Author’s Preface: WHETHER THEY BE is the story of Grace Rowley, a white woman who, following a 1968 protest in Omaha where a Black teenager is killed by an off-duty white police officer, learns that the mixed-race baby she gave up is alive and still living in the institution where she, a frightened teenager, was forced to leave him two decades earlier. Now the mother of a teenage girl, Grace faces turmoil in her marriage, job and family relationships. Despite pressure to forget him, she is compelled to meet her son and tell the truth about his father. But along the way, she struggles with her own prejudices, blundering in her attempts to be a “good white person” when in fact she is behaving more like a white savior toward people who don’t need to be rescued. As her budding relationship with her son grows, she realizes the only one she can save is herself.
*****
Hope: the last word spoken
–Rita Dove
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthly dusk.
—Willa Cather
Inside the Coliseum in Lincoln, a dozen National Guardsmen stood grasping long guns, a pair of men at each entry, the rest rimming the basketball court. A German shepherd, triangle ears rigid, flanked the officer in center court, its short leather leash wrapped tightly around the man’s fist. Sitting courtside to keep an eye on the varsity cheerleaders she coached, Grace Rowley could not decide whether the dog was there to protect or attack. Plus, she found it nerve-wracking to see rifles at a high school tournament. At least they were out in the open, unlike the pistols undoubtedly hidden under the jackets of some spectators. It was warm and humid inside the arena that Saturday March 9, 1968, and the familiar odors of popcorn and boiled hotdogs would have been comforting if not for the scene playing out in front of her.
“Are you sure it’s safe for us?” Grace’s mother asked, shouting to be heard above the music. “With all the Coloreds coming down from Omaha? And after that horrible riot? I wonder if these men can truly keep order.”
“Mother, hush!” Grace leaned close and spoke directly into her ear. “Of course we’re safe,” she said, only partly sure that was true. Her husband, a law enforcement officer back home, had warned her about the unrest over in Omaha spilling over into Lincoln, but she’d downplayed it. She couldn’t imagine anything unpleasant happening to them here in Lincoln. “Besides, we don’t say Colored anymore,” she told her mother.
“Well, excuse me, but what am I supposed to say?” Virginia glanced back and forth between the officers and the fans in the opposite stands, absently adjusting the silk scarf tied loosely around her collar. Grace, ashamed of her mother’s ignorance, waved her off for the time being. The arena, blasting with pre-game noise, was no place for this conversation.
Today’s game looked like a meeting between two nations rather than two teams from opposite sides of Nebraska, one, the favored team, from a big city, the other, hers, from a small town. The Prairie Spring High School fans waved miniature red and white pompons in time with the pre-game music, the drumbeats now vibrating inside Grace’s bones. With all the white faces and red pompons, their side looked like a cheery Christmas display. Across the court, shaking purple signs with Go Ravens, Win State, the Omaha fans were a swirl of copper browns and pink creams, like the picturesque prairie sky just after sunset.
The two bands hyped up the gathering crowd with school fight songs, brass players swaying back and forth to the bass drummers’ beats, and Grace moved her body in time, surrendering to the pre-game jitters she always felt. As her girls loosened up next to her on the sideline, the boys ran layup lines toward their baskets: dribbling, shooting, and rebounding in the well-choreographed warm-up. High-on-the-thigh shorts accentuated their lankiness. The boys were wearing their hair longer this year, not as long as the hippies, thank goodness. The white boys no longer sported buzz cuts, though their hair still hovered above their ears, while the Omaha boys’ short Afros resembled pillows cushioning their heads.
The referee’s whistle blast sent both teams to their benches where the boys settled, elbows perched on knees, muscles taut. A few bounced a leg up and down furiously, ready to leap. This championship game was making history with the country’s first all-black high school starting line-up, and Grace said a silent prayer that it would not make history for another, explosive, reason.
The music hit its crescendo, and the announcer’s deep voice bulleted through the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the nineteen-sixty-eight Nebraska state basketball championship final game between the Omaha City Ravens and the Prairie Spring Bombers!” The cheerleaders from both sides popped up and began high-kicking as the crowd bellowed, voices pinballing from the wooden floor to the high arched ceiling and back. Grace had always savored this moment as a cheerleader and now relished watching her daughter take pride in her skill and the respect it brought her.
Now coaching in a tiny town on the western verge of the state, Grace had grown up here in the east, in Lincoln. Arriving on the Nebraska University’s campus for games during her own high school years had made her feel special and protected, never afraid she’d be caught in the middle of a disturbance. Never waiting to see whether two teams would clash not only on the court but off, whether the National Guard would charge in and start clubbing, whether people in the stands would erupt in anger in what was a troubling cycle of bloody battles in cities across the country now. Just like the past Monday in Omaha when all those businesses were set on fire and the black high school boy was shot and killed by a white police officer. An off-duty officer, who sounded a lot like a vigilante to Grace.
SEGREGATIONIST’S VISIT
IGNITES VIOLENCE IN OMAHA
Lincoln Star, March 7, 1968
Ten businesses were destroyed late Monday night following former Alabama Governor George Wallace’s rally in Omaha. Howard Stevenson, a Negro teenager, was fatally shot by an off-duty policeman outside a pawn shop.
***
The times were changing just like the song said. The old ways needed to clear away to make room for the new. For some, like the Omaha team, this game was cause for jubilation, for others, her parents and many other white people, it brought a fear of losing, not simply a basketball tournament but a comfortable way of life. Grace’s feelings fell somewhere in between, stretched between the security she had always known and a pull toward the future with its inevitable vicissitudes.
As the Omaha players’ names were called and each jogged onto the court, their cheerleaders took turns with tumbling runs across the floor, and fans on both sides of the court responded with whistling and stomping on the wooden risers. Waiting their turn, the Prairie Spring girls slid to the floor, swiveling their bent knees to the same side so their white sneakers all pointed the same direction.
When Omaha’s superstar forward—the kid who had been arrested Monday night—was announced, a few fans in the Omaha stands booed. His name was Ernie Williams, and Grace liked his big smile and the way his eyes lit up when he was called and he began his jog to center court. The newspaper had made him out to be a hoodlum, but he was just a boy on the cusp of manhood. His brown complexion was on the light side, and he was slightly pigeon-toed making her worry he’d trip while dribbling and running. At the booing, one of the Omaha City cheerleaders, a blonde girl, put a finger to her lips and then shook it at their fans. Good for her, Grace thought. Doing her job, keeping up the spirit. Then their girls started a cheer, and that side of the arena became an exuberant chorus of blended voices again.
The announcer switched to the Prairie Spring lineup, and Grace’s girls leaped up. Joey, a co-captain of the squad, looked over to make sure her grandparents were watching. Grace’s father, Stuart Peterson, ruddy, long-limbed, and silver haired, and her mother, Virginia, a short ash-blonde, her round face made-up paler than Grace’s, sat with their coats across their laps, looking out of place in the frenzied crowd. They waved at Joey, and Virginia blew her a kiss. Turning to Grace, her mother shouted, “I see the Omaha team has a Colored cheerleader. In all my time, I’ve never seen that.”
“For gosh sakes!” Grace cried. Her mother was an embarrassment, an old woman, part of a generation stuck in their ways. “It’s ‘black’ now. Or ‘Afro-American—’”
“—Says who?”
“Your granddaughter,” Grace said, shifting her gaze over to Joey on the court. “Some of the kids at school—”
The warm-up clock ran out and the buzzer blared its low, grating honk, making them turn their attention to the boys returning to their benches to ready for tip-off.
The Petersons’ long-time housekeeper, Ophelia Johnson, sat straight and poised on the bench on the other side of Grace, her pink coat draped over her shoulders as if to protect herself against a chill. Her smooth skin shone sable, her straightened silver-streaked hair was flipped into a large wave at the ends, and a few worry lines between her eyebrows were the only evidence of the passage of years. When Grace was growing up, Ophelia looked after the three Peterson kids when their parents were out. Ophelia’s husband drove a moving van and was gone days at a time on his long hauls, so Ophelia brought her children, Louis and Lilac, to work when he was on the road, and the five kids played or did homework together until Grace’s parents returned and her father drove Ophelia and her kids home.
Now, Grace took Ophelia’s hand and shouted over the din. She prayed Ophelia hadn’t heard her mother’s comments. Although she’d sure heard plenty of that nonsense over the years. “I’m glad to see you, Ophelia. Thanks for coming to cheer us on.”
“I’m mighty proud of you, Miss Grace. You’ve done a good job with those girls. And your Joey, well, she sure is a beauty.” Ophelia’s rose perfume placed Grace right back into their shared past and Ophelia’s loyalty to their family, making remorse flare for an instant before she extinguished it again.
“How’s Eugene?” Grace asked. “And Lilac?”
“They’re very well, thank you. My husband’s still working like an ox, praise be. And Lilac’s in Atlanta now, working on that voter registration nonsense going on down there, and you know she blessed us with three grandbabies, teenagers now, anyway, they’re precious to us.”
Grace recalled the day she and her childhood playmate slipped through the cottonwood grove behind the Peterson’s house to the creek to make teacups for the fairies from clay on the bank. When they returned and Ophelia saw the clay smeared on their skin and clothing, she did that thing with her lips signaling displeasure and ordered them into the bathtub. The girls had bathed together before, but not in some time and, at age seven, Grace had a new thought. A question, really, about five-year-old Lilac’s skin, which was much lighter than her mother’s. Ophelia rubbed soap onto a cloth. “Use this right quick,” she ordered Grace, and then took another cloth to Lilac’s arms and legs. “Is she gonna look like me with all that scrubbing?” Grace asked, holding out her pale arm. First, Ophelia looked as if she might laugh, but then she shook her head slowly. “Child, don’t be ignorant. That’s her true tone, just like that’s yours. They’re all God’s colors.”
***
“Tell her hello for me,” Grace said now, patting Ophelia’s hand and then releasing it. The older woman’s expression at that moment, a certain way she set her eyebrows, made Grace think of Louis, but she stuffed that thought down as fast as it had surfaced. She wouldn’t mention him, didn’t want to bring back that grief back for Ophelia.
Grace focused back on her cheer squad, caught Joey’s eye and smiled. Joey waved and then shoved her hair behind her ears, her nervous tic. She had inherited Grace’s angular face and niveous skin and her father’s shiny coal-black hair. Her eyes were her own, though, as bright green as the prairie after a rainy April. Grace still couldn’t believe her baby was about to graduate from high school already.
The tip-off was grabbed by Prairie Spring, and the boys jogged down the court dribbling and passing with smooth synchroneity, paired up with their complement from the other team like dance partners. Grace’s cheerleaders hollered, and the fans joined in with more foot stomping, all the sounds ping-ponging to the rafters and back down in a thrilling dissonance.
Grace glanced at the Guardsmen, now hanging back but still at attention. The officer with the German shepherd paced on the arena’s upper tier in sight of everyone. If the boys ended up scuffling, and someone got benched or thrown out, would that start something ugly here? Something that would land this event in the news? She glanced at the locker room doors. She would grab Joey and her squad and hustle them out.
Shrill whistles added to the cacophony, and the Prairie Spring boys played better than Grace had ever seen them play. At the same time, Omaha City was making errors and missing easy shots. Flustered, they fouled over and over, their fans groaning loudly in unison. They ran back and forth looking scared and out of sync instead of playing with their usual confidence and harmony. Perhaps they were distracted by the rally earlier in the week, Ernie’s arrest, and all the recent trouble in their city. Even though she wanted her underdog team to win, she felt bad for Omaha. They’d been the leading team all year, they deserved to win. Instead, they were in real danger now.
But they kept scoring, and, in the third quarter, down by only four points, an Omaha guard passed to his center and Prairie Spring’s forward tried to intercept. It looked to Grace as if he had knocked the Omaha player out of the way to get the ball. But the referee, the shorter of two white men, did not call the foul and instead let Prairie Spring take the ball down court where they scored and increased their lead. The crowd complained again.
Grace glanced at Ophelia, whose lips were set in disapproval. Growing up, Grace worked hard to keep that look off Ophelia’s face since it cut deeper than any punishment administered. All Ophelia needed to do was glare at Grace and her younger sister when they broke a rule and the girls would apologize with true remorse. Their brother, though, tested Ophelia for a time. Once, he dared to tell Ophelia she was not his boss and stalked off like a wild animal who’d evaded capture. But Grace and Debbie had tattled on him, and after their father paddled Gary’s behind that evening for rudeness toward Ophelia, he, too, fell in line. Grace, though, obeyed Ophelia not out of fear but out of a deep need not to disappoint her.
The game, now paused more frequently for fourth-quarter time-outs so coaches could scream more directives at their players, continued cleanly for a time, with the boys engaging in their typical elbow jabs and arms raised in exaggerated no-touch blocks, reminding Grace of little kids shouting, I didn’t do it! But every action was amped up with larger-than-life importance. The championship, hinged on every play and every call. The refs, seemingly unaccountable to anyone, held an oversized power over the outcome.
She watched as the two white boys on the Omaha team, mostly bench warmers for this game, joined in the palm slaps with their teammates at every substitution. She knew the boys on the Prairie Spring team, just like her own high school team, had never exchanged a palm slap or even a handshake with a black boy.
With five minutes on the clock, the short ref called a foul on an Omaha player after a clean rebound. The jeering began again, and the player argued with the ref who called a technical foul, sending him to the bench. This made the crowd protest even louder. The Guardsmen near the court scanned the Omaha crowd carefully, some brushing fingers over their rifles. Grace wanted to object, too, but that would have been disloyal to her side. Her silence also stemmed from not knowing what to do about the injustice and how she alone could possibly do anything about it.
Soon after, Ernie Williams ran up the side, trying to get in position for a pass. As he swiveled, he tripped and fell, skidding directly in front of Joey, crouched just outside the sideline. Joey instinctively reached out a hand as if to help him up but then withdrew it when she realized the futility. The boy hopped up and began running again. But first he nodded ever so slightly at Joey. Grace could see it from her spot two rows up: they had definitely locked eyes. The pack of players hustled to the far basket, but Grace watched as Joey studied her inner wrist, in the spot she usually dabbed with perfume, at what must have been a drop of Ernie’s perspiration. Before it could disappear, Joey swiped the drop with a fingertip and drew it quickly over her lower lip, turning it glossy. Grace let out a soft gasp.
She was troubled, repulsed to be honest, by what she’d just seen, could not fathom why Joey would want to taste the boy’s sweat. She had an urge to run over, shake her and scream a question at her. But she’d never make a scene. She could talk with her later, although she wouldn’t know what to say. That was sickening. Why did you do that? What did it taste like?
She turned her gaze back to the game in order to put it out of her mind. Their shots landing, the teams traded leads now. Up by two, tied, down by two. She recognized the familiar tight gut feeling of anticipation and relief when your team shot and scored, and the desperate wishing the other team would miss and the disappointment when they didn’t. The metronome of emotions, swinging at a frantic tempo.
Grace—and most of the Prairie Spring fans—would have secretly bet against their own team, so unmatched were the squads. But now they seemed to have a chance. They might just do this, and how exciting that would be for their school, and for Joey cheering at her last game. Grace wanted this for her girl, but at the same time, it didn’t feel right. An undeserved win always carried an underlying sense of regret, and the Omaha kids would be crushed. But that’s how tournaments went. Somebody wins and somebody’s got to lose.
There were always questionable calls, and many unpopular calls, during high-stakes games like this one. But many of today’s calls from the short ref seemed unfair. His face was sweaty and stern, but his lips curled up in the slightest grin when he made the calls against Omaha. It was as if he wanted to bring them down a notch, put them in their place. And, she knew, it was also because they were a black team. Grace wondered if the man had a white sheet costume hanging in his closet. With two minutes left, the score tied, the boys chased each other back and forth. Most were exhausted, and the coaches swapped boys in and out and used their final time-outs to give them a breather. The clock ticked down, and the players sprinted even faster, desperate to gain the lead or at least hold the tie.
The final buzzer sounded, and Grace locked on to the scoreboard. 52-50. A stunned silence filled the huge arena. Then, one by one, sounds broke through: an Omaha fan shouted “No way, man,” a cheerleader sobbed, and somewhere a heavy door slammed. The officers around the court stiffened, shifting their weapons. Grace’s body tensed. The man with the German shepherd walked to the center of the court, the animal’s flanks straining as the two stood watch.
*****
Katherine Briccetti is a Pushcart-nominated essayist and the author of Blood Strangers: A Memoir (Heyday Books), a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, which was also short-listed by Graywolf and New Rivers Press contests. She has participated in Litquake, Bay Area Book Festival and L.A. Times Festival of Books. She holds a PhD in psychology and an MFA in creative writing, and she’s attended Breadloaf, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and VCFA Post-MFA fiction workshop. She’s taught English, edited professionally and reviewed books for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has appeared in the Dos Passos Review; Short ´Edition, Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts; Under the Sun; upstreet; The Writer; Bark; Los Angeles Times; and in several anthologies and on public radio. WHETHER THEY BE, has been short- and long-listed by several novels-in-progress literary contests, including Simon & Schuster’s “Books Like Us,” James Jones First Novel Fellowship, San Francisco Writers’ Conference and Master’s Review Novel Excerpt, where it placed in “the top 2%” of submissions.
