The Third Generation (26 page)

Greg made him think the girls just tolerated him. He didn’t dare ask one to be his girl, or even for a date to see a picture show. He only saw them at some impromptu party or gathering where the fellows took him. And then his time was occupied by the younger sisters and the unattractive ones. At first they thought him bashful. But once alone with him they changed their minds. He was after the real thing, they thought. He didn’t like to play, but Oh Boy, he was really frantic for it.

Often Charles went down to the tennis courts at the neighborhood YMCA hoping to meet a girl. But the players were always paired, the games dated in advance. He wound up on the other field playing rough and tumble football with a gang of ruffians commanded by a young hoodlum called Wop who smoked marijuana and played a remarkable game at quarterback. Charles always played opposite him. They made a great attraction and crowds gathered along the fence. But Wop was too much even for Charles. He tried to get Charles to smoke marijuana and drink whiskey and once suggested that they cut school and steal a car.

“When we get through riding we can sell it,” Wop said. “I know a fence that’ll give us fifty bucks for anything we bring in. All they do is strip it.”

“Suppose we’re caught?”

“How you gonna be caught? You gonna be with Wop.”

Charles shook his head.

“If you skeered, go home,” Wop sneered. He was no older than Charles but was already notorious throughout the city. “
If you skeered, go home
.” He had everybody saying it, even good little boys and girls who’d only heard of him.

Charles didn’t envy Wop. He wanted to cut a figure among a different group. If he could just dance like the boy who was winning all the Charleston contests.

On the top floor of the Y was a basketball court that doubled for dances on weekends. Charles went to several of the dances but it was no fun drinking lemonade and eating cake alone. Everywhere he turned was the gimlet eye of some chaperone. He couldn’t even smoke and pretend to be indifferent. He sat in the window and watched the couples cavort about the floor.

Charleston…Charleston…

Envy cut him to the quick. He wondered how they did it; how they came by such natural sense of rhythm. He didn’t have it, couldn’t learn it, although he was blessed with remarkable coordination.

He left the Y and walked out Cedar Avenue past houses with drawn shades and loud laughter from within, where he was certain women could be bought. He stopped at one and went up to the door.

“Er, does Miss er-er Robinson live here?” he asked the red-eyed man who cracked the door in response to his timid knocking, giving the first name that came to mind.

“Who? Who dat?” The voice was thick with rotgut and suspicion.

“Er, Miss Robinson. She’s a nice-looking, light lady with a gold tooth.”

“Ah’ll see.” The red eyes disappeared and the door closed in his face. From behind it he could hear the whiskey-thickened voice. “Mama D! Yay, Mama D! You got an’ who’ ‘round heah call Roberson?”

“Ah’ll see,” came a high, soft, whining bedroom voice.

The door cracked and the heavily made-up face of a light tan woman popped suddenly in the opening. Glazed muddy eyes looked Charles up and down. “Who you wanna see, baby?”

“Er-er, a Miss Robinson.”

“Ah’s Miz Roberson, baby. Cum on in.”

“Oh!” His nerve deserted him. He didn’t want this painted, staring mass of sinister, effluvious flesh. “Another Miss Robinson.”

“Git de hell ‘way frum heah, you lil’ bastard!” the voice said harshly; the door slammed in his face.

Frightened and chagrined, he fled down the street and crept to bed. But he couldn’t sleep for thinking about girls. He didn’t know why he was so unpopular. It disturbed him. He felt that he was growing unattractive. And he wanted so desperately to fit himself into this fascinating life. He wanted girls to admire him and desire his company. He couldn’t bear to go unnoticed.

He asked Harvard Eaton what he used to make his pomp so much more attractive than the others. Harvard said he used a combination of cosmetic and vaseline. Charles bought a stick of black cosmetic and applied it to his hair. The result was a fine patent leather shine.

That Sunday afternoon he went visiting with the fellows. It was a warm fall day, very pleasant. It affected him with a poignant melancholy he didn’t understand. The small cozy parlor was crowded. Tea was served and young men moped about with narrowed eyes like a strange assortment of sinister sheiks. Their heads glistened like lacquered gourds. The girls sat with their skirts above their knees and their legs tightly pressed together. Their bangs were like pretty painted fans above their flashing eyes and animated faces.

“Where have you been all my life?” the male talk ran.

“What’ll I do when you are far from me and I am blue?” the girls countered coyly.

Conversation was marked by self-conscious pauses. Sudden silences caught the entire group. Then chatter burst out to cover their embarrassment. The young men bantered with each other when they could think of nothing else to say. The girls gossiped among themselves. For the moment the gathering was divided into two camps, male on one side, female on the other, each seemingly striving to ignore the other. Then with a concerted shifting about they rushed together again.

“Remember the night, the night you said ‘I love you,’” the young man said to his new companion.

“Remember you promised that you’d forget me not, then you forgot to remember,” she replied.

Their conversation was made up from quotations from the lyrics of popular songs; without these they couldn’t converse. Cleo sat at the piano. Together they sang:

Though my dreams are in vain

My love will remain

Strolling again. Memory Lane,

With you.

From that they went to the rhythmic chant:

C’llegiate…c’llegiate

Yes! We are collegiate…

The mood passed quickly from frenzied jazz to syrupy sentiment. A famous ballad singer with his guitar and sweet, caressing voice had set the nation crying in its cups. It went with bathtub gin and adolescence.

Through the smoke and flame

I gotta go where you are…

Charles kept choked up, on the brim of tears. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. The exigencies of social life filled him with apprehensions.

It was a lovely party. But the room grew hot and sticky. The cosmetic with which he’d plastered down his hair melted and began to run. Black streaks coursed down his neck and left black blobs on his fresh white collar.

“Turn around,” Harvard said. “What’s that on your neck?”

“On my neck?” He dabbed at it with a white handkerchief. It came off black.

“Little Charley’s hair is running,” Greg said heartlessly.

The girls giggled. Charles felt the flame burning in his face. He could have gone through the floor.

“What’d you use, shoe polish?” Greg teased mercilessly.

Harvard took him to the bathroom and cleaned off some of the mess.

“I don’t know what happened,” Charles said. “I mixed the cosmetic with vaseline just like you said.”

“Oh!” A light dawned. “You used black cosmetic. That isn’t the kind. I use white cosmetic. It doesn’t run.”

Charles couldn’t meet the others’ eyes when he came downstairs.

“Don’t let it get you down, baby,” Thelma consoled.

“These other sheiks have accidents with their pomps too.” But the pleasure and excitement had been destroyed for him. At such times he felt peculiarly cursed with misfortune. A twist of circumstance and suddenly he became the ugly duckling. More than all others he yearned to cut a dashing figure. But when the occasion called for pretty speeches he was inarticulate. While others danced he stood apart on two left feet. His bow ties came askew, his hair grease ran; he couldn’t understand just why he exasperated all the pretty girls. He felt a lack of something within himself.

18

T
HAT FALL, ONCE AGAIN
, Charles occupied his mother’s thoughts. She reflected how strange it was that he took precedence in her emotions over her other sons. It was as if the umbilical cord still held them joined together. Even at the height of William’s need, and during that poignant time when all her soul had gone to holding Tom, it had never been really severed. And now again it throbbed with blood and worry as she pondered on the problems of his adolescence. He was so impressionable, so easily hurt, she knew. And he found it so hard to adjust to any change.

She knew that he wasn’t getting along too well in school, that he hadn’t made any friends among the pupils. She wondered if their being white exercised some vague restraint, but she could never bring herself to ask. She visited him often and was pleased to note that he showed interest in the colored youths. She’d been so afraid he’d grow moody and introspective away from William. He seldom talked about the things he did, but Mrs. Robinson kept her informed. From the beginning, Mrs. Robinson had been exceedingly impressed by Mrs. Taylor’s white blood. It was as if, by having such illustrious white forebears, Mrs. Taylor had accomplished so much more than herself. Mrs. Taylor realized this and acted quite superior. Mrs. Robinson wasn’t resentful in the least; she would have been disappointed had Mrs. Taylor acted otherwise. She was obsequious in Mrs. Taylor’s presence and very attentive toward her son. Mrs. Taylor was appreciative and quite relieved that Charles had gotten away from the influence of the Coopers. But yet she knew he needed most of all a home.

For a time she tried to get him to take piano lessons. Failing in this, she bought tickets to the symphony concerts and made him accompany her. With all her heart she wanted him to become cultured and learn to love the fine things in life. But he didn’t like the concerts. The next time she bought tickets he wouldn’t go.

“But why, son?” she asked.

“I just don’t like them.”

“You don’t have to like them,” she said. “It’s like eating olives—you must cultivate a taste for them.”

His dislike for the refined and aesthetic offerings of city life was a source of constant disappointment. She attributed it to his father’s blood.

It was curious, she thought, how, of the two, William, with his handicap, was so much better able to adjust to circumstances and so much more receptive to good influences. He seemed to be getting along splendidly and scarcely ever gave her cause for worry. The young man, Ramsey Douglas, with whom he lived, had become his most devoted friend. Although no academic schools were provided for the blind, the state paid for readers, thus enabling blind children to enroll in the public schools. Ramsey spent hours reading to William from all his textbooks in preparation for his entering school.

Practically overnight he’d grown into a charming young man, quite different from his younger brother. He was poised in social contacts and talked with ease. No furtive compulsions harassed him in his associations with young women. He was gay and witty and quite frankly liked them all. They found him a wonderful companion, and he’d learned to dance excellently in the short time he’d been away from home. There was always a girl eager to go with him to dancing parties.

The brothers ran in different circles and seldom met. But whenever William mentioned some happy occasion he’d experienced, Charles felt compelled to boast of his own great successes. Secretly he was awed by his brother’s adjustment to the grown-up world. It was hard for him to fit with ease at any level. It seemed as if there just was no place for him, like the day he went out for football practice.

He’d donned a castoff uniform with the others in the locker room. Along with the more intrepid ones, he’d run the three miles to the field where drills were held, only to learn that the varsity lineup was already drawn. He lit a cigarette to prove he didn’t care and the coach put him off the field. He didn’t go to any of the games.

There was a great deal of extracurricular activity among his classmates that fall. They had undergone a subtle change. They were seniors now, and dignity had been added. Class officers were elected, committees appointed; plans were being drawn for the senior prom. Fierce competition had developed among the honor students. Charles kept aloof, he took no part in anything. He’d never caught the spirit of the school.

His teachers were nice but uninterested. He could have been an A student with but a little effort, but he wasn’t particular. His teachers gave him B in everything but Latin. He’d never cared for Latin—only for the stories translated into English—and had just managed to pass in Caesar the year before. Now in Cicero he was failing. Several times his teacher kept him after school.

“I’d hate to see you fail to graduate, Charles,” she said. “If you will just make a little effort. I know you don’t like Latin and I hope that some day the school system will make it an elective course. But now it is required. And you must pass to graduate.”

“I’ll give it more time, Miss Parker,” he promised. “I’ll concentrate on it.” He didn’t, but she became lenient because she thought he tried.

Again the sense of futility took hold of him. Nothing seemed worthwhile. He wanted so desperately to be important, to stand out; if not that, at least to belong to something. It was mainly because of that, because he had to be different, to be seen, that he accepted his Aunt Bee’s offer to drive their car, although he knew his mother wouldn’t like it.

His aunt had asked him to drive for them in a funeral procession. She’d gotten his father’s consent. And she seemed trying to atone for putting him out of her house. He didn’t like her any better. But he loved to drive. Sitting behind the wheel of the big old secondhand car, following the somber procession through the gray afternoon, the black-clad Coopers sitting silently in the back seat, under his control, dependent on him, he felt big and important again. His aunt was so pleased she invited him to dinner and asked him all sorts of questions about his mother. It was pleasant to be the center of attention.

He drove them often after that, without his mother’s knowledge. One day he took the car for servicing and stopped in front of the Robinsons’ to rush importantly through the house. Greg appeared not to notice but Mrs. Robinson was curious.