White People

by Allan Gurganus

  Everyone but me. Straight-backed, massive. I refused. No way. Bumped from either side, I muttered at the woman beside me. Cheerful behind her tears, she yelled, “Tell it, bro!” She was just encouraging me. I explained how a person could sure use a little more room here. She nodded. My complaints just swelled the hymn. Everybody took me for a singer. Glum, feeling semi-hateful, I got coached by “Blessed Assurance.” On it rolled. First I hummed along just to be polite. (With me it’s a disease.)

  Jostled from left and right, I tested a chanting note here, a word there. A person almost had to. Pretty soon, though you still fought it (for the sake of principle), you did sort of catch on, you soon nearly liked it. But, wait, no. I stiffened my spine, wanting to prove something. What? Maybe to keep things controlled on behalf of these wild emotional people noisemaking around me. Somebody had to stay in charge, right? It was a favor that you paid others who’d lost it. There were rules.

  I asked myself what she’d advise me—what Vesta Lotte Battle’d say? (“Hey, you, un-hitch a inch. What you keeping back? You hiding something, boy?”)—I soon joined somewhat in. I trusted her. I wanted to do well. Maybe I was overly conscientious at it—but, hey, after all, Whitie does what Whitie can!

  My shoulders soon felt safe between others’ rolling massaging shoulders holding mine up from either side. I wanted to blend in for once. I hated being the go-getter all alone out front. I longed to seem the same as everybody else.

  Maybe too quick for safety, I felt enclosed, half-pardoned. I felt explained. All this was what I’d been so homesick for, and without ever having lived it!

  Soon you were pretty much loving it. I was. It felt like dancing sitting down. Like fainting with your eyes open. Like singing in the shower but with others singing in their showers nearby, others who, like you, didn’t sound so hot on their own, but pooled became an angel choir that exhales, not carbon dioxide, but perfect pitch. I felt like telling everybody why I’d come, like singing why.

  Our group stopped in one ragged rush. I was loud—alone—amazingly off-key for a long long second. Nobody blamed me or much noticed as I sucked air, swallowed “Fool!,” curled my toes. Others were now standing one by one. Fanning themselves with Jesus fans, they talked about the corpse.

  “She been a mighty good neighbor, Lila,” the woman near me rose. “One time, remember when my William cut his foot so bad on that soda bottle? well, she look after all my other little ones the whole night till we walk back home from the doctor’s out Middlesex way. Then Lila say, Don’t you be coming in here waking up these babies in the middle of no night, you let them sleep. She kept mine over to her house till they all awake and then she fed them a mighty fine breakfast, sent them back on home to me. Too, Lila done give my momma eighty cents, one time she couldn’t pay.”

  “Lila,” one old man with two canes called. “Had the prettiest yard on Atlantic Avenue, better’n mine and you know how nice mine is. Yeah, she got her dahlias to someway grow big as you head. Used bonemeal, some says.”

  They told why she never married (tending her sick mother). They said she dearly loved a moving picture show. She knew the age and facts of every movie star onscreen. Lila’s say-so settled every movie bet or argument in Baby Africa.

  Listening, I nodded. I soon felt I knew Lila a little, then—maybe it sounds pushy—I felt I knew her pretty well. It was pushy. Odd, I almost missed her. But even then I understood—I’d confused Lila with certain others: a Detroit autoworker I’d never seen alive. I mixed up this Lila person with my own ailing parents. I confused Lila with a freed slave whose burial I’d missed and maybe caused.

  After the testimonies, music started again and I really threw myself into the pump and swell of hymns. I let myself go, wanting to be excellent at this. I was a silly kid hoping, his first time out, to get straight A’s in Grief. But even while crooning the choruses, while practicing A-plus Amens loud, I still knew: This might be fine for today. For a change. Oh but I needed this now, oh yeah. And I would never forget it or outlast its uses; but, being white like me, I couldn’t live here.

  I might rant and sway, released toward the best of Afro-Baptist, I might be today’s greatest hottest pudding of emotion—but I would always remain a tourist when it came to such display. Call me frozen, or career-oriented. Fill in the blank by saying I’m hyper-Caucasian. Some claim that just such hanging back has already turned our white race into the losing side: creatures that cannot take the heat and so keel over. Maybe we’ve already been outranked by those more fluid, faster moving, closer to the earth and ready to adapt, sweat, go with things.

  That day I tried, though. Oh I tried to get it right.

  “We hopes our white friends will feel free and speak.” It was the preacher crooking off his varnished perch. He smiled for the first and only time that day. He bared his square white teeth in a fake, presented grin I recognized as mine. The single white lady popped up quick, then looked around and seemed to regret it. She’d stood to force herself. I knew this and felt for her as, stranded, she cleared her throat, alarmed but determined. The lady wore trim navy-blue, her foil-colored hair all in a knotty permanent. I couldn’t place her name but—knowing Falls the way this ex-paperboy did—I could’ve told you her street address to within one block. She might’ve been sister to the owner of that resurrected Wedgwood.

  In a girl’s voice, the lady now mentioned hiring Lila-here for many years. The lady admitted how hard Lila’d worked, far above the call of duty. The lady sounded short of breath—maybe she gasped due to sadness or stage fright, both. Soon you could hardly hear her. Everybody tipped forward, trying. I did too. She went, “… Feel we never … understood or whatever what a fine person … we had … around our house till Lila got so … so sick last … June was it?” she asked the man seated beside her.

  “June, yes. Lila’d fallen in our rec room. We came back on Monday. We found her. She’d knocked over liquid floorwax and was lying in it, it’d dried. And when my sons pulled her to standing, the sound was like the flooring coming up with her. She was embarrassed about having spilled. It was too awful. The first Monday she didn’t turn up for work I felt our house was like …” the lady waited, standing, doubting her lungs. “Like … house … was … hollow. There was an echo, it seemed all our rugs had been taken out. My husband can tell you. Now it seems that … to be … our self—our best selves—we needed Lila there to … And since she …” This time the matron curved one palm around her throat, gulping, unable to find a voice. But she refused to sit. Her husband reached out, almost touched her back, decided against it—improved his own posture instead. You saw that the woman really wanted to sit—she knew people would forgive her. But she’d decided. She had to finish.

  “Tell the troof,” some old man called, rapping floorboards with two homemade walking sticks. “Jesus going to see that you get all the air you needs for speaking true. Jesus going to fan some cold truth-telling wind down into you. You watch.”

  The thin woman smiled back at him, nodding. Her fist now rapped her sternum, she shook her prim head sideways. Her embarrassment, I saw, was a country club white person’s. Social embarrassment. She feared she looked foolish. Being foolish pained her less than getting caught at it by strangers, especially these decent black ones.

  Still, I felt for her. Takes one to know one. “The Black-and-Blue About Being White Blues.” I sat remembering Mrs. Battle in the rainstorm, drenched for me, throwing rocks under my car, scattering dogs that’d taken cover there to snap at my sogged ankles. I’d never thought of doing that. Being watched like I always was in Baby Africa—it’d never come to me that I might just kick dogs or chuck stones at them. Why’d I settled for their nipping at me? Why hadn’t I properly defended myself?

  “Loving Lila,” the white woman tried summing up. “Might’ve let us love each other more, but I’m not sure that was reason enough … for taking up her life the way we did. And by accident almost, looking back. We gave her ten days off a year. Five of those she spe
nt at the beachhouse with us. She cooked for us there. Which was no vacation. I see that now. Believe me, I’m living with this. We learned so much from her. Look, we loved her is all. Maybe that’s the best thing anybody can teach anybody? I don’t know.”

  She sat, face in hands then. “Amen. It’ll do,” somebody shouted. Heads bobbed.

  The white man hopped up to remark that what his wife’d just said sure went double for him.

  Then I stood. I did. I hadn’t known I would. Suddenly it’s like the church had sunk and left me vertical. I think the singing had made me light-headed. That song “Blessed Assurance” chanted in child voices, the white flowers’ smell, white robes like makeshift wings. Those made me.

  I told everybody I felt real bad about selling funeral insurance. I told why I’d come. I admitted seeing the great beauty of this ceremony. I conceded: Negro funerals had it all over white ones—much more personal and everything. But it seemed I’d never understand enough to help me feel quite easy with the business end of burial. I admitted: some of my most beloved clients, they had lapsed, see? I’d let them drift from the black into the red and then I told on them. I had. I couldn’t rescue the whole world, could I?—though, for a while, I’d given it my level best. You try and save a drowner but if you drown too—what good is that to anybody, you know? I said, Sure, I wanted a college education but not one built by walking on the heads of others. I apologized for taking up their time with something not exactly on the subject. Then I added—feeble, I knew—that Miss Lila’s lilac dress was about the finest-looking lilac dress I’d ever seen. “Amen. Ain’t it, though?” two old women, maybe twins, hollered. I sat. Breathing hard. No way would I start sobbing like a fool, no, they were all looking. The same old man up front began really beating floorboards with his canes, he cried back at me, “Jesus Have His Ways, Child. Be of Comfort, Son. You going to act right. You wait. Scales going to fall off them young eyes by-and-by. You’ll see.”

  Then—that fast—I knew what I would do.

  Again I stood. I emptied my pockets of all rolled quarters and loose change. I yanked out every bill. I whipped the premium book from my jacket.

  Mourners between the aisle and me kindly slid out. They let me step free. I walked to the tin collection plates tucked behind massed lilies. Into one plate, I piled all my money. About eighty-nine dollars and fifty cents, I think. Maybe more.

  Then—not able not to—I dropped in the keys to my loyal Nash. I held the key ring back up—I told everybody where my car was parked, what kind it was, what color. “Oh Lord,” somebody called. “Jesus got them Miracle-Working Ways. He look into the whiteboy Soul. He Clean House.”

  I announced I wanted some kind of college scholarship set up. It’d help some straight-A child from this church. Elders would sell my used car—that and what cash I’d left here would at least help get things rolling. The fund would be named to honor … Miss Lila here. I didn’t want to say Vesta Lotte Battle’s name. Then they’d know it was me that turned her in. I left.

  Two ushers swung open the exits for me. One young man was smiling, face all wet. The older gent gave me this “Who are you kidding?” stare, his mouth looked big, post card-sized and folded in on itself with scorn. He seemed right. But, soon as sun hit me, I felt light and wonderful. Sunflowers and zinnias seemed my African honor guard. I weighed nothing for six blocks. Though this neighborhood was rough, no dog chased me today. I felt afraid of nobody. Nothing dared to hassle or to nag me.

  I hiked back to my folks’ place. They hadn’t heard me drive up, they asked what was wrong, where’d I parked? I told them, I tried. They sat looking at each other. Dad’s latest Life rested open on his lap. I remember Ava Gardner was on the cover. She’s also from North Carolina, from very much the wrong side of the tracks and with the face of a Contessa and I have always loved her. Neither of my folks could drive. Proud, they called my wreck “Jerry’s runabout.” I often took them shopping in it or out to the Dairy Queen.

  Now Dad laughed, removed his glasses, folded them. He had an uneducated person’s respect for eyeglasses, like these were some substitute for a college degree. He set the bifocals in their little casket, snapped it shut. He kept shaking his head side to side, he told Mom, “They give our boy free encyclopedias, he throws them in the drink. Now he’s gone and handed over his roadster to the colored people because they’re poor. Who knows? Maybe if a boy acts like a rich man long enough, he turns into one? Sure hope so.”

  Then Poppa’s chuckling slid, like always, right down breath’s stairsteps into deep and deeper coughs till you never thought his wind would surface again. Mom jumped up and stood patting his back. It never helped but he liked it anyway. Next, Momma bent toward me, bent across Dad’s leatherette easy chair. She touched the top of my hair, then one side of my neck. I felt too young then, shrunken down, just like earlier I’d felt so old and high up.

  “Jerry’s always had him a soft streak,” Mom said, with me standing right here. “It’s not soft,” I snapped at her. “It’s the only part I like. It’s hard—and the rest of it is sloppy and extra. Don’t say ‘soft.’” She pitied me, knowing I was weak enough to pity others. I hated her for that.

  I stumbled to my room, threw myself onto the bed, mashed my face into the chenille spread’s nubbins, pretending they were Braille—I’d soon read what to do next. I just wished I hadn’t left my premium book in the collection plate. I don’t know. I worried what might happen to my other clients. Even with Mrs. Battle gone, I still had big responsibilities. My ledger, was it the only record for the tens of thousands that older folks had saved toward their standing on the next plane? Would they miss out on their hard-earned heaven just because I’d lost my head while feeling generous?

  Two days later, the mailman brings me a package. In it, my insurance book, all the money I’d left, plus—held to a piece of cardboard by crisscrossed electrician’s tape—my car keys. The cardboard said, “Parked right where it was.” A note read: “We all get move sometime. Sometime we needs to think out why. If it still the same way you felt then we start up the college thing for one our young folk. If not then that OK too. Cause we all Children OF God. Either way you a man of heart. IN Christ Blood Bartered for us sinners I am Rev. T. Y. Matthews—Free-Will Afro-Baptist (Church).”

  I sat down to write a check for two hundred dollars. Signing it, my hands shook—the largest check I’d ever written. I kept the ledger. And, look, I kept the car. Can you forgive me? I waited till night to go collect it. I hated being seen. My parents applauded when they heard me pull up out front again. “Pile in,” I hollered and they came running like kids rasping from a touch of croup. I drove them to the Dairy Queen. They sat in back, royalty, holding hands. You’d’ve thought it was a Rolls, my used Nash. We said nothing the whole way out and home. They were back there, sighing, eating their cones. Driving, I breathed through my mouth, not wanting to cry. The three of us, we had been so unlucky, really. And just getting back what little was ours, it seemed some great reward to us, some justice.

  NEXT DAY, I drove to Sam’s office, I would turn in my book and quit. But just outside his door, I decided on collecting two more weeks. I’m not sure why. I guess I wanted to get things cleaned up for whatever poor soul Windlass Eventualities hired next. Two more Saturdays. Hounds showed no mercy. Foolish and smug of me, but I somehow thought dogs might act kinder during these last trips. I half-believed dogs would smell my sacrifice: the Miss Lila Scholarship. I hoped yard dogs would finally decide I was a friend to Baby Africa. Dogs didn’t.

  Again I knocked. Mrs. Battle’s nosy neighbor, the hugely fat widow, peeked out. She said, “You come for your Assurance? Is you new? You look older than that last one.”

  “Yes ma’am, older.”

  From inside the darkest corner of her home, underlit by a dime-store votive candle, one Jesus grinned—dressed in powder blue and white, beard marceled just so, he had a twenty-four-carat halo that somebody really should go hock for food. He looked guilty over bei
ng so pretty on a street of such bad need. This client’s payments were only two weeks overdue. She’d greeted me with a broad face so scared I didn’t like to see it. Dead Lila in her box looked much more in control than this living woman. “I checks,” she shook her head. “I goes and looks but I real low just now.”

  Watching her move, I wondered how somebody so poor could stay so mammoth.

  She lumbered toward a tiny vase that showed another Jesus ham-mocked among clouds, arms out beside him like a diver about to leap. From here the vase sure sounded empty. She stood—eyes closed, one ear mashed against it, like listening to a seashell. Like she could hear a hundred coins trying to hatch alive in there.

  “Seem like it ought to be around here.” The widow moved from vase to firewood box to mantel. She shifted things. There sat an unopened jar of jam, a tartan bow topping it. A gift from Mrs. Battle? An inheritance?

  “I busy checking,” the woman promised.

  But I stood remembering Mrs. Battle’s honesty: “I ain’t got no money today.” “Pearl dead.” “Vesta Lotte Battle tries.” “I reckon you’ll do what you wants.” I felt I’d learned something from the old woman. I still couldn’t explain quite what.

  “Maybe it been stole. Yeah, stole probably,” the obese woman patted around behind a sheeny Last Supper wall rug. Then she moved to a calendar that showed Christ holding out his own lit-up and dripping heart. His face looked sobered. You could see why.

  “Assurance? These young boys now’ll steal you blind. Ain’t nobody safe. Too, I getting so I forgets. You sure it already a Saturday again? I done sunk mighty low but I still hunting. Don’t you fret your pretty head none, I gone find it yet. You so pretty. Look how ‘good’ and yellow his hair is. Golder’n that”—and she scanned the room for her favorite picture, then pointed to the rouged Jesus who posed nearby—heartless Himself because He kept offering it to everybody.