Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo by Mark Mathabane, Gail Mathabane Page A

houses. She had a view of the junkyard across the street, strewn with rubble and tangled bedsprings, and of rows of gutted and boarded-up buildings. Exposed electric wires hung from the ceiling.
    The doors and windows were flimsy and did not lock. The floors were caked with filth. There were gaping holes in the walls.
    The whole apartment reeked of stale tobacco smoke. The white emaciated live-in landlord down the hall, with whom she had to share a kitchen and bath, was a chain smoker. The house, which had been abandoned and boarded up for months, turned out to have been a favorite hangout for drug dealers. Graffiti was scrawled in the closet. When Gail asked why the glass shelves had been removed from the bathroom cabinet, the landlord told her the former tenants had used them to divvy up cocaine.
    “What has come over you?” I asked Gail as soon as I had recovered from my speechlessness. “How can you live in this horrible place? Don’t you have any self-respect? Even the homeless wouldn’t touch this dump.”
    “It’s the only place I could afford,” she said. “It’s only two hundred dollars a month.”
    “Why don’t you sleep on a subway grate?” I asked. “That would be free, and it would be a lot better than this.”
    She looked disappointed, then said, “I liked it because I would be nearyou.”
    “Being near me is not the issue. You would have to walk through a war zone to get to my place from here. I came to America to get out of the ghetto, not to move back into one. I hope you don’t think I’m going to visit you here.”
    Gail and I sat down. I told her that she deserved better, that it was one thing to be independent and another to recklessly endanger one’s life.
    “I would never stop worrying about you knowing you lived in this hovel,” I said. “Especially since it reminds me of my family’s shack back in Alexandra. With these differences: We didn’t have to deal with rugs, and our neighborhood, though poor and squalid, had some soul.
    American ghettos are soulless, inhuman.”
    Alone in my apartment that night I couldn’t sleep. I had nightmares of Gail being raped, forced to take drugs. I had half a mind to wake up and go fetch her.
    The next morning I heard a knock at my door. It was Gail, looking defeated and tired. Happy to see her safe, I took her by the hand and led her inside. There was an awkward silence before she said, “I know I’m being bullheaded. You’re right. I don’t think I can live there.
    I couldn’t sleep all night.”
    “I couldn’t either.”
    “The noise kept me awake,” she said. “An old Buick cruised back and forth dragging its muffler; stray dogs barked as they dug through the junkyard; the faucet kept dripping into that stained sink; derelicts outside my window kept laughing and shouting and breaking bottles; the street lamp shot a blinding beam of light straight into my eyes through the uncurtained window.”
    I begged Gail not to return to that dreadful place. I prepared her a sandwich; she had not eaten since the day before.
    “For some reason I thought having a place of my own was more important than anything, even my safety,” she said. “I guess there are certain limits to a woman’s independence.”
    I set the sandwich down in front of her and sat down beside her.
    “I think you have to stop and ask yourself what you are doing to yourself and why. What are you trying to prove? And to whom?”
    Gail ate in silence, deep in thought. Finally she said, “I’m so afraid of living with you.” She looked up at me with tears welling in her eyes. “I’m terrified of what my parents will say when they find out.
    I mean, they don’t even know about you yet. I told my brothers not to reveal anything to Mom or Dad about you, and they haven’t. I haven’t mustered the courage to tell them.”
    “You’ll have to Fend the courage, Gail,” I said, “if you believe in our relationship.”
    Gail started crying.
    “What’s wrong?” I