Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (12 page)

“And Mark respects me for being a feminist,” I said. “He says white women are seen as weak and submissive compared to black women, who are raised to be tough and assertive. He says I have to be strong and stand up for my rights as a woman, especially in a place like New York.”

0That’s so true,” my mother said. “He sounds like a really nice guy.

Do you have a picture of him?”

I bounded upstairs two at a time to fetch a color snapshot of Mark, taken as he raised his fist for emphasis during an antiapartheid lecture.

“He’s cute,” my mother said.

Happily chatting, we finished our breakfast and my mother left to do errands. She returned two hours later with a stack of library books by Nadine Gordimer.

“Mom, what are those for?” I asked.

“I have to read up for the day I meet Mark,” she said smiling.

I knew then that I had won my mother’s sympathy. I joyfully threw my arms around her neck and laughed. Mom laughed too, and hugged me in return. Still embracing her I said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

“Love is complex,” she said. “Sometimes it doesn’t need to be understood. It needs only to be accepted.”

I spent the entire afternoon with my mother, talking, drinking tea, listening to records, and recalling shared memories. Both of us felt close and light-hearted, but as evening approached and the hour of my father’s return from the office drew near, I grew tense.

“What do you think he’ll do, Mom?” I asked. “I know he won’t accept it as easily as you have.”

“You’re right,” she said. “He couldn’t sleep all night just knowing you were with a foreigner.”

“Does he suspect Mark is black?”

“No, of course not. He’d have gone through the roof.”

“Will you tell him?”

“It’s your life, honey. You have to tell him.”

“Will he disown me?”

“He loves you too much ever to do that, Gail. You’re his orly daughter and youngest child. He treasures you. He doesn’t want to lose your love. Maybe that’s why he’s always disapproved of your boyfriends and told you they’re not good enough for you. He loves you too much to let you go. He’s afraid you’ll get hurt.”

I did not tell my father that evening, or the next. I almost told him one morning when we were shoveling two feet of snow off the driveway, then changed my mind. My father and I went to the Calhoun Beach Club together to lift weights and sit in the whirlpool, but neither of us brought up the topic of Mark. We went to some indoor tennis courts and played mixed doubles with another father-daughter pair. I was enjoying our time together and did not want to spoil it by bringing up a topic I knew made him uncomfortable. All he did was give me his advice: “Why don’t you keep looking for a place of your own, honey?”

He probably already knows Mark is black, I thought to myself on the plane as I headed back to New York without having told him.

Now that Mom and my brothers know, it won’t be long until heflnds out.

Every other day I went to my brother’s apartment to type more chapters of my novel into his computer. I could tell my father had talked to Paul, for my brother started sounding more like my dad each day. He stood behind me at the computer. I could feel his presence as I tried to concentrate on the screen.

“So, are you looking for another place to live?” Paul asked.

“No,” I replied.

Later his wife, Debbie, sat down beside me and said, “Gail, we both feel living together is a big deal. There needs to be a commitment, and we just don’t get the feeling that you’re ready to make such a big commitment. We feel protective toward you. We don’t want to see you make a mistake or get hurl.”

Was my father trying to apply pressure on me indirectly by getting Paul and Debbie to agree with him? At first it was easy for me to tell myself, They just don’t understand our relationship. But with time I began to miss my solitude and independence. I was not ready to invest what little money I had in joint ventures with Mark-in buying a vacuum cleaner and dishes and a toaster oven and a down cornforter.

The growing intensity of our commitment to each other made me panic. I was only twenty-three. I liked to meet my girlfriends for dinner in East Village cafes. I enjoyed going to parties in Soho and dances with Carol Abizaid and other friends from Brown. I felt an occasional need to flee from Mark’s brooding concernřwith apartheid and injustice and indulge myself by having fun. Besides, I was not convinced I had the strength to stand up to the social pressures against interracial couples. I decided it would be best for me to search for a place of my own and let my commitment to Mark grow at a more gradual and natural pace, if it was meant to.

Carrying a tattered map of New York City in one hand and the Village Voice apartment share ads in the other, I searched for affordable rooms in Hoboken, Queens, and Brooklyn. At last I found a warm, sunny room in Park Slope to share with an honest, intelligent young woman named Michal.

My father was overjoyed to hear the news. He was particularly happy to hear that Michal was a graduate student at the same school he once attended-Union Theological Seminary. My brother Dan and his girlfriend, Lisa, helped me move. Mark looked morose as he helped us load my belongings-a tent, a sleeping bag, boxes of books and journals, a guitar, a pair of cross-country skis, and a box of artist supplies-into the trunk of Lisa’s car.

As soon as I got settled into my new place I invited Mark to dinner.

He made excuses not to come. Weeks went by, then months, and still he had not come to Brooklyn to see my new room or meet Michal. After my mother’s visit to New York in March, during which she quizzed Mark about his immigration status and told me that Dad disapproved of our relationship, Mark became distant. After his brothersin-law were murdered in Alexandra, he pulled away Theyond reach. When he stopped calling me, I knew something’was wrong. When I pressed him to tell me what was going on in his heart and mind, he told me it was pointless to continue our relationship.

“Gail, your father doesn’t approve!” he said emphatically. “We can’t go on pretending he does. You have to understand my position.

Your father might do something drastic, like calling the I.N.S. and having me deported.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” I said.

“Wouldn’t he? I can’t talk now. I have to go.”

Mark started cutting the conversation short each time I called.

Once he told me he could not talk to me and listen to the news at the same time. When he left for his promotional tour without calling to say good-bye, I knew he was determined to end our relationship.

In despair over losing Mark, I became angry at my father. It’s all his fault, I thought to myself. All my misery and hurt over being abandoned by Mark was channeled into an uncontrollable rage against my father. One April night my anger became so intense that I could not sleep. I got up at four in the morning, switched on my desk lamp, sat down, and wrote my father the following letter:

April 20, 1988

Dad, I’m writing regarding the lack of emotional support I receive from you. I don’t feel as though you believe I will ever become a writer.

In your “commandant” style you have always tried to mold me into what you wanted to show off to the neighbors: a doctor, a TV anchorwoman, anything but what Fwanted to be. You have even tried to direct and must entrust to a worthy owner. I’m not anyone’s possession!

manipulate my affections for men, as if I were a possession which you As for your latest move, sending Mom out here to ask Mark about his status in this country and to tell me that “Dad does not want to encourage Mark in anyway,” I have to respond the only way I can-in pure hate.

I’m sure you will be rubbing your hands in glee to ilnd that since Mom’s visit, Mark has distanced himself from me. Our relationship, which Is of immense importance to both of us, Is almost over. Wlly?

FIrst of all, he is hurt that you won’t approve of him even though you have never met him. Secondly, he is afraid you will approach the media, tell them that a black SouthAfrican is trying to use his daughter to gain citizenship, and that he will be kicked out of this country and be sent to prison or executed in his own.

Whether his fear is founded or not, it is very real to him. I know this news probably gives you great joy, but I’m going through hell, and decided to send you some of it.

GNL P.S. Of course I remember the times when you were a good father to me, and they make me cry. Perhaps because I wish it were always so.

A few days later, when I returned home from work, the phone rang. It was my father. He was crying.

“I love you so much,” he said between breathless sobs, “but I feel like you don’t even know me. I feel as if I were a stranger to my own daughter.”

Tears sprang to my eyes.

“How could you think I’m not supportive of you as a writer?” he asked.

I tried to sound angry at first, but my feelings rushed up to squeeze the words lodged in my throat.

“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked. “You sound all choked up.”

“I?ve had a terrible month,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just had so much rage and pain inside I wanted to blame it on someone.”

0That letter hurt me very deeply. I feel like there’s a huge, red, gaping wound between us.”

As we talked he began to realize that the angry letter had arisen from the depths of a profound depression that I had not even realized I was in.

4If you love Mark, go after him!” my father said. “I’ll never stand in your way. I never wanted to interfere with your relationship with Mark. Mother was very impressed with him. She said he is another Gandhi. If you love him, go after him. GO after HIM!!” Kis voice faded, he sounded emotionally exhausted. “Do you think your father is a racist? Me? What do you take me for?”

We talked for a while longer about Mark, about my novel, about my roommate and having my own room. Suddenly he asked, “Do you still hate me?”

“No,” I said. “I love you very much.”

We were both crying when we hung up. First I wept for having hurt my father so deeply. Then I wept over the fact that, now that we had my father’s blessing, Mark was out of my life.

I survived the next week like a zombie, trying to come to grips with the fact that I was now alone. Every Thursday I went to my Russian tutor on Seventy-second Street, Inessa, who corrected my Russian essays and had me read to her from Pushkin. This week’s essay was about my father and his suspicion that my foreign boyfriend just wanted American citizenship.

“Your boyfriend, he is Russian?” Inessa asked in broken English.

“No, South African.”

“He is black?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then I think your father has right. I’m not a racist, but I think it is not good to have relations with these people. Look how he abandoned you when he found out your father’s feelings. It means he only wanted citizenship. They may be good in the bed, but there are more important things.”

I must have looked downcast, for Inessa continued, “But you are a very young girl. When I was your age in Moscow, I had many boyfriends. I went to the theater, to concerts, to films, but never to the bed. You must have self-respect. You could get a disease or get a baby. A man will give you money and say, Here, go get an abortion.”

You are an educated girl from a good family. You must be selective.”

“But I loved him,” I said, feeling the tears rise.

“I don’t think it was a real love,” Inessa said firmly I left that tutoring session feeling vulnerable and sad, as if I had foolishly exposed my innermost self to someone who would never understand my true feelings.

One night when Michal was visiting her parents in Chicago, the doorbell rang. As usual, I opened the third-floor window, stuck my head into the night air, and tried to see who was on the stoop.

Mark was standing there in his maroon Adidas sweat suit with the white stripes. He held a suitcase in each hand. My heart began to race.

“What are you doing here?” I yelled down to him.

“I got lost!” Mark replied, his wire-rim glasses gllnting in the streetlighL He was smiling and laughing, obviously overjoyed to see me.

“Why do you have those bags?” I asked.

“I came straight from the airport.”

I went downstairs to let him in. He stood in the doorway expecting a kiss. Disguising my delight with indifference, I picked up his bags and hauled them upstairs without even pausing to say hello. He had hurt me deeply, and I was not planning to let him off the hook lightly.

He talked a mile a minute about his publicity tour, which had taken him to all the major cities in America, then he began praising the oil painting I had been working on to take my mind off him.

“I had no idea you were such a fine artist,” he said. “You should have been painting all along. You should be selling these. I like the colors. How did you get the proportions right? I had no idea…”

He went on and on. “Can I put my juice in the refrigerator?”

“I don’t think it would be worth the effort. You can’t stay here tonight.”

Mark looked hurt and pouted innocently.

“You can’t just pull away and then reenter my life at will!” I said.

“I’ve spent weeks trying to get over you, and now you come back as if nothing happened.”

“My feelings for you haven’t changed,” he said.

“It’s a fine time to tell me that now.”

“While we were apart I realized that the book, the publicity tour, even my career as a writer are meaningless compared to the feelings that we share. Love, truth, simplicity, integrity-those make up the kernel of life. Everything else is worthless chaff.”

“You wanted to break up with me. Is it because I’m white?”

“To be honest,” he began, then hesitated. “To be honest I did think, for a while at least, that it would be better for both of us to marry within our race. I felt my life would be much simpler if I married a black woman. And yours too if you married white.” He paused for a moment, awaiting a response, then continued, “I don’t want to be accused of betraying the black race or of turnjng my back on the struggle in South Africa. But that was my head speaking, not my heart.