Meridian (3 page)

They were waiting for her to speak. But what could she say? Saying nothing, she remembered her mother and the day she lost her. She was thirteen, sitting next to her mother in church, drunk as usual with the wonderful music, the voices themselves almost making the words of songs meaningless; the girls, the women, the stalwart fathers singing

The day is past and gone

The evening shade appear

Oh may we all remember well

The night of death draw near

Sniffing, her heart breaking with love, it was her father’s voice, discerned in clarity from all the others, that she heard. It enveloped her in an anguish for that part of him that was herself—how could he be so resigned to death, she thought. But how sweet his voice! It was her mother, however, whom she heeded, while trying not to: “Say it now, Meridian, and be saved. All He asks is that we acknowledge Him as our Master. Say you believe in Him.” Looking at her daughter’s tears: “Don’t go against your heart!” But she had sat mute, watching her friends walking past her bench, accepting Christ, acknowledging God as their Master, Jesus their Savior, and her heart fluttered like that of a small bird about to be stoned. It was her father’s voice that moved her, that voice that could come only from the life he lived. A life of withdrawal from the world, a life of constant awareness of death. It was the music that made her so tractable and willing she might have said anything, acknowledged anything, simply for peace from his pain that was rendered so exquisitely beautiful by the singers’ voices.

But for all that her father sang beautifully, heartbreakingly, of God, she sensed he did not believe in Him in quite the same way her mother did. Her mind stuck on a perennial conversation between her parents regarding the Indians:

“The Indians were living right here, in Georgia,” said her father, “they had a town, an alphabet, a newspaper. They were going about their business, enjoying life ... It was the same with them all over the country, and in Mexico, South America ... doesn’t this say anything to you?”

“No,” her mother would say.

“And the women had babies and made pottery. And the men sewed moccasins and made drums out of hides and hollow logs.”

“So?”

“It was a life, ruled by its own spirits.”

“That’s what you claim, anyway.”

“And where is it now?”

Her mother sighed, fanning herself with a fan from the funeral home. “I never worry myself about those things. There’s such a thing as progress. I didn’t invent it, but I’m not going to argue with it either. As far as I’m concerned those people and how they kept off mosquitoes hasn’t got a thing to do with me.”

Meridian’s mother would take up a fistful of wire clothes hangers, straighten them out, and red, yellow and white crepe paper and her shears, and begin to cut out rose petals. With a dull knife she scraped each petal against her thumb and then pressed both thumbs against the center of the petal to make a cup. Then she put smaller petals inside larger ones, made the bud of the rose by covering a small ball of aluminum foil with bright green paper, tied the completed flower head to the end of the clothes hanger, and stood the finished product in a churn already crowded with the artificial blooms. In winter she made small pillows, puckered and dainty, of many different colors. She stuck them in plastic bags that piled up in the closet. Prayer pillows, she called them. But they were too small for kneeling. They would only fit one knee, which Meridian’s mother never seemed to notice.

Still, it is death not to love one’s mother. Or so it seemed to Meridian, and so, understanding her mother as a willing know-nothing, a woman of ignorance and—in her ignorance—of cruelty, she loved her more than anything. But she respected even more her father’s intelligence, though it seemed he sang, beautifully, only of death.

She struggled to retain her mother’s hand, covering it with her own, and attempted to bring it to her lips. But her mother moved away, tears of anger and sadness coursing down her face. Her mother’s love was gone, withdrawn, and there were conditions to be met before it would be returned. Conditions Meridian was never able to meet.

“Fallen asleep, have you?” It was a voice from the revolutionary group, calling her from a decidedly unrevolutionary past. They made her ashamed of that past, and yet all of them had shared it. The church, the music, the tolerance shown to different beliefs outside the community, the tolerance shown to strangers. She felt she loved them. But love was not what they wanted, it was not what they needed.

They needed her to kill. To say she would kill. She thought perhaps she could do it. Perhaps.

“I don’t
know
if I can kill anyone ...”

There was a relaxing of everyone. “Ah ...”

“If I had to do it, perhaps I could. I would defend myself ...”

“Sure you would ...” sighed Anne-Marion, reining in the hatred about to run wild against her friend.

“Maybe I could sort of grow into the idea of killing other human beings ...”

“Enemies ...”

“Pigs ...”

“But I’m not
sure ..
.”

“Oh, what a drag this girl is ...”

“I know I want what is best for black people ...”

“That’s what we all want!”

“I know there must be a revolution ...”

“Damn straight!”

“I know violence
is
as American as cherry pie!”

“Rap on!”

“I know nonviolence has failed ...”

“Then you will kill for the Revolution, not just die for it?” Anne-Marion’s once lovely voice, beloved voice. “Like a fool!” the voice added, bitterly and hard.

“I don’t know.”

“Shee-it...!”

“But can you
say
you probably will? That you
will.”

“No.”

Everyone turned away.

“What will you do? Where will you go?” Only Anne-Marion still cared enough to ask, though her true eyes—with their bright twinkle—had been replaced with black marbles.

“I’ll go back to the people, live among them, like Civil Rights workers used to do.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Yes,” she had said, “I am serious.”

And so she had left the North and come back South, moving from one small town to another, finding jobs—some better or worse than others—to support herself; remaining close to the people—to see them, to be with them, to understand them and herself, the people who now fed her and tolerated her and also, in a fashion, cared about her.

Each time Truman visited Meridian he found her with less and less furniture, fewer and fewer pieces of clothing, less of a social position in the community—wherever it was— where she lived. From being a teacher who published small broadsides of poems, she had hired herself out as a gardener, as a waitress at middle-class black parties, and had occasionally worked as a dishwasher and cook.

“And now you’re here,” said Truman, indicating the bareness of the room.

“Vraiment,”
said Meridian, and smiled at the startled look on Truman’s face. “Why, you’ve forgotten your French!” she said. And then, soberly, “We really must let each other go, you know.”

“You mean I really must let
you
go,” said Truman. “You cut me loose a long time ago.”

“And how is Lynne?”

“I haven’t seen her in a long time. I’ve only seen her a few times since Camara died.”

“I liked your daughter.”

“She was beautiful.” And then, because he did not want to talk about his daughter or his wife, he said, “I’ve never understood your illness, the paralysis, the breaking down ... the way you can face a tank with absolute calm one minute and the next be unable to move. I always think of you as so strong, but look at you!”

“I
am
strong, actually,” said Meridian, cockily, for someone who looked near death and had to do exercises before her body allowed her to crawl or stand. “I’m just not Superwoman.”

“And why can’t Anne-Marion leave you alone?” asked Truman, nodding at the letters on the wall. “Anyone who could write such hateful things is a real bitch.”

“To tell the truth,” said Meridian. “I keep the letters because they contain the bitch’s handwriting.”

“You’re kidding?” asked Truman.

“No, I’m not,” said Meridian.

MEDGAR EVERS/JOHN F. KENNEDY/MALCOLM X/MARTIN LUTHER KING/ROBERT KENNEDY/CHE GUEVARA/PATRICE LAMUMBA/GEORGE JACKSON/CYNTHIA WESLEY/ADDIE MAE COLLINS/DENISE MCNAIR/CAROLE ROBERTSON/ VIOLA LIUZZO

It was a decade marked by death. Violent and inevitable. Funerals became engraved on the brain, intensifying the ephemeral nature of life. For many in the South it was a decade reminiscent of earlier times, when oak trees sighed over their burdens in the wind; Spanish moss draggled bloody to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall. They shared rituals for the dead to be remembered.

But now television became the repository of memory, and each onlooker grieved alone.

It was during the first televised Kennedy funeral that Anne-Marion Coles became quite conscious of Meridian Hill. She had seen her around the campus before, but never really to speak to. Meridian appeared so aloof she could sit at a table for four in the dining room and never be asked to share it; or, if she were asked, the question would be put timidly, with deference. This barrier she erected seemed to astonish her, and when finally approached—whether in the dining room, the chapel, or under the campus trees—she was likely to seem too eager in her response, too generous, too friendly, her dark face whipped quickly into liveliness, and dark, rather sad eyes crinkled brightly into gladness.

Anne-Marion had the audacity of the self-confident person who, against whatever odds, intends to succeed. Hers was an exploitative rather than an altruistic nature, and she would never have attempted penetrating Meridian’s reserve if she had not sensed behind it an intriguing and valuable inner life—an exploration of which would enrich her own existence. That she would learn to care for Meridian she did not foresee.

She sat across from Meridian as she and the other honor students watched the Kennedy family stride off toward Arlington National Cemetery behind the shattered body of their dead John. Jackie Kennedy, it was suggested by a newsman, had been given something that helped her not to cry. The students had been given nothing, and so they cried small floods. Meridian’s face, grayish-blue from the television light, glistened with tears that dripped off her chin onto her blue cotton shirt. Slumped forward with grief, she did not bother to raise her hands from her lap, where they lay palms up, empty. She shivered as if she were cold.

Earlier that same year, when Medgar Evers was assassinated, Meridian had planted a wild sweet shrub bush among the plants in the formal garden in front of the honors house. Each day the jealous gardener had pulled a bit more of its delicate roots to the surface, so that it too soon died. Remembering this, seeing her shiver, Anne-Marion held out her sweater to Meridian. Scarcely looking at her, Meridian took it and wrapped herself up tight.

T
HE WILD CHILD
was a young girl who had managed to live without parents, relatives or friends for all of her thirteen years. It was assumed she was thirteen, though no one knew for sure. She did not know herself, and even if she had known, she was not capable of telling. Wile Chile, as the people in the neighborhood called her (saying it slowly, musically, so that it became a kind of lewd, suggestive song), had appeared one day in the slum that surrounded Saxon College when she was already five or six years old. At that time, there were two of them, Wile Chile and a smaller boy. The boy soon disappeared. It was rumored that he was stolen by the local hospital for use in experiments, but this was never looked into. In any case, Wile Chile was seen going through garbage cans and dragging off pieces of discarded furniture, her ashy black arms straining at the task. When a neighbor came out of her house to speak to her, Wile Chile bolted, not to be seen again for several weeks. This was the pattern she followed for years. She would be seen scavenging for food in the garbage cans, and when called to, she would run.

In summer she wore whatever was available in castoff shorts and cotton tops. Or she would wear a pair of large rayon panties, pulled up under her arms, and nothing else. In winter she put together a collection of wearable junk and topped it with a mangy fur jacket that came nearly to the ground. By the age of eight (by the neighbors’ reckoning) she had begun to smoke, and, as she dug about in the debris, kicking objects this way and that (cursing, the only language she knew), she puffed on cigarette butts with a mature and practiced hand.

It was four or five winters after they first spotted her that the neighbors noticed Wile Chile was pregnant. They were critical of the anonymous “low-down dirty dog” who had done the impregnating, but could not imagine what to do. Wile Chile rummaged about as before, eating rancid food, dressing herself in castoffs, cursing and bolting, and smoking her brown cigarettes.

It was while she was canvassing voters in the neighborhood that Meridian first heard of The Wild Child. The neighbors had by then tried to capture her: A home for her lying-in had been offered. They failed to catch her, however. As one neighbor explained it, Wile Chile was slipperier than a greased pig, and unfortunately the comparison did not end there. Her odor was said to be formidable. The day Meridian saw The Wild Child she withdrew to her room in the honors house for a long time. When the other students looked into her room they were surprised to see her lying like a corpse on the floor beside her bed, eyes closed and hands limp at her sides. While lying there she did not respond to anything; not the call to lunch, not the phone, nothing. On the second morning the other students were anxious, but on that morning she was up.

With bits of cake and colored beads and unblemished cigarettes she tempted Wile Chile and finally captured her. She brought her onto the campus with a catgut string around her arm; when Wile Chile tried to run Meridian pulled her back. Into a tub went Wile Chile, whose body was caked with mud and rust, whose hair was matted with dust, and whose loud obscenities mocked Meridian’s soothing voice. Wile Chile shouted words that were never uttered in the honors house. Meridian, splattered with soap and mud, broke down and laughed.