by Marge Piercy
“Mmmm. You can hold a sign right at the cameras. Oh, and call the TV stations. Including Hartford and New Haven. Say who you are. It’ll get their attention,” Jamal said.
She glanced at Blake, hoping he would say she didn’t have to, but he was nodding. “Cool.”
She was scared. Her father would surely hear of it and she would be in deep trouble with her parents. If she backed down, Blake would not trust her. How had she gotten into this? Still, she must behave as if she were willing and hope something would come up so she wouldn’t have to go through with it.
“Maybe we could make a list of TV stations? I don’t really know them around here. And if anybody knows who to contact for the news?”
Ironman said, “I can get the contact list from Josie. She’s in Malcolm X with me.” One of the houses upperclassmen lived in. “She has it from last year. Or I’ll bring it by. What dorm are you in? I’ll make sure you get it by tonight. So when are we doing this? We need to get the word out.”
She went very slowly back to her dormitory, wondering how she had gotten in deep so fast. It was just a little picket outside the library and nobody would pay any attention—if she didn’t mention who she was. But they wanted her to. She had to prove to Blake that she could be trusted, that she was absolutely on his side. On Friday, they would be there with signs and chants and all the things that demonstrators did on television. Somebody would call her parents for comment. Rosemary would be furious. Could her mother pull her out of school? There would be a reckoning in the family, they would find out about Blake. Disaster hung over her head.
Of course Blake and his friends were in the right. She knew that. Her father wasn’t even deeply racist. Although he boasted of being a collateral relative of Robert E. Lee on his mother’s side, he also, when it was to his advantage, trotted out an Abolitionist ancestor who had been shot leading a charge in the Civil War. Neither Dick nor Rosemary ever used bad language about people of color, never told racist jokes or permitted them. But Dick did not count Black voters among his constituency, so he had no reason to please them. They weren’t going to vote for him, work for him, fund-raise or contribute money, so they and their needs and issues were no more important than the opinions of seagulls or pigeons. They were not on his radar except when he had to make a speech about crime or drugs or welfare mothers or family responsibility, whatever. It was not that he hated African-Americans; rather, they simply didn’t exist for him in a meaningful way. But they did for her, ever since Hartford. Rosemary was probably more deeply imbued with racism, because she never took her position in life for granted. She had been born lower middle class in a working-class town to sweet parents she viewed as shameful failures. Rosemary had an edge of quiet terror that she would slip in class, in social position. She could not afford to take chances with people she viewed as dubious assets. And herself, Melissa, what was she? Scared.
Later, when they were alone in Blake’s room, she asked him, “How come this is so important to you? I mean, you told me yourself, you don’t even know if you’re African-American. And you hardly look it.”
“But that’s how I’m classified by others. The cause is right. Besides, what are the odds that I’m Filipino or West Indian? The odds are my parents were African-American. Does that bother you?”
“Of course not! I assumed you were from the beginning. It’s just that my mother’s going to kill me.”
He raised his eyebrows high. “I doubt that. It wouldn’t be good publicity to shoot her own daughter.”
But she remained scared. How had she pushed herself so far out front of her friends, her acquaintances? She had not meant to take an active role, just to go along with it. She thought she would turn up and wave a sign toward the back. She should have kept her mouth shut. But Blake had kept looking at her sideways. She had to prove herself to him so he would go on loving her. She could not lose him through cowardice. No matter how scared she was, she had to go through with what she had said she would do, even though it made her sick to her stomach. His loving her was a small miracle. No other guy ever had, and she could not easily believe any other ever would. He was something she did not deserve, and she had to do whatever it took to keep him interested. His friends would never really accept her, but this way, they would not give him such a hard time about her—a constant series of small and large sneers, jokes, remarks, attacks she had suspected all along. She saw the way Jamal and Florette looked at them when they passed their table or saw them together.
Ironman hand-carried her the list of contacts, probably to make sure she was really going to make the calls. Fern looked after him with a surprised, impressed face. Ironman was a local sports hero, a junior who’d been on the basketball team since his freshman year. “What did he want? I mean, is he a friend of Blake’s? I didn’t know he hung with us lowly freshmen.” She was at her desk writing a paper.
Melissa explained to Fern and Emily, who often took refuge in Melissa’s room to get away from Whitney. Melissa waited for Emily to tell her what an idiot she was. But Emily was intrigued. “That’ll drive your parents wild. It’ll be fun, too. I’ll go. I’ll carry a sign. I can make a good one.”
“You’ll go too? Really?”
“I’ll go too,” Fern said. “As long as I don’t have to say anything.”
Emily tilted her head back, eyes on the ceiling. “I always wanted to be in a demonstration. My parents did all that when they were young, back around the Spanish-American War.” Emily straddled the desk chair. Her voice rose in amused excitement. “They get all misty when they talk about the good old days on the barricades. Your parents will want to quarantine you, but my parents will adore me. They’ll be thrilled. I bet I get the car I’ve been bugging them for.”
“Wow, I wish you would. That would be great.”
“It’s worth a try,” Emily said, yawning. “I’ve got to catch up on sleep this weekend. I fell asleep in class today.”
If Emily and Fern didn’t think what she was doing was insane, it must not be too bad. She would tough it out with her parents. She made most of the phone calls, giving her name but not mentioning her father. Melissa Dickinson was a common enough type of name. If people didn’t know who her father was, they never guessed. Why seek out trouble? Emily volunteered to call two TV stations. Emily was such a good friend that Melissa almost began to think of herself as unusually lucky, for she had a great boyfriend and a great roommate and friend. Even if her family despised her, she had Blake and Emily and Fern.
The day of the demonstration loomed. That morning it was raining semifrozen drops when she awoke—if waking meant anything after dozing in brief fits all night. She was relieved. She wished it were a monsoon. Then she got scared all over again. She would be branding herself a troublemaker, one of the weird wanna-bes who hung around the African-American students and imitated their clothes, their language, their style. But Blake’s group was in the right, and she should be supporting them.
The sleet kept up. The demonstration was called for noon. The local TV station had driven their truck right onto campus and had lights set up. She felt awkward, conspicuous, out of her element. The African-American students and their supporters trickled into the area, lots of raincoats and ponchos and parkas, two faculty umbrellas, a sea of baseball caps. The sleet made the scene look like bad TV reception. Her teeth chattered, perhaps from cold, more likely through pure nervousness. She saw Blake, taller than most in the crowd and far handsomer, already talking to a reporter under one of the outdoor lights they had rigged up. Florette was beside him, both holding forth. Ironman arrived late, but the camera immediately focused on him. She did not go over to join them. She waited on the edge of the small crowd with Emily and Fern. They huddled together, waving their signs. The printing held, but the drawings that Emily had made were running. Fern looked miserable but held her sign high, waving it occasionally.
She hated to see Blake on the other side of the plaza and not to go to him, but she didn’t want to be interview
ed, she didn’t want to appear on TV. She saw Blake gesturing at one point that she should come over, but she pretended not to understand. Instead she just hoisted her sign higher and waved it harder, as if that was what she understood him to want. They had about forty-five, maybe fifty students taking part. Along the other side of the plaza were some antis, frat boys yelling at them. One heavyset guy was in a shouting match with Jamal. Someone from the dean’s office appeared to represent the university. An occasional chant arose, but the real confrontation was between Jamal, Ironman, Florette, the guy from the dean’s office. There probably wasn’t enough action for the reporters, because they closed down and drove off when it became apparent nothing more exciting was going to happen. No building takeovers, no violence. It would be, she suspected, a thirty-second item on the evening news.
Blake made his way to her. “I wanted you to talk to the reporter.”
“Would it be appropriate for a white girl to seem to be speaking for the African-American students? I thought you just wanted me to show my sign to the camera.”
“It’s okay.” He grinned. “We made our point. And it stirs things up a bit. Gets some people involved. What more can you ask?”
It was over. She felt an immense relief. Blake was turning back to Florette and Jamal, who were waiting for him. Melissa took Emily’s arm and Fern’s, and they trotted back to the dormitory to change out of their wet clothes. She was chilled through. “Let’s have hot chocolate,” Emily said. “I have a two o’clock, but there’s time. One of those coffee machines has hot chocolate, if I can remember which one.”
Fern shook her head, but Melissa said, “My treat.” Fern went along then. Melissa had noticed Fern never wasted money.
She felt as if she were slinking away, but at least she had done what they asked of her, almost all of it, and she hadn’t appeared on TV herself. She could hope her mother wouldn’t hear about it. She learned later that one of the Kennedy cousins had been in an automobile accident that morning, and the crews had rushed to the Boston hospital where he was being operated on. She was vastly relieved. The Kennedy cousin had saved her.
THE NEXT NIGHT, she studied with Blake in his room. They worked for a couple of hours, and then he scooped her up out of her chair and carried her toward the bed. She loved being carried. It felt romantic, like a movie, and she was half sorry he did not have to carry her farther. She reached up to him and they kissed, and then, quite slowly and gently, he lowered her to his bed. Then just as slowly he removed her clothes, kissing the skin he uncovered as he went. “I know you were scared,” he said in his softest most velvety voice. “I know you were afraid you’d get in trouble with your family.”
“I was a little scared.”
He went on uncovering her bit by bit and letting his lips travel across her skin. “More than a little.”
“I did it. Everything you wanted.” She worried he would bring up the moment when he had motioned toward her and she had pretended not to understand.
As if he could read her mind, he said, “Florette wanted you on camera. But I wasn’t pissed that you didn’t come over. That would have been begging for trouble. And you’re right about it being sleazy using a white spokesperson…. So you didn’t end up doing anything you didn’t want to do, did you?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I want to be with you in everything you do.”
“I know.” He smiled and went on making love to every inch of her. “Because what we do, we do together. We move as one. We act as one.”
“That’s so sweet,” she said, her voice catching. She was aroused to the point of almost finding his kisses painful. “Come into me.”
“No, I want to eat you first.” He stripped rapidly, as always folding his clothes over his desk chair. He never threw his clothes on the floor the way Emily and she did. Each item was processed.
She bent to suck him, but he pushed her back down. “No. This is for you. Because you were brave in spite of being scared. Because you didn’t let your family intimidate you. You dared to go against them and what they stand for. You fought them in your own way. That’s real strength, babes.”
She was embarrassed to have him laboring over her. She had never just lain there and had a man do oral sex on her. “Baby, you don’t have to do this,” she murmured, trying to pull his head away.
“Why would you think I wouldn’t enjoy it?”
“You know. I mean, I’m not beautiful or anything. I’m too fat.”
“Fat? You’re up a tree. You have a great body. Who ever told you different? You’re built like a woman should be. Now shut up.”
She felt as if she were taking too long, but she was beyond a level of excitement when she could make him stop. When she came, she found she had tears in her eyes.
• CHAPTER TEN •
Melissa was disappointed with their lunches. Blake had been sitting down with other people. First it was Florette and Jamal. Now it was a white kid from Philadelphia, Phil. She wondered if Blake was growing bored with her company. Emily warned her not to try to keep Blake to herself, no matter how much she desired it. Em knew much more about guys than she did, so she listened. She fantasized that Blake and she were cast away on an island, sent into space in a two-person rocket ship on a five-year mission. Or just snowbound in a cabin. She longed to pull him away from his demanding friends and acquaintances, from distractions and classes, even from the bike he rode off on by himself, claiming it was too cold for her. She never got enough of him.
Florette and Jamal she could understand: they were his closest African-American friends on campus. But Phil? He was a runty guy with red hair cut roughly punk, as if he had done it in the dark in a fit of pique. He rolled his own cigarettes with a flourish. His fingers looked yellow, and he always seemed to have a cold. Em and she considered him weird. She worried that Blake was growing tired of her, that she no longer commanded his prime attention. Yet at moments she was convinced he loved her passionately. She tried to imagine how to make herself more interesting. Emily told her to take an interest in what Blake was interested in. “Guys always fall for that. Even if it’s, like, football.”
“You’re really into Phil,” she said tentatively, ready to back off if the statement bothered him.
“I thought he was someone you should know.”
“Me? How come?”
“Well, you want to be a crusading journalist, right? Or you did last week.”
“That’s what I want,” she said. The way he said it, it sounded silly. Her mother would certainly think so.
“So, Phil ought to be useful to you…. He knows who your father is. How come you don’t know who his father is?”
“Phil Lippett?” The last name was vaguely familiar. She tried to think where she had heard it. Back when Dick was governor, Rosemary had tried to cultivate a Lippett who had been attacking her father and whom she had hoped to win over or at least neutralize. He had been one of her failures. “Roger Lippett. A reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.”
“One of their best.” Blake beamed at her, tousling her hair. “Yes, babes, that’s his father. Our Phil intends to follow in his footsteps. Linking up with him could be useful for you. He’s a junior who spends his summers at the Inquirer.”
“A junior? Why would he hang with us?”
“We intrigue him, babes. It’d be useful for us if we continue to do so.”
She felt a rush of gratitude. No matter how unimpressed she had been with Phil, Blake was charming him for her benefit. He actually took her vague ambitions seriously and was trying to help her. Nobody else had ever done that.
“Like his father, he’s fascinated with King Richard. By the way, he was on CNN today, Phil told me. I wish I’d known. I like to see King Richard in action.”
That was Blake’s new name for her father. She had begun using it when she e-mailed Billy, who picked it up at once. King Richard seemed appropriate for Dick, who had always appeared larger than life but also hollow—like the huge balloons she
remembered from the parades of her childhood Noreen had taken Billy and her to watch. Blimpy Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, huge and almost frightening to a child. She had read about a woman killed by one of those balloons that had got loose at a Macy’s parade in Manhattan. Dick could seem like that: huge, cartoonish, but dangerous too. Rosemary never forgot a slight, but Dick said, “Keep your eye on the ball. The best revenge is turning an enemy into an asset. Watch for their weaknesses, watch for what they most need. Win them over or neutralize them. Only fight when you have to. Revenge isn’t victory.”
“Oh.” She grimaced. “He just wants to know me to get some dirt on my father.”
“He’s not a reporter yet. He’s learning the ropes, as you must. I thought you could help each other. And this is a start to informing yourself so you can learn to act as a conscience for your father. You can’t catch his attention unless you know a surprising amount.”
“Why would Phil want to help me?” She had a deep mistrust of those who came at her father. Dick might be a little corrupt, but politicians were under far more scrutiny than businessmen or professors. Her father did what he had to, what he could—the same as the President, the same as every other governor or senator. He was cleaner than the others, she was sure of that. Reporters were no better, willing to do anything to get a story, willing to smear people.
“Because you aren’t in your father’s pocket. I know how difficult growing up in that household has been for you, and I’ve told him how independent you are. We won’t share with him our real aim—to educate you in the ways of your father’s politics so eventually we can influence them. That’s our project and he doesn’t have to know about it.”
