Meridian (16 page)

“I’m sorry, man,” said Tommy Odds. “I shouldn’t have come down on your old lady that way.”

“It’s okay, man, no sweat,” Truman mumbled, while his thoughts continued to swirl up, hot and desperate. It was as if Tommy Odds had spoken the words that fit thoughts he had been too cowardly to entertain. On what other level might Lynne, his wife, be guilty?

“It’s just that, you know, white folks are a bitch. If I didn’t hate them on principle before, I hate them now for personal and concrete reasons. I’ve been thinking and thinking, lying here. And what I’ve thought is: Don’t nobody offer me marching and preaching as a substitute for going after those jokers’
balls.”

Was it because she was a white woman that Lynne was guilty? Ah, yes. That was it. Of course. And Truman remembered one night when he and Tommy Odds and Trilling and Lynne had gone to the Moonflower cafe for a sandwich. They shouldn’t have done it, of course. They had been warned against it. They knew better. But there are times in a person’s life when to risk everything is the only
affirmation
of life. That night was such a time. What had they been celebrating? Oh, yes. Tommy Odds’s niggers-on-the-corner:

For months Tommy Odds had hung out every Saturday evening at the pool hall on Carver Street, talking and shooting pool. He had been playing with the niggers-on-the-corner for almost a month before he ever opened his mouth about the liberating effects of voting. At first he had been hooted down with shouts of “Man, I don’t wanna hear that shit!” and “Man, let’s keep this a clean game!” But the good thing about Tommy Odds was his patience. At first he just shut up and worked out with his cue. But in a few days, he’d bring it up again. By the end of the first month his niggers-on-the-corner liked him too much not to listen to him. At the end of three months they’d formed a brigade called “The Niggers-on-the-Corner-Voter-Machine.” It was through them that all the derelicts, old grandmamas and grandpas and tough young hustlers and studs, the prostitutes and even the boozy old guy who ran the pool hall registered to vote in the next election. And on this particular Saturday night they decided to celebrate at the Moonflower, a greasy hole-in-the-wall that still had “Whites Only” on its door.

The food was so bad they had not been able to eat it. But they left in high spirits, Lynne giggling about the waitress’s hair that was like a helmet made of blonde foil. But as they walked down the street a car slowly followed them until, turning down Carver Street, they were met by some of Tommy Odds’s NOTC, who walked them to safety in front of the pool hall. After that night he and Lynne were careful not to be seen together. But since Lynne was the only white woman in town regularly seen only with black people, she was easily identified. He had not thought they would be, too.

So for that night, perhaps Lynne was guilty. But why had she been with them? Had she invited herself? No. Tommy Odds had invited them both to his little party. Even so, it was Lynne’s presence that had caused the car to follow them. So she
was
guilty. Guilty of whiteness, as well as stupidity for having agreed to come.

Yet, Lynne loved Tommy Odds, she admired his NOTC. It was Lynne who designed and sewed together those silly badges that they wore, that gave them so much pride.

“What do NOTC mean?” asked the old grandmamas who were escorted like queens down the street to the courthouse.

“Oh, it mean ‘Not Only True, but Colored,’” the hustlers replied smoothly. Or, “Not on Time, but Current,” said the prostitutes to the old grandpas, letting the old men dig on their cleavage. Or, “Notice of Trinity, with Christ,” the pool sharks said to the religious fanatics, who frowned, otherwise, on pool sharks.

So Lynne was guilty on at least two counts; of being with them, and of being, period. At least that was how Tommy Odds saw it. And who was he to argue, guilty as he was of loving the white bitch who caused his friend to lose his arm?

Thinking this, he shot up from his chair by the bed as if from an electric shock. The bottle of Ripple slipped from his fingers and crashed to the floor.

“Just don’t tell me you done wasted the wine,” said Tommy Odds, groaning. “I was just working myself up for a taste.”

“I’ll bring another bottle,” Truman said, getting towels from the bathroom and mopping up. He cut his finger on a piece of glass and realized he was trembling. When he’d put the wastebasket outside the door for the janitor he looked back at Tommy Odds. Some small resemblance of his friend remained on the bed. But he could feel the distance that already separated them. When he went out that door they would both be different. He could read the message that Tommy Odds would not, as his former friend, put into words. “Get rid of your bitch, man.” That was all.

Getting rid of a bitch is simple, for bitches are dispensable. But getting rid of a wife?

He had read in a magazine just the day before that Lamumba Katurim had gotten rid of his. She was his wife, true, but apparently she was even in that disguise perceived as evil, a castoff. And people admired Lamumba for his perception. It proved his love of his own people, they said. But he was not sure. Perhaps it proved only that Lamumba was fickle. That he’d married his bitch in the first place for shallow reasons. Perhaps he was considering marrying a black woman (as the article said he was) for reasons just as shallow. For how could he state so assuredly that he would marry a black woman next when he did not appear to have any
specific
black woman in mind?

If his own sister told him of her upcoming marriage to Lamumba he would have to know some answers before the nuptial celebration. Like, how many times would Lamumba require her to appear on television with him, or how many times would he parade her before his friends as proof of his blackness.

He thought of Randolph Kay, the Movie Star, who also shucked his white bitch wife, to black applause. But now Randolph Kay
and
his shiny new black wife had moved into the white world completely, to the extent of endorsing the American bombing of civilian targets in Vietnam. Randolph Kay, in fact, now sang love songs to the President! But perhaps it was perverse of him to be so suspicious. Perhaps, after all, he was just trying to cover up his own inability to act as decisively and to the public order as these men had done. No doubt these
were
great men, who perceived, as he could not, that to love the wrong person is an error. If only he could believe it
possible
to love the wrong person he would be home free. As it was, how difficult hating his wife was going to be. He would not even try.

But of course he had.

There was a man he despised, whose name was Tom Johnson. Tom had lived with a white woman for years, only most people didn’t know about it. He shuttled her back and forth from his house to a friend’s house down the street. Whenever he had important guests, Margaret was nowhere to be found. She was waiting at their friend’s house. She was a fleshy blonde, with big tits and a hearty laugh. Once he asked Tom— who was thinking of running for political office—why he didn’t marry her. Tom laughed and said, “Boy, you don’t understand anything yet. Margaret is a sweet ol’ thing. We been living together in harmony for five years. But she’s white. Or hadn’t you noticed?” Tom had reached out a chubby hand to bring Truman’s head close to his own and his small eyes danced. “It’s just a matter of pussy. That’s all. Just a matter of my
personal
taste in pussy.” And then he had pulled Truman’s head even closer and said with conspiratorial glee, “It’s
good
stuff. Want some?”

“I used to believe that—” he had begun, but Tom cut him off.

“This is war, man,
war!
And all’s fair that fucks with the sucker’s minds!”

Then he had begun to see them together. Not in public, but with small groups of men, in the back rooms of bars. Margaret could play poker and he liked to see her when she won. She jumped up, squealing, in her small-girl voice, her big tits bouncing at the top of her low-cut blouse, and all the men looked at her tolerantly, in amusement, their curiosity about her big body already at rest. After what Tom had told him this did not surprise him: the exhibition of her delight in winning, the men’s amused solidarity, their willingness to share her in this position of secrecy. And Margaret? Those squeals of delight—what did she feel? Or was it unmanly, un-black now, even to care, to ask?

When the community center was built, he began painting a mural of the struggle along one wall. The young men who would use the center for dances, Ping-Pong, card games, etc., were building tables and chairs. They were a shy, sweet bunch, country boys and naive as possible, who were literally afraid of white women. Their first meeting with Lynne had been comic. Nobody wanted to be seen talking to her alone, and even as a group they would only talk to her from a distance. She could, just by speaking to them and walking up to them as she spoke, force them back twenty yards. This shamed him now as he thought of Tommy Odds.

Why should they be afraid of her? She was just a woman. Only they could not see her that way. To them she was a route to Death, pure and simple. They felt her power over them in their bones; their mothers had feared her even before they were born. Watching their fear of her, though, he saw a strange thing: They did not even see her as a human being, but as some kind of large, mysterious doll. A thing of movies and television, of billboards and car and soap commercials. They liked her hair, not because it was especially pretty, but because it was long. To them,
length
was beauty. They loved the tails of horses.

Against this fear, Lynne used her considerable charm. She baked cookies for them, allowed them to drink wine in her house, and played basketball with them at the center. Jumping about in her shorts, tossing her long hair, she laughed and sweated and shouted and cursed. She forced them to like her.

But while this building of trust and mutual liking was coming into being, the Movement itself was changing. Lynne was no longer welcome at any of the meetings. She was excluded from the marches. She was no longer allowed to write articles for the paper. She spent most of her time in the center or at home. The boys, unsure now what their position as young black men should be, remained inexplicably loyal. They came to visit her, bringing news she otherwise would not have heard. For Truman too was under pressure of ostracism from the group, and though he remained a member of all Movement discussions it was understood he would say nothing to his wife.

H
E HAD GONE TO
Meridian three years after he married Lynne, driving across from Mississippi to a small town in Alabama where Meridian, at that time, lived. She had still owned a few possessions then, and was teaching in a Freedom school and keeping rather than burning her poems. He had begged her, or tried to beg her (because she did not seem to understand what begging constituted), to give him another chance. She loved him, he rashly assumed—as she smiled at him—and he did not see why she should deny herself.

“For Lynne’s sake alone, I couldn’t do it,” she had said languidly, rocking slowly in her yellow chair. “What does she have now besides you?”

“Everything,” he said sarcastically. “She’s still an American white woman.”

“Is that so easy?” asked Meridian, stopping her rocking, turning away from him toward the window. The light exposed small petal-shaped flecks of black in her brown eyes. “She was that when she decided she’d rather have you than everything. True? Or not?”

“How can you take her side?”

“Her side? I’m sure she’s already taken it. I’m trying to make the acquaintance of my side in all this. What side
is
mine?” She was not uptight. Nothing trembled. She thought. Rocked. “Don’t you think you owe something to Camara?” She looked him square in the eye.

“I owe more to all the little black kids being blown away by whitey’s racism.”

“Of which your daughter is one, surely?” She steadied the rocker, listened.

“Besides,” he continued, “I don’t owe Lynne the way I do you. You notice I don’t lie and say I don’t love her
at all.
She’s meant a great deal to me. But you’re different.
Loving
you is different—”

“Because I’m black?”

“You make me feel healthy, purposeful—”

“Because I’m black?”

“Because you’re
you,
damn it! The woman I should have married and didn’t!”

“Should have
loved,
and didn’t,” she murmured.

And Truman sank back staring, as if at a lifeboat receding in the distance.

Truman had felt hemmed in and pressed down by Lynne’s intelligence. Her inability to curb herself, her imagination, her wishes and dreams. It came to her, this lack of restraint, which he so admired at first and had been so refreshed by, because she had never been refused the exercise of it. She assumed that nothing she could discover was capable of destroying her. He was charmed by her presumption; still, he was not prepared to love her over a long period, but for a short one.

How marvelous it was at first to find that she read everything. That she thought, deeply. That she longed to put her body on the line for his freedom. How her idealism had warmed him, brought him into the world, made him eager to tuck her under his wing, under himself, sheltering her from her own illusions. Her awareness of wrong, her indignant political response to whatever caused him to suffer, was a definite part of her charm, and yet he preferred it as a part of her rarely glimpsed, commented upon in passing, as one might speak of the fact that Lenin wore a beard. And as she annoyed him with her irrepressible questions that kept bursting out and bubbling up into their lives, like spring water rising beside a reservoir and undermining the concrete of the dam, he had thought of Meridian, whom he imagined as more calm, predictable. Her shy, thin grace, her relative inarticulateness (Lynne, by comparison, never seemed to stop talking, and her accent was unpleasant), her brown strength that he imagined would not mind being a resource for someone else.… In Meridian, all the things lacking in Lynne seemed apparent. Here was a woman to rest in, as a ship must have a port. As a train must have a shed.