The marble statue was a sculptor's inspiration, but it was divine inspiration which caused her eyes to move, thought Althea. She pictured the woman's anguish in the dust of Troy. Why had Athena been helpless to protect Cassandra? she wondered. Why had she reacted like a vulnerable woman, like Cassandra herself? In this story the goddess was no longer a warrior, brandishing the shield of Medusa, more frightening than any soldier. Cassandra's rape was also Athena's defeat.
In comparison to this, Mr. Berger's threat was nothing, Althea thought. She'd gotten off easy. She vowed that he would never triumph over her. She would scorn him forever. She finished drying herself and rubbed lotion into her skin. She put on a tee shirt, sweatpants, and an old terrycloth robe. It was pleasant to wear worn, comfortable clothes and not care what she looked like. No one would see her. She'd stay in all evening.
She curled up on her couch with her journal, in which she had copied down inscriptions that appealed to her. She came upon these lines from The Art Spirit by the painter Robert Henri: "Art is, after all, only a trace—like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness. There is nothing so important as art in the world, nothing as constructive, so life-sustaining. I would like you to go to your work with a consciousness that it is more important than any other thing you might do."
What a fool I've been, she thought. What a coward, hiding my paintings away, as if a glimpse of them would turn me to stone, like those who gazed at the Medusa's shield. My paintings will not turn me to stone, she repeated. They are mine, after all.
And, determined, purposeful, Althea got up, went into her closet and took out the two divided portfolios packed with the four canvases, which she had hidden away. She opened the portfolios, removed the paintings, and leaned them against the wall, side by side. It seemed to her, as she studied them, that they were remote from her pain, the pain that had begun when she returned to New York and had since grown in her isolation. She hadn't anticipated the isolation or the pain. Her suffering, she realized, was connected to ignorance. It was a suppression in herself, a willed blindness, like the goddess averting her eyes, in damage and in shame.
But now her misery, her poverty, and her need were suspended in her as she gazed at the unfinished paintings that were still the closest to her of all her works. They were a cycle of abstractions taken from nature. One was based on a forest canopy seen from above, another on a meadow of long, twisted, yellowish grasses and blooming flowers. And there were two water scenes: one, a frothing sea against a rocky shore, and the other, a layered, still pond. Her paintings were neither transcribed landscapes nor imaginary, but something of both. In them she wanted to convey depth as well as breadth.
As she stood before her paintings, with colors glowing and brilliant and pale and somber, Althea had the momentary sensation that it was they that were examining her. She was rediscovering their effect on her. Her initial inspiration seemed so long ago, a happy time and place, a promising solitude: quiet afternoons, rose-filled evenings, and sunlit mornings when she'd walk into the sea and emerge dripping, reborn.
She thought to herself, These paintings are like footprints I have left behind in the sand. They began by being my future, and now they have become my past. She thought of how these paintings had been her gift to herself, before Paul had become her lover and then disappeared from her life. All these weeks when she had been afraid to face them, she had missed them. In addition to the pain that Paul had caused her, she thought, there was the pain that she had caused herself. Through September and October she had been waiting for him to call her, and he never had. Was she willing to give up hope? she wondered. Could she forget about Paul?
Picturing him, she still wanted him, despite herself. I might be unhappy, she thought, but I don’t have to be paralyzed. I don’t have to give up my art.
As she looked at her paintings, she remembered the quiet rapture in which she had begun them, their gradual blossoming. She thought of how she couldn’t go back to that time; it was gone, like innocence. But if she couldn't revive that past, she could try to give it a new life, in her paintings. She vowed that she would do her best to realize them, completed.
* * *
She didn't remember her dreams that night, but she knew she had dreamed. When she awoke, she felt an excitement and a turbulence still vaguely in her, like impressions of passing clouds whose shapes she could no longer recall.
The thirty-first of October was as beautiful as spring. All the mists of the day before were blown away, and the wind was ruffling the edges of the awnings over the stores. Sunlight dappled the street, and the shadows of the trees changed with the changing breeze. The world had already waked up, and Althea was rushing. It was Friday, her day to teach in Harlem.
It was warm in the sun and brisk in the shade. As the bus descended the hill of Broadway, nearing 125th Street, Althea watched for the laundry with the photograph of Martin Luther King in the window, his mouth bent over his hand, as if he had been thinking, "How long, O Lord?" and literally had had to bite the words back. She saw him as they passed and saw her own reflected image—the bus in the window and herself in the window of the bus.
It was strange to watch herself so obliquely mirrored, as if she were catching a glimpse of what other people saw, seeing her from a distance.
The school was at 127th Street and Lexington Avenue. When she arrived, the children were playing in the yard next to the building. The area was paved with lumpy asphalt and surrounded on the street sides by a chain-link fence. As usual, the boys had taken most of the space. Softballs and basketballs careened through the air, while the boys ran for them. The girls were crowded at the edge, playing double-dutch jumprope. "Hi, Miss Montgom'ry," a group of them called as she passed, and she smiled and waved. From the back of the school, teachers entered the yard, blowing their whistles: the children's signal to go in. Althea saw Mrs. Fontaine, the principal, as beautiful as a fashion model, tall and narrow. The bones of her face were well defined and her skin so taut and smooth that she seemed carved of ebony. She wore high heels, a tailored dark blue coat. She looked as if she belonged in a more elegant setting, an office high in a midtown skyscraper, with thick carpets and muted colors, and not in a Harlem schoolyard. She waved her delicate hand high, calling to get the children's reluctant attention. Althea would have liked to greet her, but she looked too busy.
This was Althea's third year at P.S. 30-1, and Mrs. Fontaine was still an enigma to her. She let Althea keep supplies in a locked cabinet in her office, and gave her permission to enter at almost any time. But Mrs. Fontaine was so often out that the whole day could pass and Althea not see her. Since the school was pinched for funds, she had had to take on other duties, supervising the playground and the lunchroom.
As Althea turned the corner to the school's main entrance, she remembered an exchange she had had with Mrs. Fontaine the previous year. She had finished teaching her classes and was taking her jacket from the coatrack in the principal's office. It was just after one-thirty. For once, Mrs. Fontaine was there. Sitting at her desk behind a stack of papers, she had looked at Althea wistfully. "And what will you do with the whole afternoon?" she had asked her.
"Probably paint," Althea had said. She had felt that she was escaping, though free to leave, and her exuberance showed. But the image of the principal's pensive face had stayed with her on the way home. She's not really happy in her job, Althea had thought. Without knowing Mrs. Fontaine, Althea liked her, was in awe of her beauty, and felt shy in her presence. She had identified with the wistful comment and had felt a little guilty, as if she were abandoning her.
Today, Althea's thoughts kept wandering to her four paintings waiting for her in her studio. She could hardly wait to get back to them. She was nervous and excited at the prospect of returning to them after a two-month interlude. In the early afternoon, after her last class, she was hurriedly putting her things away in the cabinet when Mrs. Fontaine entered her office.
"I'm almost ou
t of here," Althea said apologetically.
"That's all right," said Mrs. Fontaine. "I'm glad I found you. I have a request. The school district is sponsoring a publication of the children's work. Will you take charge of getting illustrations for it?"
"Yes," said Althea, "but you must tell me what you want."
"It's going to be a photo-copied pamphlet, stapled together, so the drawings will have to be black-and-white. I'll let you work the rest out with the teachers. I'm sure they have ideas."
"Okay," said Althea.
She wished that Mrs. Fontaine would give more direction. Although she didn't object, she must have looked uneasy, because Mrs. Fontaine said, "You have a few weeks. It's not due until Thanksgiving." Althea nodded, and Mrs. Fontaine continued, as if she were following a train of thought out loud, "You don't have to get drawings from all the students. Just ask the best ones. The district won't select but a few anyway. It won't be so much work for you," she promised.
"I'm not worried," replied Althea. "I'll be glad to help you."
"Well, that's settled," said Mrs. Fontaine. "We can discuss it further next week. I'm in a hurry. I really came in to change my shoes." As she spoke, she retrieved a pair of sneakers from under her desk. "The weather's so fine we've promised the third graders a softball game. I'm umpire. Look, why don't you come along, too? I think you'll enjoy it. The boys field two good teams, and you can help keep an eye on the girls."
The last thing Althea wanted to do was to watch a softball game, but she couldn't refuse Mrs. Fontaine. "All right," she agreed, not especially enthusiastically, but Mrs. Fontaine didn't seem to notice. Althea had never seen her look so pleased. She was sitting in her chair, her legs crossed, exchanging her high heels for the sneakers. "There," she said, tying her laces securely in double knots. She glanced up at Althea. "Well, are you ready?"
"I guess so. I'll have to wear what I've got on," she said, looking down at her flat-heeled black leather boots. "You wouldn't catch me dead in high heels."
"No?" Mrs. Fontaine smiled—a pleased, almost superior smile, Althea thought. "Well, the ballfield's not far, only across the street."
Children were already crowding the outer office, and a secretary was ordering them to wait in the hall. Two aides had charge of them, but half a dozen little black girls clustered around Althea. They were all her students, children who were joyous when she entered their classroom and diligent while she taught them. They played together and looked out for each other. Now they took possession of their art teacher, clinging to her wrists and her arms and the pleats in her skirt, and Althea didn't try to shake them off. With Mrs. Fontaine leading, everyone walked out into the sunlight.
The ballfield was on an empty piece of land situated between two streets that fed into the traffic over the Triborough Bridge. Since it was a site unsuitable to build on, it was used for recreation. The crossing was dangerous, and the adults kept the children close together. But once they reached the field, the children ran ahead, except for Althea's little girls, who stayed with her.
The field looked well-used and not especially well maintained. There wasn't much grass in the outfield and none in the infield, but there was a fence, and behind it were bleachers for spectators. While the two teams warmed up, the aides sat with the other children on the bottom rows. "Renesha, Kisha, Olivia, Clarisse, Melissa, and Yvette, follow me." Althea called them, listening to the music of their elaborate names—like mine, she thought, although the children don't know what it is. They only know me as Miss Montgomery. She led them all the way to the top of the bleachers. They sat down two by each side of her, and two behind.
The playing commenced. The ground was stony and uneven, the ball's bounce unpredictable, and the two teams argumentative, but Mrs. Fontaine was firm in her calls and ruled the game. The sun on the bleachers was warm enough to fall asleep in. It seemed to Althea that she did drowse for a moment and then woke up, but it was to another kind of dreaminess. She felt her hair being permeated by a softness at first barely discernible, almost as light as the air.
The little girls were touching her hair ever so gently and tentatively. They didn't utter a sound, but Althea could feel their small hands alight hesitantly, as if they feared disapproval and yet couldn't stop themselves. They touched her hair as one might touch a sacred, forbidden statue, while Althea sat as still as one, facing ahead, unwilling to interrupt them. At first she was surprised, then she thought she understood their fascination. They have probably never felt hair like mine, she reflected. Never in their lives have they touched blond, straight, silky hair.
She was moved, imagining herself as one of them, envisioning her hair as a rare, foreign substance, the stuff of their fantasies. Their childish caresses were tender. The roar of the traffic to the bridge, the shouts of the boys on the field, the umpire's whistle, and the conversations on the bleachers below her all receded from her mind.
She was in a reverie. The light fingers in her hair stirred and soothed her. These caresses were innocent, not bent after knowledge, like a lover's, but undirected, and hence remote. It seemed to Althea that the little girls were healing her of the damage done to her yesterday by Mr. Berger's rude touch and by her wrenching grip on the mugger's arm. Their watchfulness made her feel protected and safe. While she let them stroke her hair, she felt intimate with them, an intimacy all the stronger because she couldn't see them. They had become like abstractions, she realized, a collective of little girls, and she was an emblem, too, a woman with shining hair. All too soon they will be women, too, she thought. They will bleed as I do, submit to cycles. But for the time being all that life in store for them is hidden from them.
Althea sensed the hidden rivers of her life flowing within her. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her as gently as these little girls. She thought of Paul, and she thought of Jeanne. But then she couldn't bear to think of them.
As the little girls discovered that their teacher didn't mind their touch, they grew less tentative. They took more liberties; they played with Althea's hair, making small braids and twisting sections of it into coils. They talked among themselves. The wonder of their touch, its innocent eroticism, and her pleasure disappeared. Althea felt that she was indulging them now.
Below them the teams rotated on the field. Another inning was over. Mrs. Fontaine had mentioned that they were only playing five, but Althea hadn't noticed how many innings had already passed, nor did she know the score. She hadn't been paying attention, and neither had the girls. "All right, that's enough," she said finally, reaching for her comb. They did as she asked; they were good girls. She combed out their braids, and for the rest of the game she kept the children out of her hair.
The winning team threw up their caps in the air, and the losers beat the ground with their bats and kicked up dust, but they were all too tired to be quarrelsome. Althea thought of going home, of facing her real work. For between the work she did for wages and the work she did for herself, she made an absolute distinction, like the difference between the profane and the sacred.
* * *
During the next two weeks, she spent time with her paintings almost every day. She was lonely, but she wasn't unhappy; she was too busy. The existence of these paintings was evidence that her past was real, she thought. As she painted over sections that displeased her, she said to herself, Now I am recreating my past. She allowed herself the freedom to change her mind. That's why I'm not a realist painter, she reminded herself. I'm more interested in painting out of my imagination. I don't want to copy anything slavishly. A line she had transcribed in her journal described her intentions: "to give the past not a survival, which is the hypocritical form of forgetfulness, but a new life, which is the noble form of memory." A French philosopher, Merleau-Ponty, had written that. When she repeated it to herself, she felt elevated by a profound purpose.
She painted and read and thought and took long walks. She ate and slept and did her jobs. The next time she taught in the Bronx she was intentiona
lly cold to Mr. Berger. Not only did she barely glance at him, she managed to keep the width of the room between them at all times. During the lunch period, as she was walking down the fifth-floor corridor, she happened to pass by him and the vice-principal standing together talking in the doorway of an empty classroom, and she kept going. Behind her back, she overheard Mr. Berger's rude laugh. Certain that he was talking about her, she felt her face flame. Why do I mind so much? she wondered. Why am I so serious? Why can't I tell him off, treat him as a harmless joke? I'd be better off if I could. But I don't know how to, and I really don't want to.
She was afraid of him, and at the same time she sensed that her fear was somehow unworthy of her. In her Harlem school, on the other hand, she felt freer. She knew that she sometimes let Mrs. Fontaine take advantage of her, but Mrs. Fontaine was so gracious and the school so needy that Althea didn't mind. In Harlem, her efforts were appreciated. She set to work on Mrs. Fontaine's project, and so it was that two weeks after the softball game, she found herself alone with a seven-year-old boy in the second grade named Jamal Gilbert.
She had noticed Jamal's talent from her first day with his class. Now she needed him for the anthology. She wanted him to illustrate a story written by another child about a rabbit. "If the world was small, I would jump over the world," the rabbit was saying. "Do you think you can draw me a picture of that?" Althea asked Jamal.
Jamal considered for a moment and nodded his head. He was a small, slight boy with café au lait skin and round, startled eyes, ringed by long lashes. Miss Alexander, Jamal's teacher, gave him permission to go with Althea to work on the drawing. Obediently, he followed her to her next class, a third grade, and sat down in an empty chair at a long table with the older children.
But he couldn't get launched on his drawing. Dissatisfied, he discarded what he had done. He seemed self-conscious, anxious, ill at ease. Once, another child jostled him inadvertently, and a jagged line ruined his drawing. Another time he pressed the point of his pencil too hard and tore the paper. Doggedly he started over. As her attention kept returning to him, Althea sensed his frustration.
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