Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (9 page)

Most of us were too curious and excited to heed the dean’s warning, and knowing how Mark had suffered made me determined to do whatever I could to help stop apartheid. Whenever we J-school students could, we would cross the campus to Hamilton Hall and join in with the others as they chanted, “Aprthid kills, Columbia pays the bills” and USouth Africa’s stocks have got to go.”

Six members of the Coalition for a Flee South Africa were fasting to protest the university’s investments. tuo of them, both white, were in my Russian class. They stopped attending class, but I saw them every day on the steps of the administration building, growing thinner and more gaunt each day. Eventually they had to be hospitalized for dehydration.

Rumors spread that the administration threatened to deport any South African exchange students participating in the protest, so Mark kept a cautious distance from the rally. I attended for both of us. I was amazed by the large turnout of whites. Watching blacks and whites work together to fight injustice made me feel hopeful that racism might someday be defeated, not only in South Africa, but in this country as well.

By May graduation, the protest had lost its steam and still the university had not divested. Several months later, Columbia finally withdrew its holdings in companies that do business in South Africa, but the administration denied that its decision had anything to do with the student protests.

The protest made me think more deeply about the oppression of blacks, and in doing so, I thought about what it means to be a woman in America. Just as it bothers a black person to be seen only as a Negro rather than as a human being with dignity and pride, it bothered me when men saw me only as a female, as a sexual object for their fantasies. Knowing that many men read porno magazines, I often felt vulnerable when a strange man stared at me. But I never felt that way with Mark. I knew that he saw me as an individual first, not as a female or as a white woman.

In fact, Mark was repulsed and astounded by the emphasis Americans placed on sex. In his culture, lovemaking was natural and spontaneous, not associated with sin and scandal and fitness and baby oil and hot tubs and fraternities and Ireud. It was part of love, but it was not a major component. It was a fact of life, but it was not an obsession.

It had not been analyzed, studied, surveyed, written about, and mutilated into a mechanical act as it had been in America.

It had not been advocated and promoted and overemphasized by a sexual liberation movement, therapists, sexologists, stimulating music with lewd lyrics. It was one of life’s most precious mysteriesa mystery that was best left unexplained.

My strong desire to become a foreign correspondent led me to apply to Reuters News Service, based in London. Soon after I applied, a fellow journalism student from Texas congratulated me on getting the internship.

bat do you mean?” I said. 0Al1 I did was apply. There are thousands of applicants and they’ll only select a few.”

-I know,” Jody replied. “But people are saying that if anyone at Columbia has one chance in hell to get into Reuters, it will be you.”

All my hopes for the future were wrapped up in that one application to Reuters. When the letter from Reuters arrived, it was thin.

They did not need me.

By are you so troubled?” Mark asked. -I don’t know why you even applied to Reuters.” “I want to work abroad,” I said. 4I’ve studied German and Hungarian and Russian for so long. I want to use them!” “But if you had joined Reuters, you would never have had time to write. You don’t need a boss. All you have to do is choose a long-term goal and divert all your energy toward achieving it. One needs only two things: confidence and self-motivation. With those you can do anything you choose. You’ve already told me you want to become a writer. Why don’t you focus on your writing?”

I smiled at his advice, not understanding how one could focus on writing without first having an income.

“Look at that!” Mark said, pointing to my two-foot stack of typed and bound journals I had kept since I was thirteen. “Look how much you’ve written already. All you have to do is harness that energy, discipline it.”

His encouragement made me cry. None of my previous boyfriends had believed in me as much as Mark did.

in! care for you too deeply to see you this unhappy,” Mark said, lightly rubbing my arms and looking at me with concerned, sad eyes.

“I’ve never felt so precious to anyone besides you outside my immediate family. Of course, I’ll miss you if you find a job abroad.

But we could write to one another. If it’s what you really want, I’d never stand in your way.” to be an intern at DLe Neue Presse newspaper in Hannover. When I showed Mark my letter of acceptance, he was delighted that I had the opportunity to do what I wanted: travel to Europe, practice my foreign languages, and get journalism experience.

It amazed me that his love was so unselfish that he was not afraid to let me go.

On the plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean, I gazed into the darkness, but saw only the image of my face reflected in the small window pane-a face expressing deep sadness. All I had to remind me of Mark was a black-and-white photograph I had developed and printed in the I-House darkroom. He was standing on the roof of the dorm on the first warm day of spring, bare chested, wearing a camouflage army hat. His longshot application for a green card as a writer was pending and I wondered if he would still be in the country when I returned.

Those first two weeks in Germany before I received a letter from him were filled with regret at having left New York. I missed my soul mate. During the first week the nine other American journalists and I were kept busy touring government buildings in Bonn, meeting reporters and editors, and reading German newspapers. The language around me had a new and exciting ring to it, the bakeries and shops were quaint and welcoming, and most of the Germans I met were well educated, philosophical, politically aware, and fond of conversation.

It was only at night, when I lay in the darkness thinking of Mark and feeling terribly alone in a foreign world, that I would ask myself if I had done the right thing, if I truly wanted to spend my life moving from place to place, clinging to nothing but my career and leaping at every chance to advance it, breaking off relationships whenever they grew too constraining. Suddenly all the maxims I had learned while coming of age in America-Love them and leave them, Live life to the max, Indulge, Love the one you’re with, Live for the moment, Be free and unfettered-grated on my ears like a pack of senseless formulas designed to produce the most intense feelings of misery and emptiness.

One morning when I passed a newsstand in Hamburg, I spotted the cover of a 5pA1 magazine that read, “Ren HrS in Sild Mho-Race War in South Africa.” I immediately bought a copy and learned what had happened: The South African government had declared martial law. The country was closed to foreign journalists.

Children were being rounded up and detained without trial. I feared for the safety of Mark’s family and wondered how Mark was taking the news. I wanted to be there for him. Was he still in America?

As soon as I had a chance I sat down and wrote him a long, heartfelt letter. I didn’t care anymore that we were different colors. I loved him and wanted to commit myself to our relationship. I signed my letter No ku rondo ngop, his native language for “I love you very much.”

Three weeks later I received the following reply, and felt excited and jittery as I withdrew it from its envelope.

Gail, my dearest, I miss you terribly. Your trip to Germany has leit my soul destitute of serenity and confidence. Never have I felt such a wretch emotionally. The first week without you was a nightmarish phantasmagoria. One moment-from reading, say, a good novel or poem, or listening to an upliiting classical music record-my heart and mind would be drunk with joy and hope and a sense of control and a love for life, all of which often lead young people to believe they can never die; the neMirom thinking of you and longing to touch you and kiss you, to hear the wisdom of your mind and heart-I would be plunged Into the deepest gloom and despair.

As the second week rolled around, reality still appeared discordant, like a punctured scan drum, and meaningless, like the suffering of children. It was pure torture to contemplate the miles and miles of ocean and land, the hot months made of tedious days and minutes and seconds, that separate us.

One thing I did learn from those lonely days and nights of sunken spirits is that I’m madly In love with you. So much in love that It tern lies me. You possess me wholly, you know me deeper than I know myself, I hide nothing away from you. You know the taste of every drop of my bleeding heart-bleeding because of man’s inhumanity to man.

Think of me as I think of you, for inspiration against life’s trials and tribulations.

P.S. My Immigration situation looks promising.

We wrote to each other regularly: ten-page letters full of longing.

The time apart strengthened our relationship. Through letters we could communicate on more profound levels, exploring our feelings and seeking to describe our thoughts on writing and literature with greater precision. We sent each other lengthy quotes from the books we had read, excerpts of poems, long descriptions of our thoughts and dreams.

I carried the photograph of him with me everywhere. I did not feel complete without it. The aching hollowness in my chest did not go away no matter where I was or how many people were around me. Our correspondence inspired me so much I began writing short stories and, later, a novel. As I reflected on the months I had spent living in Budapest, in an old apartment overlooking the Danube, I came up with a plot for a novel about two Hungarian lovers fleeing the east bloc in search of artistic freedom.

When I was well into the first chapter, I wrote in a letter to Mark: inlt seems the only way to escape the hectic rush and tense routine of life is to be creative. The only way to gain a feeling of control over the chaos of our lives is to express our inner selves.”

Confident in our relationship, I threw myself into my work, submerged myself in German culture, read books in German, reported stories with seasoned journalists on the newspaper’s staff, traveled to conferences with the other nine interns scattered all over Germany, and made trips to Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Vienna.

When I was not traveling, I lived with a German family in the farming village of Borssum, south of Hannover near Hildesheim. I did not hang my treasured photograph of Mark on the wall but kept it hidden. I did not think my host family would understand. They were conservatives who supported Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s rvling party and believed that Turkish workers should be deported back to Turkey, in the same manner many whites in this country believed blacks should be sent back to Africa. The father had been a leader in the Hitler Youth when he was young. Like most Germans, they had lived in fear of Nazi informers and felt compelled to hang portraits of Hitler all over their house and greet neighbors with “Heil, Hitler!”

The grandmother, who lived on the second floor, had lost her husband when the American troops landed in Normandy and barely said a word to me the whole three months I was there.

When the last day of my internship came, I took the train to Irankffiirt and excitedly boarded a plane for New York. Flying back across the Atiantic, I reread some of Mark’s letters to me and wondered how we would combat the prejudices many people have toward interracial couples. Above all I wondered how my father would react if I ever mustered enough courage to tell him about Mark.

“How are things, darling?” Mark had written. “I got the letter in which you hinted that you might be willing to have us share an apartment in New York. I’m delighted.”

At this I cringed, for I had changed my mind and decided to live with my brother Paul and sister-in-law, Debbie, on the Upper East Side. I was afraid of rushing things with Mark, and I wanted each of us to have enough space to maintain a healthy sense of independence. Most of all, my conscience had plagued me after I agreed to live with him. I could not fight the fact that I was a minister’s daughter and that, deep down, I believed living together out of wedlock was somehow wrong. I continued reading: in! hope that your father (what a complex man!) will understand and give you his blessing.”

I closed my eyes and imagined my father’s probable reaction to the news that I was living with my boyfriend, who happened to be black. Would he rant, rave, question, pry, fume, apply pressure in all the right areas to make me leave Mark forever? I thought of my mother, who had once refused even to spend the night at a home in which the man and woman were not legally married.

I recalled my father’s reaction when he met Carol’s biracial boyfriend at a cocktail party during the weekend of Brown’s 1984 graduation. He seemed to think interracial love should be addressed by textbooks on abnormal psychology. He was so absorbed in his career as a psychologist that his conversations were peppered with words like schhren nlan incestuous tendencies, iotent homose:ruolity, biedback, repressed onger, and psrchotic bevior He and my brothers, who are also psychologists, seemed to speak a foreign language.

I gazed out the airplane window, picked up the letter from Mark, and read on.

“It is about time your father reconciled himself to the fact that he can never mold you after his own heart. You are a grown woman now, free to make your own decisions and choices and bear all responsibility. Though I have no doubt your father means well, he has his own life to live, and you have yours. I do not mind if your father chooses to hate me implacably; some day he will come to understand the depth of our feelings for each other, and understand too the spiritual, emotional and creative bond that has made our souls one, and made us such perfect complements of each other.”

I smiled at Mark’s optimism. I was not at all as confident that my father would accept my falling in love with an African. I was still not strong enough to follow my heart’s desire, not courageous enough to live with Mark and risk the censure of my parents and relatives.