A Hope in the Unseen (42 page)

He looks up at the blackboard, trying to focus on the equations and get his head back in the lesson. But it’s no use. Why is he so good at calculus? Because he worked long and hard to master the thoroughly earthbound puzzles of integration, slowly building a faith in his own abilities. And hadn’t that effort been driven, in so many ways, by a burning desire to have something—anything—for which he could be
proud? Where’s the sin in that? Is he just bringing glory unto God with his God-given talents, or does it have nothing to do with God?

He rests his head in his hands and rubs his eyes. Too much to think about, too much to figure out. Spending so much time over the holiday in church, where everyone is ranked according to sacrifice and faith, and then returning to Brown, where everyone is ranked strictly by achievement, has sparked a real shock.

He thinks for a moment about his classes this semester. There will be the second half of his yearlong Spanish class—no big deal. But there’s this class—an education fieldwork seminar, where he’ll visit some school in the inner city of Providence, keep a journal, and write a couple of papers—that is sure to present its own distinct challenges. It will undoubtedly tap, for better or worse, into his own fiery experiences at Ballou on the axis of race and achievement.

Sitting in the opening session of another class he’s thinking of taking—Computer Science 22, Discrete Math—he spots one of Brown’s nerd-gods, an eager Asian kid who answered two questions in the last five minutes. And it suddenly dawns on him: at Ballou, that was Cedric. He was the one with the unshakable confidence, at least in the ordered realm of mathematics, the one, often the only one, who could always figure his way out of a jam—or at least give it one hell of a shot.

Then he came to Brown. Losing his pride last fall for those first cautious steps into a white world—dropping onto a lower academic track of beginner classes and pass/fail—didn’t work very well, he decides. At the time, he thought it would. He thought about pride being a sin, like Bishop says, and not being something that was central to his journey. If he just did the best he could to cross that lowered bar, he recalls thinking, he would still bring glory onto God and feel okay about himself. Or part of it might have just been sober common sense—maybe this was the only way to avoid crushing failure.

But, in the end, after the months of rewritten papers and late-night cramming, it felt sort of lousy. He left Tom James’s office in mid-December feeling exhausted, slightly soiled, and strangely unlike himself.

The key, he finally realizes, has always been pride. Over years, it had quietly knitted itself into his core. But, just like at church, it was
sort of a sin in his neighborhood and at Ballou. Though he’d never actually use the word, kids must have sensed it in him when they always attacked him for “thinking he was better than everyone else.” He ended up building all those convoluted rationales for lofty ambition, saying he needed to go to a famous college, a place everyone had heard of, to justify all of his painful sacrifices. It’s all clear now: that was just a cover. It was pride—pure, simple, in-your-face, shining breastplate pride—that got him to this place. And, after making it this far, he’ll be damned if he’ll swallow it now.

He smiles, almost laughing, like he’s made a discovery. How could he have forgotten that? He looks across the room in this upper-level course and decides, then and there, that he’ll sign up for discrete math—
and
stick with all the other classes. That’ll give him five courses for the semester, one more than the per-semester requirement most students stick to.

After class ends he feels strengthened and purposeful, and he stops by the Brown bookstore to load up on textbooks and supplies. The campus seems festive as dinnertime approaches. With everyone back but little assigned work, it will certainly be a Thursday night of partying and reunion. He walks up Thayer Street lugging books, returning the smile of one passing kid from last semester’s calculus class, and then there’s the girl, whose name he doesn’t know, who smiles at him sometimes in the tray and silverware line at the VeeDub.

“Five classes,” he says to himself. “Have I lost my mind?” It actually feels kind of good to say it. He remembers what Miriam, Dr. Korb’s aunt, told him about how “saying things can sometimes make them happen.” Yes, this is a bold plan that won’t just draw him even with the other kids, with their measly four classes, but might take him a notch above. It’s an intrepid act—maybe his first since arriving here—that, somehow, seems to liberate him.

He turns the corner near a flower shop on the north end of Thayer and into a parking lot that edges into the shadow of Andrews dorm, his arms now straining with the bags of thick, fresh, unopened books.

He sees the dorm loom up ahead. Thinking about Zayd and Chiniqua, about Evan and even Rob, he begins to run. He can’t wait to tell them, in a casual, offhand way, of course, that this semester he’s taking
five—count ’em, five—classes. So, take that, he thinks, bounding to the second floor two steps at a time.

T
he Gate reaches its blooming, buzzing peak by eleven on Thursday night—a prime-time, weekend’s-coming effusion of see-and-be-seen activity, fueled by overcooked roast beef on cardboard sub rolls, slices of barbecue chicken pizza, Cool Ranch Doritos, and up-half-the-night vats of fountain Coke.

Cedric assesses Zayd’s brown boots, crossed and resting on the mirror-topped table.

“You didn’t buy those boots until you saw mine,” he says.

“I didn’t?” replies Zayd, arching a brow. “All I know is I bought them ’cause I liked them.”

“No,” says Cedric emphatically. “You saw mine and said you didn’t like them, that they looked like a girl’s. Remember, we were over at the shoe place?”

Zayd shrugs, rotates his gaze around the room once, and then turns back. “Okay, so they grew on me.”

“Just don’t you make it sound like you thought of it yourself,” says Cedric. “It’s just important, you know, that we clear about what’s what.”

Zayd seems to ignore this, scratching a blotch of dirt off the edge of his raised sole, then offers a carefully tailored response: “I mean, Cedric, I respect your sense of style and, naturally, some of it’s gonna rub off on me. And some of mine, on you. I’m cool with that.”

Cedric blows on the tip of his barbecue chicken pizza slice, takes a bite, and throws Zayd a skeptical look. “You mean some of my authentic, been-in-the projects style is gonna rub off? Yeah … ,” he shakes his head in mock disgust, “ … right.”

Zayd lets it lie. He takes a swig of his designer juice—Nantucket Nectar’s Guava Passion—and then looks away. Cedric, sure he detects impatience, something he rarely sees in Zayd, eases off a little. “Well, all right,” he mumbles halfheartedly, “I guess you got worse projects there in Chicago than we do in D.C ….”

Zayd, swiftly attentive, meets him in the middle. “For sure,” he
says eagerly. “You ever read that book,
There Are No Children Here
, about those two little black kids growing up in Henry Horner Houses in Chicago? That may be the worst housing project in the entire country.”

Cedric frowns. “What, your college professor dad get you to read that?”

“No,” replies Zayd, his voice oddly tentative, a puzzled look on his face. They’re both just looking at each other, and Cedric decides not to avert his gaze or fill the silence. A host of unwelcome and unfamiliar emotions seem to be welling inside him—he can’t quite make them out—and he roots about for another pitch, the last one not having worked very well. “Don’t give that affluent, white liberal stuff,” he says finally, stunned that a smug, cynical, college-boy line just passed his lips.

Zayd seems stunned, too, and their tension shatters into laughter.

It’s cold and wet outside. The Gate keeps filling, and no one’s going anywhere. Other kids from the unit stop by, fold themselves into the duo’s conversation, then alight at some other table, leaving Cedric with the one person everyone knows has managed to befriend him.

Along the way, the two of them settle into a discussion of music—the realm of hip-hop, rap, and R&B—the one address they both seem to share. Just before dinner, Cedric bought the new CD by R. Kelly, the hip-hop star, with $12 he borrowed from Zayd, and Zayd asks if he’s listened to it yet. Cedric hasn’t, but they talk about R. Kelly anyway, and then about whether Zayd should get his chin pierced—Cedric is against, Zayd equivocal—and then about Chiniqua’s tight new braids, both agreeing that they look very, very good.

“What kind of hair do you think looks best on a black girl?” Zayd queries philosophically, “other than her just trying to be white, like Mariah Carey, just straightening her hair?”

Again, Cedric feels his face and mood darken, but Zayd wheels around before Cedric can answer as Abby, a girl from the unit, drapes her arms over his shoulders. Cedric surveys the two of them flirting as he tries to pick through the last hour of conversation, in an effort to isolate what’s gnawing at him, making him feel volatile, like he’s pressing
something down. Abby spots someone across the room, cheerily says “See ya” to the two of them, and turns to leave.

“She’s always so happy,” Cedric says as he watches her snake across the room toward a wall-mounted TV where David Letterman is double-taking to Paul Schafer. “I hate that. It’s unnatural.”

“I know what you mean,” Zayd replies easily. “For any thinking person, it’s untenable. If you’re a thinking person, you’re upbeat sometimes, sad sometimes, whatever.”

Cedric nods, inspecting every word and feeling, like he often does. He has a jealous admiration for how light-footed and unencumbered Zayd is, how dilemmas of all sorts seem to vent right through him. “Sometimes, I keep things inside and it eats at me,” Cedric says quietly, trying to take things a level deeper. “Like, remember I told you about when I visited my father that time in jail, how he did nothing but talk to my cousin and how it just ate at me for the longest time.

“It wasn’t so much what he said that day that stuck with me,” Cedric continues, “as this feeling that I had trusted him—invested emotions, or whatever, in him—and that he betrayed that. You know, that and other stuff I been through, makes it hard for me, sometimes, to have faith in people. Like the closer I get, the more I worry about being abandoned.”

Zayd is attentive, fascinated by Cedric’s emotions in ways few others are around here. “You got to have faith in people,” he says, importantly. “People are all we got.”

Cedric resists sniping What’s that? Something from a greeting card?—and instead takes a last swig of his ginseng iced tea. Zayd is trying, after all. Trying to help, Cedric mulls, the poor black kid with few friends and all these troubles. Cedric, just back from a disquieting vacation in D.C. and newly committed to his bold five-class plan, is particularly impatient with his poor black “specialness” tonight. He wants to change the subject, to air things out. He tells Zayd he should take psychology with him, “you know, so I could stay awake in class.”

“Maybe I will,” Zayd replies, skillfully noncommittal. “As a neurotic Jew, at least on my mom’s side, I’m supposed to know all that psychology stuff. It might be nice to at least know what all the terms meant.”

Cedric knows that’s a “No” and bears down on the hard crust of his pizza. A few minutes later, Zayd’s friend Jake stops by and the two begin chatting.

“I shouldn’t be seen with two white guys,” Cedric says acerbically. “I really should be going. If people from D.C. saw me here with two white guys, they’d say, ‘Oh, the brother’s selling out.’”

Cedric watches as Jake quickly apologizes for interrupting, and Zayd’s smooth features start to cloud. He feels a moment’s hesitation. “Well, I guess, just for tonight, it’d be okay,” he mutters.

“Thanks,” says Zayd, who manages a thin smile. They sit and say nothing, neither moving. After almost a minute, Zayd spots a tall black kid near a bank of video game machines across the room and waves to him.

“Sister Souljah says that just because white people may be around you,” Cedric says, mentioning the female rapper’s news-making barb as he turns to look hard at Zayd, “it doesn’t mean they are for you.”

“I could be,” says Zayd softly. “You’re for me.”

“Who told you that?” Cedric says, as he watches Zayd’s expression become pained. He waits another moment, letting the silence speak. “I’m not saying I’m not,” Cedric says finally, surprised at how flat and hard his voice is. “I’m not pretending to like you, or not like you, I’m not pretending to
be
anything.”

The muscles in Cedric’s jaw clench, his mind racing: so Zayd wants to talk about it, about blacks and whites, about the fascinating racial dialogue, about how two opposites, one black, one white are friends and ain’t that fuckin’ cool. So, now, we’re talking about it all in such a way that, maybe, he won’t want to talk about it so much anymore. So, maybe, we’ll get past always looking at each other’s skin, and just be friends—friends without category headings.

“Whatever Sister Souljah says I know, ummm, that I’m white and I like you. Shouldn’t that be enough?” Zayd asks in a plea, as Cedric—letting the question hang—rises to go.

“I guess it should be,” he finally says in a voice without inflection, glancing down at the top of Zayd’s dirty blond head. “All I know is I already got a lot of studying to do. I’m gonna get back and get started. Maybe, I’ll see you around.”