White People

by Allan Gurganus

  OH, AND ARDELIA, our lifelong helper, cook, and company, who’s right across the kitchen scribbling steam over on her ironing board as I work at drawing here. Ardelia, humming, is bottom-heavy among her (our) laundry, the face of her forever ready at my eye level. She is a brown (colored) triangle, she is a sweet dark tent.

  AND I AM, what?—maybe a wax crayon line, improving, underscoring other things, a good clear line connecting, I’m beneath them, around and for them so. Tense. Fine. Sick of being cooperative in keeping them created on a page they barely notice how darn kindly I control.—What is more alone than a single line on so white a page?

  WITHOUT MUCH ACCURACY, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they’ll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you’ve changed into that very simple shape. They’ll choose it lazily. Only when it suits them. Maybe one summer morning. You could, for instance, be seated in a wicker chair that your mother, stirred up for six weeks by a crafts class, spray-painted a lurid apple green. Why? You could be slouched on the porch reading, at age ten, page sixty of some Tom Swifty adventure full of selflessness, abandoned lighthouses, adult crooks, plus one loyal and incredibly intelligent beagle puppy. And because you’re curled up, engrossed, chewing on one index finger, book pressed near your face, because at just this moment your father, bringing home a business partner to lunch, trudges up the backstairs, nods toward you and boasts, “Our family brain,” because of this one moment, you will go on laboring under that half-slanderous heading for a lifetime. Bryan = Brain.

  And even if you somehow sensed the phrase’s branding-iron finality and whined a protest, it wouldn’t help. This name has already “taken,” in the way a smallpox vaccination takes precisely because it ends up as a scar.

  You were hardly reading Hegel. But the more you deny the title, the truer they’ll believe it is. Hey, they’ll think, We’ve really hit on something here. So, that is that. That is you. And, two weeks later, the family doctor, who must have somehow heard, says your eyes are tired because they’re very very weak and overworked eyes and need help; he claims you’ll go on wearing glasses at least until it’s time for college and maybe later, maybe all your life. Glasses make you even more what they said, what your father said, that name he gave—as families give everything—in passing but for keeps.

  “CANDLELIGHT DINNER TONIGHT,” Mother would sometimes call aloud and musically. She opened a drawer, lifted out two pronged lumps of protective esoteric fabric. These coverlets were husked off and you’d see silver, unblackened by air: two big twisty candelabra. Into each, a dozen white candles got jammed. For lighting these she used a specialized pencil-thin taper, very long. She touched flame to every upright wick.

  Pyromaniacs, we watched. Then we pretended to be blind boys holding out tin cups.

  “Very funny. Have you two ever heard of ‘atmosphere’? It’s actually quite rare in this section of North Carolina, but that just makes me try harder, for your sakes. You turn up your noses at eggplant, crabmeat, even artichokes. You don’t want finger bowls on the table, even at Easter dinner. Well, you boys cannot discourage me.”

  “Yeah,” Bradley said, “but with just candles, you can’t see what you’re eating. The peas look like all one thing.”

  She was in a good mood. After dinner, she’d rush off to preside over some civic meeting downtown. Now she chanted at him, “Well, sticks and stones …”

  “All right, children of all ages. Enough.” Father hastily muttered Grace.

  Your eyes soon got used to the light. Thanks to it, people looked healthier than they really were. Even our salt shaker gleamed like something faceted and valuable. Mother apologized for leaving early. It was her year to chair the Heart Drive, and three nights a week she would scurry out, officious, her blouse freshly pressed, carrying a clipboard she had bought at Woolworth’s then sprayed matte beige to complement her conservative suits. Now we sat in her atmospheric aftermath, listening to the station wagon grind around the drive. Her exit’s back-door breeze got here tardily, tilting all twenty-four flames.

  When left alone with us, Father formally pretended to relax. His face now glowed, a steep stretch of angles, shadows, dents, and fullnesses. “Yep,” he said, stirring his coffee. “Yep” what?

  Brother and I sat, silent, staring at our emptied dessert plates. Bradley toyed with the candle snuffer, holding it to his nose, then one eye. It was a tarnished wedding gift we’d found in a closet. He was allowed to smother one candelabrum’s worth. I got the other. If you could dip the snuffer into your water glass when neither parent looked, then flames hissed out louder and made much more smoke.

  “Well, so … tell me, Bradley, old boy. What’d you say you were going to be when you grow up?”

  It saddened me, Dad’s waiting—glum—for Bradley’s occupation. You’d think your own father could come up with something more personal than this. He wanted to be chummy but was so bad at it. If only I could tell him: Dad, it’s just us here. Don’t get nervous. What can go wrong? We’re already yours.

  After dinner, when we were alone upstairs, Bradley always made fun of Father’s stiffness. But face-to-face, I bet he’d definitely answer.

  “Lawyer probably.”

  “Well. A lawyer, huh? I guess you changed your mind from last time. Lawyer. Great. Bound to make a lot of money, that’s for sure. Yeah, a first-rate lawyer can just about write his own ticket.”

  “Plus,” Bradley added, eyes wide, “when people get caught in a house where some guy’s been murdered and the police say they did it, lawyers can show they didn’t and get them off.”

  “That’s right. It’s good for people and it’s a comfortable living, too. Well, if you really want that, I guess law school could be arranged eventually. Of course, both my brothers went to U. Va., but your mother’s father and yours truly put in time at Harvard, their law school there, so it’s just a matter of visiting the places and deciding which—”

  “Hey, Dad?” I butted in. “Well, Bradley is just nine years old and, I mean, he could change his mind about four hundred times before then, right? We shouldn’t make him think he has to do anything, right, Dad?”

  There was a pause. Candles sputtered. On wallpaper behind him, Father’s shadow wavered, his edges wobbling.

  “Bryan, I know how old your brother is. Also, I keep telling myself, son, that you’re almost what, eleven? and that you should probably understand by now, it’s fairly aggravating when you cut into other people’s conversations. As for law school, you can never start planning a thing too early. At least that’s how I see it. And how about you, your plans? Somebody as smart as you, with grades and all like yours, I guess, really, the sky’s the limit. Person like you could do just about anything he sets his mind to, am I right?”

  He knew that I took even rhetorical questions to heart, that I’d need at least a minute to choose my life’s work; so, with an unexpected tenderness, even with a measure of respect, Father stalled, “You know, Bryan, I think you inherited the Larkins’ kind of reasoning, instead of the Graftons’ way of acting first, thinking later. The way I operate, for instance.”

  I sat looking right at him. He had this whole theory about me and my mind. Now I just wanted to please him. I sat poking at warm tallow on the lowest silver stem. Butcher, thief, Indian chief. It didn’t matter what I said. Anything would satisfy. I’d seen Bradley watching a Perry Mason rerun this afternoon; he was so easy to figure. Father noisily stirred his coffee which was cold by now and didn’t need stirring. My time was running out. I didn’t want a job, mine would be a calling, something with a mission to it. Well, explain that to him, anything. Go ahead, just spit out, “Doctor.”

  But I couldn’t do it. I honestly didn’t know. It was a silly question even if it was the best he could manage. Uncles, salesmen asked such things. Have you got a little girlfriend? Oh, I bet you do, too. Come on, who, who?

  “Well? What are you going to be, Bryan? I guess you heard me.”
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  Bradley turned his face this way, the rat, smirking so Father couldn’t see; he understood exactly how I felt. I decided: I love Father three times more than Bradley does with his quick cutesy answers.

  “I don’t know.” I stared at my hands. “It probably sounds sassy but it’s true.” I looked up at him. “I really don’t know, Dad. I could say something but I wouldn’t mean it. And you want me to mean what I tell you. Right?”

  He let out a slow elaborate sigh. “Mr. Seriousness, huh? Okay. Have it your way.” Then he turned back to Bradley and, stretching long legs under the table, “So—Corporation or Criminal law?”

  I studied the two of them, cozy in the orange glow at their end of the table. “May I be excused?” I asked quietly.

  Father tilted this way and around the candlesticks to get a full view of me. His eyes showed: clear, fierce, handsome, glinting with an orange speck for every flame. Then he swung right back to his relaxed and manly pose, smiling at Bradley.

  “So,” he said, upbeat. “Corporation or Criminal?”

  I WAS LOADED DOWN with naturalist’s equipment, bound outdoors to bird-watch when I spotted a whole new month of magazines on the foyer mail table. Walking over, I startled myself in the hall mirror. Today I wore my croupier’s visor to relieve the squinty glare of binoculars plus eyeglasses. This sunshield arched just above my eyebrows and tinted my face a cheerful green. I’d stuffed a notebook and a yellow pencil into my shirt pocket. Binoculars hung from a neck strap. Grandmother had brought this high-powered set from Switzerland, especially for me. I admired myself: Bermuda shorts, argyle knee socks and the brand-new hiking boots I’d got with my own Christmas money.

  Mother subscribed to lots of glossy bulletins about good looks for home and self. I stood flipping through these, studying this month’s styles: women with hollowed ideal faces, whitish houses like Museums of Comfort. I turned to a picture of a room almost exactly like Bradley’s, only tidier. The photograph was an ad for linoleum; its caption read “Positively Boy-Proof.” On invisible wires, model biplanes dangled from the ceiling, frozen in nosedives. Pennants praising Trojans, Steelers, Bulldogs triangulated all across the paneled wooden walls. Traffic signs were nailed and tilted everywhere, conflicting demands, just like Bradley’s collection.

  Mother had caught him sneaking a red stop sign into our house. “Aren’t you ashamed, young man? You turn right around and take that back. Think of all the accidents you might be causing this very minute.” “Hey,” he said, face lifting, brightening with his own consequences. “Neat-o.”

  How did Bradley know just which things to collect? What about my horde of quartz, fossils, file cards on local birds, my Latin labels? Where did all that fit in? Brother must share traits with the kid whose bedroom they showed here. Even if a decorator made the whole thing up, imagine all the boys’ rooms in the USA that must be just like this. Birds, state to state, look enough alike to be identified as members of the same genus. Maybe ideal standard boys shared such habits or markings, nesting patterns.

  I postponed bird-watching. He was somewhere in this house right now, no one else at home. I’d just go say hello. I wandered room to room. The binoculars, snug and Swiss in their horsehide case, slapped amiably against my front side. Hiking boots glided noiseless on our carpeting and Persian rugs. I tracked him to his hideaway upstairs. The door stood half open. I peeked in. He lay there on the oak floor, belly-down, on newspapers. He was arranging countless components from his new and biggest model. He had lined these up as a miser might. Vital parts of the USS Enterprise. Ardelia insisted on the papers, claiming that this glue was just impossible to scrub up. Now, between two tennis shoes, he’d cleverly propped the square magnifying lens. Grandmother had given Bradley this, her reading glass, when he’d resented my expensive binoculars. He got this, plus the lederhosen she’d brought him.

  With the silver beak of Mother’s versatile eyebrow tweezers, he pinched up a tiny antiaircraft gun. He held it beyond the prismedged glass and, head tilted, frowned into the lens. Then, magnified as in a fishbowl, something pink appeared from one side, an hors d’oeuvre toothpick, the kind Father bought to jab at baby onions in guests’ martinis. This one was laden with a dewdrop of clear glue. It scumbled against the khaki-colored gun no larger than an insect’s leg. Bradley knew I stood watching. He could hear the leather of my neck strap creak as I leaned on his doorjamb. But he couldn’t glance up just yet. I understood the reason. That glue dried so darn fast.

  I scanned his room. Boy-Proof. For once, it looked significant and enviable, nationally advertised. I speed-read left to right: Raiders. Yield. Visit Orton Plantation. Wolverines. Harvard. Go Back, Wrong Way. Luther Hodges for Governor. Shoplifters Prosecuted. Love Those Tar heels. See Castle of Reptiles, a educational must for kids visiting Florida. God Bless This Mess. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Food. Dr. Ornstein Dentist Patient Parking. Wolfpack. So, I thought.

  Just then he looked up. I felt awkward, sneaky. He never came to my room unless invited. Half in his doorway, half in our hall, I stood, eager for some quick sign of approval despite our differences. I needed just one word, a nod from him, then I’d leave. I smiled, uneasy. I said, “Hi.”

  In his magnifying lens, the toothpick tipped with glue stayed poised just opposite the tweezers prongs. Propped on elbows, he lay watching me, awaiting what I’d say next. I couldn’t think of a thing, not a single thing that might concern or interest or amuse him. I just grinned. His eyes, in one downward sweep, sped across my visor, binoculars, notebook, knee socks, new tan boots. His vision scraped across these and me, like the downward opening swipe of some surgical instrument made specially for that. As I hung here, smarting in the doorway, he leisurely turned back, a blond boy as in magazines; his whole concentration swerved around and fell again upon that useless plastic USS Enterprise and, quietly, still poking half-dried glue, he mumbled one word, “Weird.”

  FOUR DAYS LATER, the family brain was taking a shortcut across the school ground, hurrying home with three new public library books tucked under his arm, walking in a pompous almost military step, having just read something really great about a drummer boy, twelve years old, who’d saved the day at an African fort. Since school let out, only pigeons huddled here in daily attendance, chalking up the windowsills and bas-reliefs. All season, there’d been an epidemic among pigeons at Gorham Elementary. You’d see one lose its footing on a third-floor gutter, then fall, flapping spastic out into the sunlight, hooting for its friends and family. But, nested in brick niches, the others never seemed to notice. I asked my teacher what we could do about this, about our school’s birds being so sick, and Miss Whipple said, “Not one thing, Bryan. It’s nice that you’re tenderhearted. But pigeons just aren’t like our friends the bluebirds and cardinals. I say, good riddance.” That spring a pair of pigeons, still healthy enough, had chosen our windowsill as the perfect sunny spot to mate. Miss Whipple busily pretended not to hear our class tittering. Then she dropped her spelling book, lunged madly shrieking toward the window, slapped the glass so hard we thought she’d slashed her hand to spite the springtime, to punish us for underestimating phonics, for noticing the world itself.

  Soldiers at a tribal outpost get pounced by local Africans. Way outnumbered, the whole English regiment is blow-gunned, speared, or hit hard by fever; all but the drummer boy. He sets up rifles in the fort’s lookout towers, then pulls the strings attached to far-flung triggers, making natives think that seven able-bodied men still stand—not just one thin resourceful boy. Two days later, owing to hunger and blow darts, he begins seeing things. But just then, reinforcements announce themselves, a whinny of bagpipes eddies far across the veldt, terrifying superstitious villagers. Into the fort thunder drums, tartan kilts, and muskets. All congratulations for the boy. When he sees his comrades propped up, revived, attended to, the hero keels right over, dead asleep after weeks of perfect duty. The soldiers carry him upstairs and tuck him into the big bed of a valiant general, speared earlier. Clean silk shee
ts, it said. “A stout-hearted lad, and true.” Stirring to think of days when that old brand of bravery still held … held on just long enough to get a person appreciated by a person’s replacements.

  Miss Whipple, the librarian part-time, had said, Your reading speed is really picking up again, and I’d said, Yes, ma’am, I think it is. The eaves of Gorham Elementary hummed and cooed and crackled pigeon life. I turned a corner briskly: now, to practice speeding up my stride with the rudder-true trajectory of a fast-reading eye. I passed some shadows, heard a groan, and stopped. Four kids there, two holding the arms of one, another lifting a white pigeon into the face of the middle kid, and Bradley’s eyes and mouth were pressed totally shut. He cringed just beyond Jimmy Otis’s fat fist where the bird was shuddering, sick. I took three steps into the shade and stood right alongside, simply watching. My being there changed nothing. Two boys Bradley’s own age kept wrenching his arms, lifting these straight up behind, so he now stood almost daintily on tiptoe. Brother’s head strained as far to one side as it would twist, neck muscles bulged, the bird’s scarlet beak nearly touching a tense spot just beneath his earlobe. It seemed some peculiar injection.

  “All right,” I said. Otis looked squarely at me and winked. He was famous even among sixth graders for his innovative meanness. Rumor claimed he’d given his own mother a black eye; she was just twelve years his senior, and tragically she just looked like him. Now Otis jammed the pale bird closer, crushing its soft breast against my brother’s right ear and rigid neck.

  “All right.” I cleared my throat, tried to age my voice, imitating the austere if kindly Miss Whipple. “I guess you guys couldn’t know it, but, see, Bradley’s got allergies. At least he used to have some, to bees, things like that. And this might be fun and all for you, but it could be kind of dangerous for him. You probably didn’t even know that, right? So let’s just break this up, okay?” Enthusiastically, I answered myself, “Okay.”