Vetra smiled. "Yes, I've been watching her, too. She’s an adult now, Joe."
"Barely. In many ways she's still a little girl. Experience-wise, that is. We've kept her pretty sheltered. She has no idea what kind of snakes there are out there, just lying in wait to take a bite out of her."
"She and I had a long talk last night before you got home. She is not as naive as we'd like to believe. She's strong, smart, and independent, the way you raised her to be."
"We raised her to be that way."
"You are mostly responsible for all the good things our daughter is, honey." Here was the opening she had been looking for.
"Felice has a date tomorrow night."
"Is that right?" Joseph's face stretched into a predatory smile. "I guess I'll have to come home early tomorrow, to give the victim, uh, guy, the once over. Did she tell you his name?"
"Yes. It's Kevin Hart."
"What?!" Joseph's eyes widened, then he turned to look at his wife.
"You heard me."
"The Kevin Hart?"
Vetra sighed complacently in anticipation of the blowup. "Yes, honey, of the university's football team. The very same.”
"A white man? She is not going anywhere with him! I forbid it! No daughter of mine is going anywhere with any white man! Not while I'm alive!"
"And how are you going to stop her? Are you going to lock her in her room and take away the car keys? What about school? They must see each other all the time there. Are you going to hire an armed bodyguard or get a restraining order to keep him away from her?"
"No! None of those things. But I am her father. She has to do what I say!"
"Does she? Remember that Felice is eighteen now. If she wanted to, she could move as far away from us as possible and there's not a thing we could do about it!"
"Are you saying that she threatened to move out if we won't let her go out with that...?"
"No, Joseph, I'm not saying that. Nothing of the kind came up. My point is that Felice is enough of an adult to be allowed to make some of her own decisions. Let's sit down
on that bench over there and stop making a spectacle of ourselves." They sat.
"I remember what you told Felice about white men," she continued, "and how it would embarrass you to have one come to your house to pick up your daughter, as if everything were all about you. That’s a pretty poor excuse, if you ask me. How in the world would something like that reflect on you, and even if it actually does, who the Hell cares? It's not as though it's taking money out of our pockets or anything."
Joseph turned to look at her. "Vetra, if a white man comes to my house to pick up my daughter, it says that I've failed as a father."
"What? I'm sorry, honey, but I honestly do not get that one. What would that have to do with your fathering abilities?"
"To me, it's a rejection of black men...all of us...especially the one black man that's supposed to have the greatest impact on a young black girl’s life: her father."
Vetra looked at him, comprehension dawning. "Ohh, I see now. Since many people unconsciously pick mates who are similar to their opposite sex parent, you would view a white mate for your daughter as a repudiation of you."
"That's it exactly."
"Do I look anything like your mother?"
"No, but..."
"So, your decision to marry a dark-skinned woman was a repudiation of your mother, right?"
"Of course it wasn't! It's not about appearance, I just happen to love you."
"Isn't it about appearance? Hasn't it always been about appearance? Not just between us, but between men and women or between light-skinned black folks and dark ones, or between black and white folks? Wasn't it appearance that caused your mother to take an instant dislike to me, just because I’m dark? Honey, it's all about appearance--always was and always will be."
"Vetra, racism may have started just because of appearance, but I don't have to tell you that it's blossomed into a whole different animal. It's a part of all of us who are descendants of slaves. We all have a little part of us that's been passed down from those times, a tiny little part that tells us that they are smarter, more beautiful and better than us; that we're not fit to be anything but the master's workhorse or mule or concubine. When I think of my daughter with a white man, I feel as though she would be
telling the whole world that it's true that we're inferior; that she's with a white man because she wants her children to be better, smarter, and more beautiful, and not to be like her old black father."
"I had a white boyfriend."
"You'd feel the same way probably if Joey..." Joseph stopped as he began to comprehend Vetra's words.
"What...did you say?"
"Before you, I had a white boyfriend."
He was momentarily motionless, as if someone had cast a spell on him.
"You..." Joseph was again moving. He slowly turned to his wife, looking at her as though she were a stranger.
"You had a white boyfriend and didn't tell me?" Joseph's voice was barely above a whisper.
"You would have..."
"You kept this from me for all this time...for twenty-one years? You married me, had my children and you hid this from me?"
"If I had told you, we would have never gotten married and never had our children! You had made it clear how you felt about white men. I loved you and didn't want to lose you. I still feel the same way. Joseph..."
He looked at her for a few seconds, part of him knowing that this was his lifetime mate. However, another part of him told him that he was looking at a stranger. He turned away from her.
Vetra tried to put her hand on his shoulder, but he flinched away from her.
"Joseph. You know that I love you. I made love to you, not him. I married you, not him. I had your children, not his."
He turned to look at her, the anger dying out of his face, being replaced by sadness, like a child who just found out that there was no Santa Claus.
"I'm going...home,” he said. He got up off the bench at left her sitting there.
She sat watching his broad back, as tears began to stream down her face.
By the time Vetra reached the house, her face was dry. She opened the unlocked front door, came in and gently shut it.
"Joseph?" She cocked her head to see if her ears would give her a clue as to what part of the house he might be in. The bedroom--she could hear him rooting around in it,
making the type of noise that she was unaccustomed to.
She headed towards the room expecting the worst and not hoping for the best. She knew that she had shaken the foundation of their marriage. But the truth was the truth. There was no point at which she thought she should have told him earlier. Vetra wasn't the type of person to have regrets.
She half expected him to be packing his things, but when she entered the room, she found him sitting on the bed with one of their legion photo albums.
"Joseph?" He appeared not to have heard her. He was slowly turning each page, tracing his fingers over some of the images, laughing lightly or smiling at others.
"Joseph." He looked up at her with the sadness still etched on his face, but he beckoned to her.
"Come sit down and look at this," he said softly. With some trepidation, she did as he asked.
"Look at our children. Aren't they the most beautiful things you've ever seen?"
"Yes." She smiled at him uncertainly. "I always felt a little guilty thinking that way. Believing that one's own children are the smartest and best-looking children that ever lived is a way of inviting disaster, but I still think it anyway."
Joseph said nothing and turned his attention back to
the album. He turned the page and there was a photograph of his children taken eight years earlier. Felice's innocent, ten-year-old smile looked back at him. On her knee, she held a chubby Joey, who was grinning a baby's grin.
"Look at that, Vetra," he said softly. "Look at that picture. I remember thinking back then that those two perfect children
were the sum of all the love and trust that existed between you and me, and that they were the living embodiment of what we had together." He closed the album and looked directly at her. "Today, I found out that what we had was a lie."
"I didn't lie to you, Joseph."
"Not technically, no. But, you kept something from me that I needed to know. Omission is still a lie."
Vetra's fear was starting to turn into anger. "And why, may I ask, did you need to know this? It's not like I slept with the man."
Joseph cringed as if an image in his head were too much to bear.
"And even if I buy your answer,” she continued with an intensity in her voice growing. "Even if I agree that I should have told you this before we got married, what do you think you would have done with this information?"
"I don't know," he lied.
"That's a crock! You know exactly what you would have done. You would have dropped me like a hot potato. You have long made it plain to me how you feel about white men. We've had disagreements about it for years..."
"And now I know why."
"No, you don't know why," Vetra snapped. "The reason why is that racism is wrong in whatever form it takes and from whoever it's coming, Joseph, whether it's from some Klansman or from you."
"So, you're going to compare me to a Klansman now?"
"You know I didn't mean it that way. Stop twisting what I say!"
"After all the things they've done to our people, and to our families, and to you and me personally, you're going to sit here and defend them to me?"
"Not them, Joseph, but the individual. You've always told me that you wanted to be taken for who you are, rather than what you are, and of course, that makes perfect sense, but, you have to do the same. Take each person as the individual he or she is."
"So, you expect all of us just to forget all of the things that have happened for the last four hundred years and are still happening, just like that! Vetra, that's against human
nature and plain wrong."
"I'm not saying ‘forget.’ I'm saying ‘move on.' You know as well as I do that anger eats away at any person. Our anger, I mean our people’s anger, has held us back for too long, in my opinion.”
“So, we should turn the other cheek, eh,” he sneered, “and end up with a bullet in it like so many others have? No, not this black man!”
“It’s got to end somewhere, Joe, either with all of us dead, or with one of us refusing to perpetuate the cycle. Otherwise, we continue to go around in circles.”
Joseph looked at his wife. “I understand that you feel this way and think that you might even be right. But I’m having trouble with it. And the actual issue remains this: you lied to me.”
Vetra could think of nothing more to say. She watched with growing alarm as Joseph got up from the bed. He pulled open several of the drawers on his side of the chest. She watched mutely and helplessly as he opened the closet door to remove a shirt, a pair of jeans, and a small over-night bag.
“Where will you be?” she asked numbly.
“Over at Richard’s.” Richard was his brother.
“Fine.”
She sat there on the bed, barely hearing him close the door. As she listened to the front door close, she idly wondered what she would do without him.
Tale of the Tigers
Chapter Six
“Mom?”
Something was different. Usually when Felice came home from school, the smell of dinner would entice her before she even came in the door, whether it was food from the restaurant, or Vetra’s own cooking. On Friday, her mother always cooked, since she had all day to prepare. However, on this day, there was nothing; no fish frying-nothing.
“Mom, are you here?” Some of the lights in the house were on, ones that wouldn’t be on if no one was at home. Her parents were sticklers about saving energy; constantly
berating her and Joey about leaving on unneeded lights. She walked into the empty kitchen and shut off the light.
“In here, Felice, in the bedroom,” she heard her mother’s tired-sounding voice call.
She walked in to see her mother sitting on the edge of the bed. Vetra still had on the clothes from earlier that morning, even the purple knit cap. Felice sat down next to her.
“Mom, what’s wrong? Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s at your Uncle Richard’s. I think he’ll be there for the night...at least.”
Fear stabbed through Felice’s body. “What? What happened?”
“I told him about my old boyfriend.”
“Oh no!” Felice put her head in her hands. “It’s all my fault, Mom. All mine.” She began to cry. “I’m so selfish! I’m sorry, Mommy.”
Vetra was alarmed. She put her arms around her daughter.
“No! It definitely is not your fault, honey. It’s mine. Mine for not telling your father the truth at the outset. Please don’t cry, baby, please.” She pulled Felice’s head down on her shoulder.
“But, if I hadn’t just had to have my way,” Felice sobbed, “it would have never come up.”
Vetra gently took Felice’s face in both hands. “Yes, it would have. It would have--maybe not now, but sooner or later. The truth always comes to light, usually when you don’t want it to. Here.” Vetra grabbed a tissue from her vanity. “Come on, dry your eyes honey, and listen.
“It was my responsibility to be totally honest with the man I married, especially about something that I knew would mean something to him. That’s why he’s so angry with me, not because the guy was white. Your upcoming date with Kevin Hart was merely the catalyst for the truth to come out. It was God’s way of telling me that it was time.”
“But, you remember that you told me that it wasn’t such a good idea for you to tell Dad about your boyfriend.”
“Yes I do and you know what? I realized that I was teaching you the wrong lesson and putting you in a most difficult position. You should never have to choose between me and your father. Never.
“As for your lesson, it should be obvious.” Vetra held her by the shoulders. “Trust the people that you care about. Trust them enough to tell them the truth. Sometimes it hurts, but it hurts more when you hold back for too long a
time, say twenty or so years. Don’t make the same mistake I have.”
Felice looked at her mother, thinking of Laura Anderson, and of Kevin, and the Taus, and Daniel.
“What time is it?” Vetra looked around at the clock on the nightstand. “Oh my God, it’s nearly five! Joey will be home soon and there’s no dinner in the near future.”
“How about I go get us some Chinese take-out?”
“Good plan.”
“What are you going to tell Joey about Dad?”
“I’ll tell him that Dad is over at Richard’s and staying overnight and that’s it. He’ll think it’s a sleep-over like he and Pete do.”
“What if he asks you when Dad will be home?”
“I’ll tell him the truth...that I don’t know.”
The next night, Felice was in a frenzy getting ready for her date. She’d had so few in her life that she had trouble knowing what to wear. Makeup was no problem; a little lotion and lip-gloss was all she ever wore. Maybe she would borrow her mother’s brown lipstick.
She opened her closet with a sigh. Clothes however, were a different story. She couldn’t remember the last time
she had worn a dress, high heels, or panty hose. Her standard uniform in the winter consisted of jeans, short boots, and a sweater. In the summer, it was jeans, sandals, and a tee-shirt.
There were a couple of dresses in the closet, bought by her mother, in the hopes that she would accompany them to Mass on a Sunday. When she had been sixteen, her parents had given her the option of not attending church if she didn’t want to. She hadn’t been back since.
Felice looked at one of the dresses with a grimace. It had been bought without her input, and though it was Felice’s size, it looked more suitable for a large thirteen-year-old and she wouldn’t go ne
ar it. Felice had chosen the second one herself. Her mother had dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the mall and forced her to pick one out. It was a simple, dark rust-colored dress with short sleeves. Felice pulled it out and held it against her in front of her full-length mirror. It was a couple of inches above the knees, but not too far. Great. Her dad would probably want her to wear a full shroud, covering everything but her eyes, like the Muslim women do, but her dad wasn’t here.
She sat on her bed, the magnitude of that thought hitting her full force. When was Dad coming home? She
had wanted to cancel the date and go to her father to plead her mother’s case, but Vetra wouldn’t hear of it. She had practically ordered Felice to go out tonight.
“If you like Kevin and you want to go out with him, you’re going to,” her mom had said vehemently. “I don’t care what your father says.”
“But, Mom, if I don’t go out with him, maybe this thing with you and Dad can somehow blow over,” Felice had said desperately.
Vetra sighed. “You still don’t understand, do you? What happened between me and your father wasn’t about race mostly, it was about honesty, and it’s something that will still be between us whether you and Kevin go out or not.
“And as for his feelings about white men, especially in relation to you, those are his feelings and that is his problem, not yours or even mine. This thing is something that he has to work out for himself. In the meantime, I refuse to let him give you the racism that our generation has had passed down to us. I refuse to let you be hurt by it in your own house. There’s going to be enough of it out in the real world as it is.”
“Okay, Mom, I understand. But how can I even have a good time knowing that you’re here feeling sad about Dad and knowing that I’m part of the reason for it?”
“Girl, aren’t you listening? You’re not responsible for...”
“Yes, I am. This never would have happened if I hadn’t given Kevin my phone number. You know it’s the truth. Cause and effect-that stuff you guys have been preaching to me.” Felice had said this last, with an ironic grin.
Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game Page 9