You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down_ Stories - Alice Walker [49]
“It’s her father,” one of them said softly. “He died yesterday. Oh, Sarah,” the girl whimpered, “I’m so sorry!”
“Me too.” “So am I.” “Is there anything we can do?”
But Sarah had walked away, head high and neck stiff.
“So graceful!” one of her friends said.
“Like a proud gazelle” said another. Then they all trooped to their dormitories to change for supper.
Talfinger Hall was a pleasant dorm. The common room just off the entrance had been made into a small modern art gallery with some very good original paintings, lithographs and collages. Pieces were constantly being stolen. Some of the girls could not resist an honest-to-God Chagall, signed (in the plate) by his own hand, though they could have afforded to purchase one from the gallery in town. Sarah Davis’s room was next door to the gallery, but her walls were covered with inexpensive Gauguin reproductions, a Rubens (“The Head of a Negro”), a Modigliani and a Picasso. There was a full wall of her own drawings, all of black women. She found black men impossible to draw or to paint; she could not bear to trace defeat onto blank pages. Her women figures were matronly, massive of arm, with a weary victory showing in their eyes. Surrounded by Sarah’s drawings was a red SNCC poster of a man holding a small girl whose face nestled in his shoulder. Sarah often felt she was the little girl whose face no one could see.
To leave Talfinger even for a few days filled Sarah with fear. Talfinger was her home now; it suited her better than any home she’d ever known. Perhaps she loved it because in winter there was a fragrant fireplace and snow outside her window. When hadn’t she dreamed of fireplaces that really warmed, snow that almost pleasantly froze? Georgia seemed far away as she packed; she did not want to leave New York, where, her grandfather had liked to say, “the devil hung out and caught young gals by the front of their dresses.” He had always believed the South the best place to live on earth (never mind that certain people invariably marred the landscape), and swore he expected to die no more than a few miles from where he had been born. There was tenacity even in the gray frame house he lived in, and in scrawny animals on his farm who regularly reproduced. He was the first person Sarah wanted to see when she got home.
There was a knock on the door of the adjoining bathroom, and Sarah’s suite mate entered, a loud Bach concerto just finishing behind her. At first she stuck just her head into the room, but seeing Sarah fully dressed she trudged in and plopped down on the bed. She was a heavy blonde girl with large milk-white legs. Her eyes were small and her neck usually gray with grime.
“My, don’t you look gorgeous,” she said.
“Ah, Pam,” said Sarah, waving her hand in disgust. In Georgia she knew that even to Pam she would be just another ordinarily attractive colored girl. In Georgia there were a million girls better looking. Pam wouldn’t know that, of course; she’d never been to Georgia; she’d never even seen a black person to speak to, that is, before she met Sarah. One of her first poetic observations about Sarah was that she was “a poppy in a field of winter roses.” She had found it weird that Sarah did not own more than one coat.
“Say listen, Sarah,” said Pam, “I heard about your father. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Thanks,” said Sarah.
“Is there anything we can do? I thought, well, maybe you’d want my father to get somebody to fly you down. He’d go himself but he’s taking Mother to Madeira this week. You wouldn’t have to worry about trains and things.”
Pamela’s father was one of the richest men in the world, though no one ever mentioned it. Pam only alluded to it at times of crisis, when a friend might benefit from the use of a private plane, train, or ship; or, if someone wanted to study the characteristics of a totally secluded village, island or mountain, she might offer one of theirs. Sarah could not comprehend such wealth, and was always annoyed because Pam didn’t look more like a billionaire’s daughter.