New Boy (10 page)

"Burns," I said.

"Oh, yes, the
Burns
family," she said. "Sometimes these wealthy white people like to change their names when they come into a lot of money. As though anyone can shed the past and take on a new life." Cousin Gwen was looking directly at me now as she spoke. "But it's not that easy to take on a new life, is it?" she said. "Even with money. You can't change your past, no matter how hard you try. When I came here, I thought I had reached the promised land. I thought I had said goodbye to race prejudice and I was free to start a new life. I thought I could do
whatever I wanted to, become a different person, but I soon discovered that it wasn't that easy. I couldn't find an apartment downtown no matter how hard I looked, but I easily found one in Harlem. If I went downtown to a restaurant for dinner with a friend, we'd have to wait forever to get seated, and then they'd stick us in the back somewhere, behind the coat rack. I applied for a teaching job and they sent me straight to Harlem. And even now, when I'm downtown and I need to get home, I don't bother to try to get a cab. The cabdrivers take a look at you and assume you're going uptown and they drive right past you. So it isn't that easy for us to take on a new life, no matter how badly we might want to."

I thought about what Cousin Gwen had said, but I didn't care if Burns was Gordie's real name or not. I was just happy to find a friend at Draper. Gordie was interested in the same things I was interested in. He seemed to feel the same way I did about a lot of things, like what had been done to Vinnie. And he had also a sense of adventure. What difference did it make what his father's name might have been.

By now the sky was the color of violets and in the distance, the moon hung like a silver disc above the rooftops. My father came into the living room. "Well, it's getting close to five-thirty," he said. "You don't want to be late." Being late, of course, would be an unpardonable sin, since it would confirm a stereotype that, in our minds, all white people held of us: the belief that colored people are perpetually late.

"I'll be ready in just a minute, Dad," I said, getting up from the sofa. I went into Cousin Gwen's study to put on a fresh white shirt, a tie, and a tweed sport coat to go with my chinos, and returned to the living room. My mother looked me over. "Did you wash up?" she said. "Let me see those fingernails." I held out my hands, which she inspected to her reluctant satisfaction. "What about deodorant?"

"
Mom,
I used it this morning," I said, groaning at her interrogation.

"He's just fine, Clarissa," said my father. "Let him be."

"Well I don't want him to find himself in an embarrassing situation when he gets down there at the dinner table with all those white folks and somebody says 'Please pass the potatoes,'" she replied.

"Couldn't be any more embarrassed than he is right now," said my dad.

My mother, father, and I left Cousin Gwen with her pad on her lap sitting in front of her television, and we climbed into the Roadmaster and drove south, taking 110th Street across to Park Avenue and then heading down.

Even in the dark, I could see that the buildings along this part of the avenue were rundown, with metal fire escapes hanging off the front, little shops with signs in Spanish painted on dusty windows, clusters of brown-skinned men with curly hair and dark, somber eyes standing on corners under streetlights with their hands in their pockets, and lots of kids running in and out of the shops. I couldn't believe this was the same street
where Gordie lived. But suddenly, as the Roadmaster continued to roll along, the streets became cleaner, the sidewalks became deserted, and the buildings became tall and grand. As we rode by, you could see inside their lighted lobbies, huge pots of flowers standing at each side of the door. Awnings began to appear on the sidewalks and doormen in brass-buttoned uniforms and white gloves patrolled the entrances. We were in another world.

The gray stone building where Gordie lived took up an entire block and looked more like a bank than an apartment building. A long, dark blue awning ran from the curb across a huge sidewalk to large, double glass doors with brass kickplates and brass handles polished to a high gloss. Through the doors you could see tapestries hanging from beige walls and a spectacular cut-glass chandelier suspended over a table with a large vase containing an explosion of red roses.

When my father pulled up to the curb, my mother rolled down the window. The doorman, a tall, strapping white fellow, walked over to the Buick and leaned over to the door. "Can I help you?" he said. He sounded impatient, as though we were taking him away from something much more important.

My mother relished such situations, enlisting her best classroom voice to deal with them. "Yes, you can," she said. "Our son is having dinner with the Burns family this evening. We're just dropping him off, but there's no need to park the car."

"Are you sure you have the right place, lady?" said the doorman.

"This
is
the Burns residence, isn't it?" said my mother, doing her best to control her indignation.

"That's right," he said. "But I don't know anything about a colored boy visiting the Burns family this evening." He was wearing a dark blue uniform, the coat bristling with gold braid and buttons, and a cap like policemen wear. His black shoes were gleaming. Change his color and give him a plumed hat, I thought, and he could pass for Marcus Garvey. He had obviously been hired to discourage intruders. With his hands resting on the Roadmaster's passenger door as if to keep my mother from getting out, he leaned over and took a long look inside the car, staring first at my folks and then at me seated in the back. I felt as though we were about to be charged with a crime. I had to think of something fast or my plans for the evening would be wrecked.

"Look! Would you just give the Burns apartment a call?" I blurted out. "Gordie's expecting me."

"Gordie, you say?" said the doorman, raising his eyebrows. "What's
your
name, anyway?"

"Rob Garrett," I said. The doorman reached inside his coat pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper, squinting to read it in the darkness. Then he folded it and put it back inside his coat.

"Okay," he said. "Yer awright." He opened the back door of the car and held it, standing stiffly at attention, as I climbed out and walked over to the sidewalk. He shut the door firmly. "Come right this way," he said, escorting me up to the entrance
doors and holding one door open. Before entering, I stopped and looked back at my folks, who were still parked at the curb in the Roadmaster. Even at a distance, I thought I could sense their anxiety. Or was it their anger at our humiliation?

"Don't worry about me," I called. "I'll just take the subway home." I strode into the lobby as though I had been visiting Park Avenue for years.

"Take Mr. Garrett up to the Burns floor," said the doorman to a silver-haired white man wearing a gray cotton jacket. The old man struggled to his feet from his seat, and I followed him into the elevator. We rode up in silence on a carpeted floor, surrounded by panels of richly inlaid wood. In the back of the elevator was a folding bench, which I badly wanted to try, but we were slowing down and I didn't want to do anything to offend the attendant. He opened the door at the twenty-first floor and said, "Burns to the left." I thanked him and stepped into a large hallway with recessed lighting and a mirror on the far wall. On a table underneath the mirror, another bouquet of fresh flowers perfumed the hallway. The only other door was far down the hall to the right, at the opposite end from the Burnses' apartment. I glanced at the mirror to check my tie and noticed how confident I looked, as though I had passed some test with flying colors. I rang the doorbell and a colored woman who seemed to be about my mother's age opened the door. She was thin and brown and wore a black maid's uniform with a little white cap and small white apron. At first she seemed startled to see me but
she quickly composed herself. "May I help you?" she said in a drawl so southern, I knew she had to be from somewhere farther south than Virginia.

"Is Gordie in?" I said.

"Who shall I say is callin'?" she asked.

"Rob Garrett," I said. She was standing in a grand foyer with Persian carpets, antiques, and paintings in carved gold frames. I was still in the doorway.

"Ill tell him you're here, sir," she said. "Won't you have a seat?" She motioned to a settee in the foyer made of slender pieces of wood. It looked much too old and fragile for me to sit on.

"That's okay," I said, stepping inside. "I'll stand." The woman closed the front door and disappeared into another room. I felt as though I was in a museum. The apartment was cavernous. From the foyer I could see into the living room, which had high ceilings, long, dark velvet drapes, and tall windows with dramatic-views of the city at night. The living room floor was covered with the biggest Persian rug I had ever seen. Heavy wood frames holding two portraits of old men with beards and sober expressions, dressed in black suits and little black hats, were hanging from the walls. Sofas and lounge chairs upholstered in a fringed red fabric looked very expensive, and large potted plants looked like small palm trees. Mahogany bookcases stuffed with books lined two walls, and in a far corner of the room, a big arrangement of purple and white flowers in a large green vase sat next to an unusual brass candelabra on top of a black grand piano. The candelabra
had holders for seven candles, six on a lower row and a seventh on the top. Supporting each of the candleholders was a brass hand, each one in the shape of a palm print, open the same way Willie Maurice's palms had been open just before I left him standing in front of the Apollo. It was strange. I had never seen anything like it before.

"Well, Garrett, are you ready to go?" Gordie had come into the foyer dressed as I was, in a tie and jacket. "Before we leave, why don't I introduce you to my parents? Have a seat in the living room. I'll go and get them." He disappeared to another part of the apartment, and I sat on a sofa and took a closer look around. The brass candelabra caught my eye again, and I noticed writing on one of the open palms, but I couldn't make out what it said. Seated in the Burnses' exotic living room high above the city, surrounded by the potted palms and the antiques, I felt far removed from the rest of the world. I could imagine living like this one day myself.

I heard a door open and Gordie returned with his parents, escorting them into the living room, trailed by the faint scents of cinnamon and licorice. "Mother, Dad," he said, "I'd like you to meet Rob Garrett. Rob's a friend from Draper." Dressed in a blue silk smoking jacket and wearing bedroom slippers, his father was older than I expected, but his dark eyes twinkled mischievously as he held out his hand to me. I rose from the sofa to shake it.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, young man," he said, with an accent that sounded French to me. He was tall and lean like Gordie, but his skin was a shade darker and his thin hair was beginning to gray. He was wearing a little black cap like the Jewish people wear. And then it suddenly came to me like a bolt of lightning: Mr. and Mrs. Burns were Jews. And Gordie was a Jew, although I would never have known it, since I thought all the Jews were named Goldberg or Cohen. I didn't know much about the Jews. You hear things, of course—that they have money, that they keep to themselves, that they are "sharp," "slick," "greedy"—but you hear things about Negroes too, and most of it's trash. People are people, in my book, and you have to size them up one at a time.

There was a Jewish man at home, a shopkeeper who used to sell dental implements and equipment. His name was Mr. Cohen and he had a little store that my father would sometimes visit when he needed to replace things. Dad used to say that Mr. Cohen was the only white man he knew who wouldn't make him wait. He would treat Dad like he was any other customer. If a white man came in after Dad, that white man would have to wait his turn.

"And this is my mother," said Gordie. "Mom, Rob Garrett." Mrs. Burns extended her pale hand theatrically, and I shook it. She had long, flaming red hair that she wore in an old-fashioned style, piled on top of her head, and she was wearing a dark green dress that fell below her knees. She seemed much younger than her husband.

"Very nice to meet you," said Mrs. Burns. "Now, Gordon, I'd like you to be back home by eleven. Is that understood?" She sounded just like my own mother.

"Okay, Mom," said Gordie. "I'll be here."

"Tell me, young man," said Mr. Burns, "are you from Manhattan?"

"No, sir," I said. "I'm from Virginia."

"Virginia!" he said. "Well, I'll bet you're glad to be up here in New York."

"I'm getting used to it, sir."

"Well, you two go off to the movies and enjoy yourselves," he said. Gordie and I headed straight for the door. As soon as we left and were in the hallway, I told Gordie about the doorman. "'I don't know anything about a colored boy visiting the Burnses' apartment,'" I said, mimicking the doorman. "If I hadn't mentioned your name, he would never have let me in, and that would have ruined everything."

"Charlie's not the worst guy in the world," said Gordie, "although he can get carried away sometimes. I don't know why he had to bring up the fact that you're colored, though. When I get back, I'll tell my father about it. He'll have a word with him. It won't happen again."

The elevator arrived and with a yawn the old man opened the door and took us down to the lobby. As we entered the lobby, the doorman appeared, in full regalia. "Yes sir, gentlemen. Would you like a cab?" he said.

Gordie glanced at his watch. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "Oh, Charlie, did you meet my friend, Rob Garrett?"

"Why, yes," said Charlie, "we met earlier when he arrived."

"So you did," said Gordie, in a cool voice. Charlie's face turned beet red.

"I'll get you a cab," said Charlie, and he walked out to the sidewalk to hail a taxi. Soon thereafter, he stopped a yellow cab and opened the door for us to climb in. We both thanked him, and Gordie pressed a small piece of money into his palm as we got in.