New Boy Read online

  New Boy

  Julian Houston

  * * *

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

  BOSTON

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Several people have contributed to the development of this book. Leslie Epstein and James Carroll, both wonderful writers, have, at timely moments, fanned the embers of my desire to write fiction when they were about to turn cold. Katherine Butler Jones, who grew up in Harlem during the forties and fifties, read the entire manuscript and offered many helpful suggestions. I am particularly indebted to Susan Monsky, writer, teacher, and coach, who has shown me ropes I did not know were there and has helped me to become a better writer. My agent. Wendy Strothman, suggested the idea for the novel after reading one of my short stories, and sold it to Andrea Davis Pinkney, vice president and publisher of the Children's Division of Houghton Mifflin. Both have believed in the book and in me as a writer from the beginning, for which I shall always be grateful. Emily Linsay. my first editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Eleni Beja, her successor, provided invaluable assistance in helping me to understand and respond to the expectations of a publisher in bringing a book to life.

  Fiction writing, it is often said, is a lonely undertaking. For this writer, it would not be possible without the understanding and support of a loving family. My son, Daniel, my daughter, Elisabeth, and my beloved wife, Susan, who reads every word I write and whose comments are always offered with wisdom and affectionate candor, are the bedrock of my work.

  * * *

  Text copyright © 2005 by Julian Houston

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in 12-point Bulmer.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicalion Data

  Houston, Julian.

  New boy/by Julian Houston.

  p.cm.

  Summary: As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school, a young black man is witness to the

  persecution of another student with bad acne.

  ISBN 0-618-43253-1 (hardcover)

  [1. Prejudices—Fiction. 2. African Americans—Fiction. 3. Jews—United States—Fiction.

  4. Boarding schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H8225H0 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2004027207

  ISBN-13: 978-0618-43253-0

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  MP 10 9 8 7 6

  * * *

  To the memory of my mother,

  Alice Jackson Stuart

  Chapter One

  "It won't be easy, you know," said Cousin Gwen. "They won't take any foolishness up there. Especially from a colored boy." She was standing on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building in a wrinkled pink housecoat and worn bedroom slippers, giving me some last-minute advice. Her face was the texture and color of a raisin. Her eyes were penetrating.

  My parents and I had driven up the night before on our way to Draper, the boarding school in Connecticut to which I had been admitted. We had spent the night at Cousin Gwen's apartment in Harlem, and now my parents were sitting in the big Buick Roadmaster, waiting for me to climb in. "This is quite an opportunity you have," said Cousin Gwen. "It's so rare that any of our boys have a chance to go to these schools."

  "I'm looking forward to it," I said, doing my best to sound confident. Until she retired, Cousin Gwen had been a schoolteacher in Harlem for forty years, and as I listened to her, I felt like one of her pupils. It occurred to me that forty years of teaching members of the race had left her with an unerring ability to detect imposters.

  "You'd do well to keep to yourself at first," she said, "until you know who you're dealing with." Looking back, I'd say it was the best advice I'd ever been given by any adult, including my parents, although I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. I was eager to get going and she must have recognized it. "Well," she said with a resigned sigh. "Just remember when you're up there, they'll need you back home when you're finished. Don't end up like Joe Louis."

  In those days, the life of Joe Louis was a cautionary tale for every colored boy from a comfortable home. A big, yaller nigger, as my father would say, Louis was the son of an Alabama sharecropper who became the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. He would make the white folks jittery just by climbing into the ring. In the photographs I saw of him as a child, he was always pokerfaced, the kinks in his hair greased to perfection. He was the most famous Negro of his day, and he made millions of dollars. And lost every cent. He could knock you out with a six-inch punch, but he didn't know what to do with his money; so he trusted the wrong people. They would come to him like courtiers, with a promise of something for nothing. "Just sign here, champ," they would say, and he would sign, lending his name to a candy bar, a milk company, a restaurant, a toy doll, a saloon, assuming all of the liability for a fraction of the assets. By the end of his career, he was penniless, reduced to greeting guests at the doors of nightclubs and working as a referee at wrestling matches to pay offa tax debt too huge to comprehend. Through ignorance and carelessness, he had allowed his chance at independence to slip through his fingers, and had been returned to slavery by the government.

  We reached the school just before lunch. I reported to the headmaster's office with my parents, and the secretary, a tall, dignified woman with short, iron gray hair, directed us to the dining room. "We've been expecting you," she said with a soft smile. "Mr. Spencer would like you to join him for lunch at the headmaster's table."

  The dining room was bustling when we entered. Four hundred pink-faced boys in jackets and ties, more white people than I had ever seen in one place in my life, were seated at long wooden tables noisily comparing notes about summer vacations, summer romances, course assignments, and teachers. And just as the school's catalogue had described, at the head of each table sat a member of the faculty "to insure civility and to promote appropriate discourse." At the opposite end of the table sat a student in a white cotton jacket who was assigned to wait on the table for two weeks.

  Tall, pale, and slender, in a brown tweed jacket and a bright red bow tie, the headmaster, Oliver Spencer, stood when he saw us entering the room and walked over to greet us.

  "Well, this must be the Garrett family," he said. "I'm Ollie Spencer." His wide smile exposed a mouthful of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. I could imagine my father, who was a dentist, cringing at the sight. Mr. Spencer extended his hand, which my mother accepted without removing her glove. She was still conducting a final inspection, before deciding, once and for all, whether to leave her only child in this place.

  "Did you have a good trip?" said Mr. Spencer, making what I came to recognize as headmaster small talk. He pumped my father's hand and then mine with an excess of enthusiasm, not waiting for a reply. "Come and join us for lunch. We've saved three places for you." We began a brief but conspicuous journey to the headmaster's table, observed by everyone else in the dining room. For several seconds, amid the din of voices and the clatter of tableware, a hush fell over the room and conversation stopped while everyone took a good look. I was the first, you see, the first colored student in the eighty-seven-year history of the place, and I suppose they could be forgiven, at that point, for gawking.

  My parents and I were seated next to each other, at the head of the table, and introductions were made all around. Across from us sat Mrs. Spencer, plump and hearty, with rosy cheeks and long blond hair piled loosely on top of her head. She was wearing a white cotton blouse and a pale blue seersucker jacket. For some reason, she reminded me of a teller in a bank. Seated next to her was Mr. Wilcox, a
mathematics teacher and a dour man, with a bald head, a bristling mustache, and heavy, tortoiseshell glasses that he preferred to look over rather than through. And next to Mr. Wilcox was Peter Dillard, president of the sophomore class, the class I was entering, who was wearing a navy blue blazer and who looked as though he had recently stepped out of the shower. Of the three, Mrs. Spencer seemed most curious.

  "Well, how are things in Virginia?" she asked. Her eyes were gleaming. I was uncertain if she was asking about the weather or if she wanted to know the truth, but my father intervened.

  "Hot," he said. "It's always hot this time of year."

  "Well, it's been pretty warm up here, too," she said. "We've had very little rain. My garden is just parched."

  My mother had been silent up to that point, and I was wondering what she was thinking. I had been looking at dried-up gardens in our neighborhood all my life, and I had never heard one described as "parched." I wondered if mother had, and what she made of the headmaster's wife.

  "Very fine school you have down there in Charlottesville," said Mr. Wilcox, biting off his words like pieces of raw carrot. We let the comment twist slowly in the wind, hoping no one would catch its scent. Of course, Mrs. Spencer did.

  "Oh my, yes!" she squealed. "The university! Tell me, how is Charlottesville? I haven't been there in ages. Such a lovely town, don't you think?"

  "We sent three seniors there this year," chimed in an aroused Dillard, the class president, as lunch arrived, lugged on a large metal tray by a student waiter.

  All three seemed oblivious to the fact that until very recently I could not attend the University of Virginia, under any circumstances. I wondered how widespread was this ignorance among the rest of the school population. I was certain my parents were uncomfortable with the implications of this discussion. They had tried to shield me from the indignity of segregation whenever possible-arranging to take me wherever I needed to go so that I didn't have to sit in the back of a segregated bus or streetcar, refusing to patronize any shop or restaurant or theater that maintained a colored only section—but they never pretended that it didn't exist. I could imagine my mother giving the three across the table a withering look, dabbing the corners of her mouth with the end of her napkin, and rising from the table to say to Mr. Spencer, "We have obviously made a mistake. We have no intention of leaving our son in a school like this. Thank you for your time." Instead, Mr. Spencer put a baked chicken breast on each plate and passed the plates around, together with stainless steel serving bowls of peas and mashed potatoes, and the subject was not pursued, to my great relief.

  It had become clear, before the end of the first hour of my first day, that the world I had just entered was utterly different from anything I had previously encountered. I was on my own. I would have to fend for myself, and I was thrilled by the prospect.

  "There will be a meeting of all new boys in the auditorium this afternoon at four o'clock," said Mr. Spencer, toward the end of the meal. "Between now and then, you can get your class assignments and your books and find your dormitory room. Dillard will give you a hand." I had finished lunch and was eager to get started, but first, I had to say goodbye to my parents. They were still eating, however, and the headmaster's table in the dining room seemed hardly the place for such a parting.

  "Do you play any sports?" asked Dillard from across the table. In truth, I hadn't played any organized sports in Virginia because there were none, other than in high school, which I had attended only for one year. We were not allowed to play on the Little League baseball or football teams, and the only way we could walk onto a golf course was as a caddy, which my parents refused to allow me to do. I played a respectable game of playground basketball and could hold my own in football and baseball, but I had never been coached in anything.

  "A little basketball, a little football," I said, hoping my vagueness would cause him to drop the subject. Instead, he seemed to take it for false modesty, and his eyes widened.

  "Really?" he exclaimed. "Boy, can we ever use you. Football practice starts this afternoon. Why don't you come over to the field?"

  Everyone at the table was looking at me, waiting for my answer. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I was about to define myself.

  "Not this afternoon," I said. "I need to unpack and get my books. Maybe some other time." Dillard gave me a long look of disappointment. My parents, on the other hand, seemed to heave a joint sigh of relief.

  The lunch dishes were cleared away, and my parents stood up and shook hands with everyone. I told Dillard I would meet him at the dormitory in a few minutes, and I got up to leave.

  "Would you like to be excused?" said the headmaster. I gave him a puzzled look, and he gave me a good-natured smile in return. "At Draper, boys are expected to excuse themselves from the table before leaving," he said, smiling again, with a kind of low-wattage, paternal grin.

  "Excuse me, sir. May I be excused, sir?" I said. Everyone at the table beamed, including my parents.

  "Catches on fast," said my father with a smile. "That's a good sign." I had passed my first rite of initiation into life at the Draper School, but it was certain not to be my last.

  "We're very glad to have you with us, and I hope you'll feel free to come and see me whenever you have a problem," said Mr. Spencer, still flashing his benign, all-purpose smile. "And, yes, you may be excused."

  I walked out to the car with my parents, observing that we were still the object of curiosity on the part of everyone around us. Not only the students, but the adults, from the teachers to the groundskeepers, gave us long looks, though it was not easy to tell what they were thinking. A few seemed friendly and some seemed cool, but most of the expressions were blank as a piece of paper that had not been written on.

  The drive over to the dormitory with my parents gave us our first and last opportunity that day to exchange in private our impressions of the school. I was about to be left alone, truly alone, for the first time in my life. The two great pillars that had supported me up to that point were about to be removed.

  "Well, you're on your way, son," said my father. "They certainly keep the place looking nice," he mused, steering the Buick past manicured lawns and the graceful, towering elms that covered the campus. He was fond of bromides, and maintained a barrel of them for use in every situation. Later, after much thought, I realized that they were one of the tools of his trade. Patients came to him expecting the worst, and his first task was to put them at ease by talking, but only about little of consequence.

  Mother, on the other hand, was a schoolteacher like Cousin Gwen. She was used to having only fifty minutes to work with, so she got right to the point. "You're going to be under a microscope while you're here and don't you ever forget it. Not for one minute. Just when you think you've been accepted and they're treating you like everyone else, that's when something will happen that will cause you to remember that you're a Negro. The only contact these people have had with our people has been with maids and shoeshine boys, and you can imagine what that's been like. I didn't see another colored face in that dining room, not even back in the kitchen. So you're it. You're going to represent the race, and from what I've seen and heard, they've got a lot to learn." She leaned over the back of the front seat toward me so that I could kiss her cheek, and as I did, I realized that it was wet with tears. "Make us proud of you, son," she said.

  As we were unpacking the car, Dillard arrived to help me take my things to my room in the sophomore dormitory. It was a long, three-story brick building, with an entrance set off by four tall white columns. My room was on the third floor, with a dormer window that looked out on the campus, the surrounding hills, and a part of the golf course. There was a bed, a desk and chair, and a built-in dressing cabinet. It was not as large as my room at home, but it was comfortable enough. My parents, who had accompanied us up to the room to take a look, approved.

  "Is there an adult in charge of the dormitory?" my mother asked Dillard as we were all walking back do
wn to the car. Dillard pointed to the far end of the long corridor and a door with a brass knocker facing us. The door was shut.

  "There's a master living on every floor," he said. "You don't see them that often, but they'll have you in for punch and cookies once in a while. They're mainly here to make sure things don't get out of hand." The three of us chuckled at Dillard's remark, and strolled out to the car. Everything about the school seemed to be in such perfect order, the graceful elms, the manicured lawns, the handsome buildings, all constructed with red brick that had aged beautifully, and the pristine white columns. The footpaths had been paved with the finest gray slate and did not contain a scrap of litter. Even the birds seemed to have been trained to fly away to deposit their leavings elsewhere. It was hard for me to imagine things getting out of hand in such a place.

  All of the schools I had attended before had been hand-me-downs, used by the whites until they were falling apart, when they were ready to be abandoned to the Negro hordes. At least, I thought, I wouldn't have to worry about a leaky roof in my algebra class at Draper.

  We were downstairs at the car, and my parents were preparing to leave. Dillard handed me a sheet of paper.

  "I picked up your course assignments for you," he said. "You still need to get your books from the bookstore, which is behind the main building. I've gotta head over to the field for football practice. You sure you don't want to come?"

  "I'm sure," I said. I knew I was fortunate to have a choice. Draper had awarded me a small academic scholarship, but most of my tuition was being paid by my parents, which meant that there was no expectation, when I arrived, that I would have to earn my keep by wearing the green and gold of the Draper Dragons.