The Gilded Years

by Karin Tanabe

  “Did you skip the swimming tank today, Anita?” she said, laughing. “You look like a racehorse training to win Saratoga.” She bent down and looked at Anita’s papers.

  “Plessy versus Ferguson,” Belle said, dragging out the words. “I remember that in the newspapers. What a bore. Are you sure you want to debate for another year? You should join guitar and mandolin club with me. You’re in every other musical organization. Why concern yourself with all this propaganda? You know the whole thing was planned. A New Orleans citizens committee pressured that Negro man Plessy into declaring his race in the white car. He certainly didn’t appear Negro—from the pictures I’ve glimpsed I remember there was blond in his hair—but that was part of their act, I suppose. Aren’t there more pressing racial matters than this? I read that there will be more lynchings of southern Negroes in the nineties than in all the years combined since the Civil War. I imagine the coloreds down there care more about keeping their necks from snapping than if they can sit in a white train car. Which side are you arguing?” she asked, looking down at the newspaper in front of her.

  “Ferguson,” Anita said, inching the paper down. “I’m arguing pro the Separate Car Act in the state of Louisiana.”

  “You were lucky in that coin toss, then. You wouldn’t sound convincing arguing the other side, and neither will Lottie.” She read aloud over Anita’s shoulder. “The Jim Crow Car Case is what the papers all called it, from Salt Lake to Boston and way down South.”

  Anita read along with her, her hands moving nervously.

  “Anita!” Belle exclaimed, suddenly taking a step back. “You just spilled your ink everywhere!”

  Right over the article, a puddle of black ink was sinking through the thin newsprint into her cotton writing papers. Anita quickly picked up the inkpot but dropped it again when she realized it was staining her hands.

  “Your hands, Anita!” said Belle, moving Anita’s papers. “Don’t touch another thing. You’ll get ink on your white dress. I’ll fetch one of the maids to help clean this up.”

  A moment after Belle left the room, Anita did, too. With her black-stained hands, she gathered her papers and rushed down the stairs and out the back of the building toward the farm. Once on the path, she forced herself to walk. If she ran the mile up Sunset Hill to the farm, everyone she passed would wonder why she was moving with such haste.

  Anita leaned down, wiped her stained hands on the grass, and continued along the path. Belle would worry when she returned with the maid, but she would suppose that Anita had gone to clean up. And when she was not in her room when she checked, she would presume Anita had gone elsewhere to study. Anita’s dress stuck to her back, and she could already smell the fetor of animals in the barn. If the professors knew the truth, she thought, if President Taylor knew, she would be more welcome there, with the cows and the swine, than she was sharing rooms with Lottie Taylor.

  Anita had decided on Vassar long before Vassar had decided on her. And here she was, standing above the stately campus, living out her nearly unattainable dream. Nearly.

  But at times it was achingly hard. She wiped her hands on the grass again, the lines on her palms still caked with iron gall ink, then dipped them repeatedly in the small stream on the approach to the farm. When they were as clean as nature could make them, she sat down, removed her pen, ink, and the rest of her paper from her bag, set it against her writing board, and started a letter.

  My Dear Mother,

  I know there are women much stronger, much smarter than I who were not granted the opportunities I was, but I think God may have been mistaken this time around. I am not formidable and bright, as you always said. I am weak. I am breakable. I fall apart under duress.

  I have a recurring nightmare in which I’m attending Sunday chapel, and the guest minister, President Taylor, and the entire student body have all been informed. My secret has been passed along in little hurried whispers from pink mouth to pink ear, followed by gasps, worry, dreadful embarrassment. Because all of a sudden, every single one of them knows that I, Anita Florence Hemmings, am a liar. I am not just of French and English descent, as I wrote on my application, I am also a Negro. The only one ever admitted to Vassar. I am alone and suddenly hated. Reviled. Looked upon as something to be pitied and ostracized.

  I tell myself, when I wake up shivering in my nightdress, that it’s only a nightmare. I am still a student at Vassar—this is still mine. So I let myself become comfortable, convince myself that I am the same as everyone else here, and that’s when terror creeps in. When it happens—a remark, a reading assignment about the war, a comment about the inferiority of Negroes—I feel my bones cracking because I’ve let my defenses down. I’ve been caught by surprise. I’ve let myself become too comfortable.

  Do you remember when I was at the Prince Grammar School and I came home to tell you that I was at the top of my class, the very first? You and Father weren’t surprised at all—even though you had scarcely attended school, even though I was the first Negro girl admitted and one of the only Negro students in all my years there. You knew Frederick and I were going to carry ourselves forward, despite written and unwritten rules that seemed to keep us from moving anywhere but down.

  Your words carried me here, Mother, but I’m walking unsteadily today. Can I make it through one more year pretending I am just like them? Please tell me I can. I know you cannot write to me, but please tell me through your prayers.

  While you and Father serve people, clean up after their easy lives, I stand in my room and call for the janitor. I ring for a maid to help me button the dress we sewed together, with your savings. I laugh and dine and study with women who come from the best families in the country. White families. But what if they knew, Mother?

  Sometimes my dream is not that I’m in chapel, but that I’m standing in my best shoes on the edge of a bluff, one of the dusty, orange ones that we’ve seen pictures of out west. I know that the slightest breeze will knock me over, but I dare to stand there anyway. Suddenly, I feel a woman’s small hand push with great force on my back and I speed through the air before hitting the ground with a tremendous sound. I lie there, dead. They send for you and Father, and then they know. I’m a dead Negro who learned Greek and Latin, and who, for three years, was a promising student at Vassar College with an alarming secret.

  Mother, tomorrow I will be arguing the pro-segregation side of Plessy v. Ferguson in my debate society. I have to smile widely and devote every ounce of my intellect to winning the argument that separate but equal is the right way to live. I have to be the most convincing voice in the room—the alternative is a risk I cannot take. I must read all I can about the ruling in Louisiana. I must explain with conviction why seven white Supreme Court judges determined that Homer Plessy’s 13th and 14th Amendment rights were not denied when they forced him out of the white car. I must declare that separating races is what God intended and that white and colored should never be forced to sit together in a train car. And if not in a train car, then certainly not in a classroom, or a dormitory room. What I am arguing is simple. One drop of Negro blood taints a person. Plessy did not belong, and neither do I. No Negro belongs in a white train car, and they don’t belong at Vassar College, either. But I do belong, don’t I? Pray for me, Mother, and I will do the same for you.

  With all my love,

  Anita

  As soon as she had finished, Anita ripped the letter into pieces, tiny shreds of paper covered in incriminating words. She held them in her hand, then let them fall into the clear, cold stream.

  Anita watched the bits of pressed cotton until they had sunk to the bottom, turned to pulp, the ink washed away and her secret with it. When she finally heard footsteps behind her, she turned to see Belle, her face cloaked in concern.

  “There you are, Anita! Is anything wrong?”

  Anita stood, deliberately smiling.

  “No, Belle,” she said calmly. “Everything is perfect.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Kn
eeling next to her bed, Anita closed her eyes and squeezed her eyelids so tightly that the pressure made her face quiver. But this was a prayer that she needed to shut out the world for.

  As she had done on Friday in front of her peers, she recited the passage she had memorized from the Plessy v Ferguson court document. “Under the Louisiana statute, no colored person is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to white persons, nor any white person to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to colored persons. If a passenger insists upon going into a coach or compartment not set apart for persons of his race, he is subject to be fined or to be imprisoned in the parish jail.”

  Anita had been voted the victor in the debate, but Lottie had shrugged it off good-naturedly, congratulating Anita on her evident passion. It was the outcome Anita needed, and that she had earned after her hours of fervent study. In the days that followed, the torment she had felt making her hateful case was starting to ease, but the one image she knew she would never erase was of Sarah Douglas nodding in agreement with her. The audience was supposed to stay neutral, listening to both sides until the very end. But Sarah was apparently incapable of neutrality on such an issue.

  Lottie had delved into the argument of what constitutes a colored person and noted that Plessy had only one-eighth African blood, nondiscernible in his appearance. It was an argument Anita stayed far away from, as she considered her own origins. Her mother’s mother had been a Negro slave, impregnated by a white man. Her father was born from a similar forced union.

  Anita’s father was ten years older than her mother and hailed from Harrisonburg, Virginia, eight miles north of Bridgewater, where her mother was born in 1853. His mother’s name was Sarah, born without a last name. Like Anita’s mother, he had never known his father.

  Anita felt no softness in her heart for those white men, except that they had created her parents, who had, in turn, made her. And when she went to Vassar, she felt a small debt to them for the light skin that made it possible for her to attend. Like Homer Plessy, if Anita never told anyone she was a Negro, they would never guess.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Lottie opened the door to her bedroom and found her on her knees, her chin pressed to her chest.

  “Anita!” Lottie said, rushing into the small room. “This is no time for prayer. You can reflect during chapel this evening. We have a grave situation upon us.” Anita stayed on her knees and turned her eyes to Lottie. Her roommate was a person who seemed more beautiful when life was frantic, as if she couldn’t fully shine in a state of boredom or routine.

  “Anita, please! Cease your praying and listen to me,” said Lottie, sitting on the bed. “I have very upsetting news.”

  Now worried, Anita stood up. “I’m sorry, you just startled me. I didn’t expect you back. Do you not have a Philaletheis meeting?”

  “Oh, do I?” said Lottie, with a glance at the wooden clock propped by Anita’s bed. “I suppose I do. Well, I can’t arrive at this hour, so I might as well be absent. Plus, as I said, something terrible has happened, and I’m quite rattled.”

  “What is it?” Anita asked anxiously. It was about her. It had to be about her.

  Lottie threw herself down and covered her eyes with her hands.

  “The Harvard-Yale game is not being played this year,” she groaned. “Canceled! Just like it was last year. Can you believe it? Two years in succession. It’s inhumane. We are being robbed of a collegiate tradition. It’s unpatriotic.”

  “Oh. Is that the terrible news?” Anita asked, removing Lottie’s small hands from her face.

  “Of course that’s the terrible news!” she exclaimed. “Four years of our college career and only able to attend two Harvard-Yale games, and as freshers and sophomores, at that. Not to mention that Harvard lost both of them, the first an absolute slaughter!”

  “I’m glad that it’s nothing graver than that. Illness, death, or even worse.”

  “Scoff at me,” said Lottie, sitting up and perching herself on her elbows. “But I know you took in the game as a sophomore. I have it on record.”

  “You have a lot of spies at Harvard,” Anita said, her breath regulating again. “It sounds like a volunteer army.”

  “Don’t I?” Lottie said, looking around Anita’s sparsely decorated bedroom. “I need to train up to Cambridge and greet them all, or they’ll forget I exist. There’s been such a drought of social events, and I am certainly not waiting for Phil Day in December to socialize with our nation’s finest college men.”

  “Lottie! The way you say that is shocking,” Anita said, lying back on her bed, too. She took one of her plump, cotton-wrapped pillows and placed it under her head. On Lottie’s bed, one small wall away, all the pillows were covered in lavender silk.

  “Isn’t it?” Lottie said proudly. “But it’s more shocking for a girl to have to wait three months for male company. That’s why I’m proposing we go to Harvard this weekend for the Harvard-Williams game on Sunday. That one they actually have a chance of winning, as those Williams boys are the size of beetles this year. We can stay at an inn in town and visit my dear cousin Lilly, who lives in Cambridge, the day before the game.”

  Before Anita could protest about work or cost, Lottie threw her arms around her and said, “Say yes, Anita, please? Do say yes. Father will pay for everything. He has been pestering me to check on my brother John anyhow, and we can be back to Poughkeepsie by Sunday evening. We won’t even have to crawl in a window or poison the Lodge watchman.”

  Anita looked at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Very well, perhaps, more realistically, it will be late Sunday night, or early Monday, but it will be in time for classes, I promise,” Lottie implored. “We will be granted a leave of absence, I’m sure of it. Just say yes, Anita, I beg you. It won’t be any fun if you’re not with me. Please don’t make me attend alone, or with some dreadfully bland girl. That would be such a waste of a memorable weekend.” She pouted her lips and blinked until her eyes watered, and Anita couldn’t do a thing but say yes.

  As the roommates were packing their dresses on Friday to travel to Boston early the next morning, Lottie turned to Anita and said, “Anita, forgive me. I’ve been too excited about the football game to think correctly. We’re going to take a train that terminates in Boston. Shall we stop in to see your family? We don’t have much time, but if we are to visit my cousin Lilly in Cambridge, then of course we must call on your family.”

  Holding her white day dress in her hand, Anita let her arms fall, and the dress fell with them. Lottie bent down and picked it up for her.

  “No, we will not have enough time for a visit,” Anita said, turning away. “And I just said goodbye to them two weeks before. I would much rather spend the day in Cambridge with your cousin.”

  “Are you certain? I don’t mind a slight detour.”

  “We can make the trip up another time. I’m sure there will be many more reasons to visit Harvard as the year progresses.”

  “I certainly hope so. They hold two formal dances a year,” said Lottie. “And attending a football game in the fall guarantees an invitation.”

  “Then I can’t decline, can I?”

  “Most certainly not!”

  The girls agreed that when they arrived Saturday, they would take a carriage straight to the inn and rest, dine in Cambridge, and spend the morning on Sunday with Lilly after an early church service. Lottie and Anita were not the only girls from Vassar making the journey up for the first Harvard football game of the fall, but they decided not to group with any of the other Vassar students, wanting no distractions during their first trip together.

  “You’ll simply fall in love with Lilly,” said Lottie, as their train glided from Albany to Boston. They had spent an hour on the platform waiting to change trains and head east and were just starting to recover from the heat. Inside the car, the bulbous lamps embedded in ornate metalwork were not helping. “She’s a real beauty, Lilly is. Everyone was always going on about it when we were childre
n, and you can imagine how that made me feel. I won’t pretend I wasn’t elated when she didn’t pass the Vassar entrance exam. She was one year ahead of me at the Brearley School. She had her share of admirers at that time, but I’m happy to report that her grades were not near the top of her class. But don’t take that to mean that I was jealous of her. She’s really a lovely girl. You’ll see. I’m so very fond of her.”

  “Lottie,” Anita said, watching her friend’s gloved hands fidget with everything in reach. “You’re a very pretty girl, too. Sometimes I think you’re simply unaware of it. And you’re an awfully entertaining person, which I think is more important.”

  “Aren’t you lucky, rooming with a comedienne?” Lottie said happily. She looked out the window at New York turning into Massachusetts and said, “Anita, I am well aware that I have a flair for the dramatic, but one thing I know about is people. I can see which girls cause men to turn their heads and which do not. You, Lilly—you’re the kind of women men fall for. I’m a good-enough-looking girl, but I’m no great beauty.”

  “I think you’re mistaken,” said Anita, surprised by her roommate’s harsh judgment of herself. Anita guessed she was quoting an overcritical mother.

  “Let’s not analyze it too closely,” said Lottie. She leaned back on the green velvet seat and ran her hands down the carved wooden armrests. “Let’s just remember that we are young and intelligent and not so bad to look at. This weekend will be memorable, so let’s bask in it. It’s our last year, and I’m already feeling painfully sentimental. It’s my nature.”

  Anita smiled at her, sharing that part of her nature.

  “If your cousin did not pass the Vassar entrance exam, did she attend another college?” asked Anita a moment later, watching a porter bring lunch to the travelers ahead of them.

  “Did I not tell you?” said Lottie, flagging him down and ordering them rare steak and potato soufflé. “She’s at Radcliffe now. Class of 1899. She prepared for the exam up north so she’s behind me now. And the girls don’t live on campus at Radcliffe, so I’m in the habit of saying Cambridge. But we are to visit her on campus tomorrow.”