The Summer We Came to Life (13 page)

Jesse watched them with mischief in her eyes. “Hey, what was that dance you told us about? Punta! I bet grandpa could teach us a thing or two.”

The old man heard Jesse say punta. He grinned, showing off his one, two,
three
teeth. Jesse waved him over and asked in Spanish if he could show us the dance. The man let out a healthy belly laugh and motioned Jesse into a sandy spot in the middle of the restaurant. Nany shook her head and grinned. The children jumped to their feet, giggling.

“Come on, guys. Up!” Jesse called to the rest of us. Lynette joined her first. Then Isabel and I. The old man cracked a joke about dancing with all the ladies. He called out to the boy who'd brought the beer.

The lanky boy obediently took a seat and flipped over a plastic bucket in his lap. He started to drum.

I gave a little Shakira shake of my hips and the old man whistled appreciatively before laughing along with everybody else. He brought the little girl in the pink dress into the circle. She looked up at us shyly as the old man clapped his hands in encouragement. The girl broke out in a flurry of dance, shaking her little hips furiously in wide arcs, her arms splayed out sideways. Jesse let out a whistle and clapped. I tried my best to imitate, causing the little girl to collapse to the sand in giggles.

Without warning, the old man began to sing in a low and haunting voice, slow as lava in comparison to the drumming. As he sang, he started to dance. He took my hand into his rough leathery palm. His voice was ethereal, hypnotic.
I jimmied along to the beat, scuffling my feet forward and back like the old man. The hop from one foot to the other was so fast it looked almost like it was off rhythm. But that illusion soon vanished. The old man was perfectly on beat, the larger sum of his movements singing the soul of the drum.

Lynette beckoned her husband. As Cornell entered the circle, Isabel went and took Arshan's hand. Arshan gave one shake of his skinny butt in his khaki pants. Isabel and I almost died laughing.

“Whoo—hoo!” shouted Jesse.

Cornell playfully shoved Arshan aside and started to shake it. He emulated the old man's movements perfectly, making the frenzied motions of his hips seem smooth and fluid. Lynette clapped blissfully and blew her husband kisses. I took out my phone to record a video to send to Kendra.

For a good hour, we took turns in the circle, alongside the children, dancing to the sound of the old man's voice and the drums, in a hut halfway between the sea and the river, with a rustling jungle beyond.

BY THE TIME WE GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE, AFTER stopping several times so I could take pictures, it was an hour till sundown.

I offered to make pizzas for dinner. “We've got a can of artichokes. Might make them a little classier.”

“Whatever you want as long as you're cooking!” Jesse said.

“Do you
ever
cook?” I teased.

“Only in the face of starvation, honey. But don't I make the most fabulous party hors d'oeuvres?” She took note of Isabel's judgmental expression. “Hey, listen, you two—I cooked enough when I was a kid, for an ungrateful mother.” She waved a finger in Isabel's direction. “And I cooked for you, didn't I?”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “If ordering takeout counts.”

I laughed but Jesse got visibly upset.

“Hey, I was a working mother!”

“Yeah!” Lynette said, moving next to Jesse with a hand on her hip.

I knew better than to take them both on. Jesse laughed. “Okay, I hate cooking. What is so great about it? What century are we living in? Huh? What did Gloria Steinem and all our NOW sisters fight for?”

“The right to order
takeout!
” Isabel shouted, with a fist raised like Nelson Mandela.

“Yes, my smart-ass darling daughter. Takeout. Women have better things to do than spend hours a day cooking for kids and husbands.”

“Yeah,” Lynette said again.

I cocked an eyebrow at them. “Why don't you two—oh ye divine Creators of Feminism—go wash up and we'll handle supper in this uncivilized land with no takeout?”

“These kids have no respect,” Lynette said to Jesse as she took her arm to leave. “No idea what we fought for. For
them
.”

“Ungrateful little brats,” Jesse agreed.

“Whatever, Mom,” Isabel said as they sauntered off. Under her breath, she added, “You made money off a billionaire ex-husband, apparently.”

Jesse stopped dead and spun around. “You kiddin' me, young lady? I raised you by myself
and
ran a business. And Lynette—you don't know a thing if you think Lynette isn't worth a hearty
thank you, ma'am,
for what she did for your generation. You think it was easy for the homecoming queen to date a Negro in Virginia?”

Isabel and I stared at Jesse, speechless.

Jesse looked back and forth between the two of us, her eyebrows raised damn near to her hairline.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, her head bobbing about like a
pigeon. She linked arms with Lynette again. “My God, what do they teach these children in school?”

Lynette gave a little harrumph and stalked off with Jesse. “They don't know shit, do they?”

WHEN ISABEL AND I CAME OUT OF THE HOUSE with steaming pizzas, the parents were camped out on the beach, entrenched in a heated discussion.

As we approached the blanket, the talk stopped and all eyes turned to us.

“What?” Isabel and I said in unison.

“Oh, we were just talking about your rather limited understanding of history, girls,” Cornell answered. “A lot of heavy changes happened. Things we've decided you take for granted.”

Isabel rolled her eyes again—she was beginning to look like a rebellious teenager. “Ooh, the sixties. The decade that changed everything. But you don't think our time is crazy? Nine-eleven. The war in Afghanistan. The Israeli-Arab conflict, Iran, and North Korea? Are you sure it's not just because there's so damn many of you baby boomers that the sixties don't just
seem
like the most important decade?”

“I have failed as a mother,” Jesse said, only half joking.

Cornell thrust a hand to his heart as if he'd been stabbed.

“The sixties changed this country and the world forever. Or at least showed that you
can
change the world,” Lynette said.

“Oh come on, what really changed? Everybody still runs around killing each other over race, religion, money and power,” I said as I doled out pizza slices.

“She's right,” Isabel said. “What difference does it really make? Government everywhere is and always has been corrupt. Hellooo, Nixon. You guys fought for equal rights, world peace and free love.” She picked an artichoke off her pizza and popped it in her mouth. “What did we get but Britney Spears, the War on Terrorism, and AIDS?”

I hated this new incarnation of Isabel, but I had to agree with her. What was the true legacy of the sixties?

The four baby boomers simply stared at her.

Lynette broke the silence. “You know what? That's not only painful to hear, it's wrong. Civil rights, the feminist movement—changes have happened throughout history, and they have happened most often through the protests and actions of young people. Such as yourselves. We have a black president. Do you have any idea what that means to someone like me? Do you think that would have been possible without everything we went through?”

She sounded almost teary. I was moved. “Ok, so, why don't you tell us what it was like? Kendra hasn't told me all that much.”

“Really?” Lynette said, and frowned. “Well, that's because she never wants to know that much.”

“That's not fair, honey,” Cornell said. “We obviously should have been talking whether she asked us or not.”

“So, then tell us the story of how you guys met,” I prodded.

“Now there's a lesson in ancient history. Whaddaya say, dear? Want to revisit the glory days of our youth?” Cornell
asked his wife. When she didn't answer, Cornell frowned. “They weren't all happy times. Is that it?”

“That, and I wish Kendra was here,” Lynette answered.

“Should we call her on speaker phone so she can hear the story?” I asked, consciously ignoring the fact that Kendra hadn't answered our phone calls in days.

Isabel smirked at me, but then she jumped up and smiled. “If I get my iPod, we can record it!”

Before anyone could protest, Isabel dashed off for the house.

I shrugged. “It's a good idea,” I said, and looked down at the plates of pizza. “Eat! What is the matter with you people? I've had three pieces.”

Cornell picked up a piece of pizza and flicked off the artichokes, which Lynette hated. He handed it to her like a peace offering or an assurance of love. Whichever it was, Lynette took the pizza and smiled.

Isabel skipped back to the blanket with her pink iPod. “Okaaaaaay—”She plopped down and put a pillow in Lynette's lap. She nestled the iPod on top. “For posterity. Go,” she said, and pushed Record.

(Transcript of conversation)

LYNETTE: We met when we were fifteen.

CORNELL: Dates, sweetie. Must've been 1962 about?

LYNETTE: Hmm, 1962–63. We were sophomores.

CORNELL: I integrated into her high school that year. That's how we met.

SAMANTHA: But Brown versus Board of Education was in, like, the fifties, wasn't it?

CORNELL: That's right. But Virginia wasn't in any hurry, I can tell you that. They were still betting their Massive Resistance Campaign would pan out and that the whole civil rights thing would blow over. They tried a hundred different ways to resist integration. Further south, one Virginian
county closed all the public schools for four years rather than have black kids go to class with white kids. They paid for the white kids to go to private schools.

SAMANTHA: That is so—…strange. I never thought about the fact that you guys were around for segregated schools, and in the same town where I went to school.

ISABEL: But if African-American children were technically allowed to go to desegregated schools, why didn't more go?

CORNELL: Well, one way the Virginia school system skirted the issue was to set it up as a choice, not a mandate, guessing correctly that the races would segregate themselves. Black folk weren't in such a hurry to put their kids in schools where they weren't wanted, even if the black schools were pitiful shacks in comparison.

SAMANTHA: So, why were you the one to do it? To integrate?

CORNELL: My family wasn't your average black folk. My father was high up in the Virginia NAACP. My mother ran Sunday school and taught adults to read out of our house. They were everyday heroes. My father planned the integration for my sophomore year and prepared me for the worst. Or so he thought.

ISABEL: Why? It was worse?

CORNELL: It's almost indescribable how bad it was. I'm ashamed to say, I begged to quit. The KKK shot up our house in the middle of the night. People cursed me with names I'd never even heard before, way more descriptive than the N-word. They tripped me in the hallway, left excrement and nooses in my locker. I never went on a single date
with any girl in that school. I was never once invited to any white student's house for dinner.

SAMANTHA: That's awful. But then what about Lynette?

LYNETTE: Well, I was certainly aware of him. Segregation was a big deal to all the parents, like Cornell said. My parents didn't tell me they disapproved in so many words. They were big churchgoers and preached the golden rule five times a day. (Pause.) There's something you have to understand. It's an embarrassing reality, but those times were totally different for white kids and black kids. Everything was so segregated I wasn't aware of the really bad stuff. My friends and family didn't have any black friends, but we didn't do any of those horrible things. I spent all my time thinking about cheerleading and math class and dress patterns. It's not an excuse, but—

SAMANTHA: But now I can see how the Holocaust happened right under people's noses.

ISABEL: Sammy!

LYNETTE: Actually, that's just what I was getting at. For you guys, it'll be gay rights, global warming, and Sudan, when your kids ask—how could you not have known?

CORNELL: Sudan? Come on, now. I think I'd better point out it wasn't all bad all the time for us black kids. I had plenty of good times growing up. I was a quiet kid that didn't like to rock the boat. A disappointment to my father. Before high school, I didn't much care about Colored Days at the park because I didn't want to be around white folks anyway. It's like this—at church, at home, with my friends—I wasn't black. I wasn't an oddity or intrinsically offensive. I was just my mama's son. My best buddy's pal. It was only around white
people I stuck out like a fluorescent yellow beetle. (Pause.) That's why I was drawn to Lynette. She was just nice to me, in a real way. Not mean and not uncomfortable nice. Just nice.

SAMANTHA: What was Lynette like in high school?

CORNELL: Gorgeous. Sassy. She was the most popular girl in school. Could do no wrong in that town's eyes.

ISABEL: I can see that.

CORNELL: She was a cheerleader. Homecoming Queen. Lead actress in all the plays. Top grades. Those were pretty big deals in small-town Virginia. Did I mention she was gorgeous?

LYNETTE: Now stop it. I was preppy, naive, and spoiled. My parents treated me like a baby doll. Thank God I met this man.

SAMANTHA: What do you mean?

LYNETTE: The day I met him was the day I woke up and realized there was a whole world I hadn't even looked for.

ARSHAN: Bravo.

JESSE: So, you are listening.

ARSHAN: Of course. Fascinating to someone that still wasn't an American citizen at that time. So, who fell in love with whom first?

LYNETTE: Well, it wasn't that simple. Not back then.

ISABEL: Meaning Cornell liked you first! Who didn't have a crush on Miss Homecoming Queen?

CORNELL: Touché. However, what I think my wife means is that it was still Virginia in 1963. Sit-ins had made some
progress in lunch counters and buses, and technically, blacks and whites could be friends, even publicly. Technically. But dating was not in the realm of possibility. Not that I didn't get a certain tingling down in—

LYNETTE: Cornell!

CORNELL: (Laughter.) In my belly, Lynette. Butterflies in my belly, my love. Anyway, I'm serious. Interracial dating just wasn't done. Not even thought about. Okay, maybe we
thought
about it, but Lynette and I, we saw each other at school and that was it. There was the March on Washington that summer. I heard Dr. King's speech in front of all those hundreds of thousands of Afro-Americans. It changed my life. Changed a lot of people's lives. I went back to school armored with a sense of what I was a part of.

SAMANTHA: Did you go to the march, Lynette?

LYNETTE: Are you kidding? My mother would've had my hide. And back then, I hadn't yet thought about disobeying.

CORNELL: So, the next school year we picked up where we left off. That November, Kennedy was shot. The whole world tilted off-kilter.

SAMANTHA: Like nine-eleven. Point of no return. (Pause.) And you guys still weren't dating.

CORNELL: No way. We would find time to talk during school. Eventually, we started finding ways to walk together before or after school. But it wasn't easy and we certainly didn't voice any feelings beyond
I like you.

LYNETTE: (Laughter.) Yeah. I remember. I sure do
like
you, Cornell. I am in deep
like
of you. However, I think
they're looking for something a little more titillating, dear. Let's move on to the last summer.

CORNELL: Okay, okay. Skip over another summer when we hardly saw each other. Freedom Summer 1964. Johnson got Kennedy's Civil Rights Act passed—outlawing segregation in public places. Not like it changed overnight, but at least with young people, attitudes were changing fast. So, senior year, Lynette and I were special friends and everybody knew it.

LYNETTE: You see, a very pretty classmate of mine started flirting with Cornell. It, uh, alerted me to new possibilities.

JESSE: Ah, yes. Jealousy works on us girls every time. Good thinkin', Cornell.

CORNELL: (Laughter.) Lynette remembers that girl more than I do. I remember my daydreams being occupied by a certain cheerleader in her cheerleading skirt. Not to mention
every
boy was hung up on a lot of other awful shit going down, like the Vietnam War. The first big protest was in D.C. that April, just after Malcolm X was killed. My father wasn't a fan, being such a devotee of Dr. King. But Malcolm's death was a huge deal. Even if I wasn't in much of a position to take on all the blue-eyed devils, being one of nineteen black kids in a white school. Plus, there was this one blue-eyed devil—

LYNETTE: That summer was our first kiss. Just once, in my father's car. Well, I don't mean just one kiss—just one night. We kissed and kissed and cried that night. He was off to Howard and I was bound for The College of William and Mary. It was the end of something that never had a chance to get started, we figured.

CORNELL: Little did we know.

LYNETTE: I wanted to be an actress, though I'd barely dared mention that fact to anyone but Cornell. William and Mary was a family tradition. I hadn't even thought of rebelling against it. The rebellious gene was slow to kick in with me.

CORNELL: Though once she caught on—hell, I was glad to help.

LYNETTE: Hardy ha. So, obviously we kept in touch. With some pretty intense love letters.

CORNELL: Now, I'd been involved in the struggle my whole life because of my daddy's commitment to the movement. But nothing could have prepared me for Howard University. I came in right after a year of massive student protests. All of sudden black boys had a voice! Howard snapped me right out of any lingering “don't rock the boat” tendencies. Of course, it's easier to fight aboard a battleship full of compatriots than alone in enemy territory.

LYNETTE: He's right. It was a whole new time. The baby boomers came of age all at once. Surprised the hell out of the old folks. I convinced my dad to buy me a car and I drove down to D.C. or Cornell took the bus to see me every weekend. I couldn't have ‘gentlemen callers' yet, of course. Feminism hadn't touched down at William and Mary. But now Cornell and I could at least hold hands and dare people to say anything.

CORNELL: What a rush. Our relationship was more about agitating others than about each other.

LYNETTE: Cornell, that's not very nice. Do you believe that?
CORNELL: You don't? I'm not trying to be mean, honey. I just meant that they were empowering times. Everything was about the cause. The antiwar movement. Civil rights. Flower power.

LYNETTE: I don't think most people felt that way at William and Mary. Some girls watched the protest coverage on TV, but most were more concerned about the Beach Boys and Wham-O than the cause. I can't even remember any black classmates at all, come to think of it. It was my trips to Howard that made me aware how dangerous it was to just be seen together.

CORNELL: Summer after freshman year we were inseparable. I had a tiny apartment in the city with some friends. We went to protests and organized marches in Southern cities. We drank and smoked and partied. At first, dating Lynette gave me bragging rights. We were the ultimate symbol of victory.

SAMANTHA: And then?

LYNETTE: And then the summer was over, and everything changed again.

CORNELL: Stokely Carmichael made a speech about Black Power. It changed the rules of the game. Black boys were dying every day in Vietnam. All my friends not in college were freaking out—either trying to dodge the draft or about to ship off. Plenty had already come home in flag-covered boxes. Only white kids got deferments. So, my first year at Howard, we protested mandatory ROTC. We'd had enough of the Uncle Toms in the administration. And we were losing faith that blacks and whites could ever live peacefully side by side. Or that they should. We were talking total revolution.

LYNETTE: So, needless to say, the next year, we wrote lots of letters but we saw less of each other. He didn't fill me in very much on his developing views.

CORNELL: It was something I had to work out for myself, baby, but you were a huge wrench in my thinking, you can be sure. You remember those letters?

LYNETTE: My God, you'll make me blush. We were inspired by the Haight Ashbury phenomenon, you could say. Summer of Love was coming up. Everything was happening at the same time. The free-love hippie stuff along with the war and Black Power. The rest of '66, start of '67 is a blur. I remember Janis Joplin. Truman Capote's book. Star Trek. That movie,
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

SAMANTHA: It was the same at Howard, Cornell?

CORNELL: It was mayhem. More intense and serious, maybe, but fantastic! I was growing an Afro and reading all about Third World politics and history.

LYNETTE: I was a flower child, with hair down to my waist.

CORNELL: We came home for another summer. June of 1967. Loving versus Virginia.

ISABEL: What was that one again?

LYNETTE: It made interracial marriage legal in Virginia and everywhere. Even still, Cornell and I had to sneak around behind our parents' backs.

SAMANTHA: You hadn't told your parents yet?!

JESSE: Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in, Sammy girl.

CORNELL: Well put, Jess. Next came the riots. And the war was still a bastard thing to have to think about every day you woke up. At home, my dad and I had clearly diverged in our views again. Lynette and I started to grow apart, too.

LYNETTE: By the end of the summer, yes. (Sigh.)

CORNELL: (Pause.) When I went back to school, my classmates had committed whole hog to Black Power. The time had come for liberation and payback. We were young and angry and fed up. But there were some wonderful, positive things, too. Black is Beautiful. The Black Arts movement. It was the first time we'd ever felt so proud of being black, proud of our African history and our looks. It wasn't something I could exactly share with Lynette.

LYNETTE: We lapsed into totally different, separate lives again. Ironic, after all we'd fought for. I went down in the fall of '67 for the Stop the Draft Week March on the Pentagon. The difference was plain. His friends were cold to me. I saw Cornell being pulled in two directions and I knew I was losing. The march turned ugly. It was a terrible day for everybody.

CORNELL: It was a tough Christmas, too. My father and I fought like wolves and it broke my mama's heart to watch. He sided with the older members of the movement who viewed the Black Panthers as thugs and criminals. Way he saw it, they were about to erode everything he'd fought for his whole life. And as for Lynette and me, we just—

LYNETTE: Talked and cried and made out passionately, freezing our butts off in Cornell's old clunker.