Coffee Will Make You Black (32 page)

Today was quiet. She put the roach between two matchsticks and handed it to me. I managed to inhale without burning my mouth.

I exhaled and found my voice. “Sharlinda, you're stereotyping Chinese people, just like people stereotype black people.”

“Thank you,” Celeste spoke up. “I'm glad you said that.”

“Stevie, you tripping. I was just making a joke.”

“Stevie does have a point,” Today said.

“Whatever.” Sharlinda sighed, reaching for the second joint.

“Look, I didn't do jack shit in school, back in Paris,” Celeste said.

“I love April in Paris.” Sharlinda cut in.

“You know Paris?”

Today and I came to attention. Sharlinda better not twist her mouth and say she's been to Paris, I thought. Not unless there's a Paris, Mississippi, or something.

“No.”

“You mean the song?” Today asked.

“I'm talking about the perfume, y'all.”

I shook my head. “Sharlinda, you're not ready.”

“She's not ready for what?” Celeste asked.

“Not ready for prime time,” Today laughed.

Celeste still looked confused. It was an insiders' remark. It meant that Sharlinda wasn't ready for proper, white society. I was too high to try to explain it to Celeste. And not high enough to give a white person I barely knew insider information.

“Anyway, Celeste, you were saying?”

“I was saying?” Celeste gave me a puzzled look.

“About not doing jack shit in school,” I reminded her.

“Oh, yes, well, when I came here to the States, I decided to make a fresh start. I just began applying myself. I don't have any magic formula. If you'd like, we could study together, Sharlinda.”

“What have you got to lose?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Today agreed. “Worse come to worst, you can always fall back on cheating.”

Sharlinda gave her a fake smile.

“Think how much better you'll feel if you get an
A
or
B
on your own,” I said.

“Yeah,” Celeste agreed.

“Girl, you know you need to bring your grade point up if you want to pledge,” Today reminded her.

“OK, OK, goddamn. Y'all ain't got to run it into the damn ground. I'll do whatever y'all say. Just get off my case!”

The telephone rang and Celeste picked it up.

“Finally, well, it's about time. I'd just about given up on you.”

“The pizza's here?” Today asked hopefully.

Celeste put her hand over the receiver. “I'm getting married!” Celeste looked all happy, like she'd gotten a contact from the dope we'd been smoking. We stared at her with our mouths open.

“The pizza man proposed to you?” Sharlinda asked.

“No, it's Matthew. He finally agreed that we should get married. That's what we've been battling about.”

“Why you want to get married?” Today asked.

“Y'all ain't gonna live together first?” Sharlinda sounded disappointed.

Celeste shook her head and patted her stomach. “I'm almost eight weeks pregnant.”

“Eight weeks pregnant!” Sharlinda shouted.

“You're pregnant?” I echoed with surprise.

Celeste nodded.

“Damn, Stevie,” Sharlinda groaned. “You was fixin' to jump on a pregnant lady!”

Ain't this a blip, I thought. Like she wasn't the main instigator. “I didn't know she was pregnant, Dodo-brain.”

“Would it have really mattered?” Sharlinda asked.

“Yes,” I snapped.

“Look, you guys, I'm just so excited. We're going to sign up for married housing. It's gonna be so fantastic!”

“Congratulations, yeah, congratulations,” we said with a reasonable amount of enthusiasm. I mean, it
would've
been cooler if they were going to live together.

Celeste talked to Matthew a few more minutes, and hung up the phone. “You know, you should do natural childbirth,” I suggested. “I mean you oughta have the breathing down pat by now,” I winked, “after all that panting into the phone.”

Everyone couldn't help but crack up, even Celeste. I smiled. I didn't joke with someone unless I liked them.

The telephone rang again and Today answered it. “Good, it's about damn time. I've got the munchies bad. We'll be right down.”

“Celeste, want us to stop by and bring you a piece of pizza on the way back?” I offered.

After all, we'd smoked the girl's weed. Not to mention that I'd almost kicked her ass. The least we could do was feed her.

“Remember, you're eating for two now,” Sharlinda cut in.

“Oh, no, thanks, you guys, I'm too psyched to eat right now.”

Today fingered what was left of the nickel bag.

“Now that you're having a baby you might not want this weed around.”

“Yeah,” Sharlinda agreed. “It might be too much of a temptation.”

“Oh, you guys can have it,” Celeste smiled.

“Thanks. Hey, I'm glad we gave peace a chance,” Today said.

“Yeah, me too.” Sharlinda made a V with her fingers. “Peace, y'all.”

We all held up our fingers. And we all said “Peace” with Woodstock playing in the background.

3

Skip to the beginning of our senior year. Dudes had come and gone, pounds had been gained and lost, naps had been straightened, but Sharlinda, Today, and I had remained tight. We'd rented a car and driven to Galesburg to see
Jesus Christ Superstar
and to Peoria to see
The Exorcist
.

Sharlinda and Today had both pledged Delta Sigma Theta. Sharlinda had gotten tutoring through the Reach Out program and had maintained a C average. She and Today worked together in the dorm cafeteria. I had a job in the campus bookstore.

Celeste had become one of our hanging buddies. We'd even taught her how to play a mean game of Bid Whist. One night Celeste looked up from her hand and shouted, “I can't let a three walk!” And she proceeded to take the bid with a downtown four, coming in clubs.

“We ran a Boston on their rumps!” Celeste shouted when she and I won the last book. We gave each other five. Running a Boston was like pitching a no-hitter.

In case you're wondering, Matthew turned out to be jive. He got cold feet and Celeste ended up going to New York City and having an abortion. Abortion had been illegal in Illinois at the time. I had mixed feelings about it. I would've hated to have to make the decision myself. That's one reason I insisted on rubbers in addition to my diaphragm the times I've done it. I'm scared of the pill and the IUD. Ultimately, I feel the decision to end an unwanted pregnancy belongs to the woman. So, I guess you could say I'm pro-choice.

Celeste is convinced now that most men are chauvinist pigs. She wears a big ERA button, even on her nightshirt. I went with Celeste down to Springfield when the Equal Rights Amendment came up for a vote in the Illinois legislature. It went down in defeat. I was disappointed, since I do consider myself a feminist. But I didn't break down and cry like a bunch of white women did. I've been black too long to trip that hard on the ERA.

Today is all for women's rights so long as men and women won't have to use the same bathrooms. Even Mama supports equal pay for equal work. Sharlinda says she can't get behind the ERA, because she still expects men to pay on dates. Grandma insists black women want to be white women and white women want to be white men.

When Sharlinda and Today broke it to me that they planned to become roommates for senior year, I'd asked Celeste if she wanted to be my roomie. She'd answered, “Very much so.”

In the back of my mind, I was thinking Celeste would be a good person to finally confide in about my interest in women. After all, I'd personally sold her a copy of
Our Bodies Ourselves
by the Boston Women's Health Collective. And I bet I wasn't the only one who read the section “In Amerika They Call Us Dykes.”

“Stevie, it's natural to notice attractive women, just like it's natural to appreciate beautiful works of art.”

That's what Celeste said when I confessed to her that sometimes I checked out women more than men. Celeste should know because she's an artist and besides, she's French. You would expect her to be more sophisticated than most other people, now wouldn't you?

Celeste said the fact that I'd done the do with three dudes, a total of fifteen times and had never come, didn't mean diddlysquat. (She'd picked up some black slang from her hanging buddies.)

“Plenty of women don't really get into sex until they're in their thirties,” she'd explained. I was only twenty-one, so there was still time.

I was lucky to have Celeste. Sharlinda and Today were cool, but I couldn't talk to them about my fears around my sexuality. I suppose you could say I had the best of both worlds. I had my “sistahs” to hang out with and Celeste to get deep with.

But I don't want you to think that I am living in a utopia or anything. This place is still over 95 percent white. And although it
is
1975 and people are usually cordial, at times you can still feel the racial tension. When floor mates chip in to buy a keg of beer for a party on a Saturday night, black folks, including me, might give fifty cents, but we have no intention of partying with them. Hey, not everybody wants to be around a bunch of no-dancing white folks chugging beer and blasting “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” over and over. Especially not last night when our floor kegger conflicted with the black fraternity Omega Psi Phi's (commonly known as the Q's) pledge party. Even though I'm not in a sorority—I am a GDI (God Damn Independent)—I still dance at every set. (Black folks on the Illinois prairie call parties “sets.” And if you dress up we call it “jumpin' clean” or “gettin' clean”. And like I told you before, white folks, “hoogies.” If you're dating a white person, we refer to you as “going Greyhound” or simply “riding the bus.”)

The morning after the floor party, I was sitting on my bed listening to War on my eight-track player. The door was cracked open, but I still didn't appreciate Kelly barging in without knocking.

“Stevie, where's your floor spirit?” the Resident Assistant demanded in an anguished tone. Her baby face was contorted as she twisted her ponytail.

“How are we ever going to come together if you people keep segregating yourselves?” She continued before I could respond. I knew that Kelly was referring to my not showing up last night. I was the only black girl on the floor, so my absence had been conspicuous. But what about the hippies down the hall? I was sure K.C. and Feather hadn't attended the party either. And Celeste had gone to visit friends in St. Louis, but nobody asked about her. I resented Kelly being up in my face now. It's not like she really cared about me. Kelly was just a rah-rah type. All she was tripping on was some phony-ass floor spirit. She didn't understand my dilemma. Black people would think I had a hole in my soul if I chose my floor party over something sponsored by one of the black fraternities or sororities on campus.

“Turn that nigger music off!” a male voice down the hall shouted as War sang “The World Is a Ghetto.”

“Does that answer your question?” I asked. Kelly's pudgy face got all red and she looked like she didn't know what to say. I just asked her to kindly close my door on her way out.

So, you see, being black down here is a potato salad short of a picnic. I've even had to put up with overhearing a store clerk whisper loudly in the five-and-dime, “You've gotta watch them, they'll steal anything that's not nailed down.” It doesn't matter that I've never stolen anything in my whole life. And that I know white girls in my dorm who steal the place blind. Who cares, I'm black and I swear that's all most people ever see.

Like when I was in the grocery store last week and this white woman looked at me and reminded her friend not to leave her purse in the shopping cart. Now that was good advice, but would she have said it if she hadn't looked up and seen me? I doubt it.

Despite experiences like that, I still try to see this place in balance. I'm a Libra, what can I say? I've had both positive and negative things happen. I've met good and bad people, both black and white. And although I'm a card-carrying member of the Black Student Association, I also value my friendship with Celeste.

The most militant black person, high on weed, might admit that not all hoogies are bad. But a close friendship between a black person and a white person is still pretty rare, and perhaps even suspect. Yet, little by little, Celeste and I have become just that, close friends.

It was interesting when we compared our lives, my childhood as the oldest of three on the South Side of Chicago, and her growing up an only child in Neuilly, a Paris suburb. We advised each other about clothes, classes, and dates. She's even dragged me to some foreign films. Now, I've grown to prefer them.

After Celeste and I became tight, most of the other white girls on our floor pretty much ignored her. Only the hippies ever come in our room. Celeste sometimes finds herself eating alone in the cafeteria. Sharlinda and Today serve food during most of the dinner hour. And I almost always eat at the “black table.” I occasionally eat with Celeste and the white hippies. And sometimes I've even brought Celeste to the black table. But I've been careful not to wear out Celeste's welcome. It's an unwritten rule that you can't bring a white person to the black table one time too many. Nobody said how many times were too many.

One evening, I came straight to dinner from a newspaper meeting. I was taken aback when I saw Celeste sitting at the black table! All eyes were on me when I sat down. I barely acknowledged Celeste's cheery “Hello.” I imagined what the six other sistahs and brothas were thinking. How dare this hoogie come to the black table unescorted? The mashed potatoes tasted like glue, yet I managed to mumble through them, “Celeste, I didn't tell you to meet me here.”