White People

by Allan Gurganus

  The next morning there was to be a New Year’s Day church service at Trinity Episcopal. Helen had asked Bryan to come with us, but we didn’t think he’d get up, since it was before his usual rising time, which was anywhere from noon till three. Helen and I were eating breakfast. We were dressed for church, eating without talking, trying not to think about the night before, but thinking about it anyway.

  We were both staring at our eggs and coffee when Bryan came downstairs, all dressed for church. His head was bound up in a professional-looking gauze-and-tape bandage that covered most of his hair and forehead. The tanned ears stuck up over the white cap. He looked like someone recovering from brain surgery. Helen was drinking her coffee as he came in. In the middle of swallowing, she went into a genteel coughing fit. Bryan poured himself a cup. As he was adding cream and sugar, he said cheerfully, “Father, when people at church ask what happened to me—and inevitably they will ask—I intend to tell them exactly who’s responsible for this.”

  I sat staring down the table at him. We were squared off, me at my usual place, he at his. I started chewing on my back molars in a way I hadn’t done since the War. He went on drinking his coffee. Once in a while, he’d glance up at me over his cup. He seemed pleased with himself. Helen was staring at him with her mouth half open. She would look from him to me, her face all strained, as if she wanted me to explain him to her. So this is it, I thought. That one over there with the bandages, that’s my elder son and heir. I had to decide then whether I would really break his head or if I’d let things go. At some point, you have to decide with children whether you’re going to kill them or let them go.

  I thought of those foreign-exchange students we sometimes had to dinner when they passed through our town. Odd-looking kids with funny-shaped glasses, sometimes bad teeth, and accents half the time Helen and I couldn’t understand. But we always pretended we did. You could tell when they had asked a question, and even though you hadn’t really caught it, you still nodded and said, “Yes.” And when it turned out that the question couldn’t be answered with a simple Yes, when they stared at us, at least we’d shown that we had wanted to agree. In the long run, that was all Helen and myself could do for International Good Will.

  So at this breakfast I decided to give Bryan the benefit of the doubt. I told myself I’d treat him at least as well as we treated these nonwhite foreign students who come to dinner for just one night. You didn’t even expect thank-you notes from them. These kids’ customs were so different, their homes so far from us here. But we were always kind to them, thinking of American kids who’d be in their country someday. So I told myself there at the table, if not as a father then at least as a host and an American, I should treat Bryan at least as well as one of them. After all, a foreigner is mostly what he’s been to us.

  Helen didn’t want him to go out bandaged like that, but you have to take your own kid to church. Besides, if we hadn’t taken him he’d have called a cab and how would that have looked? I’m sure he told whoever asked about his head whatever it was he’d decided to tell.

  He left for New York that very afternoon, still wrapped up like somebody with amnesia. Except for Bradley’s wedding, we haven’t seen him since. I suspect that he’s in secret correspondence with his mother, and that’s fine and natural, I suppose. Some days she’s more tearful than others. In the middle of a meal, she’ll fold her napkin, place it on the table, leave the room.

  Someday he’ll probably publish a story or a whole book about what a tyrant I’ve been. I can imagine a chapter listing all the times I ever raised my voice or hit him. Of course, people always believe what’s down in black and white before they’ll listen to just one man’s word about what happened. I have made some mistakes, I know. But I won’t accept his verdict of me. I’m not a villain. If anything, I’ve wanted too much for him, and, considering all the ways you can go wrong with a son, it seems the one he would be quickest to forgive.

  3. ADDENDUM

  IN THIS DRAWING I am doing, a tall red man holds the hand of a small white boy. The man wears a decorative uniform: policeman, soldier, milkman. He is much taller than the child, but his right arm has been conveniently elongated, elasticized like a sling or bandage so it easily supports the boy’s white hand.

  My art teacher called me out into the hallway on the last day of school and whispered, “You mustn’t tell the other children, but you’re the best drawer I have ever taught in eighteen years. The most imaginative. Of your age group, I mean.” Now, deciding to place the man and boy before a doorway just like that one there, with a similar selection of Mother’s houseplants sprouting all around them, I recall Miss Whipple’s compliment. I feel fully capable of adding exactly what I intend. When I’m done, people will say, “Look. He’s drawn a man, a boy, a doorway, and some plants in pots.” There is a comfort in knowing you can make things recognizable.

  I have lots of room on this table we inherited early from my farmer grandfather and his shy-in-public wife. It was built to seat a family of ten, plus guests. I am alone here at my usual end. Mother, Daddy, Bradley, and I each have a whole side to ourselves and must speak up to be heard by everyone. Venetian blinds cross the dining-room window, and sunshine throws a laddered shadow straight across the walnut surface of the table. The round-ended bars of light rest there in a row, like giant versions of my own crayons.

  My brother and his friends are playing baseball in the front yard. They chant their jeers to various Episcopalian cadences. A few minutes back, a foul ball rattled off the roof. The grandfather clock in the foyer musically commemorates each and every fifteen minutes, however uneventful, and my crayon seems responsible for every drowsy sound.

  The surface of the table gives a sudden jerk, and the crayoned frond of the potted palm I’m drawing takes an unexpected twist. I look up and watch my handsome father seat himself at the far end of the table and spread his mail like a game of solitare. Crosshatched with sunlight, his white shirt is dazzling and reflected in the tabletop. From his favorite coffee cup, steam climbs. It twists and plaits itself up through the alternating stripes of sun and slatted shadow. He holds an envelope to the light and rips into it with one finger. With that same hand, he slapped me two days ago. It burned across my face and swiveled my whole head in that direction. I go back to my control of crayons. Maybe he’ll take his bills into the study and leave me here to excel privately at drawing.

  His voice startles me. “Why don’t you go outside and play with the others? It would do you some good.” I continue drawing. Indoor clouds rain blue and purple pellets on the houseplants. “Did you hear me down there?” “Yes sir.” “What don’t you like about baseball? Are you afraid you’ll get hurt or what?” I know I must say something. “I like drawing.” A pause. Still watching me, he drinks from his coffee cup. “But it’s summer, Bryan. It’s a beautiful summer morning and you’re seven years old and when—” “Eight,” I say, not looking up. “What?” “Eight years old.” “All right, then, eight, all the more reason. If you’ve got to draw on a day like this, what’s in here that you can’t draw just as well outside?” All the floating clumps of leaves have sprouted pots. “I asked you a question. What do you find to draw, sitting in here like this?” A challenge. He thinks I don’t know. Most Imaginative of My Age, and he thinks I don’t even know what I’m drawing. Tell him an airplane, tell him an airplane. “You,” I say, despite myself. “Drawing me?” Why did I tell? Now he’ll want to see it. Casually, he glances again through his mail. “So, you’re drawing your dad, huh? Well, let’s have a look.” I note that he’s forgotten all about the baseball game. After slapping me two times in one week, he’s crazy if he thinks I’ll spend all morning drawing him and then get up and walk to the far end of the table and deliver it. He only notices my drawing when he wants to show that it’s a waste of time. I won’t let him see this. Absolutely not. Unless it’s that or getting slapped again.

  “It’s really not any good,” I assure him.

  “Let me s
ee it.”

  “You won’t think it’s any good. You’ll get mad ’cause it’s not the way you really look.”

  “Bring it here.”

  “Well, I drew in the door and plants behind you, and I think you really have to see it from down here at this end, because this is where I drew it from.”

  “I can turn around and see those,” he says, peeved at conceding this. “Bring it here, Bryan.”

  I concentrate on the black crayon in my damp right fist. I study the picture itself. “Daddy,” I begin, definite. “I just don’t feel like you would … I don’t want you … to see it … yet. I’ll show you later, in a minute, later on.”

  “This is getting ridiculous, young man. I’m asking you to bring that to me. Are you going to bring it or aren’t you? It’s that simple.”

  I have included him here, but that makes the drawing even more mine, less his. It’s the one thing in this house of his that’s really mine right now. The man’s mouth is a single horizontal line. The boy’s a silly U-shape. “It’s mine,” I say quietly.

  “You said it was a picture of me.”

  “It is, but I’m the one that did it. Please Daddy, don’t make me this time.”

  A long silence from the far end of the table. “I’m waiting, Bryan. Bring that down here right this second.”

  Almost before I think of it, the crayon is scribbling. In tight black loops it traps and then eclipses half the page. I choose one figure. The face and hands are lost forever underneath an oily whorl. There is the chanting from the front yard, the scratchy circling of my crayon, less loud as black wax accumulates. My exertion delicately clinks his coffee cup against its saucer. As I scrawl, feeling sick and elated at this solution, I grind my teeth and stare straight at my enormous father, smaller than usual at the far end of the table. He seems to be sitting for a portrait as I furiously describe a neat black cyclone on the page. His jaw is set. I can hear his breathing. I know the signs. Any second he will lunge down here, grab me by the shirt, lift and shake me, slap me once with a hand the full size of my head; he’ll shove me, stumbling, toward my room, shrieking in my own defense. Now, just as he places both palms on the table to come for me, I stand. I lift the drawing by its upper corners and carry the page as if wet.

  I move toward his chair, the only chair with arms. He is waiting there to punish me for drawing during summer, for drawing anything but him all day, for then un-drawing him without permission. I stare between his eyes at the faint inch making two eyebrows one grim horizontal line.

  I warily approach him in my acolyte’s gait. I hold up the drawing, a white flag, between his body and mine. I am now beside his chair. Seated, he is just as tall as I am standing. On his forehead there are rows of pores, and over that the teeth marks where the comb passed through his hair. His back is pressed straight against the chair, hands still tense on the table’s edge. Over his business mail I place my artwork. One flimsy piece of white paper with some colored markings on it. His eyes move from my face down to my drawing. He sees the figure there. I hear him quietly exhale. His solid hands reach out and pick the paper up. I am very conscious of the hands. There I am, that’s me, I feel him thinking. He has recognized himself. I release my breath and gratefully inhale some of Miss Whipple’s wonder at my own imagination. Good for something, it has just spared me a whipping. I’ve sketched an image of him for himself, while I am permanently off the page, and saved. He is not asking why the uniformed gentleman’s longer arm is weighed with this bristling black cancellation. He is now responding to the easy magic of a drawing of a uniform on a tall figure, the horizontal mouth, the buttons and braid.

  “So, there I am …,” he says, relaxing. “Why’d you do this crossing out? What was that under there?”

  I have lost interest in the drawing. I stare out the window at the summer lawn where my brother and six neighbor kids are climbing a young evergreen, tilting it almost to the ground. “Nothing,” I say.

  “So, there I am. Those are sure some ears you gave me. What are these round things here on front? Are those medals? Medals for what?” He hesitates to risk a guess. I look back from the Venetian blinds and stare at him. He sits studying the drawing, his face rosy, jovial now. More than anything, I want suddenly to hug him, to move forward and throw my arms around his neck. I want to cry and have him hold me. Lift me off the floor and up into the air and hold me. Instead, there seems to be a layer of electricity around him. I know I will be shocked for touching him with no reason. Somewhere in the house an alarm will sound, the grandfather clock will gong all out of sequence, the door chimes will go wild, sirens will howl out of the heating ducts, and foul balls will crash through every window in the place. I look at him and, in answer to his question, shrug.

  He holds the drawing out for me to take. He’s done with it. Slipping past his chair, I saunter to the back door and, on my way outside, turn around. I see him seated in stripes of light at the vacant family table. Sad, he holds my own drawing out to me as if offering a gift or an apology or some artwork of his own. Something changes in me, seeing him like this, but as I pass into the sunlight I fight to keep my voice quite cool and formal and call back, “I’m finished, Daddy. You may keep it now. It’s yours.”

  1972-73

  Condolences to

  Every One of Us

  For Brett Singer

  and for Marianne Gingher

  Dear Mrs. Whiston,

  I was in Africa on Father Flannagan’s Tour of the World with your parents when they were killed. I want to tell you how it happened. My son-in-law is a doctor (eye, ear, nose and throat) at Our Lady of Perpetual Help outside Toledo, and he says I should write down all I know, the sooner the better, to get it out of my system. I am a woman of sixty-seven years. I have a whole box of stationery here. If this doesn’t turn out so hot, I’m sorry. My mind is better than ever but sometimes my writing hand gets cramped. I’ll take breaks when I need to. I’ve got all morning.

  I blame the tour organizers. They should be informed about the chances of a revolution happening while one of their buses is visiting some place. When I first looked at Father Flannagan’s literature, I got bad feelings about Tongaville. I’d never even heard of it, but on these package deals you just go where the bus goes. You take the bad cities with the good.

  Your parents were the most popular couple on our tour. They always had a kind word for everyone. They’d made several other world trips, so your mother knew to be ready for the worst. She shared her Kaopectate with me when I most needed it outside Alexandria. I’m sending along a picture I took with my new camera at the Sphinx. It’s not as sharp as I expected but here it is. Your mother is the one in the saddle and your father’s holding his baseball-type cap out like he’s feeding her camel. He really stood about ten feet in front of it because we were told they bite. The woman off to the right is Miss Ada McMillan, a retired librarian just full of energy and from Winnetka, III. She is laughing here because your father was such a card, always in high spirits, always cheering us up, keeping the ball rolling in ways our tour guide should have. I hope knowing more about your parents’ death will be better for you than remaining in the dark. I think I’d want the whole truth. What I’ve read in American papers and magazines about the revolution is just plain wrong, and I believe that using the photograph of your poor parents lying in the street was totally indecent and unforgivable. I pray you have been spared seeing it. That started as a Polaroid snapshot taken by my neighbor and ex-friend Cora White. She was along on the African tour. I hear she sold the picture to a wire service for 175 dollars. I will never speak to her again, I can promise you that, Mrs. Whiston.

  I’m rambling already, so I will begin to sketch out what I remember. If you choose to stop reading here, I can understand that. But I’m going on anyway. If I don’t get this Africa business laid out in the open, I know my dreams and housework will stay like they are now, a big mess.

  My memory is one thing I’ve always been proud of. I can rattle off
restaurant menus from lunches I ate with my late husband in 1926. Till now, the only good this ability has done me is not needing to keep grocery lists and never forgetting any family member’s birthday.

  The bus had to wait for sheep to cross the road just outside the capital city. I was putting on my lipstick when we heard the explosion. Tongaville is made of mud walls like what’s known as stucco in America. The town was far off, all one color on a flat desert so it looked like a toy fort. One round tower blew into a thousand pieces. The shock waves were so strong that sheep fell against the front of our bus. They got terrified and were climbing up on each other. They don’t look like our American sheep but are black and have very skinny legs. Their coats are thick as powder puffs, only greasy. Seeing how scared they were scared me.

  Some of us tried talking sense to our tour guide. He wasn’t any Father Flannagan. We’d all expected a priest, even though the brochure didn’t come right out and promise one. This guide was not even Catholic, but some Arab with a mustache. He spoke English so badly you had to keep asking him to repeat and sometimes even to spell things out. We told him it would be a mistake, driving into a town where this type of thing was happening. But he said our hotel rooms were already paid for—otherwise, we’d just have to sleep on the bus and miss the Game Preserve the next morning. We were so tired. Half of us were sick. Somebody asked for a show of hands. Majority ruled that we go in and take our chances. But my instinct told me, definitely no.