Only the Strong (35 page)

Signing in, she spoke quietly to the familiar nurses on duty. At first she thought she might read to the babies (another Dr. Noel innovation: regularly scheduled reading sessions during which soft-voiced volunteers introduced the newborns to the world of books), but decided instead to take a seat in front of the glass and simply watch them sleep.

The hallowed peace of the well-baby center always calmed her nerves. When she first came there as a volunteer, she attributed its unruffled character to the personality of its founder and the staff of nurses and young doctors that Dr. Noel had personally trained. She realized now that the ambient tranquility could just as easily have derived from the sacred purpose of the place. She learned about sacred purpose in Introduction to World Cultures, a popular class taught at River Valley by Dr. Bernard Murray.

Charlotte had yet to come up with a word comprehensive enough to describe Dr. Murray without help from other words; at semester's end the leading candidates had been
dapper
and
fastidious
. He delivered his lectures, supplemented by anecdotes of his far-flung wanderings, with the force and drama of fervent sermons as he urged his students to uncover the “numinous connection” that bound everything on earth. His pupils often
remarked that his classroom orations put Chaplain Stuckey's pulpit mumblings to shame. Chapel attendance was no longer mandatory, but enough students attended on Sundays to testify that they were ponderous snore-fests. Stuckey, who appeared to be half-asleep himself, made little effort to improve. Indeed, they swore, the only thing longer than his sermons was his nostril hair, which joined his robust mustache in a riotous, barbed tangle above his upper lip. Not so with clean-shaven Dr. Murray. He punctuated his lectures with jokes (occasionally raunchy), animated gestures, and more voices than a ventriloquist. In his version of the fire-and-brimstone cosmos, Illumination was the heavenly, sought-for goal; Ignorance, more punishing than the fiery pits of hell, was inexcusable and to be avoided at the price of one's soul.

Dr. Murray's slides offered visual proof of his epic globetrotting. There he was at the Great Pyramids, his spectacles gleaming, his straw boater resting perfectly on his pomaded head, a pipe clenched between teeth that rivaled Teddy Roosevelt's. There he was outside the Globe Theater in London in his immaculate herringbone three-piece, his bow tie flawlessly knotted.

He was a professed skeptic, an outlook that many of his colleagues saw as detrimental to his character—colleagues whose attachment to what Murray called “conventional belief systems” remained steady even as the rebellious philosophies of the Black Power movement challenged the prayerful civil rights movement. Still, he claimed to have an open mind (an acknowledgement that Charlotte appreciated, since she was still figuring things out) and was often at his most eloquent when describing various religious sites that he had visited. He spoke patiently of civilizations that spent centuries erecting shrines to a distant, bearded god who busied himself with watching over sparrows and counting hairs on human heads while wars devoured children and earthquakes swallowed cities whole. He was even more tolerant of cultures whose gods were half-human, half-animal hybrids and whose scriptures told of permeable boundaries between the living and the dead. Regardless of spiritual practice, he said, in temples and cathedrals he felt a Something that he couldn't describe, a rhythm or power that defied language. The real mystery, he argued, was
not in humanity's compulsion to properly describe it; rather, it was in why we felt compelled to describe it in the first place, instead of just letting it be.

Listening to him, Charlotte thought she knew what he meant. She felt that mysterious Something herself whenever she came to see the babies. Sure, they were helpless. They couldn't feed themselves. They couldn't talk. They had to lie in their own waste until someone handled it for them. And yet, at the same time, they were emissaries from a celestial otherworld, the most perfect beings on earth. To harness science and compassion in their service, as Artinces had done, was, to Charlotte, the ultimate incarnation of the Holy. Reveling in it, she had determined to be a healer.

When Charlotte first got to River Valley, she learned that the science part of her calling was heavier duty than she had previously realized. Her high-school teachers had been diligent but they frequently worked with outdated material. She was dismayed to find that her science textbooks had been, on average, about 12 years old.

“Surprise, surprise,” Percy said when she whined to him about it. “That's the essence of Negro education: catching up. And you thought ‘separate but equal' was all in the past.”

Unlike Percy, Charlotte had to knuckle down and actually study. As her Organic Chemistry final loomed, she was forced to acknowledge that she'd neglected her books all spring. She hadn't spent that much time with Percy; he was more off than on at that point. But that didn't stop her from sitting at the Soldiers or taking solitary moonlit strolls under the constellations that he had pointed out to her.

Finally, Laurie Jo pulled her coat. “I'm going to talk to you like I talk to my own sister,” she said as they sat in their dorm room. “You're really young. There's a lot of men in this world. Chances are you haven't run into the one for you just yet. The fellows you've known are probably just…dress rehearsals. Right now, your soulmate is somewhere else doing something important to make him become the man you need him to be. He might be in Michigan. Or California. Or Bangladesh.”

Charlotte scratched the side of her nose. “Where?”

“I just like saying Bangladesh. Blame it on World Cultures class.”

Laurie Jo made her point so persuasively that Charlotte chose to sit out the opening hours of Indestructible Black Consciousness Day and sequester herself in a cubicle at the library. Black pride could wait, Laurie Jo said. Organic Chemistry could not.

Charlotte strolled across the quad at midmorning, Bromo Seltzer bubbling in her stomach and a Lifesaver melting on her tongue. All around her, fraternity brothers and lettermen were busy transforming the dew-drizzled space into party central. They aligned barbecue grills and stoked them with charcoal, and set up a horseshoe pitch and a volleyball net. Sorority sisters and cheerleaders spread colorful blankets on the grass. On the second story of the education building, massive stereo speakers supported the raised windows. A banner with “IBC” emblazoned on it stretched across the front of the redbrick science building.

In previous years, the event had been christened Brotherhood Day. An all-day picnic in celebration of humanity's God-blessed kinship, it began with a psalm and ended with a benediction, all under the paternal guidance of the surrounding town's civic fathers. Charlotte's freshman year marked a change in theme that coincided with a change in student leadership. The student council president, sporting a sky-high natural and wearing a polished bone pendant dangling from a rawhide cord, became the newly anointed chairman of the board. The treasurer remained treasurer. The recording secretary became minister of information. The newly created post of minister of defense had so far remained vacant. In a dramatic gesture of strength, the new council struck down Brotherhood in favor of Indestructible Black Consciousness, launched without benefit of administration approval or funding.

The leaders laughed off rumors that River Valley's president, widely derided as a lackey of the white power structure, planned to intervene. “They think Jackson State's got us scared,” the chairman had declared at a rally on the quad. “But it's just made us more determined.”

“More determined to have a picnic,” Percy said when told about the rally. “So that's what they mean when they talk about speaking truth to power.”

The students at Jackson State had been demonstrating against the war, a far more noble cause, in Percy's opinion. Police troopers weren't so impressed. They fired on the assembly, killing two and wounding twelve. Students at River Valley held a candlelight vigil in support, amid a growing sentiment that peaceful gatherings of that sort were beginning to outlive their usefulness. The administration had stood pat, believing that students would soon go home for summer break and return the next fall with cooler heads. Meanwhile, less than two weeks after Jackson State, they were preparing to barbecue.

“Kumbaya,” the traditional overture of Brotherhood Day, had been emphatically dismissed. As Charlotte mounted the stairs to the library, Nina Simone was wailing across the quad, threatening to break down and let it all out.

Late afternoon and the stubborn sourness in her mouth roused her from a brief nap. She raised her head from her table and slid her tongue over her crusty teeth. Fishing coins from her purse, she headed to the vending machine in search of a 7UP. She'd nibbled on toast for breakfast and pecked at crackers for lunch, but so far none of her methods had done a thing to reduce the bile insistently brewing in her belly. The sickness stemmed from a late-night encounter outside her dorm room.

She'd stayed in the stacks until closing time before stumbling sleepily to Taplin Hall. Once she reached her room, she let her bag fall loudly at her feet as she reached into her pockets for her key. Sighs and murmurs beckoned. She turned and saw Tish and the round-bellied man devouring each other's mouths. Tish's back was against the wall. The man leaned heavily into her, locked into place by her long, sleek thigh. Tish whispered encouragement as he rubbed his face into her throat, sucked at the hollow between her breasts.

Charlotte snapped forward and threw up, splattering the bottom of her door. The lovers paused and took in Charlotte's mess. Stunned, she returned the stare. The man disengaged from Tish, his pinky ring flashing as he popped his pocket square with
a flourish. Charlotte thought he was going to hand it to her but instead he raised it to his own glistening brow. Chuckling softly, he kissed Tish's cheek with surprising delicacy, and walked past Charlotte to the end of the hallway, where he descended the stairs.

Tish smirked at Charlotte while she buttoned her blouse. “What's the matter?” she taunted. “Never seen how grown folks go at it?”

Charlotte glared. Apparently one slap had not been enough. “How could you?”

Tish took her time, getting her key out of her bag before replying. “How could I what?”

“That's sick,” Charlotte sputtered. “Something's wrong with you. With both of you.”

At last Tish caught her meaning. “Wait. You think because I call him Daddy that he's—you silly little girl. He's not my father. He's my pastor.”

Charlotte retched again. Still bent over, she braced herself by placing one hand against her door. She didn't want to straighten up. Didn't want to look at Tish.

“Careful,” Tish warned. “You almost got my shoes.”

Standing at the machine waiting for her Dixie cup to drop and fill with fizzy liquid, she became conscious of a vague chanting. She figured the frats were stomping the yard as part of the festivities on the quad. But what were they saying? It was only when she got to the window, when she looked out and saw the policemen lined up with their hands on their holsters, that she could finally make out the words, rumbling up from the ground like hints of disaster.

“Jackson State!”

“Jackson State!”

Years later, some who claimed to be among the witnesses or, even more presumptuously, the activists, would swear that hundreds of cops, clad in riot gear and armed to the teeth, lost a bloody battle with an even larger gathering of fearless and fiercely committed students. In reality, less than two dozen semi-concerned officers kept watch over a roughly equal number of students. Acting on
orders from the college president, the cops had come to shut the “illegal” picnic down.

The student resisters had removed the IBC banner that had been hanging across the science building. They held it in front of their thin, ragged line as they chanted. Behind them, perhaps 60 students watched and shouted encouragement from the steps of the science building. From her perch in the library lounge, Charlotte could just make out the stern faces on the front line: fraternity leaders, a football player or two, and the chairman of the board.

The chants grew louder. The policemen fidgeted. Out of nowhere, a stone sailed above the heads of the masses and struck an officer on the shoulder. He unsnapped his holster. The crowd chanted louder as a solitary figure ducked under the banner and approached the officers. Charlotte squinted, although it was entirely unnecessary. She knew that walk anywhere.

In her literature class, the teacher had marveled over Robert Burns's poem “To a Louse,” in which he wishes that humans had the gift “to see ourselves as others see us.” Charlotte hadn't been impressed. She remembered thinking that she already knew how men saw her; their actions throughout her life had made that painfully clear. What was the value in adopting someone else's perspective? In the end, what was to be gained? She insisted on her own point of view because doing otherwise would concede the possibility that she was just a member of the chorus in someone else's play. It would lend credence to the suspicion that she was the spear carrier, the expendable crewman, the scapegoat scribbled into the script to absorb the main character's pain. To take all the punishment and anguish so that the prima ballerina can emerge unscathed, tutu intact, all sparkles and twinkles and pink chiffon. But she was aware, so aware, of what any student in the frightened but unbending mass may have seen when he turned a curious head toward the library window: a small girl lost in clothes too big for her, nearly undone by fear.