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By Root 324 0

civilization. There Sarah watched her grandfather from the corner of her eye. He did not seem to bend under the grief of burying a son. His back was straight, his eyes dry and clear. He was simply and solemnly heroic; a man who kept with pride his family’s trust and his own grief. It is strange, Sarah thought, that I never thought to paint him like this, simply as he stands; without anonymous meaningless people hovering beyond his profile; his face turned proud and brownly against the light. The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white. But that defeat was nowhere on her grandfather’s face. He stood like a rock, outwardly calm, the comfort and support of the Davis family. The family alone defined him, and he was not about to let them down.

“One day I will paint you, Grandpa,” she said, as they turned to go. “Just as you stand here now, with just”—she moved closer and touched his face with her hand—“just the right stubborn tenseness of your cheek. Just that look of Yes and No in your eyes.”

“You wouldn’t want to paint an old man like me,” he said, looking deep into her eyes from wherever his mind had been. “If you want to make me, make me up in stone.”

The completed grave was plump and red. The wreaths of flowers were arranged all on one side so that from the road there appeared to be only a large mass of flowers. But already the wind was tugging at the rose petals and the rain was making dabs of faded color all over the green foam frames. In a week the displaced honeysuckle vines, the wild roses, the grapevines, the grass, would be back. Nothing would seem to have changed.

5

“What do you mean, come home?” Her brother seemed genuinely amused. “We’re all proud of you. How many black girls are at that school? Just you? Well, just one more besides you, and she’s from the North. That’s really something!”

“I’m glad you’re pleased,” said Sarah.

“Pleased! Why, it’s what Mama would have wanted, a good education for little Sarah; and what Dad would have wanted too, if he could have wanted anything after Mama died. You were always smart. When you were two and I was five you showed me how to eat ice cream without getting it all over me. First, you said, nip off the bottom of the cone with your teeth, and suck the ice cream down. I never knew how you were supposed to eat the stuff once it began to melt.”

“I don’t know,” she said, “sometimes you can want something a whole lot, only to find out later that it wasn’t what you needed at all.”

Sarah shook her head, a frown coming between her eyes. “I sometimes spend weeks,” she said, “trying to sketch or paint a face that is unlike every other face around me, except, vaguely, for one. Can I help but wonder if I’m in the right place?”

Her brother smiled. “You mean to tell me you spend weeks trying to draw one face, and you still wonder whether you’re in the right place? You must be kidding!” He chucked her under the chin and laughed out loud. “You learn how to draw the face,” he said, “then you learn how to paint me and how to make Grandpa up in stone. Then you can come home or go live in Paris, France. It’ll be the same thing.”

It was the unpreacherlike gaiety of his affection that made her cry. She leaned peacefully into her brother’s arms. She wondered if Richard Wright had had a brother.

“You are my door to all the rooms,” she said. “Don’t ever close.”

And he said, “I won’t,” as if he understood what she meant.

6

“When will we see you again, young woman?” he asked later, as he drove her to the bus stop.

“I’ll sneak up one day and surprise you,” she said.

At the bus stop, in front of a tiny service station, Sarah hugged her brother with all her strength. The white station attendant stopped his work to leer at them, his eyes bold and careless.

“Did you ever think,” said Sarah, “that we are a very old people in a very young place?”

She watched her brother from a window of the bus; her eyes did not leave his face until the little station was out of sight and the big Greyhound lurched on its way toward Atlanta.