The Third Generation (3 page)

She had come home to live that spring, following her father’s death. For the previous two years she had been teaching music at the seminary. She had loved her father dearly, and for a time had been disconsolate, a lonely lady immersed in sorrow. It had given her a rare beauty, vivid but withdrawn, as if she were lost in reverie.

Most of the young men thereabouts had felt uncomfortable in her presence. At that time her eyes were hazel in color, with an attractive tilt at the outer edges; but they had been level and challenging. She had seldom worn the brilliant colors that had been fashionable at the time. Her preference had been for light grays and blues; and her favorite dresses had been silk jerseys with lace collars and white, frilly dickies. She had loved fine lace with a rare passion. Her only jewelry had been a string of pearls her brother Tom had given her on her eighteenth birthday. At times she was painfully intense. Music had seemed to be her only passion.

The young men had thought her cold and unapproachable. Her restraint had dampened their ardor. No one but her mother had known how sensitive and deeply emotional she was inside. Outwardly, she had seemed so conscious of her worth, her beauty and intelligence, that she had repelled most people. She could give little of herself, and only to one she considered an inferior, only in the manner of one bestowing a grace. But she would have been horrified had she known this about herself.

Professor Taylor had come first to call on her younger sister. But he soon became infatuated with the strange, distant, beautiful girl. He had resolved to win her.

At that time he had been head of the mechanical department of the Georgia State College. He had attended Boston Technological Institute. Most women in the town had considered him a good catch, even though he was dark.

But it had not been his position that had first attracted Lillian. It had been his homage. He had given the appearance of worshipping at her shrine, even on occasions when she had acted ridiculously.

Their parlor had been heated by a wood-burning stove that had tiny panes of isinglass in the door. One evening Professor Taylor had called unexpectedly. She and her mother had been sitting in the kitchen. Her mother had answered the door, and when Lin had called that it was Professor Taylor, Lillian had snatched up the kitchen lamp and, running to the parlor, put it in the stove. She had wanted him to think she had been sitting in the parlor all the time. But after a time she had realized it was extremely chilly for so bright a fire to be burning. She had made some excuse about the damper being broken and the heat going up the chimney. But Professor Taylor had smilingly insisted that it was quite warm in the room. He had known the lamp was in the stove. It was an old trick; he had done it many times himself.

Then there had been all the entertaining when they had become engaged. Several times that winter she had visited him at the college. She had been lavishly entertained by the faculty. And he had spent his Christmas vacation with her family.

They had been married the following June.

The “Violet Teas,” she recalled, as her memories went completely sour. The “Yellow Buffet,” the garden parties, the wedding reception; all the many people, both white and colored, who had turned out to bid them bon voyage on their honeymoon. They had engaged a drawing room all the way to Philadelphia. People in the town said they had never seen anything like it.

It now seemed more like a prelude to a nightmare. She couldn’t imagine herself as that idealistic young schoolteacher who had had such high-flown dreams.

She felt the leak of bitter tears. Blindly she turned away from the sunshine and went back to her chores. After twelve years the memory of her wedding night was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.

2

I
T WAS LATE AT NIGHT
when the train pulled into the old stone station. A short black man wearing a black derby hat, dark suit and black, box-toed shoes alighted from a Pullman car. The conductor looked away. The short black man stood at the bottom of the steps and extended his hand to a woman. She wore a linen duster over a pale-blue silk jersey dress, and a large pink hat with feathers. Her face was white and strained; her deep-set eyes fixed in an unseeing stare.

The short black man touched her arm. She looked at him. A smile flickered in her stiff white face, flickered out. The short black man helped her down the steps. The conductor’s mouth pursed in a grim, straight line; his face reddened slowly.

A Pullman porter followed, carrying two heavy valises and a woman’s straw traveling case. The short black man tipped him and hailed a station porter. Then he took the woman’s arm and, preening with self-importance, followed the porter through the huge, dimly lit South Station to a dark side street.

“We’ll just go straight to the hotel, honey, unless you want to stop for a bowl of hot milk or a glass of wine,” he said.

“No,” she said.

He looked at her, undecided, as if to interpret her meaning. She seemed passive, acquiescent. He smiled indulgently and patted her arm.

The porter hailed a horse cab and put the luggage aboard, and the short black man, tipping him generously, helped the woman to enter and climbed in beside her. His actions were slightly erratic. He seemed laboring under great emotion, tautened with excitement.

The old cab went clattering through the drab cobbled streets, past row after row of gray stone houses interlocked and identical as peas, in the dim light like prison walls enclosing the tunnel down which she went to her doom. She couldn’t help the distortions of her imagination. She was frightened, lonely, homesick. The man beside her, whom she had married that morning, now seemed a stranger. And this seemed a monstrously wrong thing they were doing.

He sensed her need for reassurance and patted her hand comfortingly. But tremors of his excitement passed down through his touch into her skin and she shuddered.

He’d gone to great pains to arrange everything so there would be no embarrassment or anxiety, and her attitude puzzled and angered him.

“It’s a big city,” he said. “More people here than in all the state of North Carolina.”

She looked out at the depressing sameness of the gloomy streets. “Yes,” she replied.

They lapsed into silence…

…as if she were that kind of woman, she was thinking…

…she’ll be all right, he reassured himself doubtfully…

The clop-clop of the horse’s hoofs hammered on the silence. The neighborhood changed. Smell of city slums pressed into the cab. Strident Negroid laughter shattered on the night. The horse cab pulled up before an old dilapidated stone-faced building which carried the faded legend, HOTEL, atop a dingy door.

The short black man alighted and helped the woman down. He paid the driver and struggled with the luggage. She opened the door for him and followed across the dusty foyer to the scarred and littered desk. A few moth-eaten chairs sat here and there in the dim light of turned-down lamps and in one a fat black man sat slumped, asleep and snoring slightly. The smell of damp decay hung in the air.

The short black man put down his luggage and smiled at the woman reassuringly. “It’s the best colored hotel in town. I thought it’d be better than to try to…” his voice petered out, leaving the thought unspoken.

She didn’t answer.

The night clerk came from somewhere out of the shadows, hitching up his suspenders.

“I reserved the bridal suite,” the short black man said.

“Yas suh,” the night clerk said, and teeth came alive in his face as he slanted a glance at the strained white face of the waiting woman. “Yas
suh!
”

The short black man signed the register and the night clerk picked up the luggage and preceded them up the narrow, bending stairs, his footsteps muffled on the threadbare carpet. The night clerk opened a door at the front of the narrow corridor, entered the darkness and lit a lamp, lit the grate, carried the luggage within, and stood to one side, his big white teeth winking at them like an electric sign. The woman looked at him with a shudder of distaste.

Impulsively the short black man lifted the woman across the threshold. Her body was stiff and unyielding. Gingerly he stood her erect, then turned and tipped the servant.

“Thankee-suh, thankee-suh; Ah knows y’all gonna have uh good time,” the night clerk said as if it was a dirty joke.

The short black man quickly closed the door. He turned and went across to the woman, who hadn’t moved, and tried to put his arm around her. She pulled away and went over and sat on the moth-eaten sofa. The same smell of decay encountered below was in the room, but here it was dry, mingled with the vague scent of countless assignations. Again the woman shuddered as her thoughts were assailed by a sickening recollection. Once, as a little girl, when cutting through a vulgar street in nigger-town, Atlanta, she had heard an obscene reference to her vagina. She had not known then what it had meant, only that it was vulgar and dirty and had filled her with a horrible shame. She had never told anyone, but the feeling of shame had lingered in her thoughts like a drop of pus, poisoning her conception of sex. As she had approached womanhood, she had resolved to make her marriage immaculate. And now it seemed dirtied at the very start by this cloying scent.

The fire sputtered cheerfully in the grate. Beyond was the door into the bedroom. The short black man went and lit the bedroom lamp, then came back and turned down the living room lamp and went over and sat beside her.

“You go to bed, honey,” he said gently. “You must be tired.”

She turned and for the first time gave him a grateful smile. “I’m not tired.” She groped for words. She spread her hands slightly, inclusively. “It’s so squalid.”

“It’s the best they have,” he said defensively.

She arose and started toward the bedroom, then impulsively bent down and kissed him on the lips and, laughing girlishly, went into the bedroom and closed the door. Slowly she undressed before the mirror, glancing furtively, a little ashamedly at her nude figure, letting the realization that she was married come to her.

She was a tiny woman with soft milk-white skin and tiny breasts as round and hard as oranges. Her face was slightly longish and her expression a little austere. Laughing at herself, she slipped into her nightgown and, putting out the light, crawled quickly into bed. She lay looking into the dark, her thoughts pounding, listening to the movements of her husband as he undressed in the other room. The latch clicked, the door slowly opened. She tensed beneath the covers, watching him enter the room.

His short muscular body, seemingly blacker than the night, was silhouetted against the faint luminescence of the doorway.
He’s naked!
she thought, horrified as by some startling obscenity. And then as he came toward her, his naked body assumed a sinister aspect, its very blackness the embodiment of evil. She felt a cold shock of terror.

“William,” she whimpered.

“I’m right here, honey,” he said reassuringly.

She felt his hand pulling back the cover. She could scarcely breathe.

He lay down beside her with infinite gentleness. For a time he lay still. Then his hand moved and he touched her breasts. Her body became instantly taut. She could not analyze her fear of him, but she dreaded the feel of his touch. She was still caught in a state of shock. She feared him as something inhuman.

He turned over and kissed her on the throat. She lay rigid in terror. His hand went down over the smooth satin nightgown and rested on her stomach. Then, abruptly, he reached down and drew the gown up about her waist and his hand searched frantically. His breathing shortened and thickened.

“Don’t!” she gasped. “Don’t! Not now! Not here! Not in this hovel!” Her arms had stretched out, gripping the sheets in the classic posture of crucifixion.

He scrambled over her. His hot breath licked at her face.

“Don’t!” she cried again. “Don’t!” And then she screamed in terror, “Light the lamp so I can see you!”

But he had gone out of himself and was panting uncontrollably, unaware, unhearing, his head filled with the roaring fire of his lust. He mounted her like a stud. The penetration chilled her body like death. For an instant the vision of her father’s kindly white face with its long silky beard flickered through her consciousness. Then her mind closed against reality as it filled with a sense of outrage; her organs tightened as she stiffened to the pain and degradation.

He struggled brutally and savagely and blindly and then desperately to overcome her, conquer her, win her. She fought to hold herself back. He could not control himself; his muscles jerked with frenzy, the vague pallor of her face floating through the red haze of his vision. When she felt her virginity go bleedingly to this vile and bestial man she hated him.

He threw back the covers, leaped from the bed and lit the lamp, unaware of his reason for doing so. Standing naked, the shadow of his black, knotty body with the muscular bowed legs, darker than the night, he trembled with frustration and dissatisfaction, not knowing what was wrong with him.

She lay rigid in the posture of crucifixion, her stiff white face as still as if in death, looking at him through pools of horror. The sight of his black body was incalculably repulsive. Finally she closed her eyes. She felt as if she had been raped, victimized, debased by an animal. “You beast,” she said.

He was shocked out of his daze. He groped for reason, sucking at his lower lip, trying to frame in simple thought the basis for her attitude.

“But, honey, we’re married now,” he said in a soft, placating voice.

“You rapist,” she said through clenched teeth. “You don’t know what marriage is.”

Had it not been for the prospect of facing the night alone in a strange and terrifying city, she would have left him then. But she realized she had no place to go. Her family wouldn’t have welcomed her home, she knew. There would have been a scandal. No one would have understood. In view of all the hardships and travail her parents had experienced during their marriage, they would have been appalled by her attitude. So she steeled herself to stay with him.