Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (2 page)

Because I had dropped out of school, my immigration status was precarious. Technically I could have been deported because I had ceased being a full-time student. I was in the process of applying for a green card. If that were denied, I was ready to request political asylum rather than return home, where the Pretoria regime had escalated its repression and killing and detention of blacks. Letters from home brought only bad news and entreaties for money. I had none. I was still unable to support myself and relied on my benefactor Stan Smith, one of the closest friends I have, black or white.

Shortly after quitting journalism school I published a few articles in the St. Petersburg Tic sharply critical of apartheid and its brutal suppression of’ black dissent. Soon I began receiving anonymous threatening phone calls in the middle of the night.

I knew it was dangerous to write the truth about black life under apartheid, but I felt it was my duty, having had the rare opportunity of escaping from the bondage of legalized racism and segregation, to inform Americans, in human terms, that blacks in South Africa were fighting and dying for the same rights and freedoms that Americans’ could not imagine life without: the rights to vote, to live where one wished, to speak freely, to work for just pay, to have equal justice under the law.

One night around three, the ringing of the phone jarred me from a deep slumber. I picked up the receiver.

“Hello?)1 Silence. “Hello?fl A low, deliberate voice with an Afrikaner accent said, “You’d better watch out, kqffir” “Who is this?”

I demanded.

“We can stop you, if we have to.” “Who is this?”

No answer. The phone went dead.

I dropped the receiver into its cradle, switched off the lamp, and crawled back under the covers. But I could not sleep a wink. Fear, doubt, and anxiety tormented me.

I found comfort only in daylight and in routine. I rose each morning at seven, wrote until noon, ate lunch, read all alternoon, ate dinner, read, then worked out. One evening, not long after sunset, I carried my ball hopper and tennis rackets downstairs to the gym, hoping to bang out my fears and anger by practicing ground strokes against the wall.

In Manhattan, tennis courts were scarce and private clubs were prohibitively expensive. To keep playing my favorite sport, tennis, I had resorted to hitting against the gym wall.

The mysterious telephone calls in recent nights had put me on edge. I trusted few people, and those I did trust, black or white, had earned my confidence.

As I approached the gym, I noticed the lights were on. I paused, for I rarely encountered anyone else during my solitary tennis sessions. I opened the door a crack and saw Gail, who was stretching out. It turned out she had just returned from a jog through Riverside Park, in snow and ice. I hesitated. Should I come back later? I decided to enter. I strode in nonchalantly, placed my rackets and ball hopper in their usual spot against the back wall, and slipped the cover off one of the rackets, gilts from Stan.

“Hello,” Gail said as she bobbed over an outstretched leg, reaching for the toe of her well-worn, gray running shoe.

“Hi, how are you?” “All right,” she replied, turning to stretch her other leg. “I survived my run. It’s too icy out there for running shoes, but the snow isn’t deep enough for skis.”

Never having skied before, I found this statement intriguing. Do you ski in New York?”

4Whenever I can,” she said. “But the snow is much better where I come from, Minnesota.”

Not knowing what else to say, I started whacking tennis balls against the wall. The whole time I was thinking of what a comely, radiant face she had, boyish in shape but feminine in feature. Her shoulders were broad for a woman, probably those of a swimmer, and in her turtleneck, sweats, and parka, she appeared rustic, out HowWeMet/9 doorsy, and unseflconscious. Flustered and embarrassed by my attraction to her, which I was convinced was one way, I concentrated on establishing the rhythm in my strokes and smooth weight transference from the back to the front foot as I struck the ball. I did not look in her direction.

What made me uncomfortable about my attraction to her was that she was white. My predicament was this: Since coming to the United States I had come under increasing pressure to choose sides in America’s racial battles. Militant blacks wanted me to prove my solidarity with their cause by disassociating myself from whites and confining my friendships to the black community. My refusal to adopt the attitude that all whites are racist by abandoning white friends who had earned my trust and respect led me to be labeled an Uncle Tom.

To regard all whites as racist by failing to judge them as individuals is as harmful as the white attitude of stereotyping all blacks. But this argument of mine fell on deaf ears. Bitterness, rage, suspicion, fear, and hate had largely supplanted reason, tolerance, and common sense in America’s race relations.

Some whites, on the other hand, also victims of the racism and intolerance that pervaded society, were unable or unwilling to deal with me on my own terms, as an individual, rather than as one of the many stereotypes about blacks they had imbibed growing up selfsegregated from black America.

Suddenly Gail jumped up, picked up one of my other rackets, and tested the grip size.

Do you play?” I inquired.

I used to play a lot when I lived in Austin, Texas.”

“Let’s see,” I said, and tossed her two balls.

She hit the balls hard, stirny, but with determination. They bounced back to her at odd angles, making -her look ludicrous as she lunged and twisted and spun with little success in hitting the balls back. Both of us laughed uproariously.

“Hold the racket firmly but don’t choke it,” I said. And don’t forget to watch the ball carefully. And follow through, transferring your weight forward. Like this.” I demonstrated.

She tried again, but control of the ball kept eluding her. I noticed she was frustrated and a bit embarrassed. I took the pressure off her by patiently demonstrating the proper technique. We took turns hitting. Gradually some of her old skills came back. Gail ran nonstop all over the gym attempting to return my best shots. Finally she dropped from exhaustion.

“Don’t stop, you’re doing great,” I said. “You’re a natural athlete.”

“I’ll never be a tennis champion.”

“Are you still holding your racket properly?” I walked over to Gail, placed my hands gently on hers, adjusted her forehand grip, and guided her arm through the correct swing. I did not let go of her hand right away. Our eyes met.

GAIL’S VIEW I wondered if he were intentionally looking into my eyes or if he had simply forgotten himself. I was puzzled by the way his dark brilliant eyes seemed to penetrate right through me. I stepped away from him and hit a few more balls.

I had never before been attracted to anyone of a darker race, and I did not know how to react to my own emotions. Interracial love, white society had loudly and insistently said, was taboo. I did not forget for a second that I was alone in a gym with a black man. But I also knew he was a remarkable human being from what I had heard from colleagues at the J-school, and I felt excited at the opportunity of finally meeting and talking to him. I gathered my belongings nervously and headed for the door, overcome with the strangeness of the situation. I had learned to relate to blacks with respect and as equals from interviewing them in Harlem and the South Bronx for journalism classes, but I was aware of the racist attitudes of many whites and wondered at my own subtle prejudices. Simply put, I dreaded getting involved, however platonically, with a black man.

“Leaving already?” Mark asked.

“Yes, I have to go.”

He seemed to want to say something more, so I waited.

“Would you like to accompany me to a tennis match Sunday afternoon?” he asked.

I felt paralyzed with a potent mixture of joy and fear. I spoke from my heart, not my head, when I said, “I’d love to.” Then I fled HowWe Met/Il from the object of my emotional turmoil. I ran upstairs to my tenthfloor room and sat on my bed looking out the window at Riverside Church and the Hudson River and the gray sky, deep in thought.

I first became aware of Mark during a Monday morning lecture in the World Room of the journalism school. I saw a well-dressed black man, whose shirt had apparently been carefully ironed and whose short Afro had been neatly combed, stand up and question the speaker about an issue related to apartheid. He spoke with a strange British accent, and the speaker cleared his throat several times before attempting to evade the question and mumble some obscure, unrelated answer.

Michelle Nayman, a fellow journalism student from Australia, leaned toward me and whispered, “That was Mark Mathabane. Have you met him?”

“No,” I said. “Who is he?”

“Oh, you’ve got to meet him,” she whispered. “He’s led an incredible life and he’s writing a book about it. He escaped apartheid with the help of Stan Smith, the tennis player. He grew up in a ghetto outside Johannesburg in a shack made of tin, plastic, and brick, and slept most of his childhood on pieces of cardboard under the kitchen table. He’s the eldest of seven, and in the winter his mother wrapped them in old newspapers to keep them warm.”

“How awful! Couldn’t they afford blankets?” I asked naively, unaware, like most Americans were at the time, of the horrible living conditions in South African townships.

“No, they were very poor. His father made only ten dollars a week,” Michelle continued. “But most of the time he couldn’t Find work. The family had to scavenge for food at garbage dumps.”

I shook my head in disbelief, then looked at Mark, several rows up.

“You’d never know from looking at him that he’s lived through all that.”

“He has amazing determination,” Michelle said.

Michelle’s admiration for Mark sparked my curiosity I yearned to hear more about Mark’s life under apartheid, a system I understood only superficially from newspaper accounts.

A few weeks later I was having lunch with a Belgian journalism student named Geert when Mark joined us at our table. He directed his conversation to Geert, and gesticulated with his hands a lot when he spoke. Having seldom sat so close to a black person before, I was fascinated by the simple fact that his palms were a lighter color than the backs of his hands. He had the smallest, cutest ears I had ever seen, and I admired his large brown eyes and the way his goldrimmed glasses, watch, and white sweater contrasted with his dark skin.

Geert asked him questions. Mark infused his replies with incisive observations about race and such poignant details about his life in the ghetto that an overwhelming feeling of empathy arose within me.

I had never before heard of such horrors or such a graphic description of the plight and resiliency of South African blacks. He Ielt a deep impression on me.

One evening as I rode the elevator to the tenth floor, the car stopped on the sixth floor to let someone off. As the doors opened, I saw Mark jumping rope in the hallway, wearing nothing but yellow running shorts and tennis shoes. He was taking a breather, and his muscular chest glistened with sweat. He smiled bashfully as he stepped aside to let people by. He must have been popular, for everyone greeted him with a “Hi, Mark,” to which he replied with a slow and drawn out, “Hello, how is everybody?”

Then the doors slid shut and the elevator jolted upward. It had just lasted a few seconds, but that image of him stuck in my mind.

As a former swimmer and cross-country runner during high school, I had always admired well-conditioned athletes. A few days later, as I headed for the sixth floor elevator, Mark was doing push-ups. I pressed the elevator button and waited, trying to act casual and keep my eyes off him. I had a sudden urge to show him that he wasn’t the only athlete at I-House so I dropped to the ground and did ten quick push-ups, then dashed onto the elevator with a quick “Bye.” As the doors closed I saw a funny smile spread across his face.

I never imagined Mark would ever become my boyfriend, let alone my husband. At the time I had a steady boyfriend named Glen.

Though we were both PKs (preacher’s kids) from Minnesota, Glen and I had met, of all places, in Budapest in 1983. He was a blue-eyed graduate of the University of Minnesota with a fullblooded Norwegian ancestry and a middle name of Thor, after the Norse god. As soon as I was accepted to Columbia, he started applying for jobs in New York City so he could be near me. He got a job with a nonprofit group started by Ralph Nader that fought to keep consumer prices down and advocated safe, reliable, and affordable public transportation. I admired his devotion to the public good and his dedicated efforts to help the poor.

He rented a small room in Brooklyn and we would commute by subway to see each other.

I excitedly told Glen about Mark and his remarkable odyssey from a violent and desperate South African ghetto to the journalism school.

One night I happened to run into Mark when I was with Glen, so I introduced them.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Glen said, shaking Mark’s hand with enthusiasm. He did not have the slightest hint of jealousy in his voice, probably because Mark was black and, therefore, presumed not a threat.

Glen wanted us to live together and eventually get married.

Commitment scared me. My career ambition was to become a foreign correspondent. I was applying for jobs at Reuters News Service in London, at Radio Free Europe in Munich,’ and at the U.S. Information Agency for an internship in Germany. In case I could not get a job abroad, I had sent resumes to papers all over the country: on forested islands off the coast of Alaska, near Hawaiian beaches, in the wilds of Arkansas and Louisiana, high in the Rocky Mountains. I poured my random desires into the mailbox and patiently waited for my future to decide for itself what I would do and where.

Glen liked me to wear a white scarf because he felt it made me look “pure.” He sometimes had jealous dreams in which I told him I had been seeing someone else. He wanted me to be his and his alone. He made me feel that I could have no male friends. He could never forgive me for having had boyfriends before him. Instead of being proud of my accomplishments, he felt threatened by them. He hated the Ivy League, and all it stood for, and resented the fact that I had graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, an institution he pegged as a tool for perpetuating the elite ruling class. Envy gnawed at him when he learned I was taking a literature class at Brown taught by Susan Sontag. It came to a peak when he learned I was taking a law course at Columbia taught by Benno Schmidt, now president of Yale University, and New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis.