LEANDER

Joyce Carol Oates

THAT EVENING A lone white woman appeared diffidently at the rear of the small redbrick Hope Baptist Church on Armory Street, Hammond, New York. She took a seat in the last pew, near the center aisle and the front door. No one was near: no one glanced in her direction, at first.

Already there were forty or more people at the front of the church talking together with much animation. Everyone seemed to know everyone else: of course. The lone white woman understood that she was (perhaps) a curiosity to them: not only a white woman in a company of (mostly? entirely?) black- and brown-skinned persons but a woman with a very white skin, a porcelain sort of pallor that suggested recent illness, and stark-white hair to her shoulders, of a length uncommon in women her age. And though this woman was dressed inconspicuously in dark clothing it was evident that her clothes were not inexpensive, and that her manner lacked the ease and camaraderie of whites accustomed to black activist occasions. This white-skinned woman smiled in greeting to anyone who acknowledged her but her smile was overeager, uncertain.

She’d rehearsed the way in which she would identify herself should anyone ask. I am Jessalyn, I am interested in SaveOurLives and would like to help any way that I can. I—

It would be a relief to her, yet a disappointment, when no one approached to ask her name.

Alone in the last pew of the little church the woman listened to a sequence of impassioned speeches from the pulpit. She was shocked, appalled: she’d had no idea that so many unarmed and defenseless individuals in inner-city Hammond, ranging in age from an eight-year-old boy to an eighty-six-year-old woman, had been shot by Hammond police officers within the past decade. So many deaths, so many shootings and woundings, and not a single conviction of any Hammond police officer! In fact, not a single indictment.

Not a single apology from the Hammond Police Department.

The minister of Hope Church spoke, gravely and with dignity. The head of a New York State youth training program spoke, vehemently. A young black lawyer spoke, his voice quavering with emotion. Mothers spoke, holding pictures of their murdered children. Some were tearful and tremulous and some were angry and resolute. Some could barely speak above a whisper and others raised their voices as if keening. Young dark-skinned men and boys had been assaulted by Hammond police in the greatest numbers but no one was exempt from police violence—women, girls, the elderly, and even the disabled—a nineteen-year-old Iraqi war veteran in a wheelchair, shot dead by police officers for seeming to “brandish” a weapon; a twelve-year-old boy Tasered into unconsciousness by police officers for “suspicious behavior”—fleeing a police cruiser that braked to a stop in the street.

Jessalyn listened with mounting despair. She would have liked to add her voice to these voices but she could not bring herself to speak.

Such sorrow in this gathering, she dared not appropriate it as anything of her own. Driving into the inner city, as it’s euphemistically called, exiting the expressway into a neighborhood of old, crumbling brownstones and row houses, driving cautiously along narrow potholed streets lined with derelict vehicles, she’d felt like one descending in a bathosphere, into a twilit world in no way contiguous with her own affluent, suburban world at the periphery of the city. (Yes, she’d locked the doors of her car before exiting the expressway. If another had been present she’d have made an embarrassing remark, an awkward excuse—but she would have locked the doors nonetheless.)

Eyes on her were curious, inquisitive; not hostile if not (evidently) friendly. The tall grave minister smiled in her direction but rather stiffly, guardedly. White lady? Why’s she here?

As it turned out there were several white- or very light-skinned individuals at the meeting. One of these was lanky limbed with hair tied back in a slovenly ponytail—for a moment Jessalyn thought this might be someone she knew, a friend of her son’s. (It wasn’t.) Another was a tall gray-mustached man in a Stetson hat, wearing a dark-rose embroidered shirt and a black string tie—gentlemanly, Hispanic, of her approximate age.

But the tall mustached man was involved in an intense conversation with several others and took no notice of the (white) woman at the rear of the church.

A sharp-voiced white woman sporting a mane of ashy-blond hair, in gaudy quiltlike clothes, actually turned to stare at Jessalyn, and to glare at her; here was a middle-aged Caucasian hippie-activist, contemptuous of the diffident white woman of a very different, genteel background.

Her friend at the gathering was a massive black woman with a stern face, who also turned to stare at Jessalyn. This woman had spoken at the pulpit in a fierce voice denouncing the “tradition” of white racism and white indifference to black victims dating back to pre–Civil War times.

Jessalyn had never seen so large a woman, and she had never seen anyone stare at her with such hostility. The woman was in her midforties, perhaps, weighing as much as three hundred pounds; she was at least six feet tall, and wore a sacklike article of clothing that fell loosely over her bulk; her legs were columnar, and her arms were masses of slack, pocked flesh. Her face was massive as well, yet sharper boned, like a carved totem, and her eyes were accusing. “Yes? Ma’am? What you wantin’ with us, ma’am?”—she called to Jessalyn in a mocking voice loud and assured as a bugle.

Jessalyn was stricken with embarrassment. Like a guilty child she all but shrank in the pew. Why had she come to the Hope Baptist Church, to intrude upon these people who knew one another intimately, and had no need of her? Badly she wished she could escape. In a hoarse voice she managed to stammer that she’d wanted to contribute to SaveOurLives but her words were too faint to register with anyone.

Fortunately the massive glaring woman and her ashy-blond-haired friend had lost interest in Jessalyn almost immediately. Nor did anyone else take notice of her except, out of politeness, it seemed, the minister of Hope Church, who smiled in her direction, and seemed uncertain whether he should approach her, or take pity on her embarrassment and ignore her.

How thoughtless and foolish she’d been, Jessalyn thought. An affluent white woman, a resident of Old Farm Road, hoping to align herself with inner-city African Americans who’d suffered at the hands of white police officers, and through white indifference, countless times: what had she been thinking? Her son would charge her with white-liberal condescension. Her daughter would charge her with lunatic recklessness. If he’d been alive her husband would be speechless, as deeply shocked by Jessalyn’s behavior as if she’d set out deliberately to upset him.

That’s a dangerous neighborhood. Why are you there? Why alone? What on earth are you thinking?

Yet, the minister decided to come to speak with her. He had a wan, worn face, kindly eyes, his impatience with the awkward white visitor seemed to vie with his natural courtliness. Jessalyn saw that he was older than he’d appeared at the pulpit, her deceased husband’s age at least. Maybe he knew Jonny. Maybe they’d worked together and had been friends. . . .

It was the most tenuous, the most pathetic, of hopes. But Jessalyn dared not suggest it. There were no words she could offer to anyone in the little redbrick church, no attitude that was not in some way condescending, or inadequate; ridiculous, self-serving, and (unavoidably) racist. The massive stern-faced woman had peered into her white, shallow soul and annihilated her.

Vaguely Jessalyn had intended to donate money to SaveOurLives. For that purpose she’d brought along her checkbook. She had no idea how much money to give: one thousand dollars? But she was thinking now that such a sum was too much, that it might surprise and offend these people; the massive woman would sneer at her, and the ashy-blond-haired woman would sneer at her, as a rich white woman who hoped to absolve herself of racial guilt by giving money. But was five hundred dollars too little? Was five hundred dollars both too much and too little?

In his will her husband had left thousands of dollars to Hammond charitable organizations with ties to the black, inner-city community; he and Jessalyn had donated to these, as to the NAACP, for years. But the donations had been impersonal, mediated. The donations had, in a sense, substituted for actual encounters, investigations of the inner city, attempts to become acquainted with, still less befriend, individuals who lived in the Armory Street neighborhood; they had been oblique assertions of power, of the power to be charitable, a virtue of the Christian church to which, at least officially, Jessalyn and her husband had belonged. (And of course, the donations were tax-exempt.)

But here in the Hope Baptist Church, Jessalyn was personally exposed. Her generosity, or lack of generosity, could not be disguised.

The kindly minister stooped over her, introduced himself, and shook Jessalyn’s hand. He did not ask her name (she would recall later) but thanked her gravely for coming. He did ask if her car was parked near the church. Rapidly Jessalyn’s mind was working: should she make out a check for seven hundred dollars? (Not much, but nothing she could give would add up to much. The racial situation in the city seemed all but hopeless, during the very reign of the first black president of the United States.) Jessalyn wanted to apologize to the gentlemanly black man for having so little to give: her husband had left her money constrained by the stipulations of a trust fund, to prevent her giving extravagant amounts of money away to causes like SaveOurLives. . . . But of course Jessalyn couldn’t give such an excuse: it would seem to be blaming her husband, the most generous of men.

In the end, as the minister looked on with some embarrassment, Jessalyn hurriedly made out a check for fifteen hundred dollars to SaveOurLives. It was more than she could afford this quarter but she could not explain that. Her face burned with shame, discomfort. “Ma’am, thank you!”—the minister smiled and blinked at her in genuine surprise, and shook her hand another time.

He had seemed to like her, at least. She felt a faint thrill at the touch of his hand, his long fingers closing upon hers, unusually long fingers, they seemed to her, with pale undersides; strong fingers, surely, but their grip of the (white) woman’s hand was tentative, fleeting.

By this time the others, at the front of the church, speaking intensely together, had forgotten Jessalyn utterly.

The minister walked her to the door of the church, which he pushed open for her, as if to make sure that she left. In some magical way, a click of the long deft fingers, perhaps, he’d summoned a boy named Leander to “walk this lady to her car, please”—that happened to be in the parking lot of the Hammond Public Library just three blocks away.

Tall, spindly-limbed Leander was polite, taciturn with the (white) woman with long, shoulder-length strikingly white hair. He had not ever seen anyone quite like her close up—(was that possible?). He hadn’t balked at the minister’s request though clearly he was not thrilled with it. As he escorted Jessalyn to her car she tried to make conversation with him but he replied in mumbles—Yes’m. N’m. He was about the age of her eldest grandson, she gauged; though, in fact (she had to concede), she had no idea how old Leander might be, a teenager, or in his twenties, his skin was so dark and his features so—unusual—unfamiliar?—in her eyes.

To white police officers, black boys invariably looked older than their age, and larger than they actually were. Jessalyn had never quite understood this before.

■ ■

The thought came to her, both exciting and distressing—Should I give Leander something? But—of course not. I should not.

He would be embarrassed by the gesture. Possibly, insulted.

(Would he?)

At her car Jessalyn thanked Leander for his kindness. Leander did not linger as if he expected anything more than thanks but muttered Yes’m and quickly edged away.

She could call after him—but she did not.

Of course, she should not.

In her car, at once she locked the doors. The parking area behind the library was lighted and there were a half dozen vehicles still in the lot since the library was open until nine p.m., but still her heart was beating rapidly as if she’d narrowly avoided a terrible danger.

How easily she might have given Leander a twenty-dollar bill—she would have liked to, badly; and the boy would have appreciated it.

Yet he might have been insulted by a tip. (He had acted out of kindness, not for a tip.) (She knew this: yet, knowing it, could she not in any case have given him a twenty-dollar bill as an acknowledgment of his kindness, and not a tip?)

“But when is a tip not a tip? Is a tip always a tip? Is there no escaping—tip? If you are white?”

There was something debasing in the very word tip. Flippant, insulting. No one wants a tip.

By the time Jessalyn arrived at the large, darkened house on Old Farm Road she was feeling very tired. Disgust and depression commingled in an ashy taste at the back of her mouth. The drive from Armory Street in downtown Hammond to Old Farm Road, North Hammond, that should have taken no more than twenty-five minutes at this hour of the day required nearly twice that long for her; in the haze of a steadily increasing headache pain she’d stared through the windshield at the highway as if she’d never seen it before. She was assailed by a dread of taking a wrong exit and becoming hopelessly lost in the very place in which she’d lived most of her adult life.

The fact was, she’d rarely driven into Hammond, and never at night; returning home from an event in the city, her husband had always driven.

And how dark Old Farm Road was, without streetlights! Set on large three- and four-acre lots, the houses here were spaced apart; the driveways were so long, like the graveled drive to Jessalyn’s house, you could barely see the houses from the road. Of course, it is a white enclave. Strangers are not welcome here after dark or before.

■ ■

“Leander?”—in the morning and for many mornings in succession the name came to her, a mysterious name, it seemed, beautiful and strange and yet tinged with regret, reproach.

She had to think for a moment, before recalling why.