The Third Generation (4 page)

Vaguely aware that he was losing her, he tried to win her back. Afterwards, he was infinitely gentle. But she never became reconciled. Each time, she received him with horror and revulsion. Although a child was conceived, she never got over that first night. She was never able to separate the blackness of his skin from the brutality of his act; the two were irrevocably bound together in all her thoughts of him.

After they returned to the college in Georgia where he taught, he discovered she hated him. She was cold and distant and shuddered at his touch. He thought it was due to her condition; many women hated their husbands during pregnancy. To lighten the burden of housekeeping for her he brought his sister to live with them and do the housework. Beatrice was a thin, black girl with short, kinky hair. It was her first time away from home. And she stood in such awe of her forbidding, white-faced sister-in-law she was painfully self-conscious and stupid. Mrs. Taylor was ill and unhappy and very impatient with the girl. She thought her mean and sullen, and took out her spleen toward her husband on her.

One day Beatrice burst into tears and begged Professor Taylor to send her home. He turned on his wife and shouted, “Confound you, quit picking on my sister!”

“Then get her out of my house,” she retorted. “I can’t help it if she feels inferior because she’s black.”

“Inferior? Because she’s black?”

“Yes, that’s why she’s so sullen and slovenly. It’s no crime to be black.” For the first time she had revealed her attitude toward color.

He was shocked. Then suddenly it all came clear, the source of her unhappiness, the reason she hated him. “Confound it, who do you think you are, a white woman!” he raved, turning ashy with fury. “You’re a colored woman, too, just like my sister. The only difference is my sister and I aren’t bastards.” It was an epithet black people hurled at light-complexioned Negroes, challenging their legitimacy.

Her face blanched. “You’ll live to see the day you regret that vile calumny,” she vowed.

“Yes, and you’ll live to see the day you’ll wish you were black as me,” he replied cuttingly.

She pursed her lips and turned away. He knew that he had scored a hit and felt a sense of triumph. But he little knew how deeply he had wounded her, nor how relentlessly she’d seek vengeance. Added to the shock and horror of her wedding night, it completed the destruction of their marriage.

For years she punished him in every conceivable manner. She left his bed and for four years forbade him to touch her. She wasted his salary on expensive luxuries and ran him into debt to embarrass him. All her love and tenderness were spent on her child. She treated her husband with unwavering contempt and made enemies of all his associates. She whipped him with her color at every turn, and whipped all those about him. There came the time when she was not welcome in a single house. Yet her scorn and fury continued unabated. Eventually he was asked to leave the college.

When they came to this college in Missouri, he was beaten. Only then did she feel avenged. After Thomas became of school age she relented and accepted him again as the father of her children. She had resigned herself to marital unhappiness, but now she longed for a family. It was the beginning of her bitter struggle for security, for possessions and prestige and a home, and for opportunities for her children.

By then Professor Taylor had lost all hope and confidence. He refused to share in her plans and seemed only interested in earning his salary. When William was born she became desperate. She tried to fire him with ambition again. But he seemed dead inside. For a time she was sorry for him. She knew she had destroyed him. And she wanted to remake him with her love and devotion. She forgave him for all that he had done to her. When he seemed most despondent and forlorn she responded to him most passionately. Charles came as the result of this tender interlude. She often thought that was the reason she loved him best. All the while she carried him she felt devoted to his father. She thought she was mending him with her love.

When it finally became evident that he was unchanged, her love reverted to hate. She became more disillusioned than ever. She was chagrined as much as infuriated. She hated him for leading her on. All waste, she thought. All her efforts to fire his ambition and spur him on—nothing but waste. Nothing had changed.

Even now, after twelve years, she was still as revolted by him as she had been on their wedding night, she reflected as she went bitterly about her chores. Twelve years of nothing but waste. He had the same type of job he’d had when they were married, with scarcely any more salary. They didn’t even own the house in which they lived. Her own parents had owned their home in less than twelve years of freedom, she thought bitterly. But her husband had given up. It filled her with rage and frustration.

Even with all his other faults, including his apishness and carnality, she could respect him if he had kept fighting to advance. She could make allowances if he were a success. But he couldn’t even succeed at teaching, for which he had been trained.

None was better educated. He was a fine blacksmith and wheelwright. His students had built some of the best carriages and wagons seen in that city. He could make the most elaborate andirons and coal tongs and gates and lampposts imaginable. He had made jewelry and lamps and dishes from gold and silver. He was an artist at the forge and anvil. There was practically nothing he couldn’t forge from metal. Many prominent white people from all over the city commissioned him for jobs. He had made the wrought-iron gate for the governor’s mansion, and a pair of ornamental silver bridles for the district attorney. All of the school’s metal work was done in his shop. He made cedar chests and brass lockers and all manner of things for the faculty members; he shod their horses and repaired their harnesses. Nor could she accuse him of neglecting his own home in this manner. Their house contained numerous fine pieces that he’d made—marble-topped tables with intricately wrought iron legs, hat racks, stools, fenders, footscrapers, chests, cabinets.

And the children loved him too. He made most of their Christmas toys—little wagons, the exact replicas of large expensive ones, with hickory axles and iron-bound hubs, spoked wheels with iron tires, solid oak beds with removable sides, and seats with real springs. They were the joy and wonder of the neighborhood. And he had made sleds with fine iron runners, rocking horses, and miniature garden tools for them.

No one could deny he had the ability. That was what enraged her most. He could if he tried. But when opportunity knocked he seemed to shrink within himself. Often she wondered if his being black had anything to do with it; if in some way he was racially incapable of doing great things. During moments of despondency she regretted having married a black man. She should have known better. Had she married a man her own color at least she would not have to worry about her children being black.

She had long since concluded that he was not going to get anywhere. And regretting it was just a waste of time, she told herself. But she was tied to him by her children. And she would never let him hold back her children.

For a moment she wondered where it was all going to end. Now she was not so certain of anything. But as she worked, a strange set came over her face and her actions became forceful. It was as if she stood with clenched fists, drawing on her heritage, and said over and over again, “I will! I will! I will!”

3

T
HE CHILDREN BEGAN PLAYING
Indian. They skulked behind the fence, awaiting the arrival of the stagecoach. Soon they would attack the stockade. Poking about the yard in search of tomahawks, they ran across a can of paint and a brush left there by their father when painting the window sills.

It was war paint, they decided, and just what they needed to become big bold braves. Dipping the brush, they sloshed great splotches of paint over each other’s face and head. Then, screaming wildly, they ran in circles about the yard.

Hearing them, their mother came running in alarm. Turning the corner, she came unexpectedly upon two apparitions dripping fresh green paint from head to foot and screaming as if in pain. Her first thought was they had blinded themselves. She was frightened out of her wits and for a moment had to steady herself against the house to keep from fainting. “Have mercy, God,” she gasped. And then she noticed Charles’s matted hair, plastered to his skull. “It’s ruined,” she moaned, “oh, it’s ruined,” her anguish as poignant as though he were dead.

Rousing herself, she staggered forward and began wiping their faces with her skirt. It merely smeared the paint. Some got into their eyes. They began to cry.

“My eyes,” Charles screamed. “I can’t see, Mama, I can’t see.”

She caught sight of his eyes covered with a greenish film. Suddenly she screamed, “Lord, oh God!”

The children were more terrified by her outburst than by their own pain. They clutched her about the legs as if hanging on for dear life and screamed at the tops of their voices.

Mrs. Allen, wife of the English professor, and her cleaning girl, came running from the house next door. They found the mother and her two sons clinging to one another in blind terror, like figures from a Greek tragedy.

“What is it, Lillian? What is it, dear?” Mrs. Allen cried in a shocked voice.

“The children!” Mrs. Taylor sobbed. “The children!”

Mrs. Allen looked at the children who were screaming in pain and terror. “Why, they’ve got into some paint,” she said.

The cleaning girl stood to one side, her eyes popping whitely in her startled black face. “Dey’s green as watamelons,” she observed.

“Oh, they’ve gotten it all into their eyes and ears,” Mrs. Taylor sobbed helplessly. “Please send for Mr. Taylor.”

“Run and get the professor, Lucy,” Mrs. Allen directed. Then, gently, she clasped Mrs. Taylor about the waist and got her separated from the children. “Now, dear, get hold of yourself. Let’s get the children inside.”

Finally Mrs. Taylor came to her senses. “Oh yes, oh yes, we must.” She took Charles by the hand and Mrs. Allen followed with William.

Mrs. Allen saw that the children were not seriously hurt, and gave a sigh of relief. But they’d looked so funny, the three of them clinging to each other like Medea bidding her children farewell, she thought, stifling the impulse to laugh. “Now don’t you worry, dear, it’ll be all right,” she said soothingly, as if talking to a child.

“Oh, their eyes and their ears,” Mrs. Taylor wailed as she half-led, half-dragged Charles around the house toward the kitchen. “Oh, his hair,” she added involuntarily, thinking aloud. “It must be ruined.”

In the kitchen they undressed the children and Mrs. Taylor brought bath towels. Carefully they wiped the paint from their faces and necks, but it kept dripping from their saturated hair.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Taylor sobbed. “Oh, dear.”

Mrs. Allen wiped methodically. The children bawled.

Lucy ran all the way across the campus to Professor Taylor’s shop. Professor Taylor wore blue denim coveralls over his trousers and vest. When Lucy appeared he was burning a hot iron tire onto a wagon wheel. His students were ringed about him. He held the blacksmith’s hammer aloft to pound the tire. Lucy dashed into their midst and cried hysterically, “Fess Taylor, Fess Taylor, yo’ chillun’s done painted theyselves.” He understood her to say
fainted
.

Without a word he turned and started to run, still holding the blacksmith’s hammer aloft. His wits weren’t working. His mind held just the one picture—
accident!
His love for his children was such an integral part of his existence he never thought about it. He never thought of his heart beating. He loved his children in the way his heart beat.

Students and several members of the faculty saw him running across the campus, the hammer held aloft. They thought he’d taken leave of his senses.

“There go Fess Taylor, chasing a ghost,” a student remarked.

He arrived in his kitchen out of breath. His gaze stabbed at his wife, flashed toward the children. They sat side by side on an old bench before the stove. Their heads glistened with dark green paint; their skin had a greenish cast. They looked at him out of wide, frightened eyes, whimpering slightly. Slowly he lowered the hammer to his side and looked enquiringly toward his wife.

“What is it, honey? What’s happened to them?” His voice was breathless with anxiety.

“You left the paint open in the yard and they’ve painted themselves,” she said hysterically.

“Painted?”

She pointed accusingly. “Look at their hair.”

He looked again toward the children. They stared back solemnly. Except for their red eyes they didn’t seem injured. Relief flooded over him in a wave of weakness. It was all he could do to keep from laughing. Carefully he averted his face under a pretense of disposing of his hammer.

But she had noticed his expression. “You needn’t laugh,” she cried. “They’ve gotten it all in their ears and eyes.”

“Now, honey, there’s nothing to get so upset about,” he said placatingly. “They’re all right.” He had a deep rich baritone voice and when he attempted to placate his wife it acquired a syrupy tone. “Just put little drops in their eyes—”

“I did,” she said harshly. “And I’ve put sweet oil in their ears.”

“They’re all right,” he soothed. He went over and patted the boys on their heads. His hand got wet with paint and he wiped it on one side of the soiled towels.

The children stopped whimpering.

“We were playing Indian,” William informed him.

“We were braves,” Charles added.

Their father laughed. “See, honey, they’re all right. Their eyes are bright as pennies. There’s nothing to get upset about. They’re all right.”

Her mouth tightened angrily. Now that he had gotten over his own panic he was condescending toward hers, she thought. She knew that he could panic as easily as herself and his calmness infuriated her. She felt resentful toward the children also, as if they had let her down by responding to their father’s reassurance.

Turning to his neighbor, he grinned broadly. “How d’you do, Mrs. Allen.”