Paris in May. D. Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ headed toward the student center, where he briefly chatted with students and bought his morning coffee and The New York Times. Back in his book-lined office, he organized his day, which included some time spent in his laboratory and some time to peruse the travel section of the newspaper. This day, the spotlight story, “Paris in the Spring,” was just what he needed to break up the humdrum of a relatively successful life that had emerged from an unlikely beginning.

      The Professor’s Story

      Early 50s

      As a child, David Walton was not so different from other black boys his age. His circumstances would not surprise anyone in his community. Almost all of them carried the same weight and had the same narrow future. There were dreams about the future, but those dreams were muffled by the long insidious shadow of slavery and the lingering oppression of reconstruction that pervaded almost every aspect of the African American experience. In general, black people were invisible throughout America and were persona non grata outside their communities. For most young people coming of age, the future was limited. What did pervade the community was the knowledge that their blackness was hated and reviled.

      Generational hardship and pain were ever present and came in many forms. Never getting the value or products of their labor, as if both were a gift to humanity, offered as a thank-you for manumission. Stay where you are, where you belong, among other souls as black as yours. Don’t ask for more, else your memory of the lash will be made a reality. The reality of racism, of forced segregation and ownership of almost nothing, poisoned aspects of everyone’s life. A psychology of worthlessness was deeply ingrained and hidden from view but invaded every corpuscle of black private lives. Frustration and anger often exploded into aggression, and its pervasiveness offered a model of behavior for the impressionable. These things were so pervasive that proclamations, political action, and economic growth could only chip away at the hard crust of oppression. It would take time. It would take generations to outgrow. In the meantime, widespread impotence caused by social and economic injustices formed the cognitive maps that delineated and limited physical and aspirational boundaries beyond which one simply did not go.

      Yet all around them was a world of plenty. No one had to look far to find it. Those with radios or televisions had it streamed into their understanding of what the world was really like outside of their narrow slice of reality. There were the laws that stopped blacks from participating in the so-called American dream. There were the false beliefs held by whites, insisting that blacks did not have the brain power or work ethic to do the jobs necessary to transform their lives. People felt trapped but continued to work hard to provide for their families. Many looked for help from above and found relief in the church, even though a worldly change in circumstances was not offered by the church. Some in the throes of this degrading reality vented the constantly accumulating frustration by not wanting to be black. Mimicking the poison that whites had injected into their veins by treating other blacks as the white man treated them was pervasive. It made them feel better calling another black a nigger or by copying the white man’s assessment of blacks by parroting that attitude in sayings like, “If you’re black, stay back; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re light, you’re all right.”

      David’s father, John Walton, was a man born of this history. A man who dragged it into his understanding of the world, and even though time might have given him a multitude of possible destinies, he died with a single identity carved from a past that, from his understanding, had not and would not change. The unconscious need to hide from life was his everyday reality. The mundane habits of a subsistence life melded into a long junk heap of days indistinguishable from one another. It did not have to be that way. He was aware of paths other than the one he was forced to take. But given his personal experience, he was not among the few who could avail themselves of opportunities that would make him slightly acceptable beyond the boundaries of blackness. Those doors were never open to him. The path he took required little, only a bit of luck. Unfortunately, he was not gifted with the kind of knowledge that would transform him into a person who might change the outcome of his life. After his move from the south, he tried. As a young man, he tried. For a few years, he was a fix-it man for a bus company. At his wife’s behest, whenever he was paid, he would always stop by a used bookstore, but he only bought picture books so he might see how the world looked. Unfortunately, the job only lasted a few years before the company went out of business. After that, his only hope was standing on the corner with other men, praying that someone needing a day laborer or semiskilled person would give them work. A person who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the rates being charged by white tradesmen could get the same work done for less than half the cost. Since blacks were not allowed in any of the trade unions, men with real skills could be hired as a helper by a plumber or carpenter. The tradesmen would pay his helper much less than the boss was paid but the help would never be allowed into the union or get union wages. The helper could make enough to pay rent and feed and clothe a few mouths. Both women and men had people they worked for on a regular basis. Cleaning house, cooking, taking care of kids, or handling the physical upkeep of the house and garden were some of the jobs that kept the black community going. In any household, you might hear, “I got Miss Jane on Tuesday and Miss Talbert on Thursday,” or “On Monday and Wednesday, I got to oil the floor and clean the shelves at Mr. Mac’s grocery store,” and most of it was paid under the table. These hardworking men and women became grateful to Miss Ann or Mr. Charley for allowing them the opportunity to help feed their families. These attachments became so strong they often felt familial.

      For David’s father, John Walton, luck did not come easily. For him, like others, it was a day-to-day effort. Getting up and searching for a job that might never come, and when it came, it was always something like sweeping the streets or sweeping out stores or digging ditches or doing a multitude of menial jobs that he knew were far below his mental ability. As time passed, nothing much changed. He had to grovel and often demean himself for the same menial jobs. When his wife died in childbirth and he decided to raise his only son, he tried, but nothing changed. Through all of his unsuccessful trials, he had become helpless. He believed nothing he could do would make a difference. In a word, John Walton became pathologically and chronically depressed. For him, the future was fixed by the past, and his behavior would not make any appreciable difference in his tomorrow. So he chose a behavioral repertoire that set him on the road to smallness and perdition, one that constricted life and made it anything but bearable. The darkness of his myopic character was set early, and it never changed. All that he could depend on was a monthly check from the welfare department, periodic visits from a social worker, and despite everything he wasn’t, a son who loved him.

      It was a social worker who first suggested to John Walton that he might need a medical and psychological evaluation. If it was determined that he was a candidate for medication, he might be eligible for a free monthly supply. Trusting in the education and knowledge base of his caseworker, he agreed to the evaluation. Given his gloomy outlook and dispirited behavior, it was not surprising he was diagnosed and labeled with high blood pressure and clinical depression. He was told that taking the pills would make him do better, or at least feel better. So through state approved channels, the caseworker was able to get a pharmaceutical manufacturer to supply John Walton and others in need with medication for hypertension and depression.

      For the first few months, John Walton felt better. There was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of the household. However, before long, he slipped back into a quiet lethargy that seemed to get worse.

      In time, his son, David Walton, came to think that maybe his father’s medication might be doing more harm than good. Serendipitously, while reading a magazine in the school library, he read a brief article on the drug Lopresid and its efficacy. It said that the drug may work in the short term, but over time, it might do more harm than good. Upon checking what his father was taking, his worst fears were confirmed: his father was taking Lopresid. When checking with the social worker and with his father’s doctor, neither showed much concern and reassured David the drug was what his father needed. When he sent a letter to the manufacturer, he got nothing back but boilerplate touting the effectiveness of the drug. When he tried to get his father to stop taking the drug, СКАЧАТЬ