by John Berendt
“Oh, but the fun’s just startin’, honey.”
“Well, it’s all over for me,” I said. “I’m leaving.”
“Oh no, you ain’t, child. ’Cause if you do, I will read your beads right here in public, I promise you. I will scream and carry on. I will go up to that old man in the blue ruffled shirt you was just talkin’ to, and I will tell him that you brought me here, and that I am carryin’ your baby, and that you have just walked out on me.”
Every hair follicle on my head began to tingle. I was too respectful of Chablis’s sense of drama to dismiss her threat out of hand. She smiled and moved closer to me. “This is what you get for not bringin’ me as your date,” she said. “But if you are a good boy, I promise I won’t say nothin’.”
“Just behave yourself, Chablis,” I said.
“I’ll try, honey,” she said. “But it ain’t gonna be easy. Whenever I’m around high yellas, I get jumpy. Know what I mean? And this place is loaded with ’em. Just look around.” Chablis leaned on an elbow and scanned the crowd, panning slowly from one end of the hall to the other. “What you are lookin’ at is ‘black society,’” she said. “And now you know the big secret about black society: The whiter you are, the higher you get to rise in it.”
“But the debutantes don’t all have light skin,” I said. “They represent a pretty broad mix if you ask me.”
“They can make debutantes in any color they want,” said Chablis, “but it won’t make any difference. The girls with the light skin are the ones the successful black men are gonna marry. It gives them status. Black may be beautiful, honey, but white is still right when it comes to getting’ ahead in this world, in case you didn’t know. I ain’t got nothin’ against high yellas. Their color ain’t their fault, but they do tend to clan together. You oughta see em at Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church on West Broad Street. That’s the black status church here in Savannah. People say they got a comb over the front door, and they won’t let you in unless you can run the comb through your hair without breakin’ it. Inside the church the real light-skinned people sit in the pews up front, and the darker ones sit in back. That’s right, honey. Just like it used to be on the buses. Y’see, when it comes to prejudice, black folks are right up there with white folks. Believe me. It’s no big deal, but when I see black folks start actin’ white, honey, it brings out the nigger bitch in me.” A sly smile crept across Chablis’s face. She peered seductively over her shoulder at me.
“Behave yourself,” I said.
Chablis ordered another apple schnapps and drank it down. “We gotta stop talkin’ now, child. It’s time for The Doll to go play with the boys.”
Chablis walked demurely onto the dance floor and tapped the shoulder of the first debutante who passed. She and the debutante exchanged polite smiles and traded places. In a moment, Chablis was nestled against the chest of her new dancing partner. I watched from the bar, my anxiety tempered somewhat by my double scotch. Five minutes later, Chablis disentangled herself from her new partner and cut in on another couple. She did this several times in the next half hour, working the room and rubbing up against all the best-looking young men. She took care, as she made her rounds, not to neglect the feelings of the debutantes. “Love the gown!” she would say as she cut in. Chablis’s mouth was moving as fast as her body. She whispered to her partners, she gossiped with the girls.
At one o’clock, the dancing came to an end, and a breakfast buffet was laid out. Chablis filled her plate with eggs and sausages and then, as people began to sit down at their appointed tables, she floated around the room looking for a place to alight. Before long I noticed she was floating in our direction. She scooped up an empty chair from the next table and dragged it over to ours, squeezing it in between the two matrons who were sitting opposite me. They obligingly made room for her.
“Oh, pardon me,” said Chablis. “Is it all right if I join you?”
“Why, certainly,” said one of the women. “I must tell you I have not been able to take my eyes off your beautiful gown all night. It makes you look like a movie star.”
“Thanks,” said Chablis, settling into her seat. “As a matter of fact, I wear it on stage a lot.”
“Oh, are you in the theater?” the woman asked.
“Yes, I’m an actress,” said Chablis.
“How fascinating. What sort of acting do you do?”
“Shakespeare. Broadway. Lip sync. I’m based in Atlanta, but I came to Savannah tonight so I could see my cousin become a debutante.”
“Oh, how nice,” said the woman. “Which one is she?”
“LaVella.”
“Oh, LaVella’s a lovely girl! Don’t you think so, Charlotte?”
“Oh, my yes,” said the other woman, nodding and smiling broadly.
“I think so too,” said Chablis, a saccharine sweetness creeping into her voice, “and she’s always wanted to be a debutante. Ever since I can remember.” Chablis ate her food with exaggerated gentility, both pinkies raised.
“Isn’t that sweet,” said the woman. “LaVella’s so delicate and pretty. And so intelligent.”
“She’s wanted it so bad. We used to talk about bein’ debutantes when we was kids,” said Chablis. “I’m so glad she got to be one. She was afraid she wouldn’t make it, though.”
“Well,” said the woman, “I can tell you LaVella had nothing to worry about. She’s a first-class young lady.”
“She was worried anyhow. She’d say to me, ‘Oh, Cousin Cha-blis, I’ll never make it.’ I know I’ll never make it. And I would say, ‘Now listen, girl. You got nothin’ to worry about. If Vanessa Williams can get to be Miss America in spite of all the checkin’ up they do at the Miss America pageant, you ought to be able to slide right by that two-bit debutante-screening committee in little ol’ Savannah.”
The two matrons glanced across Chablis at each other.
“‘Besides, LaVella, honey,’ I said. ‘You are always so careful to save your whorin’ around for when you come to Atlanta. No one in Savannah has a clue.’”
The two women stared wordlessly at Chablis, who continued to eat her breakfast daintily while she talked.
“I wanted to be a debutante too,” she went on. “Oh, yes, I really deeyid. But like I said to LaVella, ‘If I am gonna be a debutante, let me be a real debutante. Let me be a Cotillion debutante. I am serious.’”
One of the women coughed; the other looked away from the table in desperation, as if searching the horizon for a rescue ship.
“‘Oh, sure, LaVella,’ I said, ‘The Alpha ball is very beautiful and glamorous. Don’t get me wrong. But, LaVella,’ I said, ‘what are you gonna do this summer when you get off from school? Huh? You’re gonna work at the Burger King on West Broad Street. Right? Well, honey, Cotillion debutantes do not work at the Burger King. No way, child. They take bicycle trips through France and England. I am serious. They go to Washington and work for a United States senator who happens to be a friend of the family. They sail on a yacht. They fly to a spa and lay on their asses all summer. That’s what they do. And that’s what I want to do as a debutante.’”
Chablis pretended not to notice the discomfort she was causing the women. She glanced at me briefly and pursed her lips. Then she went right on talking.
“So I said, ‘Go ahead and laugh, girl. But you know I really could be a Cotillion debutante if I wanted to be. ’Cause I’m so good at passin’. I can be whatever I choose to be, and if I choose to be a rich white girl, honey, that’s what I will be. God knows I’m halfway there already. I have plenty of blond hunks to play with, honey, and I’m workin’ on havin’ me a white baby.’”
The women gave me pained glances, embarrassed that I—the only white person in the ballroom—should be forced to hear such talk. The temperature in the room seemed to rise by sixty degrees. I was sure my face was bright red. Suddenly Chablis put down her knife and fork.
“Oh, my goodness!” she said. “What time is it?” She grabbed the hand of the woman
next to her and looked at her watch. “Half past one! My driver’s been waitin’ for me since midnight.” She glanced around the room, then pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. “Well, it’s been nice meetin’ you,” she said. “I gotta say good-bye to some people before I go. If you ladies happen to see my chauffeur, would you tell him I’m still here and not to leave without me? Tell him we’ll be takin’ my cousin with us—my other cousin, that is. Philip. Tell him Philip and me haven’t finished disturbin’ the peace yet. He’ll know what that means.”
“Yes, why certainly,” one of the women mumbled.
“And you won’t have any trouble spottin’ my chauffeur,” said Chablis, casting a glance my way. “He’s white.”
Then she set off around the room, table-hopping and slipping her telephone number to several of the boys. Now, I figured, was the time for me to leave. Quickly. I nodded good-bye to my table mates and headed toward the door, giving Chablis a wide berth. I knew that if she saw me she would draw me into whatever stunt she was about to pull. I approached Dr. Collier and hurriedly thanked him for inviting me. Dr. Collier did not sense the urgency of my departure and introduced me to the man standing next to him, the man who had taught the debutantes how to dance the minuet. I smiled and uttered pleasantries but barely heard a word that either of the two were saying; my eyes were darting around the room for signs of Chablis. When at last it was possible to take my leave, I withdrew, ducked around the bar, slipped through the ballroom doors, and bounded down the escalator two steps at a time. I managed to make it across the lobby without incident and dashed out the front door into a calm, untroubled misty night on Bay Street.
Chapter 25
TALK OF THE TOWN
Midway through Jim Williams’s second year in jail, Savannah more or less forgot about him. The city turned its attention to other topics. There was a good deal of talk, for example, about the divine intervention allegedly visited upon George Mercer III.
George Mercer III was a prominent businessman and the nephew of the late Johnny Mercer. Mr. Mercer was leaving his house in Ardsley Park one evening to go to a dinner party when he suddenly realized he’d forgotten his car keys. He went back inside to get them. In the front hall he heard a voice say loud and clear, “George, you drink too much!”
Mr. Mercer looked around, but the hall was empty. “Who are you?” he asked. “And where are you?”
“I am the Lord,” said the voice. “I am everywhere.”
“Well, I know I drink more than I should,” said Mr. Mercer, “but how do I know you’re the Lord? If you really are, show me. Show me now. If you can prove to me you’re God I’ll never drink again.” Suddenly, Mr. Mercer felt himself being lifted high in the air. Up over his house. Up over Ardsley Park. He was lifted so high he could look down and see all of Savannah—the downtown squares, the river, Tybee Island, and Hilton Head. And the voice said, “Have I proved to you that I am real?” Mr. Mercer declared then and there that he did believe, and the Lord put him back down in the front hall. George Mercer III never took another drink after that.
Even people who doubted the truth of that story had to admit that on a spiritual level at least something very strange was happening to Savannah’s upper crust. How else could one explain the charismatic services Thursday nights at Christ Episcopal Church? Christ Church was Savannah’s oldest and most tradition-bound house of worship. It was the Mother Church of Georgia, John Wesley having served as its rector in 1736. But now the charismatics had a foot in the door, and they were gathering in the basement on Thursday nights, speaking in tongues, strumming guitars, banging on tambourines, and waving their arms in the air whenever the spirit moved them. The more conservative parishioners were appalled; some simply refused to believe it.
Spiritual matters were not Savannah’s only preoccupation, however. There was concern about the city’s economy as well. Savannah’s renaissance had crested, and a decline had begun. The city seemed more isolated than ever. Northern businesses were relocating in the South, but they were putting down roots in Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Charleston, not in Savannah. Downtown real estate values, after rising sharply for twenty years, had softened. Retail stores were abandoning Broughton Street and moving out to the Mall and elsewhere on the southside. More ominous yet, it seemed that Savannah’s most lucrative source of income—the shipping business—was on the verge of being choked off by, of all things, the old Talmadge Bridge. As tall as the bridge was, it was not quite tall enough to allow the huge new superfreighters to sail under it to the docks upriver. Several medium-size containerships had already clipped off aerials and radar masts on the underside of the bridge, and port officials dreaded that any day now a whole poop deck would be sheared off into the water. Before that ever happened, of course, a fair portion of Savannah’s shipping trade would have headed for other ports. The threat to the economy of Savannah and Georgia was grave enough to send the state’s congressional delegation scrambling in search of federal funds for a new bridge. After a period of tense negotiations, money was allotted and a potential calamity averted. Fears about the old bridge were replaced by curiosity about what the new one would look like.
With matters like these to talk about, there was little time for thoughts of Jim Williams. “After all,” sighed Millicent Moore-land, “what more is there to say except ‘Poor Jim!’”
Indeed, a more immediate concern was the sudden appearance on downtown walls, sidewalks, and dumpsters of graffiti that read A DISTURBED JENNIFER. The desperate nature of the scrawl suggested that a deranged woman was roaming the lanes, contemplating harm to herself or others. After a month of heightened anxiety and double-locking of doors, “A Disturbed Jennifer” materialized as a rock group composed of four green-haired students from the Savannah College of Art and Design. The resolution of that mystery calmed fears but did nothing to soothe Savannah’s increasing impatience with the new art school.
The Savannah College of Art and Design—known familiarly as SCAD—had opened its doors in 1979 with the blessings of all Savannah. The school had taken over the boarded-up Guard Armory on Madison Square and refurbished it as classrooms and studios for seventy-one art students. Within two years, enrollment had climbed to three hundred, and the college had acquired and restored several more old and empty buildings—warehouses, public schools, even a jailhouse. SCAD’s young president, Richard Rowan, let it be known that the student body would eventually grow to two thousand.
Downtown residents did not respond happily to Rowan’s announcement. While the students did contribute something to the local economy, and they did bring a little life to the otherwise empty streets, they were becoming in the eyes of some people a blight on the landscape with their green hair, their odd clothes, their skateboards, and their tendency to play loud music on their stereos well into the night. In reaction, a group of downtown residents formed a Quality of Life Committee to deal with the situation. Joe Webster, who headed the committee, could be seen each day at noontime walking stiffly with the aid of a cane from his office in the C&S Bank building to the Oglethorpe Club for lunch. His route took him down Bull Street past the main entrance of SCAD, where he would invariably make his way through a small cluster of students and point silently with his cane at some offending object—a crumpled candy wrapper or a motorcycle idling noisily at the curb. On one occasion, Mr. Webster and his committee stopped in to see Richard Rowan in his office to express their concern that the fragile human ecology of downtown Savannah might not survive two thousand students. The total population of the historic district was, after all, only about ten thousand. Rowan told the committee that he would see what he could do about the loud music and that, by the by, he had recently revised his goal from two thousand students to four thousand.
However disruptive the college might have been to Savannah’s peace and quiet, it did nothing to harm the city’s physical beauty. The college restored each building it bought with taste and authenticity, and Savannah continued to receive complim
ents from its far-flung admirers. Le Monde called Savannah “la plus belle des villes d’Amerique du Nord.” The National Trust for Historic Preservation focused a flattering spotlight on the city when it bestowed its highest honor—the Louise Crowninshield Award—on Lee Adler for his contribution to Savannah’s restoration. Adler went to Washington to accept the award, and upon his return his fellow citizens rallied around him in customary fashion: They congratulated him for winning yet another great honor, and as soon as his back was turned, they bitterly denounced him for once again hogging sole credit for a job done by many.
While Savannah had grown accustomed to receiving compliments for its good looks, the city was thoroughly unprepared for a shockingly negative piece of news about itself that came howling out of the FBI in Washington and resounded around the world. Savannah had achieved the highest per-capita murder rate in the United States the previous year—54 murders, or 22.6 murders per 100,000 people. Savannah had become the murder capital of the United States! A stunned Mayor John Rousakis looked at the figures and complained that Savannah had been the victim of a statistical fluke. The numbers reflected murder rates in metropolitan areas. Unlike most cities, Savannah did not have vast outlying suburbs with thousands of untroubled suburbanites to dilute its murder rate. When the murder rate was confined to actual city limits, Savannah ranked fifteenth in the nation, which was still a troubling distinction for a city that was not even among the country’s hundred largest cities.
Intending to clarify the matter, the city manager, Don Mendonsa, announced that a breakdown of police figures showed that crime in Savannah “is a black problem.” Nearly half of Savannah’s population was black, he said, but 91 percent of the murderers were black, and 85 percent of the victims were also black. The same was true for rape (89 percent of the offenders and 87 percent of the victims were black). Ninety-four percent of assaults and 95 percent of robberies involved black offenders. The city manager was not a racist. He expressed a compassionate concern for dealing with the root causes—12.1 percent unemployment among blacks, compared with 4.7 for whites, and similar disparities in school-dropout rates, teenage pregnancies, unwed mothers, and family income.