Virgin Soul (28 page)

B
ibo and I keep our eyes peeled for the University Avenue exit. After the San Francisco airport, we're on our way to Palo Alto on 101 South. “How long is your appointment?”

“Less than an hour.”

“A Stanford donor. That's big money.”

I'm going to Stanford; he's going to a meat wholesaler in Union City who has donated sausages to the party for our Breakfast for Children program. We take the exit and drive up to the gates that I had gone through last at the school's Black Arts Week. I had performed with LeRoi Jones.

“Take Palm to Arboretum and left on Quarry,” the guard says.

The campus is an idyllic leafy suburb with bicyclists and students with Frisbees. If I didn't read the papers or look at TV, the My Lai massacre might seem like it took place on another planet. Or maybe Stanford is a planet, not a university. When we reach the medical school, Bibo gives me instructions. “This is how we work it. I drop you here. Cut over the Dumbarton Bridge, pick up the meat, and come back right here. I'll be waiting, okay?”

I watch him drive away before I check out the students, guessing which came from money and which were on scholarship. I can't figure it out. Appearances, appearances. Everything that's gold doesn't glitter. I go up to the sixth floor, looking for the State alumni and third-year resident I'd talked to on the phone. He finds me.

“Geniece Hightower from State?”

Now he looks like a scholarship student with his beard, jeans, and sneakers. He ushers me into the conference room and we sit across from each other. I pull out my notebook where I keep a record of all contributions given to me. I record his.

“I want you to know I read the Black Panther paper religiously. And follow the party in the news as well.”

“Why religiously?” Sounds like FBI. He laughs and pauses and laughs again.

“That's part of why we wanted to talk to you. All the social programs that the Black Panthers are initiating are extremely important to us. The university has pioneered studies of newborn and early childhood mortality risk and early childhood learning, and we see a correlation between child nutrition, early developmental support in child care, health, and education, and the exact kinds of programs you're running.”

From our phone call I'd thought this would go in the direction of a donation from some Abe Lincoln Brigade radical, the kind who fought fascism in Spain in the thirties.

“The school of medicine has reserved four slots next fall for black applicants.”

The black premed students I knew had graduated State and were taking advanced sciences, hoping to get in UCSF or elsewhere. Stanford? Impossible without family connections.

“The committee has already made three selections. You're our fourth.”

I couldn't believe my ears. Was I dreaming awake? “I don't see how I could be a doctor.”

“I've followed your work, brilliant writing on social change and women.”

“I did one piece in the BPP. That's not a body of work.” I was getting paranoid. Was this how the FBI got informants? I thought it would have been more straightforward. “My science grades, ah, I can't even explain them away.”

He is beyond eager. “Look, we bring you in. Use the first year to bring you up to snuff. Tutors, counselors, scholarship, housing, and a stipend.”

The thought of a doctor's uniform over my jeans is mind-blowing. Dr. Geniece. He keeps on. Would I be interested in pediatrics? Infectious diseases? Ob-gyn? Then the door to the conference room opens and an older white man, who looks like he was born with money dripping from his umbilical cord, comes in.

“Young lady, I've heard that you're our newest humanitarian project.”

This is unfathomable. “Why of all the people have I turned up on your radar?”

“It's not so far from the realm of possibility. Your tutorial program's making quite an impact,” he says. “We are one of the funders for the program.”

“I tutor kids. How does that connect to medical school?”

He sits and says, “There's a tremendous shortage of physicians in urban communities. We're committed to changing that, and you are bright and committed.”

He shakes my hand and walks out. The resident beams.

“I still don't understand why my name came up for this.”

“It came up three different ways. The chair of your psychology department gave us a list of possible candidates, and your name was on it.” I never had a decent conversation with him. Why would he have done that?

“Secondly, we know of your community ethic with both the Panther Party and your work on Potrero Hill. That's huge for us.” Not as huge as it was for Tammy and Yvette.

“What's the third?” They know too much about me. At this point he got excited. “I know that you are almost solely responsible for open admissions. The BSU chairman told me about your work in bringing that about.”

Chandro-Imi! I'm stupefied.

“There you have it—the future. Help us change the world.” He gives me a sheaf of application papers and I leave the building in a haze. I cross a footbridge and my legs give out. I see Bibo waiting for me and crawl into the car.

“What happened? You're shook. Did you have a confrontation?”

“It was crazy, that's all I can say. Crazy.” I give Bibo the blow-by-blow. He cracks up so hard he has to stop driving.

“This is exactly what Huey predicted. He said we'd know we achieved the revolution when black people had all the opportunities and psychoses of white people.”

“You better drive this car. Why is this funny? I don't see cause for hysteria.”

“It's funny because it's surreal.” We get out of Palo Alto and back on 101. “This is a message from the future.”

“Oh, I was dreaming this whole thing? They couldn't possibly be serious?”

“No, baby, they were serious. Are you? Do you want to be a doctor?”

“I was a candy striper in high school.”

He yells at me so loud it hurts my ears. “Do you want to be a doctor, fool?”

I yell back. “No, I don't want to be a doctor. Dammit.”

He finds some R&B on the radio and lights up. I don't want any but get a contact anyway. Back in the city, Bibo drops me at the pad but touches my shoulder to say, “We won't see the results of the revolution. We'll either be dead or in jail. Dig?”

I call the resident and connect him to the black premed students. I don't want to be a doctor. But it was interesting to peer into the future.

I
t's May Day, 1968. Students all over the world demonstrate by cutting classes April 26 to end the war in Vietnam. When I step again into Yvette and Tammy's apartment, which smells of garlic sausages and fried potatoes, they're washing down dinner with grape soda. They mostly stayed at Grannie's next door even after Mrs. Moore came home from the hospital. Whenever I called, they weren't at home but at Grannie's. I look around for Mrs. Moore. I've got free tickets from the tutorial program to see the Harlem Globetrotters in the gymnasium at State. I want to be on time.

Tammy says her mom is back at her boyfriend's apartment, been there since coming from the hospital. We find seats in the middle of the bleachers, canned music from “Sweet Georgia Brown” filling the room. The kids go nuts as the players cakewalk onto the floor. The kids, slurping Popsicles, love Curly, the bald-headed player—even when he stands mute and stares at them.

Tammy says she wants to move up higher. Yvette tells her to shut up.

Tammy begs. I say, “The bogeyman's crawling around up there. You don't want to go up higher.”

Tammy asks to go to the bathroom.

Yvette says, “You went already when we came in.” Tammy says, “Can't help it.”

I say, “A whale mouse waits in there for little girls who drink grape soda. And he'll bite your pee-pee if you go to the bathroom before halftime.”

Tammy asks, “What happens at halftime?”

I say, “He gets spooked when he hears all the toilets flush and hides.”

Yvette says, “Yeah, Tammy, he'll bite if we go in now.”

The Globetrotters irk me; they're a throwback to Stepin Fetchit. It's painful to watch them, minstrels with basketballs. I buy cotton candy, Crackerjacks. I think of Bert Williams, who had to please the crowd that wanted nothing more, nothing less, than blackface, an object of ridicule. Yet his essential dignity shone through. I attempt to see the Globetrotters' dignity, but it's hard. The children's laughter resounds.

Tammy says, “Yvette still has some Crackerjacks. Make her gimme some.”

Yvette says, “I didn't ask for any of your cotton candy.”

I say, putting my ear to the box, “The Crackerjacks say, ‘If Tammy eats us, we'll turn her into a big ant, big as this room.'”

She giggles, but she's scared off. When we get ready to leave, Tammy won't go in the stall in the ladies' room by herself. I go in with her and use the toilet standing up so she can see the whale mouse isn't there.

Tammy shrieks, “There he is.”

I turn around and look. She smiles.

Tammy says he had big orange eyes and a tail like a whip.

One last treat I buy from a vendor inside is a pack of black Jawbreakers, the strongest manifestation of blackness in the show. We suck them to the center, which is a hunk of chewing gum. They take a while to suck. I hate the texture. It feels like gravel rolling around my mouth. Our tongues turn black. We show each other. “My tongue feels like a driveway,” I say. The two of us make big bubbles. Yvette teases Tammy for not knowing how to make bubbles.

Back at the apartment, I wait for Mrs. Moore. She wasn't there when we left. She isn't there when we return. The girls begin getting ready for bed as if this is routine.

“Where is your mother?”

“Out,” Yvette says. “She does the same thing all the time.”

“She prolly went to a bar,” Tammy adds.

They want to snuggle on the sofa with me. We talk about the game, school, the foster home, and how they got used to it. I'm getting tired.
Come on, Mrs. Moore, I'm not staying here until the bars close. Or your boyfriend falls asleep.
I yawn.

“Don't go to sleep, Geniece,” Tammy says.

“Don't worry, I won't.”

“I want to show you what I can do,” she says. She pulls a Jawbreaker out of her pajama pocket. I thought we sucked them all. She bounces it on her palm a couple of times, and before I see what she's trying, throws it up. She positions her mouth to catch it, like a flamethrower. It goes in. I jump up. I hear it hit her pharynx. She makes a sound like she's gargling it. I hold my hands out. I expect it to come back out like mouthwash. Yvette peers down Tammy's wide-open mouth.

“It's stuck,” she says. She looks up at me. I look at Tammy's blackened tongue. It looks like a blacktop driveway, the Jawbreaker an oversized stone at the end. Gingerly I put my fingers in her mouth.

“She's not going to bite you. She can't move her mouth,” Yvette says. I take my fingers out.

“Your hand is smaller than mine, Yvette. Try to get it.”

“No, your fingers are longer.” She's right, she's always right. Damn. I stick my fingers into Tammy's mouth. I hated cutting up frogs in lab. Yvette's voice goes up with her anxiety. “Hurry up, Geniece, before she can't breathe.”

“Go call the operator, Yvette.”

I hear her feet against the linoleum. I hear her dial. I edge my thumb and forefinger toward the ball. I hear each click of the dial as it returns. But the bridge between my thumb and pointer finger is too big for Tammy's mouth. When I close the two together, the thumb doesn't reach far down enough. Tammy keeps blinking but stays calm. Scared stiff, I hear Yvette talking. The Jawbreaker turns a little. A sweet-smelling black viscous strand drips off the ball. It goes down her throat. Tammy begins to gag. Yvette comes back.

“They're sending the fire department.”

Tammy's eyes close. I have to do something before she chokes on her spit. I edge my forefinger and index finger toward the ball. If only I had talons. I get ahold of one side but not the other. Tammy gags again. The Jawbreaker spins downward and settles on her windpipe. Her body goes slack. We sit her down. Her eyes blink open. She looks at me, fully conscious, silently beseeching me to let her breathe again. I try again, but it is entrenched. A black thing stuck in her windpipe.

“Maybe if we push it back up. Squeeze it out?” Yvette suggests. The sound of the fire engine approaching steels us. Yvette squeezes Tammy but only funny sounds come out. I reach in again but can't do anything for fear of pushing it down more. Tammy lifts her fingers to her throat as if pointing to the candy.

“We see it, Tammy. We can't get at it,” Yvette says. Her voice cracks. “We just can't get at it.”

Tammy convulses twice, her eyes reach to me, pleading, between waves, and she goes limp. Her eyes close. Then her lips form a horrible rounding over her teeth. Her mouth is still open but like a fish mouth, limp. The firemen knock on the door. Yvette, in tears, goes to the door, lets them in. They rush to the sofa, take over. As we explain, one holds her lifeless body over his knees, as if the Jawbreaker will come out. But it is lodged there. They take her pulse, go through motions, but I can tell by their faces it's no use. One takes me by the shoulder. He explains it's a freak accident. . . . We would have had to crush her throat to get it or break both jaws. . . . She would've died either way. The ambulance attendants come with the stretcher. When they place her body on it and I see that her top is buttoned crooked, I shudder. The attendants lay her hands at her sides; her head looks like it has wilted from its stem. Yvette holds on to me. The firemen ask if I'm the mother. When I tell them I'm not, they say they didn't think so. I have no idea where she is. I tell them that. I want to touch Tammy's head, straighten it out. It lolls to the side as if she is pretending to look silly. I touch her; I feel the pressed edges of her hair at her temple. I align her head with her body. I brush my lips against her warm face and stand up. Yvette touches her forehead. Death, as if it's been sitting in her throat all day, relaxes the muscles and pushes the Jawbreaker out. It rolls off her chin and onto the floor with more liveliness than anyone in the room. It comes to rest underneath the stretcher. They begin to wheel Tammy out. Our eyes turn toward her. One of the front wheels crunches the Jawbreaker to pieces, black to black to black. The wheels flatten the pieces, rolling out the gumminess. I gather our sweaters and, with Yvette in her nightgown, walk out.

All is quiet, even though many people stand around waiting to see who will emerge on the stretcher. When they see Tammy, they gasp. Each drawn-in breath rips off the box around my heart; people begin wailing and sobbing her name as we get in the ambulance. Yvette holds on to me for dear life. I want the paramedics to explain how they handle this, fresh, young, inexplicable death. Instead, the ambulance rolls down the hill and I hold on, wanting this entire black, blacker, blackest night to be a parable of destruction I imparted to the girls. Only a parable.

Yvette turns to me and says, “Geniece, something moved around in your stomach, I felt it against my cheek.”

It hits me as hard as the surface of one of those Jawbreakers. I am still pregnant. I haven't had time to get an abortion. The ambulance rolls on and Yvette puts her ear at different places on my abdomen. My throbbing heart feels as if someone has touched it and it might hemorrhage. I can't take one more blow to this entity called my life.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

B
etween finals I go to the funeral home to see Tammy. I recognize some of the girls' neighbors, their social worker, and Grannie, who motions me to sit next to her.

“Why is the casket closed?” I whisper to Grannie.

She whispers back, “They Catholic, but Mrs. Moore don't go to church. So they had it here. Cheaper. Don't have to move the body back and forth.”

“How is Mrs. Moore holding up? Is she all right?”

“No, chile, she ailing bad. Back in the hospital. I don't think she'll be out soon.”

“And Yvette?”

She raises her eyebrows. “You didn't hear?”

“I've called and the phone is disconnected.”

“Yvette sent to live with her great-aunt in Texas, on the white side of her family. Say they got a good home for her.”

“What a horrible shock to lose Tammy, her mother, and then to have to move to Texas.”

Grannie pats my knee. “Chile, that girl was pulling the whole family on her shoulders. It was too much. Being an orphan not the worst thing. Sometimes you get to start over, if you can only get some kindness shown you.”

Maybe Aunt Ola was right. Maybe I was fortunate Family had spread its wings over me until I left the nest, the orphan blackbird.