Black Ice (25 page)

Then he wanted to hear about St. Paul’s School. There had been so many changes since his time. I found myself saying, in answer to his question, or the Rector’s signal, that I was more aware of being black at St. Paul’s than I was of being a girl. I used a clever phrase that I stole from somewhere and hoped he hadn’t already heard: “Actually, we’re still more like … a boys’ school with girls in it. But black people’s concerns—diversifying the curriculum and that sort of thing—the truth is that that’s more important to me than whether the boys have the better locker room.”

Pompous it was, and I knew it, but better to be pompous in the company of educated and well-off white folk, better even to be stone wrong, than to have no opinion at all.

Mr. Cox thought a moment. God forbid he should go for the cross-examination. I added more. “Black concerns here at school may look different, but are not really, from the concerns that my parents have taught me all my life at home.” I put that
one in just so he’d know that I had a family. “And believe me, sir, my mama and daddy did not put President Nixon into the White House.
We
didn’t do that!”

Mr. Cox wrinkled his lean, Yankee face into a mischievous smile. His voice whispered mock conspiracy. He leaned toward me. “Do you know who Nixon hates worst of all?”

I shook my head no. I had no idea.

“Our kind of people.”

My ears felt hot. I wanted to jump on the table. I wanted to go back home and forget that I’d ever come. I wanted to take him to West Philly, and drop him off at the corner of Fifty-second and Locust, outside Foo-Foo’s steak emporium, right by the drug dealers, and leave him there without a map or a bow tie. Then tell me about our kind of people.

The Rector gave me a look that urged caution. I fixed my face. “What kind of people are those?” I asked.

“Why, the educated Northeastern establishment,” he said.

The Rector smiled as if relieved.

Soon after, I received a note to meet another visitor: Mr. Vernon Jordan, president of the National Urban League. During his talk to students, Mr. Jordan referred to incidents in the history and current affairs of black and white racial relations that I had never heard. I felt the relief of a child after she has walked a very long way trying to be brave. Afterward I could not think of one intelligent question to ask him. It felt good simply to ride awhile. The next morning Alma and I met him at Scudder. Mr. Jordan was finishing breakfast when we arrived. He asked us about ourselves and the school. Alma described my involvement in Student Council and teased me about my reluctance to talk. “She’s usually a big talker,” she said.

I told him about Alma’s athletic achievements, her varsity letters in basketball and lacrosse. We mentioned our Third
World Coalition, and admitted our squabbles, our struggles, how at times we felt constricted, but could not figure out what to do.

He understood us. He caught up our words and showed us what we meant. “This is a new phase of civil rights,” he said. “Just a few years ago, it was a lot clearer. You could point to outrageously racist laws. Now it’s more subtle. You kids here are feeling the effects. I mean you’re here—” he motioned his hand in the air to take in the graceful room. We could hear Mrs. Burrows washing dishes in the kitchen. “And it’s hard not to become a part of all this. It’s hard not to forget where we came from.”

How could I tell him: forgetting wasn’t the problem, it was finding a new way to fight. If we couldn’t fight, we’d implode. I tried to say that. I tried to ask him what we should do now, in this new phase. It was time for him to go to Mem Hall, but he hadn’t told us how to go on. I wanted to beg, to demand that he show us the way. “The most important thing,” he said, “is to get everything you can here. You kids are getting a view of white America that we never even got close to.” He shook his head. “We couldn’t even dream of it.”

I thought of the scene in
Native Son
—I’d have to teach it soon to the Fourth Formers—where the two boys stand on the sidewalk looking at an airplane. Only white boys could fly, they said.

“You’ve got to get as much as you can here, be the
best
that you can, so that when you come out, you’ll be ready. But you cannot forget where you’ve come from.”

When I had been eleven years old, the year before Martin Luther King was shot, I had written to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference headquarters in Atlanta asking them what I could do to help the struggle. They had said the same thing. Stay in school. Prepare yourself. Then what?

“The fact is,” he said, “there’s no blueprint for what we’re
doing now. It’s all uncharted water. We’re going to need you. We’re going to need every one of you.”

I wolfed down Mr. Jordan’s visit like every other experience at St. Paul’s. I had no time to digest it. Mr. Cox came and went. Mr. Jordan came and went. Over Long Winter Weekend, we students who were staying at school slept late and lingered lazily over our meals. Valentine’s Day arrived. Anthony put a card in my mailbox, and my grandmother Jackson sent me a card, with “a little paper money,” as she said, tucked in. I took it to town to buy toiletries. That night, I found that Jimmy had been in town, too.

“Jimmy’s looking for you,” his roommate told me. “He needs to talk to you. Now.”

“What is it?” Jimmy never sent messages.

“I think he should tell you.”

“I got to get out of this dorm,” Jimmy said when I arrived. We went to the skatehouse, but on Saturday night it was full of people. So we went to the squash courts, picked a court, and closed the door. The court was white and empty. Someone in another court was practicing. We heard the balls hit and zing off the walls. In a week, the student work squad would be assigned to wash the black strike marks.

It had begun at the supermarket in town. Jimmy had taken a carton of cigarettes and was stopped on his way out by a security guard who hustled him to the manager. The manager listened to Jimmy’s apology. “I was begging her, please. I told her that I didn’t know why I had done it, that I’d never do it again. I’d never come into the store again! I’m blurting all this out to her about how I was from St. Paul’s School and there was all this pressure, and I must have lost my mind. I offered to do anything I could to make up for it. She must have seen what a state I was in, because she told me that she was willing
to let me go without pressing charges if I could find an adult who was willing to come get me.”

Jimmy asked her to call a black family he knew in town. It was characteristic of him to have found these people and made the effort to get to know them. They were not home, however, when she called. While Jimmy was sitting outside the manager’s office, she telephoned the school and was referred to Jimmy’s groupmaster, Mr. Price.

Mr. Price came to the store, thanked the manager, and assured her that the incident would not be repeated. When they got into the car, Jimmy said, Mr. Price slammed the door. “He started screaming and cursing at me,” Jimmy told me. “He was like: ‘You are screwed, Jimmy Hill.’

“It was like he had been waiting on this, like he was really going to get off on seeing me screwed. I know that’s not my imagination.

“I know what I did was wrong. Hey, look, I’m willing to do anything I can to make up. I don’t know what made me pick up those cigarettes! It was like, I wanted them, and I didn’t have enough money, and it’s a great, big store.…”

“You could have asked me,” I moaned. “I got some money this week.”

“I know that. I know. That’s what makes this whole thing so stupid. I could have asked Dorien. Dorien’s loaded. I could have got it off any of the white kids. They’ll give you money in a minute. Why not?

“I just did it. Like, they’re not going to miss this one little carton of smokes.
I know it’s wrong
. I know it. I’m not trying to make excuses. But Mr. Price is out to get me. It’s like no matter what the school decides, he wants me screwed. Personally. And I can’t figure out why. I never did the man any harm.” He smiled wanly. “You got a cigarette? Obviously, I didn’t get any this afternoon.”

We went outside to stand in the butt-littered snow and smoke. Jimmy asked me about the disciplinary process. It gave me chills to describe it to him. I had sat on the committee half a year. I never thought I’d have to sit across from the boy who was so close to me that I no longer knew where he began and I ended.

“So what are my chances?”

I did not know. Jimmy’s academic record was acceptable; his participation in sports reluctant. He had energy, spunk, talent in the arts, and charisma. The committee might just come down harder on him than they would on some kid who had fewer personal resources.

“All I can tell you,” I said, “is to write your statement honestly. Write everything, just like you told me tonight. You’ve got to promise not to try to outslick the committee.”

“Are you kidding? I have learned my lesson.”

“And don’t say that. Everybody says that.”

I sat in on Jimmy’s D.C. Although he’d never been to the committee before, this was not his first offense. He’d been caught out of the house after hours the year before (headed for my room across the quad). He was known to be flip and sarcastic, to miss commitments. He was black satin in an all-cotton world. I spoke for Jimmy. I tried to show the love and loyalty I knew in him that I suspected the committee might not see for the showmanship.

In a few days Mr. Oates decided that Jimmy would be suspended for a few days, but not expelled. When he returned he was enjoined from leaving the grounds (“Good,” he said. “I can’t be trusted.”), and he was to come up with a plan to make amends to the community. He set to work on a weekend extravaganza of music, dance, and theater. He and I practiced
duets together for a chapel program of gospel music, and he even stopped complaining about sports. Jimmy was a changed man, and only occasionally did he liken himself to Winston Smith, the brainwashed main character in 1984, one of our assigned novels. By spring, his irreverence was back, but so, too, was a new caution. He had come close to leaving St. Paul’s, and both of us had been shaken.

I
had chosen to apply only to Penn and Princeton, because the recommended five colleges seemed like an admission of doubt or greed; I picked large universities in reaction to St. Paul’s intimacy, which was beginning to stifle; Ivy Leagues to satisfy what I thought my advisers expected and to give me career credentials; and mid-Atlantic locations so I’d be close to home if my mother took sick again. I designated Princeton as my first choice, because it seemed to have more prestige, but I had no real preference. I trusted that the fate that had carried me to St. Paul’s School would see me on to college.

During spring break, before we received our acceptance letters, fate, in the person of Wally Talbot, rang the phone. I was in the kitchen polishing cabinets. The connection was bad. Wally’s voice—familiar at once even though I hadn’t heard it since he’d graduated the year before—sounded urgent and far away.

“Listen,” he said with little preamble. “I’m working in the admissions department here at Princeton, and I came across your application. From what I can see, it looks like you’re in.”

“Oh!”

“Don’t come. Listen, Libby, whatever you do, don’t come.
It’s like St. Paul’s, only worse. And all the good things about St. Paul’s, it doesn’t have. I’m telling you: don’t come.”

In addition to Wally’s oracular call, I saw, when I received my acceptance letters, that Penn was offering me fifty dollars more financial aid. I took it as an omen.

Besides, Anthony was going to Penn, too. We fantasized about the college years ahead. One afternoon he asked jokingly whether I intended to “pull a St. Paul’s” in college. In other words, did I hope to become a big woman on campus at Penn, and if so, had I thought about the toll it took on relationships—including ours?

I felt the constriction in my chest. It forced the air out of my lungs in little bursts, none of them strong enough to carry the words I wanted to say: I thought I had been paying attention to our relationship. I thought that he didn’t mind what I did. I thought he liked me for it. As if I’d discovered a brand-new tactic, I decided that for the moment, I’d let things ride. September was a long way off.

I concentrated instead on our time together. As the term wore on, it was true that more students began to act out, and more Disciplinary Committee meetings filled the evenings. But we did spend each afternoon together. Out in Pillsbury Field behind the track, Anthony introduced me to the shot put. After two years of sports training, I could begin to feel the simple happiness of exertion. Field gave me the exhilaration of dance, the wordless joy of translating ideas into movement—but without the complication of an audience. Inside the circle, from the crouch through the exploding sweep of the pivot, shot put felt more simple than I’d ever remembered childhood, and as powerful as I had hoped adulthood might be. For a while, it seemed as if the buggy, blue afternoons would stretch out indefinitely, as if in spring term of Sixth-Form year time acquired a half-life that kept graduation always coming, but never there.

• • •

Then it came. New beds of annuals appeared, the banners were hoisted and the gates swung open to admit the crowds. My family arrived in a caravan of cars: my parents and sister, my grandparents, my aunt Evie and my cousin Dana, friends of the family, and friends of mine, five carloads in all.

My attention swung from my school friends to my family, and then to introducing the two groups. We talked arrangements. Moving so large a group was a complicated operation. The children needed to run and older folks to rest. Those who had not seen the school before wanted to tour. My mother, who was nearly well, wanted to talk. My father craved peace and quiet.

I vacillated between wanting to march them through the rituals—Friday night’s dance, chorus and drama performances; Saturday’s speeches; the alumni parade; lunch in the Cage next to the gym; crew races; the athletic-award ceremony—and wanting to avoid the rituals myself.