Says Esther, I had hoped, but I didn"t know.
Says Aaron, If you had hoped, then . . . ?
Says Esther, choosing her words with care, Because I am different now. My life has changed.
That night Esther writes a letter to Darian in Schenectady, taking care not to seem boastful, let alone vindictive (for in truth she still loves Aaron, and would marry him if circ.u.mstances allowed), telling him that, at age twenty-six, she feels like a princess awakened from a long enchanted slumber . . . or was it a lifetime of having been bewitched as a frog, or a toad, or a dun-colored little bird? . . .
If I regret my decision, she concludes, at least it has been my decision.
BUT IS THAT too smug, too self-a.s.sured? too boastful after all?
Esther doesn"t mean it to be!
Thus, in a postscript, written the next morning: It is one of Katrina"s cruel old tales, where the wish comes true but it is no longer the wish . . . and it"s no longer true.
"THE FIRST ANNUAL UNIVERSAL NEGRO CONFRATERNITY RALLY"
Why . . . ? Because it"s his "game," Maynard," Millicent whispers, suffused with a queer exhilaration, as her nine-year-old tugs at her gloved hand in an annoying little spasm of fear. "He won"t fall as you would, in his place."
"But why, Momma?" the child persists.
"Because it"s his; because it"s what he does."
"But-"
"Do be quiet, sweetheart: you ask too many pointless questions!"
Forty dizzy feet above Richmond"s Rialto Theatre there sits, on a rubber-covered seat, atop a flagpole newly erected for this very purpose, the great "Shipwreck" Kelly himself-champion flagpole sitter of North America, man of mysteries and amusing little foibles (he will play only "Peg o" My Heart" on his harmonica, for instance, and is said to have refused a Hollywood contract because his filmed self would replace his true self in the hearts of his fans). Shipwreck refers to himself as "the luckiest fool alive" and it appears to many that this is so: hotels and movie theaters have bid for his services across the United States, paying him a goodly sum of money simply to climb atop a flagpole and sit.
And now he"s come to Richmond, Virginia, to the splendidly gaudy Rialto Theatre on Main Street, and is in his fifteenth day of sitting-a lone triumphant figure against a changing sky, cheery, stoic, much admired and debated-over (for is he mad, or is he merely very shrewd?), the focus of all local attention, white and Negro alike. People of widely divergent ages and social cla.s.ses have sent Shipwreck small gifts; several young women have proposed marriage (for he is handsome, and only thirty-two years old); a number of local businesses have joined up with the Rialto Theatre, pledged to pay for bonus days beyond the first two weeks. There is even a lottery-not altogether legal, but very popular-which will pay $500 to the person who guesses closest to the day, the hour, and the minute of Shipwreck"s descent (voluntary or otherwise) from his solitary perch.
How does he do it, is a question far more commonly asked than why, for the answers are relatively straightforward. Shipwreck makes no secret of his use of a well-cushioned seat tightly strapped to the flagpole ball (the seat is examined beforehand by local authorities, its photograph published in the newspaper); he has trained himself, as he says, to sleep with his thumbs anch.o.r.ed into holes bored into the seat and his ankles firmly clasped about the pole. During his vigil in the air he eats only fluids (broth, milk, fruit juice, and "gallons of black coffee, to keep awake") hoisted aloft by a pully; his bodily wastes are lowered by way of the same pully, in a discreet tin bucket. (Shipwreck, being a gentleman for all his vanity and clownishness, takes care to relieve himself only at night or when he is reasonably certain that no one is watching.) When it rains and storms, even when lightning flashes, why then poor Shipwreck must endure it: for such is the price of his profession, and his coast-to-coast fame. On mild days (like today) he sits bareheaded, softly playing his harmonica (is the tune "Peg o" My Heart"?-the breeze blows much of it away into the sky), his legs jauntily crossed. Seen through a pair of binoculars (which Millicent has brought along, as much for her own use as her son"s) he appears in high spirits, quite darkly tanned. As he plays the harmonica his eyebrows wriggle and his eyelids droop with a sort of languid pleasure, comically inappropriate to his perch in the sky. Peering through the binoculars" lenses Millicent realizes she is half awaiting the impossible: that the "luckiest fool alive" will suddenly chance to see her.
Millicent offers to pay 50 so that she and little Maynard might climb to the roof of the Rialto, in a long straggling line of sight-seers, for a closer look at Shipwreck Kelly; but, to her surprise and annoyance, the child refuses to go. "What if the man falls, Momma," Maynard says, in the hurt whining tone Millicent particularly dislikes, "-what if he falls and hurts himself, I don"t want to see!"
Millicent says, "He isn"t going to fall, don"t be silly."
"I don"t want to see!" the boy whimpers.
"And even if he fell," Millicent continues, angry, inspired, "he wouldn"t hurt himself, like you or me. Or Daddy."
But little Maynard is clearly frightened and now wants only to be taken home, though, for many days, he begged Millicent to be taken downtown: all his friends had seen the flagpole sitter, only he was left out. Warren had no interest, naturally, in journeying downtown on so supremely childish an outing (he has to conserve his strength, in any case); and six-year-old Betsey"s nerves are such, her mother would never consider bringing her along. ("She"s too much like myself," Millicent thinks uneasily. ""Myself,"-at that frightening age.") So the little excursion on a mid-May afternoon comes to an abrupt end. Millicent is rather bored, herself. Around her on the sidewalk, necks craned, eyes shielded from the sun, a number of men and women stand peering at Shipwreck Kelly so prodigiously high above them, waving frantically, shaking little flags and banners, calling out loud cheery greetings ("How"s it goin", Shipwreck!" "How"s the weather up there!" "You ain"t goin to fall, are you!"), and laughing with an edgy, pointless gaiety, for after all Shipwreck might slip to his death virtually at any moment . . . he might, the wind being right, fall at their very feet.
Millicent leads the trembling little boy away without a backward glance. Flagpole sitting is after all a lowlife activity, to put it mildly; as Warren warned, she"d likely run into white trash, mainly, if she took their boy to see it.
Still, the daring!-the foolish bravado!
So mad a display of self-esteem!
So reckless a Game, played out in the very sky!
AND WILL I come to him, humble myself before him? I will not, I dare not, I am a wife and a mother . . . a white woman.
That night her sleep is agitated; she dreams not once, but repeatedly, shamelessly, of her lost lover; waking with the decision that, yes, she will arrange to travel to New York, and soon; she will, at last, after these many years, arrange to meet with "Lisha whom she still loves. ("For there is only one first love. As, they say, there is but one first death.") This decision made, Millicent feels enormous relief. As, they say, the decision to die can release long-withheld sensations of joy.
Beautiful Millicent Stirling breaks hearts, but can it be her fault?-she doesn"t force men and women, even an occasional mooncalf college boy, to adore her, or even to take her seriously. As there is no Game there must be numberless games, of varying degrees of intensity, for golf and tennis and mahjong and bridge and dancing and amateur theatrics and light opera cannot absorb all of Mrs. Warren Stirling"s nervous energy . . . any more than being a wife to an ailing aging husband, and a mother to two beautiful children, and the mistress of a splendid house overlooking the Richmond Country Club golf course can absorb the ferocity of her concentration.
By now Millicent Stirling has acquired detractors amid the "youngish older" country club set to which she and Warren belong, disillusioned admirers primarily, and of course those (all women) who are jealous of her conquests: yet detractors as well as friends commonly report themselves dazzled by her . . . even perplexed by her . . . for how has she time, let alone the physical strength, to do all the things she does, and to do them, for the most part, so well? Acting, and singing, and even a bit of spirited dancing in such productions of the Richmond Players as A Trip to Chinatown, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Sunshine Girl, Watch Your Step, The Mikado; chairwoman of committees of the Women"s Auxilary of Grace Episcopal Church, the Friends of the Richmond City Orchestra; the local branch of the Virginia Historical Society; one of the most popular hostesses in the city; and a highly compet.i.tive, if somewhat temperamental and uneven, player of bridge and mahjong. Depending upon her mood Millicent Stirling is even rather good at golf, for a woman who seems to have come late to the game.
And how striking a vision on the club"s tennis courts, in her stylish white costume with the short pleated skirt, her hair tied back by a vivid red scarf-though the ferocity with which she plays, the way she slams the ball out of bounds or into the net or directly at a startled opponent has cost her friends.
"Darling, it"s only a game," Warren says, concerned that she becomes so emotional so easily. "Why be upset?" And Millicent says calmly, with her sweetest smile, "Because it is only a game, and not worth the effort I give it."
THIRTY-TWO YEARS OLD . . . thirty-five . . . at last an unimagined thirty-eight. And I, Father"s fairy-daughter. Destined for what prince? Millie must concede with a shrug that she"s no longer the youngest, prettiest and most fashionable woman in any gathering; she"s the mother of two growing children; the wife of a good, decent, distinctly middle-aged (and aging) man whom she loves . . . or in any case respects. "Warren is so much better than I deserve," she thinks, almost bitterly. "To give him up would be a mistake. And yet . . . "
Never once has Millicent Stirling succ.u.mbed to one of her romantic friendships or allowed herself to be persuaded by a pa.s.sionate admirer that they should consummate their love, let alone elope together. In this giddy Jazz Age in which it suddenly seems everyone is getting divorced (from "Peaches" and Daddy Browning of the tabloids to millionaire Rockefellers and McCormicks), Millicent Stirling is terrified of the very thought of divorce . . . though it"s an open secret in the social circle to which she and Warren belong that she"s bored with him. (Since Betsey"s birth six years ago the Stirlings have slept in separate bedrooms and Millicent quite enjoys her independence as a virginal wife. Certainly, Mrs. Stirling isn"t the only virginal wife in Richmond.) Her challenge is simply to keep Warren believing that she loves him as he loves her . . . she adores him as he adores her . . . no matter that by degrees their marriage has become increasingly formal. Seeing him sometimes gazing at me with that look of boyish yearning seeing in me another person a young girl perhaps, a stranger. And Millicent envies her husband for to love is so much more joyous than to be loved.
Thinking then, indifferently, "But what does it matter? I"m sure love is only a species of game, in any case."
(But has Elisha ever married? Millie thinks not. She subscribes to New York papers where she reads greedily of Prince Elihu and never once has his name been linked with that of any woman.)
Thirty-eight years old. Yet in her innermost heart no more than seventeen.
When first he"d dared touch her not as a brother but as a lover.
Not this anxious woman with the skin so thin, dry, bleached of healthy color; white creases by her mouth; hollows beneath her eyes; a woman who must labor now at beauty where once she scarcely played and who has become cautious, this past year, of which of the household mirrors she looks into.
Would he recognize me now? Love me . . . now?
Of course. He has promised!
He would die for me he said.
The Game! What pleasure in it, if there"s no one with whom to share the smallest victory?
Millicent Stirling has become an artist of the lie-not-precisely-a-lie. You might call it "inventing"-"romancing." With wide-eyed innocence she concocts misunderstandings among her friends and admirers, her Stirling relatives, the members of her Episcopal congregation (in which Warren is a much-respected deacon) and even her household . . . her staff of devoted Negro servants. Discreetly not blaming Tabitha for something that Roslene has done; expressing hurt that Rodwell has failed to complete a task as he"d seemed to promise, or had it been Jebb who"d promised; or had they all promised their elegant Mrs. Stirling and had they all disappointed her? It stirs her icy heart to hear a Negro woman sob for a Negro woman knows how to sob; to hear a Negro man curse, imagining no white folks near, for a Negro man knows how to curse. On a whim, she "lets go" one of the girls; on a whim, she hires her back the following Monday. She"s sharp-eyed noting which of the women is gaining weight in the hips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s . . . which of the men is swaggering, the s.e.xual glisten in his face and his body so alive she feels faint that she might accidentally brush against him . . . how easy that would be! And irrevocable.
Yet knowing, to the black servants she"s merely the white lady. She"s Mr. Stirling"s wife. Even if she fires them and breaks their hearts their hearts will quickly mend, they will be hired elsewhere by another white lady. Sometimes she imagines she"s the only white person in Richmond to know a secret: that the many Negroes in their midst are not in fact "Negro" but . . . what?
FATHER SAYS OUR skins are neither white nor black.
As "white" and "black" are ignorantly understood.
Father says we stand outside the "white" race . . . and the "black." For all men are our enemies.
Yet it"s Elisha"s dark skin she loves, she cannot help loving, for Elisha"s skin is Elisha; as his brown eyes are him, his lanky restless body, his long slender fingers and toes. She"d kissed the inside of his hands: so pale! pale as her own skin! They"d laughed at such markings. For in young love, there"s much laughter.
In these fever dreams of her thirty-ninth year Millie is herself yet subtly altered. Naked, and sprawled in a stranger"s bed. In a s.e.xual delirium as her lover comes to her, hot-dark-skinned, more forceful and blunt than he"d been in Muirkirk. There, he"d been a shy, trembling, reckless lover; here, he"s impatient. "Lisha? she whispers, "Lisha? she begs but the mouth is hard and greedy against hers, sucking her breath away. The act of love is swift, impersonal. Her arms close desperately about him, her face is buried against his neck, for this time she must not lose him, she must not surrender him; waking in shuddering, voluptuous waves of sensation, sobbing, frightened. For long minutes she lies exhausted unable to grasp where she is-what room is this, so prettily decorated? smelling of fresh-cut flowers, and her own sweet perfume?
"Why do you hurt me, "Lisha? When you know that I have never stopped loving you. And if you are "black"-and if I am "white"-what is that to us? What is Father"s curse to us?"
Since the Philadelphia days as St. Goar"s beautiful, mysterious daughter, Millie has been aware of the career of Prince Elihu, the radical Negro revolutionary of whom it was predicted he wouldn"t live for more than a year-how many years ago. Her father refused to discuss Prince Elihu with her, as he"d refused to discuss poor Thurston, but Millie hadn"t needed Abraham Licht to confirm what was clear to her through studying newspaper and magazine photographs minutely. "There couldn"t be two young men like "Lisha. So like "Lisha. Impossible!"
And what of this teaching of his, that the entire white race is d.a.m.ned and only the colored races of the world will be redeemed?
Millie believes it an artful variation of Father"s grand scheme: the Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoleon Bonaparte. Here, the scheme is the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union, boasting more than one hundred thousand members, whose plan it is to emigrate back to Africa by the year 1935. Elisha can"t be serious, it must be a scheme. A brilliant game, though dangerous.
Yet it seems that many people, white as well as Negro, do take Prince Elihu seriously, whether as a savior or a madman; or a traitor to his country. Millie had read with astonishment of how Prince Elihu voluntarily returned from Central America to surrender to federal authorities in San Francisco, to answer to absurd charges of "wartime sedition" and to receive a harsh sentence of twelve years in prison with no possibility, as Attorney General Palmer insisted, of parole. (Though in fact President Harding pardoned Elihu anyway-to the consternation of Millie"s Stirling in-laws who are, like most Richmond whites, genteel Christian racists.) How could this be? Millie wondered. Had "Lisha failed to heed Father"s admonition not to be seduced by The Game?
Millie has long worried that something may have happened to "Lisha in the intervening years. A blow to the head, severe illnesses . . . (She"d read, greatly upset, of his three-month tour of Africa during which time he"d been dangerously ill.) For it"s impossible to comprehend how the "Lisha she knew so intimately, closer than any brother, could believe such cruel nonsense-that Caucasians are fallen, diseased and doomed; but a degenerate subspecies of the original h.o.m.o sapiens who were Negro. Quite apart from the doubtful science of this belief, which Millie has seen refuted in such journals as Atlantic Monthly, it"s a fact, isn"t it, that Millie, whom "Lisha had vowed to love forever, is white? "How can he then believe that "whites" are inferior to "blacks"? In love, we were equal. He knows that."
Going squirrelly is one of the colorful catchphrases of this colorful era, prevalent in popular songs, comic strips and jokes. Millie laughs, to think that going squirrelly may be la mode, and Prince Elihu is riding the crest of the mode. The more absurd the lie, the more easily it might be believed.
"But I would be more desirable to him," she tells herself, "than any Negro woman, as I am white."
Yet: would Millie leave her children behind? Yes she would leave them if "Lisha insists. Or-might she bring them along? "If we eloped to Europe, for instance. He is said to be a wealthy man, and I have saved money of my own. The children could come . . . if they wished. For a while." She paces through the upstairs of the gracious old house plotting, rehearsing. What she will say to Warren. What she will say to "Lisha. What she will say to her children.
Yes she will go to New York. But no-"Ridiculous! I would not drive across Richmond to throw myself at any man"s feet."
Then one morning in early summer idly skimming the Richmond Sunday paper, the decision is made for her as if she"d rolled dice: on page 2 there is an article headlined HARLEM LEADER ELIHU TO SPEAK AT RALLY, and on page 19 there is an article headlined MIAMI EVANGELIST PLEDGES MILLION-DOLLAR MINISTRY. Millie reads these seemingly unrelated articles in tandem, with mounting excitement. The first reports that Prince Elihu will preside over the First Annual Universal Negro Confraternity Rally in Madison Square Garden, Manhattan, on 19 June 1929; over one hundred thousand partic.i.p.ants are expected. The second reports that Reverend Thurmond Blichtman of the New Church of the Nazarene, Miami, Florida, has received more than $1 million in donations as a result of an intensive tour through Florida earlier in the year, and that he"d had a vision from G.o.d of exactly the church he would cause to be built on a "sacred piece of property" on Biscayne Boulevard overlooking the bay. The focus of the slightly scandalous article is Reverend Blichtman"s newly emergent fame, or notoriety, in Florida; evidently the man is a mesmerizing preacher who recites the Gospels in an impa.s.sioned voice that provokes men and women to break down in tears and rush forward to be "saved." Rival preachers and ministers complain bitterly that this "Northern carpet-bagger" has been stealing their congregations from them-"That man knows no shame," a Baptist leader has charged. A prominent Methodist minister has accused Blichtman of "satanic powers of seduction." Blichtman refuses to reply to his critics except to say he prays for them; in the meantime he"s ama.s.sed an undisclosed amount of money from donations for the construction of a New Church of the Nazarene in Miami. Millie is initially drawn to the article by the accompanying photograph of a strongly built man of middle age, fair-haired, handsome, with something damaged about his face. He"s kneeling on the ground, hands clasped at midchest in prayer. Thurston! Millie thinks.
Peering through the magnifying gla.s.s Warren uses for close reading, she studies the grainy photo, breathless with excitement. Reverend Thurmond Blichtman. New Church of the Nazarene. My lost brother. Can it be?
Something slips off the edge of the wrought-iron table (they"re break-fasting on the terrace, this warm May morning) and shatters. Tabitha comes forward quickly to remedy the harm. "Millie darling, why are you so-nervous?" Warren asks in his kindly, exasperating way; and Millie, thrusting the newspaper from her, yawns and stretches and declares she isn"t nervous at all-"Only restless! Richmond is so finite."
IT"S REVEREND THURMOND Blichtman who has made up Millie"s mind for her. Like her eldest brother, she will bravely seek her destiny.
Speaking to Warren of her longing to see her brother Darian and her sister Esther in upstate New York in such a wistful way that Warren will imagine it"s he who has thought of a train trip north for Millie-"To revive your spirits." Millie will travel to Schenectady to visit Darian, and travel on to the west to visit Esther in Port Oriskany where her sister has become involved in what Richmond citizens would decry as an "immoral" movement . . . nurses, welfare workers, volunteers, nearly all female, crusading for a newly founded organization, the American Birth Control League. (Since becoming a well-to-do Richmond matron, Millie finds this t.i.tle so coa.r.s.e, so crude, she"d be embarra.s.sed to utter it aloud in mixed company. Birth control! "Though it"s a very good thing of course, for the lower cla.s.ses. And yet-think of the innocent children who would never have been born!") At the Richmond station, Millie kisses her adoring husband, and Betsey and Maynard, good-bye. She"ll be gone, she promises, only two weeks. "Already I miss you, darlings," Millie hears herself say, a lilting soprano voice, her eyes shining with happiness and audacity and something like terror; as if, stepping up into the train, gaily waving at her family only a few yards away, she has already stepped into a void, and will never return.
IMAGINING AS THE train speeds relentlessly north he might be, he must be sensing my approach. My arrival. My return to his life.
In Manhattan, Millicent Stirling loses no time checking into the Waldorf-Astoria, which is the only hotel she knows, the hotel in which she and Warren have stayed previously; next evening, she takes a taxi to Madison Square Garden for the rally, or rather to the vicinity of the Garden, for there"s so much traffic in the streets, so many vehicles and pedestrians, and mounted policemen shouting into the crowd, the driver can"t bring her within two blocks-"This is as far as I go, ma"am." Millie smiles to see the man frowning and shaking his head in the rearview mirror. He wonders who I am, a white woman; wonders why I have a special invitation to such an event.
This rally of 19 June 1929 will be, as newspapers promise, a "historic" event. Never have so many Negroes gathered together for such a purpose, in the very heart of a white metropolis; only Prince Elihu, leader of the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union, could draw such a crowd. Millie has costumed herself for the occasion, quite cleverly she thinks: to disguise, as best she can, the color of her skin, she"s wearing a stylish tunic dress of dove-gray silk with long sleeves, and a high lace collar; her stockings are of a matching hue, though sheer silk; she wears white eyelet gloves and a flat-crowned hat of Spanish style, made for her by the leading Richmond milliner, in glazed black straw with a black dotted swiss veil-"Both ladylike, Mrs. Stirling, and very "s.e.xy,"" as the milliner has said. Now Mrs. Stirling, on foot, as rarely she"s on foot in such a place, wide city streets, avenues, an unfamiliar and inhospitable atmosphere, is breathless with excitement, like a young girl embarked upon an adventure unknown to her elders; finds herself carried along by the throng of noisy people, black faces on every side, pushing into the interior of Madison Square Garden by several doors. The marquee boasts FIRST ANNUAL NEGRO CONFRATERNITY RALLY. Everywhere are six-foot posters of PRINCE ELIHU, a fierce, handsome youngish Negro in a white caftan, wearing a helmet with a white ostrich plume, an amazing costume, a quite effective costume Millie thinks, like Prince Elihu"s fine, fierce, intelligent eyes, his clenched jaws, that expression both n.o.ble and truculent-"It is. "Lisha." Millie would know her lover anywhere, as he would know her, even in disguise.
As Millie stumblingly ascends a flight of steps, jostled by the hurrying crowd, she hears someone shout, "Ma"am? Ma"am!"-and turns guiltily to see, about ten feet away on the sidewalk, a helmeted policeman, white, eyes hidden by a tinted visor; but Millie pretends she hasn"t heard, and escapes inside.
Inside, the air is far denser and warmer than in the street; for there are too many people; too many; the smells are beginning to define themselves to Millie"s sensitive nostrils; where she"d halfway imagined a kind of path cleared for her, as Mrs. Warren Stirling of Richmond, Virginia, a white woman known to Prince Elihu, even while knowing such an expectation was nonsense, she"s confused that she"s so . . . anonymous, even in her white skin.
In the foyer, long lines press forward to the ticket counters, for there are many who haven"t purchased tickets beforehand, like Millie; the interior of the great, high-ceilinged building is dizzy with the ring and echo of thousands of voices; an air of intense excitement, expectation; here and there are pickets, enemies of the Negro Union?-pamphlets thrust rudely into Millie"s gloved hand, and Millie is too polite to refuse-All-Race League Protests Negro Zionism-Manifesto of the NAACP-Black Socialists Unite!-Why Did Jesus Die for You?-"Prince Elihu" Traitor to Race & Nation. There are raised voices, arguments; sudden scufflings and struggles; moments of eerie stillness when everyone in Millie"s vicinity freezes, to see what is happening; giant Negroes in uniforms sweated through beneath the arms, bearing the insignia of the Negro Union, are engaged in hauling protestors away, walking, or dragging, them swiftly and deftly against the incoming stream of people which parts to let them through.
Millie"s beautiful, costly Spanish hat has been knocked askew on her head, and the veil, heated and dampened by her quickened breath, clings to her face. Millie adjusts the hat, blindly using her three-inch ebony hatpins; she imagines eyes glancing upon her, more curious than startled or disapproving. A white woman, a white lady-here? Millie has begun to think that she"s in foreign territory though still in the United States; perhaps she should have planned her strategy differently . . . a telegram to "Lisha, notifying him of her arrival, instead of this planned surprise.
Tickets are $1. Millie pays with shaking hands, her eyelet gloves already mysteriously soiled.
Inside the vast hall, however, the atmosphere is less frantic. Earnest young Negro boys and girls, in navy blue suits and white shirts, are ushers; they pa.s.s out pamphlets t.i.tled The World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union: Salvation Here & Now, with the glorified likeness of Prince Elihu on the cover. From somewhere out of sight a bra.s.s band is playing loudly, quick-stepping military music. (Millie recognizes one of "Lisha"s old favorites-"Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!") Millie is escorted to a seat many rows from the stage, and a hard, uncushioned seat it is, so very different from seats in the Richmond Opera House; she"s imagined she came early to the rally, and might sit in the first row center so that, once she removed her veil, Elisha might notice her; but clearly she hasn"t come early enough.
""Lisha has become a master of The Game," Millie thinks, glancing uneasily about.
And what a variety of men, women, children: some of them dressed as if for Sunday, in colorful pastels, with snap-brim straw hats, patent leather shoes, vests, ties, enormous flowered hats, elbow-length gloves; others, the majority, in more ordinary workaday clothes, though clean and well groomed, like the reliable, devoted Negroes of the Stirlings" household; others visibly poor, with mismatched clothing. Here and there Millie sees, not wishing to see, an obviously deranged person; one of them, an obese woman, sits only a few seats away, angrily fanning herself with a pamphlet and singing what sounds like "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood"-a hymn Millie has heard Tabitha sing in the kitchen. And here and there in the crowd Millie sees a Caucasian face-except, when she looks more closely, she decides that the individual is only just very light-skinned, in some cases creamy-skinned, with fair brown hair, or red hair; Caucasian features mixed with Negroid features; a ghost-blend of races that seems to her beautiful, haunting.
Had we had a child together, "Lisha and I, he would have looked like that.
And yet-is it too late? Millie is not yet forty, and women have been known to have babies well into their forties. And how youthful, how young she is, scarcely changed from the girl she"d been twenty years before when she and "Lisha were first lovers.
THE RALLY IS scheduled to begin at 8 P.M. but the military band plays until 8:20 P.M. when the first of the speakers, the minister of state of the Negro Union, appears to welcome the throng. Following him is an impa.s.sioned minister of the treasury, and a Negro with the t.i.tle of vice-regent; at last, as antic.i.p.ation in the Garden has grown, at 9:10 P.M. there appears Prince Elihu himself-striding into the spotlights, magnificent in his white costume, gold braid, helmet and ostrich plume, his jewel-studded saber at his side. One hand is raised in triumph and the other extended to the cheering, screaming mult.i.tudes in a gesture Millie seems to recognize, the Buddha"s promise of peace? love? sympathy?-the palm of the hand open and the fingers outstretched. Yet how electric Prince Elihu is, charged with energy as a wild animal.
Millie stares greedily. She has removed her hat, no matter if her white skin draws the attention of people around her, in fact no one notices her, for all are captivated by Prince Elihu as Millie is, captivated and dry-mouthed wondering Is this my "Lisha . . . this fierce stalking angry Negro?
Millie sits too stunned to move as on all sides people leap to their feet in a frenzy of welcome; awkwardly she tries to stand, but sinks back into her seat staring hungrily, desperately at the prancing figure on the stage. Prince Elihu? "Lisha? His skin is much darker than she recalls; the set of his jaws harder, and the eyebrows more severe; his hair lifts in a fine dark woolly aureole; he"s taller, more muscular, though lean-bodied like a snake, with a quivering, flamelike energy. So tense! so angry!-why is this man, beloved by so many thousands, angry?-why doesn"t he smile to welcome them, instead of standing with booted feet apart, his clenched fist raised above his head and his handsome face uplifted, waiting with barely restrained impatience for the rapturous ovation to subside?
Yes, it is Elisha; yet, simultaneously, this rabid furious Negro who has swallowed "Lisha up. In his blinding white costume it"s almost hurtful to look at him. Yet Millie, too, gamely claps; raises her gloved hands to clap, that Prince Elihu might see her; until her hands smart with pain, and she"s obliged to give up.