by Terry Kay
I remember blushing.
“Come on,” she said. “I was beginning to think you had chickened out. You should have been here an hour ago.”
I did not move. “What’s this about?” I asked.
“If you can manage to put one foot in front of the other, I’ll show you,” she answered irritably. She started toward the garage.
She’s crazy, I thought. Just like everybody thinks. I looked again down the road and then followed her.
I could hear voices in the garage before we reached it. Small voices, the voices of children. They were laughing over something one of them had said. Marie glanced back at me, then stepped inside the open door of the garage.
The voices fell silent when I entered.
“This is what I’m talking about,” she said.
I stood, gazing in bewilderment at four black children, two girls, two boys, small to pre-teens, who were sitting on makeshift benches before a table cluttered with books and papers.
“You could say hello,” she said.
“Hi,” I mumbled.
The children whispered a reply I could not understand.
“Say it out loud,” she commanded easily. “Say, ‘Hello, Cole.’”
The children spoke in unison: “Hello, Cole.”
“Do you know who Cole is?” she said.
The children shook their heads. They stared in wonder.
“This is Cole Bishop,” she explained. “He goes to school with me. He’s supposed to be a big football star and all the teachers think he’s smart because he talks all the time.” She smiled at me. “Of course, he’s not as smart as I am, but he doesn’t know that.”
Grins waved over the faces of the children.
“He your boyfriend?” one of the girls asked.
The other children giggled.
“My boyfriend? Good heavens, no,” Marie said. “I wouldn’t be caught dead with somebody like him for a boyfriend. He’s too ugly.”
“He ain’t ugly,” the girl said.
The children giggled again.
“Well, he is to me. He’s ugly enough to win a Mr. Ugly contest, but that’s not why he’s here,” Marie said.
The children exchanged glances that held laughter.
I remember clearing my throat and crossing my arms in front of my chest. I made a sound. Not a word. A sound.
“Oh, you wonder who they are,” Marie said lightly. She smiled proudly. “They’re my students, Cole. The Curry children.” She pointed to the giggling boy. “That’s Alfred.” Her finger moved to the girl sitting beside Alfred. “That’s Sarah.” Her finger moved again, again to a girl, the one who had asked if I were her boyfriend, “That’s Seba, and—” she turned to the last child, a small boy, no older than three or four—“and this is Littlejohn.” She looked back at me. “That’s his real name. Don’t you love it? He was named after Little John in Robin Hood.”
Littlejohn slipped closer to Seba and took her hand. He ducked his head, then looked up at me and grinned shyly and ducked his head again.
“Remember what I told you about reading?” Marie said quietly to the children. “If you can read, you can do just about anything you want to. Cole Bishop’s read hundreds of books.”
“How many’s that?” asked Alfred.
“It’s a lot,” she answered. She looked at me.
“Yeah, a lot,” I said.
“Cole Bishop’s read more books than anybody in Overton County, except for me,” she added. “And I just wanted you to see him. If Cole Bishop can read books, so can you.” She looked again at me.
“Yeah, that’s—right,” I said.
“He read us a book?” asked Alfred.
“Maybe he will, someday,” she said. “But it took him so long to get here it’s time for you to go. Your mama will be waiting for you. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, all right?”
The children nodded and slid from their benches and left the garage, their gazes holding on me. Outside, they sprinted across the yard toward the house.
“What was that all about?” I asked after a moment.
“That’s a dumb question,” she said. “What do you think it was about? Exactly what I said. They needed to see somebody in person who reads, somebody they wouldn’t think about, and you fit that description.”
“Don’t get mad at me,” I said. “I don’t even know what’s going on.”
She sat on one of the benches and pulled the straw hat from her head. Her hair fell across her shoulders. She gazed out of the garage door as a tall black woman came from the house, surrounded by the children.
“That’s what’s going on,” she said at last. “Their mother works for us. Her name’s Jovita.” She paused. “I like that name. I really do.” She sailed her hat toward the table, missing it. “Anyway, I found out that none of Jovita’s children could read. Seems like their school system is even sorrier than the one we attend, if you can believe it. So I decided to teach them. They’re great.”
“Why didn’t their mother teach them?” I asked.
She laughed sarcastically. “Damn, Cole, sometimes you’re as dumb as everybody else around here.”
“And not everybody’s as arrogant as you are,” I said, hearing the anger in my voice.
The smile fell from her face. She looked up at me. “I deserve that,” she said. “You’re right. I am arrogant. I love being arrogant. It’s so easy, especially around here. Tell you what, Cole, I’ll make you feel better. In the last school I attended, I was about as average as a loaf of stale bread. So, you see, arrogance is a new experience for me. Down here, I can’t help it. What we’re studying in the twelfth grade, I studied in the seventh. You’d be arrogant, too, if you were in the same situation.”
“Well, I’m not,” I said. Then: “I got to go.”
“Cole.”
“What?”
“The reason Jovita didn’t teach her children how to read is because she doesn’t know how to read herself.”
I looked away, toward the street. I could see Jovita and her children walking on the sidewalk. The children were dancing around their mother, jabbering gladly, their high, shrill voices playing like wind chimes. I do not think I had ever felt so uncomfortable. After a moment, I asked, “How did you know I’d read a lot of books?”
“It’s kind of obvious,” she answered. “You’re the only person in school that ever has an answer more than three sentences long, but the real reason I know is because I asked.”
“Asked? Where?”
“At the library. You’re a legend in there, Cole Bishop. A legend. It’s a wonder they don’t name the library after you.”
I remember blushing, shuffling my feet. “I got to go,” I mumbled.
“Cole?”
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t this better than wasting time at the drugstore?”
I shrugged. “It was all right.”
“Cole?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to help me teach them?”
“I don’t know how to teach,” I said.
“Sure you do. You’d be a great teacher.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” I protested.
“You don’t want to do it, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Sure, you did. You just didn’t use the words. Is it because they’re black?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” I countered.
“You’re lying, but you don’t know it.”
“What’re you talking about?” I asked irritably.
“You’re from the South and it’s nineteen fifty-four, that’s enough to know,” she answered. “Do you really ever read anything besides comic books? It’s in the papers every day and on television every night. Turn the schools into private schools. That’s what they’re trying to do, just to keep Jovita’s kids from sitting down beside somebody’s little white girl or little white boy. Do you think they care that those kids out there can’t read? They don’t. The
y don’t give a damn, and that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I do read, and if I’m not mistaken, the same thing’s been going on in Washington, DC, which you seem to believe is holy ground.”
“They settled that,” she shot back.
“No they didn’t,” I said. “They just compromised.”
“At least they did that,” she snapped.
I took a step toward the garage door, then turned back to her. “It must be great being perfect,” I said curtly.
She did not answer for a long moment, then she whispered, “No. Not all the time.” She stood. “Get out of here, Cole. Leave me alone.”
“What did I do?” I asked.
“Good God,” she sighed. “I feel sorry for you.” She walked past me, toward her house.
It was after ten o’clock when he finished the writing about going to Marie Fitzpatrick’s home and meeting the children of a maid named Jovita, and the muscles of his back and shoulders ached from sitting so long in front of his computer, his only break coming for a cheese sandwich at the dinner hour. Still, he was not sleepy. He did a printout and went into his kitchen and made a cup of hot chai tea, sweetened with honey, and he sat at his kitchen table and read what he had written, thinking how ancient the event was, yet how fresh it seemed in the reading. His mind-pictures were clear. Marie, boyishly dressed as she had been. Littlejohn. Alfred. Sarah. Seba. It was a miracle that he remembered their names, remembered their asking Marie if he was her boyfriend, remembered her answer. It was a question he would ask Tanya: Is the mind capable of such recall, or was he merely inventing memory?
He took his tea and returned to his office and emailed the writing to her. It was a compromise, the emailing. Tanya had wanted him to read it aloud. I want to hear you say it, she had told him. The way you say it matters. He had balked at the request, insisting that he would find reading aloud awkward, and she had laughed at him, saying, You’re like every teacher I know, Cole. You’ve got scholaritis. You’ve been around academia so long, you’ve lost all your imagination, but if you want to be stubborn about it, then do it your way.
I will, he had answered, hearing irritation in his voice.
He struck the keys to cause sleep in his laptop, and then he opened the drawer containing Marie Fitzpatrick’s letters, again selecting one at random.
Dear Cole:
You may now address me as Doctor Fitzpatrick. I am, after all these years, a legitimate sawbones, as they used to say in the old west. I am pleased to announce to you that I will be moving to Columbus, Ohio, to begin practice. Why Columbus? God, I don’t know. They made a pitch for me and it sounded so earnest, so pleading, that I had a momentary meltdown of good sense and agreed to become Goddess of the Scalpel among Ohioans. If you had asked me three months ago where I wanted to live, it would have been in any state in the nation other than Ohio. I even would have chosen Georgia, for crying out loud, and you know how I despise Georgia.
Maybe I need whatever humbling I’m certain to encounter, and that should make you happy. You’ve always been unbearably rude about my God-given superiority. Maybe, in Columbus, I’ll meet another Cole Bishop and after the lobotomy I perform on him, he will play the same role in my life that you have played—being the irritant that forms the pearl in my soul—but he will be mute. I’ll see to that.
And maybe I’ll only stay a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll go to work one morning and someone will say something so sugary sweet, I’ll throw up, turn in my stethoscope, and strike out for parts unknown. Maybe I’ll even wind up in that miserable little Vermont town you’re in. (No, I wouldn’t do that. I’d have the unhappy accident of bumping into you in a food market.)
Isn’t it strange, Cole, that we’ve never visited in all these years?
Why is that? (Other than our agreement, I mean.)
Are we so afraid of one another?
Oh, God, I’m beginning to feel sentimental. That tiny, uncontollable part of me—the one I would exorcise in a heartbeat if I could—misses you. I wanted you to be here to celebrate with me.
Excuse me, I think I’m going to stop writing now and go into my bedroom and close the door and throw myself across the bed and cry you out of my system. It’s what I get for revealing myself.
Never reveal yourself, Cole. Never. You may discover who you are.
I hate you.
In sleep, he dreamed of Tanya Berry.
An erotic dream.
In the dream, she said to him, This is your healing.
The dream was still locked in his senses the following morning when she called. The timing of it—of memory matching call—invited a smile.
You were up late, she said.
I was, he admitted. He added, As you should know.
It was worth it, she told him. What you wrote was fascinating. No wonder this woman has bothered you all these years. She’s remarkable. Did that really happen—about teaching black kids?
It did, he said.
He could hear her sigh over the phone, a sound of awe. It must have caused a row back then, she said.
That’s a kind way of putting it, he told her.
Write it for me, Cole, she urged. I want to read that part.
For a moment he did not speak, then he said, That part won’t be easy.
Who said it would be? she countered. But does it matter? You’ve started and you won’t be able to stop it until it’s over.
Probably not, he admitted.
Did you dream about her last night? she asked.
He laughed softly, remembering his dream. No, he said.
That surprises me, she replied.
I don’t think I’d better talk about my dreams with you, he told her.
Why not? she asked.
I don’t want your ridicule, he said.
Fine, she conceded. Keep your dreams to yourself. You’ll tell them when they lace you up in a straitjacket. Now, are you still coming to Christmas dinner at my place?
Sure, he answered. If it’s not an intrusion.
She laughed. You just can’t scrub that last little bit of the South out of you, can you? No, damn it, it’s not an intrusion, and don’t ask what you can bring because the answer is nothing. Just your handsome, regal self and your willingness to put up with my husband’s blithering about football.
I like your husband and I like football, he told her.
How wonderful, she said pretentiously. Why don’t you regale Mark with your heroics? I’m sure he’ll be impressed. I’m sure everyone there will be also.
You’re cute, he said.
I know, she replied.
FOUR
Mid-morning, after a shower and his third cup of coffee, he took his Overton High School yearbook—the Panther—and leafed through it. He had not opened it in many years and reading it again was like discovering events from the history of strangers. Names he recognized, but it was not easy to put names with faces, unless the name and the face appeared togther. He found himself smiling out of many pages—in uniforms of sport and in the groupings of clubs—and in each photograph he seemed to be acting the fool, the same look most of his classmates wore. All except Marie. The one photograph of Marie, in the alphabetized senior class lisitng, was a non-smiling gaze. Under the photograph, she was identified as:
Marie Jean Fitzpatrick
Valedictorian
Class Prophecy: Surgeon General of the United States
Reading the prophecy caused a smile. It was intended as a joke, the kind of hyperbole teenagers always found clever, yet he believed there had been a jittery uncertainty among the writers of the class prophecies: it would not have been a great surprise for Marie Jean Fitzpatrick to become Surgeon General or even to preside over the United Nations. She had the brains and the intimidating nerve for the job.
His own prophecy had been: Oscar-winning Actor.
And that, too, caused a smile, bringing the memory of the set falling around him during the senior class play, and how he
had shrugged and continued with his lines while the audience howled in laughter.
Perhaps the prophecy had been correct, he thought—minus the Oscar. Perhaps he was merely an actor. Someone who had found his stage in a classroom. The photograph of him standing proud in his football uniform, his hands resting on his hips, certainly had the look of an actor. An amateur, of course, but still an actor.
Yet, it was not what Marie Jean Fitzpatrick had predicted.
After the late hour of the night before, he surrendered to a morning nap and then had an early lunch of black bean soup before he sat again at his laptop computer and began to write.
December 21, afternoon
I am at my work-desk, with my high school annual open near me. On the page is a photograph of me as a seventeen-year-old boy wearing a football uniform. In truth, it is a silly picture—a skinny boy believing he was a giant. Still, I occasionally visit those boyish moments as a make-believe athlete with great pleasure. Given the distance of time, it is easy to become increasingly heroic, yet such is the joy of memory. I am sure Art and Wormy and Lamar and Corey and Hugh and all of my other teammates have felt the same. In memory, we were gods of war, those of us who wore the uniforms of sport and threw our bodies against one another in tender boy-man years.
I know now that we did not play for the moment; we played for the memory.
And for me, Marie is there, in the memory.
There was a game—it was the seventh of our season—that we won. I do not remember the team we beat, though I know the score was 13-7 and the winning touchdown came in the fourth quarter on a thirty-yard pass to Hugh Cooper, who played left end. I remember also that it was a rough game. Corey Johnson broke his arm and I was twice carried bodily from the field after being knocked breathless. A cut was over the bridge of my nose and blood was caked to my right leg from a scrape caused by a rock on the field.
(As I write, I am realizing that it must be necessary for heroes to be wounded warriors, blood being the color of bravery. In truth, the cut on the bridge of my nose was probably a scratch and the red on my leg nothing more than mud from the field. Truth does not always work for heroes.)