by Robert Ward
Then, finally fully awake, I realized that the sound came from my grandmother’s room.
I felt panic overtake me as I jumped from the bed and ran into her room. Maybe all this had been too much for her, and she was having a heart attack.
I went to her door and looked in, frightened to go any farther, not sure of what I would see.
And what I finally did see scared me even more deeply. Grace was sitting up in her bed, her eyes wide open, her gray hair let down long behind her head.
Her eyes were staring in extreme fear, and she was pointing with her right hand at some invisible phantom in front of her.
The sound she was making was so guttural, so unlike her normal speaking voice that it seemed to come from some other person … or some other thing that possessed her.
For a second the sight of her—looking so much like a possessed witch that she might have stepped right out of “Hansel and Gretel”—scared me so badly that I couldn’t move from her door.
I simply stood there, in terror myself, watching her as she pointed and groaned this terrible sound …
“Ahhhhhhhhhh … Winnnnnnn … Gateeeeeee Noooooooooo! God. Win … gate … no!”
She threw up her hands as if protecting herself from some invisible blows.
Finally, I forced myself to move forward, and seconds later I was at the bedside, holding her by the shoulder, gently shaking her.
“Gracie, Gracie!” I said. “Wake up. Wake up . . “
The sound continued for another six or seven unbearable seconds. I was shaking myself, terrified…. She had to stop this … she had to …
“Grace, Gracie … please. Stop! Wake up!”
And then slowly she seemed to come back from that dark, terrible place. She blinked and turned to me.
“Bobby?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “Honey.”
Then she put her head against my chest and began to cry, sadly, deeply.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right. You must have had a nightmare, but you’re okay now. It’s okay, Grace.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, a nightmare. That’s all …”
And she slowly stopped crying.
“Could you hand me a tissue, honey?”
I pulled a Kleenex from the box next to her bed. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose.
“You’re not in any pain, are you?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“It must have been one heck of a dream,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Ghosts …”
“Really?” I said. “Did you recognize them?” She shook her head.
“No … no, my dreams are never that clear. Just fear … terror. Something coming for me. Stalking me.” She stopped and looked at me.
“I must have scared you to death, honey. And after all you’ve been through lately. I’m terribly sorry.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “You couldn’t help it.”
She sighed and managed a smile.
“No … of course not,” she said.
I fluffed up her pillow for her, and she lay back down.
“I love you, honey,” she said.
“I love you, Gracie,” I said.
Then I kissed her forehead and patted her on her worn cheek.
“Good night, honey,” she said.
“Good night, Grace.”
I smiled and quickly left the room. But I didn’t go to sleep for a long time. I had finally seen it and heard it with my own eyes and ears: one of Grace’s famous “spells.” What could it mean? Where did such paralyzing fear come from in one who had been so brave? It didn’t jibe with the woman I knew.
But then, neither did her failure to talk on the Negroes’ behalf at church. What had all that been about?
And what about the meeting with Dr. Brooks just after the protest?
She’d seemed nervous when I asked her about it. And he’d seemed excited as he approached her…. I found myself wondering if there was something more to it, something she hadn’t told me about.
But I dismissed the idea and felt a pang of guilt for my disloyalty.
Just before I fell asleep I thought of my parents again. I would have bet my life that they were happy, that they would always be together. Now, I knew it not only wasn’t true anymore, but worse: maybe it had never been true.
Maybe they had been putting on an act for my sake. Or maybe it was always there, the anger and tension between them, but I was just too young and unconscious to see it.
Maybe they just lied. I knew a bright kid in school, Teddy James, who swore that adults were all skilled liars. One wise guy I knew in my own neighborhood, Denny Blake, told me once that you weren’t really an “official adult” unless you lied about something important twice a day.
Then I had an almost unbearable thought. Maybe, maybe it was the same for Grace as well. Maybe she had a good act down, but when it came to putting herself on the line, she wouldn’t tell the truth to anyone, especially not a mere kid.
Bobby Ward, 1955
H aving gone to bed doubting my parents and my beloved grandmother, I woke up convinced, as only a teenage boy can be convinced, that my latest intense feelings were dead-on (they had to be, because they were my latest feelings): all the adults had betrayed me, and the best and most intelligent thing I could do was forget what any of them said or promised. Forget the civil rights movement, which was after all not my movement, and simply go to school, learn what the teachers had to teach me, chase girls, play sports, and be a normal, fun-loving teenager.
As I climbed onto the Number 8 streetcar on the way to school, I told myself that I felt much, much better. I believed in nobody and nothing, and I was never going to take a chance on anyone or anything again.
I was going to be normal, by God, happy, and to hell with civic duty, morals, and all that other complicated junk. After all, most of my friends didn’t seem to be struggling with this torturous stuff, so why should I?
That morning at school I felt a tremendous sense of freedom. All I had to do was pay attention in class and do well on tests. A snap for a basically smart guy like myself. I told myself that I’d get into my studies, that I’d blank everything else out. After all, hadn’t everyone said that school had to be number one? And from now on it would be. To hell with anything else—Negroes, parents, and especially tricky grandmothers.
This new strategy worked brilliantly for three periods, right up to lunch. After eating a hot meal in the school cafeteria, I went out with the rest of the kids for recess, sat on the stone wall, and watched my classmates playing basketball. I was a pretty fair shooter myself and sometimes played in the daily game. In fact, I was debating whether or not I should join in when Howard Murray, a black boy my age, ran up to me.
“Hey, man,” he said. “You gonna play?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I ate so much lunch I feel like a beach ball” He laughed and hit me on the arm in a friendly way. I told myself not to be overly friendly back to him because I wasn’t going to get involved with any more Negroes. It was too confusing, and I was on my new be-a-regular-guy kick.
“Know what you mean,” Howard said. “That corn bread and stewed tomatoes is good. Not as good as my mama makes it, but pretty good anyways.”
I laughed, and so did he. It occurred to me that whenever I talked to Howard we were both usually laughing. Which made me sad, because I wasn’t going to be involved with Negroes ever again.
“Where do you live, Howard?” I said.
“Why, you gonna come and rob my house?”
I laughed and felt a flush of warmth for him. I immediately told myself to negate it. Do not get involved in any of this … be happy.
“Over on the Harford Road,” he said. “Up by Cold Spring.”
I knew the neighborhood and was surprised. It was a white hillbilly neighborhood, filled with guys who made Elvis look like a fraternity boy. D.A.S, chopped and channeled rods, h
oods who wore Luckies rolled up in their T-shirt sleeves and had girlfriends with big hair courtesy of tons of Spray-Net. Fast girls who chewed gum triple time while they were doing the backseat boogie at the Timonium Drive-In.
“Man, that’s hairhopper kingdom over there,” I said.
Howard smiled.
“Not on my block,” he said. “We’re the second black family to move in.”
“Wow,” I said. “Have there been any problems?” He looked down at the ground, hesitated.
“Nothing much,” he said finally. “Some big mouths blowing off steam is all.”
I nodded then and looked back out at the guys running a fast break. Something was happening to my newly found resolve. My morning nihilism was breaking down. I felt real affection for Howard. Damn.
“You want to play ball over at Waverly Rec sometime?” I said. I couldn’t believe I had said this. Hadn’t I just told myself to avoid complications? Hadn’t I just sworn to myself to be simple, a normal mindless American sports-loving girl-chasing teenager?
“They got any problems with integration over there?” he said.
God, I hadn’t even thought about that. Here was my chance to get out of it. All I had to do was say, “Yes, Howard, they seriously hate niggers in Waverly,” and he’d turn me down.
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know,” I said.
“You ever seen a Negro play there?”
“No, but Ray Lane plays there, and Johnny Brandau. You know those guys from school. They won’t let any of the assholes hassle you.”
“How ‘bout you?”
“Me either,” I said. “I’m with you.”
He laughed.
“Damned hairhoppers can’t shoot baskets anyways. Let’s give ‘em a lesson.”
“Good, we’ll do it soon. Hey, if you’re the first Negro, we’ll have integrated the place.”
“Cool,” Howard said. “Let me know. Meanwhile, I’m gonna get in the game.”
He headed out to the basketball court, and I smiled and gave him a little wave of encouragement, and then thought, “What are you doing?” Indeed, in less than four hours I had broken every vow I’d made that morning. I had sworn off complexity, told myself I would never put myself out on any moral limbs again, but from some perverse, unknowable depth in myself, I had asked a Negro to come play ball at a redneck rec center, a place where he and I might both run into serious trouble.
Not only that, he knew it, I knew it, and we both still wanted to do it.
I was sick, that was all there was to it. I was sick and craved moral complexity, drama, confrontation, even though I knew I was essentially cowardly, gutless, and a teenage fool.
As the bell rang to signal the end of recess, I felt ugly, strange, weak, and heroic all at the same time.
I hadn’t been home in nearly two weeks. My mother had called once but I’d been out, and when I called her back, the line was busy. I called three more times and still got the busy tone. Whoever she was talking to was getting an earful.
Finally, on Wednesday, two weeks after I’d moved to my grandmother’s, I decided to pay a visit to my home.
The walk home from school with my old friends Don Hoffman and Kevin Higgins was weird. Only two and a half weeks before, it had seemed pleasantly routine. Me and my pals walking to our block together—what could be more normal? Now it was as though I was a visitor from some other neighborhood. There was an unnatural silence as we walked. The guys started talking about a great catch Hoffman had made playing tackle football over at Tom Mullen Little League Field, and I felt the sting of omission.
My house on Winston was the first one we reached, and we usually stopped for a moment to finish whatever conversation we were having before I went inside. But today my two friends looked at me in a strange, confused way.
“What’s the deal, Bobby?” Kevin said. “Do you live here or down in Waverly now?”
“Hey, I’m just visiting my grandmother for a little while,” I said. “It’s nothing. I still live here.”
“Is it going to be weird for you to go home?” Don said.
“No,” I said. “Not weird at all. I mean it’s still my home. Haven’t you guys ever visited your relatives?”
“Sure, in the summertime,” Kevin said. “But not during school.” He rubbed his burr haircut and sighed.
“You gonna stay here or down there with your grandma?” he said.
“Ah, well … my grandmother’s not feeling very well right now,” I said. “So I’m looking after her.”
“Well, since you’re here today, you want to play ball over at Morgan?” Kevin said.
“I don’t know. I have to talk some stuff over with my mother,” I said. “Maybe. I’ll call you in a half hour or so.”
They both nodded, and Kevin hit me on the arm as I went back up the steps to my parents’ redbrick row house.
I watched my friends carrying their bookbags down the street and felt suddenly dizzy and sick to my stomach. It occurred to me that my disappearing had upset my friends as well as me, and that made me want to cry.
I used the key, which I wore around my neck on a string, and let myself into the house.
Of course, my mother wasn’t home. She didn’t get home for two hours. I didn’t know why I had told them I had to talk things over with her before I could play ball. That sounded ridiculous. It was as if I wanted her to be in there, waiting for me. I was like a damned baby.
“Oh, Mommy, please be there at home to snuggle with me.”
What was wrong with me? I was revolted by my childishness. I was fifteen, practically in high school, and I could take care of myself. Or at least I should be able to. Jesus …
I walked through my house, feeling my sense of panic rising. Everything was the same, the TV, the blue-striped sofa, the piano next to the stairs, the blond Danish Modern dining room table and the four blond chairs. The little serving table with my record player on it and my stacks of 45s neatly piled next to it. Just as I recalled it, but the light was wrong. There was a waxiness, a kind of alien sheen on everything. A sheen of strangeness.
It was as though our home had been sold, and all the tables and chairs and magazines and lamps had been placed in there by some phantom real estate lady to make it look like a “typical Baltimore family’s dwelling place.”
I could see and hear her as she walked through the house, dressed in a two-piece wool suit.
“This home used to belong to a typical Baltimore family, the Wards. A father, a mother, and a child. They were happy here for a time, until … well, let’s be gentle and just say bad luck overtook them. Now they’re gone … no one knows quite what happened to them. You can make a very nice deal on their house. Furniture and 45 collection included.”
I sat down in the suddenly too-white kitchen, looked at the startling sunburst clock on the wall.
Then I put my head down on the cool Formica table and fell fast asleep.
My mother woke me when she came in from work. She ruffled my hair and smiled at me when I looked up.
“Well, hello there, stranger,” she said, trying to affect a jaunty tone.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “Guess I fell asleep.”
“Your grandmother isn’t letting you stay up too late, is she?”
“No,” I said. “Just a busy time.”
She took off her old gray overcoat and folded it neatly over the back of the kitchen chair.
“You have a snack?”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I tried calling you, but the line was busy.”
My mother sat down and folded her hands.
“Guess I’ve been on the phone a lot lately,” she said.
She looked old, tired; there were new wrinkles on her face, crows’ feet that I swore hadn’t been there just last month. And her hair had a few new iron-gray strands in it.
“I may as well tell you,” she said. “You’re old enough to know the truth.”
I bit my lip and squeezed my hands together. My fingers
were cold.
“Your father’s having an affair. He’s not home at night because he’s out with another woman.”
I felt as though someone had punched me in the chest.
“Who is she?” I said, amazed that I could say anything.
“Someone named Helen. Someone at his office. She’s older than him. He always wanted a mother to take care of him like Gracie did. Now he’s got one. She babies him, tells him he’s a great man.”
I said nothing but reached out and held her hand.
“What’s going to happen?” I said.
My mother shook her head and began to cry.
“I loved him so much…. When he was away in the navy at Pearl Harbor, I could have gone out on him, you know. I had plenty of men ask me…. Once in a bar where I went with my friend Flo, two marines on leave picked us up. They took us to some friend’s apartment, down on Charles Street. Flo was pretty drunk and she went right into the bedroom with the one called Bill. I was in the front room with the other one. His name was Ted. He was from Seattle. He kissed me on the lips. I wanted him to … go on. God help me, I did. But then I remembered I was married and I felt dirty and cheap. I pushed him away from me and walked right out of there. It was snowing outside. I wanted to get a cab and go home. But I didn’t want to leave Flo with two men, so I went back in to get her. She didn’t want to leave, but I told her I’d be waiting outside until she came. I just sat down outside on the curb. It was freezing, the wind was like a knife; it whipped up my dress, freezing my ankles and legs. Flo didn’t come out for an hour. And when she did, she laughed at me. Said I was an idiot for sitting out in the cold, that I should have been inside partying with them. At the time I thought they were awful, but you know what, hon? She was right. Flo went down there every time Bill came into town. Marty and the kids didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t blame her. I wished I’d done it now. I wished I’d gone down there with her every damned time.”
“No, Mom,” I said. “Don’t say that.”
I held her hand. But she pulled it away.
“You were right to go live at Gracie’s. All we do around here is scream at each other. Go back there if you want to. I don’t blame you.”
