White People (6 page)

Up drove the Embassy’s four black cars to rush us to the airport. American soldiers and government secretaries were driving anything they could lay hands on. They said to leave all the luggage we couldn’t carry in our laps. Mimi Martinson asked everyone but me if they’d seen her precious makeup bag, so why should I have told her where it went? More officials arrived, two sports cars and a Buick that looked bigger than ones at home but was a lot like Teddy and Lorraine’s, only yellow. For one second, I really thought it was them come for me. That’s how crazy I’d turned. By this time, I didn’t know Africa from around the block.

A Volkswagen camper with Delaware plates pulled up in front. I rode in that. It belonged to the Ambassador’s daughter. We unloaded food from the little refrigerator to take on the plane with us. The freezer was full of Stouffer’s Lobster Newburg dinners, and more of these were waiting at the airport in ice chests from the Embassy Commissary.

We’d started for the plane when we heard the biggest explosion yet. An oil refinery, this row of tanks went off like bombs and in one minute the entire sky got black. We had to keep low in the camper, but at an intersection near the refinery I heard something and looked out and saw two sheep running through the empty streets. I think oil had spilled on them and their coats were on fire, Mrs. Whiston. They both ran down the center of the road right along the dotted line. Smoke came blowing off their backs and real flames and they were making noises so
human, so terrible I cannot describe it. When I was a child, I was sick a lot and had nightmares full of horrible sights, and this was like some dream from then but worse.

The Embassy man tried to tell me that these sheep were headed toward some river and would be all right. But, if there was a river through the desert, how could it stay a desert and dry? We flew to Athens then to Brussels then home to Kennedy. We were treated like royalty, except by the reporters, who were rude. The Ambassador and his wife acted just like everybody else and weren’t a bit stuck up. He said he’d known there was some trouble brewing, but as for a revolution, he guessed he’d been caught napping.

Now, I am home. I’m safe and sound at my own kitchen table. When I walked in here for the first time last week, my new maple spice rack looked like an altar to me. I’m tired and never plan to leave the security of Toledo again.

Mrs. Whiston, it’s hard for me to believe that our earth has gotten this bad this quick. I’m not saying your dad was right in doing what he did, rushing outside without understanding how dangerous things are now. He just forgot his place and took way too much for granted. He thought all people on earth were as good-natured as himself, and with as much free time, and would pose for him. But he overlooked hunger. That is bound to make terrible changes in people’s dispositions. White or black, people are more miserable and less willing to be scenery than the
National Geographic
would like us to think. Every fact I once held dear has swung around and turned into something else.

As one example, Teddy says there probably
is
no Father Flannagan. It’s just a name somebody thought up to suck people in. Anyway, I contributed a gift in honor of your folks and my late husband to the Little Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. I found I had less of a nest egg thanks to the bite the money crunch has made in our economy, so I only gave half of what I promised,
but the Sisters seemed happy and Teddy told me I was crazy to do it.

I feel that knowing what I know now, I should start life over. If you asked what Africa taught me, I couldn’t spell it out with words but in my heart, I think, something serious has switched. Chances are, my life is too far along for any last-minute change in plans. However, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should give up what we own to feed the hungry? But at my age, an old white woman and spoiled like this, I wonder how much I could do without. It shocks me to understand how greedy I am. Really, I’ve learned so little.

As a result of being long-winded like this, I am very tired. So listen, across the miles, Mrs. Whiston, I just offer you a hug. I do hate to hit the end of this letter. I would like to buck you up in your time of sorrow but my place, I think, is still here in Toledo in the old neighborhood. This afternoon I’m tending my grandchildren who are way ahead of others their age. They’re final stars in whatever crown I’m going to get on earth.

Oh well, so long. We all do what we can, don’t we? We just hope that in the end it’s worth the hard daily efforts and has been mostly for the best. We are really the lucky ones. The rest think they are outside looking in at happiness. If they only knew. When the highs and lows are so far apart, it’s hard to stay in the middle and think of yourself as a good person. But I’m trying.

Teddy and Lorraine said to send their regards. I pass on my deep sympathy to you and, as far as that goes, to every one of us. I’ll just sign this as coming from

Yours truly,

P.S. If you write back, wonderful. I don’t get much mail.

1974

I
N THE SHADY
northeast corner of the park, where vines have overcome the water fountains, and evergreens grow, rangy and unkempt as in the depths of the Vronsky Forest, I came upon two children doing something very naughty. I had wandered to this most rustic corner of the Common seeking quietude and relief from the dogs recently permitted by a foolish ordinance to run free without leashes in the park. Their barking had annoyed me, a man of modest but fixed habits, and I strolled in this new direction.

I turned onto a footpath between fir trees. A terra-cotta sculpture stood there, its color soapy and golden: Cupid, mounted on a marble block little taller than I. The children had just scrambled up onto the pedestal. One broken branch of the spruce beside it still swung back and forth. I stopped, appalled at what these urchins were already doing. Cupid’s weight rested poised upon one tiptoe. The other chubby leg swung behind him in the illusion of flight and forward motion. The girl squatted underneath the sculpture, hooking her thin arm over its uplifted leg. She laughed, calling for the boy to watch, then pulled matted hair back from her forehead, craned her neck, and began licking at the statue’s bulbous little underparts. I stood there, astonished.

In the rosy light that fell across the sculpture at this hour, her head moved like a suckling calf’s. The boy locked arms around the
Cupid’s neck and shouted something I did not understand. He then eased his weight back between the two arched wings and hung there, as from a bicycle. I saw that he had pulled his plaid shorts down. Now, swinging forward, he wrapped skinny legs around the statue’s hips and began rutting vigorously at the plump sculpted buttocks. In street argot, he called obscenely to the girl. She leaned beyond the terra-cotta belly, squinted up at him, gave a sharp cynical laugh.

With a slight breeze, the sun intensified. I was startled at how long I had watched all this, and with what detachment. I told myself, these are not simians climbing about their artificial island at the National Zoo; these are human beings defiling a human monument. My abdomen registered a tremor: nausea and some preposterous sexual desire. Gripping the paper, I saw how sweat had smudged the evening news across my palm. I could not bear to look at the Cupid again but turned and hurried to the concession booth, where a policeman had been chatting with the boy behind the counter. As I passed the fountain, I saw the uniform, still there. I approached and observed the officer bent into the booth, examining a medal around the neck of the concessioner. I asked the policeman to come with me at once. I was afraid to tell what I had seen. I requested that he please follow me quickly. Others there, twin brothers with bottled lemonade, a plain girl eating an apple, stared at my face, my clothing. The gypsy boy behind the counter toyed with the gold medallion at his throat and smirked at me. I beckoned the officer along a brick path, beyond the broken fountain, four stranded bronze swans, an apple core set cruelly upon the head of one. A nurse watched me lead the policeman. I felt like Charlie Chaplin followed by an enormous constable. I hoped none of my pupils or colleagues might chance past. I was already pointing toward the Cupid when it came into view beyond the spruce. The children were gone.

The sun had moved higher on the statue so only its head and wings now showed golden in the light. “They have run away,” I said and walked forward, feeling ridiculous. I had to be certain and, standing on my tiptoes, I pressed fingers to the genitals, still darker than the rest, and damp. At least I knew. The policeman stood beside me, watching my examination of the Cupid.

“Perhaps,” I stammered, settling back onto both heels, “I will not bother you with what I just saw at this spot.” He laughed once, good-naturedly, and easing me back against the marble pedestal, continued grinning as he reached down and gently cupped his hand between my legs.

S
INCE
M
OTHER’S DEATH
, my father has become a great heartache to us. Soon after she died of food poisoning on a seaside outing, it was announced that Father would be retired from the Academy where he has taught since I was born. This puzzled my husband and me. Father had always been well liked at the school. When I was a child, he invited the poorer boys to our home on holidays. He was an athletic gentleman and played sports with them on the mowed side yard. He devised complicated scavenger hunts which lasted until evening. I would sometimes help wrap the little presents he gave them. He wrote out each boy’s full name in his beautiful old-fashioned script. Often he copied mine and let me keep the slip of paper.

I sent Ernest, my husband, to investigate Father’s dismissal. When Ernest came home, he looked in through the doorway, shaking his head with disgust. He said that Father had been fortunate, being dismissed so quietly. My own father, Ernest told me bitterly, had taken boys from the school to a hotel room on a holiday trip to the seashore. Their parents believed the Academy sponsored this outing. Afterward, one boy reported my father’s misconduct. When this happened, others came forward to confess. How I cried when Ernest told me this so coldly. How this soured all memories of Father tussling with the boys on our side yard in those perfect early evenings.

Watching such games through the cottage window, Mother once wept. “Oh,” she sobbed, stroking the cat, Mitzi, who always slept there on the windowsill beside the potted geraniums and herbs, “you should have a little brother, Hedwig. How your father needs a real son.”

She pressed the long embroidered apron to her face. I reached for her skirt and leaned my forehead against her strong leg.

After Father’s forced retirement, he again concentrated on his book, a work of art history he had been rewriting since I was a baby. Ernest and I hoped Father would be happier, retired. He owned the cottage, he had a small pension and the remains of Mother’s land, the yearly rents from her two dairy farms in the South.

Three evenings ago, I read in the newspaper of my own father’s arrest. He had not called or notified us. Ernest says that shame was the reason. One paper printed Father’s photograph, an out-of-date portrait from his brilliant days at the University. The trial is next week. Ernest says I must not go, but, of course, I shall.

I am only glad my mother never lived to see so respected a gentleman fall to such public disgrace. His book was with a publishing company. Ernest says they will not print it now.

The mother of one boy my father took to the ocean resort wrote me a terrible letter. Ernest read it, then tore it up before I ever saw it. He will not tell me what it was about. He only says he can understand why a mother wronged in this way would write such dreadful things. Every hour of the day, I am ashamed.

T
HE DEFENDANT
approached me in front of the concession stand at Ney Park that afternoon. He seemed distressed and asked me to accompany him. He was a distinguished-looking older gentleman and I thought perhaps an elderly companion of his had fallen or was sick somewhere in the park. This had happened to me last summer; an old woman said nothing but gestured me to follow and there her friend was, holding her hat, crying beside a bush, her hip broken. I asked no questions of the defendant but followed him to the northeastern edge of the park, the corner near the War Memorial. He led me down a narrow path between trees to a statue of a baby angel. Once there, he said we were now alone. He stood on his tiptoes and touched the private parts of the baby angel. Then he held his hand up to the light and examined his fingers. He smiled slightly, turning to face me. It was at this moment that he leaned against the base of the statue, seized my right hand and pulled it over against his privates. As a result, I then arrested him.

“Y
OUR GRANDSONS
?” the desk clerk asked, smiling sentimentally. “Oh, yes,” I lied to simplify matters, “an outing with them.” I signed my last name and their firsts. The boys, each holding a small pasteboard suitcase, stood across the lobby near the French doors. Felix quietly read aloud the Latin names of shells. Both boys’ legs were edged with light, the down—ankle to upper thigh—glowed, an incandescent fringe. Their long shadows angled across the marble parquetry to where the desk clerk and I stood watching. My students were suffused, without seeming to notice, in a pink and golden light as pure as the vivid glazes on the conch shell they now held between themselves. They listened intently, both heads tilted toward it, as to a telephone receiver.