The Gilded Years

by Karin Tanabe

  The dreams that sent her into a pool of sweat and despair every night started to subside, too, and she was able to sit in the empty parlor without crying or thinking of the blissful times she had experienced there. It was now two weeks since Lottie had confronted her, and nothing had happened. No student had looked at her strangely. No one had ostracized her. She was starting to feel dangerously safe. Lottie would never speak to her again, but it appeared that she would have the decency to keep her secret, to let her graduate.

  Belle and Caroline split their time between the estranged roommates and told Anita they were trying their best not to take sides.

  “But of course we’re actually taking your side,” said Belle one day when Caroline had gone. “Lottie is the most selfish girl who will ever graduate from this school. I like so much about her, but increasingly, there is more to dislike. I will never forgive her for what she did to you. You were right to exile her from this room. It would have been too much for me to handle, as well.”

  “You shouldn’t be angry with Lottie,” said Anita, terrified of saying a word against her. “She isn’t all bad.”

  “Sometimes, Anita,” said Belle, standing up to leave Anita’s bare parlor room, “she is.”

  It was just two days later, as Anita was walking to chapel with Belle for choir practice, that she heard the low-pitched female voice so many students feared. This time, it was saying her name. Repeating her name.

  Anita turned around to see Mrs. Kendrick approaching, her skirt taut on her ankles as she walked swiftly and with purpose. She wanted to whisper to Belle to jump with her out the nearest window and run until they were far from the campus, never to return.

  Instead, she simply said, “Hello, Mrs. Kendrick.”

  Belle also greeted the lady principal, who was still wearing a high-necked winter shirtwaist though the air outside was scented with spring, then put her hand supportively on Anita’s back before slipping into the chapel to give them privacy. Anita knew Belle assumed that Mrs. Kendrick wanted to speak with her about her feud with Lottie and the gossip they were generating around the school, distracting other girls in the midst of their finals. Mrs. Kendrick was known to abhor distractions. But there could only be one reason why Mrs. Kendrick would single her out, and as the reality of it set in, the nerves in Anita’s body felt like they were being split, one by one.

  “Miss Hemmings, would you mind stopping by President Taylor’s office this evening after chapel?” Mrs. Kendrick said evenly. “Something has come to our attention that we need to discuss with you promptly. I imagine you know what it is I’m speaking of, but I do not want to bring such a sensitive matter up at an inappropriate moment.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kendrick,” said Anita quietly, her eyes cast down. She wanted desperately to close them, to keep the room from spinning, and to shut out the lady principal’s stern face. But that would not be possible. From that moment on, Anita knew, she would have to comport herself as the most dignified student Vassar had ever known. She had to be the good Negro, the exceptional Negro. “Maybe then,” she prayed, “they will let me graduate.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Kendrick levelly. “I’ll let you get to choir practice now. I assume that’s where you were going with Miss Tiffany?”

  Anita nodded.

  “You have a beautiful voice,” Mrs. Kendrick said, even her compliment devoid of emotion. “I will greatly miss hearing it next year.” She gave Anita a nod and walked off down the hallway.

  Anita felt that her heart had started pumping twice as fast, and she longed to be far from campus, but she could not run from her fate.

  At choir practice, she sang flatly, her high notes breaking. During chapel, she feared she might hyperventilate. She wanted to stand up and denounce Lottie to the school at the top of her voice, but instead she bowed her head along with the other students, in silent, despairing prayer. Then she stood up and walked to the president’s office.

  Except for a polite hello in passing, Anita had never spoken to President Taylor. At that moment, she wished she had. If they had developed a rapport, then maybe she would be more than a word on a page to him: Negro, the school’s only Negro.

  His secretary guided her to his office, knocking on the door and ushering her inside. The president was seated behind his simple wooden desk, his short silver hair parted on the side, his mustache trimmed and neat. Seated on a chair to his right was the lady principal, next to her was Lottie, and surprisingly to Anita, across from the desk was Miss Franklin, her Latin professor.

  “Miss Hemmings. Come in, and please have a seat,” said the president, with a look on his face that Anita interpreted as friendly. But of course, she thought to herself, firing squads were never in tears. “I assume Mrs. Kendrick has already informed you what this meeting is about?” said the president, superfluously. The presence of Lottie Taylor told everyone what the meeting was about.

  “She has,” said Anita, politely. She would remain calm, unshaken. She sat down in the empty chair and thought of her father, putting money away week after week for her and her siblings’ educations. Sweep the floors, clean the toilets, scrub the windows, wax the building until it gleams like a glass palace. The faceless Negro janitor. She thought of that. For him, she had to persuade the people in that room to let her graduate with the class of 1897. For him.

  President Taylor lifted several sheets of paper from his desk and glanced through them. “Miss Hemmings, I’m afraid a sensitive matter has arisen for us all. Are you aware of what I’m implying?”

  Was she aware that she was a Negro? Up until two weeks before, she had been the only one who was aware. Her nerves were jumping, but she managed to look squarely at the president and said, “Yes, sir, I am aware.”

  “Good,” said the president, picking up the first paper in his stack. “Then this delicate matter with Miss Taylor is what I want to address first. This document here represents the findings of a private investigator hired by Miss Taylor’s father. It states that he traveled to the Boston home of Miss Anita Hemmings in the Roxbury neighborhood and discovered that her parents are both Negroes. Light-skinned, it says, gray eyes, whiskers, nearly able to pass as white. Nearly.” He looked up at Anita and said, “This refers to your father, I presume?”

  Anita nodded, trying to keep her expression perfectly compliant.

  “It was presented to me two days ago by Miss Taylor herself,” said the president. “Very unusual to approach me directly, but I suppose in this case it had to be done.”

  Anita looked over at Lottie, but Lottie kept her eyes fixed smugly on the president.

  “While I think this is certainly crossing a line into personal matters, the hiring of an investigator and so on, it is something we have to address,” said President Taylor. He looked at Anita and said, “So this is true, Miss Hemmings? Your parents, and therefore you, are Negroes?”

  The moment Anita had dreaded for four years had arrived. The cold fear of it had governed her life, causing her to wake up in plashes of sweat, to destroy her unsent letters to her mother, to forbid Bessie Baker to write to her or Frederick to visit her on campus. Full of sorrow and regret, she took a breath so deep that it made her stomach swell and said, “They are, I am. We are Negroes.”

  “I see,” said the president, still looking at her for an explanation.

  “I was never asked whether I was a Negro, so I never addressed it. If I had been asked, I would not have lied.” Anita looked down at her hands, half-shocked that she was still breathing after such a confession. But there she was, alive, and now at the mercy of the people in this room.

  A sigh of protest came from Lottie, but Mrs. Kendrick silenced her quickly. She handed a few more papers to the president, who read them slowly. Anita immediately recognized her handwriting.

  “Miss Hemmings, the application to the school asks specifically about a family’s origin. Mrs. Kendrick has pulled your record here, and I see that you wrote French and English in response to that question. Why did you c
laim such?” asked the president, without looking up. President Taylor was known to be conservative in his views on women but also deeply religious. Anita prayed that his conscience would sway him her way in this instance.

  “I am French and English,” she replied simply.

  “Fine,” said the president, now studying her light complexion. “But if you are a Negro, there must also be African blood.”

  “I suppose there must be,” she replied.

  “So you are not denying the accusation,” he said.

  “I am not denying it,” Anita replied. “My mother is a Negro, though light-skinned. My father is a Negro, though very light-skinned, with gray eyes, as the Taylors’ detective mentioned. And until I went to Dwight Moody’s Northfield Seminary to prepare for the Vassar examination, I lived as a Negro.”

  Lottie’s smug smile widened.

  “I have known for many months now that Miss Hemmings is a Negro,” said Miss Franklin suddenly. “That is why I’m present. When Mrs. Kendrick approached me a few days ago, since it was I and Miss Macurdy who had recommended Anita for several postgraduate scholarships, I told her that I had suspected it for some time and had had my suspicions confirmed in December.”

  “And you never spoke up?” asked President Taylor. “Why not, Miss Franklin? You certainly should have. The school must always be first and foremost in your considerations.”

  “It didn’t seem the Christian thing to do,” said Miss Franklin, stealing a quick glance at Anita. “She earned her place in the school. She is a well-liked student with excellent grades. Who was I to disturb such an equilibrium? It did not seem right. And if I may raise my voice now, all of this does not seem right, either. Should we really be entertaining the findings of an investigation done out of malice?”

  Miss Franklin had known. The day she had approached Anita after class, she had known the whole truth. She had not been supportive then, even of the idea of Anita rooming with a Negro, but perhaps time had softened her. Anita let her head fall back, thankful to have one person speaking on her behalf.

  “But how did you come to know when the rest of us did not?” asked President Taylor. “We did not know, did we, Mrs. Kendrick?” he asked. The lady principal was supposed to be his eyes and ears on campus regarding everything to do with the students.

  Mrs. Kendrick shook her head no, and everyone in the room looked at Miss Franklin expectantly.

  “I have a friend, a Latin instructor at Northfield, where Anita was a preparatory student. Because of Miss Hemmings’s close friendship with a quadroon woman there in 1892, this instructor always suspected that Miss Hemmings was a quadroon, as well. She shared these thoughts with me last year when I mentioned Miss Hemmings by name. I was speaking of my most gifted students. Miss Hemmings is certainly one of them.”

  Miss Franklin folded her hands in her lap.

  “I’d like to add one point that supports Miss Hemmings’s argument that she never tried to conceal her race,” she said. “In December, there was an article in the Boston Daily Globe that stated that Vassar College’s Miss Anita Hemmings was bridesmaid in a wedding between two prominent Negroes in Massachusetts. The bride was Miss Hemmings’s roommate at Northfield. This article stated plain as day that Miss Anita Hemmings of Vassar College was the bridesmaid during a ceremony with only Negroes in attendance.”

  She cleared her throat and glanced at Anita, who had never seen such an article. Had Bessie’s wedding been reported in the newspaper, she wondered? Had her family simply never mentioned it because they worried about alarming her? “But I suppose no one but me ever saw the article. Our school staff is too learned to be reading New England society sections. Especially when they concern Negroes,” Miss Franklin added.

  “I certainly do not bother myself with those pages, Miss Franklin,” said the president. “They are written for consumption by you ladies.”

  “My point is simply that Miss Hemmings was not purposely misleading the school,” Miss Franklin said. “She did very little to conceal her race. It is we who simply failed to see it.”

  “Very little to conceal it!” Lottie burst out. “I beg your pardon, Miss Franklin, but she did everything to conceal it, starting with the fact that she excluded the word Negro from her Vassar application. What could be more duplicitous than that? Furthermore, she concocted an intricate story about her father practicing law when he is nothing but a Negro laborer, a mere janitor.”

  She paused, reassumed her ladylike position, and lowered her voice, which was huskier than usual from emotion. “We must think of the good of the school. Imagine how our esteemed founder, Matthew Vassar, would feel knowing a Negro was about to graduate from his institution. He would turn over like a barrel in his grave.”

  “Negroes have graduated from other women’s colleges,” said Miss Franklin, moving straight to the decision that the president had to make. “Radcliffe has two now, Mount Holyoke one, and Wellesley has had several. Should Vassar not follow in the footsteps of the other women’s colleges?”

  “Miss Franklin, you know as well as I do that Vassar does not follow the actions of other women’s colleges,” the president said sharply. “We lead. Our position in this is that we do not admit Negroes, which extends to graduating them as well.”

  Anita’s throat closed, her eyes beginning to well up.

  President Taylor selected a sheet from the papers in front of him and said, “Now, let me be the authority on this matter, Miss Franklin, if you please. There is nothing spelled out in our bylaws that forbids Negroes from attending the school, but I did find in our minutes from 1865 that the school was not authorized, nor did it feel prepared, to admit anyone but white students. That is written plainly, as you can see here.” He took the sheet of paper, covered in large cursive script, and thrust it toward the Latin instructor.

  “But does Miss Hemmings’s success here not show that the founders may have been wrong in thinking that?” asked Miss Franklin.

  Anita, grateful for her ally, looked at her and prayed that she would have the courage to continue arguing with the president, as she herself was certainly not in a position to do it. She had to remain quiet, deferential, like a person who would never cause a problem for the school again.

  “There will never be other Negro women at Vassar, Miss Franklin,” said Lottie, her voice severe. “This school was not founded to educate women like Anita; it was founded to educate women like me.”

  Miss Franklin sat back, shaking her head at Lottie’s insolence.

  “There is truth in that, Miss Taylor,” said the president. He looked down at his papers and again at Miss Hemmings and her pleading, pleasing face. He inspected it carefully and Anita was sure she knew what he was thinking, what they all were thinking. It was certainly hard to tell she was a Negro. She watched him looking at her, plainly searching for Negroid features. She regretted walking so much in the sun that spring. Did she look darker than usual, she wondered. Would that be the pitiful thing that kept her from being allowed to graduate?

  “We have never graduated a Negro, and do not plan to admit any in the future,” said the president, still looking at Anita. He paused. “However, we will be making an exception this year. Our board met yesterday, Miss Hemmings. We have discussed it and have agreed that it is in the best interest of the school to allow you to graduate on June seventh. We do not need any negative press when our school is still so young.”

  “Yes, so young and in need of funds, is that it?” broke in Lottie. “You wouldn’t want anyone to hear about this embarrassing scandal and stop donating so generously to our campus? Well, I can tell you which family will never give you another cent, President Taylor. The Taylor family. My Taylor family. I will have nothing to do with this institution when I have graduated from here.”

  “Your rudeness is shocking, Miss Taylor!” Mrs. Kendrick exclaimed, breaking her silence. “You are still a student here and will cease speaking to the president like this at once.”

  Lottie apologized and loo
ked pleadingly at President Taylor.

  “I hope you will change your mind in time,” the president said stiffly. “Until then, I ask all of you in this room not to mention this matter to anyone. I assume we are the only ones at school who are aware of this situation besides our board—is that correct? Miss Taylor, did you speak to anyone of this matter besides myself and Mrs. Kendrick?”

  “I did not,” said Lottie. “I do not want to be known on my graduation day as the girl who roomed with the Negro.”

  “Very well,” said President Taylor. “As we are the only five on campus who are aware of Miss Hemmings’s race, we will remain the only five at Vassar who ever know. No one will speak of this until after graduation. I would implore you never to speak of this matter, but I understand that my authority extends only to current students and faculty, not graduates.”

  He looked at Anita again, this time as the respected college president and not as a man scrutinizing her face for answers. “You will be graduated with the rest of your class, and you will keep your head down until then. The same applies to you, Miss Taylor. Despite what you said, I know you care about this school and are willing to make sacrifices for the good of the institution.”

  “Of course,” said Lottie, her contempt audible.

  “Then it is decided,” he said, pushing the pile of papers away from him. “Miss Hemmings, I hope you are pleased, but I must make one additional stipulation. Your association with this school must have its limits. Miss Franklin informed me that you have applied for several scholarships for continued study and to travel abroad this summer. I’m afraid that even if you have been found a worthy candidate, you will no longer be considered for those. If news of your race was ever revealed, it would be ill-received that the school had continued to bolster you after graduation.”