Full Circle (17 page)

“Going to church, girls?” the housemother had smilingly asked and both had answered yes. They both knew that she had meant different ones, but Tana went to the black church with Sharon where they met Dr. Clarke and a small crowd of ninety-five blacks and eleven whites. They were told to stay calm, to smile if it seemed appropriate, but not if it would provoke anyone, and to remain silent no matter what anyone said to them. They were to hold hands and to enter the church solemnly and respectfully, in groups of five. Sharon and Tana were to remain together. There was another white girl with them, and two black men, both burly and tall, and they told Tana on the way to the other church that they worked at the mill. They were hardly older than the girls, but both were married, one had three children, the other four, and they didn't seem to question her being there. They called her Sister, and just before they walked into the church, the five companions exchanged a nervous smile. And then quietly, they stepped inside. It was a small Presbyterian church on the residential side of town, heavily attended every Sunday, with a Sunday school that was well filled, and as the black faces began to file in, every man and woman in the church turned around. There was a look of complete shock on everyone, the organ stopped, one woman fainted, another began to scream, and within a matter of moments all hell broke loose, the minister began to shout, someone ran to call the police, and only Dr. Clarke's volunteers remained calm, standing solidly along the back wall, causing no trouble at all, as people turned and jeered, hurled insults at them, even though they were in church. Within moments the town's tiny squad of riot police had arrived. They had been recently trained for the sit-ins that had begun to occur and were mostly composed of highway patrolmen, but they began to push and shove and drag the uncooperating black bodies out, as they made themselves limp, and allowed themselves to be dragged away, and suddenly Tana realized what was happening to them. She was next, this was not happening to a remote “them,” it was happening to “us” and to
her,
and suddenly two enormous policemen hovered over her, and grabbed her roughly by both arms waving their sticks in her face.

“You should be ashamed of yourself … white trash!” Her eyes were huge as they dragged her off, and with every ounce of her being she wanted to hit and bite and kick, thinking of Richard Blake and how he had been killed, but she didn't dare. They threw her into the back of the truck, with much of Dr. Clarke's group, and half an hour later, she was being fingerprinted and she was in jail. She sat in a jail cell for the rest of the day, with fifteen other girls, all of them black, and she could see Sharon across the way. They had each been allowed one phone call, the whites at least, the blacks were still being “processed” according to the cops, and Sharon shouted to her to call her Mom, which Tana did. She arrived in Yolan at midnight, and released Sharon and Tana simultaneously, congratulating them both. Tana could see that she looked harder and more drawn than she had six months before, but she seemed pleased with what the girls had done. She wasn't even upset when Sharon told her the news the next day. She was being kicked out of Green Hill, effective immediately. Her things had already been packed by the housemother of Jasmine House, and she was being asked to leave the campus before noon. Tana was in shock when she heard, and she knew what she could expect for herself when she was ushered into the Dean's office. It was just as she had thought. She was being asked to leave. There would be no scholarship the following year. In fact, there would be no following year at all. Like Sharon, it was all over for her. The only difference was that if she was willing to stay on in a probationary state, she could stay on until the end of the year, which would at least mean that she could take her final exams and apply to another school. But where? She sat in her room in shock after Sharon had left. Sharon was going back to Washington with her mother, and there had already been talk of her spending a little time as a volunteer for Dr. King.

“I know Daddy'll be mad because he wants me to go to school, but you know, truthfully, Tan, I've had it up to here with school.” She looked sorrowfully at Tana then. “But what about you?” She was devastated about the price of the sit-in for her friend. She had never gotten arrested before, although they had been warned before the church sit-in that it was a real possibility, yet she really hadn't expected it.

“Maybe it's all for the best.” Tana tried to cheer her up, and she was still in shock when Sharon left, and she sat alone in her room until dark. Her probation meant that she had to eat alone at Jasmine House, keep to her room at night, and avoid all social activities including the freshman prom. She was a pariah of sorts, but she also knew that school would be over in three weeks.

The worst of it was that, as they had warned Tana they would, they informed Jean. She called, hysterical, that night, sobbing into the phone. “Why didn't you tell me that little bitch was black?”

“What difference does it make what color she is? She's my best friend.” But tears filled Tana's eyes and the emotions of the past few days overwhelmed her suddenly. Everyone at school was looking at her as though she had killed someone, and Sharon was gone. She didn't know where she would go to school next year, and her mother was screaming at her … it was like being five years old and being told you had been very, very bad, but not being sure why.

“You call that a friend?” Her mother laughed through her tears. “She cost you your scholarship, and got you kicked out of school. And do you think you'll get accepted anywhere else after this?”

“Of course you will, you jerk.” Harry reassured her through her sobs the next day. “Shit, there are zillions of radicals at BU.”

“I'm not a radical.” She cried some more.

“I know that. All you did was go to a sit-in, for chrissake. It's your own goddamn fault for going to that prissy redneck school. I mean shit, you aren't even in the civilized world down there. Why the hell don't you come up here to school?”

“You really think I might be able to get in?”

“With your grades, are you kidding? They'd let you run the place.”

“You're just trying to make me feel better.” She started to cry again.

“You're giving me a mammoth pain in the ass, Tan. Why don't you just let me get you an application and see what happens?” And what happened was that she got in, much to her own astonishment and her mother's chagrin.

“Boston University? What kind of school is that?”

“One of the best in the country, and they even gave me a scholarship.” Harry had taken the application over himself, put in a good word for her, which seemed like a crazy thing to do and touched her to the core, and by July first, it was settled. She was going to Boston University in the fall.

She was still numb from the events of two months before, and her mother still wanted to wrestle about it with her.

“I think you should get a job for a while, Tan. You can't hang around in school for the rest of your life.”

Tana looked horrified. “How about for another three years, like until I get a degree?”

“And then what? What are you going to do then, Tana, that you couldn't do now?”

“Get a decent job.”

“You could go to work for Durning International right now. I spoke to Arthur last week.…”

Tana seemed to be screaming at her all the time now, but she never understood. “For chrissake, don't condemn me to that for the rest of my life.”

“Condemn you!
Condemn
you! How dare you say such a thing? You get arrested, kicked out of school, and you think you have a right to the world. You're lucky a man like Arthur Durning would even consider hiring you.”

“He's lucky I didn't bring charges against his son last year!” The words flew out of Tana's mouth before she could stop them and Jean Roberts stared at her.

“How dare you say a thing like that?”

Her voice was quiet and sad, “It's true, Mom.”

She turned her back to Tana, as though shielding herself from the look on Tana's face, not wanting to hear. “I don't want to hear you tell lies like that.” Tana walked quietly out of the room, and a few days later she was gone.

She went to stay with Harry at his father's place in Cape Cod, and they played tennis and sailed, swam, and visited his friends, and she never felt threatened by him at all. The relationship was entirely platonic as far as she was concerned and therefore comfortable for her. Harry's feelings were something else but he kept them carefully veiled. She wrote to Sharon several times, but the answers she got back were brief, scrambled, and obviously written in haste. She'd never been so busy, or so happy, in her life. Her mother had been right, and she had a wonderful job working as a volunteer for Dr. Martin Luther King. It was amazing how their lives had changed in one short year.

And when Tana started school at Boston University, she was astonished at how different it was from Green Hill, how open, how interesting, how avant garde. She liked being in class with boys as well. Interesting issues were constantly raised and she did well in every class she took.

And secretly Jean was proud of her, although her rapport with Tana was no longer as good as it had once been. She told herself it was a passing phase. She had other things on her mind anyway. By the end of Tana's first year at Boston University, Ann Durning was getting married again. There was going to be an enormous wedding at Christ Episcopal Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a reception, organized by Jean, at the house. At the office, her desk was littered with lists, photographs, caterer' lists and Ann called her at least fourteen times a day. It was almost as though her own daughter was getting married, and after fourteen years as Arthur Durning's mistress and right arm, she felt possessive about the children anyway. And she was especially pleased at how well Ann had chosen this time. He was a lovely man of thirty-two, also previously married, and he was a partner at Sherman and Sterling, the law firm in New York, and from everything that Jean Roberts had heard, he was a very promising attorney, and he had plenty of money of his own. Arthur was also pleased about the match, and he gave Jean a beautiful gold bracelet from Cartier to thank her for all the work she did to make Ann's wedding a success.

“You're really a wonderful woman, you know.” He sat in her living room, drinking a scotch, looking at her, wondering why he had never married her. Once in a while he felt like that, although most of the time now he was comfortable by himself. He was used to it.

“Thank you, Arthur.” She handed him a small plate of the hors d'oeuvres he liked best, Nova Scotia salmon on little thin slices of Norwegian pumpernickel, little balls of steak tartare on white toast, the macadamia nuts she always kept in the house, in case he came by, along with his favorite scotch, favorite cookies … soap … eau de cologne … everything he liked. It was easier to be always ready for him now, with Tana gone. In some ways, that had helped their relationship, and in others, it had not. She was freer now, more available, always ready for him to come by at the drop of a hat, but at the same time, she was much lonelier with Tana gone, more anxious for his company. It made her hungrier, and lonelier, and less understanding when two weeks slid by without his spending a night in her bed. She realized that she should be grateful to him that he came to her at all, and he made so many things in her life easier, but she wanted so much more of him, she always had, ever since they first met.

“Tana's coming to the wedding, isn't she?” He ate another mouthful of steak tartare, and she tried to look vague. She had called Tana about it only a few days before. She hadn't responded to the invitation Ann had sent, and Jean had chided her for it, telling her it wasn't polite, and her Boston University manners didn't apply here, which of course had done nothing to warm Tana's heart.

“I'll answer as soon as I get around to it, Mom. I have exams right now. It only came last week.”

“It only takes a minute to respond.”

Her tone annoyed Tana as it always did now, and she was curt when she replied. “Fine. Then tell her no.”

“I'll do nothing of the sort. You answer that invitation yourself. And I think you should go.”

“Well, that comes as no surprise. Another command performance from the Durning clan. When do we get to say no to them?” She still cringed every time she imagined Billy's face. “I think I'm busy anyway.”

“You could make the effort for my sake at least.”

“Tell them that you have no control over me. That I'm impossible, that I'm climbing Mount Everest. Tell them whatever the hell you want!”

“You're really not going, then?” Jean sounded shocked, as though that weren't possible.

“I hadn't thought about it till now, but now that you mention it, I guess I'm not.”

“You knew it all along.”

“Oh, for chrissake … look, I don't like Ann or Billy. Scratch that. I don't like Ann, and I hate Billy's guts. Arthur is your affair, if you'll pardon the pun. Why do you have to drag me into this? I'm grown up now, so are they, we've never been friends.”

“It's her wedding, and she wants you there.”

“Bullshit. She's probably inviting everyone she knows, and she's inviting me as a favor to you.”

“That's not true.” But they both knew it was. And Tana was getting stronger and stronger as time went on.

In some ways, it was Harry's influence over her. He had definite ideas about almost everything, and it brought something similar out in her in order to respond to him. He made her think about how she felt and what she thought about everything, and they were as close as they had ever been. And he'd been right about BU too. Moving to Boston had been good for her, much more so than going to Green Hill. And in an odd way, she had grown up more in the last year than ever before. She was almost twenty years old.

“Tana, I just can't understand why you behave this way.” It was back to the wedding again, and her mother was driving her nuts.

“Mom, can we talk about something else? How are
you?”

“I'm fine, but I'd like to think that you'll at least think about this.…”