The Gilded Years

by Karin Tanabe

  He pulled Anita’s transcript toward him again and turned the pages. “You have excelled here academically, and I have no doubt that you will continue to do the same after graduation.”

  Turning to Lottie, then back to Anita, he said, “Good luck to both of you as you finish your time here with us. I trust there will be no other reason to see you again before the semester concludes, so I will see you both at commencement.”

  He stood up and walked out of his office, leaving four stunned women behind. Despite the Lottie Taylors of the world, Anita Hemmings would graduate from Vassar College.

  CHAPTER 26

  I can’t believe this day is finally here!” said Belle, taking Anita by the hand as the two of them hurried toward Main the morning of commencement exercises, trying to stay out of the rain that fell disruptively. Anita may have been rooming alone and a magnet for gossip, but she would never lose Belle.

  Belle clutched Anita’s arm, which was holding a large umbrella, but both stopped walking when Lottie passed them without a word.

  “What a pity about you and Lottie,” said Belle, opening her own umbrella. It was being said on that June day, their third day of rain in a row, that ’97 had entered college with a storm, kept the college in a storm, and left the college in a storm.

  “It’s just a misunderstanding,” said Anita, trying her best to smile.

  “Everyone is still gossiping about it,” said Belle, pressing her friend’s hand. “They’re calling it the Hamilton scandal, and Sarah Douglas has become the official mouthpiece for it, since neither of you will say a word. Scandal presented with a southern inflection. It doesn’t sound right.”

  Anita gave a little, knowing look and replied, “I have never been fond of Sarah Douglas.”

  “She’s a lot like Lottie,” said Belle. “But not as cruel. I suppose Lottie is difficult to say no to, but I know Porter was in love with you. I’m sure it was just his family, pushing him to be with her. Louise Taylor, if available, will be chosen over any other woman, even one as good as you. They are just after her money. It’s been said in the papers that when she marries, she will bring with her a dowry of nearly two million dollars.”

  “I just don’t want to be talked about anymore,” said Anita, folding her umbrella and handing it to a maid as the girls entered Main Building. She twisted to fix the wide ribbon running around her waist and down the back of her dress.

  “It’s almost over now,” whispered Belle, helping Anita. Like the other women poised to graduate, they were wearing starched white dresses with high formal necks and lengths of ribbon nipping in their waists. Black robes were draped over their shoulders, and they wore the flat, tasseled graduate’s caps that were newly in use at the school.

  When they walked up the staircase, crowded with soon-to-be graduates, and stood in front of the still-closed doors of the chapel, Belle whispered, “And wasn’t it so very gauche of Lottie to announce her engagement to Porter right before graduation? Yesterday’s Class Day was supposed to be about unity, about us being together for the last time as seniors. But Lottie Taylor found yet another way to make it about her.”

  Anita looked at Belle with surprise. She had attended Class Day, but her peers had clearly succeeded in keeping the news from her. If she had known as she watched the ten carefully chosen sophomores parade into the chapel with the traditional daisy chain, carrying almost a hundred pounds of fresh flowers, that Lottie was at that very moment engaged to Porter, she would barely have seen what was taking place. Members of Vassar’s first classes, ’67 and ’68, had been there, and one of the most prominent of them had told the girls: “Our appearance here will forever destroy the fallacy that a college education unfits a woman for matrimony. The college woman is not handicapped for life in mind, body, or estate.” Those words, thought Anita, must have caused whatever was left of Lottie’s heart to swell with pride. She was about to be one of those educated married women.

  Belle looked at Anita sympathetically. “Lottie may be engaged to Porter, but we have the rest of the world, don’t we? You’ll be off to Greece, and I to study music in Italy or Austria, and all this will feel very small to us then. We’ll always love it, of course, but it will feel very small.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way yet,” said Anita, looking at the large ’97 woven out of daisies hanging on the chapel door. She tried to remember that in a matter of hours, she would become a true graduated member of the class of 1897.

  “Of course not,” said Belle. “But Anita, promise me that even with all that Lottie has done, you will not forget about the rest. For most of the year, life was extraordinary, wasn’t it? You, me, Lottie, and Caroline. The Gatehouse group. Who did coin that phrase?”

  “Probably Lottie,” said Anita, thinking back. “It sounds like her.”

  “I feel guilty saying it now, after what happened between the two of you,” said Belle, hesitating, “but it was the best year of my life. I loved every minute that we spent together, did you not, Anita?”

  “I did,” said Anita honestly. “In many ways, it was the best year of my life, too.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” said Belle, beaming. “I know you and Lottie will work out your differences. Your time abroad will do you both a world of good, and you’ll meet someone else, someone much better than yellow-hearted Porter Hamilton.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not heading to Greece after graduation,” said Anita, unable to keep her disappointment from showing on her face. “Financially, it just isn’t a possibility anymore.”

  “Is it not?” said Belle. “But I was under the impression that the school had recommended you for a scholarship.”

  Anita shook her head no. “They recommended me, but I did not come out the victor, I’m afraid. The Babbott Fellowship was awarded to Misses Ellery, Bishop, Clark, and Hotchkiss, and four others won the graduate scholarships. Even Sarah Douglas was awarded the Barringer Prize.”

  “That’s such a pity,” said Belle. “There is no senior stronger in Greek and Latin here than you. Can there be no way—”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Anita, interrupting her. “I’ll be going back to Boston and will continue my schooling on the East Coast. But I still intend to become a professor, Belle. I think I’m more committed to that goal now than I ever was before.”

  “Oh, good! Good. Do not give up on education, Anita, don’t you dare. You are far too intelligent. I am sure that one day you will be teaching here. Then you’ll go to Greece. And I’ll meet you there. You have my word.”

  “It’s time to march in as a class,” said Medora Higgins as she passed them. “Do line up, please.”

  “Are your parents not here, Anita?” asked Belle before they moved to comply. “I didn’t keep you from them, did I?”

  “No, I’m afraid they aren’t able to attend,” Anita lied. “Frederick is graduating from Cornell this very same weekend. I told them to please make the trip to see him, as we also have family in Ithaca. I’m happy to be here simply surrounded by friends.”

  “That you are, Miss Hemmings,” said Belle, looping her arm through Anita’s. “Come and say hello to my mother and father after we are awarded our diplomas. They remember you and your voice so well from our choir concerts.”

  “I will,” said Anita, and the two ran over to Medora to be placed in the proper alphabetical order.

  As Anita stood between fellow seniors Mary Hecker and Rose Heywood, she watched as Lottie approached her, gliding past the beginning of the alphabet, heading to the back near Belle Tiffany. Anita wanted their eyes to meet, just one last time before they were separated for good. Maybe there would be something in Lottie’s expression that showed remorse, or even friendship. Just a glimmer of the old Lottie, thought Anita as her roommate approached, something of the girl that made Vassar come so alive for her. But she didn’t even receive a glance. Lottie walked by her section with her head high, and turned it away from Anita as she moved past. Anita looked down at the wooden floor, embarrassed, as the other
girls straightened their spines proudly and prepared to march in the chapel. At that moment she became quite certain that Lottie Taylor would never utter another word to her for the rest of their extraordinary ordinary lives.

  After the academic papers were read and Anita had sung an aria from Le Cid backed by the choir, President Taylor addressed the gathering on the supreme importance of conservatism. Anita closed her eyes and for a moment thought only of the diploma she was minutes from possessing.

  “Avoid the dangers of notoriety, emancipated thought, and forgetfulness of soul,” the president advised as he concluded his oration. “Commune much with the Invisible, seek simple faith, true life, and fidelity to duty. Keep yourselves, and keep the trust.”

  Anita squeezed her eyes tighter as the room erupted in applause. She had sacrificed so much for her diploma, more than any other girl present, and had earned what she was about to hold in her hand.

  CHAPTER 27

  You’re home. My girl. My graduate,” said Mrs. Hemmings, hugging her daughter as soon as she walked in the front door of the Sussex Street house. “You did it! My smart, smart girl.”

  Anita smiled and allowed herself to be hugged again, so soothing were her mother’s plump arms. She had done it. Only five thousand women in America had obtained college diplomas that year, and almost none of them were Negroes. But she was one. She was Vassar’s one.

  “Tell me all about your graduation day. What a pity it rained,” said her mother, ushering her farther into the house. “I wish circumstances were different and we had been able to come. Though even if they were, we wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip. But never mind that. I just want to hear about the whole splendid affair. They say rain is good luck. Unless of course you are hungry? You must be, after such a long journey. Let me prepare something for you. Your brother is in Cambridge tutoring, and your father is at work, but—”

  “Anita!” came a cry from the stairs. Elizabeth came flying down the crooked staircase and enveloped her sister in a tight embrace, nearly knocking her over.

  “Elizabeth, please,” said her mother, laughing. “Dignified young women do not run down the stairs like horses.” She turned to Anita and put her hand on the back of her hair. “As I was poised to say, Elizabeth is home.”

  “Yes, she is,” said Anita, kissing her younger sister.

  “Are you staying now? Forever?” asked Elizabeth, her face still pressed into Anita’s shoulder, which sagged a little with fatigue after her journey.

  “Not forever,” she replied. “But for now. The short now and the longer now.”

  “I’m so glad,” said her sister. “I want to sleep next to you and listen to you exist.”

  “All in good time,” said her mother, peeling her youngest daughter off her oldest. “First, I would like to see Anita’s diploma. Is it buried deep in your trunk?”

  Anita knew what a relief it was for her mother to have her graduated. Dora Hemmings had survived in a state of controlled panic since Anita had left for Vassar four years earlier, constantly voicing to her family her terror that someone might guess the truth. She was the one who counseled her daughter to always wear a hat, to stay out of the sun, to never act in a way that was unbecoming a lady. Before Anita had left for her freshman year, her mother had cried on her shoulder and said that if someone did guess that Anita was a Negro, it would be because of her family—the Logan blood, not the Hemmings. Anita thought of that day as she reached for her mother’s hand, so glad that her years of worry were over.

  When Dora eventually released her, Anita opened her trunk and took out the carefully wrapped paper that lay on top. She pulled out her Vassar diploma, walked into the dining room, and laid it on the simple pine table where the family took their meals.

  “Here it is!” said her mother with pride, leaning down to examine the black letters. “How formal the writing is. Will you read it to me, Anita? My eyesight is slipping away from me this year.” She bent as close to the paper as she could without her nose touching it and said, “Is it not written in English?”

  “It’s in Latin, Mother,” said Anita, pushing away the thought of her lost summer trip. “It’s the custom of the school. But it says I’m a graduate. Do you see my name, there?” she said pointing. “Anita Florence Hemmings. And those words, right under it, indicate that I graduated with honors.”

  “With honors,” said Dora, moving her finger across the diploma. “I am so proud of Frederick for graduating from the Institute of Technology, but there’s something different about my daughter being graduated,” she confessed. “My little girl, who I watched study after the rest of us fell asleep. Who can speak different languages and make sense of everything. My Anita, a college graduate.” She wiped her tears before they fell on the diploma. “My own blessed mother was still illiterate when she died. But here you are despite it all, my exceptional child.”

  Anita had decided on the train ride home, which she had made with several other Vassar students traveling back to different parts of New England, that she would not say one word to her family about Lottie and what she knew. Now, looking at Dora’s tears of pride, her resolve hardened. This moment was what her mother deserved, she thought. She must never hear about the day her daughter sat in the college president’s office, humiliated and terrified.

  When Frederick came home late that evening, he placed his diploma next to Anita’s, and brother and sister stood and examined them together, disbelief on their faces.

  “I’m very proud of you,” said Frederick, patting his sister’s hand.

  “And I of you,” she replied. “Father told me you already have employment with a chemist in Boston.”

  “I do,” said Frederick, smiling as if he were the most surprised of all. “I’ll be working with Henry Carmichael, an analytical and consulting chemist. His office is on Federal Street. Number 176. I found the work with the help of one of the faculty at the institute, a man who was very kind to me. He helped me obtain my three scholarships after I was admitted to the chemistry program.”

  “I had a professor who sounds similar,” said Anita, thinking about Miss Franklin.

  Frederick left to go upstairs, returning moments later with a slim bound volume that he handed to Anita. “My senior thesis,” he said. “I’m afraid it won’t make much sense to Mother and Father, but perhaps you would like to read it.”

  “ ‘The Change That Glucose Undergoes During Fermentation,’ ” Anita read aloud. “Frederick, as hard as I tried, I never became the chemistry prodigy that you are. That was Lottie’s domain—”

  “Let’s not talk about her now,” said Frederick, cutting off his sister. “Just read it, even if you don’t fully enjoy it,” he said. “It would make me happy.”

  “Of course I will,” said Anita. “My brilliant little brother.”

  Anita spent her first few days back in Boston with her family, but on Sunday, as was the custom of the devoutly religious Hemmingses, they walked to the Episcopal church where Anita had worshipped since childhood. It was no shock to Anita, or her parents, that the first person they saw standing outside the door was Mrs. Lillian Peoples, chief gossip of not only the Negro community of Roxbury, but also that of the Negro community of Boston’s Trinity Church.

  “Anita Hemmings!” she shouted, clasping her pillowy hands together as if she were already praying. “And the proud parents! I knew you would all be at church today, I just knew it. I’ve been reading all the newspapers, as I always try to do, and I read about last week’s Vassar graduation ceremony. I said to myself then, this is when the famous Hemmings girl makes her journey home. Vassar’s Negro angel. Come here, Anita, give me a kiss. I want to applaud the most intelligent girl in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  Anita prayed silently for Mrs. Peoples to lower her voice, and she knew the rest of the family would be praying, too. The church community of course knew her as Negro, but the white parishioners did not know she had gone off to Vassar, and many were just entering the buil
ding as Mrs. Peoples spoke.

  “Our Frederick also graduated this June,” said Robert Hemmings. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “A chemistry graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And he’s already found employment with Henry Carmichael on Federal Street.”

  “Of course you have,” said Mrs. Peoples, beaming at Frederick, though with a shade less animation. “Such a brilliant family, and the highest honor for the community. Come now, Anita, we must show you off. A graduate! There are girls here in the church who know all about you. Young schoolgirls. And not only do they know about you: they hope to become you. You must speak to them, guide them, shake their hands. Let them worship you as they should.” She turned to Dora. “Perhaps we can have Reverend Donald say a few words about Anita’s triumphant return?”

  The Hemmings family stopped as one, a shared panic shooting through them.

  “That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Peoples,” said Dora. “Anita does not need any recognition. And it probably wouldn’t be wise, given the mixed company.” Reverend Brooks had passed away in ’93, and while he had been very familiar with Anita’s education and how she had achieved it, Reverend Donald was not.

  “Of course, of course, the mixed company,” said Mrs. Peoples, clearly not caring who her company was as long as she had their attention. Anita Hemmings was her trophy. She took Anita by the arm and marched her inside.

  “Lord give you strength,” Dora mouthed to Anita as they watched her go. The family walked in and sat in a pew toward the back of the grand church and observed Anita being guided around by the effervescent Mrs. Peoples. She held up Anita’s hand as if she were a boxing champion.

  “A graduate!” they heard her loud voice echo. “And one of us! The Negro who graduated from Vassar College. It’s unprecedented! It’s only happened twice before at Wellesley and never at Vassar until today. Be sure your hearts are welling up with pride for Miss Hemmings, welling up to the point of bursting,” she warned her friends in the congregation, in case they weren’t sharing her immense joy.