I’ll Take You There

But how sad, was my immediate thought. I said, "Oh, I understand."

He laughed for some reason, I hoped not at me; and I laughed with him. He was a man, I saw, who liked to laugh; yet didn't have much opportunity to laugh; for the professional study of philosophy doesn't inspire laughter, nor any degree of mirth; just as the earthy smell of death is excluded from the philosophical examination of finitude and death, so too laughter is excluded; it was a somber, sobering vocation. I thought I will help him to laugh. Inspiration, fueled by the giddiness of the moment. Several awkward swallows of beer. Trying not to gag. Yes, I would inspire laughter in this man; I refused to be one of the women who diminish, not increase, a man's laughter; I refused to be a woman who made Woman my life. Quickly I told Vernor what was only true: I agreed with him, I didn't want to marry, didn't want to have babies. (But was this so? Ida had married, Ida had had babies.) Vernor laughed carelessly saying he'd never met a "female" who wasn't maternal-"In her heart, if you could penetrate it. Or another organ." Hotly I said, "There are exceptions." "No exception 'proves the rule.' Only disproves it." I was left behind in all this. Vaguely I smiled lifting my glass. Vernor drained his glass, went to buy another. I sat basking, or dazed, in the aftermath of his words. Had he praised me? Had he made an exception of me?

A couple now. Perceived as such.

It hurt me to recall how, in the Kappa house, I'd overheard my Kappa sisters speak of "niggers." Not meanly, not with malice, but matter-of-factly. One of our house boys was a Negro, that's to say a "nigger." There were categories of girls whom Christian sororities automatically cut: "niggers," "Jews."

A fractional Jew, I could pass.

And there was Vernor Matheius. I am who I am, none of you can trap me with your language.

Returning to our booth, Vernor began speaking in a new way. As if, standing at the bar, he'd glanced back in my direction and hadn't liked what he saw. For now he was antagonistic; asking me again what I wanted from him; what I thought I was doing, chasing after him- "Girl, don't wince. 'Chasing after' is it." I felt my face heat; I could not defend myself; I could not say that it was Vernor Matheius who drew me to him, not I who had the volition to be drawn. I could not say But I fell in love with your voice, your mind, before I even saw you. For it was preposterous, it would make him laugh in derision. He stared at me, frowning. Saying maybe I was just naive? inexperienced? too trusting? "There are men who'd take advantage of you, you must know. You're an intelligent girl, Anellia." I heard his words, I was thrilled by the sound of Anellia in Vernor Matheius's voice. I had no reply to his statement for it was not a statement that could be refuted. I liked it that I was being presented to myself as a problem to be solved; my face was hot with embarrassment and pleasure; it was like being teased by my brothers when they weren't being cruel, exactly; simply to be noticed was a thrill. In noisy Downy's there was happy brainless laughter for which I was grateful, I couldn't be expected to raise my voice against it. I smiled at Vernor Matheius shyly. Yes but I love you. That is the problem to which all other problems can be reduced. As if he'd heard my thoughts Vernor frowned again; he removed his glasses and polished the lenses with a tissue; without the glasses his face loomed above me with sudden startling intimacy; the contours in the oily dark skin around the eyes, the somewhat sunken sockets, the lashes long as a child's, the exaggerated flatness of the nose that would have been (I thought this without thinking) disfiguring in a Caucasian face. When Vernor Matheius shoved his glasses back onto his face, adjusting the wire frames behind his ears, he seemed to be glaring at me, seeing me more distinctly.

Without a word he rose. Immediately I followed.

In a haze of not-knowing what would come next I followed Vernor to the door as he shrugged on his sheepskin jacket, pulled his wool cap down on his head. He'd left me to struggle with my own coat. Not out of rudeness (I was certain), he just hadn't noticed. It was time for us to leave, ergo it was time for us to leave. The actual process of making our way through the crowd, to the door and out, was a secondary matter.

Yet, at the door, he remembered me; he paused, to let me pass through the doorway ahead of him; I felt his fingers lightly on my shoulder; again, I had the sense that he was herding me; impatient with me; I didn't think at the time It's a gesture of possession in this public place. Even if no one is looking. Not that Vernor Matheius wants me sexually or in any other way but he wants to make a public claim, a proprietary gesture. Behind us I felt the net of eyes and disapproval and I laughed stepping out into the cold; into a damp wind bracing as a slap in the face when you've been a little dazed, giddy. I would have expected Vernor Matheius to say good-bye to me on Allen Street but instead he walked me to my residence hall, several blocks away, an old brick building undistinguished as an old shoe, and no words passed between us; I could think of nothing valuable to say, and nothing I dared say; Vernor Matheius seemed to have run out of words, too; for there are problems that may be too snarled to be solved. At Norwood Hall, outside the lighted front entrance, Vernor Matheius said, "I won't come in. I'll say good night here. I want you to know, Anellia, you're not new to me." He smiled at my look of confusion. I said, stammering slightly, "Not n-new?To you?" He said, backing off, "I saw you a while back. It was you. Scavenging in the garbage behind the Mohawk Bakery." Vernor laughed at my look of distress. How long he'd been waiting to tell me this, I would have to wonder. My face burned with shame, I had no defense.

"Hope you're not scavenging with me, girl."

Vernor walked off. He knew I would stand stricken behind him, staring as he strode away. Other girls and their escorts passed by me, I had no awareness of them. There went Vernor Matheius in his sheepskin jacket taking long strides across the street, away from me without a backward glance to see how I gazed after him.

Yes but I love you, nothing can shame me.

14

I'd wanted to be independent. I'd wanted to earn money, at the age of fourteen. So I could say like my brothers that I worked, I had a job. If my father telephoned, and if he asked to speak to me, I would tell him about my work, my job. For work on the farm and in my grandmother's house didn't count, earned me no money or the small respect that comes with earning money. And so I did housework for several Strykersville women, well-to-do by local standards, exhausting daylong jobs arranged for me by a great-aunt of my father's who lived in town and whose relationship to my rural, diminished family was sympathetic, though condescending; one of the women for whom I worked was Mrs. Farley the doctor's wife, an entire Saturday in June just after school ended for the summer; there I was vacuuming, sweeping, scrubbing, mopping, and scouring through the Farleys' six-bedroom Colonial on Myrtle Street; Myrtle Street was Strykersville's most prestigious street; I'd never been inside one of the houses on that street; and now my heart beat in resentment, and yet in admiration and envy. There were classmates of mine who lived in this neighborhood and I'd never thought so clearly of what it might mean in one's soul to live on Myrtle Street as if one were entitled to Myrtle Street .

Mrs. Farley's soul had been plumped up living on Myrtle Street, like a hen's breast feathers.

As I worked inside, I could see the Farleys' lawn bay working outside. In fact he was no boy but a hump-backed Negro in his fifties with a skin coffee-colored like Joe Louis; he had something of Louis's furtive, watchful ma