Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 82

"h.e.l.l, don't start on that." Blanche said The look of alarm on her face was not far from her expression in the cafeteria when she'd told us about being detained by the police because someone thought she looked like Angela Davis. Other than her Afro and lighter brown skin she didn't remotely resemble Angela, whose picture was plastered all over post offices and newspapers, but the differences hadn't registered with white cops eager to see themselves on the evening news after catching America's most wanted Black radical. The same thing happened that year to Ernestine and Aisha, who didn't look much like each other or Angela either.

"That mess almost lost me my first big job."

"Oh come on," I said.

"No really!" When I finally got an interview at Della Robbia, I'd been struggling to get into advertising forever. Then I had to fill out this form and when I got to where it asked if I'd ever been arrested I froze. I mean really, like paralytic."

Tank and I erupted into laughter.

"Who the h.e.l.l was going to think being mistaken for an FBI fugitive was amusing?"

"So what'd you do?" I asked trying to keep sarcasm out of my voice. I couldn't imagine Ernestine or Aisha in such a quandary.

"What any good revolutionary does when pinned down by the man-I lied."

Tank's laugh again filled the room. It was obvious he was still susceptible to her charms.

"Technically it wasn't an arrest," I said dryly. I don't know why, but I felt like we were being disloyal to Angela. "You didn't even stay overnight."

"Sitting in a job interview in a corner office on Madison Avenue, literally on Madison Avenue . . . in New York City . . . didn't seem like the time to discuss subtle legal philosophy, my sister."

I had to smile even though her condescending tone usually got on my last nerve.

"Hey, I'm going to order some grumbles," Tank interrupted, still running interference between folks when it looked like some kind of disagreement was on the horizon. "Any requests?"

"Grumbles? Tank I haven't heard that word since-"

"Now don't you start, too. You want food or not."

"Yeah," Blanche and I answered together like we were cheerleaders, which we'd never been. He went off to the bar to put in a request for a selection of appetizers.

"You still in advertising?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's a living," Blanche said with the lowest level of enthusiasm I'd ever heard in her voice. "My ex-husband has a small firm and I manage his office."

"Ex?"

"Believe me it was cheaper to stay working there than try to get anything out of him!"

I was surprised to hear the edge of disappointment in Blanche's voice.

"Business is going great," Blanche said re-igniting her spark, as if she needed to refute my thoughts. "We keep a steady flow of work going. I can't complain."

From the cut of her suit it looked like she really was doing fine despite the unusual arrangement, but clearly there was something missing.

"You still doing photography?"

"Oh yeah."

"You know, I have seen your pictures." Blanche rolled her eyes upward and seemed to search her perfectly colored coif for a memory: "Once, in the Times, I think. I couldn't believe it!"

Why the h.e.l.l not! I was just about to spit out when Tank came back with another BIP in tow.

"Edwin!" Blanche squealed and leaped up from her seat as if she were relieved we weren't going to talk about our professions any more. He'd always been the quietest Black man I ever met, and when he said h.e.l.lo it sounded like he hadn't changed much. You still had to lean in to hear what he said; but now the manner had a subtle authority. The fullness in his face was new and the oversized leather FUBU jacket almost concealed his extra pounds.

"Brother man, it's like old times," Tank said.

"I hope not," Edwin shot back as he clasped Tank's hand in the multiple grips of the Black Power handshake that went on for four minutes.

I hadn't seen Edwin in years, but we had spoken on the phone a while back when I gave him permission to use some of our photos for a PBS doc.u.mentary he was directing. Even though he'd filled out, Edwin's tightly coiled energy gave the impression he was wiry.

"The last time I saw you two together Tank was beating your a.s.s in a game of bid whist and you were chugging on a bottle of Creme White Concord!" I said.

"Still cracking wise Miss Roxie." Edwin's grin widened further as he hugged me. The waiter arrived with a couple of bottles of New York State champagne and gla.s.ses.

"At least we don't drink screw top wine anymore," Edwin dropped into a chair as we widened the circle.

"Righton!" Blanche said, deliberately enunciating like a Black Vanna White. I could see the young, white waiter working hard not to smile as he was popping the cork.

"I loved the last piece you produced for . . . was it "Lehrer News Hour"?" Tank said.

"Oh yeah, Edwin, that really was good," I said, remembering I'd seen it too.

"It was deep," Tank said solemnly.

"What, what?" Blanche asked, wriggling in her seat.

There's something that happens around people's eyes when they don't want you to see inside. Edwin masked his discomfort almost completely. "It was a doc.u.mentary about people who're mixed race."

"Mixed . . . ?" Blanche didn't squeal. Her voice, perplexed, dropped down to her ample chest. There are always some details that get lost in memory.

"You know, like Tiger Woods," I said, trying not to sound like I was talking to an adolescent.

"Like me," Edwin added.

I could see Blanche rea.s.sessing Edwin's medium brown skin tones and lightly waved hair, searching to remember if she knew this information already. He'd always been a gung ho nationalist, yet avoided the harshest "hate whitey" rhetoric. He was one of only a few BIPs who'd been on the losing side with me when the controversy broke about changing the name of our newspaper from Off the Pig to Black Times.

"Basically I got a chance to look at the larger idea of what it means to be Black in the U.S. and not rely on some constructed mythology of race or cultural purity that we all know is . . . well just myth."

"Go, brother, I hear you." Tank's enthusiasm seemed sincere. Did that weigh in on the side of agent or not?

"That may be the last you hear of me," Edwin said shaking his head wearily. "The way money is drying up now, if your name ain't Burns, don't even think about getting funds for a doc.u.mentary these days."

"Well . . ." Tank intoned as if he were in the amen corner.

"His stuff is good." Edwin jumped back in, not wanting to sound like he was bad-mouthing another filmmaker. "But I can name you three other black guys who've been trying for the past twenty years to rustle up money for films on blacks in baseball and in jazz."

There was silence while we each sipped champagne and wondered how depressed we'd make ourselves before the reunion really got going.

"Speaking of white devils," Blanche said after a moment, tickled with herself. "You know who's coming tomorrow, don't you?"

It didn't take much thought for us to say simultaneously: "Jackson Wright." He overused that epithet so much by the time we graduated, he'd worked everybody's nerves, including the one brother who was aspiring to be FOI for The Nation.

Blanche led the laughter this time. If I wasn't mistaken, it looked like Blanche's sparkle was spreading itself in Tank's direction very specifically.

"Man!" Edwin said in disgust. "That guy . . ." His voice trailed off and each of us remembered Jackson Wright's way of dealing with people who disagreed with him: nail them to the wall for not being "Black enough." Unfortunately, since he's an award-winning poet and our most famous alum to date, Jackson was booked to be the featured speaker at the Sat.u.r.day-night program.

No matter what the poem, he eventually had to break into an egotistical rant that skewered some Black person he judged to be betraying Blackness, or a white person who was betraying him. His tongue was so sharp it should have been registered as a weapon. Wright is brilliant, I'll give him that, but . . .

"They need to put some of those contestants from one of those survivor TV shows in a room with Wright and see who lasts to win the million!" Edwin said, breaking into my thoughts. "Did you check him out on that BET talk show awhile back?"

We all shook our heads together slowly, as if we were synchronized swimmers.

"You really missed a scene. He went on and on about white feminists ruining his career. I think that was when he was filing a cla.s.s-action suit against the National Organization of Women."

"Oh stop!" I exploded.

"The host was egging him on like Wright was the second coming, I kid you not."

"Talk about ecology . . . what a waste of air!" Blanche sucked her teeth.

"He should have been spending the time pushing for some more money from the networks or public TV for Black producers or something. But not this guy." The anger was ripe in Edwin's words.

"That was during the 'Me' decade, wasn't it?" I asked rhetorically, knowing that whenever Jackson Wright turned up it was the "Me" decade. Seeing all the optimism that had fueled us reduced to careerism, midlife crises, and BMWs made me a little nauseous. But unless there's a national emergency, I was resigned to enduring the Sat.u.r.day-night program.

"Jackson did have a tendency to go a little overboard," Tank said in his most conciliatory tone.

"You know," Blanche said, the pitch rising in her voice along with the sparkle in her eye as she tried to keep a straight face, "they're having a separate reunion this weekend . . ." Her pause were perfectly timed, then she went on: "All the young white girls Jackson slept with when he was head of Afro House . . . over at Harvard Stadium!"

The laughter burst from us as if we were still huddled together in the student lounge. It almost scared away the waiter who was now delivering a tray of appetizers.

"There was some serious jungle fever going on all around, brothers, so don't be laughing too hard at Mr. Wright," Blanche said knowingly. "Don't get me started naming names!"

There were a couple of coughs, then genuine laughter again. Blanche had put us back in sync while we settled into the familiar act of eating together. I almost expected Otis to pop up beside the table with French fries he'd smuggled out of the hot food line.

"Hey, has anyone heard from Otis?" I wondered out loud.

"Otis?" Blanche wrinkled her forehead.

"Otis, right. He used to work in the cafeteria." Edwin was digging through his memory. "He wasn't registered though, was he?"

"Naw," Tank said, chewing on a Buffalo chicken wing and still looking elegant.

"He was in some kind of probation program . . . got him the job in the school cafeteria. That brother tightened up the Black table every day!"

"He was trying to get his life together. I remember now," Blanche said.

"You never went to Wally's with me and Sheila?" I asked, recalling the name of a local bar we used to sneak off to.

"That pit?" Edwin said with enough middle-cla.s.s disdain to make the Dean of Students proud.

"Hey! Wally's wasn't as bad as some buckets of blood I went to back in Chicago. Otis was a great dancer."

As the memory flooded in, I realized how disappointed I was that no one had heard from him. I'd thought about Otis every once in a while over the years. In addition to an incredible smile and smooth dance moves, he'd been a stalwart supporter of the BIPs. He must have been the same age as we were, but he had the edge of someone who knew things about the world he wished he didn't.

Me and Tank and some of the others had come from neighborhoods not too different from the South End where Otis lived. It was literally on the other side of the railroad tracks from the university; undercapitalized and forgotten by the politicians, except when the police were sent in. Then the Movement had stepped in instead.

"Affirmative Action babies," they call us now, which rankles my nerves. There was nothing babyish about clawing my way out of the cycle of street shootings and pregnancies in my 'hood. And certainly nothing babyfied about trying to survive on a white campus where teachers and students looked at us like we were s.p.a.ce aliens. That was before s.p.a.ce aliens got their own TV shows.

I'd spent my freshman year mystified by academic topics no high school teacher had ever bothered to mention. And being humiliated by financial aid administrators who acted like they were giving me money out of their own little piggy banks. If they treated Black students that bad I couldn't imagine what working in the cafeteria had been like for Otis.

"Earth to Roxie." Blanche snapped me back to the table. "What're you sucking your teeth about, girl?"

"The dim-wits trashing Affirmative Action, so don't get me started."

"Oh, there she go!" Tank teased.

"How the h.e.l.l did we end up in this mess?" I asked without the tiniest hope of an answer.

"Girl, when I saw what they put Anita Hill through on TV I knew it was the end of civilization as we know it." The tinkle in Blanche's voice was greatly subdued.

"And that's only the stuff they let us see," Edwin said.

"You just got to keep pushing," Tank said, as if trying to convince himself. "There is good stuff happening out there."

"Nothing to make the evening news, my brother," Edwin said.

"Maybe we better not be counting on the evening news," Tank responded from a serious place deep in his chest.

"People are too busy shopping on the Web for revolution now," Blanche spouted, the disillusion I'd heard earlier returning to her voice.

I know I'm something of a ranter, which is how I ended up coming to this reunion thing, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. The plushly carpeted room around us soaked up the disappointment that was spilling out of our reminiscences.

It was hard to believe we were sitting here, only a few blocks from the campus where we'd spent four years determined to change the world. I almost felt like I was the same person I was back in the day. I didn't care any less now about people being hungry or not learning to read or making drugs their religion. Maybe I was a little slower, but still I worked forty- and fifty-hour weeks leaping in front of other news photographers and setting up impossible shooting angles. Hanging out the fourth-floor window of McMillan Hall had paid off.

Tank looked like he could still take on the first string of anybody's opposing team, and was much smarter than I remembered. Even Blanche still had the spirit when she didn't try to flirt too much. I'm not one who believes you have to be young and poor to be hungry for action and change. But something was missing. And the comfort of the hotel bar was starting to feel like a trap.

"Anybody mind if I take a few shots while we're hanging?" I pulled my favorite little Leica from the Le Sportsac bag I carried everywhere, relieved to stand and get some energy going.

"Roxie!" Blanche protested as she grabbed her Fendi purse up from the floor and reapplied her lipstick. "Don't be snapping me with my mouth full."

"Blanche, would I do that to you?"

"Yes." Her pinky went up as she dropped her purse back to the floor, hoisted a small square of something from the tray of snacks, and popped it into her perfectly painted mouth.

"Did you work on the slide show for tomorrow?" Edwin asked, excited.

"I sent in some of the shots we had from the demo." Oops, there was that "we" again. I went on quickly: "But I think the "Say Brother" folks from WGBH had a bunch of material. You all sent pictures in, too, right?"