Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (19 page)

It was easy to see how both sides in the racial conflict could turn their venomous arrows of hate and anger and fear at us. After all, we were a reminder of the ideal of racial harmony they had abandoned; we were a reminder of how much work still had to be done, on both sides, before racial concord could truly exist. But also, and most important, we were a reminder that it could be done. That Americans, despite their racial and cultural differences, can find common ground, can treat each other with respect if not with love. Though Gall and I were husband and wife, at the bottom of our relationship there lay a genuine friendship founded on mutual trust and respect for each other as individuals. And reciprocated trust and respect are prerequlsites for racial harmony.

During the two years Gail and I had been together, we had, like most couples, experienced ups and downs, games of tug of war-I would pull away, then she would pull away. But the odyssey and ordeals had taught us much, had made us grow. Now that we were married, and accepted the responsibilities that accompanied our union, we had begun moving about naturally, sure of our feelings for each other. We moved forward together, rather than pulling in opposite directions. I hoped her family would notice these important changes and give us their unqualified blessing.

Two weeks earlier Gail had received from her father a copy of a sermon on desegregation he had delivered at a church in Saginaw, Meeting the Family.

Michigan, in 1961. The gist of the sermon was that white Christians should let blacks move into their all-white neighborhoods. Whites should not worry about their children marrying blacks, he argued, because it seldom happens that a girl marries “the boy next door.”

Gail and her brother Dan puzzled over their father’s motive in sending it. Gail’s father had a history of being criticized for being too liberal and pro-black in his sermons.

It was a warm, blue, and beautiful weekend in early March 1986.

The Ernsbergers had arranged to meet at the Museum of Natural History, but in typical Ernsberger fashion, this entailed one-and-ahalf-hour waits at three separate entrances.

At last Gail found me wandering about the cavernous entrance hall. She took me by the hand and led me down the broad stone steps to meet her father. The moment he saw me he threw his arms wide open and embraced me. I was flabbergasted. I glanced at Gail; tears of joy filled her eyes.

Years later Gail asked her father about his changed attitude toward me.

Dr. Ernsberger replied that there had been “no change whatsoever. At least, no conscious change.”

“My earlier reservations had nothing to do with accepting Mark as a future son-in-law,” he said. “It’s just that like any father, I wanted my little girl to have the most hassle-free, stress-free existence. I wanted her to have the best possible start out of the blocks.”

“Why did you think I’d have all sorts of problems if I married Mark?”

“I specialize in marital therapy, babe, I should know,” he replied.

“I’ve counseled mixed couples before. Being an interracial couple adds external stress to a marriage, and marriage, by nature, has a lot of stress already bullt into it. Coming out of a failed marriage myself, I’m very aware of the stresses and strains involved in any marital relationship. Then there are additional strains between the couple and the envlroning society. The stress placed on mixed couples in a racist society is considerable, at times intolerable. And when a coupIe becomes socially isolated, that really creates stress.”

“Then why did you embrace Mark?”

“It was a spontaneous act of admiration. I had some worries and concerns at first, but that doesn’t mean your father is a bigot. Why shouldn’t I have embraced my future son-in-law?”

Gail’s father, brothers, and I left the brilliant sunshine and entered the museum. We began at the African cultures wing. I explained the significance and symbolism of various ceremonial masks and artifacts.

Throughout the museum visit Dr. Ernsberger kept watching Gail and me, as if studying how we interacted. His occasional remarks suggested that he was well satisfied with what he saw. At one point I furtively and quickly removed my gold wedding band: Gail and I were, after all, not yet “married.”

The highlight of the weekend was Sunday brunch overlookIng the water at South Street Seaport. Gail, her father, her two brothers, Paul’s wife, Debbie, Dan’s girlfriend, Lisa, and I splurged on a gourmet, all-you-can-eat, free-champagne brunch in a breezy room flooded with light. A black woman played romantic tunes on a grand piano and sang in the background. We were all relaxed and smiling as we made champagne toasts.

“To Gail and Mark,” her father said, raising his tall narrow glass.

“Hear, hear,” the others said amid clinking glasses and again congratulated us on our engagement.

Following brunch the seven of us strolled lazily through the crowds of southern Manhattan and rode the Staten Island Ferry across the bay. A thousand memories flooded my mind as I thought of those months I lived on Staten Island, those months of struggle and emotional turmoil. Then I looked up and saw the woman I had shared it all with, the woman who was now my wife, and I smiled.

Now that I felt welcomed by Gail’s parents and her brothers, I fervently wished she could someday meet my own dear family. It would complete the circle of our marriage.

GAIL’S VIEW

In late June 1987 the phone rang in my Brooklyn apartment. Stumbling out of bed, I groped for the receiver and managed a hoarse “Hello?”

“Sweets? I have a surprise for you. Can you be at JFK Saturday morning around ten?”

“Yes, but what for?” uMy family is arriving from South Africa.”

“What!”

“Yes, darling, they’re on their way,” Mark said. “It’s all arranged.

Oprah Winfrey is paying for their airline tickets and putting them up at the Sheraton in Midtown for a few days.”

“How did Oprah get involved in all this?” I asked.

“It all happened so fast,” Mark said. “She was walking down some street one evening with her boyfriend and saw the Boy displayed in the window. She bought it, read it, and was deeply moved.

She then began a nationwide hunt for me. At last she found me here in High Point. We talked for over an hour. She asked about the family and I told her that I hadn’t seen them in nine years and wanted dearly for them to visit America. Oprah was eager to help and she arranged and paid for everything. What a wonderful soul she is.”

I could hardly believe my ears. It was not only the coincidence of everything and the mention of Oprah’s name that surprised me.

What astounded me most was that Mark’s mythical family would soon become reality. I could not imagine Mark surrounded by his mother, grandmother, and siblings. To me he had been a solitary intellectual, a loner in an American world of bewildering extremes and contradictions that had severely tested the down-to-earth values his family had instilled in him. Sometimes it seemed his closest friends were dead writers: Gibbons, Wright, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hughes, Shelley, DuBois , Keats, Tennyson.

To me his family members were characters in Her Boy. There was a long-suffering and courageous mother; a dignified, queenly atriarch named Granny, resplendent in colorful African garb and bracelets; a younger sister named Florah who had lived through the same hunger and terrors Mark had; and a brother George whom Mark nearly smothered to death in an attempt to keep him quiet during a police invasion of their ghetto neighborhood.

The youngest two, Linah and Diana, had been so small when their eldest brother left South Africa at age eighteen that even Mark had only a vague idea of what his own sisters would be like.

“You must be excited to see them,” I said. “It’s been nine years. I can’t believe I’ll finally get to meet your mother.”

“I’ll probably want to spend some time alone with them at first,” he said. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I said. But, deep down, I had already begun to fear that I might lose Mark to a group of loving strangers I had not yet met. Up to that point, I felt that I alone, besides Stan and Margie Smith, had been his family in America. Now his real family was coming-full of love and eagerness to see him and hold him again. Perhaps, I thought anxiously, he will never again need me as powerfully as he did when it was just the two of us against the world.

I went to the airport on the JFK Express train. It was Saturday. I wore a casual blouse and matching skirt and fastened my hair, now grown long, with a barrette.

Once in the airport, it was not difficult to spot Mark, Oprah, and her boyfriend Stedman Graham. The ABC network crew surrounded them, shining bright spotlights on the double doors leading out of customs, pointing a large microphone at Mark, then at Oprah, then at Mark again.

Oprah’s presence created quite a commotion, and travelers pushed through the crowd to snap photos of her.

Ellie Spiegel, the director of programs at International House, arrived with her husband, Hans, to witness the grand event.

“Have you met Oprah yet?” Ellie asked me.

“Oh, no, of course not,” I said. I had been hiding in the back of the crowd behind a pillar. Even Mark was not aware of my arrival. I wanted to stay out of the way as much as possible. This was Mark’s big event, not mine. And I certainly did not want to draw any attention to myself, especially because I am white and Mark is black.

Before I could express any of these trepidations to Ellie, she had dashed through the crowd and was tugging at Oprah’s arm.

“Hi, Oprah,” Ellie said with her usual zest. “Have you met Mark’s fiancEe?”

“Iiance!” Oprah exclaimed. “No, is she here?”

I looked for a way to escape, but Ellie took my hand and pulled me through the crowd toward Oprah. I saw Oprah’s large brown eyes grow even larger when she spotted me. Stedman glanced at me and seemed to stiffen. I almost died of embarrassment.

Before Oprah and I could exchange more than a hello, a cry of excitement arose from the crowd and Mark’s family emerged from customs wearing acrylic knit caps. I quickly withdrew to my original place behind the pillar to watch, unobserved. I could not believe how small and malnourished they all looked as they walked up the ramp on thin legs. George’s hair was yellowed at the ends, probably from a lack of protein.

Granny, Mark’s mother, Florah, George, Linah, and Diana all descended on Mark in a pack, wrapping all twelve arms around him.

Watching him hug his mother touched me deeply and I could not keep myself from smiling and laughing and crying along with them.

Oprah snapped photos of the reunion as ABC reporters jockeyed for position, interviewing those who could speak English-George and Florah.

As I stood watching the melee, IIorah surged toward me, having recognized me from a photograph Mark had sent them. She cried, “Are you Gail?”

I nodded slightly, and was hugged with more vigor than I had ever been in my life. She turned and called to Mark’s mother in Tsonga, who gave a cry of delight, rushed toward me, and planted a kiss solidly on my lips. Florah and Mark’s mother, whom I quickiy learned to call Mhani ffsonga for “Mother”), took both my. hands and escorted me out of the airport along with the rest of the throng.

Oprah threw her arm around Granny, who was walking slightly ahead of us, and said, “Hey, Granny! I’m Oprah.” Granny nodded, bewildered by the loving gesture from a total stranger who was speaking to her in an unintelligible language.

Mark’s mother was determined to get me into the limousine with them, but it was already crowded with Mathabanes and I knew Mark wanted to be alone with his family. I said good-bye to everyone and turned to head back to Brooklyn.

“How are you getting into the city?” Oprah asked.

“The same way I arrived,” I said, embarrassed to say, “By subway.”

“You can ride with us,” she said.

“No, that’s all right. Mark wants to be alone with his family.”

“Well, you’re part of the family now,” she insisted. “Come on, hop in.”

As I stepped into the long black limo I wondered, Am I really part this huge /amily? Can I, a white woman, ever truly become integrated into a tight-knit scan clan whose language and customs I don’t yet ally understand? I did not yet realize how much mutual admiration, trust, and affection can be communicated without words.

I sat beside Debbie DiMaio, the producer of the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” and across from Oprah and Stedman, who did not remove his sunglasses, though the limo had tinted windows. Oprah asked me questions about myself and about Mark’s family as we rode. Stedman did not say a word the whole trip, even when Oprah teased him to take off his sunglasses.

He refused. I never saw his eyes. I found it strange that he was so uncommunicative, that he kept his face rigid the entire ride into Manhattan, no matter how many times Oprah tried to make him laugh by cracking jokes. She even kicked off her shoes and threw her legs playfully across his lap, but still he did not smile. I had the awful feeling that his solemn mood had something to do with the fact that I, Mark’s fiancEe, was white. Two years later I learned the reason for his silence, but to reveal that now would be to get ahead of the story.

As the limousine raced down the highway toward Manhattan, Oprah lowered the window and snapped photos of the limousine in the next lane.

Through a half-opened window I caught a glimpse of Mark in the backseat, surrounded by his siblings, his head thrown back in laughter and a smile on his face broader than I had ever seen it. I felt a pang in my chest. Why had I never bare seen him so happy?

Mark seemed an entirely different person. He was no longer the guilt-ridden and brooding loner I had known. A dramatic change had taken place within him, and I felt more than ever that I was losing him to these laughing, loving Africans, who made him happier than I ever could.

When the limousine arrived in front of the Sheraton, Mark was busy ushering his family into the hotel through the revolving doors.

Granny almost got trapped in one: she had never used such doors before.

Knowing that Mark wanted to be alone with them, I slipped away unnoticed, descended into the subway, and waited for the Number 2