These things and others I told my lover Vernor Matheius when he lay in my arms, sweaty and spent and at peace; temporarily at peace; Vernor Matheius warm, heavy, and unresisting in my arms; his eyes shut; his face shut; gently I stroked his hair, his head, his shoulders, his arms; this was the great happiness of my life, holding Vernor Matheius in my arms; Vernor Matheius who had once been a disembodied voice in a lecture hall; I thought Only what we don't deserve justifies our lives. For I could not believe that I deserved Vernor Matheius. I knew that I did not deserve Vernor Matheius. Sharing in clumsy intimacy in his narrow bed, the mattress flat and sagging in the center like a broken-backed beast of burden; the sheets damp from our bodies and suffused with our sweat, the smell of Vernor's hair, underarms and feet, the smell of his stopped-up semen liquid and milky in the condom drooping from his shrunken penis; Vernor Matheius subdued after sexual triumph which was to him indistinguishable from sexual defeat; we would share this uncomfortable bed, and this hour or hours, but we would not share sleep; we would not share dreams; for where Vernor Matheius drifted in sleep I did not know, could not guess, as I floated on the surface of sleep like froth on water and sank a little, and rose and sank, and sank, my sleeping fingers in the man's hair as I drifted off at last to sleep, knowing where he'd gone I could not follow.
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And what of my life in those months that was not Vernor Matheius, what of the vast incalculable world not Vernor Matheius, what of a girl whose body I inhabited who was not Anellia but another individual entirely, what connection, what vision seen through her skeptical eyes, had she no future, had she no hope, did no other possibility exist?
Yes. But no.
26
She would not utter the word Ne-gro. You could see her approach and retreat from Ne-gro. You could see the fierce ice pick centers of her eyes as she considered, and hurriedly rejected, Ne-gro. Saying in her voice of mock-solicitude, "And what is your relationship to, to—to this person of another race?" at last uttered, with an intake of breath, frown lines deepening in her pouchy bulldog face so incongruously peachy-powdered, and her marble-eyes drifting downward in a semblance of feminine modesty, decorum,"—graduate student I believe he is, in philosophy, many years older than you? I have heard troubled reports, I mean I have heard troubling reports, Miss—" pronouncing my name in identically stressed syllables as if in this way she might disclaim her responsibility in making sense of a name so clearly foreign; she spoke with a stoic dignity; her high moral worth of herself prevailed; her title was Dean of Women at the university and it was a title she did not take lightly. Listening, I was stunned into silence; I could think of no reply; long ago I'd muttered Oh I hate you! running from my German grandmother and possibly the old woman had heard me, and possibly not; but I could not mutter such a phrase now, I was twenty years old and an honors student at the university. Thinking with a stab of guilt She knows, knows what we have done together, how can she know? I'd been summoned to the office of the Dean of Women amid one of my crowded weekdays, between classes and my part-time job (now in the cafeteria); I hadn't had time to think, even to dread; I'd given up thinking of anything much beyond Vernor Matheius and my studies, the two inextricably conjoined for my mind was sharply honed in imitation of Vernor Matheius's flashing mind, my work was written as if to Vernor Matheius's unsparing judgment, my concentration was monomaniacal and in its way satisfying as that of a tightrope walker making her way across an abyss; the abyss was Death; the abyss was my doomed love for Vernor Matheius. And so I hadn't had time to think, to prepare myself for this unexpected attack. Sitting dazed and humiliated and by degrees resentful listening to the Dean of Women lecture me in her drawling insinuating voice; a voice practiced in scolding, chiding, abrading and humiliating young women; a voice quavering with its power, and with the unspeakable pleasure of power. This is jot your own good such voices assure us. You are of an age often blind to its own good. Several times this semester I'd been summoned to the dean's office and each time had been a painful ordeal. I'd petitioned to be freed from the tyranny of Kappa Gamma Pi but the dean strongly disapproved of any sorority girl departing any sorority for any reason, however desperate; evidently there wasn't enough housing at the university for upperclassmen, and sororities and fraternities were crucial to the university. Yet this pragmatic fact was never uttered. All was couched in terms of commitment, loyalty, contractual agreements; being true to your pledge. The prevailing ethic was You've made your bed, now lie in it but the dean wouldn't have spoken so bluntly and honestly. In those excruciating sessions with the dean I'd had to convince the woman that I wanted to leave the Kappas for reasons of financial hardship as well as moral repugnance; it wasn't enough that my Kappa sisters disliked and ostracized me (and, I knew, complained to the dean wanting to be rid of me); it wasn't enough that I was wretched in their midst and irrevocably estranged from them; it wasn't enough that I was not Episcopalian as I'd misrepresented myself but had "Jewish blood"; that a non-Christian had lied her way into a Christian sorority; it also had to be demonstrated that I couldn't continue for financial reasons and was already in debt; I'd had to show the Dean of Women financial statements, the most embarrassing a notarized statement from a Syracuse bank; I'd had to defend myself as a pauper. That I was still an honors student despite my difficulties was used against me by the dean; since I'd continued to receive high grades, and reports from my professors were uniformly excellent, how could I claim, as I was, that Kappa Gamma Pi was detrimental to my academic work? You, a young woman of superior intellectual gifts, don't you feel an obligation to offer aid to your sorority sisters, wouldn't that be a generous, selfless thing to do?Yes? So the dean tormented me, and revelled in her tormenting; reduced me to exhaustion, and almost to tears; but I'd vowed I would not be provoked into crying; we both knew she hadn't any choice but to approve the petition since my sorority sisters had voted to expel me, I was no longer one of them. And now, a few months later, here I was back in the dean's office again.
It was ironic to be charged with a relationship with a person of another race when, in fact, I had not heard from Vernor Matheius in three days. For all I knew, I would not hear from him again. We'd parted awkwardly, Vernor in one of his sudden sunken moods not bothering to rise from bed, lying naked with an arm across his forehead staring at the ceiling; as I emerged from the bathroom, and uncertainly prepared to leave, Vernor said in his grim-jocular voice Schopenhauer said it: Life is a struggle against sleep and eventually we lose. That morning I'd violated our unspoken agreement and gone to Vernor's apartment, concerned that I hadn't heard from him in a while; I'd decided I must go, and risk his anger; he'd said he would call me when he wanted to see me and I knew (I think I knew) that he was punishing me; my punishment had something to do with my admiring remarks about the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and the demonstration on campus; I hadn't concurred in Vernor's dismissal of politics, activism, history; I'd disappointed him, and he meant to punish me; but I'd dared to go to him anyway, as if in ignorance. And he'd been there, and let me in; and we'd made love eventually, if not entirely satisfactorily; and I'd gone away again and had not heard from him for another three days balanced on the high wire above the abyss and determined not to fall. And the Dean of Women summoned me, I hadn't any choice but to obey. I would soon be twenty years old. Twenty! It seemed to me very old; never could I imagine living another twenty years. The Dean of Women had the power to expel me from the university, or so I was led to believe. A woman in her mid-fifties perhaps with a large sliding bosom and that lavishly powdered peach-tinted face, a face that pretended to know what it didn't know, and pretended not to know what it did know; a face that had never been a mother's face; a face of spite and gloating. "—This adult graduate student, this—person of a, another background—" pursing her lips with a show of concern, and fixing me with her hard marble-eyes, "—have you given serious thought to—paused to consider the wisdom of—is your family aware of such behavior—the responsibility
of my office is—is such—" I listened with mounting shame, and with mounting anger; I supposed it was the resident advisor in my dormitory who'd reported me, though I could not imagine why; or how she knew about Vernor Matheius. As I listened to the dean I became increasingly angry; I was frightened of my anger; from Vernor Matheius's tension-filled body I'd absorbed anger; the low hum, the accelerating pulse, the throbbing beat of anger; thinking She believes white skin is sacred, you've defiled it and her. I was expected to defend myself but I sat in silence, stubborn and resistant; the dean began to speak more forcibly, in disapproval,"—you seem to have quite a history, Miss—" with grave eyes contemplating the opened folder on her desk, "—your unfortunate experience at Kappa Gamma Pi—your 'troubled peer relations'—'difficulty in cooperating with others'—your 'sociopathic tendencies'—" and at this I spoke, I interrupted her in a voice sharp as Vernor Matheius's, "Excuse me, what did you say—'sociopathic'? Did you actually say—'sociopathic'?" and the dean drew herself up to her full seated height, her bulldog face darkening with blood, "Yes, I'm afraid so, one of our respondents has noted 'sociopathic tendencies'—'inability to adjust'—'continued opposition'—" and I said, "You have no right to be spying on me," I was speaking quickly, angrily, "—I can see a man if I want to; I can love a man if I want to; no one can stop me," and the dean frowned at my sudden crude words, such unfeminine behavior, saying, "That's quite enough. Your behavior will be duly noted on your record," and I said, trembling, "Why is it your business or anyone's business if I am seeing a black man? If I am in love with a—black man?" and at this the dean stared at me as if I'd spoken obscene words, clearly she wasn't accustomed to mutinous young women in her office, "Miss, you've gone too far. You will not speak to me in such a manner. You—" but I'd jumped from my chair and snatched the folder off her desk, saying, "I have a constitutional right to see what's been written about me," and the dean was so taken by surprise she couldn't reply, her powdery face dissolving in shocked awe as I leafed through the folder, transcripts of my grades through three semesters, photocopied forms, high school letters of recommendations and test results, a copy of a document from the New York State Board of Regents in Albany awarding me a state scholarship—quiet, very mature for her age, highly intelligent—reports from my university professors—brilliant but very young, immature—an outstanding student blessed (or accursed) with a skeptical imagination; and in the stilted backhand of Agnes Thayer which I recognized immediately these con demning words—willful, troublesome, unattractive girl, rude and sociopathic in tendencies, inability to adjust with others and disrespectful toward her elders. NOT RECOMMEND FOR ANY FUTURE EMPLOYMENT IN ANY FIELD OF ENDEAVVOR. These phrases passed in a rapid blur before my astonished eyes yet I had time to note the errors recommend, endeavvor, and to realize the extent of Mrs. Thayer's emotional upset; by now the dean had heaved herself to her feet, a heavyset panting middle-aged woman, though much larger than I, she appeared frightened of me; a girl of such wild sociopathic tendencies, what might I do next? With as much poise as I could summon, I dropped the folder back onto her desk; I said, "How dare you spy on me? You and Mrs. Thayer—you know what a disturbed woman she was, you know what happened to her. If I am in l-love with a—" and now I too faltered, hardly knowing how to speak of Vernor Matheius, for any words assigned to him that dissolved his individuality in a category, a class, were false; worse than false, traitorous. Even to speak of him neutrally, in such a context, was traitorous. I said, stammering, "—if I am in love with any man of any background you have no right to interfere. You have no right to intimidate me. I am twenty years old, an adult! My friend Vernor Matheius is associated with the American Civil Liberties Union and we'll sue you, you and the university both, if you continue in this racist persecution, we know our rights as—American citizens!" and I was out of the office of the Dean of Women and hurrying through her outer office in a blaze of righteousness, retaining a blurred and dream-like image of the dean's stunned face, rushing down the stairs of Erie Hall exhilarated, my blood up thinking If Vernor could have heard!—he would love me wouldn't he? Thinking in giddy triumph Am I sociopathic, am I a pathogen to society? Is that who I urn—my essence?
I was running. I was attracting some attention. I was not crying, my face shone with righteousness. A pathogen. A pathogen! It was a term from biology; a helpful term; never had I felt so empowered, so certain of myself. Vernor Matheius and I: pathogens. I felt the thrill of the outlaw, the outcast; the object of loathing and taboo; my skin was "white," a camouflage I might wear through life as I wore my costume-clothes; as I wore my "femaleness"; what others perceived as a weakness, I would forge as my strength. How radiant in self-knowledge I was! Crossing a broad, sloping lawn, spongy from recent rain; the afternoon air had turned twilit with thunderclouds obscuring the sun, and glimmered with a peculiar iridescence, like a rainbow; I gloated in my secret otherness no one (not even Vernor Matheius) would ever know. There came gusts of sulphurous air. A rolling of thunder. And an unexpected piercingly sweet odor of lilac from a hedge beside the Music School and I was seeing again the ragged lilac bushes that grew behind my grandfather's ramshackle barn, I drew a deep shuddering breath running now in rainwater and mud splashing my legs, my bare white legs, laughing to myself, my face gleaming with tears of laughter, rage, hurt, determination So I am a nigger-lover, and a pathogen. That is what I aw.
27
Never did I dare tell Vernor Matheius about my adventure in the office of the Dean of Women. I hadn't the courage though continuing to think with childish obstinacy He would love me, if he knew. My courage on our behalf.
But was it so? Would Vernor Matheius have loved me, or even admired me, if he'd known? If he'd overheard? Or would he have been mortified, infuriated, disgusted at my appropriation of his name? My boast of my friend Vernor Matheius which was the first time, and would be the last time, I spoke his name to another?
But I never told him, he never knew.
Nor did the Dean of Women continue in her harassment of me. So far as I knew. My threat of a lawsuit and my evocation of "civil rights" had been a blind strike in the dark, yet inspired; the exact weapon with which to defend oneself against a college administrator in that era of civil rights reform; of a radically new thinking about race, individuals, civil liberties. The Dean of Women would not have cause to speak with me again that year, nor in my remaining two years at the university; ironically, by what seems in retrospect a remarkable fluke, I would be named valedictorian of the class of 1965 and would deliver an idealistic valedictory speech on the subject of civil rights; afterward, on the commencement platform, I would be warmly congratulated by the chancellor of the university and by a succession of administrators in academic regalia, including of course the Dean of Women; I saw that she was one of very few women in the commencement program, and among so many tall, distinguished-seeming men a figure of female uncertainty, her raddled face too lavishly powdered and her black cap unflatteringly bobby-pinned to her grayish-brown hair. Her mouth pursed as I approached; her small damp eyes fixed upon my face as if in sudden dread of my uttering something sarcastic, rude, damning that would be overheard by her male colleagues. But our meeting, which was also our parting, was amicable. I may have been a little nervous, excited, and still high from giving my speech, and being applauded; I was smiling at everyone, and seeing no one; except there loomed the Dean of Women before me, a black tent of a woman, and there was my hard little hand being shaken by her soft boneless hand, and both hands were cold as if drained of blood; the Dean of Women smiled saying, "Congratulations, my dear. You have lived up to your early promise." I said, "Thank you, Dean. And good-bye."
I'll Take You There Page 19
