would leave those books as I found them: dog-eared, smudging, foxed and torn, worn away by desperate readers who had come before me.
That night, in my deranged state, those newspaper clippings stood before me like criminals in a lineup, staring out with bleary eyes, each one an aspect of the world that Buzz revealed to me. All the silence and lies of a nation. Holland’s heart would have to bear it now. Like a king’s taster who has eaten his limit of poison, I could not take it anymore—all I’d tried to hide from him—I could not swallow any more of the world.
I pulled out the gloves Buzz had given me; I put them on. The red bird fluttered in my palm. I clenched it tight inside my fist; I felt its awful twitching struggle.
The telephone operator greeted me kindly and I told her to dial EXbrook 2-8600. A crickety voice answered. I asked to be put through to Mr. Drumer, please, and she said, Gal you can’t be calling this early. I said someone’s life was at stake, and that seemed to get her. A pop of sound and a man was on the line, sleeptalking, saying Pearlie? Pearlie?
“I have to protect my son,” I said.
He wanted to know if I would help him. “That’s what I’m telling you.” I sat there staring at the dawn as he said what he wanted me to do. From the front door came the shivering sound of bottles on the step. A truck started up and rolled away. All I could do was sit there on the phone bench and listen, shaking a little, thinking everyone must be an optical illusion, even the one we love. We think we know them, flat and simple—not at all. They are faceted in ingenious ways, with hundreds of hidden sides, impossible to discover even in a lifetime. Razor-sharp, frightening sides. I heard the man talking softly in my ear. I could save my son, if not my marriage. Life could be exchanged; could be better, what you’d dreamed of; could be built on a cliff above the roaring world. A choice: take this, or nothing. There was no other option, in those days long ago, in my outpost by the sea. Not for colored girls like me.
II
I will never forget Eslanda Goode Robeson, wife of the singer Paul Robeson, called before the committee that year. Cohn and McCarthy questioned her about being a Communist, and that proud colored woman sat in her flowered dress and hat and declined to answer, under protection of the Fifth and Fifteenth amendments. The Fifteenth? asked a flustered Roy Cohn. “Yes, the Fifteenth,” Mrs. Robeson told him regally. “I am Negro, you know. I have been brought up to seek protection under the Fifteenth Amendment as a Negro.” Cohn told her it was nonsense; the Fifteenth was about the right to vote. But she shook her head: “I have always sought protection under it… you see, I am a second-class citizen in this country and, therefore, feel the need of the Fifteenth. That is the reason I use it. I am not quite equal to the rest of the white people.” Cohn could get nowhere else with her; it was beyond translation, her version of life in our country.
They don’t teach Eslanda Goode Robeson in schools. There is no room in textbooks, among all the myriad battles and treaties, for history’s wives. But what she said about needing extra armor to protect herself, I never forgot it. It glowed in my mind. It guided my life like a sextant.
We were the only Negro family in the Sunset. It would have made a difference if I’d had a friend to trust, some colored woman who could hide me and Sonny in her sewing room the way she might hide a beaten wife; I might have fled into her arms. But I was not beaten; I was, in my way, beloved. And I had no friend like that. Even Edith, the only Jew in our neighborhood, mirroring my solitude across the street, was not someone I could turn to. There was no question of fleeing that night with Sonny; imagine a colored woman walking down the highway with her crippled boy, seeking aid from other migrants.
That night, in my deranged state, those newspaper clippings stood before me like criminals in a lineup, staring out with bleary eyes, each one an aspect of the world that Buzz revealed to me. All the silence and lies of a nation. Holland’s heart would have to bear it now. Like a king’s taster who has eaten his limit of poison, I could not take it anymore—all I’d tried to hide from him—I could not swallow any more of the world.
I pulled out the gloves Buzz had given me; I put them on. The red bird fluttered in my palm. I clenched it tight inside my fist; I felt its awful twitching struggle.
The telephone operator greeted me kindly and I told her to dial EXbrook 2-8600. A crickety voice answered. I asked to be put through to Mr. Drumer, please, and she said, Gal you can’t be calling this early. I said someone’s life was at stake, and that seemed to get her. A pop of sound and a man was on the line, sleeptalking, saying Pearlie? Pearlie?
“I have to protect my son,” I said.
He wanted to know if I would help him. “That’s what I’m telling you.” I sat there staring at the dawn as he said what he wanted me to do. From the front door came the shivering sound of bottles on the step. A truck started up and rolled away. All I could do was sit there on the phone bench and listen, shaking a little, thinking everyone must be an optical illusion, even the one we love. We think we know them, flat and simple—not at all. They are faceted in ingenious ways, with hundreds of hidden sides, impossible to discover even in a lifetime. Razor-sharp, frightening sides. I heard the man talking softly in my ear. I could save my son, if not my marriage. Life could be exchanged; could be better, what you’d dreamed of; could be built on a cliff above the roaring world. A choice: take this, or nothing. There was no other option, in those days long ago, in my outpost by the sea. Not for colored girls like me.
II
I will never forget Eslanda Goode Robeson, wife of the singer Paul Robeson, called before the committee that year. Cohn and McCarthy questioned her about being a Communist, and that proud colored woman sat in her flowered dress and hat and declined to answer, under protection of the Fifth and Fifteenth amendments. The Fifteenth? asked a flustered Roy Cohn. “Yes, the Fifteenth,” Mrs. Robeson told him regally. “I am Negro, you know. I have been brought up to seek protection under the Fifteenth Amendment as a Negro.” Cohn told her it was nonsense; the Fifteenth was about the right to vote. But she shook her head: “I have always sought protection under it… you see, I am a second-class citizen in this country and, therefore, feel the need of the Fifteenth. That is the reason I use it. I am not quite equal to the rest of the white people.” Cohn could get nowhere else with her; it was beyond translation, her version of life in our country.
They don’t teach Eslanda Goode Robeson in schools. There is no room in textbooks, among all the myriad battles and treaties, for history’s wives. But what she said about needing extra armor to protect herself, I never forgot it. It glowed in my mind. It guided my life like a sextant.
We were the only Negro family in the Sunset. It would have made a difference if I’d had a friend to trust, some colored woman who could hide me and Sonny in her sewing room the way she might hide a beaten wife; I might have fled into her arms. But I was not beaten; I was, in my way, beloved. And I had no friend like that. Even Edith, the only Jew in our neighborhood, mirroring my solitude across the street, was not someone I could turn to. There was no question of fleeing that night with Sonny; imagine a colored woman walking down the highway with her crippled boy, seeking aid from other migrants.
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