Visible empire, p.4
Visible Empire, page 4
“I only meant to ask about your money.”
Coleman snorted and slapped him on the back. Then he stood and, in a manner unsettlingly similar to Raif, in a manner in fact so eerily alike that it made Robert think there might be lessons, or if not lessons then actual genes, responsible for the distinct gestures of the wealthy, Coleman reached into a back pocket and produced a billfold.
He put two tens under his glass.
“That’s too much,” said Robert. He belched a little. The milk might have been rancid. “That’s an obscene amount to put down. Are you looking to be robbed?”
“Come on,” said Coleman. He slapped him again on his back, only this time Robert did vomit a little, but the vomit stayed in his mouth and he was able to swallow it down. “What’s too much?” said Coleman. “Is too much a thing? Come on. I’ll show you what’s next for my money. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’m busy.” A fly buzzed lazily overhead.
Coleman picked up what was left of Robert’s drink—a dwindling ice cube, a splash of cloudy liquid—and sniffed it. “Nah,” he said. “You’re done being busy with this.” He put the glass on the other side of the bar, away from them, as though it were poison. “I’ve got better stuff at home. Come with me. Let me tell you my plan.”
“What kind of stuff ?”
“Better.”
“Be specific.”
Coleman flicked his nostrils with his thumbnail. “Got the picture?”
Robert slipped one of the tens from under Coleman’s tumbler. “It’s still too much,” he said. Then he stood, threw back the last of Coleman’s drink, pushed the ten into his own pocket, and said, “What the hell are we waiting for?”
Piedmont
Piedmont Dobbs was one of the 132 eleventh graders who had applied to be among the first Negro students to matriculate into Atlanta’s all-white public school system. This was in the month of May, in 1961, nearly a year before the disaster at Orly.
Teachers passed the forms out during second period, which for Piedmont was U.S. history. There were no box fans in their classroom on the third floor. But the windows were open wide, and a breeze from off the playground below drifted up and in, bringing with it the soft scent of fresh mulch and last night’s rainstorm.
“Talk to your parents,” his teacher had said. “Talk to each other. Think about the pros. Think about the cons.”
There’d been giggling from the back row, where the popular girls sat, one of whom was light-skinned and called Lora. Piedmont would be taking her to prom in the coming weeks.
“The world is changing,” his teacher said. “This city is changing. You have a chance to be a part of that.”
With trembling hands, Piedmont folded the application in two and tucked it delicately between the center pages of his history book.
For nearly seven years, his mother had been dreaming of this moment, ever since the Warren Court handed down its decision. He was twelve when that happened, and he’d been sitting at the kitchen table with her, the radio between them, when it was announced that Plessy v. Ferguson had finally been overturned. His mother just stared at the radio and cried. “This is it,” she’d said. “This is the beginning.” Piedmont’s father had been dead by then for more than two years. “This is the beginning of everything,” his mother had said. She rocked and cried, rocked and cried.
Now he was nineteen years old—older than many of his classmates but not the oldest—and he was a junior at Booker T. Washington High School in southwest Atlanta, and here was the application his mother had been waiting for; here was his chance. If he made it, if they picked him to be one of the ten to matriculate, his life would be forever changed. That’s what his mother had always said. Those ten students—whoever they might turn out to be—were guaranteed a future of magnificence, of excellence even.
And yet, even as he sat there at his desk, as he listened to the giggling, as he listened to his teacher go on and on, even as he knew he would apply no matter the pros and cons, it nagged at him that his mother had gone to Booker T.; that his father had gone to Booker T.; that Nipsey Russell, who’d been on the Ed Sullivan Show, and Martin Luther King, who was suddenly everywhere and everything to everyone—that even they had gone to Booker T. nagged at him. What made Piedmont Dobbs, son of a dead automobile salesman and a decent-but-not-gifted church singer, what made him think he deserved anything more than any of them?
He knew the story of Alveraz Gonsouland, the boy who’d transferred from the Booker T. in Norfolk, Virginia, to Norview High in ’59 with sixteen other students. “The Norfolk 17,” the papers had called them. Alveraz couldn’t deal with the pressure—maybe it was the photographers (there’d been so many, the city had to send in police to thin them out), or maybe it was the white kids. Either way, he’d transferred back to his own Booker T. and would graduate this year with the kids he’d started with.
Piedmont was in tenth grade when Norfolk integrated. He never dreamed Atlanta would do so in time for him to have a chance. There were rumors that the Norfolk 17 had been coached by members of the NAACP to sit together, near exits and in front rows, so they could defend themselves and flee more quickly if attacked. He’d been partly horrified, partly fascinated by such details. Now here it was—his opportunity to be part of history and to matter. That, after all, was what it came down to: his mother and his father, Nipsey Russell and MLK: Booker T. had been good enough for them because no other opportunity had existed. But it did for him. This was his fate. He felt the sureness of it, the rightness of his role as one of The Ten, pulsing just beneath the surface of his skin.
On the news that night, he and his mother listened to the story of Antulio Ortiz, the man who—days earlier—had hijacked a National Airlines flight out of Miami, forcing the pilots to fly to Havana. Everyone onboard, and even the plane, had been allowed by Castro to return the next day. But Ortiz, an electrician from Miami, had stayed. There was new information every day. Tonight they learned that he’d not used his real name to board the flight. Instead, on the manifest, he’d been listed as Mr. Elpir Cofresi, after a nineteenth-century pirate.
“Can you imagine?” his mother said. “Can you even imagine?”
Piedmont couldn’t imagine, since he’d never been on a plane, much less seen one up close or in person. The word—hijack—filled him with an instinctive sort of terror, but he liked the idea of this man Ortiz and his simple, if disastrous, desire for Havana. Cuba: that was another thing Piedmont couldn’t imagine.
His mother stewed greens as Piedmont set the table. Between news stories—up next after the continuing hijack saga was word that President Kennedy’s $1.25 minimum wage had passed in the House—his mother would squeeze Piedmont’s shoulder and say, “I’m just so proud of you. So proud.”
“Ma,” he said every time, “I’m not in yet.”
“But you will be,” she said. “You will be.”
She wanted to fill out the application with him, but he’d asked to keep it to himself for a day or two. “I just want to get a sense of my answers on my own,” he said. “I just want to make sure I have ideas before getting help from you.”
“But you promise you’ll let me see it,” she said, “before you hand it in?”
“Ma,” he said. They were eating by then, the news over and the radio turned off. “I’ll let you send it in. You can mail it yourself if it means that much to you.”
After dinner, he’d gone to his bedroom. As he did every night, he re-hung the shirt he’d worn that day. He sniffed at the pits—not too bad, plus this one hadn’t yet started to yellow. He removed his pants and laid them on top of his twin bed. With an old bristle hairbrush, he went to town on the fabric, brushing from the waistline to the cuffs, paying special attention to the fabric at the knee. It was thinning. He’d need a new pair before the end of summer. But at least they didn’t want washing any time soon. Washing, he knew from his mother, weakened the fabric and aged the cloth.
When he was satisfied with their cleanliness, he folded his pants and placed them on the single shelf of his closet above the five shirts that hung below. For pajamas, he wore shorts and an old T-shirt that had once belonged to his father. It was too hot for anything more that night. His bedroom window was open, and the fading light outside was yellow-brown and glinting with the promise of more rain. But he was not so lucky now for a breeze, and his upper lip moistened as soon as he wiped it dry.
Carefully, methodically, he cleared his desk of books and papers until the only thing on it was his lamp (which he would turn on only when it was so dark he could no longer see) and the application he’d been given that day at school. He unfolded the piece of paper, smoothed both sides so the crease was not as pronounced, then sat down at his desk and began.
At prom, several weeks later, on the same day he’d been interviewed by the three white committee members who would choose the Atlanta 10, Lora danced with Piedmont twice but no more. She had agreed to go with him because her parents wouldn’t let her go with Alfred Thompson, a senior with a bad reputation. Now she was slow dancing with Alfred, and Piedmont was slumped alone against the wall of the gymnasium. His mother had over-starched his collar, and it itched against his neck. He was scratching beneath the fabric with his index finger when Madelyn Bean appeared by his side.
Madelyn was dark-skinned and tall. Her shoulders were more masculine than most of the other girls and she kept her hair too short for his taste, but she had a nice waistline and she wore her belt cinched tight to accentuate the curve.
Madelyn had also been interviewed by the school board. Piedmont knew this because he’d seen her with her parents as he was walking in alone.
There was no chance that by talking to Madelyn he might make Lora jealous—his date hadn’t looked his way once since that second dance—but it made sense to be friendly since they might end up at the same high school next year.
Madelyn leaned against the wall beside him.
“Who’d you come with?” she said.
“You don’t know?”
Madelyn looked down and smiled. “You must have guessed you were just a tool. Everyone knows about Alfred and her.”
“Maybe I thought Alfred would have moved on by now.”
Madelyn laughed. “Mama says beware the man with so many notches on his belt.”
“Guess that makes me a safe bet.”
Madelyn turned toward him, her shoulder still resting against the wall. She was nearly his height.
“You want to dance?” she asked.
Piedmont shook his head. “Not really.” He said it too quickly and his lack of interest sounded crueler than he intended. “Maybe in a little while,” he added.
“I can take a hint,” she said. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”
She pushed herself from the wall as if to leave. Piedmont reached for her elbow.
“No,” he said. “Stay. I just don’t feel like dancing. We can talk, though. I don’t mind talking.”
She resumed her original position, but now with crossed arms, and instead of facing him, she gazed out at the dance floor. Piedmont did the same.
The music switched from fast to slow, and the lights overhead moved from a yellow filter to red. Everyone looked older, sexier, than they should have. Lora and Alfred especially looked old and sexy. Alfred was holding her close, one knee pressed visibly into the fabric of her dress, he guessed between her legs. Piedmont clenched and unclenched his hands. Of course he’d been just a tool, but part of him—that dreamer side of him who believed, in spite of reason, that if he wished it hard enough someone somewhere would grant the wish—God or whatever—that part of him had believed in the possibility that after one dance, Lora wouldn’t even remember Alfred’s name. But that hadn’t happened. And here he was the fool, no one to blame but himself.
“Did they ask you about the bathroom?” Madelyn said. “That was a hoot, I thought.”
Piedmont shoved his hands in his pockets.
“The thing about the bathroom,” she said, “about what you’d do if there were white kids waiting for you in there?”
He nodded. “Sure, sure. They asked. What’d you say?”
“I told them the girls would probably say hi. I’d say hi back. Then I’d put my lipstick on and leave. What about you?” she asked. “What’d you say?”
“Same. Without the lipstick.”
Madelyn giggled.
In fact, what he’d said was “I’d fight. My daddy’s dead, but he taught me some before he died. I’m not afraid of anyone.” The man who’d asked the question, a psychologist, had smiled and nodded; he’d given no indication that Piedmont’s answer was unacceptable. He’d scribbled down a few lines on the notebook in front of him then turned the interview over to the school board committee member, who’d asked him about his mother, about their evening habits, about his favorite subjects.
But now Piedmont understood that everything that came after the bit about the bathroom, all their other questions and all his other answers, didn’t matter. It was in that moment—standing next to Madelyn, watching Lora and Alfred slip out the side exit of the gymnasium—in that precise and completely definable and ever memorable moment, when Piedmont knew he wouldn’t be chosen to attend one of the all-white high schools in the fall.
He was right.
Five days later, when the rejection letter came, he didn’t even open it. His mother did. She cried so that her nose ran and her makeup smeared. “It’s my fault,” she said. “It’s my fault.”
“No,” he said. “It’s mine.”
“I’ve ruined your chances,” she said. They were sitting in the kitchen, the discarded letter on the table between them. She put her head in her hands.
“Ma,” he said. He put his hand on hers. He was about to tell her about Madelyn, about the conversation they’d had, about his own suggestion of violence as a response to bullying. He was about to tell his mother that he’d known since prom that he wouldn’t be accepted, but he didn’t get the chance.
“I have to tell you something,” she said, pulling her hand away from his. She sat up straight. “You have no business comforting me. I’ve done something I shouldn’t have.”
Now Piedmont also sat up and back. There was nothing she could have done—would have done—to ever hurt his chances. She’d wanted this for him all his life; she’d dreamed of this opportunity. He shook his head.
Her confession was so plain. What she’d done was so insignificant he could spit. On the application, she’d changed his age from nineteen to sixteen. “They must have found out,” she said. “I didn’t think they’d take you. They’d think you were too old, that’s what I thought.”
He looked at his mother, her graying hair, her watery eyes. Behind her was the stove, dented and dirty with grease. Next to it was the sink, above which were the shelves, atop which were all the same cans and boxes that every other family on their block had purchased and put away in a similar manner. Beans here, rice there, butter on the counter, greens in the icebox. He’d been so stupid, thinking he was destined for anything more than anyone else. He’d been so unprepared, just like his mother, who was weeping and wailing before him. She’d been equally stupid, equally naïve, believing Piedmont was the future, the way up and out. His mother, his poor, dumb mother, sitting there thinking that his age made any difference at all: he could have been fifteen or forty-five; he didn’t stand a chance and never had.
He stood up. “You’re right,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Oh, sweet boy.”
She reached for him.
He stepped back.
