And All Our Wounds Forgiven

by Julius Lester

  JULY 12, 1964: MEADVILLE, MISSISSIPPI — A MAN FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FINDS LOWER HALF OF BADLY DECOMPOSED BODY. THE FOLLOWING DAY A SECOND BODY IS FOUND, DECAPITATED, A PIECE OF WIRE WRAPPED AROUND ITS TORSO. CHARLES EDDIE MOORE, 20, AND HENRY DEE, 19, HAD BEEN MURDERED BY KLANSMEN WHO BELIEVED THE TWO WERE BLACK MUSLIMS PLANNING AN ARMED UPRISING. ALTHOUGH THE TWO MURDERERS CONFESSED, ALL CHARGES WERE DISMISSED WITHOUT EXPLANATION.

  FEBRUARY 26, 1965: MARION, ALABAMA — JIMMIE LEE JACKSON, 27, KILLED BY A STATE TROOPER DURING A CIVIL RIGHTS MARCH.

  MARCH 11, 1965: SELMA, ALABAMA — REVEREND JAMES REEB, A WHITE, UNITARIAN MINISTER FROM BOSTON, BEATEN ON THE STREETS OF SELMA AND DIES TWO DAYS LATER. IN CONTRAST TO THE MURDER OF JIMMIE LEE JACKSON, REEB’S DEATH PROVOKES NATIONAL OUTRAGE. PRESIDENT JOHNSON PHONES REEB’S WIDOW AND VICE-PRESIDENT HUMPHREY ATTENDS HIS FUNERAL. JIMMIE LEE JACKSON’S MOTHER RECEIVED NO PHONE CALL FROM THE PRESIDENT AND NO PRESIDENTIAL REPRESENTATIVE ATTENDED HIS FUNERAL. FOUR DAYS AFTER REEB’S DEATH, PRESIDENT JOHNSON SENDS A VOTING RIGHTS BILL TO CONGRESS AND ADDRESSES THE NATION ON TELEVISION, CONCLUDING WITH THE WORDS, “WE SHALL OVERCOME.’’

  MARCH 25, 1965: LOWNDES COUNTY, ALABAMA — VIOLA LIUZZQ, 40, A WHITE MOTHER OF FIVE FROM DETROIT, SHOT AND KILLED WHILE DRIVING A CIVIL RIGHTS MARCHER BACK TO SELMA AFTER THE SELMA-MQNTGQMERY MARCH.

  JUNE 2, 1965: VARNADQ, LOUISIANA — ONEAL MOORE, 34, FIRST BLACK DEPUTY IN WASHINGTON PARISH, SHOT AND KILLED.

  JULY 18, 1965: ANNISTQN, ALABAMA — WILLIE BREWSTER, 39, SHOT AND KILLED WHILE DRIVING HOME FROM THE PIPE FOUNDRY WHERE HE WORKED.

  AUGUST 20, 1965: HAYNEVILLE, ALABAMA — JONATHAN DANIELS, 26, A WHITE MINISTERIAL STUDENT, SHOT AND KILLED.

  JANUARY 3, 1966: TUSKEGEE, ALABAMA — SAMUEL YQUNGE, JR., 22, A STUDENT CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, SHOT AND KILLED TRYING TO USE WHITES ONLY RESTRQQM AT A SERVICE STATION.

  JANUARY 10, 1966: HATTIESBURG, MISSISSIPPI — VERNON DAHMER, 58, VOTING RIGHTS ACTIVIST, KILLED WHEN HIS HOME IS BOMBED.

  JUNE 10, 1966: NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI — BEN CHESTER WHITE, 67, MURDERED BY THREE WHITE MEN WHO WANTED TO KILL A NIGGER.

  FEBRUARY 27, 1967: NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI — WHARLEST JACKSON, 37, MURDERED AFTER BEING PROMOTED TO A PREVIOUSLY WHITE-ONLY JOB AT THE ARMSTRONG RUBBER COMPANY WHERE HE WORKED.

  MAY 12, 1967: JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI — BENJAMIN BROWN, 22, WHILE GOING TO A RESTAURANT TO GET A SANDWICH FOR HIS WIFE, KILLED WHEN POLICE FIRE ON PROTESTORS THROWING ROCKS AND BOTTLES FARTHER DOWN THE THE SAME STREET.

  FEBRUARY 8, 1968: ORANGEBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA — SAMUEL HAMMOND, 19, DELANO MIDDLETON, 18, HENRY SMITH, 20, SHOT AND KILLED WHEN HIGHWAY PATROLMEN FIRE ON STUDENT PROTESTORS.

  i have wondered if the real work of the civil rights movement was not interracial sex. do not misunderstand. i am not deriding the passage of the 1964 civil rights act or the 1965 voting rights act. i am not dishonoring the memories of all of us who died. but if social change is the transformation of values, then the civil rights movement did not fulfill itself. there has not been any diminution in the ethic of white supremacy’, instead racism has added legions of black adherents, making america an integrated society in a way i never dreamed. our racial suspicions and hatreds have made us one nation.

  the sixties were unique because so many blacks and so many whites took the risk of extending themselves toward the other. in the twentieth century, there was a brief period of a mere eight years when a significant number of blacks and whites lived and worked and slept with each other. those who did so were forever changed.

  i used to feel guilty about what seemed a compulsion to be with a white woman. i do not know even now when the feeling began. i suspect it antedates my existence, that it begins — where? — on the slave auction block at annap-olis? or charleston? or savannah? who was that african who survived the middle passage, survived the breaking-in period in the west indies where he was acculturated to slavery and then, brought to these shores and placed on an auction block? while standing there did he look out and see for the first time a woman with skin the color of death and hair the color of pain and eyes the color of the corpse-filled sea? did he look at her and she look at him and know?

  i was around 7. one Saturday morning i went into montgo-mery with my father. we were walking along a street. i happened to look up and see a white girl on the other side. she looked like a woman. given my age, she was probably no more than 12. into my mind came the words: “I’m going to marry her one day.” she did not see me, did not know i existed on the planet. what did i see that led to such words? it was as if the story had been leading to that moment for centuries: “i’m going to marry her one day.”

  that is how social change happens. a 7-year-old alabama colored boy thinks a thought it is doubtful any other 7-year-old alabama colored boy had ever thought. except, and i need to be accurate, i didn’t think it. the thought thought me. however, i did not reject it. other 7-year-old alabama colored boys had been thought by similar thoughts — ‘i wish i could marry her.” “i sure would like to marry her.” they yearned. i asserted: “i’m going to marry her one day.”

  what did it mean? what was i trying to tell myself? the first time elizabeth and i were together. we were both nervous. more, we were frightened. she was a virgin, but the anxiety was other. what we were about to do had been forbidden for centuries. black man. white woman. it was a social taboo with almost as much force as the one against incest. black men were killed if a white man thought they might be thinking about white women. Emmett Till. Mack Charles Parker.

  could she and i act as individuals? were we strong enough to defy four centuries of history?

  in the sixties a lot of black men and white women tried to heal history with their bodies. i am not naive. i know many of those black men and white women abused each other. i know many black women were made to feel worthless as they saw black men walk past them to get to the nearest white woman. history extracts its price, regardless. i also know that some of history’s wounds could not have been tended any other way.

  i loved her from the moment i saw her picture on the front page of the newspaper. who was this young white girl that dared cross over, this young woman whose beauty was apparent even in the grainy texture of a newspaper photo, this young woman whose wealth and background exempted her from the cares and concerns of ninety-nine percent of those on the planet? was she guilt-ridden because she was white and wealthy? that evening on huntley-brinkley they showed film of the arrests in nashville and there she was, walking easily, almost leisurely, from the store where they had been sitting-in and into the paddy wagon.

  andrea noticed and said: she’s quite lovely, isn’t she? embarrassed, i wanted to demur but i sensed it was important not to betray myself — and her: yes. she is.

  neither andrea or i could escape the reverence in my tone.

  a few weeks later when the invitation came from fisk, i accepted immediately and asked andrea to come with me, which was unusual. she never accompanied me on my travels, not even in those early years. two years later, when i returned from california with elizabeth, i think she was relieved that someone was finally going to take responsibility for my aloneness.

  that phelps girl is at fisk. i don’t think i want to be there when you meet her.

  i tried to deny that my eagerness to go to fisk was to meet elizabeth. i was confused. i did not understand why i needed to meet her. i knew it appeared to andrea to be a sexual attraction. it was not. i could’ve hidden that because it is essentially meaningless except if personal gratification is the essence of one’s existence. perhaps i wanted andrea there to protect me. i thought if she was with me, nothing would happen and i would be safe.

  after lunch at the fisk president’s house, andrea and i got in the car to drive back to atlanta. we were both afraid to break the silence, afraid that any word would mean the end of the marriage. yet, if the silence continued for too long, that, too, would mean the end. i did not know what to say. there was nothing to say.

  elizabeth. />
  i had said her name like a lover consenting to go wherever the beloved led.

  andrea: listen and don’t respond. if you say anything, it will be a lie, and i don’t like you when you lie. you can’t help it. you’re a man. truths of the heart confuse men. they confuse women, too, but we know it is better to speak them aloud. men lie aloud and speak the truth to themselves. women speak the truth aloud but believe the lies they tell themselves.

  we fear truths of the heart because, more often than not, they hurt. they complicate our lives. but that is only appearance. ultimately, truths of the heart simplify, even if we aren’t able to always believe them.

  i do not like being the wife of john calvin marshall. i did not say that i do not love you. i love you more now than the afternoon we met my freshman year. i love the man you are becoming. i love you for choosing to be the leader of our people. i love you, john calvin. being your wife is another matter.

  i do not like the tightness in my stomach everytime a car passes the house. i do not like the dread of waiting for the next window to shatter from a rock or implode from the blast of a shotgun. i do not like the memory of the house falling around me; i do not like thinking, what if i had not taken three steps toward the kitchen? i would have been killed. i do not like to hear the phone ring when you’re away because one time i will pick it up and someone will tell me you are dead.

  most of all, i do not like that i am married to you and you are not married to me. i looked at that girl today and i envied the look in her eyes. i don’t mean when we were standing in the foyer but before you spoke. i noticed your eyes look up into the balcony and i knew you had found her. i turned and looked. i expected to see hero worship in her eyes. i expected to see the thick glow of infatuation. instead i was shocked. on her face, in her eyes, i saw a look of understanding. it’s not fair, i thought. i have tried so hard to be what you need. you have scarcely noticed because my efforts have been so far off the mark. you and she had not even exchanged a word, and yet, she seemed to know you in ways i never will. and afterward, in the foyer, did you notice that she stood and waited for you to come to her? did you notice that?

  john calvin: yes, i did.

  andrea: thanks for not lying. seeing how she was with you was remarkable. god, i hated her. i really hated her. it is not possible for a black woman to move through the world with such assurance, such self-confidence. how old is she? 19? my god! there has not been a 19-year-old black girl in the history of western civilization who could stand on the earth as if it were her unquestioned possession. but, i can’t hate her. it’s not her fault. and, this is what i want you to know. it is not yours, either. black men. white women. history has decreed that the two belong to each other in ways that black men and black women, white men and white women cannot. thank you for asking me to come. having seen the two of you together, having heard you speak her name, i will know that this is not some sexual fling. no woman likes to be rejected for that which all women have — pussy, if you will excuse me. if your husband is going to be sharing himself with another woman, at least let it be for something he could not have with you. i don’t know if that will lessen the hurt, but it will keep the hysteria within manageable boundaries — some of the time. it will assuage the loneliness — some of the time. it does not mean i forgive you — yet. it does not mean that i do not hate her. but my mind understands. some day, if i am blessed, my heart will accept.

  i said nothing but when we got home, we made love more truly and more tenderly than we ever had and ever would again.

  late that night, when i was downstairs going over my notes for the next day’s classes, i could hear her, upstairs, crying.

  CARD

  it seemed logical that the young would respond eagerly to my calls for social change. i did not understand that for the young change has no other content than change. the appearance of activity differentiates them from their parents. the task of youth is this definitive act of differentiation because the young can have only one priority — to see themselves.

  i mistook their eagerness to follow me as confirmation. but ardor is as characteristic of youth as the large, moist eyes of cocker spaniels. though that ardor combined with courage to create a movement that ended racial segregation, what a price the nation extracted from its young to pay a debt they had not incurred.

  but did i have an alternative? the foundation of national policy for resolving racial conflict was set by brown v. board of education. the supreme court required children to do what adults had not — desegregate the nation.

  it seemed logical. the young were less imbued with prejudice. because they were young they could more readily learn and live an ethic of social equality. but we robbed them of childhood and thus of integrity. they never knew. adults are skillful at pandering to youth. listen to the platitudes of any high school or college commencement address. the young are flattered into believing that the responsibility for the future of humanity is now passing into their hands. they are told that they are the best and the brightest, the most caring and sensitive youth to ever tread the crust of mother earth. they applaud with self-congratulatory fervor when they are told that their generation must and will succeed where their parents’ generation has failed.

  thus we lie to the young in america. we leave it to them to discover, with a shock, that youth is the shortest and most fleeting period of their lives, that the living will get more arduous as they age, and that the hallmark of maturity is the courage to withstand uncertainty and paradox and the absence of a solution for anything, anything at all.

  1974

  The phone woke him.

  He opened his eyes to narrow slits and peered across the floor at the clock radio whose luminous numbers shone like evil contemplating itself.

  Bobby knew he should let the phone ring until whoever it was hung up or died. In the history of the world nobody had ever received good news at 4 a.m.

  “The phone’s ringing,” came a sleepy female voice from the other side of the mattress.

  “Don’t you think I know that,” he growled, wondering who the bitch was. “If you care so damn much, answer the muthafucka your damn self!” He laughed harshly. “Bitch!” he added, as if he had left the sentence incomplete.

  He leaned over and snatched the receiver off the phone from where it sat on the floor next to the radio. “What the fuck you want?”

  He heard a sigh, followed by a soft chuckle.

  “Bitch!” he screamed. “If you want to sigh, come on over! I got something between my legs that’ll make you do more than sigh, goddammit!”

  “You get more charming with the years,” came the calm response in a soft female voice.

  Card was silent for a moment and then recognized who it was. “Shit!”

  “It’s so nice to be remembered,” the voice said sweetly.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he said with a cold fury, sitting up now, grasping the receiver so tightly his hand hurt. “Do you know what the fuck time it is? And no, the check is not in the mail.”

  The voice laughed genuinely, and in spite of himself, Card smiled. “Guess you knew that, huh?” he responded, calmer now.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to break a four-year habit.”

  “At least I’m consistent.”

  “When one is devoid of virtues, consistency is all that remains.”

  “Goddammit, Kathy!” he flared.

  “I apologize, Bobby.”

  “Fine! Now, get to the fucking point.”

  It had been eternities since he had heard that voice as seductive as promises, and he was frightened that it could still make him want to reach for what he had been unable to grasp.

  He waited in the darkness for her to speak and became wary as the silence merged with the darkness and she hid within one or the other or behind both, a snake burrowed in the ground sensing the prey oblivious to its imminent death.

  Just as his impatience was about to explode, she said softly, “Bobby?”

 
“Dammit, you know my name and I know my name. What the fuck is it? Something happen to Adisa?” he asked, the thought occurring to him for the first time.

  “Bobby?” she repeated, her voice hesitant and seeming to break like scraps of cloud. “It’s George. He’s dead.”

  “George?” he echoed reflexively, not knowing who she was talking about.

  “He shot himself.”

  “Shot himself!” and he saw a thin face with a wisp of beard. “George!” he exclaimed, his body suddenly rigid. “George shot himself?” Then he chuckled, shaking his head nervously. “You got to be kidding, Kathy. George wouldn’t do that.”

  “That’s what I thought. But he did.”

  Card shook his head again. “Uh-uh. That’s not possible.”

  “Wylie just called and told me. He wanted me to get in touch with you.”

  “What the fuck for?” he shot back, suddenly surly again.

  Kathy chuckled. “That’s what I wanted to ask him.”

  “He think I give a fuck about George blowing his brains out,” he continued, not having heard Kathy’s quiet riposte.

  “Yes, but he doesn’t know you as well as I do.”

  “Fuck you, too!”

  “Wylie wanted me to ask you to come to the funeral. He needs you.”

  “Fuck that! I went to my last funeral when Cal got blown away. Tell Wylie I’m sorry.”

  “You call him and tell him. Sorry I had to wake you. Now, tell me. What sixteen-year-old white girl are you in bed with tonight? Or have you matured to seventeen-year-olds?”