Читать книгу Passing For black - Linda Villarosa - Страница 9

The day I met Cait, a passing breeze stirred up the warm, thick air as I walked through the campus of New Amsterdam University. That cool undertow, weird on such a still, sunny fall day, felt like a sign that something was about to happen.

As I pulled open the heavy door of the Humanities building and turned down the hall toward the Kenneth Clark African-American studies wing, that’s when I saw her. She was standing on tiptoe tacking a flyer onto a cork bulletin board. It read: “Lesbian Sex Conference: We Want You to COME,” followed by an off-campus location and a date a little less than a week away.

Putting down the flyer, she turned and looked at me quizzically. Then she smiled, raising one eyebrow, a dimple denting each cheek. I stopped, midstride, and took a deep breath, inhaling a bouquet of Sharpie and pine cleaner.

She was strikingly androgynous, and looked like an older version of Ethan, the beautiful fifteen-year-old boy I had been obsessed with one summer at sleep-away camp in New Hampshire. Her light brown hair was parted boyishly on one side, and flecked with bright blonde streaks. As she turned toward me, I could see Pam Grier doing a Foxy Brown high kick on the front of her T-shirt. Sleeves cut off, it tugged tightly across her breasts.

“I’m Caitlin Getty.” Staring at me, her eyes clear gray and steady, she took my hand. Her appraisal was brazen. Thinking briefly about the ring on my finger, I shoved my left hand in my pocket.

“I’m Angela, uh, Wright.” I could feel her fingertips against my palm as we shook hands lightly. I tried to ease my hand out of hers, but she held it. Mine was warm and damp, hers, cool and dry.

“Angela, may I give you a flyer?” She spoke with the trace of a British accent; from her mouth, my name sounded like dessert. “I’d love to see you on Saturday at the sex conference.”

Finally she dropped my hand and plucked a flyer from a stack next to her foot. “Actually, I would just love to see you. My e-mail address is on the bottom.”

As I studied the flyer, I felt a mild electric shock travel from the tops of my thighs and through my crotch, before settling somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I was feeling a pull toward this woman so urgent that it was difficult to nudge aside.

But I had to push away these feelings, as I always had, starting the summer after Ethan. I had been even more obsessed with Adriana, a junior counselor who had a tiny tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder and wore thick white socks that bunched at her ankles. And in college, when I had had a crush on Laura Chin-Loy, the RA in my freshman dorm. And a few years ago, when I had taken the same photography course twice so that I could stand next to the instructor, Genevieve Britton, in the darkroom, our upper arms touching as we dragged photo paper through pans of developing fluid.

All of those feelings had been free-floating and vague, like a nondescript snippet of music, muffled in another room. I let them drift away; they were un-returned, barely examined. But this was stronger, more urgent. A violent, dangerous delight.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, stuffing the flyer in my bag. As I walked away from her too afraid to look back, I clutched the top of my arm and pressed my nails into the soft skin, nearly drawing blood. I am not gay-lesbian-bisexual-questioning. I am a straight heterosexual American. I repeated these thoughts until they crowded out the others.

By the time I slipped into a seat at the back of Keith’s classroom I’d gotten right again. Blinking, I focused on my fiancé, who was wrapping up his lecture. Standing in front of the thirty-odd students enrolled in his “Twentieth Century Black Experience” seminar, Keith lifted his palms from the podium, spreading his arms to make a point. He reminded me of the stately prime minister of a Caribbean island. Keith took a breath, mopped his brow with a handkerchief, and looked at his watch. “We’re out of time for today.” Their heads down, the students noisily began to gather their jackets and backpacks.

“Excuse me.” Keith raised his voice to be heard over the sound of students moving out of black history and returning to present. “Let me remind you that by next class, you should be finished with the assigned reading, The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys. And remember that the African Diaspora Society will hold its monthly meeting tomorrow at five P.M. in this classroom. I hope to see some of you there.”

I picked up my coat and bag and walked to the front of the classroom. Keith was involved in a passionate discussion about the global mass marketing of black culture with a student. I wished he were just a good friend or even a cousin. Then I could look at him fondly without creeping panic as I imagined myself tethered to this man for the rest of my natural life.

Keith was a good man, really, but secretly, I sometimes tacked on “enough.” He looked good enough, and, in fact, he looked pretty good, compared with other unmarried black men in their mid-thirties who weren’t dogs or players or on the down low. The few others left had pillowy bodies, scuffed shoes and frayed collars. When they looked at you their watery Bassett-hound eyes seemed to say feed me—and while you’re at it, do my laundry, scrub behind my ears, and then tuck me in.

Keith made good enough money with his professor’s salary and fit on the edges of my social circle as my slightly older, straight-laced but cute big-Daddy boyfriend. He impressed my friends by translating the fine print 401K lingo of their employee benefits packages into plain English and explaining why every black person must have a mutual fund in order to move the race forward. And my mother loved him. She nodded her vigorous approval during his toasts at family gatherings, centering on “bettering our people.” My cousins called him Malcolm Gen-X behind his back.

After five years, we fit together like a pair of worn slippers, one stuck inside the other. Each night I felt his belly burrowing into my back, his soft penis pushing against my thigh, and my body softened sleepily against his. He made me feel safe, protected from the feelings like the ones I had had with Caitlin Getty.

“Good lecture, sweetie.” I reached up and placed my hand on his neck and kissed his cheek lightly.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. As he looked down at me and smiled, Keith’s stern Dr. Redfield face faded and the shallow trench between his eyebrows disappeared. I smiled back at him, or at least I tried to make the corners of my mouth turn upward. He was relaxed, in his element and happy to share it with me. I felt suffocated and had a fleeting feeling of wanting to shake things up, make a mess.

As we prepared to leave, the door swung open, and I felt breathless again. It was that Caitlin woman, the flyers tucked under her arm. But something was wrong. Keith had taken a step toward her and was standing uncomfortably close. A vein ran from his jaw down the side of his neck bulging, large, blue and ugly. The purple kente bow tie I had bought him at an African market uptown looked tight around his throat.

“Hello, Dr. Getty. I see you continue to appropriate African-American culture.” His voice was tight and thin as he looked at her coldly, a white woman splashed in Pam Grier.

“Dr. Redfield, you don’t own Foxy, just because she’s black. She’s a woman too, and, if anything, probably a lesbian.” Her smile was mean, and her dimple looked less playful than menacing. The accent was stronger, and she pronounced “anything” like “enna-thing.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Keith seemed to congeal into that spot. Only his fist opened and closed stiffly before he shoved the hand in his pocket.

“So, Keith, what’s new in African-American History? Oh, right, nothing’s new since it’s, um, history, a time way before the present when scientists have determined that biological races do not exist and that race is simply a social and political construct that the world would be better without.” She said it in one sentence, like she was reciting something she’d written. Keith took a step back. The two of them looked like dancers in a vinegary interracial tango.

“Dr. Getty, how’s everything in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and, what is it, Transgender Studies?”

“Transgender hasn’t been officially added to our department.” She frowned, folding her arms across her chest so they rested lightly on Foxy’s oversize afro.

“Well, I think Transgender should be a part of gay and lesbian studies, and at the next department meeting, I plan to vote for adding it,” he said, leaning toward her, his arms rigid at his sides. “Or maybe instead we should have courses in bestiality or pedophilia. Or we could make it easier and rename the whole department Perversity Studies.”

She rolled her eyes and turned her body away from Keith, toward me. “Keith, you’re so rude—hi, again, Angela.” Staring at me, her eyes a clear gray, the color of a storm, she took my hand. Keith looked confused.

“This is my fiancée.” He pulled my hand away from hers and put his arm around me. I felt his grip hard and tight on my shoulder. “Angela, I see you’ve met my colleague, Dr. Getty.”

“Really nice to meet you, again.” She continued looking at me, giving me a barefaced appraisal. Why the hell was she doing this? What did she see in me? I squeezed myself closer to Keith. Get the message now? I am a heterosexual woman, locked to my better half. Balling my hand into a fist behind my back, I dug my nails into my palm until it stung.

“Dr. Getty, what do you want?” Keith took a step away from me and shoved a stack of papers into his worn, leather briefcase.

“Here, take some flyers to give out to your classes,” she said as she peeled several from her stack and handed them to Keith without touching him. “We want to make sure the turnout at our sex conference is diverse—as you’ve instructed us to strive for at campus-based events.”

“Black people aren’t interested in this.”

He held the flyers with two fingers. “And nice seeing you—good-bye.” He dropped the flyers into the trash can.

“That’s not very collegial, but I wouldn’t expect anything less.” She turned toward the door. “See you at the Humanities cocktail party, Dr. Redfield. And please bring your beautiful fiancée.” As she opened the door, she turned and caught my eye, flashing me her mischievous grin.

“What was that about?” I asked. At that moment, I felt confused by everything that had just happened, but especially baffled by Keith’s behavior. Generally, he tempered his emotions at the U, careful not to ever “show his ass.”

“I don’t like her,” he answered stubbornly, snapping his briefcase shut without looking up.

“Honey, why—” I stopped. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say about her, and I wished I hadn’t seen their nasty exchange. I preferred to remember the feel of her breath on my cheek.

“It’s not because she’s gay, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Keith answered, looking at me coldly, and shifting back into Dr. Redfield mode. “And I would never condone discrimination of any sort.”

“Yes, I know that—”

“But, you’ve never had to be in meetings with people like Cait Getty, for God sakes.” His voice had risen and he was grinding the toe of his loafer into the tile floor. “Comparing our Civil Rights to their sexual rights.”

“Keith, you sound like Bull Connor.”

“Angela, every time I hear gays whine about being discriminated against and appropriating the language of the Civil Rights Movement, I want to vomit.”

“Okay, I think you made your point,” I answered quietly, taking his arm and steering him toward the door.

“No, I haven’t,” he said with a note of finality. Grudgingly, he allowed himself to be pulled. “It is blasphemous to compare the rights of homosexuals with the struggles of our people. They were never kidnapped from their homeland, forced into chattel slavery, their women raped, their men hung from trees, babies slaughtered. Period. Let’s go.”

Now that the lynching and chattel slavery cards had been pulled from the race deck, there was nothing more to say. As I followed Keith out of the room, I remembered the dangerous feeling of touching Caitlin’s hand. Slipping my hand into my bag I lightly fingered the fold of the flyer.