And All Our Wounds Forgiven (10 page)

andrea noticed and said: she’s quite lovely, isn’t she? embarrassed, i wanted to demur but i sensed it was important not to betray myself — and her: yes. she is.

neither andrea or i could escape the reverence in my tone.

a few weeks later when the invitation came from fisk, i accepted immediately and asked andrea to come with me, which was unusual. she never accompanied me on my travels, not even in those early years. two years later, when i returned from california with elizabeth, i think she was relieved that someone was finally going to take responsibility for my aloneness.

that phelps girl is at fisk. i don’t think i want to be there when you meet her.

i tried to deny that my eagerness to go to fisk was to meet elizabeth. i was confused. i did not understand why i needed to meet her. i knew it appeared to andrea to be a sexual attraction. it was not. i could’ve hidden that because it is essentially meaningless except if personal gratification is the essence of one’s existence. perhaps i wanted andrea there to protect me. i thought if she was with me, nothing would happen and i would be safe.

after lunch at the fisk president’s house, andrea and i got in the car to drive back to atlanta. we were both afraid to break the silence, afraid that any word would mean the end of the marriage. yet, if the silence continued for too long, that, too, would mean the end. i did not know what to say. there was nothing to say.

elizabeth.

i had said her name like a lover consenting to go wherever the beloved led.

andrea: listen and don’t respond. if you say anything, it will be a lie, and i don’t like you when you lie. you can’t help it. you’re a man. truths of the heart confuse men. they confuse women, too, but we know it is better to speak them aloud. men lie aloud and speak the truth to themselves. women speak the truth aloud but believe the lies they tell themselves.

we fear truths of the heart because, more often than not, they hurt. they complicate our lives. but that is only appearance. ultimately, truths of the heart simplify, even if we aren’t able to always believe them.

i do not like being the wife of john calvin marshall. i did not say that i do not love you. i love you more now than the afternoon we met my freshman year. i love the man you are becoming. i love you for choosing to be the leader of our people. i love you, john calvin. being your wife is another matter.

i do not like the tightness in my stomach everytime a car passes the house. i do not like the dread of waiting for the next window to shatter from a rock or implode from the blast of a shotgun. i do not like the memory of the house falling around me; i do not like thinking, what if i had not taken three steps toward the kitchen? i would have been killed. i do not like to hear the phone ring when you’re away because one time i will pick it up and someone will tell me you are dead.

most of all, i do not like that i am married to you and you are not married to me. i looked at that girl today and i envied the look in her eyes. i don’t mean when we were standing in the foyer but before you spoke. i noticed your eyes look up into the balcony and i knew you had found her. i turned and looked. i expected to see hero worship in her eyes. i expected to see the thick glow of infatuation. instead i was shocked. on her face, in her eyes, i saw a look of understanding. it’s not fair, i thought. i have tried so hard to be what you need. you have scarcely noticed because my efforts have been so far off the mark. you and she had not even exchanged a word, and yet, she seemed to know you in ways i never will. and afterward, in the foyer, did you notice that she stood and waited for you to come to her? did you notice that?

john calvin: yes, i did.

andrea: thanks for not lying. seeing how she was with you was remarkable. god, i hated her. i really hated her. it is not possible for a black woman to move through the world with such assurance, such self-confidence. how old is she? 19? my god! there has not been a 19-year-old black girl in the history of western civilization who could stand on the earth as if it were her unquestioned possession. but, i can’t hate her. it’s not her fault. and, this is what i want you to know. it is not yours, either. black men. white women. history has decreed that the two belong to each other in ways that black men and black women, white men and white women cannot. thank you for asking me to come. having seen the two of you together, having heard you speak her name, i will know that this is not some sexual fling. no woman likes to be rejected for that which all women have — pussy, if you will excuse me. if your husband is going to be sharing himself with another woman, at least let it be for something he could not have with you. i don’t know if that will lessen the hurt, but it will keep the hysteria within manageable boundaries — some of the time. it will assuage the loneliness — some of the time. it does not mean i forgive you — yet. it does not mean that i do not hate her. but my mind understands. some day, if i am blessed, my heart will accept.

i said nothing but when we got home, we made love more truly and more tenderly than we ever had and ever would again.

late that night, when i was downstairs going over my notes for the next day’s classes, i could hear her, upstairs, crying.

it seemed logical that the young would respond eagerly to my calls for social change. i did not understand that for the young change has no other content than change. the appearance of activity differentiates them from their parents. the task of youth is this definitive act of differentiation because the young can have only one priority — to see themselves.

i mistook their eagerness to follow me as confirmation. but ardor is as characteristic of youth as the large, moist eyes of cocker spaniels. though that ardor combined with courage to create a movement that ended racial segregation, what a price the nation extracted from its young to pay a debt they had not incurred.

but did i have an alternative? the foundation of national policy for resolving racial conflict was set by brown v. board of education. the supreme court required children to do what adults had not — desegregate the nation.

it seemed logical. the young were less imbued with prejudice. because they were young they could more readily learn and live an ethic of social equality. but we robbed them of childhood and thus of integrity. they never knew. adults are skillful at pandering to youth. listen to the platitudes of any high school or college commencement address. the young are flattered into believing that the responsibility for the future of humanity is now passing into their hands. they are told that they are the best and the brightest, the most caring and sensitive youth to ever tread the crust of mother earth. they applaud with self-congratulatory fervor when they are told that their generation must and will succeed where their parents’ generation has failed.

thus we lie to the young in america. we leave it to them to discover, with a shock, that youth is the shortest and most fleeting period of their lives, that the living will get more arduous as they age, and that the hallmark of maturity is the courage to withstand uncertainty and paradox and the absence of a solution for anything, anything at all.

1974

The phone woke him.

He opened his eyes to narrow slits and peered across the floor at the clock radio whose luminous numbers shone like evil contemplating itself.

Bobby knew he should let the phone ring until whoever it was hung up or died. In the history of the world nobody had ever received good news at 4 a.m.

“The phone’s ringing,” came a sleepy female voice from the other side of the mattress.

“Don’t you think I know that,” he growled, wondering who the bitch was. “If you care so damn much, answer the muthafucka your damn self!” He laughed harshly. “Bitch!” he added, as if he had left the sentence incomplete.

He leaned over and snatched the receiver off the phone from where it sat on the floor next to the radio. “What the fuck you want?”

He heard a sigh, followed by a soft chuckle.

“Bitch!” he screamed. “If you want to sigh, come on over! I got something between my legs that’ll make you do more than sigh, goddammit!”

“You get more charming with the years,” came the calm response in a soft female voice.

Card was silent for a moment and then recognized who it was. “Shit!”

“It’s so nice to be remembered,” the voice said sweetly.

“What the fuck do you want?” he said with a cold fury, sitting up now, grasping the receiver so tightly his hand hurt. “Do you know what the fuck time it is? And no, the check is not in the mail.”

The voice laughed genuinely, and in spite of himself, Card smiled. “Guess you knew that, huh?” he responded, calmer now.

“I wouldn’t expect you to break a four-year habit.”

“At least I’m consistent.”

“When one is devoid of virtues, consistency is all that remains.”

“Goddammit, Kathy!” he flared.

“I apologize, Bobby.”

“Fine! Now, get to the fucking point.”

It had been eternities since he had heard that voice as seductive as promises, and he was frightened that it could still make him want to reach for what he had been unable to grasp.

He waited in the darkness for her to speak and became wary as the silence merged with the darkness and she hid within one or the other or behind both, a snake burrowed in the ground sensing the prey oblivious to its imminent death.

Just as his impatience was about to explode, she said softly, “Bobby?”

“Dammit, you know my name and I know my name. What the fuck is it? Something happen to Adisa?” he asked, the thought occurring to him for the first time.

“Bobby?” she repeated, her voice hesitant and seeming to break like scraps of cloud. “It’s George. He’s dead.”

“George?” he echoed reflexively, not knowing who she was talking about.

“He shot himself.”

“Shot himself!” and he saw a thin face with a wisp of beard. “George!” he exclaimed, his body suddenly rigid. “George shot himself?” Then he chuckled, shaking his head nervously. “You got to be kidding, Kathy. George wouldn’t do that.”

“That’s what I thought. But he did.”

Card shook his head again. “Uh-uh. That’s not possible.”

“Wylie just called and told me. He wanted me to get in touch with you.”

“What the fuck for?” he shot back, suddenly surly again.

Kathy chuckled. “That’s what I wanted to ask him.”

“He think I give a fuck about George blowing his brains out,” he continued, not having heard Kathy’s quiet riposte.

“Yes, but he doesn’t know you as well as I do.”

“Fuck you, too!”

“Wylie wanted me to ask you to come to the funeral. He needs you.”

“Fuck that! I went to my last funeral when Cal got blown away. Tell Wylie I’m sorry.”

“You call him and tell him. Sorry I had to wake you. Now, tell me. What sixteen-year-old white girl are you in bed with tonight? Or have you matured to seventeen-year-olds?”

Card looked guiltily at the mass of blond hair spilling over the top of the sheet. “Anything else on your mind?” he asked Kathy.

“Well, since you asked, shall I tell Adisa that her father said hello and that he loves her?”

“Tell her whatever the fuck you want to!” He slammed down the receiver and fell back onto the bed, fists clenched.

“Sounded like bad news,” a voice said sympathetically from the other side of the mattress.

“Goddammit!” Card spluttered, leaping from the mattress and rushing across the room to turn on the light switch next to the door. “Who the fuck are you?” he screamed at the pudgy face of the girl clutching the sheet in front of her pale naked body. “Who the fuck asked you anything, and what the fuck are you doing here anyway?” Card hurried over and tore the sheet from her hands, flinging it toward the foot of the mattress.

The girl, her blue eyes wide with fear, didn’t look to be more than sixteen. She cringed at the head of the mattress, her back against the wall, arms crossed over her breasts as her eyes filled with tears.

Card laughed harshly as he stared down at her. “You oughta cover ‘em up! Don’t understand why somebody as young as you should have tits drooping like an old lady’s. Get the fuck outta here! Go on back to Brooklyn or Queens or Teaneck and tell your girl friends that you fucked a nigger and it’s going to be the highlight of your sorry ass life.” He drew back his arm as if to strike her, then let it drop. “Didn’t you hear me? Get the fuck OUT!”

The girl leaped from the mattress, picking up her clothes from the floor. Card shoved her across the room, grabbed her shorts, underpants and tanktop and threw them at her. “Put ‘em on in the goddam hall! Just get out of my sight!”

The girl scooped up her garments and, clutching them to her breasts, ran from the apartment, sobbing. Card slammed the door behind her, then, leaning against it, trembled. In the hallway he heard the rustle of clothes being put on hastily, the gasps of inhaled sobs and sniffling, then the sound of running steps down the hallway and the stairs. He went to the window, raised the shade and looked down in time to see her running west on Twelfth Street toward Avenue A. “Bitch,” he said softly.

He fell down on the mattress and stared at the blank wall across the small room, a mad glint in his eyes, jaw rigid and fists balled, the nails digging into the palms of his hands.

“Fuck you, muthafucka! Fuck you!”

Once Bobby Card had been thin and lean as winter. Now his stomach was flabby and soft, and where there had been tempered muscles in his shoulders, arms and legs, there was only flesh. He stared at the wall from dark eyes sunk deeply between a protruding forehead and high cheekbones. His shaven head completed the impression of someone whose face was more skeletal than human.

Though his tiny eyes stared at the wall, they were not seeing it. Nor were they seeing some inner landscape or replaying a drama from his 32 years. They saw nothing and as long as they did, he could remain still; the rage would pass and he wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital. He had pills somewhere, but even in the hospital he hadn’t liked to take them. White people had a pill for everything. If you were angry, they had a pill that left you floating somewhere. If they thought you had floated too far away, they had a pill to make you feel like green grass in the summer time. Hon-keys could cut off your balls and leave you thinking you were the biggest stud east of the Mississippi.