wasn’t being physically hazed by the Gammas. It was early onset arthritis, he insisted. But I wasn’t fooled: I stuffed a cushion in my book bag and gave it to him to sit on.

  And Roz became a secret Lily for the Betas. Like Steve and Abdul, she stopped eating at the table with Keisha and me. She sat on the other side of the refectory with the rest of the underground Lilies, who did not talk about their ambitions. I was decried as off-limits, since I had messed with Abdul and supposedly caused his breakup with an important Beta. Roz walked past me on campus as if I were invisible, looking forward intently as if she and the air had an exclusive appointment.