applied. My sisters had stuck by their school in town and that had not been easy. It was an old high school with many sentimental graduates who wept at community meetings and devised through their tears a plan to save the school from the black neighborhood that had grown up around it and was closing in. To preserve its racial harmony, the school had been allowed to go private, to give entrance exams and charge tuition. I was on my own at Westfield. My sisters’ grades didn’t hang over me, the teachers didn’t show up at NAACP meetings. No one knew who I was, and what I was I set aside every morning at 7:45.
My new classmates were ready with batting averages, won-lost records, and the history of shutouts. The names of Queen Victoria’s nine children, nineteen grandchildren, and thirty-seven great-grandchildren did not fall into the category of anything anyone but me wanted to know. Westfield was like a stocked fish pond, brimming with opportunities. I had only to cast down my bucket where I stood. But I was like the tourist who doesn’t want to look as though it is his first trip in business class or his first attempt to buy aspirin in a foreign drugstore. I behaved as though I had been among the Westfielders all the while and was finally shedding the protective coloration that had kept me completely unseen.
I wanted to copy the manner of the coolest boy in my grade —his shiny brown penny loafers with slightly worn-down heels;
the way he spun the calculus ruler of the advanced mathematics student; the noncommittal way he let himself be detained for a moment by admirers, like the terribly rich who must always be on guard against that someone who affects social ease; the way his letter sweater tapped his hips as he made his graceful escape; and the way—never mind that my hair couldn’t “fall,” that my glasses had thickened—he swept his Beatle hair out of his eyes, moiré-gray agates that accepted the devotion of all and gave nothing back.
Grandfather mounted a new high horse—the advantages I was about to receive, which raced too near his perfunctory “blessings we are about to receive” over the congealed canned ham and pineapple. It upset him that I was not moved to compare what he conceived of as the elaborate equipment in the chemistry and language labs of Westfield to the inadequate “learning tools” I might have had, had I gone on in the schools that served the world according to Capitol Avenue.
The pleasure of my circumstance depended not only on my perverse wish not to comprehend Grandfather’s point, to show that I was not one of his underprivileged youth group members sweating under an obligation to be thankful, but also on superstition, on a Lot-like contract of deliverance. I couldn’t allow myself to look back, having presented myself to myself as one who had never been anywhere but where I was.
I lived entirely at my surface, passing without reflection from class to class, like someone out for a walk noting when the clouds either darkened or dissipated. The school facilities and high property taxes of which the township was so proud that its citizens voted in referendums against absorption into the city were, for me, so intent on approval, only decoration. My appreciation was like the relief of someone who has crashed a party but isn’t asked
to leave, in gratitude for which, and also from misplaced pride, he doesn’t touch a bite.
Scene 1. The English teacher who believes the harassment of having a large family has taught him all he needs to know about being understanding calls out the scores on the Dickens multiple-choice test. He holds back the new student’s test paper for an after-class conference. “I want you to be honest with me. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know when the material is too hard for you. Now be honest with me. Did you cheat?” The hands of the surprised Negro student—“I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could
My new classmates were ready with batting averages, won-lost records, and the history of shutouts. The names of Queen Victoria’s nine children, nineteen grandchildren, and thirty-seven great-grandchildren did not fall into the category of anything anyone but me wanted to know. Westfield was like a stocked fish pond, brimming with opportunities. I had only to cast down my bucket where I stood. But I was like the tourist who doesn’t want to look as though it is his first trip in business class or his first attempt to buy aspirin in a foreign drugstore. I behaved as though I had been among the Westfielders all the while and was finally shedding the protective coloration that had kept me completely unseen.
I wanted to copy the manner of the coolest boy in my grade —his shiny brown penny loafers with slightly worn-down heels;
the way he spun the calculus ruler of the advanced mathematics student; the noncommittal way he let himself be detained for a moment by admirers, like the terribly rich who must always be on guard against that someone who affects social ease; the way his letter sweater tapped his hips as he made his graceful escape; and the way—never mind that my hair couldn’t “fall,” that my glasses had thickened—he swept his Beatle hair out of his eyes, moiré-gray agates that accepted the devotion of all and gave nothing back.
Grandfather mounted a new high horse—the advantages I was about to receive, which raced too near his perfunctory “blessings we are about to receive” over the congealed canned ham and pineapple. It upset him that I was not moved to compare what he conceived of as the elaborate equipment in the chemistry and language labs of Westfield to the inadequate “learning tools” I might have had, had I gone on in the schools that served the world according to Capitol Avenue.
The pleasure of my circumstance depended not only on my perverse wish not to comprehend Grandfather’s point, to show that I was not one of his underprivileged youth group members sweating under an obligation to be thankful, but also on superstition, on a Lot-like contract of deliverance. I couldn’t allow myself to look back, having presented myself to myself as one who had never been anywhere but where I was.
I lived entirely at my surface, passing without reflection from class to class, like someone out for a walk noting when the clouds either darkened or dissipated. The school facilities and high property taxes of which the township was so proud that its citizens voted in referendums against absorption into the city were, for me, so intent on approval, only decoration. My appreciation was like the relief of someone who has crashed a party but isn’t asked
to leave, in gratitude for which, and also from misplaced pride, he doesn’t touch a bite.
Scene 1. The English teacher who believes the harassment of having a large family has taught him all he needs to know about being understanding calls out the scores on the Dickens multiple-choice test. He holds back the new student’s test paper for an after-class conference. “I want you to be honest with me. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know when the material is too hard for you. Now be honest with me. Did you cheat?” The hands of the surprised Negro student—“I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could
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