A Hope in the Unseen (28 page)

Nods all around. Cedric’s brow furrows as he tries to understand what she just said, while his point disappears in the thicket. Everyone returns to the deepening groove of identity designation for another hour, with the discussion moving from whether it’s fitting to be “really proud of something you never had a hand in, just the way you were born” (that from the provocative Los Angeleno, Ira Volker) to why no one mentions Caucasian as an identity. “Because someone might think you’re racist—Caucasian is the oppressor group,” says Kim Sherman, quickly picking up the multicultural lexicon. “Instead, we stretch for something distinctive, you know, being a minority—in who you are or how you act—or being some sort of victim. That’s what gets you status.”

Why would anyone want to embrace being a victim, Cedric wonders. Even though he’s probably the only true victim of circumstances in the room, being a victim is the last thing he’d want to celebrate. He
looks down at the unmarked paper in his hand. One word? A thousand words wouldn’t do justice to who he is, he decides, and crumples the scrap into a tiny ball.

R
ob Burton opens the door, delighted to see that the room is empty. It’s Saturday, early afternoon, and he’s ready for a little down time. He played soccer for a while on the green near Andrews dorm in the late morning, and, with lunch now in his belly, he’s feeling whipped. It was a late night of partying last night—drinking beer mostly, cruising around the campus, and then talking until all hours on the third floor with some of these new guys.

Flopping on his unmade bed, he remembers that one of them—a guy named Billy who got 5’s, highest you can get, on all of his achievement tests—said he went to a private Catholic school in Baltimore.

Just like me, Rob thinks. Head propped on his pillow, he admires his corner lair. Got it just so. On the wall to his left are two glossy photos he tacked up yesterday. The nearest one is of him dancing, sweaty and close, with his girlfriend at his high school prom. He starred at the school, a private Catholic academy in Marblehead, his senior year—newspaper editor, varsity tennis and soccer player, second in the class. And a cute girlfriend, too. He broke it off with her this summer, and it’s just as well, he realizes now, that he doesn’t have an HTH (home town honey) like some of the guys. It would make things so complicated. He looks at the other photo, also a prom shot, of him and his best buddy in a drunken tuxedoed hug, and laughs. What a nut. Got to send him an e-mail later today, he thinks.

His mind wanders back to beloved Marblehead, a sumptuous seaside exurb of Boston where he could drink a bit, do some experimenting with his girlfriend in the back seat of his car, and then set off on his path to college and beyond. Rob’s father is an obstetrician; his mother is a longtime emergency room doctor turned occupational physician. There was never any question about whether he would use his quick mind and good manners to excel. It was assumed in everything that cosseted him. His house is a stunning five-bedroom clapboard colonial, ten minutes from the blue Atlantic.

He misses it, but not terribly. He feels a sense of closure about it all after another excellent summer running a skiff at the Marblehead Yacht Club, hanging with his buddies, and going on a few trips with the folks. Sure, there was a sense that an era of his life was coming to an end. But it was time, no doubt, to take the next step.

He rolls onto his side, figuring he’ll catch some sleep, and looks just to the left of his pillow at his favorite recent
Rolling Stone
cover—neatly taped up—a shot of Sting, all blond ease, gazing off remotely and effortlessly, very cool.

He lies there for a while, finds he doesn’t really feel like napping, and sits up. Resting gently on top of his canvas bookbag, which is teetering on the edge of his desk right near the bed, is a letter home he started writing two days ago.

He snatches it, seeing if maybe he feels like finishing it.

Cedric. He pushes a pile of his sweaty clothes from this morning’s soccer game away with his foot and puts the letter down on a cleared spot of floor. Well, college is supposed to be broadening, he muses, and there’s no doubt he’ll get broadened this year with a roommate like Cedric. But it’ll work out. Casual and nonconfrontational, upbeat and accommodating, Rob can get along with anyone—it’s a point of pride for him. If people are reasonable and open-minded, conflict always dissolves. Even if they just agree to disagree, at least they will have agreed on something. Not that he won’t be challenged when it comes to Cedric. He’s never really been close to a black guy, barely known any. The few encounters he’s had were characterized by caution, by
him feeling like he was walking on eggshells, not wanting to offend, inadvertently, with an inappropriate tone or casual remark. Last night with the guys, when all the talk shifted to roommates, Rob said to everyone it was going fine. There’s a lot of interest in Cedric from the other kids, him being a black city kid and all. Everyone agreed that none of them had spent too much time with a person like that and, God knows, there aren’t all that many of them here at Brown.

He looks across the room at the empty bed, at the hospital corners and fluffed pillows, everything in order, like a fortress. It seems like he and Cedric couldn’t be more different, he thinks, looking at his mess of socks and papers and empty juice bottles. Different, it seems, in every way.

He grabs a pen, bent on finishing the letter. It’s dated two days ago, he should get it done.

The door opens.

“Hey, Rob.”

“Oh, hi, Cedric,” Rob says, looking up from the notebook on his lap with the letter on top. “Where you been?”

“Lunch.”

“Yeah, me too,” Rob says, wondering if Cedric saw him there and thought that Rob might have snubbed him because they didn’t sit together. “I didn’t see you.”

“Oh, no. I had to go to the corner and get a sandwich. I lost my temporary ID. I’m just living off this money my mom gave me. It’s baaaaaad. I can’t eat on my meal plan. It’s like I don’t exist.” Rob commiserates and says he’ll steal stuff for Cedric from the cafeteria if he wants.

Cedric putters around for a bit, hopping over to his chair and looking at some scheduling forms on his desk, while Rob turns back to the letter, not making much headway.

“Do you like mopping floors?” Cedric asks, after a bit.

“No, I don’t
think
so,” Rob says mawkishly, thinking it’s some sort of joke.

“I just want to take a mop to it once a week, just to keep this place clean,” Cedric says.

“Sure, you can do that if you want,” Rob says, not thinking until a moment later that Cedric might have been hoping for more participation.

“You know, Rob, your feet smell bad.”

“Oh come on, they do not.”

“Do too! Man, walking around in your bare feet … that’s disgusting.”

Rob, accustomed to cut grass, thick pile carpets, and clean beach sand, has no idea what he’s talking about. “Cedric, everyone walks barefoot.”

“Maybe where you’re from,” Cedric says, raising his eyebrows. “Not where I’m from.”

Cedric sits on his bed and turns on the TV, flipping the channels, looking for something to watch. Rob doesn’t watch much TV and told Cedric that the first day. Now, with the noise, he can’t seem to concentrate on the letter.

Instead, he grabs a novel he’s been reading over the summer and flops on his bed, trying to ignore the blare. After a while, he drops the book and decides to see whom he can find to hang out with up on the third floor. He’ll let Cedric enjoy the company of his TV.

“I’m outta here,” he says to no one in particular as the door slams. For the first time, he notices how nice his bare feet feel on the hallway carpet.

W
aking up just shy of noon on Labor Day, Cedric is gripped by hunger. Barbara’s cash gift ran out yesterday. It’s now a matter of survival; he needs food.

A few minutes later, next up in line at the registrar’s office, Cedric gathers his strength for combat with the clerk on duty. He explains that he lost his temporary ID but understands that the permanent ones are ready. She tells him that to get the permanent ID (a student’s passport to everything from the library to the dining hall to the bookstore), he needs to hand in his temporary one.

“I told you, I lost it.”

“Well, let’s think,” says the clerk, a prim, brown-haired girl with glasses, probably a student. “Then, you need a picture ID of some kind, like a driver’s license. Pretty much everyone has one of those by now.”

Cedric closes his eyes as he shakes his head. “I don’t have a driver’s license … nothing like that.”

He tries not to yell. The line is lengthening behind him. His eyes wander to a set of long file boxes on her desk with alphabetical dividers separating cards with laminated photos. The IDs.

“Cedric Jennings,” he pleads, pointing to it. “Just look at the picture in there. I’m telling you, you’ll know it’s me!”

She looks up at him, showing just enough sympathy to paw through the H’s, I’s, J’s.

In a moment, he’s outside, holding high the prized card. He runs down the hill to the Ratty, where he bumps into a dozen Unit 15ers gathering for the morning meal. It’s 12:34
P.M
.

Over powdered eggs and undercooked hash browns—no coffee, at least not yet—they talk about last night’s karaoke party in the dorm, where Cedric, at that point weary of solitude, made a brief appearance and sang a few songs.

The breakfast crowd—clearly delighted that the standoffish Cedric is here—talks about how stunned they were by his voice. Someone asks if he’s considered trying out for one of Brown’s many singing groups. Cedric, munching on toast, eschews that idea with a humble nod but is delighted that someone noticed something about him beyond pigment.

Sitting next to Cedric is Zeina Mobassaleh, a tall, doe-eyed Arab American from Potomac, Maryland, hailing from the exclusive Holton Arms school. She looks across the table and admires Rob Burton’s hat, a canvas Australian job with a dangling strap. Rob, as always, is a vision of ease and cool: wraparound sunglasses, sun-bleached T-shirt, sandals, a tiny metal half-sun, half-moon hanging from a woven leather necklace.

“Couldn’t survive without it,” he says. “This hat kept the sun off my face while I was working on boats at the yacht club and … ”

“Wally …. Wally,” Cedric interrupts from across the table. Rob
smiles, his nonchalance broken, but that’s okay. “Wally Cleaver,
Leave It to Beaver
. That’s you.”

Sure, an old reference (for years, Cedric has devoured old sitcoms), but it’s right on. Lighten Rob’s dark brown hair a touch and he’s a dead ringer for Tony Dow, who played Beaver’s older brother.

Like so many inner-city kids, Cedric knows that his notions of the distant, white world—of two-car garages and dads home for dinner—have come largely through the television, with all of its vivid distortions and unintentional verities. After days of sitting on the sidelines, not being able to enter conversations because he couldn’t offer anything in context, he has discovered a way in. Everyone knows TV. That’s one place, Cedric realizes with glee, where he has a Ph.D.

He turns to Zeina. “You know, and you’re like Janet, from
Three’s Company.”

“Oh no. People think I look more like Sandra Bullock, from
Speed”
Zeina protests. “Janet is such an anal-retentive wimp.”

“No, she’s not,” Cedric says, stopping Zeina with his earnestness, as though the TV character is a dear friend. “She has surprising strength. Yes, you may look a little like Bullock. But Janet is your double.”

Next to Zeina is her roommate, Corry Mascitelli, a smooth-skinned blonde girl from Southbury, Connecticut. Cedric pauses a moment.

“Marcia Brady.” Bingo. The table is hysterical.

Quiet Billy Mosberg, the Catholic-school kid from Baltimore, with a thin nose, glasses, and a cap pulled down over his high forehead, awaits Cedric’s designation. “George Bush’s son.” More laughter.

Phillip Arden wants one, too. “What about me?”

“Give me a few days,” says Cedric, smiling broadly, feeling a first blush of social acceptance—he might possibly make some friends up here. “I’ll get it. I’ll come up with one for you, too.”

They disperse into the midafternoon sun, with much of the day having already passed. Classes start tomorrow, Tuesday, and there’s a bustle on Thayer Street, College Hill’s main drag of latte bars, used-record nooks, boutiques, bookstores, sandwich counters, pizzerias, and
copy shops. Like a small town hurrying to prepare for the harvest, everything here is left until the Labor Day sunshine starts to cast long shadows.

With his new ID, Cedric meanders into the huge, three-story Brown bookstore. He needs to buy books for the courses he’s signed up for—Spanish, Calculus, and Richard Wright—and look for a fourth course in catalogs they have at the store’s resource desk that include candid course critiques from student surveys.

He waltzes onto the second floor, through long rows of books marked with yellow index cards noting course titles. With each step, his anxiety about gaps in his current level of learning seems to grow. He begins to wander, gazing at titles and authors: Sylvia Plath’s The
Bell Jar
, Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, another of Woodrow Wilson. All people from another country. Some of the names sound vaguely familiar. Most draw a blank.

A short girl with dark curly hair is standing next to him in front of
Beowulf
. He notices her intermediate Spanish 1 book, the low-intermediate section he’s figuring on joining. “You taking that Spanish?”

She turns, surprised but pleasant.