Chapter 3
"Carrie----"A rap of knuckles on the door. "Carrie... I want to talk to you... open up." A deep impatient sigh. "Don't be stubborn... let me in!" The voice grew in volume and deepened with impatience.
Two watery blue eyes gazed sleepily toward the kitchen where a splash of yellow light bathed the room in a warm glow. Carrie shuddered under the covers pulled tight to her chin and listened apathetically to the male voice pleading from the door.
Fiery sunlight intense as a sunlamp shone through her bedroom window early the next morning. She awakened with the discomforting feeling of separation, like awakening from a dream. Reality had not set in. Better it hadn't.
Drugged with depression, Carrie forced herself out of bed and into the shower. Dressed, she busied herself about her apartment, making lists of things to buy: Rug for the bath, new curtains for the bedroom.-Disheartened, she gazed about the small, semi-furnished apartment with the enthusiasm of a traveling salesman flopping down his suitcase in the tenth hotel room in as many nights. With time, it would feel like home. Now it felt foreign and stale.
Like my mental state, she snickered bitterly to herself.
But badness is balanced by goodness, and more determined than ever to fulfill her dream of teaching sociology, explaining the state of society, she unpacked a box of textbooks and thumbed through her notebook of lessons ƒ_" her senior thesis project.
Two days later, the sterile bathroom was brightened with a crisp yellow rug, in a bowl vase floated magnolia blossoms plucked from the tree brushing against the rail of her balcony.
A pink satin coverlet replaced the scratchy plaid one, now folded up and forgotten, stained with virginal blood. Slowly patiently, 133 Badger Street was becoming home. She made friends with the woman across the hall, a rather rumpled woman who wore housecoats late into the day and sported a penchant for hair rollers, though Carrie had never seen her socialize.
This wasn't friendly northern Minnesota, but she would cope, she decided on the first morning of school. Phil had not succeeded in cajoling himself into her apartment and that strengthened resolve a notch. Once friends with her pupils, the constant distraction of counseling and preparing lessons would fill her nights and she would forget the animalistic beast who cared more about his plumped up ego than her feminine preciousness! Selfish man, Sex... sex... sex... that's all men think about! she tutted, grabbing her handbag and book bag and storming through the door, happy to be at work at last.
Happy, until she crossed the sidewalk from the bus stop and entered the fenced-in asphalted parking lot outside George Washington High.
Like a convict being escorted to prison, she thought, stiffening and watching hordes of teenage girls with less innocent faces than her own in skin tight jeans swagger up the steps. Negro girls with Afro hairdos worn in braids with beads jiggling about their shoulders, and others with huge combs stuck recklessly in the black bushes of their hair.
Sassy attitudes, defiant, rebellious and sporting a self-confidence no one felt even as an adult, she thought mingling with the crown toward the front steps littered with cigarette butts and candy wrappers. And the boys, if one could call them that, dragging on cigarettes and staring glassy eyed at the women parading past them for their prurient pleasure.
True, Carrie's apple-cheeked, blonde haired, blue eyed features didn't mix well with the potpourri of humanity. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Blacks, with a poorly represented percentage of whites. Like salt and pepper, mused Carrie, scurrying past them and down the hall. Halfway down the hallway whose walls were decorated with posters advising against smoking, drinking and drugs... fresh and free of graffiti on this first day of school ƒ_" Carrie stiffened.
"Hey, if it ain't the white honkie with the tits! Hey, man, you seen 'er before! 'Member the white bitch in the car done stripped for us?"
Oh, dear God... it can't be him! Blood pounded in her ears, vision fuzzed. Forcing a stiff upper lip, she swirled around and stared into the black face of the fifteen year-old boy who'd masturbated on Phil's windshield four days prior! She would recognize him anywhere: Proud Afro hairdo, sparkling chocolate eyes, wide nose, high cheekbones ƒ_"and the tight faded levis hugging his muscular thighs, belt riding low on his hips. Biceps bulging with panther-like strength. It was him and he was taunting her, humiliating her in front of the entire school!
Shooting him a threatening glance, she stomped toward the principal's office to be assigned a classroom. Breath snorted from her nostrils. Dizzy, she pressed her fingers to her forehead for a light massage and stood before the secretary's desk.
A kind faced black woman stared concernedly up at her. "Are you okay, Miz?"
"What... ? Oh, yes, I'm fine... just a bit warm for me.
The black woman's buxom breasts bounced with laughter. "I can tell you don' be from this part of the south! White skin like yours gotta be from up north somewheres... "
"Minnesota ƒ_" where the sun never shines," returned Carrie, calmed by the other's kindness. "I'm Carrie Osgood, sociology teacher and I'd like my room assignment, please."
The black woman's glasses sat on the tip of her nose, thick lips pooched in concentration as the chipped polished fingertip ran down the computer sheet. "Ah, ha... here we be! Miz Osgood, Sociology 101, Room 102." The woman shook her head and dark eyes rose over her bifocals to stare at Carrie. "Don' envy you none teachin' that class... boy we got us some rough ones now. All them killin's makin' everybody jump outta their skin! Ain' no way to live, no way at all... "
An alarm sounded in the hallway, proclaiming ten minutes until first hour. "Thank you, I'd better rush off... "
101, 102... muttered Carrie to herself, perusing the freshly painted numbers on the glass windows smelling freshly on this first day of school of ammonia.
Half of her class had seated themselves when she rushed through the class room door.
Laughing, telling jokes, radios blaring, there they were ƒ_" her pupils. Her blue eyes swept over the rows of black ones staring defiantly back at her. Abruptly she stiffened. In the back row next to the window, smouldering Kool cigarette dangling from his thick enigmatically smiling lips, sat the boy who had caused her nothing but anguish from her first two hours in Atlanta.
"Put out that cigarette this minute! This isn't a pool hall!" she spat in retaliation. Plunking her handbag and bookbag on the desk, she glared at him and watched in stupefied horror as his lanky, tight muscled body unfolded from the desk and opening the window, flicked the lit butt into the parking lot. Settling back at his desk, he muttered something that tore a chant of obscene laughter from the thick lips of his companions, and made girls clamp hands over their mouths.
His dark liquid eyes, predatory and hungry, scanned the rich bumps and curves of Carrie's svelte body, settling on the round sells of her breasts. "My name's Cederick... pleased to make your acquaintance, m'am."
Accept it as cruel ridicule or politeness? That was Carrie's dilemma. Forcing a warm smile, she made a quick survey of the room. Late comers filtered in as the last bell rang.
"Class, I'm happy to be your sociology teacher. My name is Carrie Osgood and, as you can probably tell," she announced with a twitter of fear for repercussions, yet wanting to be honest with them,"... I'm from the north."
She felt his eyes on her making a casual but extremely thorough examination of her lush young body under the thin cotton dress. "I will expect you all to be on time and anyone tardy will be forced to stay after school. As your teacher, I expect a modicum of respect.
... "
A hand shot up in the back row. Predictably, as she'd feared, it was Cederick's black paw waving in the air. "Yes, Cederick."
"What's modicum mean? I ain' never heard tha' word before."
"Modicum means a moderate amount of... " she explained, hoping she'd misjudged his intentions.
"Oh," he returned. "I though tha' had sometin' to do with cummin'... you know, cunts and dicks and all tha' shit... "
"There will be no vile language in this room!" she snapped. "Let's keep the garbage in the streets ƒ_" please!"
"How's 'bout they keep it in the north----" came a guttural reply.
"Yeah!" echoed a comrade of Cederick's whom Carrie feared might have been involved in the baseball bat vigilante group. Her cheeks burned as she recognized him as the one who'd plastered his face to the car window and licked his lips as she slumped in the car, naked from the waist up, head bent, sobbing in abject humiliation.
"Yeah... I thought they done promised us a black teacher! We gittin' real tired down here in Atlanta of da white folks givin' us shit! You talk 'bout garbage in the streets, m'am... we can't even walk da streets no more wif out gettin' killed and dumped in da river!"
"Yeah... " echoed another, followed by a chorus of acquiescence rumbling about the room.
Fearfully, Carried counted a total of three whites in a classroom accommodating twenty-two. Clearly, she was in the minority, and they wouldn't let her forget it! Sexual innuendoes were to be expected, but the naked truth of self-defense, righteously stated, was impossible to rebut. Still, the fact that she was from the north and white, didn't make her responsible for the killings, or the attitudes slated against blacks. The mere fact that she was here teaching in a predominantly black school should be proof of that! A deep hurt, deeper than Phil's rape, darkened her spirits. She tried to ignore the comment and take roll-call from the computer printout sheet sitting on her desk.
"Rufus Stone... Janet Smith... Cederick Waters... Charlie White... Clara Jones... " On and on, down the list, her heart sinking with each name. After clipping the list of absentees to the clipboard outside the door, she asked if there were any questions. Of course, there would be... with rebellious, defiant teenagers like those sitting staring at her with hate-filled eyes.
"I got a question." A pretty young girl with a cocky, barnyard attitude, straightened at her desk. She wore a tight yellow sweater, cupping the lemons of her budding fourteen year-old breasts. The dark areolas of her nipples poked through like bumblebees. Her hair was braided, decorated with beads. In kinder circumstances, Carrie would have judged her a very beautiful young girl -- modelish and leggy and very, very self-assured. "I wanna know why it jus' be blacks gits vic'mized. How come there ain' no black man killin' white kids...
snatchin' em out from under der mothers' noses and stranglin' em? Nobody cares if a black kid gits killed... but... "
Carrie cut her short with a silencing had. "Please, let's not get carried away. I understand the tension black youth are experiencing in Atlanta and I'm... "
"You understand! You understand! A black boy next to Cederick shot to his feet, jabbing a bony finger in her direction. A young Stokley Carmichael he could have been. Better still, a Huey Newton, she amended mentally, considering his handsome features. "How cin you understan' when you been here four days! Shit, my ol' lady won' even let me sit on the stoop at night no more! You ever live in a house wid eight kids an, two bedrooms! I can' even sit on ma stoop!"
Carries eyes shot toward the door. She felt her cheeks burning. Certainly someone in the hallway must have heard the angered outburst. Security guards? The principal?
"Perhaps," she sighed with a quick intake of breath, "we could relate these matters to our sociology lessons, Write a letter to our congressman, senator maybe."
A groan of contempt roared from the classroom.
"Dat kinda shit don' do no good!" grumbled Cederick, brandishing his hand in a dismissing gesture and clearly robbing her of control.
"We're going to teach this class my way," averred Carrie staunchly. "There will be no more racial slurs, no more complaints. If we want to make changes within society, first we must change ourselves. Attitudes give rise to other attitudes, bitterness to bitterness... and quite frankly," and here she crossed her arms defiantly over her chest and stared point blank into Cederick's eyes, "I see nothing but bitterness and hatred here in this room."
Straightening, she rose from her chair behind the desk and leaned against the front of her scratched, metal desk. "I will make no apologies for being born with white skin... I could be purple for all I care! I'm here because I want to do something for society and if you can't accept that, I would happily have you transfer to another class. Is that understood?"
Another kind of derision separated the room now. The pretty young black girl was staring hatefully at Cederick. That a private battle ensued between the new white teacher and Cederick was starkly evident. Each time he stared at Carrie's svelte, buxom body, the girl thrust out her chest and rubbed a polished fingertip over the nipple of her left breast, trying to pry her boyfriend's eyes loose from the teacher.
Carrie, catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, stopped in mid-sentence, horrified at the girl's brazen lustiness. Not wanting to rouse the other students' attention, she blatantly ignored the lewd gesture. Finally, it was Cederick himself who threw a cigarette at the girl to put her fingers at rest. The Rose, whose name she found on the seating chart, smirked hatefully back at Miss Osgood, as if to say, "You won this bout, but baby, don't cross my path!" The hour wore on and wore thin. Weakened from maintaining defenses for sixty accusing minutes, Carrie nearly yelped for joy when the bell rang.
A stampede of students shuffled out the door, casting their new teacher challenging looks over shoulders bearing chips. They had laughed at her, rebuked her, challenged her sincerity. She collapsed in her chair, frustrated, personally abused. She was in the midst, like it or not, of a horde of vigilante youth, ghetto children under the threat of death... and they wouldn't let her forget it!
Massaging fingertips worked at the lightning rod tension sizzling through her head. Her stomach rumbled, and she remembered she hadn't eaten breakfast. The south, she was learning, was a difficult place to live. Silly it would be to ask herself why she' come to this hate-ridden corner of the world. Why not San Francisco, romantic and cool, she wondered, willing the sweat from her brow. Or Chicago? At least it was a cultured city.
Phillip Jay Carmichael was the answer to it all. Now he was out of the picture, leaving a dark, empty hole. She had planned to offer spare time on community committees to advance the consciousness of Atlanta slums... now that was a forgotten dream. Still, she couldn't afford to dump her job, her apartment, her future because of one miserable man!
Wearily, she gathered up the computer printout sheet, and seating chart, stuffed them into her bookbag which she slung over her shoulder and headed for the teacher's lounge down the hall and one flight down.
A quarter plunked into the candy machine and the weary-faced blonde haired teacher ruminated on the merits of Jack LaLaine candy bar opposed to the traditional Snickers, when a tall, square-faced man wearing sweat pants and a sweat shirt, sauntered silently in Adidas gym shoes behind her. A basketball was tucked in the crook of his arm. He bounced it twice to get her attention.
"Hi... " It was a heartless greeting on her part. Turning back to the candy machine, she pulled the lever and a gold wrapped bar plunked in the tray below.
"Good choice," he offered in a deep voice. "I eat 'em myself all the time." His toothy grin melted into concern. "Hey, what's the matter? Students giving you a hard time?"
"Hard isn't the word for it!" she burst, amazed at her aggressiveness. "All they talk about is these killings... I admit it's horrible, murderous, but it's not my fault!" She found herself yelling at him, transmitting the concern to him. "I'm sorry," Her head bent and her voice softened. "I don't mean to take it out on you."
"Ah, I know how it is... this is a hard school to teach in. Hey, you don't sound like you're from the south."
"Minnesota," she answered almost apologetically, taking in the muscular height of him and feeling a sense of familiarity. Phil's height, weight, build.
"Care for a drink after school? God knows I need one. We're starting off the season on a losing note. I gotta put us on the top if I wanna keep my job." He returned her accepting smile, Amazingly, Carrie's second class of the day was comprised of a smattering of well-mannered Mexicans - mostly girls ƒ_" and the remainder white. She slipped through that class easily and met Jason, the basketball coach in the parking lot. He opened the door of a green MG and she slipped in. "Glad to see you survived the first day. Lots of teachers don't," he commented, revving the engine and backing out of the parking lot. A crunch of broken glass drew a wince from the coach. "Damned kids leave their beer bottles under the wheels. Think it's funny!" He swore under his breath and tore out of the parking lot in a screech of burning rubber. Carrie glared at his foul-tempered expression out of the corner of one blue eye hiding behind ovalled sunglasses perched atop her perky nose.
"Students are different here. I'm used to slow-talking mid-westerners with even tempers."
She, shrugged her lovely shoulders. "I guess you have to blame it on environment."
"Yeah," he agreed, ramming the gear shift as the green MG made a tight right onto the main street. "Damned ghetto kids don't appreciate anything! Half of 'em belong behind bars, I swear!"
His racist attitude, equal to Phil's sour one, ate at complacency. "That's not a fair assumption, Jason. You could have been born black... "
His blonde head flew around and he glared at her dumbstruck.
"Or me____" she quickly amended.
Jason lost no time changing the subject. "I know of a nice little bar with cold beer and nachos dripping with cheese. Join me?"
"I... I should be going home. I am engaged," she said, taken aback by his racist attitude and aggressive attitude. "We're supposed to have dinner together."
Lines tightened on his forehead. "Then why the hell did you lead me on?" he burst. "You could have told me from the start instead of wasting my time!"
Carrie turned her head, away from his open examination of her delicious curves, stunned that any body could be so rude. Maybe Phil was right: Southern men don't take no for an answer ƒ_" without a fight! She had caught the glint in his eye and shivered. Never in four days had she met more disagreeable men. Cederick .. the defiant, man-boy and his licentious girl friend. Dear God, didn't anyone have any manners down here?
"I live a block from here. I don't mind walking," she announced with a firm set to her jaw.
"So your fiance doesn't see you, no doubt," he snickered, drawing up to the curb with a rocking halt.
"Thanks for the lift," she sniped, grabbing her bookbag and slamming the car door with a tinny bang of finality.
Men! I can't believe what animals they are! Really, did he think he was going to make love to me? The audacity!
Her apartment felt claustrophobic with heat. Ripping open the balcony curtains, she yanked open the sliding glass doors and stood on the balcony for a long moment.
Delicately, she broke a magnolia blossom from its branch and sniffed its sweetness. Five o'clock sounds of mothers calling their children echoed in her ears, as she watched them with dirty faced children at their heels, greeting husbands with tight hugs as they pulled into the parking lot. The contrast to her own morbid existence was as depressing as the suffocating heat.
For the hundredth time, visions of Phil's animalistic attack flitted through her mind like an x-rated movie. Somehow, she could not dispel the shameful feeling that she had instigated his attack by working herself into a frustrated pitch in the shower. And Phil telling her she had enjoyed stripping for the black ghetto vigilantes! Clenching shut her blue eyes, she nervously stepped into the kitchen and slammed shut the glass doors. Why did that young boy unnerve her so? A third provocateur joined the lineup: Jason, basketball coach. Actually believing he could sleep with her after one day's acquaintance!
A feeling of loneliness and desertion so black and deep she couldn't fight it, weighed like a bag of cement in her heart. Shoving it aside, she pitted emotion against rationale. If she had precipitated his attack, then it was unfair to punish him. By punishing him, she punished herself. And who, she realized in a burst of understanding, was losing then?
Self-pity? Fear? Maybe Phil had been showing respect for her by arranging for an apartment, helping find her a teaching position. Was she as frigid as he accused her of being?
Perhaps she was unwomanly, wasteful in punishing Phil for his dominant, manhood and expecting him to plead for her favors. The more he wanted her, the further back she pushed him until now, like a crucifix she had him nailed with the sin of rape on his soul!
"Oh, no, what have I done!" she wailed, raising a clenched fist to her mouth. In this city of black vigilantes and hatred, she needed someone close to her. Needed a man to protect and love her, to smooth the ragged edges of reality. Like a fool, she fought him off and insulted his masculinity. What man in that situation wouldn't ignore her, leave her to her own self-created torment?