A Hope in the Unseen

by Ron Suskind

  Having brought up college, Thomas asks Cedric if he knows where he’s going next year. Cedric—proud to offer up a Latin Bee victory of his own—tells him, “You bet. I’m off to Brown University.”

  Thomas frowns and shakes his head. “Well, that’s fine, but I’m not sure if I would have selected an Ivy League school.” Sliding his bulk down in the too-small chair, he stretches his feet out and rests his chin against his breastbone. “You’re going to be up there with lots of very smart white kids, and, if you’re not sure about who you are, you could get eaten alive.”

  Cedric, his brow furrowing, grows quiet, and Thomas chooses his words carefully. “It’s not just at the Ivies, you understand. It can happen at any of the good colleges where a young black man, who hasn’t spent much time with whites, suddenly finds himself among almost all whites. You can feel lost.” Thomas tells him a story about a kid from Georgia who went with him to Holy Cross—“smartest black kid I ever knew”—who “got confused about who he was and ended up getting addicted to drugs and dropping out.”

  Cedric looks on, pensively, wondering, Why is he telling me this? No doubt getting into Brown was a great victory—it’s one of the best schools in America—and Thomas, after all, went to Yale Law School. Cedric remembers Thomas’s law school classmates from the hearings. What does he know, Cedric mulls, that I don’t?

  He leans forward, inching up to the front edge of the couch cushion. Thomas is becoming increasingly animated by the prospect of Cedric going to Brown. He’s talking faster now, reaching out his wide arms. “No doubt, one thing you’ll find when you get to a school like Brown is a lot of classes and orientation on race relations. Try to avoid them. Try to say to yourself, I’m not a black person, I’m just a person. You’ll find a lot of so-called multicultural combat, a lot of struggle between ethnic and racial groups—and people wanting you to sign on, to narrow yourself into some group identity or other. You have to resist that, Cedric. You understand?”

  Cedric nods, understanding enough of what Thomas is saying to at least respond, “Like, you mean, that you have to be your own person.”

  “That’s right! That’s it!” The justice is rolling, cutting swiftly across the terrain of affirmative action and quotas and something he calls the “liberal elite,” his hand chopping the air for effect. But he’s not looking much at Cedric. It’s more like he’s preaching to people who are not here.

  Thomas suddenly stops. “Cedric. What are you thinking of majoring in?”

  “Math, I think.”

  “Good. Good. That’s what I look for in hiring my clerks—the cream of the crop. I look for the maths and the sciences, real classes, none of that Afro-American studies stuff. If they’ve taken that stuff as an undergraduate, I don’t want them. You want to do that, do it in your spare time.”

  As he talks, Cedric recalls that there were two guys in their mid-twenties who passed through the office while he was sitting among the wooden signs—could have been Thomas’s clerks—but they were both white. Then a third white guy walked by after a bit, maybe a clerk as well. It strikes him … of course they wouldn’t be taking any Afro-American studies. Wayne is clearly some sort of administrative aide, not a clerk. Does Thomas not have any black law clerks? Is it because they don’t apply, or because the justice doesn’t want them?

  “Cedric? Listen, Cedric!” Thomas exclaims, now almost exuberant. “You can’t be going out, partying on weekends or going to Florida on spring break. You just have to keep studying, like your life depends on it. Some of these kids will be ahead of you, for sure, but you just have to outwork them. That’s the way you’ll beat them. It was that way with me, too. There was no safety net. No choice. To fail means to drop all the way to the bottom. It was that way for me. Same for you.”

  Cedric nods, but his lips are pursed. Thomas’s enthusiasm suddenly seems to be gleaming with fury. It unsettles Cedric, makes him feel like he’s going off, barely armed, into some sort of battle with white kids. He doesn’t want to fight them, he thinks. He just wants to be part of something bigger, with kids—black kids, Hispanics, whatever. With everyone being a top achiever, just like him.

  Thomas gets up from the chair and strolls around for a moment, loosening up after the rhetorical workout, and Cedric looks down at his watch. It’s almost 4:30. He’s been in the office nearly three hours.

  Thomas fusses with a few things on his huge, baronial mahogany desk and looks up, smiling sheepishly. An afternoon has passed. Looking at Cedric sitting quietly now on the couch, a sympathetic look crosses the justice’s face. He sees that Cedric has been frightened by his dark vision.

  “I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” he says gently, walking slowly toward him as Cedric rises from the couch. “It’s just that I understand, in a very personal way, how big a step you’re taking. When you get on that plane, or train, at the end of the summer and leave home, you won’t ever really be able to go back. But you may find you’re never fully accepted up ahead either, that you’ve landed between worlds. That’s the way I feel sometimes, even now, and it can make you angry. But you just have to channel that anger, to harness it.”

  Cedric, standing eye to eye with the justice, finally finds a sentence forming in his head, a response from down deep.

  “Well, you know, I guess I’m just hoping I won’t have a reason to become an angry person. That I’ll be accepted up ahead for who I am.”

  Clarence Thomas smiles a warm and melancholy smile as Cedric shakes his hand in gratitude—a firm clench this time—before slipping past the end table with St. Jude and out the door, curiously happy to be headed for home.

  May is a month for assemblies at Ballou, a time of diminished classwork and even lower than usual attendance, when there is little to do except gather students in the auditorium. Any excuse will do.

  This mid-May Tuesday is called “Awards Day” for the general presentation of awards. At the front of the receiving line in the half-filled auditorium is Cedric L. Jennings: from the Association of Telecommunications Managers and Associates, $1,500; from Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, $1,000; from the Washington Chapter of the American Society of Military Comptrollers, $7,000 over four years; and then there’s Para-mount’s Kings Dominion Scholarship, $1,000. Matching him is the quiet and studious LaCountiss Spinner—with her own cache. James Davis gets a few awards for his all-around efforts, and twenty-two Ballou students who were selected back in junior high by the “I Have a Dream” Foundation (a national network of benefactors who guarantee college tuition to anyone who eventually needs it) walk up to get certificates commending their achievement thus far. LaTisha’s in that program, and so is Phillip Atkins, a last remnant of his days as a straight-arrow eighth grader. A middling, earnest student named Lawan Foster who is often homeless (her mother a drug addict, her brother hiding from gang vendettas) gets the “Beat the Odds” award from the Children’s Defense Fund.

  And then there are kids who are recognized for the achievement of simply participating in various clubs, like the band, ROTC, or the Ballou Sapphire Models—a row of lithe, tight-jeaned girls, hair swirled in impressive fountains, who squeeze by LaTisha, in the aisle seat, on their way up front to receive gold-embossed certificates.

  By noon, it’s all over and the kids file out, many of them—even some crew members who happened by—shuffling along as they study the four pages of smallish type at the back of the awards booklet, the section called “College Acceptance, Awards, and Scholarships.”

  Leaning against a wall outside the auditorium, Cedric bears down on his booklet—couldn’t very well read it up on stage—matching what he’s heard about who’s going to college, and where, to what he now sees in type. It fascinates him: a final tally for so many math/science kids he knows and, more broadly, for the 850 or so sophomores who entered Ballou nearly three years ago as the Class of 1995. According to this list, sixty-four students have been accepted into a college of some type, twelve of them into the come-one-come-all University of the District of
Columbia. Many of the institutions are black colleges, like Washington’s nationally known Howard University and smaller schools like Bennett College and Lincoln University.

  Cedric, not necessarily unique in raw talent, shows how he is anomalous in his lofty collegiate ambitions. Under his name is Brown, along with the names of institutions that eventually recruited him, including Duke University, George Washington University, Brigham Young University, and Florida A&M, a black engineering school near Orlando.

  More important, each school on Cedric’s list has an asterisk next to it, indicating the offer of some scholarship money. Cedric flips through the four pages of student names and sees that plenty of the colleges have no accompanying asterisks. He, like everyone here, knows that that means plenty of the senior class’s select sixty-four won’t be going anywhere next fall.

  Money is crucial. Acceptance to college is meaningless for many kids at Ballou without financial aid. And for Cedric this glorious list means a sort of financial redemption, representing—in the case of Brown, at least—an annual scholarship just shy of $20,000, about what his mother makes a year.

  So there it is: his row of asterisks for everyone to see. It’s a delicate issue, and Cedric knows to keep his mouth shut. He spots James Davis walking away from the auditorium and decides to check the list before calling out to him. James was accepted to his first choice, Florida A&M. There are no asterisks.

  Cedric knows James was hoping for a scholarship. He looks up and winces, thankful that James has vanished in the crowd. Florida A&M’s scholarship—a special prize based on both merit and need—is, in fact, an afterthought on Cedric’s own sterling list. He wishes he could just give it to James, but he knows it doesn’t work that way.

  He puts the awards booklet in his backpack and makes his way through the halls, sensing that a largely theoretical separation between himself and most of his classmates has suddenly become painfully literal.

  As the day passes, he feels edgy and watchful, detecting some extra bile in the comments and stares to which he’s grown accustomed. In the late afternoon, he bumps into Jack Davis, James’s equally huge twin, near the boys’ bathroom. Jack is usually cordial, due, Cedric figures, to his passing friendship with James. No more. “Brown University,” says Jack darkly. “You can’t hang there Cedric. You probably won’t last a year there. Definitely won’t last two. No way. You’ll be coming right back.”

  Cedric says nothing, looking away, just shaking his head. This is the last guy he wants to get into an altercation with, especially on this day of victory.

  As May wanes, the whole senior class seems locked in a fitful finale, taking the final tally of dismal achievement and stunted opportunity into the hot summer. It’s a bad time for kids to feel desperate and dispirited. When the weather warms and the streets start to fill with kids cutting school and meeting peers who are long beyond formal schooling, the season of mayhem begins in Southeast. Just two days after the awards ceremony, a hail of gunfire was pumped into a parked car—just a block from Cedric and Barbara’s apartment building—killing two men and critically injuring a three-year-old boy who later died.

  Onto these streets, graduating seniors are about to spill, accentuating the divide between a few haves looking forward to summer preparations for college and a vast army of have-nots, looking at a first summer of official, out-of-school, get-a-job reality.

  Cedric, always attentive to potential threats, has spent the two weeks since the awards ceremony with his face frozen in an innocuous half-smile, trying to look utterly neutral and inert, shrugging a lot as though all his good fortune stems from some sort of clerical error. It’s just the most recent of many poses Cedric has affected since he got into Brown. Once word got out about his acceptance, he noticed a grimness start to come over his antagonists in the halls. It was easier to be the headstrong monk, a boy on a long-shot mission, before he’d actually won anything. With the prize in hand, he realized his single-minded drive came across as aloof cockiness; his painful martyrdom suddenly looked like self-nomination for sainthood. So he toned it down, not telling anyone about the Clarence Thomas meeting. Not discussing his preparations for Brown. Not talking too much about the awards. Pride, he knows, can get you killed in a place like this.

  But with only a few weeks of school left, he’s not sure he can keep up this exhausting, aw-shucks facade for much longer.

  In Advanced Physics class on an afternoon at the end of May, Cedric—in the front row, as usual—tries to stay focused on his worksheet as Mr. Momen leaves the room.

  A moment later, he sees a large hand plunge over his shoulder. It’s James Davis, snatching Cedric’s Texas Instruments T-18 calculator, a prize Cedric got a year ago from the math department for academic achievement. James hustles to his desk in the back of the room, saying over his shoulder, “You don’t need a calculator anyway.”

  Cedric shakes his head in exasperation. He just can’t keep his tongue tied any longer.

  “James, I need my calculator,” says Cedric, clearly impatient.

  James ignores him.

  “Muthafucka, give me my calculator,” he says, now loud enough that everyone is looking up. “Look, I don’t feel like playing all the time, bitch.”

  Curse words, spoken often between boys of this age in this place, may or may not mean anything. That’s for James to decide. And today he clearly decides they mean plenty. His jaw muscles bulge, squaring his wide face. He pushes himself up from the desk and rushes up the aisle, thundering forward, his compressed rage rising like lava until his full bulk is leaning over Cedric, who has barely managed to swivel sideways in his chair.

  “Who the fuck you talking to?” James yells, ready to blow.

  Cedric is stunned, but it’s already gone too far to back down.

  “To you,” he says, trying to make it sound tough. The words are barely out when James’s forty-eight-inch shoulders begin to swivel and a huge, wrecking-ball fist flies forward right into Cedric’s heart, as the smaller boy, still sitting, finds the wind flying from his lungs, shoulders folding forward, his chest caving under the force.

  A split second passes and Cedric begins to rise, barely, trying to catch his breath and muster some response. LaCountiss and two other girls jump in between the boys. Two boys—one graced with a stamped ticket out of here—standing face-to-face, eyes afire, in this world turned upside down.

  At lunch hour two weeks later, Cedric—standing at the entrance to the teachers’ lounge—reaches inside the collar of his shirt to touch the bruise on his chest. The bump has gone down and it’s now just a dull ache when he presses on it. He looks over at LaCountiss Spinner, sitting with Constance Thompson, an English teacher and senior class adviser who must read over all the speeches for graduation. He keeps his impatience in check, trying to quietly wait for his turn. Her path to sterling grades bore little resemblance to his, insofar as the social codes for girls at Ballou are slightly less restrictive than they are for boys. For a girl to be a “goody” or a “whitey” by wanting to do well and leave everyone behind is not considered as serious a disrespect to the less fortunate as it is for a boy. A straight-arrow boy who thinks “he’s better than other people” can get taken down with violence. A girl of the same mien can be taken down with sex, making her a prize for a tough guy who can exhibit irresistible charms. While, as a result, most top students at schools like Ballou are girls, LaCountiss never needed the type of lofty goals Cedric had to hold on to in order to push against a fierce headwind. She will go on to an unremarkable institution—Marymount University, nearby in the Virginia suburbs, which offered her a full scholarship. Never thought much about big, renowned universities. Never had a reason to.

  But that’s fare for next fall. At Ballou, at least, LaCountiss finishes first in line. Cedric’s rear-guard assault—based on acing more advanced, higher-credit classes in the past two years—wasn’t enough to overcome a few B’s he got in ninth grade. LaCountiss, with straight A’s throughout, edged him out by a g
rade-point fraction for valedictorian.

  “That looks just fine, LaCountiss. It’s a very nice speech,” Ms. Thompson says as LaCountiss, placid and nonconfrontational to the end, smiles softly and slips out.

  Cedric plops down in the empty chair and drops his latest draft before Ms. Thompson. He’s already seen her three times over the past four days. His speech doesn’t seem to be changing much between drafts.

  “It’s just not there yet, Cedric,” she says. She doesn’t know Cedric very well, never had him in class, but she knows he doesn’t take ultimatums well. “Give it another try. Why not talk, maybe, about some of the friends you made at Ballou.”

  He nods, lips pursed. “All right then,” he says, as they agree to meet later in the afternoon. “But don’t expect much.”

  There is only one day until graduation. Underclassmen are still in school; seniors have been finished with classes, for the most part, for a week. Tomorrow, Cedric is going to have to stand and deliver before the class.

  And he has written a spiteful speech.

  The question: what to do? The message, quietly passed down a few days ago from the principal’s office to a handful of teachers involved in graduation planning, is blunt: he can’t stand and give that angry, bitter speech to tomorrow’s assemblage of parents, members of the school board, Mayor Barry, and God knows who else. Simply can’t happen. Somebody do something.

  After lunch, Cedric ducks his head into the classroom of Shirley Briscoe, his senior English teacher. She’s sitting at her desk, trying to stay cool in a blue flowered summer dress. It’s a sweltering afternoon, and she’s grading some of her last papers, their edges fluttering in the breeze from a huge platform fan.

  “Oh, Cedric,” she says, pleased to see him. She’s retiring in a few days after nearly three decades at Ballou, having seen the school slowly deteriorate from a clean, promising place to its current disarray. “I hear you’re working on your speech.”