E P I L O G U E
The morning is jagged enough to crunch underfoot and mean enough to explode as clouds in front of the faces of the shell-shocked where they are in line at Independence National Bank, standing or sitting in fold-up chairs made for picnics or concerts or church dinners. They must have been there since before the sad excuse for daylight dawned because it is still early and two lines stretch and turn at opposite corners up both Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards. Empty coffee cups and paper food wraps blow down the street.
And there is no music.
Winter is going to be hard again for the sun people. The wind is blowing that promise down 125th Street against the lines. The cold is seeking a way through a scarf and a collar and a hat and a hood to assault ears and to play on tender necks. I would not call the wind Mariah after my great-grandmother who, although she was not particularly gentle, was not mean like this. Many on the line are her age as I remember her. And they are bundled against more than the November weather.
The boys are making us some money hawking the Harlem Journal. It is full of the information we have spent the week digging up about our community bank.
We put together the loose bits of gossip, essential insider leaks and a satisfying sense of daring to tell the bank’s stories. Today, November 13, 1990, our gamble is on the front page of the special edition of the Journal:
The paper’s photographer Karl is walking the line, taking close-ups of faces. I wish I had a broadcast hook-up so they could say how it feels out loud and people could see them say it. But I do have my notebook and I ask the questions, gently or not, depending.
“Did the City’s only black commercial bank feel like a safe place?”
“If a new Harlem bank opens up, will you deposit your money?”
“Who do you blame.”
“Pearl Washington over here!”
Eyewitness reporter John Johnson is making his way across the street. I can visualize the television shot of me profiled against the bank door, so I put off knocking and turn my best side toward him and wait for him to cross.
“John?”
“Is it true you killed Bobby Bop Nelson.”
“You know I won’t comment.”
“Did you forget this is not Hollywood? You’re an actress, not a real cop.”
How many times have I heard that this week?
“No comment.”
Reverend Doctor William Garrison walks past us to knock on the bank door. He is one of several ministers who have come to see about their flock and their finances.
The guard shakes his head no. And I watch Reverend Gary take on the self-important air I find so annoying as he walks toward us.
John catches it on his television camera and sticks his microphone in Gary’s face.
“Reverend Garrison! What does this mean to the people of Harlem?”
“Is someone asking those racists in Washington that question?”
“You’re on the bank’s board of directors. What are you doing about this?”
“Nobody’s asking for a handout. The only commercial bank in the city run by black people was started by heroes and run by supermen. Pledges are still coming in. Even just now someone pledged another two million dollars on the phone. If this goes down, then know what gets endorsed and supported is not our self-sufficiency, but our dependency. Always has, always will.”
While the camera is pointed the other way, I knock. The stranger inside moves aside one of the concealing shades and looks out. He is not impressed with my press credentials, which are actually expired, but he wouldn’t know because he doesn’t move close enough to see.
I am forced to step back to join my neighbors outside our community bank. I feel with them the weight of our defeat. We are stooped under it.
The line is a snaking thing full of stunned acceptance. The anger is barely contained in its familiar groove. As much as it feels like a unique experience, it also feels like one too many of the same old thing. Some have come with company to the boulevard. But if we have come alone, we can find comfort in the line. We are dense together because we need less personal space on this cold morning. The angry voices trying to rally us are an intrusion.
“Save the bank.” The chant comes and goes. It seems to take too much voice.
I march across the street away from the bank because I feel the need to re-establish a distance.
When I turn back I get a wider view of the two lines leading to the bank’s covered windows and doors. My people. Glorious and complex. Langston Hughes once said they do not know how beautiful it is to be colored.
“Pearl! Pearl!” Samantha is waving a piece of paper at me as she makes her way across the street. She is one of those slow-moving sisters.
“You got another fax from Roger,” she says when she finally gets to me. She passes me a single page rolled lengthwise like a baton.
“Thank you, Samantha.”
“Sure,” she says. “The devil is busy,” she adds and she turns away without waiting for a reply.
I unroll the paper. It is a poem. I fold it in half.
“Who’s Roger?” Obsidian asks from behind me. He has done that thing he does. Sneaking up on a person is probably an essential talent for his cop job.
I turn to him and tell half a truth. “Roger is my friend who teaches kickboxing and mixed martial arts to my meditators.”
“I wish the brother well,” he says. “But you’re going to be spending a lot of time here in the City. And I don’t think you can be trusted.”
I deserved that but I did not expect it.
“If I am going to be here, I need to meditate again with your people,” I tell him. “That was hard last night.”
“How does it feel to be in danger? To witness someone dying? Did you feel tenderness toward your fellow man and fellow woman? Was your heart open?”
I get the point he is making, using the language from my meditation at the precinct.
“No,” I say. “I noticed my heart closed. I disassociated to protect myself.”
“But did you feel the chemicals your body unleashed?” he asks.
“Yes. If you are talking about fear and grief.”
“My people experience that all the time and their intention is to protect themselves from a danger they perceive will leave them dead in the street.”
“Perception is framing reality—figuring out how we think things are. You say your police perceive danger in the dark bodies they are supposed to protect. Do you hear yourself?”
He looks over at the crowd across the street. “I’m not afraid. This is my community.”
He turns back to me. “But we can’t afford empathy and an open heart. That kind of connection will get in the way of us doing our job. You saw how fast that happened last night. You don’t have to worry about meditating at the precinct again. It’s not going to happen.”
“Because I practice, I could be aware of where the reaction was landing in my body,” I say “And I could tolerate being activated and stay present to my thoughts and feelings and watch them change.”
“I practice too. I discharged by moving by body this morning.”
“But we can’t just discharge the grief and rage. To heal, we have to admit to what’s happening—to the fact that the community and the cops are all being triggered again and again without release.”
“Them and us. That’s the place we never step out from.”
I pull out my notebook. “Tell me again about how your black mayor and black police commissioner will have you getting out of your cars and walking the streets.”
“I’m not talking about this with you. I came to tell you I got a call. Viola is in custody. They were stopped at LaGuardia Airport. Virginia asked you to come get her. I’ll be back for you.”
I watch him walk away.
Other police on horses clop down the boulevard in front of the restive crowd.
“Save the bank! Save the bank!”
Finally, belatedly, the crowd begins chanting loud, like they mean it.
The bank doors are open. The line moves and Adrianne walks into the bank with the first in line.
She comes back out and turns down her thumb to let me know they are cutting checks.
We were right, and as she turns back to the line, she raises her fist in an incongruous power salute. I give it back to her.
T H E • E N D