The Gilded Years (20 page)

“Look at you two,” said Robert. “Six more months, and you’ll both have college degrees. How did my children turn out so intelligent?”

“You told us we would sleep outside in the hail and snow if we ever came home with poor grades,” said Frederick, laughing.

“Did I say that?” asked Robert, his light gray eyes smiling along. His thin face, different from Anita’s and Dora’s rounder ones, was covered in well-groomed whiskers, cut in the popular English style. Despite his evening of janitorial work, he had changed into a wool lounge suit before coming home to greet his daughter properly. “I’m so pleased I said such an awful thing. It seems to have been effective. Perhaps I should threaten Elizabeth and Robert, too.”

“Anita,” said her mother, when her father had fallen quiet. “Are you lacking for anything in school?”

Anita knew this was the way her mother had of asking: Do the others still think you are a wealthy white student instead of a poor Negro one?

“I’m not lacking for a thing, Mother. I’m still tutoring in Poughkeepsie twice a week,” she said. “And I earn enough from that for my clothes and outings. You both do enough by paying the expensive tuition; I can manage the rest. As for the other matter, everything is as it should be.”

“I’m so glad to hear it. We do worry so much about you there, hiding certain realities, and for what? To have the education you’re entitled to, I suppose. I wish things could be different for you.”

“But they might never be,” said Anita, reaching for her mother’s hand while trying to keep Porter Hamilton out of her thoughts.

“Don’t say that,” said Dora. “Just finish your year, come home to us, and be my daughter again.”

“I’m still your daughter,” said Anita, feeling tears of guilt building in her throat.

“Of course you are,” said Dora.

Anita got up from her chair and went to sit by her mother, folding her body onto the floor and letting her head fall into her lap.

“You’re my brave girl,” said her mother, smoothing her daughter’s straight black hair, identical to her father’s. “You’re my smart, brave girl.”

For another hour, the four of them sat in the sparsely furnished living room and spoke about the Christmas holiday, about Anita’s and Frederick’s studies and what the two of them hoped to do after graduation. Knowing that her parents could not pay for any more schooling, as they had to save for her two youngest siblings, Anita did not mention her plans for graduate school and instead maneuvered
the conversation toward her brother. Frederick wanted to start work as a chemist immediately, and was aware that his chances of obtaining employment were best in Boston, where the MIT professors could assist him.

Anita looked at her father flush with pride as he listened to Frederick speak of his future. Robert Hemmings Sr. had never been able to make plans or weigh choices the way his two oldest children were now doing, brimming with optimism. His mother, Sarah, was illiterate her whole life. Impregnated by his white father as a young woman, she had never married and had little to offer her son in their tiny wooden dwelling in Virginia. She gave him love, rags for clothes, and a strong head for independence, but that was all. His children had been given so much more.

In Robert’s rural southern town, there hadn’t been a school for Negroes until 1866, and by that time he was twenty-three, had seen the horrors of the Civil War and had dreams to leave the South forever. He and Dora had married at twenty-eight and eighteen respectively, and had left Virginia without a backward glance. Anita had come along shortly after their arrival in Massachusetts. Robert and Dora Hemmings had made it plain to their children that they had no fondness for the state of Virginia but refrained from speaking about their childhoods past that. Massachusetts hadn’t brought them wealth, but it had brought them hope. Their children went to fine integrated Boston schools; they weren’t scared for their lives. They were only scared for Anita.

Before Anita went upstairs for the night to the room she shared with her sister, and Frederick to the one he shared with Robert Jr., her brother stopped her at the stairs and put his finger to his lips. He led her quietly by the arm into the cramped kitchen.

“We need to talk about Phil Day,” he whispered, trying to get close to the heat still coming from the open fire.

“Lottie hasn’t forgotten you,” Anita whispered back, “but she’s starting to. The man we found as her escort for Phil, Joseph Southworth, he was perfect for her. Amusing, too. Everybody was pleased with him.”

“And you?” asked Frederick, firmly. “Whom were you pleased with?”

“Not Porter Hamilton, if that’s what you’re implying,” said Anita. She hated to lie to Frederick, but it was four days before Christmas and if she told him the truth, she feared their holiday would be ruined. She would confess everything to him in a letter when she was back at school. She wanted to give him time to think about it away from their family; she couldn’t risk him confiding in her parents now. If they knew, they wouldn’t let her return to Poughkeepsie.

“He was not your escort at Phil?” Frederick probed.

“No. He was present, but I didn’t share one dance with him. We exchanged a few polite words and I spent my time with others. But not one longer than the next.”

“Good,” said Frederick, relaxing. “That has been weighing on me, Anita. I understand the temptation, but you cannot. You never can.”

“I know,” said Anita. “I understand that now.” She gave her brother a kiss on the cheek and said, “Good night, Frederick. I’m so happy we are both home.” Anita felt her face contorting with her lies, but Frederick, appeased, didn’t appear to notice his sister’s strained expression or the tension in her step as she walked up the creaking wooden stairs to the top floor.

T
hree days after Christmas, Anita had just finished getting dressed to stand by Elizabeth Baker as she married William Henry Lewis at St. John the Evangelist Church when her friend took her by surprise. Bessie walked into her bedroom in her parents’ small Cambridge house and closed the door quickly behind her.

Like so many Negroes Anita knew, Bessie had been born in the South and had come north as a child. Her family was from Halifax, Virginia, a small town on the Tennessee border. Her father, Eldridge Baker, had been a laborer there, but in Cambridge he worked as a salesman and as a waiter in a hotel. Bessie had left Virginia as a baby and had never returned. One night in their shared room at Northfield, Anita and Bessie had looked out their large window over the campus, down the hill to Dwight Moody’s white cottage with its double chimneys, and had agreed to never travel to the state their parents had fled. That same night, Bessie had confided in Anita that she had been born when her mother, Caroline, was still unmarried. She sometimes thought—though she felt sinful for entertaining such thoughts—that Eldridge, the only father she had ever known, was not her biological one as she was so much
lighter-skinned than her siblings and was born before her mother married him.

But all of that was forgotten now. It was her wedding day, and to Bessie, and by extension Anita, the world was perfect for one afternoon.

Bessie was wearing her wedding dress of brown and gray camel’s hair, topped with a coat basque, the front a beautiful heliotrope silk. Her wide hat, with black velvet trim, matched her gown and gloves. Anita looked down at Bessie’s long, slender hands; instead of holding flowers, she clutched a white leather prayer book. Anita opened her arms wide to embrace her friend.

“Oh Bessie, you’re getting married!” she said. There was no one, not even her family, whom she missed the way she missed Bessie. Bessie had been with her when she was living as a white student. In their shared room, Anita was able to let her guard down every night, something she sorely missed at Vassar.

“I am,” said Bessie, embracing her friend, her prayer book pressed tight against the back of Anita’s blue silk and lace dress. “And to the most wonderful man. I can’t wait for you to meet him properly. He’s primed to do important things in his lifetime. He already has, but I think all this—Harvard and football—is just the beginning. There’s much more coming for him.”

Even though William Henry Lewis was already a legend in the Negro community in Massachusetts, and one with strong ties to local white political leaders, he and Bessie had decided to keep their wedding intimate. There were but forty guests in the pews, and most were prominent Negroes from Cambridge, Wellesley, and Boston. Anita and Bessie watched from the carriage as their families entered the church. Along with them were respected Negro men,
friends of William, and whom Bessie pointed out to Anita as they made their way in through one of the three front doors.

“That is Dr. Samuel Courtney,” she noted as one man walked from a hansom to the church. “A renowned physician. Oh, but more importantly, the older man behind him with the closely cropped hair and whiskers is the famous Archibald Grimké. He is the nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and a fellow graduate of Harvard Law School. He currently serves as American consul to the Dominican Republic. A noted writer, too. I’ve never made his acquaintance myself, but William was telling me he would make time in his travels to attend, and here he is. How kind of him.”

“Of course he did,” said Anita, watching the parade of distinguished men with interest. “William is marrying the most beautiful woman in Massachusetts. Who wouldn’t want to attend?”

After an emotional moment a few minutes later in which Bessie pledged that her marriage would do nothing to change their friendship, Anita walked her down the aisle to William, who was standing with his best man, J. Howard Lee of Newton, Massachusetts.

Anita and Bessie had been so alike until they went to Northfield together. From the day they had filled out their short applications, Anita had made the irreversible decision to be a white student, foreseeing passing as the only way she could gain admission to Vassar, and Bessie, though physically she could have done the same, chose not to. But on Bessie’s wedding day, Anita felt as if they were the same girls again, from similar backgrounds and on a
shared path.

She had often wondered what her life would be like if she had not decided to study for the Vassar entrance exam, but had remained a Negro and tried to gain admission to Wellesley.
Harriet Alleyne Rice had been the first Negro to graduate from that notable school, in 1887, but she and Bessie knew that Wellesley was not likely to admit two in two years. Bessie was only the third Negro to be granted admission, and nearly ten years after the first and second. Anita hadn’t wanted to take Bessie’s place. That’s what she remembered telling herself at the time. But the truth was, she had wanted to go to Vassar since that day in church; she just wasn’t sure how. Yes, Mame Marshall had suggested passing, but that did not take care of the paperwork. Northfield—a boarding school that bright women of little means attended after graduating from less demanding high schools—made it a possibility. The school, which some entered for only a year or two, was excellent at preparing women for college entrance exams and provided her with distance from her Boston high school, which had her in its records as Negro. But Northfield did much more than that. To live in a place where differences were embraced and genuinely Christian principles trumped prejudices taken as God’s truth elsewhere, gave Anita the confidence she needed to fill out her Vassar application and to say yes when she was accepted.

It was not until well after the ceremony that Anita was able to properly speak to William Lewis, and she quickly understood why not just the Negro community of Boston, but white, educated Boston, had fallen under his spell. He had eyes with a rare depth and brightness, a firm build and broad face with a soft wave of black hair parted elegantly in the middle. He was almost as light-skinned as she and Bessie were, though not enough to disavow Negro heritage.

“Thank you for being part of today,” he said, bowing to Anita. “Bessie is fonder of you than you’ll ever know.”

“And I of her,” said Anita, taken aback by William’s commanding presence.

“Good,” he said, watching Anita change her casual posture to match his formality. “She is a woman who should be loved.”

Anita nodded and looked around the room for her friend, but she was busy greeting other guests. She glimpsed Bessie’s sister, Gertrude, whom she had already spoken with, mentioning nothing about her trip to Radcliffe. Feeling a familiar wave of shame about her behavior that day, she turned back to William and changed the subject. “Bessie told me that it was W. E. B. Du Bois who introduced you, when you were a student at Amherst.”

“That’s right,” said William, speaking informally about the great Negro leader. “Elizabeth and W. E. B., along with the other Boston-area students—Harvard’s William Monroe Trotter and others—they all attended my graduation. I was not the only Negro graduate that year; my Virginia Normal classmate William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson and George Washington Forbes of Ohio graduated, too.”

“Three Negroes graduated in the same class?”

“Yes, class of 1892. Life opened its gates for me at Amherst, Anita. It wasn’t like Elizabeth’s experience has been at Wellesley. I was not alone.”

“I can’t imagine,” said Anita, who had never been in a class with three Negroes.

“No, you can’t,” he said, softening slightly, his words coming slower. “But I will tell you one anecdote and maybe you’ll have a better idea of my school. In my early days there, the president of Amherst College handed me tuition money while I was working as a horse groomer. I was standing in a barn brushing an Appaloosa, and he came and put a stack of notes in my palm. It was quite a bit more than I would have made in six months of grooming horses and he said it came straight from God himself. Can you imagine that?
According to President Merrill Gates, God was set on my graduating as an Amherst man. And then I captained the football team. It was a memorable four years.” He allowed a small smile to show on his broad, proud face.

Anita could barely comprehend what William was describing. She knew he had been a football captain and star at Harvard, the first Negro all-American as a law student and then a coach, but she had not known of his happiness at Amherst. It was painful to realize that there were academic communities that embraced the Negro scholar, but hers was not one of them.