by Caryl Rivers
“This isn’t Birmingham,” Mary said. “These are people I’ve known all my life. I think it’s going to be OK.”
“I hope you’re right,” the city editor said.
She was sitting in the minister’s living room, drinking a cup of coffee that Don had brewed, talking about nonviolence. He leaned back on the sofa and tried to explain.
“The good people have to confront what they support when it’s right in front of their noses. They think, ‘That’s not us,’ when people talk about bigots, ‘That’s the guys with the red necks who wear sheets and burn crosses.’ But they’re the ones whose silence makes Jim Crow possible. When they have to see the police dogs and the fire hoses, they can’t avoid what the system does. Or maybe they just think that chaos is bad for business. Either way, nonviolence works, because it weeds the ugliness out of hiding, brings it out into the light.”
“Is it much different in the North?”
“Here, there’s no system of segregation that’s built into law. People can hate just as hard, but they use economic power to push us around. Bureaucrats, not police dogs. The end result is a lot the same.”
“It’s strange,” she said, taking a sip of the coffee, “but all the time I was growing up I didn’t think much about all the Negroes living in the same place. It just seemed to be — how things were.”
“That’s one of the great forces we have to overcome. The status quo. Whatever is, is right.”
“But it’s hard to think you have the right to change things. I wrote to Newsweek because they have men younger than me, and with no experience, starting as reporters. But the editor told me they have a rule, no women can be reporters. They can be researchers, looking things up in the library, not reporters.”
“That’s not fair. If you’re good enough, you should get the job.”
“Well, part of me thinks that, but there’s another part that says maybe they’re right, they know more than I do. Part of me thinks I don’t have a right even to try for that job. But I know I can do it. I am doing it. I’ve covered Kennedy. I have great clips, but that doesn’t matter. Nobody but me thinks it’s not fair. So maybe I’m the one who’s out of line.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You’re the first white person I’ve ever heard say that.”
“What?”
“That you don’t think you have a right to go anywhere or do anything.”
“There’s somebody or something inside my head, telling me I don’t. It’s just — them.”
“I have them too. But I know who they are. White people. They say, ‘you can’t you can’t you can’t,’ and it’s hard to tune them out. Who’s your them?”
She stared down at her coffee. “I don’t know. I never thought about exactly who they are, but they’re there. Even my mother. She loves me, but it’s like she’d be afraid that if I step over some invisible line, bad things will happen.”
“My father’s like that. He worked so hard to create this little circle for all of us, and we’re safe inside it, but if we go outside, we have to be afraid. We have to act this certain way, or — or I don’t know what will happen. But something bad. And I don’t mean down south. I mean in my hometown, Washington, D.C. It’s like white people are always there, like God, watching and disapproving.”
“But you don’t care. You’ve been so brave.”
He shook his head. “I can’t tune them out sometimes. They use my father’s voice. He says I can’t be a writer, because Negro men can’t make a living that way. I hear his voice when I’m sitting in my class at Georgetown. I’m the best writer there, I know that, but the others, they don’t hear voices.”
“What does your father want you to do?”
“He wanted me to go to med school, take over his practice. Now he wants me to be a teacher, at a Negro college. But my professor, she wants to introduce me to her literary agent. She thinks there’s a book in the things I’m writing.”
“That’s great!”
He frowned. “But I can’t really believe it could happen, I guess because my father thinks it can’t. What if I spend all my time on it, and it’s no good? What if he’s really right?”
“It doesn’t matter, you have to try.”
“Yeah, but that means I can’t go back to the South. And that’s where I should be.” He looked up at her and shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.” He took another sip of coffee. “I have this weird feeling that if I go south again, I won’t come back. That I’ll die there. I never thought that when I was there. Even in the worst moments, the ones when it was really possible that I could get killed, I still had this feeling that I was immortal. But not anymore. So I wonder, am I using the book idea to chicken out, not do what I should do?”
“You’re organizing people here. That’s important.”
“Yeah, but this will be settled soon, one way or another.”
“What do you really want to do?”
“I want to try to write the book.”
“Then that’s what you should do.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so. And so do you.”
“I guess,” he said. “I just needed to hear it.”
She smiled at him. “You just have.”
Journal: Donald A. Johnson
Growing up black and Catholic meant that church was different for me than for most Negroes. It was only when I went south that I really experienced what it was like for us to have a church of our own. I’d been to my uncle’s church a few times, but it always seemed strange to me, all that singing and calling out, all that energy. I got used to it in the South, began to realize what a source of strength it could be. Still, it’s not the gospel rhythms that have the deepest hold on my soul; it’s the Salve Regina. The Jesuits say “Give us a boy until he is seven and he is ours for life,” and I guess that is true. It was my father who converted to Catholicism because of a priest he met as a young man, and my mother converted, too, after they were married.
I don’t remember thinking much about color as far as church was concerned until I was in second grade and I got a holy card with a picture of a guardian angel on it. It showed two little white children crossing a bridge over a rushing river, and there was a slat missing on the bridge. The angel had its wings wrapped about the children, and you just knew they were in no danger.
I really liked the idea of a guardian angel, but I instantly had my doubts about the one on the card, who was pale white, with hair even fairer than that of Claude Jarman, Jr., and silvery wings. I needed a guardian angel because a bunch of tough white kids had taken to roaming the fringes of our neighborhood, beating up little Negro kids who made the mistake of walking down the wrong alleys. I didn’t think the guardian angel on the holy card would be much help, because these kids were tough. They’d make mincemeat out of him; they’d pull his long hair and tie back his silver wings and sucker punch him in the gut. No, I needed a more rugged breed of angel. I decided my guardian angel looked just like one of the “bad niggers” from Seventh and U, his face as dark as coal with a six-inch scar running down it, his hair slicked back with oil, his dark wings glistening like a bat’s, and a cold, hard smile. Just let those white toughs confront me as I took a shortcut through an alley; they’d get the surprise of their lives. He’d materialize right out of the air, and he’d look at the kids and say, “Come on, white trash, I’ll kick your butts all the way back to Rhode Island Avenue.”
And the eyes of the white kids would widen and their mouths would open in surprise and their leader would say, “Oh fuck, they let guardian angels be Negro?”
And my angel would smile that cold, hard smile and say, “Go and sin no more, my man.”
It only gradually dawned on me, as I went three days a week to my after-school catechism classes, that all the saints were white, and that the Last Supper was as segregated as the lunch counters in Birmingham. I played saints like I played movie heroes, and once agai
n, I had to be white. My favorite was not a saint, exactly — so many of them seemed to come to violent ends, getting beheaded and crucified and such, but on the wall of our classroom there was a picture of Sir Galahad, whose strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure. My kind of guy. He also wore armor and carried a lance, and if any infidel tried to behead him, he’d put a three-inch hole in the guy’s navel — after a little prayer, of course.
I loved being Sir Galahad. The top to the trash can was my shield and a curtain rod my lance. I’m sure my neighbor Mr. Williams would look out his window and say to his wife, “What is that Johnson child doing now?”
What I was doing, of course, was searching for the Holy Grail. Thunder was my loyal steed. I couldn’t ride him, of course — he’d bite my ass — but I dragged him through our neighborhood, searching. I mean, who knew where the Grail might have ended up. After the Last Supper, it could have fallen into the hands of one of those hawkers of celebrity paraphernalia, the guys who sell stuff like the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz or Gene Autry’s hat. Jesus was a big deal back in the old days, and stuff associated with Him probably sold for mucho shekels. I pictured this Arab trader, his camel pack loaded with collectibles — crumbs from the loaves of loaves-and-fishes fame, fragments of the true cross, parchment copies of the Sermon on the Mount, suitable for framing, and the Holy Grail. Who’s to say he didn’t do a little business with an African traveling man who was the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of somebody who took it with him on a slave ship, and passed it from generation to generation. So it could have wound up in the trash can of a family in Washington, D.C., who did not recognize its value and who happened to live on my street.
With Thunder by my side, I quested. I found a broken vase with Chinese people on it, surely a treasure worth much; a picture of a clown in a broken frame, a baseball card of Bucky Harris, and a fragment of something gold colored, which I was certain was a piece of the Holy Grail. I kept them all in my room. I was the only kid on the block with a piece of the Holy Grail.
I had a few problems with God in catechism class that year. There was a picture of him in our book — he was an old white guy with a beard, who looked exactly like a wino who always hung around North Capitol Street. It didn’t surprise me that God was white — that figured — but what was he doing hanging around our neighborhood dressed so crappy? Maybe keeping track of Negro sinners? If he saw every sparrow that fell, maybe he would check out the kids on my block, too. I was always very good when he was around. Thunder always slunk away from him, with what I presumed to be stark terror on his stupid face. Thunder had not lived a good life, being bad tempered and grouchy most of the time, and I expect he feared the wrath of Jehovah for not being Lassie. I told Thunder that it was OK, helping search for the Holy Grail would get him a lot of years off in dog purgatory.
Adam and Eve were something of a problem, too. She was very white, with long, blond hair, and he was blond also. I’d have thought they were Swedes, but the Garden of Eden couldn’t have been in Sweden — we’d just studied that in Geography, and they’d have frozen their butts off, wearing only a few strategically placed leaves. If these two were the parents of us all, then where did black folks come from? Even with a tan, Eve would not have looked like my mother.
Billy Williams, the sophisticated one, said that it was the mark of Cain. When Cain killed his brother, Abel, God put a mark on him so all the world would know that he was a killer. All his children would carry that mark, and people would shun them.
“He made Cain colored?” I asked.
Billy Williams nodded solemnly.
I pictured Cain, who had been blond like Adam, suddenly turning dark and getting kinky hair and looking around in astonishment, saying, “Holy Moley, I’m a Negro!”
I thought about that, long and hard. The idea of being a killer had some cachet. The white toughs might back away from the mark of Cain, even if the guardian angel was off that day.
“I have it, white trash! The mark of Cain!”
“Run, quick, he’s a killer for sure!”
But if we had the mark, then it was all right for everyone to shun us. In fact, they were supposed to shun us. Even … Jackie Robinson. When Dixie Walker came sliding into second with his spikes up, he’d be saying, “This one’s for Abel, sucker!”
I asked Sister Mary Imelda about this, and she said nobody knew what the mark of Cain was, and it certainly had nothing to do with skin color, which came from what sort of climate your ancestors lived in. Still, I worried. I don’t suppose little white kids ever lost a moment’s sleep over the mark of Cain, because they knew they didn’t have it. God was white, he would never make white skin a curse.
The funny thing is, I never even considered the possibility that God was colored and Adam and Eve were, too, and Cain, God turned him white, and he watched with horror as his skin faded out and he cried, “Oh, no. I hate this stuff. It gets sunburned and it wrinkles and I look like I have TB.”
But I couldn’t even imagine it. I could imagine me white, but not them black. It’s what happens when somebody who doesn’t look like you controls all the images that you see. Even if they’re not lynching you and keeping you out of their schools and their restaurants for being the wrong color, even if they’re not telling you you’re inferior, you get the message anyway. If you pray to a white God, how can you think yourself equal? Later on, of course, I realized that God is a spirit, he has no color, but that image of the old white guy with the beard stays with me. I guess what Rafe is trying to do, with his African garb, is to change all those images, to put new ones in their place. It’s a good idea, but for me it’s too late. I could wear robes and speak Swahili, but the Catholic Church got me before I was seven, and I am still Sir Galahad. But I am seeking a new grail, a better one than a piece of an old drinking cup. It’s equal rights, and as an American and a Catholic I have learned that there will be no justice in America if we do not find them. God is not white, but He is just, and He loves all his children. (I suspect He even loves grouchy, mean-tempered dogs, and that Thunder’s spirit is by His side, no smarter than ever but happy at last.) I am going to dedicate my life to those rights, whether it’s by organizing and maybe going into politics, as some people have urged me to do, or by writing. My heart is not exactly pure (I told Loretta about being Sir Galahad, and she has found interesting uses for my lance), but I hope my strength will be as the strength of ten. There is a new day dawning in America; I can feel it, I can see it. President Kennedy has finally come to full support of civil rights and we will bury Jim Crow and then all the words on all the marble buildings will finally be true. One day we will be proud to have lived in the era of King and Kennedy, we will think of ourselves as “We happy few, we band of brothers.” We will have changed the world.
He drove along, scowling, clutching the wheel and feeling edgy. He had wanted something wonderful to happen, and it had. Now he was not sure he could handle it.
He’d always been in control, where women were concerned. Always knew he could walk anyway, anytime he wanted, and it would be OK. He would be OK. Not that he ever wanted to be a bastard with women, he liked them, but it was very good, being in control. You didn’t have anything to lose. Photography was his passion, women had been on the back burner, so to speak. His fantasy women could be summoned or banished at will; they didn’t impinge on his life at all. The real ones even less so. Mary Springer was different. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, and a lot of the time he worried about her. It had not occurred to him before that there were so many lethal things around — an oil slick on the road, a stray virus that could kill before you knew it was there, crazy men with guns.
When he tried to simply will her out of his mind, she wouldn’t go, and he didn’t know what to do about that. Sometimes he wanted to lay his heart at her feet, slay dragons for her. When he thought of her in the pink dress with the mud-caked shoes he wanted to throw his arms aroun
d her and keep all the ugly things of the world away from her. Sometimes he wanted to be her best friend, telling her all the secrets of his soul. Sometimes he wanted to gently kiss the freckles on her shoulders and run his tongue across her lips. Sometimes he wanted to throw her on the ground and fuck her brains out. Whatever the hell it was he felt, he could not control it. The ache in his chest — however it was he thought about her — would not go away.
“Damn!” he said to the image of her in his head. “Oh damn, just go away. Please.” But she wouldn’t. How could he live with this?
I don’t want to love her.
No, I don’t, he thought. I don’t want to love anyone. I want to be back in control. I want it to be like it used to be.
He tried to think of how it used to be, a very short time ago, when he thought he was going to die young, taking a bullet in the Hindu Kush, and it had a melancholy poetry to it. Now he couldn’t stand the thought of dying at all, because of her. Damn.
He looked up and discovered that he was driving through Norma’s neighborhood. He felt a sudden, warm flush of feeling for Norma. Such a nice woman. So easy to screw and forget.
He remembered that he still had a print in the car, one of his photographs of Kennedy, that he had promised to give her and never had. He pulled up in front of her apartment. The light was on.
He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door, and she answered wearing a robe, with a towel over her shoulder.
“Jeez, look what the cat dragged in. I thought you’d fallen down a hole someplace.”
He hadn’t bothered to call her. She just went off his screen, a disappearing blip, like a crashing airplane.
“I brought you this,” he said, handing her the photograph. She looked at it, and her face brightened. One of the few things that impressed her was that he hung around Kennedy from time to time. “Oh wow!” she said when she saw it. He was forgiven.
