porch. Sunlight and birdsong drifted in from gardens. In the outer rooms, more new students arrived with their parents, and more old students greeted them.
I found myself wishing that Mike Russell were there. As Mr. Oates took a moment to exchange some man-talk with my father (they took on the look that men got when they put their hands in their pockets, tilted their heads to one side, and put aside the milder wife-and-kids smiles), I suspected that I had come to this place all on the recommendation of one professionally attentive creature who was now unpacking
his
bags at Harvard. It was the social ease and gentleness that blew so balmy around me that brought Russell to mind. It had been just that confidence that had seduced me, the poise that passed my understanding and made me think that if I were where he’d come from, I, too, would emerge young, gifted, and black for all to admire.
Instead, I stood awkward and ridiculous, cloaked in a makeshift composure so brittle that I seemed fairly to rattle inside it like seeds in a gourd. Instead of Mike Russell, the dashingWally with his uptilted eyes and sidelong glances implied a camaraderie I did not feel. Lanky white students made coffee-table conversation. The omniscient Rector, plain-spoken and gray-haired, welcomed us into my new “community.” And from where we stood in the Rectory, the green-and-brown grounds spread out around us, pushing the world away, holding me in as if I had been caught in a slide-projector show.
How was I to know (since I could not read Wally’s dashing eyes) that other black students had felt the same way? Not until years later was I able to ask them outright and resurrect the strangeness of it all. Ed Shockley, who graduated in my class, can still remember standing outside the Rectory looking at the grounds and wondering whether his white classmates would jump him in the woods.
Lee Bouton, one of the first nineteen girls to arrive at St. Paul’s in 1971, came to the Rectory without any family at all. As a tenth-grader, she flew from Washington, D.C., to Boston, caught a bus from Boston to Concord, and then a taxi from Concord to St. Paul’s. She carried her own luggage from one transport to the next. It was January when she and the other girls arrived to begin coeducation at St. Paul’s. The driver let Lee out in the snow in front of an administration building. The switchboard operator inside called Jeremy Price to come pick up his charge.
Mr. Price “took me to the Rectory, where the welcoming tea was going on. There were parents there, and other students, and I walked through the door with Jeremy Price, feeling very intimidated. He’d taken my bag. I didn’t know where my room was. I didn’t know anything. And I walked in, and you know how when you walk into that [outer parlor] there’s a couch facing the doorway? Well, Loretta [the other black girl] was sitting right in the middle of the couch, and she jumped up and said: ‘Oooooooooh! Here’s another one!’ And she cameover and gave me this big hug. And right behind her was Mike Russell with this big, beautiful smile. I felt like, maybe it’s going to be all right, you know?”
My family and I stood in the Rectory just a year and a half after Lee’s first tea. Unlike her, I was armed with the experience of a proper, on-campus interview, and I was escorted by attractive young parents and a cuddly kid sister. Unlike Ed Shockley, I was not afraid that the white boys were going to catch me alone in the woods one night and beat me up. But for the first time, I had a whiff, as subtle as the scent of the old books that lined the wall, of my utter aloneness in this new world. I reached into myself for the head-to-the-side, hands-on-hips cockiness that had brought me here and found just enough of it to keep me going.
My dormitory was around the corner from the Rectory, over a bridge and across the road from the library. Inside, just off the common room, steps led to the open
I found myself wishing that Mike Russell were there. As Mr. Oates took a moment to exchange some man-talk with my father (they took on the look that men got when they put their hands in their pockets, tilted their heads to one side, and put aside the milder wife-and-kids smiles), I suspected that I had come to this place all on the recommendation of one professionally attentive creature who was now unpacking
his
bags at Harvard. It was the social ease and gentleness that blew so balmy around me that brought Russell to mind. It had been just that confidence that had seduced me, the poise that passed my understanding and made me think that if I were where he’d come from, I, too, would emerge young, gifted, and black for all to admire.
Instead, I stood awkward and ridiculous, cloaked in a makeshift composure so brittle that I seemed fairly to rattle inside it like seeds in a gourd. Instead of Mike Russell, the dashingWally with his uptilted eyes and sidelong glances implied a camaraderie I did not feel. Lanky white students made coffee-table conversation. The omniscient Rector, plain-spoken and gray-haired, welcomed us into my new “community.” And from where we stood in the Rectory, the green-and-brown grounds spread out around us, pushing the world away, holding me in as if I had been caught in a slide-projector show.
How was I to know (since I could not read Wally’s dashing eyes) that other black students had felt the same way? Not until years later was I able to ask them outright and resurrect the strangeness of it all. Ed Shockley, who graduated in my class, can still remember standing outside the Rectory looking at the grounds and wondering whether his white classmates would jump him in the woods.
Lee Bouton, one of the first nineteen girls to arrive at St. Paul’s in 1971, came to the Rectory without any family at all. As a tenth-grader, she flew from Washington, D.C., to Boston, caught a bus from Boston to Concord, and then a taxi from Concord to St. Paul’s. She carried her own luggage from one transport to the next. It was January when she and the other girls arrived to begin coeducation at St. Paul’s. The driver let Lee out in the snow in front of an administration building. The switchboard operator inside called Jeremy Price to come pick up his charge.
Mr. Price “took me to the Rectory, where the welcoming tea was going on. There were parents there, and other students, and I walked through the door with Jeremy Price, feeling very intimidated. He’d taken my bag. I didn’t know where my room was. I didn’t know anything. And I walked in, and you know how when you walk into that [outer parlor] there’s a couch facing the doorway? Well, Loretta [the other black girl] was sitting right in the middle of the couch, and she jumped up and said: ‘Oooooooooh! Here’s another one!’ And she cameover and gave me this big hug. And right behind her was Mike Russell with this big, beautiful smile. I felt like, maybe it’s going to be all right, you know?”
My family and I stood in the Rectory just a year and a half after Lee’s first tea. Unlike her, I was armed with the experience of a proper, on-campus interview, and I was escorted by attractive young parents and a cuddly kid sister. Unlike Ed Shockley, I was not afraid that the white boys were going to catch me alone in the woods one night and beat me up. But for the first time, I had a whiff, as subtle as the scent of the old books that lined the wall, of my utter aloneness in this new world. I reached into myself for the head-to-the-side, hands-on-hips cockiness that had brought me here and found just enough of it to keep me going.
My dormitory was around the corner from the Rectory, over a bridge and across the road from the library. Inside, just off the common room, steps led to the open
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