A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [18]
Ultimately, the more time I spent at Milton—at tea parties after football games, at alumni council gatherings—the more comfortable I became. I was never popular or much of an athlete. I was just a good citizen, a patient listener, and a sharp observer. I figured out the blue blazer and the rep tie, the difference between the old money destinations and the new. Though I had never actually been to most of these places or even owned a rep tie, I had broken the code. I could out-WASP the WASPs. I could even use summer as a verb.
As I learned the code, people grew more comfortable with me. They opened up and allowed me to see how universal the human condition really is. Despite their venerable names and magnificent homes and important art collections, the men and women of privilege bore struggles hardly different from those I had seen at home. They told me about their bad marriages, their estranged children, their family traumas. There was alcoholism, addiction, infidelity, suicide, ruin, and loss. One student got pregnant during her senior year and decided to keep the baby. The father of another could not keep a job and spent most of his days in his pajamas, staring out his bedroom window at the garden. Money may have helped some of these people cope with calamity, but it did not immunize anyone from it.
Though I was largely accepted at Milton, true assimilation was not possible. It was as if I was encouraged to forget my past and embrace a community that would not actually let me surrender that past. Sometimes, as my father feared, I let my guard down.
In my junior year, I was the student manager of the soda machines in the dorms and the candy concession at the Canteen, which was open at morning break for students. The money went to the scholarship fund, with a small cut to the student manager (who was always a scholarship student). I collected the money and paid for the sales stock in arrears. But in one instance, the funds did not cover the soda bill. When I told the deliveryman that I was short, he took the matter to the dean of students, who took it to the housemaster and ultimately the headmaster. We had a round of questioning, and the authorities insinuated that I had stolen the money. I had not taken a dime, of course, nor had I even been paid what I was owed, as a thorough review of the books made clear. I explained, however, that I had heard the boys boast of being able to reach into the vending machines to pull a can out and had actually seen a few do it. The masters dropped the issue when one of the boys blithely demonstrated that it could be done quite easily, and no evidence could be found that I had enriched myself. But there were no apologies. “Boys will be boys” was the reaction to the white kids stealing sodas from the machine. “Watch yourself” was the message to me.
It was the first time I’d felt the helplessness and hurt of false accusation. I knew that such an accusation could jeopardize my standing at Milton. The presumption that the actual thieves—the rich white boys who were helping themselves to sodas—were innocent pranksters while I—the black kid on scholarship—was up to no good stung me deeply. When I tried to explain why I was so upset to a young and caring white teacher, he explained a rationale that had nothing to do with race—in effect, why I was the logical suspect. I had control of the money, so it was natural to question me closely, even if I was otherwise beyond reproach. He was trying to comfort me, to keep me from being bitter. But I then appreciated that the curse of being black is always having to wonder