After The Wild Child's death she could not live on campus, although she continued to attend classes, and lived instead in the ghetto that surrounded it. It was a poor community but friendly and very clean. In order to pay her rent and to buy other items that one needed at a school like Saxon--tennis racket, bathing suit, ballet slippers and tights, etc.--she went to work as a typist for a professor who had recently retired and whose office was a few blocks from her door. He was a very old man who had, years ago, known her mother's family. It was her mother who encouraged her to take the job, reminding her that her father could not afford to send Meridian the two or three dollars a week she had asked him to send. His health was poor, and with the loss of the farm he was diminished in every way. He was no longer qualified to teach, now that integration was threatening the schools, and was doing odd jobs when and where he could find them.
It was her mother who first noticed that Meridian's thick, shoulder-length hair was beginning to thin. She even essayed a joke about how Meridian should be careful not to wind up bald, like Nelda's mother. It did not surprise Meridian that her hair came out as she combed it, any more than it surprised her that her vision sometimes blurred. She was too driven to notice; and it seemed essential to her then that whatever happened to her she should be prepared to accept. Besides, she was in love, with Truman.
The Conquering Prince
TRUMAN STOOD ON THE other side of the screen door in a flowing Ethiopian robe of extravagantly embroidered white, his brown eyes aglow with excitement. Everyone thought him handsome because his nose was so keen and his skin was tan and not black; and Meridian, though disliking herself for it, thought him handsome for exactly those reasons, too. Or had, until, when she had known him for about a year, she began to look closely at him. With scrutiny, much of the handsomeness disappeared behind the vain, pretentious person Truman was. And his teeth were far from good.
But the sly, serious double takes were still in the future. Therefore, she threw open the door for him with such passionate force it banged like a shot against the wall. Truman strode in like a conquering prince returning to his lands.
"You look fantastic!" Meridian breathed, as she cuddled up in his arms.
"Et toi aussi," he replied in French. "Tu es tres magnifique!"
Truman loved all the foreign cultures of the world, but his favorite was French. He had spent a year in Avignon and Paris. He believed profoundly that anything said in French sounded better, and he also believed that people who spoke French were better than people (les pauvres, les miserables!) who did not.
Therefore, "Bon!" said Meridian--which was the only French expression with which she felt comfortable. Luckily, she understood the language better than she spoke it, because Truman would continue to speak it throughout the evening. When he talked to her she had to translate every syllable into English before answering. Their conversation moved slowly. But it didn't matter. She loved being with Truman. She felt protected when she was with him. To her he was courageous and "new." He was, in any case, unlike any other black man she had known. He was a man who fought against obstacles, a man who could become anything, a man whose very words were unintelligible without considerable thought. She also wanted to make hot, quick, mindless love with him whenever he was near. When he touched her now, on the arms where they joined her shoulders, she trembled against him, faint with desire, as the description read in old novels. She had never felt faint with desire before and felt she had discovered a missing sense.
"I am so glad you came to Saxon," he whispered, en francais, of course. "You were going to waste out there in the sticks. Speaking of which," he suddenly said, drawing back, but keeping his arms tight about her, "aren't you losing weight?"
She buried her nose in the center of his throat and sucked his collarbone. They were going to a party, but if he didn't stop caressing her shoulders, whispering in French (which did sound awfully sexy) and looking at her with his wild brown eyes, she knew they would never make it. So she said, "Let's go," abruptly, pushing him reluctantly but firmly from her, and preceded him out the door.
Driving through town Meridian told him of the three white exchange students who had come on the march with them that afternoon.
"From where?" Truman asked. "Swarthmore?"
"No, Smith and Carleton."
"What do they look like?"
"One is exactly like the little Dutch boy on Dutch Boy paints. A pale blonde with ear-length hair. She's the prettiest. The other two are kind of homely. Susan is short and mousy with thick legs. Lynne is thin and dark, with bright black eyes that sort of stab at you. They've been here a week, and I've already been out canvassing voters with Lynne. I like her. She can't say 'saw,' she says, 'I sarh it.' And she starts her sentences with 'So.' Listen, let me tell you about this one lady's house we went to ... way back in the sticks, on the edge of nowhere. This lady was sitting on her front porch, just as serene and untroubled as she could be. We should've seen that her Kingdom had already begun to approach, just by looking at her face. But we have to try everybody, right? She was one of these large, motherly types, with the tits, you know? Everybody's grandmother. Her food was cooking back somewhere on the stove. Butter beans, Lynne swore she could tell by the smell. Anyhow, we walked up and Lynne put one foot up on the lady's step. Her stomach was growling and she held her canvassing pad in front of it. The lady looked at her foot for a full minute.
" 'How y'all durin'?' she asked, and started fanning herself real slow, with one of those fans that show Jesus walking on water.
"Lynne said, 'My name is Lynne Rabinowitz ...'
" 'Lynn Wizz,' the lady repeated.
" 'Yes, ma'am,' said Lynne.
" 'And who you down ther uprootin' my collards with yo' eyes?"
" 'Meridian Hill,' I said, starting to laugh, because I liked her and because I sure was eyeball deep in her greens. They were so healthy they flashed in the sun, like they'd been greased.
"'We came up here to ask you to register to vote.'
" 'Did?' asked the woman.
"Lynne's stomach let out a massive growl. 'You're not already registered, are you?' she asked, clutching her pad.
" 'Nome,' said the woman.
" 'You are Mrs. Mabel Turner, aren't you?' asked Lynne. She knew she was but she had to work that 'Mrs.' in somewhere.
"The slow fanning stopped. The light of recognition beamed from Mrs. Turner's eyes. 'Y'all must be them outside 'taters. Jooz an runnin' dogs. Y'all hongry?' She heaved herself up from her chair and started for the kitchen.
"We sat down at the table and had a big meal. Butter beans, collards, cornbread, the works. Mrs. Turner urged second helpings.
" 'So isn't this terrific? I'm about to pop right open,' said Lynne.
"'If you did it wouldn't make much mess, skinny as you is,' said Mrs. Turner. 'I wants to feed y'all real good, 'cause I don't believe in votin'. The good Lord He take care of most of my problems. You know he heal the sick and race the dead. Comfort the uncomfortable and blesses the meek.'
"I said right then, 'We thank you for feeding us, Mrs. Turner,' and I got up to go, but Lynne wanted to argue.
" 'So God fixes the road in front of your house, does he?' she asked, using her Northern logic.
" 'Let's go,' I said. But no, she was just tuning up.
" 'Jesus Christ must be pleased to let you live in a house like this. The good Lord must get his jollies every time you have to hop outside to that toilet in the rain. The Holy Ghost must rejoice when your children catch pneumonia every winter....'
"'You sounds just like a blasphemer to me,' said Mrs. Turner. 'You sound like maybe you is kin to Judas Iscariot.' She frowned sadly and shook her head.
"Well, they argued and argued, until Mrs. Turner was afraid she had insulted her religion by feeding us. And Lynne refused to acknowledge the state of grace Mrs. Turner thought she was in.
" 'If only we hadn't eaten,' she kept saying, 'if only we had refused the food, don't you think Mrs. Turner wou
ld have registered to vote?' "
"Of course I said no. A blind man could have seen Mrs. Turner was just well beyond the boundaries of politics...."
"La fanatique," said Truman.
Meridian drew back as if to strike him. "Stop talking like that about your cousins and aunts!"
Truman laughed. "And grandmother and so forth.... What's the name of the Dutch Boy?"
"Jill."
"C'est vrai?"
"Oui."
Meridian lit a cigarette and passed it to Truman. "I think they'll all be at the party tonight. They're eager to see how the natives make out after dark. Oka-mo-gah! Do you know what Charlene told me? She said that Jill was taking photographs of the girls straightening their hair and also of them coming out of the shower."
"Et puis?"
"Well, and then Charlene and the other girl whose pictures were being taken threatened to beat her up unless she destroyed the film. 'This here ain't New Guinea,' Charlene says she said."
"They were just curious about les noirs," said Truman. "When I was in Paris I was curious about the French. I'm sure I did strange things, too."
"Like photographing them while they styled their hair and when they emerged from the shower? Or is it true that the French never bathe?"
Truman laughed. "My little kitten has sharp claws. Still," he said, "it pays to have a little tolerance with other people's curiosity. It never bothers me any more when foreigners look at my hair and say, 'A leetle beet of zee tar brush, eh?'"
"Everyone is proud to acknowledge a tiny bit of a 'bad' thing," said Meridian. "They know how fascinating it makes them."
She looked out the car window and realized they had stopped a few houses down from where the party was. Truman reached for her and gathered her tightly into his arms. She felt his tongue licking the eau de cologne off her earlobes. His hands were squeezing the nipples of her breasts. When she pulled her head away he buried his face in her lap, an action that briefly shocked her. She felt warm tingling sensations creeping up from the bottom of her stomach.
"Let's not go to the party," he pleaded. "Let's go back to the apartment. Everybody else is here, we'll be alone. I want you."
"I love you," she said.
"And we're going to the party, right?" Truman sat up and ran his fingers through his hair.
"But do you understand?" Meridian asked. "I'm not a prude. Afraid, yes, but not a prude. One day soon we'll be together."
"You're so young," said Truman, getting out and adjusting his robe. "I wish I could make you feel how beautiful it would be with me."
"I feel it, I feel it!" cried Meridian, taking his hand and walking up the street.
At the party Meridian danced, as seemed to be her fate at most parties, with a plodding young man from Arkansas. His first name was Terence; she deliberately kept herself innocent of his last. They pushed along the floor until a white boy broke in. Terence, exhibiting his freedom from prejudice, practically shoved Meridian into his arms.
"You go to school around here?" the white boy asked.
"Yes," said Meridian, "more or less." He was a head taller than she and her chin, when she looked up at him, poked into his chest. He was not ugly, only plucked-looking, with short black hair, shaved down around the bottom of his hairline, and teeth that had tiny white spots in the enamel, as if tiny pieces of seashell had been embedded there.
"Where are you from?" she asked. She hated to think in cliches at a time like this, when she could see he was gazing at her admiringly, but his dance was very stiff.
"Connecticut," he said. "We came down from the University of Connecticut. Con U," he added, and laughed. Meridian did not get the joke. She almost asked, "What you want to con me for, already?"
Someone had put a fast record on and they plunged about the room crazily. When they stopped to breathe Meridian looked about for Truman.
"I'm looking for my date," she explained to Con U, who was following the sweep her eyes made across the room, unable to conceal his anxiety that she might walk away.
"Isn't that him over there?" asked Con U, delight in his voice.
Truman was sitting on the stairs that led up from the basement. The Dutch Boy was sitting cross-legged on the floor beneath him, looking up at him with--admiration? curiosity? hunger? Meridian was not sure. That the girl's skirt was above her knees she could see.
Con U laughed. "Looks like he's doing all right for himself," and he sort of hunkered over her, his elbow against the wall. He seemed to her peculiarly rustic, and though now that she was in college she prided herself on having catholic tastes when it came to men, white farmers were not yet included.
"My name is Scott," he said, "after Scott Fitzgerald. My mother loves his books."
"Ummm ..." said Meridian, grudgingly relinquishing her own name.
He was also going to be a talker.
Did she go to dances often? Did she like to dance? How far away was her home town? Did her mother like to dance? What kind of work did her father do? Did he like to dance? And what of the school--did she like it? Did they teach dancing there? And of the demonstrations--how many had she gone on? Did she believe, truly, that one ought to protest in this way? Wasn't there some other method that might work and prove less disastrous than marching in the street? Didn't our Constitution provide for just such emergencies as the present racial crisis? What did she think of the Constitution? the foundling fathers? He wondered if they would like what was going on in the country? Did they believe in unlawful protest? He thought it was an interesting question. Wonder, come to think of it, how they passed their time when not drafting the Constitution? Did they dance?
"Terence," she called, clutching his shoulder as he plodded by, "I'm so glad you've come back. You know I promised you the last dance."
She looked about for Truman to rescue her but he was nowhere in sight.
Terence beamed with pride and joy. Off they moved to a dreary finish.
"I went out for cigarettes," said Truman, adjusting his robe. Meridian stood on the porch. Everyone else had left. Fearing the kindled gleam in Terence's eye and not feeling up to a struggle, she'd waited for Truman.
"God, you just don't know what a drag this evening was," said Meridian, who was too tired not to complain.
When they reached her house she invited him in, but he too was feeling tired and sleepy.
"Maybe tomorrow night," he said, stifling a yawn.
But she did not see Truman again, alone (except for one heart-breaking time), for several months, not until he had read The Souls of Black Folk, in fact. The exchange students, all three of them, had gone back North then, and he needed someone to discuss Du Bois with. "The man was a genius!" he cried, and he read passages from the book that he said were reflective of his and Meridian's souls. But Meridian was reading F. Scott Fitzgerald then, though she never gave up any of the Du Bois she already knew. It just seemed too deep for conversation with Truman, somehow. He was startled by the coolness with which she received his assertion that what he had decided, after reading "le maitre," was that if he dated white girls it must be, essentially, a matter of sex. She laughed when she saw he expected her to be pleased and reassured, a bitter laugh that sent him away again, his chin thrust forward against her misunderstanding.
The time she had seen Truman, after he began dating the exchange students, had been bitterly regretted. And for her part in what happened, Meridian paid dearly.
She had been walking down the street from her job at the old professor's and--walking with her head down--had not seen Truman coming toward her. They almost passed each other before he stopped and turned, his brown eyes very dark and hot against the green polo shirt he wore.
"Meridian?"
"Hi," she said, feeling embarrassed to see him now that he was busy dating the exchange students. It was strange and unfair, but the fact that he dated them--and so obviously because their color made them interesting--made her ashamed, as if she were less.
He came up to her and casually
placed his arm around her shoulders. "You walk with your head down. It should be up. Proud and free." And he chucked her playfully under the chin.
She looked at him wondering if he had, as she had done, marched that day. As a rule, he said, he didn't march any more, "because what I believe cannot be placed on a placard." And she had teased him about that and said, "How about just the words 'Freedom, Liberty, Equality'? That would cover what you believe in, wouldn't it?" She was also tempted to add white exchange students. But how polite she was! How bewildered by his preference. It went against everything she had been taught to expect.
For she realized what she had been taught was that nobody wanted white girls except their empty-headed, effeminate counterparts--white boys--whom her mother assured her smelled (in the mouth) of boiled corn and (in the body) of thirty-nine-cent glue. As far back as she could remember it seemed something understood: that while white men would climb on black women old enough to be their mothers--"for the experience"--white women were considered sexless, contemptible and ridiculous by all. They did not even smell like glue or boiled corn; they smelled of nothing since they did not sweat. They were clear, dead water.
Her mother, though not a maid, had often worked for white families near Christmastime in order to earn extra money, and she told her family--in hushed, carefully controlled language, keeping her face set over her ironing board--about the lusty young sons home from school for the holidays, calling her by her first name, of course, and begging and pleading and even (and her mother scoffed) getting all blubbery the way white men get. "Gertrude pul-eze," her mother mocked the slow pull of the pseudocultivated Southern gentleman. "What are you talkin' 'bout, Mr. So-an-so?" (This is a twenty-one-year-old kid, her anger and her religion choking her.) "I'm old enough to be your grandma. I can remember when your mama was a girl. You wouldn't hang around any of your mama's friends like this. Why you botherin' me?"
This would lead Mrs. Hill directly into an exhortation on her religious as opposed to her human dignity. (Because she rightly assumed "Mr. So-an-so" would not be interested in the latter.) She was black, wasn't she? And a female. (Not lady, not even woman, since both these words conjured up something larger than sex; they spoke of a somebody as opposed to a something.) Yes, it was understood about white men. Some of them liked black women for sex and said so. For the others it was a matter of gaining experience, initiation into the adult world. The maid, the cook, a stray child, anything not too old or repulsive would do. In Mrs. Hill's voice there was a well, a reservoir, an ocean of disgust. And when she described white men it was with weary religion-restrained hatred. She could speak freely because the general opinion of white men, among blacks, was in her favor. She spoke of their faces as if they were the faces of moose, of oxen, of wet, slobbery walruses. Besides, she said, they were manipulated by their wives, which did not encourage respect.