The Third Generation (2 page)

Although she tried to love her sons equally, deep within her she loved Charles best.

As she stood behind the front screen door, watching the children play, she recalled what a seven-day sensation she had caused by engaging a white doctor at their births. It had incurred the animosity of all the Negro physicians and had provoked great consternation among the faculty. Her face hardened with a vague bitterness and she derived a fleeting sense of pleasure from the memory of her husband’s tremendous trepidation at the time. He was afraid of his own shadow, she thought.

The children were crouching down behind the rosebushes, peering through the picket fence. A dog trotted by on the cinder path outside.

“Bang! Bang!” screamed the children.

The dog jumped as if he had been stung and fled down the gulley. The children ran in wild pursuit as far as the yard permitted. She wondered absently what the dog represented.

Her gaze lingered on Charles. She’d wanted a girl when he was born, she recalled, thinking, he looked enough like a girl to have been one. It reminded her of what the doctor had laughingly remarked at his birth, “He is almost a girl, at that.”

Unconsciously she sniffed for the scent of flowers, a habit left over from her girlhood when she had tried to tell what flowers were blooming when she passed a garden at night. She had loved flowers and had addressed them as if they were human, scolding those that grew poorly and praising those that did well. There was a wonderful, earthy scent in the air, she noticed. It reminded her of the Easter Rambles held in her home town when she was a little girl. For a moment she reveled in the memory of the good times she had had during her girlhood. “Such good times,” she murmured, the words escaping from her lips. She smiled strangely; then the present invaded her consciousness again and the smile saddened and slowly vanished.

Sighing, she smoothed her hair. She wore it parted on the left and brushed loosely across her forehead, gathered in a chignon behind. In repose her features had a slightly drawn and bitter cast and her skin had the slightly pallid hue of one who has been ill for a long time. There were dark circles about her deep-set, gray-green eyes, and the lids drooped, giving her a look of weariness.

She was a tiny woman, but she carried herself with such implacable determination that her size was seldom noticed. She had always dressed attractively, even at home. The dark woolen dress she now wore had been ordered from Chicago but she had made the gingham apron. Her hands, clasped loosely across her waist, were slightly rough, and the knuckles were reddened and swollen from washing dishes. Her engagement ring with a solitary pearl and the plain gold wedding band which Professor Taylor had made in his shop from virgin metal gleamed brightly in the sunlight.

Absently, she watched the people pass along the street. A farmer drove by, his dilapidated wagon, pulled by a brace of mules, piled high with cordwood. She looked down across the front yards and picket fences of her neighbors. It was a pleasant street, flanked by scattered elms, and the weeds had not yet had time to grow high in the gutters. Later, all the trees and flowers would be in bloom, she thought, and when the hedge about the college bloomed it was a lovely sight. Farther down the street was the state prison, bordered by an exquisitely beautiful flower garden tended by the prisoners, and sometimes the forbidding Black Maria passed before their door.

Mrs. Barnes drove by in her new carriage, the perfectly matched team of dappled gray mares kicking up dust from the graveled roadway. It was a pretty sight. Mrs. Taylor had heard they had a new carriage, but this was the first time she saw it. Dr. Barnes must be doing very well indeed, she reflected. In addition to being head of the college hospital he had a very good private practice. They lived in a large colonial-style house in the next block.

Mrs. Taylor was not on intimate terms with the Barneses—Dr. Barnes had never forgiven her for engaging a white doctor at the birth of her sons—and she prided herself on never having “set foot” in their house. But she had heard of their expensive furnishings and she had seen their blooded horses and luxurious carriages passing along the street. And she was no different from the other women of the community who envied them. But, unlike the others, she did not consider them her superior. Despite all their possessions and their great prestige, she felt herself to be their superior. And this was due entirely to the fact that Dr. Barnes was a dark-complexioned man and his wife only a “high yellow” with kinky hair. Mrs. Barnes could have no more than three-fourths white blood at best, and that was highly improbable, Mrs. Taylor had decided. She herself was only one thirty-second part Negro. And in her veins flowed some of the most aristocratic white blood in all the South. Mrs. Taylor thought of racial strains in terms of blood, and of this blood as flowing in her veins.

Mrs. Taylor had not always been so preoccupied with racial strains. Nor had her sense of being a superior person evoked such bitter disparagement. At first it had been protective, a shield for her wounded pride and outraged sensitivity. Quite often it had been constructive, enabling her to set her sights higher than most Negroes would have dared. It extended the limitations of her ambitions. And it also defended her from despondency and defeat. Whenever she felt the urge to give up, she reminded herself of her parents’ magnificent accomplishment, of how they had come out of slavery and made a home for themselves, and after great hardship had prospered and educated all seven of their children. She had inherited their determination and stamina and their credo—to want something better, to become educated, to be somebody worthwhile. And in remembering what they had done, she always remembered how they looked.

Her father had been a tall, spare man with light brown hair and a long silky beard. His complexion was as fair as any white person’s. Her mother, though slightly darker, had the coarse black hair and high cheekbones of an Indian. Both would have been accepted as white in a northern state. But it had never occurred to them to leave the South.

They had three small children when they were freed. Their one asset with which to face a new, strange life had been their ability to read and write. Both had been “body slaves” and after the Civil War their master had tried to persuade them to remain on the plantation.

“You have never known want, and if you remain with me, you never will,” he had promised them.

Dr. Jessie Manning was descended from the English peerage, and had once served in the United States Senate. According to his own lights he had tried to be a kind and just master. Both Charles and Lin loved him. But they had refused to stay. Even though the very thought of freedom had terrified them, they had wanted to be free. Deep inside them had been some compelling urge to flee from the shadow of slavery, to rear their children in the sunlight, to provide them with something better, with education and opportunity. They had heard these ideas propounded by their master; they had listened to the reverence in his voice; they had believed.

For two years they lived in a floorless, one-room cabin with a lean-to on an acre of land they had cleared. Charles had learned brick masonry and did odd jobs in the neighborhood while Lin took in washing and worked as a wet nurse.

But the proximity of the old plantation had stifled their sense of freedom. They moved to a railroad town in Georgia and took the family name of Manning. For a decade Charles worked as a brick mason. Another son and three daughters were born to them there. Mrs. Taylor’s Christian name was Lillian, and she was second from the youngest.

Although she was then a little girl, not more than five, Lillian could remember the crisis that had arisen when her father went broke. He had been ill for a long time and one day he had said to Lin, “Hon, we got to sell the house.”

They had moved to Atlanta and he had worked for a time as a Pullman porter before finally having to quit. For three years he had been ill with tuberculosis, and for a year he had been confined to his bed. It had fallen Lillian’s lot to nurse him. All of the older children had worked desperately to make ends meet. Lillian never forgot the great piles of laundry her mother washed each day. But they had never given up.

When her father recovered, the family returned to the town in South Carolina where the parents had grown up as slaves. Once again they had cleared a plot of land and built another house. The parents were more determined than ever to bring their children up in the church, give them an education and a better start in life. They joined the Presbyterian Church; Charles became a Deacon and the Superintendent of the Sunday School, and Lin became active in missionary work. For years the church had been the center of their social life.

It had been a slow, hard struggle all the way. Despite his ill health, Charles had worked long hours as a brick mason and day laborer, while Lin did washing. But they had sent their children to college, the girls to the church seminary and the boys to a college in Atlanta.

All of the girls had been considered very talented; they played the piano and had “white folks’ manners.” All had fair complexions and reddish hair. The three eldest had taught at the seminary upon graduation. Tom, the eldest son, had become a successful building contractor. Both Charlie, his younger brother, and his father had worked for him.

During that time the family had gained in prestige and had become prominent throughout the town and state. Two of the girls had married doctors. Lillian’s oldest sister had married a minister who had later become a bishop. Both brothers had married schoolteachers.

Lillian had taken piano lessons from the age of six and had been considered the genius of the family. She had been given to daydreaming and was moody and temperamental. When her older brothers and sisters had grown up and began earning their living the family showed signs of prosperity. After the age of ten she had been raised in very pleasant circumstances. It had been during her early teens she had first conceived the romantic notions of her heredity.

She had seen only one of her grandparents, “Grandma Mary,” her father’s mother, who had lived on the old plantation until her death. Her parents never spoke of the others. She had been a curious girl. Once she had asked her mother, “Where does Grandpa live, ma?”

“Your grandpa was killed in the war,” Lin had replied.

“Both of them?”

Lin had stopped ironing and had sat in the rocker by the hearth. “Come here, chile, and I will tell you all ‘bout your grandpas. Your Grandpa Manning, your pa’s pa, was killed at Chickamauga when he threw himself in front of Ol’ Mars to save his life. He caught the bullet that was ‘tended for Ol’ Mars’ heart and fell dead at his feet. And my pa was shot trying to get through Gen’l Sherman’s lines to carry orders to the cap’n of the Georgia troops. They never did find his body.”

Lillian had known that this was fiction to satisfy her curiosity and had become more curious than ever. After that she had eavesdropped on her parents’ conversations. One of her favorite positions was in the dark by the open kitchen window when her parents thought her in bed. Here she had learned that her father was the son of Dr. Jessie Manning, and that her mother was the daughter of an Irish overseer and an Indian slave.

She had added to the story, enlarging and changing the parts she didn’t like. The resulting story was that her father was the son of Dr. Manning and a beautiful octoroon, the most beautiful woman in all the state, whose own father had been an English nobleman. Her mother was the daughter of a son of a United States President and an octoroon who was the daughter of a Confederate Army general.

At first it had been a childish game of fantasy. After having received several whippings for recounting it to her wide-eyed schoolmates she had kept it to herself, and in time had outgrown it. As a young woman she had felt a real sense of superiority which, in her home environment, had needed no support.

It was only after the disillusionment of her marriage and the first bitter conflicts about color with her husband and the dark-complexioned faculty wives that she revived it. She never gave the story absolute credence, but it became conceivable. She certainly had a great percentage of white blood, she told herself. And it was quite reasonable it should be the blood of the type of persons who had been friends of the aristocratic Dr. Manning.

She created the fiction of being only one thirty-second part Negro deliberately. It symbolized her contempt and disdain for all the Negroes she felt had tried to hurt her. It was her final rejection of all the people who would not recognize her innate superiority. Because regardless of how much they hated her, or tried to hurt and belittle her, none of them could possibly be her superior, and but a very, very few her equal, because she possessed the very maximum of white blood a Negro can possess and remain a Negro.

At the beginning it was a simple mechanism to bolster her morale. But after all the inroads of hurt, discouragement and despondency, it slowly attained the strength of fact. For a time it became the only fact she possessed. She thought of it as a legacy, and she wanted to pass this legacy on to her children. She wanted to impress on them that in their veins flowed the blood of aristocrats.

For a moment her attention was drawn back to the children. They were pulling at the rosebushes. But she checked the impulse to scold them. She should be thankful, she told herself, that they had not begun that awful shrieking and hammering and slaughtering of palefaces.

When she looked up the street again, Mrs. Barnes’ carriage had passed from sight. She felt strangely relieved. There were various other professional and business people who lived on the street, but none disturbed her as did the Barneses. Although most of them earned more money than the professors, the professors had the greater prestige.

Negroes put a great value on education, she meditated. They thought of it as both the source and result of all good things. And she, too, believed in its efficacy. That had been the reason she had married Professor Taylor.

She recalled how dazzled she’d first been by the dashing young professor from the state college who had courted her. How impressed she’d been by his education. All the fuss and bother; all the fine talk of his dreams and ambition. She’d been thrilled by the thought of the wonderful things they could accomplish together. They would complement each other like no other two people who had ever lived.