New Boy (21 page)

"Mama, this is Rob Garrett," she said. "He's a friend of Roosevelt's. He goes to a school in Connecticut and he's going back tomorrow."

"Pleased to meet you, young man," said Mrs. Gentry. "I saw you at the Braxtons' New Year's Eve party. Latrice told me she had introduced you two." She nodded at Paulette holding my hand. "I guess things must have moved along pretty quickly after that," she said in a good-natured but serious way. There was the slightest hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. "Well, I hate to interrupt you two, but I need Paulette to help me out in the kitchen."

"I'll be there in just a minute, Mama," said Paulette, looking at her mother with an expression of polite exasperation.

"Nice meeting you," said Mrs. Gentry, and she turned and went back into the kitchen. Paulette and I walked outside onto the front porch, still holding hands. It was almost nighttime. Scraps of sunset could be seen through the dark green leaves of the magnolia tree, providing us with enough light to see each other's eyes, each other's mouth, and so we kissed and kissed and kissed some more, clinging to each other until, finally, we
parted, waving to each other until we had both disappeared into the darkness. I raced back to the bus stop feeling on top of the world. Though I was sure my parents would be wondering where I was, I didn't care. When the bus arrived I paid my fare, took a seat, and started to think about Paulette and what she had said about me staying at Draper. I could see her point, but I couldn't imagine being away from her. Suddenly, I noticed the other passengers on the bus. There were only a few. All of them were colored and all of them were seated behind me in the back. I was the only one not sitting among them, and for a moment, I thought of trying to talk them into coming up to the front with me in the white section to start a protest like Miss Rosa did in Montgomery, but before I could do anything, the bus arrived at my stop. I got off and ran all the way home. I had a girlfriend. A real girlfriend. For the rest of the evening, every time I closed my eyes, I could see Paulette's face with her wonderful crooked eye.

At 6:30 the next morning, I was standing on the platform at the railroad station with my bag packed, about to climb onto a train that would take me back to school. I kissed my parents goodbye and climbed aboard the last coach, where, as usual, I had to remain until we reached Washington. I found a seat next to a window so that I could wave to my parents as the train pulled away. I was still thinking about Paulette, about kissing her on her front porch and remembering what she had said about my returning
to Draper. I also thought about the meeting in the basement at Mt. Calvary and how that college fellow Joseph seemed to have an answer for everything. I had felt uncomfortable when I listened to him, the same discomfort I had felt with Michaux. I had to admit, though, that Joseph had thought things through. If he was right, we could do something that Negroes in town had wanted to do for almost a hundred years, maybe even longer. We could make history, which would be a lot better than the history I was making as a student at Draper. The coach lurched, the wheels squealed. Slowly, the train began to move forward, and I looked out the window to wave to my parents, watching them disappear from view. All the while I was thinking about what would happen if I didn't go back to Draper next year. I would be Paulette of course but how would my parents take it? Would I be a failure in their eyes? Would they get over it if I left?

It was snowing lightly when I got back to Draper. Before I went to bed, I could still see individual snowflakes floating outside my window, but when I awakened, the campus and the distant hills were barely visible through a thick curtain of falling snow. It rarely snowed at home, and when it did, it was usually a surprise and a cause for celebration. School would be called off for the day and everyone would try to build a snowman before it got warmer and the snow began to melt. At Draper, however, snow was considered a force of nature, like the summer heat at home, to be endured until the change of season. Every day we trudged back and forth through the ice and slush, from our dormitories to our classrooms, ignoring it, unless a snowball came sailing our way.

Having made the honor roll for the fall marking period, I felt a certain pressure to repeat my success. I had always been on the honor roll at home, but at Draper it seemed like a much bigger challenge. I thought the bleakness of the winter days would eliminate distractions and help me concentrate even more on my schoolwork. After making the honor roll, I had begun to feel confident in my classes. My teachers, especially Mr. McGregor and Mr. Althorp, my English teacher, were calling on me more often. But there was also more to think about in my life than ever before, and after dinner, I would sometimes return to my room with my books and assignments piled on my desk and collapse on my bed, imagining I was sitting next to Paulette on the front steps of her house in the shade of the big magnolia tree with my arm around her waist and her head resting on my shoulder. Or I'd recall the meeting in the basement at Mt. Calvary and my excitement at planning for the sit-in. Even though I wasn't going to get arrested, I would still be able to say I was a part of things, the way Russell and I had been a part of things at the Majestic. And sometimes I'd think of Vinnie, alone in the infirmary, and I'd remind myself to stop by for a visit. Eventually I would struggle to get up from the bed, and would make my way over to the desk to start reading for the next day's assignment. I would get up and raise the window to feel the freezing air in my face before returning to my desk to study, until I couldn't see the words on the page or hold the pencil in my hand and I would fall asleep on the bed without bothering to undress.

"Garrett, I'd like to see you after class," said McGregor one morning as I entered his classroom. "I want to have a word with you." He sounded so distant, as chilly as the weather, and as the class began, I looked out the classroom window at the surface of
the snow, smooth and white, trying to imagine why he would use such a tone with me, what he wanted to see me about. Maybe I had been slacking offa little bit, but not enough to justify a warning, if that was what he was going to give me. As McGregor began the class, his voice sounded warm again. I felt better and, reassured by his tone, I continued to gaze out the window at the snow-covered ground and the leafless skeletons of the trees rising through the snow. Several thin upper branches were trembling under the weight of a flock of sparrows arriving and departing in their midst. "Garrett," said McGregor. I knew he was calling on me to answer a question, but I had no idea what the question was. The sparrows were flitting through the branches, spilling powdered snow onto the ground, when suddenly something startled them and they took off like a swarm of bees in the summertime, taking cover in the shadowy depths of a massive evergreen "Garrett?" McGregor repeated in an intimidating voice. "Do you wish to be excused Garrett?" He had never spoken to
me
that way before, and his tone brought me abruptly back into the classroom. The other students were staring at me with curiosity. A couple of them were smiling.

"No, sir," I said.

"Then tell us, if you will, what were the factors that brought about the Civil War." He was standing in the front of the classroom, looking out the window with his arms folded.

"The inability of the northern states and the southern states to compromise on the issue of slavery was one," I said. "The fact
that the economy of the South was heavily agricultural and the North's was more diverse and becoming more industrial was another, and the other was the fact that the South could not accept being a part of the Union."

"Why couldn't the South accept being in the Union?" said McGregor. He was still looking out the window as though he was the master of all he surveyed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the sparrows dancing in the air. I would have loved to have been among them.

"Because they knew the North was stronger," I said, with a faltering voice.

"What evidence do you have to support that statement?" said McGregor, his right eyebrow arching on his otherwise impassive profile. I could feel him closing in on me.

"Well, the North
was
stronger," I said. "More people, more wealth. They must have known it."

"Yes, yes," McGregor said impatiently, cutting me off. "But what leads you to say that this was the cause of the South's resistance to being a part of the Union?" I knew he had a specific answer in mind, a point that he wanted me to make on his behalf for the class, but I didn't have any idea what it was. In the past, he had often called on me to supply just such an answer, but this time I couldn't help him. Instead I sat mute, for what seemed to be an eternity.

"Did you read the assignment, Garrett?" he said in a cold, sharp voice.

"Yes, sir," I said. "I did." I was lying.

"Then why are you unable to answer my question?" he said.

"I don't know, sir," I said.

"Bingham?" said McGregor. Marty Bingham was overweight and wore thick horn-rim glasses. His beard was so heavy he had to shave twice a day. He sat in the front row of all his classes and always had the answer to every question on the tip of his tongue.

"The South wouldn't accept being a part of the Union because the Southern people found it politically unacceptable, sir," said Bingham. McGregor turned away from the window with a tight smile and went on with the class discussion, mercifully not calling on me again. When the class was over, I stayed behind until the other students had left the room.

"Sit down, Garrett," said McGregor. I took a seat in the front row. He sat on the edge of the desk with his arms folded. "Garrett, I don't know if you realize it, but you have been the subject of considerable discussion recently among the faculty." I was trying to guess what he was driving at. I couldn't think of any rules I had broken.

"How's that, sir?" I said.

"Well, as you know, you're the first colored student we've had at Draper, and there is a great deal of interest among the faculty in having you succeed." This was the first time I had heard anyone mention the faculty's interest in me. In fact, this was the first time anyone at Draper had brought up the subject of my being the first colored student or what was expected of me, except, of
course, in a general sense when Spencer gave his talk to new boys at the beginning of the year. At Draper, there seemed to be an understanding, among the students as well as the faculty, that everyone here was on his own, to sink or swim as best he could. If you had a sound character, you would swim; if you didn't, you would sink. Life was as simple as that.

"I do my best, sir," I said, looking up at him.

"You certainly have," he said, and he cleared his throat. "That is, until recently." He paused, and then continued. "Since you returned from Christmas vacation, you've appeared distracted. I've noticed it and your other teachers have as well. Your papers have been satisfactory, but they are not what we are used to seeing from you. And when you're in the classroom, much of the time you're looking out the window as though your mind is a million miles away. If this keeps up, Garrett, you'll have trouble making the honor roll again." There was another pause. "Is something wrong? Is everything all right at home? If there is something your teachers can do, something we should know about, I assure you, we stand ready to assist you in any way we can."

I didn't know how to respond. Of all my teachers, I liked McGregor the best. I knew that I hadn't been working as hard as before, but I thought I had been doing my best to keep up, and I was turning my papers in on time. I wasn't about to tell him everything that was on my mind. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and for some reason I thought of my mother, when she had hugged me in the kitchen.

"Is there anything else, sir?" I finally said.

"There is one more thing. You have an exam coming up at the end of next week. Judging from your performance so far this marking period, you'll have to do very well on it to receive an honors-level grade in this course." He gave me a long, somber look with his gray eyes until his face eventually broke into a little half-smile. "Your work's cut out for you," he said, sounding almost apologetic.

As I walked back to the dormitory, I kept thinking about what McGregor had said. It was as though he knew something about me, some secret that he was keeping to himself. I also contemplated the reality that once anyone made the honor roll, there was always the danger of falling off. But if you were colored and trying to succeed, the fall could be terrifying, a long, long way down. Even for professionals like my parents and their friends, or famous Negroes whose pictures were in magazines and hanging on the walls of church basements, or colored entertainers who appeared on television sometimes, or even if you were a Negro whom nobody had ever heard of but who had managed to survive, there was always the risk of falling.

McGregor had put the challenge squarely before me, and it was up to me to respond. But the more I thought about it, the more his challenge bothered me. Hadn't I committed myself to the struggle to end segregation? If I wasn't thinking about my courses all the time, it was because I was often thinking about something more important. I wasn't just whiling away the time in the television room, like some students. Of course, McGregor
couldn't know about my involvement with Russell and Joseph, but he could certainly look at me and see that I was different from the others. He had said as much himself. I decided that for the time being, at least, I wasn't going to change a thing. I would still do my schoolwork, but I would also continue to spend time thinking about the future and what it held for me.

On the night before the big exam, I got my homework for my other courses out of the way, and then took a break to read the newspapers. Before I realized it, it was almost midnight. I decided I would have to pull an all-nighter if I was going to study for the exam. I considered not studying at all, just going into class the next morning and taking it cold, but that seemed too much like throwing myself over the edge of the precipice, so I opened my notebook and my classroom texts at 12:10
A.M.
and began to study. By 3:00
A.M.
I could barely keep my eyes open. My head was leaning to one side, and several times I almost fell off my chair. I stumbled downstairs to get a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the dormitory basement. It tasted awful, scalding and burnt, but I drank it anyway, right there in the basement, and it brought me back to life like an elixir. The dorm was silent as a tomb. I trudged back upstairs to my room with only the echo of my own footsteps to accompany me. I resumed, studying, but by five o'clock, I was falling asleep again in my chair. I knew I had to get a few hours of sleep before the exam or I wouldn't be able to get through it. I set my alarm clock for 8:30 and fell onto the bed. The exam was scheduled for 9:00
A.M.
At 8:30 the alarm went off. I reached over and shut it off and lay on my back, trying to clear the cobwebs from my brain, but my fatigue was too great and I slowly drifted back to sleep. I have no idea what awakened me. Perhaps it was the instinct for survival, but at 9:05,1 opened my eyes and looked at the clock and realized that I was already late. I grabbed my notebook, put on my jacket, and raced down the stairs and out of the dormitory to McGregor's classroom. When I entered, the other students in the class were already writing in their exam books. McGregor was seated at his desk in the front of the class and looked annoyed when he saw me. He nodded at me and pointed at the edge of his desk to the test questions and the exam books, and I walked over and took them and found a seat. As soon as I read the questions, I knew that I would do well on the exam if I could stay awake. I was yawning for the entire hour, which drew several angry looks from classmates who were seated nearby. I held my head in my hand the entire time, but I wrote and wrote and wrote. Somehow the answers came to me, and by the end of the class I was sure I had done well. I was giddy with fatigue and relief when I handed in my exam book. I stumbled to my next class, took a seat in the back of the room, and slept through it with my eyes open.