His entire life, my grandfather made a quiet project of supporting Rose. Her children and their children had their educations funded, no questions asked. Physician appointments. Rent, cars, winter coats. Nobody ever talked about this.
Lorene Cary also writes, in Black Ice, about falling apart when she learned that her mother, back home, was ill. The rector, concerned, summons her and asks why she doesn’t just go home to visit. “I’m sure your teachers would be more than happy to excuse you to go home to see your mother.” He doesn’t imagine that Cary doesn’t have the money for a weekend jaunt. I would not have imagined it either. The thought would never have occurred to me that kids didn’t go home for Thanksgiving for any reason besides not wanting to. Cary describes how the school came up with the money for her to go see her mom. She accepts it uneasily; in the context of a sense of tokenism she shared with the few other African American students on campus, it was hardly a simple gift.
But she also writes, of boys at St. Paul’s:
Some talked over us as a matter of course; others were pointedly deferential. I remember being glad that I wasn’t one of the white girls. Boys stared at them. I watched them looking from one to the other and then back again to one particular girl or some part of her: her hair, her arm, the nape of her neck.
When I think of what it might have been like (what it might be like) to be black at St. Paul’s, I consider that my experience of the assault might be useful: by taking the measure of the loss of what, at school at least, I had imagined I was entitled to, I can see what I had assumed would be mine. From here I might begin to consider what was not meant (was never meant) for others.
Only one of the boys who assaulted me was white. I don’t think there’s anything more to be said about that.
After a few more uneventful hours in the kitchen, my grandmother, poking at the dull bird, asked my mom whether it was finally time to take it out of the oven.
“Are the juices running clear?” asked Mom. She was sitting on her hands to avoid taking over.
My grandmother said, “What juices?”
The bird, never thawed, was a carbonized shell. We made a late-night Denny’s run. I had never seen my mom in a Denny’s—she did not believe in franchised establishments—but she slid into that banquette like she’d been born to it. My brother and I couldn’t believe our luck. We got bottomless drinks with lots of ice. The plates ran with gravy. There were chocolate sundaes.
On the way home the next day, Dad announced that he wanted to push through, so we would be stopping only for gas. We never spent more than a single night with my grandparents, and this was one of the few times we stayed even that long. A pall beyond the ordinary covered us: my grandparents, having buried the last of the previous generation, were putting the family home on the market and moving to Florida. This concession to time had unsettled my parents, and they were snappish. I put my headphones on to avoid the fallout in the front seat.
“They are terrible,” Mom said, because she wanted my father to apologize.
It was the last thing he’d do. Dad said, “They’re my parents.”
“Well, they’re still terrible.”
“Alicia, please.”
“Did you hear them ask about Lacy’s classes? Or James’s soccer?”
Dad softened. “Oh, no, I didn’t—”
“Right. Because they didn’t.”
“Ah. Maybe they forgot?”
“They hate us.”
Dad did not respond.
My brother fell asleep.
Outside the windows, the cornfields were overwintering like farms of pins, a whole horizon full of matchsticks. If I had somehow managed to open the door and jump out of the car without dying, without anyone noticing, could I have run off into those fields? How far would I have had to travel before I came to a place where I could start a new life? I remember visualizing the perpendicular angles of momentum: how our car was barreling forward, Dad at the wheel, hands at ten and two, mirrors minutely adjusted, and how my door—against which I was curled—would open out, at ninety degrees. What if I just shot off in that direction? I pictured moving away east while they continued north. Our lines would never, ever converge.
In Grundy County, Illinois, about a hundred miles south of home, Dad pulled into a gas station. We all got out to stretch our legs. With Mom watching keenly, I sprinted across the freezing tarmac to use the foul restroom at the back of the service building. Enormous trucks rocked on the pavement. Still more were pouring north, heading toward the first major interchanges south of Chicago. I was grateful to tuck back into
