City of Light (17 page)

CHAPTER X

T
hat night, as I lay in bed, Dr. Hoyt’s accusations came back to me. Did I really know too little about life to make realistic judgments? Alone in the darkness, I found myself agreeing with him. I recognized all that was lacking in my experience. Over the years I’d had to close myself off from so many of the wonders of life, simply to survive. And yet … the scent of spring was flashing through the night breeze. I got up and opened the window wide, letting the sweet air envelop me, feeling it caress my skin. Returning to bed, drifting into sleep, faces went through my mind: Grace, Tom, Franklin Fiske, Karl Speyer bundled against the cold … in the softness of this particular night, none of them could trouble me.

When I woke in the morning, a perfect snowdrift the size of two plump stacked pillows had formed along the wall beneath the window. Shivering in the cold as I got out of bed, I knelt beside it. My knees turned chill through the gauzy spring nightdress, and I felt a surge of happiness when I looked outside from my second-floor perch. During the night a windless blizzard had blanketed the daffodils and the hyacinth, and the great elms on the stately parkways. Snow covered each tree limb, outlining it white against the blue of the morning sky. Spring blizzards … my city was known for them, a gift from the Great Lakes.

I ran my hands through the light, dry snow. I rubbed it against my face. I tasted it, crisp knots of cold melting in my mouth like ice cream. Suddenly reckless, I threw the snow into the air, handfuls and handfuls, higher and higher, sparks of it lit by the sun like private fireworks falling upon my face, sharp and cold.

But as joyful as this was, I had work to do—and I was thankful for it. Always there was work, filling my life and warding off my fears.

As usual on the weekends, I was dressed and had breakfasted by nine. I intended to use this quiet Saturday morning to review a stack of scholarship applications, and went next door to my school office. Because of Tom’s gift, I could accept six scholarship girls in the coming year. So much good would come from the endowment … today I felt as if I could almost put aside my apprehensions about the reason it was given.

I had dozens of applicants. Most of the girls were recommended by my colleagues in the public school community. These educators knew that without a compelling reason to stay in school, such as the improvement in expectations made possible by Macaulay, even the most gifted would be forced by their families to take full-time factory jobs or care for younger siblings. Few parents saw an intrinsic value in the education of daughters.

With a sense of urgency, I read through the forms: the daughter of a stevedore, mother deceased. A girl with nine siblings, whose father had been a grain hauler killed in the labor disputes of ’99. The daughter of a hotel clerk, of a railway telegraph operator, of a printer. A girl who lived at the Remington Settlement, on the worst part of the waterfront. The child of a police sergeant. And on and on. That the girls received excellent grades and participated in a wide array of activities was a given; that they were more gifted than many of the girls who paid fees at Macaulay was also a given. What I had to determine was who would fit in and benefit most from what the school had to offer. I needed to find a flexibility of temperament and a touch of innocence. I couldn’t accept those who had been embittered, for they might close themselves off to what the school could give them and became resentful of the easygoing wealth of their new peers. I hated myself for making such judgments, but I knew no other way to separate one girl from another; I could only follow my instincts.

Hours passed. I barely noticed the morning turning to midday as I read the personal essays each girl had been required to prepare. My book-lined office, with its mullioned windows and Persian carpet, glowed with reflections of sun on snow. I felt as if I were in a high tower, all alone, while my mind was filled with images of construction sites, grain elevators, steamships—places I rarely saw, flowing across the applications in my hands.

“Excuse me, may I come in?”

Startled, I looked up to find Millicent’s aunt, Mary Talbert, at the door.

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Talbert.” Unreasonably frightened, I rose hastily, upsetting the paperwork spread across my desk. “There’s nothing wrong, I hope?”

“No, no, nothing wrong. Forgive me for approaching you unexpectedly. Your housekeeper told me I might find you in your office and guided me, not without misgivings, through the perhaps-secret corridor leading from your parlor.” Mary Talbert was a solidly shaped but elegant woman, somberly dressed in the same style she encouraged for Millicent: clothes that were well made and expensive but never drew attention to the person who wore them. Her skin was a smooth, dark-honey color, her brown eyes intense.

“I did not wish to cause you … embarrassment,” she said, with an ironic glimmer in her eyes, “by visiting during school hours.” Her voice was deep and sonorous, like that of an opera singer or a minister, each word precisely enunciated as if she were reciting the Psalms.

“You could never—” I began the expected protest.

“I believe you understand what I mean, Miss Barrett.”

Alas, I did. When she had brought Millicent for a tour of the school, all eyes, teacher and student, had followed them wherever they’d gone, from library to chapel to classes. As I could not shoo the watchers away without calling more attention to them, I’d simply ignored them, as had Mrs. Talbert and Millicent.

“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Talbert. Shall I make tea?” Immediately I regretted the phrasing, which turned the making of tea into an imposition.
Would you like tea?
Would that have been better? Or,
I was about to make tea, would you like a cup?
A fruitless line of debate, for the question was asked and couldn’t be taken back. Conceivably Mrs. Talbert had heard nothing odd in it, and my uneasiness reflected only my own self-doubt.

The truth was that Mary Talbert both intimidated me and filled me with guilt. She was more qualified for my job than I was, but because of her race she would never be offered a position like mine. She was the daughter of a barber. She’d attended Oberlin College, become a teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the principal of a high school there. She’d come to Buffalo when she married William Talbert, a wealthy real estate man from one of Buffalo’s oldest colored families.

Although only about fifteen hundred Negroes lived in Buffalo, many were well-established. The city boasted a strong Negro professional class, with doctors, lawyers, and educators. William Talbert was president of the Buffalo Colored Republican Club, and because of his real estate interests he was on good terms with Mr. Rumsey—which undoubtedly accounted for the board’s quick acquiescence to Millicent’s Macaulay application. Talbert worked as a city accountant, although he was called a “clerk” because colored people weren’t officially permitted to work for the city in such professional positions. Because the Buffalo public schools had a policy against hiring married women, Mrs. Talbert couldn’t pursue her teaching career after her marriage (happily, race wasn’t the determining factor here: There were quite a few Negro women teaching white pupils in the public system). Instead of teaching, Mrs. Talbert served her community.

“Thank you, Miss Barrett, for the offer of tea, but I have only a moment.” She still stood.

We were caught in a play, the two of us, saying our prepared lines. We had so much in common. We could have been friends, we would have been friends, had our skin colors been the same.

“And I don’t wish to interrupt your work.” She motioned to my desk.

“I’m reviewing scholarship applications.” I tried to sound lighthearted, making small talk. “Always a wearisome task.”

“Is that so? In my years as an educator I never had the privilege of reviewing scholarship applications.”

I must remember never to make small talk for Mary Talbert. “Do sit down, Mrs. Talbert. What can I do for you?” I asked briskly, resuming my own seat.

My harsh tone seemed to suit her more than my attempts
at politesse
. She settled herself opposite me. “First, I have come to discuss Millicent. She has been upset these many weeks now over her encounter with Grace Sinclair. I didn’t come to you initially because I believed Millicent’s distress would pass. However, I fear the incident has captured her imagination. You see, Grace Sinclair’s threat comes from a point of view somewhat alien to our community. I suppose we, or at least the friends and associates Millicent meets at our home, are so involved in fighting for the future of our race that we seldom have time for thoughts of—suicide.” A gentle smile played at the edges of her lips.

“Millicent handled herself very well with Grace,” I said. “She stayed calm, she commented sympathetically and reassuringly, and she tried to show Grace her value to the community—a profound insight on Millicent’s part. I reassured Millicent on this at the time.”

“Yes, and Millicent took comfort from your words and your concern for her. My concerns, however, are somewhat different. How was it, I wonder, that Millicent was accompanying Grace Sinclair home to begin with? Millicent is not a servant, to be assigned whatever job needs doing.”

“I have spoken to Principal Atkins of the lower school quite frankly about this point, and it shall not happen again.”

“I am grateful to hear it. I hope it shall prove to be the case.”

Why was she doing battle with me? “I do not excuse Miss Atkins. Nonetheless, I believe Millicent took a certain pride in the responsibility entrusted in her, to escort the younger child home.”

“Yes, indeed, she was quite irrationally proud of that, and I did not attempt to open her eyes to the true facts.”

We looked at each other for a moment. “Mrs. Talbert, let us posit a hypothetical situation: How would you feel if Millicent’s Sunday school teacher were forced to ask her to escort home a child of your own community?”

“That would be different.”

“It would be both different and the same. As I say, I am not excusing Miss Atkins’s breach of protocol, but rather asking that you put the situation into perspective. Now then,” I continued, before she could interrupt, “moving on to Millicent’s fears for Grace, I think we can explain to Millicent what I myself have come to believe: that Grace was indulging in a bit of hyperbole, not uncommon at her age, saying phrases guaranteed to shock, with little knowledge of what her words actually meant.”

I didn’t believe a word of that, but it sounded plausible.

Mary Talbert simply stared at me, as if looking right through me—seeing my pretenses, my lies, the balancing act I performed to maintain my position.

“Yes. Indeed. You are right, Miss Barrett,” she finally offered. “In your position I would say exactly the same. I shall reassure Millicent in this way and reiterate her own fine behavior.”

Again she stared at me, and I forced myself to meet her gaze.

“I must say, Miss Barrett, that I wish it were not necessary for Millicent to attend the Macaulay School.”

I flushed with anger. “That the Macaulay School exists at all is a blessing to the young women of this city.”

She looked taken aback. “Please don’t misunderstand me—I meant no personal offense.” She paused. “I did not explain myself properly. I do not wish Millicent to be … fooled is possibly the best word: attending classes with white girls, dining with white girls, sharing a cloakroom with them—when she will always be the stranger in their midst.”

“After everyone adjusted, there has never been a problem at school.”

“That is part of my point: that someday someone might act on behalf of your innocent white girls, to ‘protect’ them from the stranger in their midst.”

“As we are speaking frankly, I must say you are exaggerating.”

“Perhaps. I hope so. It is also my hope that one day there will be a school in our own community that will provide Millicent, or at least the girls who come after her, with the standards and expectations that Macaulay provides. In the meantime, yes, I am grateful for what Macaulay offers her. I only hope that the school will never do her any harm.”

“I trust not, Mrs. Talbert.” My anger ebbed. I glanced out the window, then searched for a means of conciliation. “Do you miss your own teaching?” I asked.

“I do not feel that I have stopped teaching. I have simply broadened the perspective of my teaching: organizing my people, working toward suffrage, fighting lynching, helping newcomers to find steady work by providing vocational training to give them the skills they need. Everything I do is teaching.”

How meager my own endeavors seemed in comparison. “I once considered going to the South to teach colored children,” I confessed. “When I was at college.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“The salary was low, of course. And I—well, frankly, I had no family, no outside income, I needed to support myself. I needed—wanted”—I stumbled over my hypocrisies—“a certain standard. Then as time passed, other … considerations kept me here.”

“Materialism triumphant once again,” she joked. But the joke stung.