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Chapter 3

High School, Low Point

The summer before high school, my desire to learn shifted from school to all things social. My best friend Ruth Ann, almost two years older, had whetted my desire for high school life while I was still at Jefferson. During our frequent sleepovers, she shared everything about how to be part of the “in” crowd and their activities. I even participated where I could.

The year I was in ninth grade, my cousin Melvin DeWalt was the star of the Pontiac Central basketball team. I basked in the status of being related to Melvin and his predecessor, my uncle Willie DeWalt, who in the late fifties had been the Michael Jordan of the squad. With my friends, I went to every game.

Summer gave me an opportunity to get the jump on being asked to join Les Jeunes Filles, an invitation-only club. Les Jeunes Filles was one of two girls groups that guaranteed a certain level of acceptance. The most popular girls were members or alumni of one club or the other. The differences between the clubs were fuzzy. Devonaires, the other group, may have been a bit prettier and more circumspect, Les Jeunes Filles a little spunkier and more irreverent, but all were cute, smart girls, and belonging to one of the clubs was what mattered. I tagged along with Ruth Ann doing grunt work for LJF summer parties: carrying and cleaning folding chairs, setting up tables and spreading paper table cloths, doing whatever I was asked in hopes of becoming a member in the fall.

During summer, the fun moved to the Hayes Jones Community Center—named after a hometown Olympic gold medalist—where the crop of males was not limited to junior high boys. The parking lot was crammed with twenty-something guys in fresh-off-the-line cars. Chuck’s fire-engine-red Catalina convertible, James’s black Mustang, Clifford’s midnight-blue Grand Prix, Bobby G’s yellow Chevy Impala: all gleaming with the promise of plentiful joyrides and fodder for fantasies. My friends and I would pile into these chick magnets for raucous trips to the local McDonald’s, Motown music blasting. Our newly found sex appeal radiated from us like Martha & the Vandellas’s “Heat Wave.” Finding safety in numbers, we flirted with these older guys like crazy. For that summer, we girls were young and invincible and life was a feast on shiny chrome wheels.

Academic life in the new school year just wasn’t the same without homeroom 202. Even though all of us had selected a college prep curriculum, we might have only one or two previous classmates in any given class. At Pontiac Central High, we college-bound black kids were once again isolated, standing out first because of our skin color, then because of our unexpected intelligence. In advanced biology, I sat next to the sons and daughters of doctors. In civics classes, I defended the “equality now” stance of the civil rights movement against the “steady progress” arguments of the children of attorneys. My years at Jefferson and in homeroom 202 had imbued me with the belief that I could compete with anyone academically, but they could not provide me with the experiences and intellectual arsenal that these kids took for granted. Family trips to Europe, summer camps focused around particular interests, the ability to have complex science questions answered at the dinner table—these were among the privileges that my new classmates took for granted. When Chris Blakeney opined, “Chiang Kai-shek is a fool,” I intuitively knew that she was parroting someone, but I was struck by the fact that the struggle between Taiwan and Mainland China would never have come up in any setting of my life beyond the classroom. At Pontiac Central, I began to see what I was up against in life. The enormity of disadvantage was suddenly as real to me as a fifty-foot concrete wall that I would have to climb by finding footholds in the cracks. I admitted to myself that Dr. King’s dream might never be achieved in my lifetime. I understood what all those relatives and church people had meant when they exhorted me, “You gonna be somebody. And don’t let anyone stop you.” But whoever was trying to stop me was big, powerful, and invisible. Who had given me the same IQ and talent as these white kids, but seemingly given them so many more advantages? I directed an ever-increasing amount of my attention to social life. There, I was once again comfortable in a nearly all-black world, one that we considered superior to the white students’ world.

In our view, white kids couldn’t dance, the guys were not cool, the school-sponsored dances they attended were wack, and the girls were so silly they actually dated boys their own ages. We were convinced of our social superiority—white kids could never out-cool us—it was an incontrovertible fact that was borne out in our style, swagger, music, and dance. Even the names of our beloved Motown groups—the Supremes, the Miracles, the Temptations, Little Stevie Wonder—exuded the conviction that buoyed us and lifted us above the daily discomfort of being surrounded by white peers who enjoyed a favor that no amount of achievement could neutralize. Where once, being smart had seemed the way forward, being cool became the Holy Grail that propelled me.

My shift away from studies was not complete, though. Certain teachers, like my stern but cool biology instructor, pushed me to apply myself. Sporadically, I complied. For some reason, when our class studied the human electron transport chain, I took notes and crammed for the test. A pretty blonde named Lynne got a C on that test. Disappointed in her grade and seeking company for her misery, she stopped by my desk for the first time ever and asked, “So, what did you get?” She couldn’t hide her surprise when I answered, “An A.” I was happy to disappoint her, but I wondered when people had stopped expecting me to be at the head of the class.

Studying just couldn’t compete with Les Jeunes Filles, sporting events, dances, parties, and older guys. I had always liked Hubert Price, a handsome, smart cousin of Ruth Ann’s who took me to ninth-grade prom, but he had gone on to Michigan State. I set my sights on Richard, a nice-looking factory worker. We had almost nothing in common; I can’t recall a single conversation we had. With too much unsupervised time on my hands, I made out with Richard until my lips were sore and frustrated him to no end by refusing to take things to the ultimate level. Finally, after a dance, as we sat in his car in the parking lot, he told me that if I wasn’t going to have sex with him, he wasn’t going to drive me home. He wasn’t interested in anything I had to say. “I know you’re not going to do it, so get the hell out of my car!” I stood next to the car wondering what to do. I wasn’t infatuated with him, and he was too unconcerned to pretend I was special to him. No way was he going to be my first.

A soft voice came from the open window of a sharp-looking white Catalina parked nearby. “Are you all right, baby?” I vaguely recognized the driver and the car. One cold day when my girls and I had been walking from Jefferson, I had seen what I thought was Ruth Ann’s uncle’s white Grand Prix slowly approaching through the heavy snow. I had playfully stepped into the street and flagged the car down to ask if he would give us a ride home. The car had stopped and I opened the door. When I saw the color of the interior I knew that I had made a mistake. The driver, a nice-looking guy of about twenty, had smiled at me. He didn’t seem to think it was so bad to be flagged down by three young girls. As I began to close the door, he had said, “Wait, wait, what’s your name?”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I replied, firmly closing the door on his entreaty and his smiling face. That same face was now looking at me from inside the same car.

“I’m okay, but I need a ride.” I was less afraid of this kind-faced near-stranger than of walking home in the dark at almost midnight.

“I’ll give you a ride. Get in.”

As I entered the car, he asked my name.

“Valerie.”

“That’s a pretty name. I’m Vert.” Unromantic as it was, this is how I met my first love. He was six years older and a perfect father figure for a confused girl.

Vert achieved with kindness what Richard could never have bullied me into. He called the day after he drove me home, and the day after that. I had, of course, vetted him with Ruth Ann immediately after our parking lot meeting. He was a well-known guy, popular enough, who was nicknamed “Hat Man” for the jaunty fedora he was seldom seen without. Given how starved for attention I was, Hat Man did everything right. He took me out to basketball games and movies, bought me shrimp dinners at the L’il Pig barbeque joint, and cheerfully chauffeured me around. He introduced me to his parents, showed me off to his friends, and made me his official girl. I gave myself to the relationship completely. Hat Man took my virginity, but I also gave it. At fifteen, I was madly in love. When my mother found out how old he was, she forbade me from seeing him. I had no intention of breaking up with him; in fact, I intended to marry him.

When Mama came home from work one day and found me sitting in Hat Man’s car, she tapped on the window and angrily directed me into the house. He came in with me and declared his love and honorable intentions. “I’m proud of Val,” he said, and I melted like ice cream over warm apple pie. I was convinced that our love would last forever. Six months later he had outgrown me and moved on to a young woman of nineteen.

I wondered if anyone had ever died of a broken heart. I thought the pain of losing Hat Man would surely kill me. When our entire circle of couples went en masse to the new James Bond movie, he took Her. My stunning Easter outfit—a white wool cape suit, chic cloche hat, faux-lizard sling-back heels and matching bag—was selected to make him miss me. I attracted plenty of male attention but left my ex unmoved. When our whole crowd picnicked at a state park, he was there with Her. Nearly every day, I endured the humiliation of seeing his car parked near Her apartment in the projects. When I heard that they had become engaged, I removed the white gold and pearl ring he had given me. On their wedding day, I cried my heart out in my room as a caravan of cars passed by, blowing their horns in celebration of the marriage.

Decades later, I saw Hat Man at a family wake, where he greeted me warmly. I didn’t recognize him at first, not because he had changed so much, but because I had.

“I know that I know you,” I smiled, trying to place him when he approached me.

“Yes, you do,” he replied in a tone that almost demanded I recognize him. “I’m Vert.”

“Oh my goodness! How are you?” Hat Man had receded to the irrelevance of a sophomore high school romance. Seeing him, I realized that the players in our lives often fade away; it’s the lessons we learn from them that leave a mark.

The spring and summer after Hat Man moved on were an achy blur. Looking to replace the intimacy we had shared, I deliberately went after Ronnie, a brooding ex-soldier I had met through my friend Denise, who was dating his best friend. I’m not sure he liked me and I can’t remember if I liked him, but getting together was convenient. I needed someone to fill the hole in my heart, and this tall, strong Vietnam vet was right in front of me. He carried the moody vestiges of having been in a war. He didn’t talk to me much and probably listened even less. We had sex two or three times, mostly because I knew this was what a grown man expected, and thanks to Hat Man, I was no virgin. I don’t remember much about it, except that on one occasion, the condom he used came off. I felt kind of rejected the entire time, as if Ronnie the soldier wondered what he was doing with me. I was too inexperienced to see how this mirrored my relationship with my father, the original unattainable man in my life.

Once school was out, the only thing that broke through my emotional numbness was my excitement over driver’s education. Six a.m. was the only time slot available, but learning to drive was worth getting up for. I showed up for class faithfully, walking the quiet streets and enjoying early morning’s soft sunlight, damp grass, and chirping birds. My tough instructor’s gruff manner was perfect for teaching us the rules of driving and staying alive. A one-way sign doesn’t mean some maniac won’t come at you from the wrong direction. A red light doesn’t mean some fool won’t run through it. Expect the unexpected. That last one turned out to be especially good advice.

One evening my Aunt Dean showed up at our house out of the blue. Dean, my grandfather’s sister, was normally a lot of fun, a cigarette-smoking, wisecracking, irreverent fixture of my childhood. That evening, though, she strode deliberately into the house, greeted my mother, and then spoke directly to me.

“I want to talk to you. I heard something about you at work and I don’t like it a bit.” I wondered how she could possibly have heard that I was having sex. Which of her hospital coworkers could have known? “A woman I work with told me that she saw you out on the street about five thirty in the morning, girl! What in the world is going on? You haven’t been raised like that.” When I told her that I had been on my way to a six o’clock class, she sat back in her chair, let out her usual raucous laugh, and immediately switched gears. “You just wait until I tell that woman you were on your way to school! I’m getting her told as soon as I get to work. Driver’s education. How ’bout that!”

I felt like I had dodged a bullet, but I felt guilty too. I hadn’t done what I was suspected of, but I was no longer the girl she thought I was, either. Soon enough, that would become clear.