The Third Generation (13 page)

Professor Saunders had been running in the direction of the Pattersons’ field. But the sound of the shot panicked him and, wheeling suddenly, he jumped the picket fence, snagging his coat. As he tore off down the road in a cloud of dust, she raised the gun and fired again, the bird shot kicking up spurts of dust far behind him. He was well out of danger, but at the sound of the second shot he leaped high in the air, as if he’d been hit, and howled in fear.

“Shoot him again, Mama!” Charles screamed.

Students were converging from all directions, attracted by the commotion. Ignoring them, Mrs. Taylor marched the children into the house, moving with the slow, taut preciseness of an automaton, and placed the gun in. the parasol rack. The white heat of her fury had cooled. She felt no more compunction than had she shot at a chicken thief. But she still felt a sense of shame and humiliation and was unbearably vexed with her children.

“What in the world were you doing?” she asked.

“Just looking,” William said.

She turned toward Charles. But he was silent.

“What possessed you to go to that dirty, filthy place?”

“We were playing.”

“Playing what?”

“Just playing.” William sounded ashamed.

She glanced at Charles, her mouth tightening.

“We saw some students looking,” William said apprehensively.

She wheeled on Charles. “And what were you doing?”

“I was just looking, too,” he said stubbornly.

His reply infuriated her. She ran into the yard and cut long switches from the umbrella tree. A crowd of curious students were clustered about the gate, watching the furious woman with fear and apprehension. They didn’t know what she was up to, but several had seen her shooting at Professor Saunders, and someone had already gone for Professor Taylor. But none dared interfere. They stood in awe of the grim, white-faced woman married to Fess Taylor.

She paid them no attention. Returning to the house, she lit into both boys at once, whipping them indiscriminately, releasing her fear and worry and frustration into each hard blow. William screamed so loud the students thought she was killing him, and milled about the gate, muttering indecisively. Finally he ran outside and escaped her. She turned her rage on Charles because he wouldn’t run. He jumped and danced in pain. There was a fury and jealousy and strange frustration in her punishment of him. It resembled some horrible, silent ritual. At moments in her passion she felt that she would kill him. She received a vicarious pleasure, hating herself.

Suddenly she was shocked. She dropped the switch and ran up to her room and lay across the bed, sobbing. A strange, shocking doubt gnawed at her thoughts.

After a time, when his pain had subsided so he could walk, Charles limped upstairs. He went over and stood beside the bed.

“I won’t do it anymore, Mother,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry you, Mother.”

She sat up and gathered him into her arms, holding him close. “The things you do hurt Mother so.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Mama. I don’t want to hurt you.” He rarely called her Mama, and only when intensely moved.

“But you do, darling, and Mother loves you so.”

Downstairs Professor Taylor rushed in, followed by Professor Saunders and President Burton.

“Lillian!” he shouted. “Lillian!”

Sighing resignedly, she arose and went downstairs. Professor Saunders gave her a baleful look, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence.

“Now you’ve gone too far,” Professor Taylor began. “I know that you don’t like it here and I’ve tried to be patient—”

“Now, wait a minute, Prof,” President Burton cut in, sweating with discomfort. “We can settle this amicably. Professor Saunders was wrong and he’s willing to apologize. Now if Mrs. Taylor will apologize—nobody was hurt—we’ll let the whole thing drop. Your wife is excitable—we all understand that. And Professor Saunders had no business trying to whip her children—that’s for y’all to do—that’s between you and your wife. Now if your wife will just apologize—”

Professor Saunders leered vindictively.

“Apologize to
that
,” Mrs. Taylor said. “I’ll never! Never!” Turning on her heel, she left the room and went upstairs.

The three men looked at one another.

“I’ll get her to apologize,” Professor Taylor promised.

“For the time being, we’ll just leave it as it is, Prof,” President Burton decided. “We don’t want any trouble ‘tween you and your wife.”

But Professor Taylor felt outraged and humiliated. Had she been willing to apologize, he would have been able to turn his fury on Professor Saunders for striking her. But now he was put on the defensive and couldn’t assert himself as he felt a husband should. When the others had gone, he rushed upstairs and charged into her room belligerently.

“Confound it, woman, this is the last time you make a monkey out of me—” he began threateningly.

She looked at him with scorn and contempt. “If you dare lay a hand on me, Mr. Taylor, I’ll shoot you too,” she said.

For a moment he stared at her, trembling with rage and frustration. Then he turned and stalked down the stairs and out of the house and walked out his rage down the dusty roads.

The next day Mrs. Taylor ordered violins for the children. She hoped the music would calm their wildness. The music teacher from the college came three times a week.

They approached their music as they did their classroom studies; they practiced conscientiously and learned rapidly. But it didn’t get them. It didn’t touch them down inside.

With the piano it was different. They enjoyed their mother singing in her shallow, weightless soprano voice, cleared of the harsh undertone that had come into her speech. They kept her at it, and when she tired they begged her to continue playing. Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” was Charles’s favorite. Both of them loved Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Charles could ride the liquid, golden arpeggios, doubling back again and again on the mood, as if on a winged steed.

The violin lessons didn’t make either of them any less wild. Their mother was constantly after them. “God doesn’t like ugly,” she said. They hated the expression. It made them uneasy to have God in it. Why couldn’t it be just between them?

During that time, following the shooting, their father and mother weren’t speaking again. That worried them too. They wondered if their parents loved each other.

They didn’t know that the shooting had created a big scandal. Although no action had been taken, everyone knew that a serious thing had happened. The students and faculty alike were stung with curiosity. The faculty wives had it that Professor Saunders was secretly in love with Mrs. Taylor and had become enraged because she had spurned his advances. Few of them, however, took her side. Most wondered what really had happened. There were all sorts of rumors making the rounds. For a time it gave them a subject for gossip. But Mrs. Taylor refused to discuss it with anyone. And they held that against her too.

9

I
T WAS ABOUT THIS TIME
the children became concerned with racial differences. They had always been aware of the absence of white people at the college. And they’d studied all about the races of mankind.

“Brown, black, yellow and white,” they rattled off in class. They had learned that Negroes were descended from slaves. They knew their father was a Negro. They’d heard their mother call him a “shanty nigger,” but she’d been angry at the time. But they had never thought of the rest of them as Negroes. Tom was yellow, William was brown, Charles was tan, and their mother was white. Only she wasn’t white like other white people, because she lived with Negroes.

All their lives, except for the brief train trip south, they’d lived within the confines of two Negro colleges, where white people were seldom seen. Their parents never discussed the subject of race within their hearing. They knew that something happened when white and black folks met. But they’d never thought about it until that year.

The first time they saw this strange thing happen was in their father’s shop. A white man, who was having his mules shod, asked, “How you niggahs gittin’ ‘long down heah, Willie?” The man had sounded friendly. But no one replied.

Their father went about as if he hadn’t heard. The students stood rigidly, gripped in a sullen silence. The children didn’t understand what was happening. The students often called each other “niggah.” They didn’t realize the man was talking to their father; they thought he addressed a student by the name of “Willie.” But they knew, by everybody’s attitude, that something bad had happened.

Then their mother got into trouble in Natchez. She’d gone there for dental service. As usual, when alone, she patronized a place reserved for whites. The dentist treated her never doubting that she was white. When he asked her address she gave the railroad station.

“That’s down near the nigger training school, isn’t it?” he asked conversationally.

“It’s the post-office address for the college,” she replied.

He thought her choice of words curious, but was not concerned. Leaving his office, she met the brown-skinned wife of Professor Hill.

“Why, Lillian,” Mrs. Hill exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to town today? I didn’t see you on the train.”

“Oh, I just came to have my teeth attended to,” Mrs. Taylor replied.

The dentist witnessed the scene from his office window.

He rushed into the street and clutched Mrs. Taylor by the arm. “Are you colored?” he asked abruptly.

“You release me this instant,” Mrs. Taylor fumed indignantly. “I’m just as white as you are.”

Mrs. Hill was terrified. She tried to escape, but the dentist took hold of her also. “You called her ‘Lillian,’” he charged. “I heard you. Is she colored?”

“Why—er—ah—she’s married to Professor Taylor at the college,” Mrs. Hill stammered with fright.

A crowd of white people were collecting. Mrs. Taylor turned and began walking away determinedly. The dentist ran after her and seized her arm again. She struck at him. “How dare you touch me!” she cried, her voice rising in anger.

A policeman came up. The dentist charged her with breaking the law which prohibited Negroes from patronizing white places. She demanded an attorney. The officer took her to the police station and locked her in a cell.

“I’m just as white as you are,” she maintained.

The policemen became concerned and called in the chief. It was known throughout the state that the Negro college was one of the governor’s special interests. So out of courtesy to the governor, the chief called President Burton at the college. The President sent posthaste for Professor Taylor. He flagged the next through-freight. By that time, word of the incident had reached the governor. When Professor Taylor arrived at the police station, the chief directed him to telephone the governor.

“You get that yallah woman of yo’s outa Natchez an’ keep her home,” the governor ordered him. “You know better’n tuh let her run ‘round tryna pass herself off.”

But Mrs. Taylor would not accept defeat. “I’m going to sue you,” she threatened the chief of police as her husband dragged her from the building. “I’m going to take this case to the Supreme Court if it’s my last act on earth.”

That night, lying awake in bed, the children heard their parents discussing it downstairs.

“But you didn’t have to pass, honey. There’re good colored dentists there. There’s Doctor Williamson and Doctor Simpson.”

“They’re nothing but hacks,” they heard her reply in the harsh, discordant tone her voice assumed when something went against her. “I’m not going to have any colored dentist breaking my jaw.”

“But you’re in the South, honey. When in Rome, you have to do what the Romans do. If the governor didn’t like and respect me, I’d have lost my job.”

“That would have been the best thing that ever happened, Mr. Taylor, I’ll tell you that.” They could imagine her mouth going grim and her eyes glinting.

“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, you just do as you please and see where it gets you,” they heard him say. “These white people aren’t as easy as I am. You can’t dog them around. You’re going to find out that you’re colored.”

The children knew it was something to do with her being colored. The white people might do something to her because she was colored. They didn’t know what, but they trembled in fear for her.

“Will,” Charles whispered.

“What?”

“Mama’s colored.”

“Papa’s colored too. All of us are colored, silly.”

“I know.”

They lay silently, scarcely breathing.

“What’s the matter, Chuck?” William asked.

“Something’s wrong,” Charles murmured fearfully.

“I know.”

“What, Will?”

“I don’t know,” William whimpered.

The next day after recitation period William asked his mother, “Why is it bad to be colored, M?.ma?”

The question startled her. “Why, William, what on earth are you talking about? Where did you hear that?”

“I—I don’t remember,” he replied evasively.

Then Charles said, “One day we were coming down the road and we saw a fellow and he said we were going to get it ‘cause we were colored,” making it up on the spur of the moment.

Their mother looked from one to the other. “Was he a white man?” she asked cautiously.

“No, he was a nigger,” Charles replied.

Mrs. Taylor was shocked. She’d never heard the children use that word before. “Don’t you dare use that word,” she said. “Where did you learn such a word?”

“That’s what they call ‘em. They call everybody that—sometimes.”

“We heard a white man over in Papa’s shop say ‘niggers,’ and he was talking about everybody,” William added.

“We heard you call Papa a ‘shanty nigger’ once,” Charles said.

Their mother was sick at heart. “I didn’t mean it, children. Your mother was probably upset when she said it. You mustn’t hold it against Mother. It’s a very naughty word and you mustn’t ever use it.”

But they weren’t satisfied. “Are we bad because we’re colored?” William persisted.

“No, children, no!” she cried in anguish. “You mustn’t think of yourself as colored. Your mother is as white as anyone. You both have white blood—fine white blood—in your veins. And never forget it!”