so we left together in search of a place to smoke.
We found one next to the squash courts. It was marked by a sand-filled stone urn and a few butts. We liked the place, because we could smoke there, and because we had a solid wall to lean on and buildings with which to swaddle ourselves against the open sky.
I was not afraid to go to St. Paul’s School, although it was becoming clear to me from the solicitous white faces that people thought I was—or ought to be. I had no idea that wealth and privilege could confer real advantages beyond the obvious ones sprawled before us. Instead, I believed that rich white people were like poodles: overbred, inbred, degenerate. All the coddling and permissiveness would have a bad effect, I figured, now that they were up against those of us who’d lived a real life in the real world.
I knew that from a black perspective Yeadon had been plenty cushy, but after all, I had been a transplant. West Philly had spawned me, and I was loyal to it. Jimmy felt just as unafraid, just as certain as Darwin that we would overcome. Jimmy had grown up in the projects, the son of a steadfast father and a mother who was a doer, a mover who led tenant-action and community groups. Together, his parents had raised a boy who had a job to do.
“Listen to me, darling,” he said. “We are going to turn this motherfucker out!”
And why not? I, too, had been raised for it. My mother and her mother, who had worked in a factory, and her mother, who had cleaned apartments in Manhattan, had been studying these people all their lives in preparation for this moment. And I had studied them. I had studied my mother as she turned out elementary schools and department stores.
I always saw it coming. Some white department-store manager would look at my mother and see no more than a modestly dressed young black woman making a tiresome complaint. He’d use that tone of voice they used when they had
important
work elsewhere. Uh-oh. Then he’d dismiss her with his eyes. I’d feel her body stiffen next to me, and I’d know that he’d set her off.
“Excuse me,” she’d say. “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say to you …”
And then it began in earnest, the turning out. She never moved back. It didn’t matter how many people were in line. It didn’t matter how many telephones were ringing. She never moved back, only forward, her body leaning over counters and desk tops, her fingers wrapped around the offending item or document, her face getting closer and closer. Sometimes she’d talk through her teeth, her lips moving double time to bite out the consonants. Then she’d get personal. “How dare you,” would figure in. “How dare you sit there and tell me …” Finally, when she’d made the offense clear, clearer even than the original billing error or the shoddy seam, she’d screw up her eyes: “Do you hear me? Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
They’d eventually, inevitably, take back the faulty item or credit her charge or offer her some higher-priced substitute (“like they should’ve done in the first place,” she’d say, and say to them). They would do it because she had made up her mind that they would. Turning out, I learned, was not a matter of style; cold indignation worked as well as hot fury. Turning out had to do with will. I came to regard my mother’s will as a force of nature, an example of and a metaphor for black power and black duty.
My
duty was to compete in St. Paul’s classrooms. I had no option but to succeed and no doubt that I could will my success.
Jimmy understood. He knew the desperate mandate, the uncompromising demands, and the wild, perfect, greedy hope ofit. If we could succeed here—earn high marks, respect, awards; learn these people, study them, be in their world but not of it—we would fulfill the prayers of our ancestors. Jimmy knew as I did that we could give no rational answer to white schoolmates and parents who asked how
We found one next to the squash courts. It was marked by a sand-filled stone urn and a few butts. We liked the place, because we could smoke there, and because we had a solid wall to lean on and buildings with which to swaddle ourselves against the open sky.
I was not afraid to go to St. Paul’s School, although it was becoming clear to me from the solicitous white faces that people thought I was—or ought to be. I had no idea that wealth and privilege could confer real advantages beyond the obvious ones sprawled before us. Instead, I believed that rich white people were like poodles: overbred, inbred, degenerate. All the coddling and permissiveness would have a bad effect, I figured, now that they were up against those of us who’d lived a real life in the real world.
I knew that from a black perspective Yeadon had been plenty cushy, but after all, I had been a transplant. West Philly had spawned me, and I was loyal to it. Jimmy felt just as unafraid, just as certain as Darwin that we would overcome. Jimmy had grown up in the projects, the son of a steadfast father and a mother who was a doer, a mover who led tenant-action and community groups. Together, his parents had raised a boy who had a job to do.
“Listen to me, darling,” he said. “We are going to turn this motherfucker out!”
And why not? I, too, had been raised for it. My mother and her mother, who had worked in a factory, and her mother, who had cleaned apartments in Manhattan, had been studying these people all their lives in preparation for this moment. And I had studied them. I had studied my mother as she turned out elementary schools and department stores.
I always saw it coming. Some white department-store manager would look at my mother and see no more than a modestly dressed young black woman making a tiresome complaint. He’d use that tone of voice they used when they had
important
work elsewhere. Uh-oh. Then he’d dismiss her with his eyes. I’d feel her body stiffen next to me, and I’d know that he’d set her off.
“Excuse me,” she’d say. “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say to you …”
And then it began in earnest, the turning out. She never moved back. It didn’t matter how many people were in line. It didn’t matter how many telephones were ringing. She never moved back, only forward, her body leaning over counters and desk tops, her fingers wrapped around the offending item or document, her face getting closer and closer. Sometimes she’d talk through her teeth, her lips moving double time to bite out the consonants. Then she’d get personal. “How dare you,” would figure in. “How dare you sit there and tell me …” Finally, when she’d made the offense clear, clearer even than the original billing error or the shoddy seam, she’d screw up her eyes: “Do you hear me? Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
They’d eventually, inevitably, take back the faulty item or credit her charge or offer her some higher-priced substitute (“like they should’ve done in the first place,” she’d say, and say to them). They would do it because she had made up her mind that they would. Turning out, I learned, was not a matter of style; cold indignation worked as well as hot fury. Turning out had to do with will. I came to regard my mother’s will as a force of nature, an example of and a metaphor for black power and black duty.
My
duty was to compete in St. Paul’s classrooms. I had no option but to succeed and no doubt that I could will my success.
Jimmy understood. He knew the desperate mandate, the uncompromising demands, and the wild, perfect, greedy hope ofit. If we could succeed here—earn high marks, respect, awards; learn these people, study them, be in their world but not of it—we would fulfill the prayers of our ancestors. Jimmy knew as I did that we could give no rational answer to white schoolmates and parents who asked how
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