Growing Up (33 page)

On a sweet day in early May we rode the early train to Washington. A few minutes of languid conversation revealed that she knew absolutely nothing about American politics, government, or history. The urge to play Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle came on me like a fever. I lectured her all the way to Washington about our colonial beginnings, the Puritan tradition, the Mayflower Compact, and the ancient origins of slavery.

We disembarked at Union Station, and I walked her through its spacious grandeur and lectured her on the great age of the railroads and the land swindles of Reconstruction on which they were built. I walked her up Capitol Hill and lectured her on the great Americans whose statues stood in the Capitol Rotunda. I walked her to the House of Representatives, then walked her back to the Senate, where we watched a man addressing an empty room, and I lectured her about Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Thaddeus Stevens, and—in a reprise of my assault on Herb—told her what a bicameral legislature was. I walked her to the Supreme Court and lectured her about James Madison and the separation of powers.

I walked her down the infinite boredom of Constitution Avenue and into the National Gallery and lectured her about Rembrandt and Van Gogh, of whom I knew almost nothing. I walked her across the Mall to the Smithsonian and showed her
The Spirit of St. Louis
and lectured her about the history of flight and the myth of Lindbergh, Lucky Lindy, who’d flown all the way to France by the seat of his pants, and how Lindbergh had become an isolationist before the war began, not neglecting to lecture her on why isolationism was evil.

I walked her down to the White House, and while we stood outside the fence staring at that famous white paint I lectured her about the history of the Presidency, remembering to include Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, and Benjamin Harrison. I walked her to the Lincoln Memorial and lectured her on Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stephen Douglas, Mary Todd, Andrew Johnson, John Wilkes Booth, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Edwin M. Stanton, Salmon P. Chase, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Simon Legree.

I walked her back toward the Washington Monument and lectured her on the Egyptian obelisk and phallic symbols and classical mythology and ancient Rome and the difference between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire and the nobility of men like Cincinnatus, emphasizing that he was the man for whom Cincinnati was named, while Troy, New York, was named after a mythical city in Homer, and Cairo, Illinois, after a real city in Egypt. Leading her toward the Washington Monument I said, “We can take the elevator to the top, but it’ll be more fun to walk up.”

“Couldn’t we sit down a while?”

“You’re not tired?”

“You’ve been talking for the past six hours so you probably haven’t noticed that we’ve walked fifty miles without a rest.”

“There’s a lot more to cover,” I said.

“I can’t walk another step,” she said, and collapsed on a park bench on the Mall. Well—let her rest a few minutes. Maybe we could skip the top of the Monument. Later we could walk over and
look at the Treasury and then we could walk through the Federal Triangle. I sat down and started to explain how Harry Truman had become President.

“Is there anything you don’t know?” she moaned.

Was that sarcasm I detected in her voice? Maybe I had overdone it. “I wanted you to have a good time. I didn’t mean to bore you.”

“You could have fooled me,” she said, taking her shoes off to rub her feet.

“Why don’t you do the talking for a while?” I suggested.

“What would I talk about? I’m not the expert on the Emancipation Proclamation.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Sure there is. I don’t even know where you come from.”

“Why should you? Nobody could care about that.”

“I could. How’d you come to be living on Mount Vernon Place?”

“Well, I come from New Jersey,” she began, and bit by bit I began to get the story out of her. I hadn’t thought of her as someone who might have had a life before I knew her. What she was telling me now seemed horrible. The Sheltering Arms—did such places really exist? Soon she was talking fluently, pouring out the saga of her miseries and maybe enjoying the tale a bit and making it just a shade more hair-raising to hold my attention. As she talked, love assumed another face, and I felt myself becoming her predestined protector, the strong sheltering male who must never let such dreadful things happen to her again.

When she said, “Isn’t there any place to get some food?” I could no longer offer her the hot dog and soda pop I’d budgeted for the trip. “Budget be damned!” I said to myself and feasted her at the Chicken Hut on fried chicken, potatoes, gravy, and cole slaw. I no longer wanted to batter her with education. “If you’re tired we can go to a movie and sit down,” I suggested.

I paid an awful price for two tickets to a first-run movie and felt not a twinge of pain at the cost. I was prepared to give her
everything I had. Nobility soon had its reward. In the darkness she slipped her hand into mine, squeezed it, and left it there.

We were both exhausted when we got back to Baltimore. I was in a mood close to holy exaltation. I despised myself for having once thought of carnal riot with this girl. In that, I had been like all the other beasts who had made her life a misery. Now I would atone by showing her how a gentleman could treat a woman. We climbed the steps to her apartment. She unlocked the door. It was here that she always offered the courtesy kiss and I, lout that I was, had always collected it. This night I determined that I would not.

To my surprise, she didn’t offer it. Instead she opened the door wide and said, “Would you like to sit down awhile?”

Absolutely not. Not in my present state of pure love. “I’ve got to get home,” I said, and started down the steps. “Good night.”

She followed me to the top of the stairs. “Don’t you want to kiss me good night?”

“I’m not that kind of guy,” I said, and swaggered out. Love had clothed me in the glory of sainthood.

I let a few days pass before I phoned again. Of course she remembered me. Was I trying to be sarcastic? Why hadn’t I phoned sooner? Wouldn’t I pick her up that evening? Her roommate Jennie was out of town visiting family for a few nights. It was lonely with no one there.

We took a long walk in the soft spring evening. When I brought her home and she opened the apartment door, I didn’t hesitate about stepping in. It was odd how quickly the serenity of beneficence wore off. Closing the door, I put my arms around her and said farewell forever to sainthood. The era of the courtesy kiss had ended.

“When you left the other night I thought you were mad at me,” Mimi said later. “I was scared you wouldn’t come back.”

“Are you crazy? How could I be mad at you? I’ll always come back.”

And this, it turned out, was God’s truth.

T
HREE
months passed before I mustered the courage to introduce Mimi at Marydell Road. Sunday dinner seemed the ideal occasion. Sunday dinner had become a family ritual for my mother, as it had once been with Ida Rebecca, a time when family was expected to gather round and celebrate its unity in food and table talk. It weekly confirmed my mother’s pleasure in having given us “a home of our own.” It was always a command appearance for me. Doris, now nineteen, helped with the hours of cooking. My mother would preside at one end of the table, and Herb would sit at the other straining to hear the Washington Senators baseball game on the living-room radio while flattering my mother on the crispness of the fried chicken, the texture of the gravy, the excellence of the devil’s food cake, the coconut cake, and the apple pie with which the dinner always ended. Their child, Mary Leslie, was big enough now to sit at the table on a pile of books. Uncle Harold and Aunt Sister came frequently, and there were always other guests with blood ties to my mother’s family, to Herb’s, or to the Bakers.

It seemed the logical occasion for presenting Mimi. Sunday
dinner put my mother in her most gracious mood. With so many people present there would be no chance of matters getting out of hand. I knew Mimi would have instant allies in Doris, who was broad-minded; in Uncle Harold, who liked women; and in Aunt Sister, who liked meeting people.

“I’ve invited a girl I know to dinner Sunday,” I told my mother. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Your friends are always welcome here, Buddy. What’s her name?”

“Mimi.”

“I’ve never heard you mention a Mimi before.”

“You’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I’ll like her if you like her. My boy has good taste.”

“She’s a lot like you. She’s had to make her own way in the world.”

“Did you meet her at Hopkins?”

“She’s not in school,” I said. “She’s got a job.”

“What does she do?”

“Works in a department store.”

“Selling?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, I’ve got nothing against a girl making her own way in this world. Lord knows, I had to do it long enough.”

“You’ll like her,” I said.

“Have you met her family?”

“She doesn’t have any family. I guess you could call her an orphan.”

“Where does she live if she doesn’t have a family?”

“She’s got an apartment downtown with another girl.”

“Two girls living alone in an apartment?”

“They’re both nice girls.”

“Have you been there?”

“Once or twice,” I lied.

“I see,” my mother said, and I suspected she did. She couldn’t help but wonder why I had stayed out so many times in recent
weeks until four o’clock in the morning. She must have worried about where I might be on those nights, but she hadn’t asked. “I look forward to meeting her” was all she said, though.

“You’ll like her,” I said.

I hadn’t told Mimi much about my mother. “You’ll like her,” I’d said. I suspected neither would like the other, but I was praying.

On Sunday Mimi came out to Marydell Road. I met her, and when she stepped off the streetcar, I felt a pang of uneasiness. Excited about being received into a family, eager to make a fine impression, she had dressed elaborately. She had bought a new dress, a pink clinging fabric that molded itself seductively to her body. She had had her hair done the day before by a hairdresser who, after lightening it with streaks of bleach, had chosen an upsweep suggestive of a Hollywood sex goddess. To present a proper face, she’d spared no expense at the cosmetics counter. Gazing at her, I thought her the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and knew it was all wrong for Marydell Road.

“Do I look all right?” she asked.

“Terrific,” I assured her.

The other guests hadn’t arrived, and my mother was waiting alone on the porch when Mimi and I came up the steps. It wasn’t until next day that my mother said, “Mimi wouldn’t be a bad-looking girl if she didn’t use so much makeup,” but Mimi understood everything that Sunday night when I took her home on the streetcar. “Your mother didn’t like me,” she said.

“How can you say that? Of course she liked you.”

In fact she had taken pains to be pleasant to Mimi all afternoon. I’d been happily surprised by that.

“She doesn’t like me,” Mimi said. “She’ll never like me.”

I was unwilling to believe this even after the next day’s “Mimi wouldn’t be a bad-looking girl if she didn’t use so much makeup.” I insisted Mimi come back for another Sunday dinner, and another, and another, and she did. Uncle Harold and Aunt Sister became fond of her. So did Herb. So did Doris. My mother saw only menace. She began clocking my movements.

No matter how quietly I came creeping in at three or four o’clock in the morning, I could count on my mother to be awake. “Is that you, Buddy?” she would whisper from her bedroom.

“Uh-huh.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Not too late.”

Once in a while: “Where’ve you been?”

“Out with George,” I’d whisper, closing the bedroom door behind me.

One morning, tiptoeing in just before dawn, I found her sitting in the dark in the living room. “Do you know what time it is? I’ve been waiting up all night for you.”

“Is something wrong?”

“There’s plenty wrong and you know what it is.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so didn’t.

“Don’t you ever want to amount to anything, Russell?”

I was scheduled to graduate from college in a few months. “I’m not doing too bad,” I said. “Let’s turn in.”

“I’ve worked and slaved to help you make something of yourself someday,” she said. “Now you’re throwing everything away because of that girl. She’s got you hypnotized.”

“That’s silly.”

“Oh, is it? Where’ve you been all night?”

“Out with George,” I said.

“George doesn’t stay out all night. He’s in medical school, he’s trying to make something of himself. You’ve been with Mimi, haven’t you?”

“Come on, Mom, you’re tired. Let’s go to bed.”

She turned on the light instead. “You never used to lie to me, Russell. Now you lie all the time. Can’t you see what she’s done to you?”

“What do you want me to do?” In anger at being treated like a child, I was ready to burn bridges.

“I’m only interested in your own good, Buddy. Don’t think your mother is interfering.”

“That’s a fine thing to say. Of course you’re interfering. Well,
if you want to know—yes, I have been at Mimi’s. Does that satisfy you?”

Her face went slack, expressionless. She stared beyond me at something five thousand miles away. “It’s in the blood,” she said, speaking to herself now.

“What’s in the blood?” I asked.

She focused again on me, and, with a look as close to hate as she’d ever given me, she cried, “You’re just like your father was. Just like your father.”

It was said with loathing. Had she hated him, then? I’d spent most of a lifetime with her and she had rarely told me anything about my father, rarely even mentioned him. It was as if she wanted to erase him from my life. But now, in that hate-filled cry—“Just like your father”—she lit up an entirely different landscape of the heart. There had been some taint in my father’s blood. She had reared me in dread that it might reappear in mine. Maybe that had been her reason for taking me out of Morrisonville and away from my father’s people before the funeral meats were cold. Maybe she had hoped I could escape the taint of the blood by growing up far away from it among her own people.