And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester Page A

alabama colored boys had been thought by similar thoughts — ‘i wish i could marry her.” “i sure would like to marry her.” they yearned. i asserted: “i’m going to marry her one day.”
    what did it mean? what was i trying to tell myself? the first time elizabeth and i were together. we were both nervous. more, we were frightened. she was a virgin, but the anxiety was other. what we were about to do had been forbidden for centuries. black man. white woman. it was a social taboo with almost as much force as the one against incest. black men were killed if a white man thought they might be thinking about white women. Emmett Till. Mack Charles Parker.
    could she and i act as individuals? were we strong enough to defy four centuries of history?
    in the sixties a lot of black men and white women tried to heal history with their bodies. i am not naive. i know many of those black men and white women abused each other. i know many black women were made to feel worthless as they saw black men walk past them to get to the nearest white woman. history extracts its price, regardless. i also know that some of history’s wounds could not have been tended any other way.
    i loved her from the moment i saw her picture on the front page of the newspaper. who was this young white girl that dared cross over, this young woman whose beauty was apparent even in the grainy texture of a newspaper photo, this young woman whose wealth and background exempted her from the cares and concerns of ninety-nine percent of those on the planet? was she guilt-ridden because she was white and wealthy? that evening on huntley-brinkley they showed film of the arrests in nashville and there she was, walking easily, almost leisurely, from the store where they had been sitting-in and into the paddy wagon.
    andrea noticed and said: she’s quite lovely, isn’t she? embarrassed, i wanted to demur but i sensed it was important not to betray myself — and her: yes. she is.
    neither andrea or i could escape the reverence in my tone.
    a few weeks later when the invitation came from fisk, i accepted immediately and asked andrea to come with me, which was unusual. she never accompanied me on my travels, not even in those early years. two years later, when i returned from california with elizabeth, i think she was relieved that someone was finally going to take responsibility for my aloneness.
    that phelps girl is at fisk. i don’t think i want to be there when you meet her.
    i tried to deny that my eagerness to go to fisk was to meet elizabeth. i was confused. i did not understand why i needed to meet her. i knew it appeared to andrea to be a sexual attraction. it was not. i could’ve hidden that because it is essentially meaningless except if personal gratification is the essence of one’s existence. perhaps i wanted andrea there to protect me. i thought if she was with me, nothing would happen and i would be safe.
    after lunch at the fisk president’s house, andrea and i got in the car to drive back to atlanta. we were both afraid to break the silence, afraid that any word would mean the end of the marriage. yet, if the silence continued for too long, that, too, would mean the end. i did not know what to say. there was nothing to say.
    elizabeth.
    i had said her name like a lover consenting to go wherever the beloved led.
    andrea: listen and don’t respond. if you say anything, it will be a lie, and i don’t like you when you lie. you can’t help it. you’re a man. truths of the heart confuse men. they confuse women, too, but we know it is better to speak them aloud. men lie aloud and speak the truth to themselves. women speak the truth aloud but believe the lies they tell themselves.
    we fear truths of the heart because, more often than not, they hurt. they complicate our lives. but that is only appearance. ultimately, truths of the heart simplify, even if we aren’t able to always believe them.
    i do not like being the wife of john calvin marshall.