New Boy Page 2

  Dillard said goodbye to my parents, shook their hands, and headed off to the football field.

  "Seems like a nice young fellow," said my father in his blue serge suit, his hands clasped behind his back, surveying the campus again.

  "Are you sure you packed that extra pair of pajamas I left out for you?" said my mother. I assured her I had. "What about underwear? Are you sure you've got enough underwear? What about your gloves? Remember, it gets cold up here." She was having trouble leaving, and it should not have surprised me, for I was the embodiment of her dreams, the life she had nurtured from her womb and then tended in the hoary, weed-choked garden of the South, until the decision was made to send me away to firmer, richer soil. Nevertheless, I was absolutely desperate for them to go. This was supposed to be my experience, and I wanted to have it on my own. I was too young to understand that it was also their experience, indeed, their adventure, in a world they had dreamed about and read about but never inhabited. Now they were going to live in that world through me, but the price of the ticket was steep. When they returned home, my bedroom would be empty. At dinnertime, the table would only be set for two. And they would no longer have to transport me from place to place so that I wouldn't have to ride in the back of the bus.

  We exchanged brief hugs and kisses, and both of them seemed to be fighting back tears as they climbed into the Roadmaster. I felt, at that moment, looking at them seated behind the windshield of the huge black sedan, that in the brief trip north, they had somehow aged; that without their realizing it, time had caught up with them and was passing them by, and now, having brought me as far as they could, they were about to return to the past. Dad turned over the big Buick engine and it rumbled to life. From the interior of the sedan, he looked at me standing alone at the edge of the driveway and gave me a big wink, which I pretended not to notice. With the edge of a handkerchief wrapped around her index finger, Mother dried the corners of her eyes and managed a faint smile and a wave. Dad eased the car forward, rolling it slowly down the driveway, until it reached the main road and disappeared.

  Chapter Two

  The meeting with Mr. Spencer was intended to acquaint new boys with the basic rules of the school. It was held in the school auditorium and the entire freshman class was there, most of them in heavy woolen sport coats they were expected to grow into, baggy khaki pants, and ties that were much too long for young bodies that were still filling out. A few seemed to have been dressed by custom tailors, in Harris tweed jackets or navy blazers with gold buttons and gray wool trousers that fit perfectly. And everyone was wearing wide-eyed looks of fresh-scrubbed, pink-faced, beardless innocence that would disappear forever by the end of the school year. The rest of the audience was composed of new students like me, who looked older and were scattered around the room, dressed like the freshmen, in jackets and ties.

  I took a seat near the back, to be as inconspicuous as possible. I still hadn't met any other new students, but I was content to be by myself. Most of the new students were gathered in seats near the stage, from which they would steal furtive looks in my direction until the meeting began.

  "Is this seat taken?" someone asked. I looked up and saw a homely white boy in a tie and jacket looking down at me with dark, beady eyes and a wide, lopsided smile. His dark brown hair was thick and straight and slicked down, with a part on the side, but the most memorable feature of his face was his skin. It was pockmarked and oily, and inflamed with acne. Of course, he was not the only student in the auditorium, let alone the school, with skin trouble, but his was worse than anything I had ever seen anywhere, and in the limited environment of Draper, the eye of the casual observer was as likely to be drawn to that face, I assumed, as to the color of my own dark brown skin.

  "Nope," I said, removing from the seat next to me the books I had just purchased in the bookstore.

  "My name's Vinnie Mazzerelli," he said, extending his hand and shaking mine as he sat down. "Guess you're new here, too. What grade you in?" He was speaking to me in a whisper, his mouth shielded by the back of his hand, while onstage, Mr. Spencer welcomed everyone in a silken voice, reminding us how fortunate we were to have the privilege of a Draper education.

  "Sophomore," I whispered back, with my eyes still focused on Mr. Spencer, who was standing behind a lectern with a complacent expression on his face.

  "You are among the most intelligent, most gifted members of your generation. You come from the finest families and the finest traditions, and many of you will go on to positions of great leadership, to lead our industries, our banks, our armed forces, our government, while our job during your years here at Draper is to prepare you to assume these positions of great influence, so that you are qualified, both intellectually and morally, to hold them." Spencer spoke to us with matter-of-fact candor, and as I listened, I felt the power of his message relaxing my concerns about being the only colored student in the school, about speaking differently and looking different from everyone else, about doing well and finding understanding at Draper. It seemed that I was being given access to virtually everything I would need in order to overcome the shortcomings of my youth and to find success in my adult life. All I needed to do was perform.

  "Where you from?" whispered Vinnie. I was having a hard time dividing my attention between Spencer's exhortations and Vinnie's questions, but I felt I couldn't ignore Vinnie altogether.

  "Virginia," I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, hoping my one-word answer might cause him to lose interest.

  "No kidding!" he exclaimed softly. "My sister's down there now. She's a junior at Hollins." I greeted this news with silence and intensified my concentration on Mr. Spencer's remarks.

  "Of course, with leadership comes responsibility, and an important element of responsibility is knowing the rules. So one of the first things I want you to do before the end of the day is to read the Draper School handbook. It contains all of the rules you will be expected to obey during your years at Draper." And without missing a beat, his tone shifted, from silken to imperious. "Read it and read it well." On the stage, the headmaster had removed a copy of the handbook from the inside pocket of his brown tweed jacket, and was holding it before him like a hymnal, reading selected portions to the audience through half-moon spectacles perched on the tip of his long, aquiline nose. Everyone, even Vinnie, seemed to be listening.

  "There are four offenses at Draper," intoned Mr. Spencer, "for which the punishment is immediate expulsion. They are: the use of tobacco, in any form; the use of alcohol; cheating; and the commission of any act recognized as a crime by the laws of the state of Connecticut." He cleared his throat, and concluded: "As I have said, gentlemen, a Draper education is a privilege and one that must be guarded with the utmost care. If you work hard and live within our rules, you will discover, upon your graduation, that the world will open up for you like an oyster. And the pearls of life will be yours for the taking. Good luck to each of you, and welcome to Draper." As the new boys filed out of the auditorium, Mr. Spencer stood alone on the stage, smiling at his new charges, none of whom, it seemed, bothered to smile back.

  "You headed back to the dorm?" asked Vinnie as we left the auditorium.

  "Yes," I said. "I want to get unpacked and look at my assignments. What about you?"

  "I'm unpacked already, but I'll walk back with you," he said. "What floor are you on?"

  "Third. What about you?"

  "Second. One flight down. I've already met some of the guys. They seem pretty nice. What time is dinner served around this place?"

  We were walking across the campus to the dormitory, as the late afternoon sun burnished the edges of the trees and the brick surfaces of the buildings with golden light. The brilliant green lawn surrounded us like the sea, filling the air with the fragrance of freshly mowed grass. It was as though I had been deposited at a resort or a country club, neither of which I had ever visited, to spend the next three years of my life. I was in awe of my good fortune. Oh, I knew there would be adjust
ments to make, both on my part and on the part of the school, but, as I made my leisurely way across the campus with Vinnie, I thought I could feel the past slipping away. I was shedding like an overcoat the image of myself with which I had been raised, of the good colored boy brought up in a proper colored home to serve the needs of the race during its sojourn in captivity, treading the narrow line separating them from us, with proper manners and diction and the refinements of general appearance (natural or self-imposed): proper skin color, hair texture, and dimensions of lips and nose Even the Church, into which I had been recently baptized, seemed to lose any claim on my thoughts. Like Joe Louis, I had escaped the harsh and final judgments of the South. I was free to become whoever I wanted to become. I had only to avoid his mistakes. My success would be my contribution to the race.

  As Vinnie and I were about to enter the dormitory, the front door swung open, and a group of students emerged in dress shirts, open at the neck, and khakis, engaged in a noisy discussion.

  "The Browns are gonna walk away with it."

  "G'wan. Nobody's gonna beat the Giants. Conerly to Gifford. Can't be stopped."

  "Anybody ever heard of the Colts?"

  "Aw, you're just saying that 'cause your old man owns a piece of the team."

  "So? Mara's father owns all of the Giants. Why do you think he's picking them?"

  Everyone laughed, including me.

  "You're new, aren't you?" said a large, freckle-faced boy with long red hair that looked as though it had just been combed into a wet pompadour. I had seen the style on the street at home on young white men wearing jeans and white T-shirts, sometimes with a pack of cigarettes rolled into one sleeve, revealing a blue tattoo. They were usually loud and up to no good. He looked at me with mischievous eyes and a roguish grin and said, "What's your name?"

  "Garrett," I said. "Rob Garrett. What's yours?"

  "Mike Sargent. But most people call me Carrot," he said, squinting through a miniature thicket of copper-colored eyelashes, and he proceeded to introduce the others in his group. They all had blue eyes and distant half-smiles that seemed to be intended more to please the headmaster than me. "Where're you from?" he asked. I told him. "That's a pretty part of the country down there. What made you want to come up here?"

  "Same as you, I guess. Trying to get the best education I can, so I can better myself," I said. It was a stock answer, the identical one I had given when a Draper alumnus had come to our house to interview me the year before.

  "This guy sure has you figured out, Carrot," said Rolf Schroeder, a slim blond boy with a deep tan. "He knows exactly why you're here." Everyone laughed again except Vinnie and me.

  "I don't understand," said Vinnie with a confused look. "Isn't that why we're all here? I mean why else would you come to a place like this?" The laughter abruptly stopped. The smiles disappeared and the mood outside the dormitory entrance, still washed in afternoon sunlight, became chilly.

  "Who's he?" said Carrot, looking at me and nodding toward Vinnie.

  "That's Vinnie," I said. "He's new, too."

  "Vinnie, huh? Vinnie what?" said Carrot, this time looking straight at Vinnie.

  "Vinnie Mazzerelli," said Vinnie, in a good-natured voice.

  "Where ya from, Vinnie?" said Carrot. "You from Virginia, too?" I could feel something building, but I wasn't sure what it was.

  "Me?" said Vinnie. "I'm from New York," and he pronounced it in a way I had never heard before: "Nooo Yawk."

  "I thought so," said Carrot, with a hint of a sneer. "Tell me, Vinnie, what does your father do down in New York?" he added, making a crude attempt to imitate Vinnie's pronunciation. "Does he make spaghetti or drive a cab?" Carrot and his friends exploded in laughter. Even Vinnie laughed, although his face was flushed. I was speechless. I had always thought of prejudice as exclusively a matter between black and white. Of course, I also knew what it meant to be treated unfairly by my own people, some of whom regarded me as spoiled or stuck up because of the circumstances of my birth or the fact that I did well in school, but these exceptions paled before the lengths to which white people were willing to go to maintain the myth of their superiority. It seemed Vinnie was being gored by the same ox. And he was a white boy.

  "He's actually a cardiologist," said Vinnie when the laughter had died down.

  "Where's his office?" said Peter Holcomb, a short boy with a crewcut who had been silent up until then. "The Lower East Side?" Carrot and his friends were doubled over in laughter. Vinnie was now red as a beet, his acne suddenly less apparent, but his face still managed to hold on to a tight, goofy little smile, despite the insults.

  "He's got two offices," said Vinnie, with forced good humor. "One on Park Avenue and one at Mount Sinai."

  "Oh, really?" said Carrot. "Is he a Jew, too?" And the group dissolved in laughter again at Carrot's rhyming.

  "Hey, look, fellows," said Vinnie in a limp voice. "I don't know how this got started, but it's getting close to dinnertime and I want to wash up. So, if you'll excuse me," and he pulled open the dorm door to enter.

  "Don't scrub too hard," said Rolf. "You might bleed to death." Snickering, the group strolled away.

  I followed Vinnie into the dormitory. The first-floor hallway had dark mahogany paneling and a tile floor. The lights were off, but in the shadowy coolness, I could see that his cheeks were wet, although he tried to wipe away the evidence with his shirtsleeve.

  "How come they jumped on you like that?" I said in wonderment. "They really had it in for you." I thought that Vinnie might have offended one of them earlier in the day, or perhaps there was a feud between Vinnie's family and one of their families, like in Romeo and Juliet.

  "God, I don't know," he said. "I've never seen any of them before. I don't know what set them off, but they were pretty rough. I can take it, though. I've heard that kind of stuff before. I'll be all right."

  I told Vinnie I would see him later, and went up to my room to stretch out on my bed. It was still light out, and, as I lay on my back, I could see the tops of the trees turning dark green against the pale blue sky. I thought about where my parents would be by now. Somewhere along the Jersey Turnpike, I guessed, and then it would be nightfall, through Delaware, Maryland, and home, all the places I had left behind, that I had wanted to leave behind. It was too late to call them back to come and get me. They were returning home. I was going forward. But forward to what? Who was this new person I wanted to become, freed of the carefully articulated mold of the good colored boy that the South—and even my parents—had prescribed for me? I recalled what my mother had said just before she left. "They won't let you forget that you're a Negro." Perhaps she's right, I thought. Perhaps I can't escape the image that others have created for me, but if I don't try, I will never know if I can or not. And this could be my only chance. I thought about the friends I had left behind in the South and the cramped, sad lives they seemed destined to lead, the hollow trappings of maturity they would be expected to acquire, a sharp suit of clothes, a Sunday hat, to have a regular job teaching school or sorting mail at the post office or even, perhaps, to become a professional sitting behind their own desk in their own office in the colored part of town. The card parties they would attend on Saturday afternoon. The house parties on Saturday night. Church on Sunday morning. Dinner on Sunday afternoon. Their lives would be defined by the limits of their existence in the South, and those limits were absolutely fixed and utterly impregnable. I wanted to find my own way of life one that did not depend on how well I fit the mold. I wanted to be myself, and if I did well, I thought Draper would give me that opportunity. But the incident with Vinnie troubled me. Suppose something like this happened again? And what if something like this happened to me? What would I do? How many others in the school were like Carrot and his friends? And what did they think of Negroes?

  Weeks passed without another incident, although when I saw Vinnie, he would complain that the fellows on the second floor were giving him a hard time. Most of the time, I chalked i
t up to his tendency to exaggerate, like the time he told me Joe Louis was one of his father's patients.

  "My dad said he's going to drive up one weekend soon with Joe Louis and take us all out to dinner," said Vinnie. Weekend after weekend passed, and they never showed up.

  Chapter Three

  I went to classes, went to meals in the dining room, and attended to my studies, and I found that, as Cousin Gwen had recommended, I was most comfortable when I kept to myself. That way, the differences I noticed between me and those around me—teachers, classmates, fellow students—were less obvious. I still spoke like a southerner, and a colored southerner at that, and despite my efforts to disguise my accent to make myself sound more northern, it was common for my roots to be exposed when I spoke. Asked to recite in class, I could sense amused glances being exchanged between my classmates as I labored to deliver my assignment in a neutral voice. At mealtimes, I ate and listened to the table conversation and was often the first to be excused.

  The conversation in the dining room was usually dreary, concerned with subjects in which I had no interest at all—golf courses, New York society, or which towns in Florida had the best beaches—but occasionally it touched on something that caught my ear. A member of the senior class had been caught with gin in his aftershave bottle and had been sent home. The new French teacher's wife was spending an awful lot of time with Mr. Hall from the science department. They were often seen together around the campus, and one of the freshmen had overheard the French teacher, who was his dorm master, arguing about it with his wife late one night. "What do you expect me to do in this godforsaken place?" she was heard to have said. "Crawl into a hole?"

  The subject of race, however, was never mentioned. Instead, the name of a well-known Negro athlete would come up, and everyone would agree that he was extraordinary. I had come from a community that regarded all sorts of Negroes as extraordinary—Dr. Carver, Dorie Miller, Marian Anderson, Father Divine—but none of them were ever mentioned. Nor was there any mention of Negroes like Emmett Till, whose name had been a household word at home after he was lynched. There was so much that they didn't know, so much, it seemed, that they didn't want to know. It was as though we didn't exist, except to provide them with entertainment, and it soon became clear that, among our people, white people admired the colored athletes above all others, if they even knew of any others. They preferred Willie Mays for his showmanship and his humility to Jackie Robinson, of whom, it seemed, they were wary. Nor was there much enthusiasm at all for Joe Louis, who was considered a god, if slightly tarnished, by everyone at home. For the most part, however, the conversation had little to do with me, and I had little to do with it.