THAT NIGHT, GLORIA AND THE OTHER TEACHERS SPOKE while little white wax candles lay ready and waiting on the desk arms of their wooden chairs. Gloria felt a balance in her soul; yes, each and every person had a candle and a fan. When Sam West give Stella his red-sided cigarette lighter, she had to ask, “Should I lay it down or stand it up on its base?” and Gloria knew Stella was so old-fashioned she’d never held a cigarette lighter in her hand till that moment. Neither had Gloria.
Jimmy Harlow held out a book of matches to Gloria, and she placed it beside the dead little candle lying on her desk. The matchbook was black and had a modern Picasso-like drawing of a bull on it and the words DALE’S HIDEAWAY.
“You been to Dale’s Hideaway?” she asked Jimmy shyly.
“Naw, but my uncle he used to wait there. At Dale’s Cellar, too.”
Gloria decided she’d ask Stella to tell her about Dale’s. That and the restaurant at Cobb Lane, with the she-crab soup. Suddenly she remembered Stella saying of Cat, at sunset, with a man present:She’s flooding. Yes, the interiors of forbidden restaurants could certainly be discussed.
Gloria had had no interest in eating at the Woolworth’s—that was just symbolic, a step along the way. But she wanted to taste things so soft and flavorful that she couldn’t even imagine them now. She wanted to go inside the places behind the intriguing names: Dale’s Hideaway, Dale’s Cellar, The Club, Cobb Lane with the she-crab soup. She wanted to go there while she was still young.
“Jimmy,” she said, “what was the name of the most important document signed in 1776?”
“Declaration of Independence,” he said, but now he was doodling, copying the drawing of the bull standing on its hind legs like a man.
“Way back in history, before history,” Gloria said, “people used to draw animals on the walls of caves. In the south of France. Those bulls and horses have been there over ten thousand years.”
Now Jimmy looked at her.
“I can draw,” he said.
“But perhaps later?” she asked and made her voice as soft as the petal of a pansy. “The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution didn’t include black people.”
They knew that. That was one thing they weren’t likely to miss on the multiple-choice test if it asked “What groups were implicitly excluded in the opening statement of the Constitution?”
“No women, either, white or black.” Gloria liked her tone, so quiet, as though she were talking to herself. They had to lean forward to hear. “When they say ‘men’ they mean men, not everybody, like you might have thought they meant to say.”
The six young men in her group bowed their heads and looked up strangely at her, as though she was embarrassing them. They didn’t want to discuss a woman topic. “Does anybody know when women got the vote—black and white women?” And she had to tell them: 1920.
This was the way to teach when you didn’t have any books. Fact by fact. You told them, you explained. You asked them to repeat it. One by one. That was the glory of her “classroom”; for a moment in time, everybody knew everything you asked of him. You didn’t go on till they all knew it. Then everybody stepped forward together.
Gloria went to the window and threw up the sash. “Let freedom ring!” she said, and the big boys jumped up and helped her till all the windows were wide open.
AT BREAK TIME, Christine told Gloria and Stella, authoritatively, “You want to improve education, you not got to do but one thing and one thing only: reduce class size. We are cookin’.”
“And put screens on the windows,” Stella added.
Where was Arcola? Out on the porch hobnobbing with Charles Powers. Where was Jimmy Harlow? Suddenly Christine was inviting Gloria to go home with her after classes. “I want you to meet my kids.”
“Thank you,” Gloria said. Today was Aunt Carmine’s birthday, but Christine’s invitation was more important. Making friends was about the future. Every decision now was a chance to step boldly into the future. Christine would lead her forward.
“You say that ‘Thank you,’ ” Christine replied pleasantly, “like I invited you to Buckingham Palace.”
In the background, Gloria heard student voices tuning up like an orchestra. I’m bored with these history facts, Gloria thought. My mind’s wandering all over the place. When I finish school, I don’t want to be any teacher. The luscious cello section soli in Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” sang in Gloria’s mind. She wanted to go to New York.
“Now what was an indentured servant and how was that different from being a slave?” she asked her group.
Across the room, Arcola’s group watched their teacher attentively. With her friendly ways and Colgate toothpaste smile, Arcola made people want to do right and enjoy themselves. She’d make these students want to come to school. They didn’t care if she wore her glamour braid or not. She was just pretty, even if her skin tones were a little murky.
Gloria had always liked the even, dark blend of tones in her own skin, a strong darkness, more toward black than brown, but with brown and red in it. Mahogany, she thought. Like fine furniture. And she used to put her arm on the dining room table, when her mama had the protective pad off, to match up her skin tone with the polished tabletop.
One young man in the class was darker than Gloria, and she was fascinated by him. Every night she looked at him with satisfaction: just as dark as ever, across the room in Christine’s group. Like somebody from Africa. He was married and wore a wide gold wedding band. The ring surprised Gloria, and she wondered how a shiftless Neighborhood Youth Corps boy had brought himself to get married and to have a gold ring. But it gleamed enticingly against his skin, which was dark as bittersweet chocolate.
How many mosquitoes, crickets, and moths flying around in this hot room?
And then the bell was ringing, lessons came to a bored halt, and school was out. All evening, the little white candles had la in unused. Agnes began to gather up the fans and the candles and to put them back into her shopping bag for safekeeping, till tomorrow night. Gloria hoped Cat would be back.
There was Mr. Parrish lounging against the doorframe; so casual but handsome in a lightweight suit and tie. Gloria loved the contradiction between his nice clothes and his relaxed body; he was sexy. She thought he was even better looking than Dr. King. Mr. Parrish had a wildness in his eye that made her think of Lord Byron and Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. Mr. Parrish made her think of her handsome daddy, too, and how she used to run and jump in his arms after Sunday school.
Arcola was asking Stella, “You want Charles and me to walk you to your car?”
Yes, Gloria thought, Stella might be scared without Cat for company. Not that Cat could protect a flea. Or hurt one.
“Thank you,” Stella said to Arcola, and her smile showed tension leaving her face, an echo of the wide, relaxed smile Arcola always gave everybody. “Good night, everybody,” Stella called out. But first she crossed the room to Gloria. She’s flooding—had Stella really said that at sunset while they waited for students to show up? She walked across the room, reached out, and touched Gloria’s forearm. The white girl didn’t look at what her hand was doing; she just looked straight into Gloria’s eyes. “See you tomorrow night.”
Mr. Parrish asked Christine and Gloria to go with him to his office.
WHEN THE THREE of them stepped into the night air, it was like walking against a curtain of heat, pushing it forward with your nose, but never getting past it or through it. Christine asked Mr. Parrish if there had been any follow-up on the bullhorn man.
“Naw,” Mr. Parrish said, and he snorted skeptically through his nose.
He sounded like a bull, full of power and glory, and Gloria thought again of the matchbook drawing of a bull standing on his hind legs like a man.
Once she had seen a real bull stand up and snort when her daddy had taken her out in the country, up to Winston County, where he had grown up. His people had lived there since the Civil War. When Alabama seceded from the Union, Winston County had seceded from Alabama, and Winston was called “The Free State.” As a young man, her father had realized if he was going to make anything of himself, he’d have to leave farming and go to the city, to Birmingham. Once established, he had gathered all his sisters into his garage apartment behind their new house in Birmingham.
During one visit to Winston County, Gloria had sat in the car to watch the men load a bull into the back of a truck with a stock rack added above the metal sides. Quickly, the beast turned around, then stood up, heaving his mighty chest onto the bars of the stock rack. It had melted under him like butter. For a moment, the bull just hung over the bent bars; then he commenced to kick and snort and struggle. Her father got out of the car to help, but he told Gloria and her mother to stay inside, that a bull was a dangerous animal.
Striding toward his office cutting across the sward, Mr. Parrish looked as though he could wrangle a whole herd even while he was wearing a suit. Like that standing bull, the matchbook drawing—Mr. Parrish was a kind of Minotaur, king of the labyrinth.
Her father had helped to put up the ramp again, to open the tailgate, to hold the rope on one side with three others, so the snorting bull could walk down to his kingdom.
When they entered the office, Gloria’s eye fell on the little statue of Vulcan, and she couldn’t help looking out the window to see what color light the real, true Vulcan was holding up, across the city, perched on the high ridge of the mountain. The Popsicle light was green. She recalled how Arcola had sucked on Vulcan that day at the beginning of the summer when Mr. Parrish had told them white women would be joining H.O.P.E. White women? Cat and Stella, they turned out to be.
When Gloria dialed up her mother, she was surprised to hear her mother’s voice against her ear saying You don’t neglect your family for your friends. Gloria didn’t know how to reply. She took a breath. Then her mother added that Gloria could just put in an appearance at the birthday party and then visit her friend.
“I just wanted to congratulate you,” Mr. Parrish was saying to Christine, “on the fine job you’re doing.” Then he looked at Gloria, as though he were beaming at a child. “You, too, Miss Gloria. I’m proud of you.”
“Gloria’s coming over with me to meet my children,” Christine said.
“I have to go home first,” Gloria explained. She felt depressed.
Ignoring Gloria, Mr. Parrish said to Christine, “You have three, don’t you, and it’s just you.”
“My sister watches them a lot.”
“I’d enjoy meeting your family, sometime, Christine. I have four children myself.” He picked up some papers from his desk, as though he was bored and wanted them to leave.
As soon as Gloria and Christine closed the office door behind them, Christine said, “Oh, I forgot to tell him something. You run on to your aunt’s party and come over to my place later.” Then she told Gloria her address.
WHEN GLORIA GOT HOME, she went straight to the lit-up garage apartment. Chatter from the party clattered down the stairs. Her mother and father were already there, and Aunt Carmine’s birthday teacup of flowers had already been presented.
“Girl, you ought to ask off early for your auntie’s birthday,” Carmine said reprovingly.
Her father winked at her. “You not missed nothing,” he said.
Dressed like jewels—red, yellow, green, and blue—the aunts were resplendent. And the perfume on them!
On the occasion of each of his sisters’ birthdays, Oliver Callahan gave them a small bouquet nestled in a teacup with a matching saucer. Each set was beautifully unique in its floral decoration; they never duplicated. “The cup garden,” the sisters called the collection, and it was as colorful as they were. Tonight they’d displayed all the empty cups and saucers on a round table, then added the new one, filled with fresh flowers, to the group.
Gloria’s mother still wore her staid professional clothes, but her father had changed to a Hawaiian shirt. Seated, he raised his glass for a 7UP toast to Aunt Carmine and her birthday. All the women hovered around him, ready to wait on him, or to touch him or to get his attention. Gloria saw her father, surrounded by his sisters, was as pleased as though it were his birthday. When he suddenly stood up to lead the toast, Gloria thought of Picasso’s bull, erect in all his glory.
Once when she was very little, before they moved to Dynamite Hill, she had gotten up in the night to go to the bathroom. When she came out in the hall, there was her daddy coming out of the other bedroom. He was wearing only a T-shirt—maybe she dreamed it—and his member was standing up straight and tall as a little man the shape of a clothespin doll but much larger. With both hands, he had stretched down the white cloth till he’d covered himself. Unperturbed, he smiled at Gloria and said, “Go on back to sleep, sweetheart.”
She had dreamed she was Snow White, pleasantly slumbering in the heart of a diamond, but Snow White’s cheeks were the blissful color of a milk chocolate candy kiss, and her nose stuck up in an inviting little milk chocolate peak.
From over Aunt Carmine’s birthday party array of cups and saucers, decorated with roses, cornflowers, violets, marigolds, snapdragons, lilies, clover, and hyacinth, her father smiled at her now, just as he always had.
“Daddy,” Gloria said, “you remind me of Ferdinand.”
“Ferdinand who, baby?”
“The gentle bull among the flowers, in the children’s story.”
Her fingertips rubbed her forearm, the place Stella had gently touched, and then she touched her cheek where the white man at the lunch counter had spat.
Were her aunts more like tropical birds or colorful jewels in their bright, tight clothes? In her quiet gray suit, Gloria’s mother sat calmly among their flutter. Why should Gloria leave this? She was home. She’d telephone Christine, arrange to visit some later time.