Love In Black And White
by
Mark and Gail Mathabane

publisher unknown

copyright 1992

ISBN: unknown

What does it mean to be an interracial couple in America?  For many
years, decades, it has meant being analyzed, studied, categorized,
labeled, and collected into statistics and theories-some bizarre and
others downright ridiculous-aimed at answering a question at once
simple and complex: Why do human beings fall in love?

There's little doubt that of all the kinds of mixed couples in America,
the black and white relationships are among the most studied,
psychoanalyzed, and discussed.  They provoke the strongest reactions in
people.  They are constantly targeted by black and white opponents of
trrace mixing."

Sociological treatises and psychological studies abound about the
problems of and the motives behind interracial relationships.  They
have fascinated and titillated society since the days of slavery.  But
despite extensive research into such relationships, there have been few
human stories about why individuals from dilferent and frequently
antagonistic worlds defy formidable cultural prejudices and taboos to
unite their lives in friendship and marriage.

There are about 200,000 married black-white couples in America, living
in virtually every state of the Union.  Amazingly, many of these
couples are in the South, where until 1967 such marriages were
forbidden by law.

In Virginia in 1959 a white man and his black wife were convicted by an
all-white grand jury for violating the state's ban on interracial
marriages.  The penal code stated: If any white person intermarry with
a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white
person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by
confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than
five years.

In his sentencing opinion the Virginia judge stated: Almighty God
created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed
them on separate continents.  Alld but for the interference with his
arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages  The fact that
he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to
mix.

The couple appealed the decision, and in June 1967 the Supreme Court
struck down the Virginia law, along with the anti-miscegenation laws of
Fifteen other states, on the grounds that the freedom to marry whom one
chooses is one of the "vital personal rights" protected under the
Fourteenth Amendment.

But attitudes change slower than laws: Twenty-five years after the
Supreme Court ruling, stereotypes and misconceptions against mixed
marriages are still rife.  We have attempted, with this book, to
explore and expose these attitudes.

Our book is not another "scientific" or "sociological" study of mixed
couples.  It is simply the story of two individuals who fell in love.

From outward appearances Gail and I could not be more dissimilar-a
blond American who grew up in relative comfort in the middle-class
suburbs of Ohio, Texas, and Minnesota, and an African raised in
segregated South Africa amid dire poverty, suffering, and racism.

With the publication of Her Boy and Her Boy in Ariea, our relationship
came under the spotlight.  It was misunderstood, criticized, praised,
and subjected to all the stereotyping that America's lingering and
pervasive racism could conjure up.

This book is about our odyssey as a mixed couple in America.  It is
about what brought and keeps us together, how we have dealt with
opposition from family members, hostility from opponents of inrace
mixing," hate mail, the birth of our children, the threats to our
careers, our own grappling with the complex requirements and emotions
of interracial love.

It is also about the moving personal stories of friends and Preface
acquaintances who decided to break long silences about the true
nature of their interracial relationships, ofien revealing paullid
secrets about careers, friendships, and families sacrificed for their
undying conviction that humanity is one, that human love can and should
be shared with everyone, regardless of color or creed.  For years many
of these courageous individuals had been prevented from telling their
stories for fear of opening deep wounds, of provoke ing racist attacks,
or worse.

Gail and I are far from assuming to speak for all mixed couples.

Nor do we have all the answers for the complex process of falling in
love that is as individual as our fingerprints.  Nor do we expect our
book to dispel all the stereotypes about mixed couples.  In some cases
these stereotypes may be validated.  But of one thing we are certain:
Interracial couples should cease being simply statistics, guinea pigs
for social scientists and psychoanalysts to dissect and analyze.  They
should become human.

KERNERsyILLE, NORTH CARoLINA, 1991

MARK'S VIEW ,," Gail and I met in 1984 when I was twenty-four and she
twenty-two.

We were both graduate students at the Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism in New York City.  I had just committed what many considered
the worst blunder of my life: I had abandoned my scholarship at the
journalism school and a possible secure job afterward as a
journalist.

I had few prospects except a half-completed, unpublished manuscript
about my childhood and youth in Alexandra, a South African ghetto, and
how I escaped from apartheid bondage to freedom in America.  My leaving
journalism school had partly to do with a fervid desire to finish the
book, whose story had haunted me for years.  A few publishers had
expressed interest in the manuscript.  But I held out little hope that
the book, if published, would change my life-in other words, that it
would be any dilferent from the thousands published each year only to
fade into oblivion, leaving the author as poor and insignificant as
before.

Gail and I were living at International House-popularly known as
I-House-on 122nd and Riverside Drive.  Situated on the edge of Harlem
and overlooking the Hudson River, the five hundred rooms of I-House
olfered alfordable housing to students of various nationalities, from
all over the world, who were in the United States pursuing advanced
degrees or working as interns for multinational companies in New York
City.  Among them were Germans, Africans, Swedes, Mid-Easterners,
Japanese, South Americans, French.  Scores of American students were
permitted to live in I-House to partake in the unique cultural
exchanges.

I first became aware of Gail at a crowded dance party, hosted by the
African cultural club, in the main hall of International House, an
elaborate room with huge original oil paintings on the walls and French
doors opening onto a terrace overlooking a small park.

Attending the party was a fluke.  My upbringing and experiences in
South Africa (which in no sense was a normal childhood) had led me to
believe that life was mainly for working and learning.  I had tried
since arriving in the United States in 1978 to learn to relax and
enjoy myself the way most Americans do, but to no avail.  As a result,
many women considered me a bore.  At this party I merely stood
awkwardly and abstractedly beside a pillar, occasionally attempting to
engage this and that person in serious conversation, with little
success.

Gail was joyously leaping about to the Reggae music, laughing and
clapping her hands as if she had no cares in the world.  She was the
epitome of a free spirit.  Because I frequently brooded over the fate
of my impoverished family back home in South Africa, her carefree
attitude was like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy hut.  It gave me
momentary relief from heavy and depressing thoughts.

1Gail was dancing with a tall, gangly white fellow.  A strange feeling
akin to envy arose in me as I saw them sit down on a couch together to
talk.  I watched them out of the corner of my eye, wondering if they
were more than friends.  But what reason did I have to Iwonder at such
things?  I didn't even know her.  Besides, she was white and we seemed
to have little in common.

Some of the women I had dated through college had been white, and I had
enjoyed and benefited from the experience, but I still hoped eventually
to marry a black woman.  Repeated attempts to establish serious
relationships with compatible black women, however, ended in painful
failure.  Some considered me ascetic, too seriIous about life and too
much of a bookworm.  Others thought me too efemininett because I
openly expressed my feelings and disdained a macho image.  Still others
were bewildered and even ashamed at finding out about my background of
poverty, squalor, and degradation.

This befuddled me as I thought we had much in common, emotionally at
least, given our similar experiences under white oppression and common
African culture.  But many black women saw themselves as more American
than African.  They judged me and my worth in American terms, and
because I had no prospects, no money, and no status and was a foreign
student, I was presumably considered a risky investment for a long-term
relationship.

Realizing this, and being somewhat wounded by it, I vowed to stick with
the woman, whatever her race or color, who would see that beneath the
poverty, seriousness, and lack of material success, there was a
feeling, caring, and loving human being worthy of being befriended,
loved, and depended on.

Gail and I continued to run into each other.  At meals I saw her enter
the cafeteria carrying her lunch tray, look around for an open table,
and sit down at a distance from me.  She seemed taller and stronger
than other women; she wore her blond hair short and usually dressed in
shabby men's clothing.  Her favorite outfit consisted of a dark blue
men's suit jacket she bought the previous summer at a yard sale in San
Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, denim jeans, army-style boots,
dangling earrings, and multicolored scarves around her neck in the
bohemian style reminiscent of the 1960s.  Her devil-may-care manner of
dressing was part of her charm.  She would have been out of character
in high heels and dresses.

One evening while doing my regular exercise routine of skipping rope
and doing push-ups on the sixth floor, Gail happened to walk by.

Without warning she dropped to the floor, did ten quick push-ups,
smiled at me, and then vanished behind a closing elevator door.

I was perplexed.  Who is this strange woman?  Why is she so independent
of societal pressures, especially the pressure many women felt to act
weak and feminine?  At the time I was rereading John Stuart Mill's
classic essay The Subjection of Women" and was strongly interested in
feminism, particularly in comparing the role and struggles of women in
South African and American societies.

My early introduction to feminism was through my mother and
grandmother.  Though the two indomitable matriarchs daily groaned under
the yoke of a triple oppression-they were women in a patriarchal
culture, blacks in a white-dominated society, and unschooled in a world
where education was increasingly vital-they remained strong, caring,
loving, and compassionate individuals, full of earthy wisdom and
resolute in striving to better their lives and those of their
children.

Granny had raised my mother and my mother's four siblings alone after
her husband abandoned her for another woman.

And my mother, following my father's emasculation by the apartheid
system, effectively kept the family together.

My mother and grandmother were the first feminists I knew.

Their characters, example, and deeds heavily influenced my values and
outlook on life.  They liberated the other important half of me, the
feminine part, and made it grow and fully complement my masculine
half.

Whereas my father had sought to teach me that however deep the pain men
never cry, ever, and that they should suppress, deny, and keep their
emotions bottled up, my mother and grandmother taught me that a man can
cry, love, care, change diapers, clean house, iron, and still be a
man.

Once I came to know Gail well, I saw a lot of my mother in her.

Her being white did not obscure the fact that she was intensely
human.

She felt deeply and cared about others.  She possessed in full measure
what in my mother's Tsonga culture is called rirbandu (inhuman love,
kindness").

My first conversation with Gail was about women's issues.  One day in
the hot and humid laundry room in the basement of I-House, I overheard
Gail telling Katie King, another journalism student, about her visit to
a battered women's shelter in Harlem.  I joined the conversation.  My
sympathy for women's issues and my hatred of male violence against
women surprised Gail and Katie.  But I was merely speaking from
personal experience: My father used to beat my mother for such trifles
as answering back when he lectured her, which he called
ininsubordination unbecoming the woman he bought."  At the age of
thirty-seven, he had paid about twenty cattle in Jobota for my mother
when she was seventeen and without a say in the matter.

The patriarchal tribal culture at the time invested men with almost
dictatorial powers over women.  Wife beating was so widespread and
accepted that many women considered it a sign of a man's affection.

HowWe MetIT Not my mother.  She was a quiet, but determined, rebel.

As I mentioned at the beginning, about the time I met Gail I was
leading a life, largely self-imposed, of an intellectual hermit.

Having dropped out of Columbia J-school to concentrate on completing
the manuscript for Her BoA, I followed a rigid schedule of reading,
writing, and exercising, and spent most of my time in my cell-like dorm
room.  I only went out to purchase fruit at a Korean fresh market on
Broadway or to browse through my favorite used-book stores on Amsterdam
Avenue and downtown at the Strand.

Because I had dropped out of school, my immigration status was
precarious.  Technically I could have been deported because I had
ceased being a full-time student.  I was in the process of applying for
a green card.  If that were denied, I was ready to request political
asylum rather than return home, where the Pretoria regime had escalated
its repression and killing and detention of blacks.  Letters from home
brought only bad news and entreaties for money.  I had none.  I was
still unable to support myself and relied on my benefactor Stan Smith,
one of the closest friends I have, black or white.

Shortly after quitting journalism school I published a few articles in
the St. Petersburg Tic sharply critical of apartheid and its brutal
suppression of' black dissent.  Soon I began receiving anonymous
threatening phone calls in the middle of the night.

I knew it was dangerous to write the truth about black life under
apartheid, but I felt it was my duty, having had the rare opportunity
of escaping from the bondage of legalized racism and segregation, to
inform Americans, in human terms, that blacks in South Africa were
fighting and dying for the same rights and freedoms that Americans'
could not imagine life without: the rights to vote, to live where one
wished, to speak freely, to work for just pay, to have equal justice
under the law.

One night around three, the ringing of the phone jarred me from a deep
slumber.  I picked up the receiver.

"Hello?)1 Silence.  "Hello?fl A low, deliberate voice with an
Afrikaner accent said, "You'd better watch out, kqffir" "Who is
this?"

I demanded.

"We can stop you, if we have to."  "Who is this?"

No answer.  The phone went dead.

I dropped the receiver into its cradle, switched off the lamp, and
crawled back under the covers.  But I could not sleep a wink.  Fear,
doubt, and anxiety tormented me.

I found comfort only in daylight and in routine.  I rose each morning
at seven, wrote until noon, ate lunch, read all alternoon, ate dinner,
read, then worked out.  One evening, not long after sunset, I carried
my ball hopper and tennis rackets downstairs to the gym, hoping to bang
out my fears and anger by practicing ground strokes against the wall.

In Manhattan, tennis courts were scarce and private clubs were
prohibitively expensive.  To keep playing my favorite sport, tennis, I
had resorted to hitting against the gym wall.

The mysterious telephone calls in recent nights had put me on edge.  I
trusted few people, and those I did trust, black or white, had earned
my confidence.

As I approached the gym, I noticed the lights were on.  I paused, for I
rarely encountered anyone else during my solitary tennis sessions.  I
opened the door a crack and saw Gail, who was stretching out.  It
turned out she had just returned from a jog through Riverside Park, in
snow and ice.  I hesitated.  Should I come back later?  I decided to
enter.  I strode in nonchalantly, placed my rackets and ball hopper in
their usual spot against the back wall, and slipped the cover off one
of the rackets, gilts from Stan.

"Hello," Gail said as she bobbed over an outstretched leg, reaching for
the toe of her well-worn, gray running shoe.

"Hi, how are you?"  "All right," she replied, turning to stretch her
other leg.  "I survived my run.  It's too icy out there for running
shoes, but the snow isn't deep enough for skis."

Never having skied before, I found this statement intriguing.  Do you
ski in New York?"

4Whenever I can," she said.  "But the snow is much better where I come
from, Minnesota."

Not knowing what else to say, I started whacking tennis balls against
the wall.  The whole time I was thinking of what a comely, radiant face
she had, boyish in shape but feminine in feature.  Her shoulders were
broad for a woman, probably those of a swimmer, and in her turtleneck,
sweats, and parka, she appeared rustic, out HowWeMet/9 doorsy, and
unseflconscious.  Flustered and embarrassed by my attraction to her,
which I was convinced was one way, I concentrated on establishing the
rhythm in my strokes and smooth weight transference from the back to
the front foot as I struck the ball.  I did not look in her
direction.

What made me uncomfortable about my attraction to her was that she was
white.  My predicament was this: Since coming to the United States I
had come under increasing pressure to choose sides in America's racial
battles.  Militant blacks wanted me to prove my solidarity with their
cause by disassociating myself from whites and confining my friendships
to the black community.  My refusal to adopt the attitude that all
whites are racist by abandoning white friends who had earned my trust
and respect led me to be labeled an Uncle Tom.

To regard all whites as racist by failing to judge them as individuals
is as harmful as the white attitude of stereotyping all blacks.  But
this argument of mine fell on deaf ears.  Bitterness, rage, suspicion,
fear, and hate had largely supplanted reason, tolerance, and common
sense in America's race relations.

Some whites, on the other hand, also victims of the racism and
intolerance that pervaded society, were unable or unwilling to deal
with me on my own terms, as an individual, rather than as one of the
many stereotypes about blacks they had imbibed growing up
selfsegregated from black America.

Suddenly Gail jumped up, picked up one of my other rackets, and tested
the grip size.

Do you play?"  I inquired.

I used to play a lot when I lived in Austin, Texas."

"Let's see," I said, and tossed her two balls.

She hit the balls hard, stirny, but with determination.  They bounced
back to her at odd angles, making -her look ludicrous as she lunged and
twisted and spun with little success in hitting the balls back.  Both
of us laughed uproariously.

"Hold the racket firmly but don't choke it," I said.  And don't forget
to watch the ball carefully.  And follow through, transferring your
weight forward.  Like this."  I demonstrated.

She tried again, but control of the ball kept eluding her.  I noticed
she was frustrated and a bit embarrassed.  I took the pressure off her
by patiently demonstrating the proper technique.  We took turns
hitting.  Gradually some of her old skills came back.  Gail ran nonstop
all over the gym attempting to return my best shots.  Finally she
dropped from exhaustion.

"Don't stop, you're doing great," I said.  "You're a natural
athlete."

"I'll never be a tennis champion."

"Are you still holding your racket properly?"  I walked over to Gail,
placed my hands gently on hers, adjusted her forehand grip, and guided
her arm through the correct swing.  I did not let go of her hand right
away.  Our eyes met.

GAIL'S VIEW I wondered if he were intentionally looking into my eyes or
if he had simply forgotten himself.  I was puzzled by the way his dark
brilliant eyes seemed to penetrate right through me.  I stepped away
from him and hit a few more balls.

I had never before been attracted to anyone of a darker race, and I did
not know how to react to my own emotions.  Interracial love, white
society had loudly and insistently said, was taboo.  I did not forget
for a second that I was alone in a gym with a black man.  But I also
knew he was a remarkable human being from what I had heard from
colleagues at the J-school, and I felt excited at the opportunity of
finally meeting and talking to him.  I gathered my belongings
nervously and headed for the door, overcome with the strangeness of the
situation.  I had learned to relate to blacks with respect and as
equals from interviewing them in Harlem and the South Bronx for
journalism classes, but I was aware of the racist attitudes of many
whites and wondered at my own subtle prejudices.  Simply put, I dreaded
getting involved, however platonically, with a black man.

"Leaving already?"  Mark asked.

"Yes, I have to go."

He seemed to want to say something more, so I waited.

"Would you like to accompany me to a tennis match Sunday afternoon?"
he asked.

I felt paralyzed with a potent mixture of joy and fear.  I spoke from
my heart, not my head, when I said, "I'd love to."  Then I fled HowWe
Met/Il from the object of my emotional turmoil.  I ran upstairs to my
tenthfloor room and sat on my bed looking out the window at Riverside
Church and the Hudson River and the gray sky, deep in thought.

I first became aware of Mark during a Monday morning lecture in the
World Room of the journalism school.  I saw a well-dressed black man,
whose shirt had apparently been carefully ironed and whose short Afro
had been neatly combed, stand up and question the speaker about an
issue related to apartheid.  He spoke with a strange British accent,
and the speaker cleared his throat several times before attempting to
evade the question and mumble some obscure, unrelated answer.

Michelle Nayman, a fellow journalism student from Australia, leaned
toward me and whispered, "That was Mark Mathabane.  Have you met
him?"

"No," I said.  "Who is he?"

"Oh, you've got to meet him," she whispered.  "He's led an incredible
life and he's writing a book about it.  He escaped apartheid with the
help of Stan Smith, the tennis player.  He grew up in a ghetto outside
Johannesburg in a shack made of tin, plastic, and brick, and slept most
of his childhood on pieces of cardboard under the kitchen table.  He's
the eldest of seven, and in the winter his mother wrapped them in old
newspapers to keep them warm."

"How awful!  Couldn't they afford blankets?"  I asked naively, unaware,
like most Americans were at the time, of the horrible living conditions
in South African townships.

"No, they were very poor.  His father made only ten dollars a week,"
Michelle continued.  "But most of the time he couldn't Find work.  The
family had to scavenge for food at garbage dumps."

I shook my head in disbelief, then looked at Mark, several rows up.

"You'd never know from looking at him that he's lived through all
that."

"He has amazing determination," Michelle said.

Michelle's admiration for Mark sparked my curiosity I yearned to hear
more about Mark's life under apartheid, a system I understood only
superficially from newspaper accounts.

A few weeks later I was having lunch with a Belgian journalism student
named Geert when Mark joined us at our table.  He directed his
conversation to Geert, and gesticulated with his hands a lot when he
spoke.  Having seldom sat so close to a black person before, I was
fascinated by the simple fact that his palms were a lighter color than
the backs of his hands.  He had the smallest, cutest ears I had ever
seen, and I admired his large brown eyes and the way his goldrimmed
glasses, watch, and white sweater contrasted with his dark skin.

Geert asked him questions.  Mark infused his replies with incisive
observations about race and such poignant details about his life in the
ghetto that an overwhelming feeling of empathy arose within me.

I had never before heard of such horrors or such a graphic description
of the plight and resiliency of South African blacks.  He Ielt a deep
impression on me.

One evening as I rode the elevator to the tenth floor, the car stopped
on the sixth floor to let someone off.  As the doors opened, I saw Mark
jumping rope in the hallway, wearing nothing but yellow running shorts
and tennis shoes.  He was taking a breather, and his muscular chest
glistened with sweat.  He smiled bashfully as he stepped aside to let
people by.  He must have been popular, for everyone greeted him with a
"Hi, Mark," to which he replied with a slow and drawn out, "Hello, how
is everybody?"

Then the doors slid shut and the elevator jolted upward.  It had just
lasted a few seconds, but that image of him stuck in my mind.

As a former swimmer and cross-country runner during high school, I had
always admired well-conditioned athletes.  A few days later, as I
headed for the sixth floor elevator, Mark was doing push-ups.  I
pressed the elevator button and waited, trying to act casual and keep
my eyes off him.  I had a sudden urge to show him that he wasn't the
only athlete at I-House so I dropped to the ground and did ten quick
push-ups, then dashed onto the elevator with a quick "Bye."  As the
doors closed I saw a funny smile spread across his face.

I never imagined Mark would ever become my boyfriend, let alone my
husband.  At the time I had a steady boyfriend named Glen.

Though we were both PKs (preacher's kids) from Minnesota, Glen and I
had met, of all places, in Budapest in 1983.  He was a blue-eyed
graduate of the University of Minnesota with a full-blooded Norwegian
ancestry and a middle name of Thor, after the Norse god.  As soon as I
was accepted to Columbia, he started applying for jobs in New York City
so he could be near me.  He got a job with a nonprofit group started by
Ralph Nader that fought to keep consumer prices down and advocated
safe, reliable, and affordable public transportation.  I admired his
devotion to the public good and his dedicated efforts to help the
poor.

He rented a small room in Brooklyn and we would commute by subway to
see each other.

I excitedly told Glen about Mark and his remarkable odyssey from a
violent and desperate South African ghetto to the journalism school.

One night I happened to run into Mark when I was with Glen, so I
introduced them.

"I've heard a lot about you," Glen said, shaking Mark's hand with
enthusiasm.  He did not have the slightest hint of jealousy in his
voice, probably because Mark was black and, therefore, presumed not a
threat.

Glen wanted us to live together and eventually get married.

Commitment scared me.  My career ambition was to become a foreign
correspondent.  I was applying for jobs at Reuters News Service in
London, at Radio Free Europe in Munich,' and at the U.S. Information
Agency for an internship in Germany.  In case I could not get a job
abroad, I had sent resumes to papers all over the country: on forested
islands off the coast of Alaska, near Hawaiian beaches, in the wilds of
Arkansas and Louisiana, high in the Rocky Mountains.  I poured my
random desires into the mailbox and patiently waited for my future to
decide for itself what I would do and where.

Glen liked me to wear a white scarf because he felt it made me look
"pure."  He sometimes had jealous dreams in which I told him I had been
seeing someone else.  He wanted me to be his and his alone.  He made me
feel that I could have no male friends.  He could never forgive me for
having had boyfriends before him.  Instead of being proud of my
accomplishments, he felt threatened by them.  He hated the Ivy League,
and all it stood for, and resented the fact that I had graduated magna
cum laude from Brown University, an institution he pegged as a tool for
perpetuating the elite ruling class.  Envy gnawed at him when he
learned I was taking a literature class at Brown taught by Susan
Sontag.  It came to a peak when he learned I was taking a law course at
Columbia taught by Benno Schmidt, now president of Yale University, and
New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis.

I should have terminated the relationship much earlier, but I was
afraid to hurt him.  So I stuck it out, growing more miserable each
day, and silently longing for a man who would let me be myself and
trust me enough to let me have male friends.

At Christmas time 1984, back in Minnesota, I skied alone through
snow-filled woods, sliding silently between evergreens laden with ice
crystals.  I brushed the snow off a fallen tree and lay down on it,
facing the deep blue sky and watching the steam rise from my body.

As I lay there, thoughts came to me that changed my life: I grew
convinced that I should develop my talents and creativity fully, let my
spirit thrive uninhibited, and avoid any man who sought to stifle and
kill that spirit, the only thing that gave purpose and meaning to my
life.  I would break up with Glen.

The new year came and I returned to New York.  I had been back a week
when I went for a run along the Hudson River through snow, listening to
Corelli and Telemann on my Walkman and watching the sun set in a
glorious serenity of colors whose beauty made the heart ache.

I was stretching out in the gym when Mark walked in.  My heart beat
faster.  I could not resist watching in silent awe as he began hitting
tennis balls against the wall.  He seemed to glide across the floor,
like a ballet dancer, as he steadily and gracefully struck the yellow
tennis ball, hard and fast against the wall in a lulling rhythm of
bounces and swats.  His jaw was firm in concentration and his eyes were
riveted on the ball.  His smooth black arms and legs moved in a
synchronized manner with precision and grace.  It was beautiful to
watch.  I was thrilled when he invited me to the tennis match.

But alone in my room, guilt set in.  How would I tell Glen I was going
to a tennis match with Mark?  Did I have the courage to break up with
him?  When Mark called to confirm the date, I said, "Can I take a rain
check?"

"Sure," Mark replied.

"Who was that?"  Glen asked as I hung up.

"That was Mark.  He wanted to take me to a tennis game."

As I expected, Glen flew into a jealous rage.  "You were going to go on
a date with another guy!"  he screamed.  "What were you thinking?  How
would you feel if I told you I was going on a date with another
woman?"

"It would be okay with me, because I trust you."

How We Met/IS a photograph of John McEnroe holding a huge, ornate
silver trophy above his head in triumph: He had just won the
Grandmaster's titie.  I regretted not having gone to the match at
Madison Square Garden with Mark, and I worried that he might have
ascribed my refusal to his being black.  I wrote a short and honest
note to him, explaining why I had decided not to go and adding, in no
uncertain terms, that I admired his character.  Upon rereading the
note, I realized I might be making a fool of myself if he were already
in love with someone else.

My cheeks flushed red and my heart pounded as I added a timid
postscript: "P.S. Do you have a girlfriend?"

The next day I found in my mailbox a letter written on pink
stationery.

It read Dear Gail, Many thanks for your candid letter.  I do not know
if you expected a reply, but my heart willingly gives one.  Bear in
mind it is my heart speaking, and as we mortals well know, hearts have
a curious language of their own, intelligible only to a select few.

Such persons have about them that rare wonder called 0Beauty of the
Soul."  The thoughts in your letter tell me you're one of them.

They're spontaneous, down to-earth and unpretentious.  Put differently,
they're the essence of you.

They make you extremely attractive intellectually, emotionally, and'
otherwise.  It is a joy to know you.

True friends are too hard to come by for us not to open our hearts when
someone special comes along.  Of course opening our hearts entails
risks, leaves us vulnerable to the vicissitudes of human nature.

But I have yet to meet true friends who knowingly hurt one another.

That's what I believe we have the potential of becoming: true
friends.

l:inally, I don't presently have a steady girlfriend.  The reason: I've
yet to meet a woman who sees me the way you've described me; a woman
who understands that true friendship is the basis of a relation ship; a
woman who accepts the maxim that love is that relation between man and
woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and
the obligation reciprocal."  I hope I'm not looking for an angel on
earth.

With love, MA

Like two nervous high-school kids on a blind date, Mark and I met
downstairs in the lobby of I-House the next day, bundled up have been
spring.  We sauntered to Broadway where we boarded a bus for the
Cloisters, an old medieval monastery on a cliff beetling over the
Hudson that had been converted into an ancient art museum.  Mark wore
an amusing pinkandgreen plaid tie.  We strolled through the warm
monastery, discussing unicorns and tapestries, brass statues and carved
doors, and much more that was communicated without words by shy,
sidelong glances and sheepish smiles.

That evening, alone in my overheated room, I wrote in my journal: "The
sun has just set over the Hudson, and I have just fallen in love with
another man.  He is refined and highly educated though he grew up in a
ghetto.  He sees with his soul and writes with his heart.

His thoughts sometimes roll by me as I struggle to pursue their
meaning, his mind teems with philosophy and noble ideas, his shelves
overflow with great literature, his face shines with the radiance of
his convictions.  He is a great artist, an independent spirit, a rebel
in disguise, a believer in truth and right in a world full of deception
and cynicism."

The phone rang, breaking my concentration.  It was Glen.  I told him I
wanted to date "someone."  We argued.

He rode the subway all the way uptown to talk to me in person.  I told
him I had spent the day at the Cloisters with Mark.

"You two have been seeing a lot of each other lately, haven't you?"  he
fumed.

"If you call one day a lot,' " I replied.

He paused, then asked, "Did he kiss you good-bye?"

"Yes."

"On the lips?"

"Yes."

Glen started trembling all over.  Soon he was shaking so violently he
put on his coat.  "You have to choose between me and Mark," he said,
"and I want the answer right here and now."

I didn't know what to say.

Glen hurled his shoulder bag at the wall, then grabbed it and lelt, his
face flushed with anger.  He called me later to say he was cold, wet,
lonely, and terrified of losing me.  He said he had been wandering
around the city like a madman and had wet feet and was shivering in a
phone booth.  I felt awful.

"How could you just throw us away like that?"  he demanded.

"Your biggest fault is that you can be so damn coldhearted sometimes.

I can't stand the thought of losing a woman to another man.  If you
leave me my life is over."

The next few months my joy at getting to know Mark was overshadowed by
my guilt at having hurt Glen.  Glen seemed to think I was just going
through a passing phase and would soon come to my senses.  The fact
that I had lelt him for a black seemed to make him even more desperate
to win me back.  He wrote long, tortured letters.

He called me at odd hours to make sure I was in my room.  He composed
depressing poems I could not interpret.  He waited for me outside my
classes with bouquets of flowers.

I wished Glen could just let go.  Our relationship was over.  All my
devotion was now directed at Mark, whom I knew I could never stop
loving.  I carried my pain over the breakup inside me, and did not
share much of it with Mark.  But without my saying a word, Mark could
always tell when I was upset or troubled.  He would stop whatever he
was doing to listen to me, comfort me, try to understand.

"I don't understand why you stayed with him for nearly two years," Mark
said.

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"You're so' brilliant, such a free spirit, that it pains me to see you
feeling confined and depressed.  You deserve all the opportunities to
grow.  There's nothing wrong with stopping to ask yourself whether
you're happy and trying to change your life if you're not."

I recall these memories not to revel in the pain I inllicted on someone
I once cared deeply about, but to address a pervasive stereotyp'e about
mixed couples.  Many whites believe that a white woman would only stoop
to loving or marrying a black man if she were too ugly, too ignorant,
or too poor to find herself a white mate.

This could not be further from the truth.  I've met dozens of bright,
attractive white women from respectable families who have fallen deeply
in love with good men who just happen to be black.

Another popular theory is that white women who date blacks have low
self-esteem and want to degrade themselves as much as possible by
prostituting their hearts, souls, and bodies to black men, who will
supposedly take them for granted and treat them like trash.

This, too, is a racist stereotype.  Most white women I've met who date
black men are more confident, self-assured, and independent than
average.  They are strong-willed and open�minded individuals who choose
to go against the social grain rather than give in to pressure from
parents, friends, coworkers, and society to break up with men they
admire, respect, and love.

In my case, my friendship with Mark has been an uplilting experience,
not a degrading one.  Mark has been unstinting in his support of me as
a writer.  He constantly encourages me to do my best without fear of
criticism or rejection.  He has instilled in me one of his mother's
favorite maxims: In life you never fail as long as you keep trying.  He
was even more of a feminist than I, and convinced me that women, like
blacks, should strive to realize their potentials without letting
prejudice and discrimination define, rule, and ruln their lives.

"Most obstacles to sellactualization can be overcome," he said.

"If I did not believe that, I would still be in South Africa."

Mark was all the things I had ever hoped for in a man-an intellectual,
a lover of books and philosophy and classical music, an athlete, a
fellow writer, a sensitive and compassionate human being, and a loyal
friend.  To be honest I had not expected my ideal man to be black, but
the fact that he was did not keep me from falling in love with him.

That spring Mark and I spent hours in one of the soundproof study rooms
off the library, facing each other across a huge table covered with
books and papers.  We talked deeply and intensely about topics ranging
from injustice, fate, and the Cold War to apartheid, history, and
writing.  He would read me Dover Beach, prelude, he RubGird!  of On!ar
KhdJyam, Ado nail, and other favorite poems.  He shared with me the
history of Africa's contributions to literature art, music, dance,
science, religion, and warfare so that I gained a greater respect and
sensitivity for truly one of the world's great civilizations.

I heard so many tales of his painful childhood that I knew his life
story by heart long before the Boy was published.  On my part I told
him what it was like growing up in the Midwest as the daughter of a
Presbyterian minister: how I always had a congregation of adoring faces
smiling down on me, how my father would take us sailing every Sunday,
how I spent my summers MOUNTAINCLIMBING in the White Mountains, and
several of my off-beat adventures.

"What a vivid storyteller!"  Mark exclaimed.  "You're the writer, I
laughed at his childlike enthusiasm and wished I had half the
confidence he had in my potential.

Mark heightened my desire to write and made me regularly think about
life's deeper meaning.  I thought of all the people who toil through
life, suppressing their emotions and ideals, forsaking or shunning
those eager to love them, single-mindedly pursuing their careers up
some mythical ladder with blind persistence, only to grow old and die,
leaving nothing behind but a hole in a corporate structure.  I realized
that the importance of life lies deep in one's relationship to
others.

People make our lives meaningful.  Human interaction is the essence of
our being.  When we die, we are kept alive only by the memories of
those who loved us, only by those whose lives we touched.

When Mark and I talked about writing we sometimes whipped ourselves
into amazing states of optimism and euphoria.  Writing, to us, was a
religion.  Great writers were our prophets.  We modeled our
relationship after that of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife,
Mary, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecralt and the author of Eanketein,
whom we saw as two perfectly matched nonconformists and free spirits.

I admired Mark's discipline so much that soon I acquired many of his
habits: I drank no caffeine, ate no red meat or sugar, woke up around
seven and typed journal notes or articles, ate piles of fruits and
vegetables, and worked out every other day.  We went for runs together
through Riverside Park from 122nd to 72nd and back up again.

Mark, in turn, wanted me to share elements of my life with him.  I was
doing my master's thesis on foreign artists living in the East
Village.

I took him to a few art openings packed with artists with spiked hair
that had been dyed fluorescent pink, in galleries reached only by
passing prone derelicts, drug dealers, and rotting garbage.  The
paintings on the walls burst with color and expression, but neither of
us could make any sense of their meaning or relevance to reality.

One winter evening, after hearing the New York Philharmonic play
Stravinsky and Debussy at Carnegie Hall, Mark and I walked to a rustic
restaurant crowded with heavy wooden tables on which burned thick white
candles surrounded by piles of dripping wax.  The place reminded me of
the wine cellar under the Budapest Castie.

----I-----------------------------------------------------------------
---I-."shirt with his gold necktie pin, telling me about his childhood
and youth.  Neither of his parents had gone to school, yet he
consistentiy came out Iirst throughout primary and high school, which
he attended after winning a government scholarship.  after a childhood
deprived of books, he fell in love with English, his fifth language,
and by his early teens books had become his only solace, his best
friends, the liberators of his mind and soul.

My eyes filled with tears as he spoke, but I tried to hide them so he
would not see my distress.  His eyes too seemed glazed with tears at
bringing overpowering memories back to life.  He had once told me that
he had trouble finding the right woman because many women thought him
lachrymose, mistook his sensitivity for a sign of latent
homosexuality.

I told him that his not being afraid to feel, to cry, to care, made him
more human, and thus more of a man to me.

Here bare me, I thought to myself, is a wise and sensitive spirit, born
in black skin and surrounded by the dirt and sorrow utter poverty and
powerlessness.  But since the human spirit can have no race or color,
he rose steadily and naturally, led not by what others told him he was
or was not, but by what he believed himseU to be.  He is an admirable,
yet most intimidating, companion.

MARK'S VIEW If someone had told me while I was growing up in a South
African ghetto that I would someday end up marrying a white woman, I
would have thought them insane.  For much of my childhood I didn't
know, let alone believe, that whites were even human, capable of
emotions such as love, care, and compassion.  The only image I had of
them was as policemen and soldiers.  Akin to predators, they were to be
feared and hated.  The oppression they daily and ruthlessly enforced
robbed me of my innocence and trust by forcing me, in order to survive
the raging hell of ghetto life their racist policies had created, to
begin thinking, feeling, and acting like an adult while still a
child.

I was about five years old when I had my first brutal encounter with
the police.  They had launched one of their midnight raids into the
ghetto.  I was awakened from my cardboard bed under the kitchen table
by a tremendous din outside our tiny shack.  Sirens blared, dogs
barked, windows smashed, doors shattered, and children screamed.  I
instantly knew that the police had invaded the neighborhood.  Terror
seized me as I recollected that during previous raids my mother and
father had to flee their own home to escape arrest because they did not
have a permit allowing them to live together as husband and wife under
the same roof.  Their nocturnal flights always lelt me feeling
helpless, confused, and afraid, especially as I had to care for my
siblings, Florah, three years old, and George, one year old.

Repeated raids crystallized my hatred of whites.  Once I was beaten by
the police after they forced their way into the shack, for failing to
open the door on time.  I had delayed in order to give my parents time
to hide or escape.  Another time I felt rage and hatred well inside me
as I saw them humiliate my father by marching him naked out of bed and
interrogating him in the middle of the shack, in front of his
bewildered and whimpering children.

For many years of my childhood my only contact with whites continued to
be with the police and soldiers.  Because of the Groups Areas Act,
which mandated rigidly segregated neighborhoods, blacks were forbidden
from entering white suburbs without permits.  Without meeting whites
who were different, I came to regard the inhumanity and bigotry of the
police and soldiers as typical of their race.

This stereotypical image of whites was reinforced by, among other
things, my father's virulent hatred of whites, and by a constant diet
of violent movies shown at the ghetto's only cinema.

My father's emasculation and suffering at the hands of the police and
his employers, who confined him to menial jobs and paid him a pittance
of ten dollars a week, not only made him a bitter man but he came to
hate white so much he would forbid the eating of white bread in the
house.  As for the movies, I took their violence and mayhem as a true
representation of life in the white world I was forbidden to enter by
apartheid laws.

The first undermining of this stereotype of whites as all bad came when
I was about seven years old.  Some black and white missionaries pitched
a tent in our neighborhood and invited us to come hear "good news" so
glorious, so warming to the heart, so uplifting and comforting to a
suffering soul, that our lives, our hearts, the situations in our
homes, would be changed forever for the better.  The fact that blacks
and whites cooperated to spread the gospel, to do good, rather than to
infiict pain and suffering on blacks, as the black and white policemen
did, made an impression on me.  It was an early indication that skin
color doesn't determine the goodness or badness of an individual; it is
the color of one's heart that matters.

Overcoming Stereotypes / Another instance of this maxim came when a
white nun at the local health center altered my destiny by helping my
mother in her quest to enroll me at the local tribal school.  To do so
my mother needed a permit from the authorities certifying that my
parents were legal residents of Alexandra.  They weren't.  The only way
I could get around the law was if I had a birth certificate showing
that I was born in Alexandra.  I didn't.  I had been born, like many
black children in the ghetto, at home, my mother having been unable to
afford maternity care.

Once my mother determined that the only way to save me from the
dead-end life of the streets and gangs was by taking me to school, she
went to the authorities and begged for a permit.  They told her to
bring my birth certificate.  She went to the clinic and begged for
one.

They told her that they couldn't issue it without a permit from the
authorities.  This continued for almost six months, with my mother
getting up around three in the morning and waiting in long lines, being
humiliated and insulted by unfeeling bureaucrats till the white nun
intervened after my distraught mother implored her: "Please Sister,
help my child."

after hearing my mother's catalog of woes, the white nun, tears
trickling down her face, stormed into the office, and briefly argued
with the black officer.  In a jiffy my mother was called to the window
and the birth certificate was thrown into her face.

As we walked back home, my mother singing songs of praises for the
white nun and calling her God's angel, she turned to me and said,
"Child, you see, not all white people are bad.  Remember that."

The most indelible image that remained with me of the white nun were
her tears.  Some white people do cry, I remember thinking; they are
human after all.  Though I continued to meet and to suffer at the hands
of racist whites, the stereotype that whites were all bad had been
forever shattered.

At age eleven another milestone was reached in my batlle against
stereotypes.  Granny took me on my first visit to the white world, to
meet the Smiths, a white English family for whom she worked as a
gardener.  Though paternalistic, the Smiths turned out to be kind,
respectful, and loving toward Granny.  They had a son about my age.

From this family I began receiving secondhand clothing, toys, and
books, which became powerful weapons in my struggle to liberate my mind
from mental slavery, an oppression I believe to be most formidable
because it had caused me to make peace with my servitude, to accept a
racist society's definition of my humanity.

These revolutionary books had names like TIeasure island and David
Copperfield.

It was also from the Smiths that I got my first tennis racket.

Determined to master the sport that had brought world fame to Arthur
Ashe, the first free black man I had ever seen, I began teaching myself
the game at the dilapidated ghetto sand courts.  Soon I became good
enough to attract notice.  An open mind led me to befriend some liberal
whites at a nearby tennis ranch.  They invited me to train and play at
their facilities.  They respected me as an athlete, and I respected
them for treating me like a human being.  My white tennis partners and
coaches gradually became steadfast friends.

I knew from the start that my association with whites would alienate me
from black militants.  Many of my black peers in the ghetto had an
us-against-them attitude that had been hardened by repeated encounters
with the police and soldiers.  They didn't believe me when I said some
whites were different.  They pressured me to cease contact with
whites.

One night on my way home from playing tennis at theranch, a black gang
waylaid me.  I would have been knifed to death had I not outrun them.

A brick that smashed into my face, knocking out my front tooth,
reminded me of the risks I was running for my refusal to consider all
whites racist and to judge them according to the concept of collective
guilt.

Had I done so I never would have had the courage to lean across a fence
one hot alternoon in November of 1977, to watch U.S. tennis champion
Stan Smith, one of my idols, practice with Bob Lutz, a doubles partner
and Davis Cup teammate, during the South African Breweries Open in
Johannesburg.  If I had been consumed with a blind hatred of all
whites, I would not even have been at the tournament.

As it turned out Stan invited me onto the court to hit some balls.

Later I accompanied him and his wife, Margie, to a restaurant where I
was the only black.  That encounter, that friendship, that human
contact, between individuals who had grown up in worlds as different as
night and day, led to Stan arranging a tennis scholarship for
Overcoming Stereotypes / me to attend college in the United States, at
a time when I was at the end of my tether and in danger of being
detained by the police as a student activist.

In America I discovered that many blacks believed that all whites were
racist.  As my South African experiences had taught me otherwise, I was
again called on to defend my conviction that there were among whites,
as among all people, both good and bad, and that to realize fully my
own humanity, it was my duty to acknowledge and respect the humanity of
others.  This meant judging people as individuals, by the contents of
their character, rather than by the color of their skin.

My open-mindedness in relating to whites incurred me the resentment and
enmity of militant blacks.  My motives were olten misunderstood and I
was sometimes called an Uncle Tom.  Though these accusations hurt, I
had come a long way from the days when rage and hate had consumed and
almost destroyed my life.  I had acquired values and convictions that
my conscience told me had to be defended at all cost, because they were
a part of my soul and formed the essence of my humanity.  One of these
convictions is that neither blacks nor whites have a monopoly on racism
or love.  Anyone with a feeling heart is capable of love and anyone who
is blind to the fact that his humanity is inextricably tied to his
respect of the humanity of others is capable of racism.

International House was the perfect setting for putting my beliefs to
practice.  Every day I interacted on a level of equality and mutual
respect with men and women of every race and religion.  I had friends
from the Far East, the Mid-East, Africa, South America, Europe,
Australia, the United States, and Canada.  In the lounge I saw Indian
saris, Muslim turbans, and African tribal dress and heard the babble of
a dozen different languages.  We partook in each other's culture and
found that we had a great deal in common and that our differences were
more enriching than threatening.  In such an environment it was easy to
forget cultural and racial differences and interact on a purely human
plane.  It was on that important level that my friendship with Gail
began.

			GAIL'S VIEW.

The white partner in an interracial relationship usually has ample, if
subconscious, stereotypes to overcome.  I did.  Like Mark, I believe
that these stereotypes began in my childhood, as did my battle against
their influence on my life.  To explain fully the turbulence of
emotions I felt when I found myself falling in love with an African, I
need to recount a few childhood experiences that shed some light on my
past attitudes toward race.

On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, in the early 19705, in a new housing
development surrounded by cracked mud flats infested with rattlesnakes
and composed of identical $30,000 stucco homes with burglar bars,
sun-burned yellow lawns, and prickly cactus gardens, I grew from an
innocently confident little minister's daughter adored by flocks of
staid Presbyterian churchgoers into a shy and bewildered adolescent who
found out she had a lot to learn about race and sex.

In the dry heat of Austin I grew tall quickly, Texas-style, like the
wheat in the vast fields I saw stretching out in every direction toward
the horizon.  I grew wise quickly too.  I had to in order to survive as
a minority "honky" in an overcrowded junior high school.  I watched in
jealous silence as gangs of blacks and Mexicans patrolled the school
halls and kept the panic-stricken, mostly white teachers in line.

Nineteen seventy-four found me a scrawny twelve-year-old with
shoulder-length blond hair that hung in straight, uncombed wisps like
straw.  I was a fearless tomboy.  It thrilled me to wear my brother's
cowboy boots, play capture the flag and soccer and half-court
basketball with the boys, and hunt for armadillos at night by crouching
on the mud flats in my faded jeans and shining my flashlight between
the tumbleweed and cactus plants.

Gnarled, stunted trees lined the banks of the creek where I watched
water moccasins glide stealthily in the murky depths.  I was stung by
scorpions, fell from trees, slid down moss-covered dams, jumped at the
sight of black widow spiders, stood frozen while a copperhead snake
wrapped my ankle in a slithering embrace as I stood barefoot in the
deep mud, watching in breathless fear as his black tongue darted in and
out.

The Texas sun beat down on our neighborhood.  Every other house had a
pool or plastic tub in the backyard, some container large
one-hundred-degree heat.  Every third house was identical.

The neighborhood was divided along racial lines.  White families lived
on the hill, up on Greensboro Drive, and blacks were down in the
valley, along the streets where smaller homes were still under
construction.  Black boys sometimes came up the hill to play basketball
with the white boys in our neighborhood, slam-dunking balls through
dozens of hoops mounted over garage doors.  There were three black
brothers who always came up the hill together: Dookey, Tiki, and
Mojo.

Their names sounded strange to me, and I could not understand much of
what they were saying.

"I1s gonna dot yo eye in a minute, boy.  I ain't Lett messin'
witchoo.

I's fixin' to knock you flat."

I was afraid of blacks.  For the first ten years of my life I had lived
in lily-white communities in Cincinnati and Springfield, Ohio, and knew
nothing about the people my Texas girlfriends casually called
"niggers."  In the halls between classes at Pearce Junior High School I
clung to the walls and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible,
tiptoeing away from gang fights with my eyes down and my books pressed
against my flat chest.  I would try to cling to the walls and glide
unnoticed past the groups of tough-looking, weather-beaten students who
filled the halls.  Occasionally I would have difficulty getting to my
classroom, blocked by a massive hall riot of leaping, tangled,
thrashing bodies.  Whenever I saw blood splattering on the lockers, I
would seek an alternate route.

Pearce was, in the early 1970s when I attended and when busing first
began, a racially torn and violent public school circled by fourteen
portable classrooms and a parking lot that glittered with broken glass
smashed during rumbles-massive fights between white and black
students.

The student body was 55 percent black, 25 percent Mexican, and 20
percent white.

During classes, blacks sat in the back, mostly braiding and combing
each other's hair with big metal Afro rakes.  I had been terrified of
those rakes since the day I walked innocently into the girls' bathroom
and found one being waved in my face.  Three black girls, sitting on
the bathroom sinks, watched with amused expressions on their faces.

"Give me some money," one of them said, tightening her grip on the rake
as if it were a gun.

UYeah, you know, the stuff you use to buy things with."

The other girls burst out laughing at my nervous na1vetO.  They seemed
so confident and sure of themselves while I, new to the school and
unacquainted with robbery, felt so timid and uncertain.  I quickly
emptied my pockets and gave her all the lunch money I had, then made my
escape with the sound of snide laughter, which resounded in the
concrete chamber, still ringing in my ears.  I did not eat lunch that
day, and I never again entered a school bathroom.  I became very good
at holding it until I got home.  One day I saw a white girl with six
perfectly straight scars across her face, and I knew she had offended
someone wielding an Afro rake.

My fear of blacks was mingled with admiration.  They could braid their
hair in neat rows from their faces to their napes; they could sprint so
much faster than whites that the track team was virtually all black;
they were tough and confident and had the temerity to tell a teacher to
shut up; and they could dance so well I dared not even try a single
step for fear of being laughed at.

My admiration developed into a mild envy.  Perhaps it was simply a
minority's desire to fit in, but I sometimes wished I were black.  All
the popular girls in school were black and had names like Felicia and
Bhonda and Janelle and Paulette.  All the cheerleaders were black, and
danced along the sidelines doing the bump, knocking their hips together
and singing Boogie down, our team don't mess aroun', We got the spirit
now, we gonna show you how, To boogie down, boogie down, boogie down,
l'ight now!

A shiny chrome jukebox stood in the corner of the school cafeteria,
belting out songs by the Jackson Five and Barry White and Marvin Gaye
as crowds of black students boogied and jived and did the bump and the
robot.  They would dance on the tabletops to such funky, irresistible
tunes as: 0She's a dance, dance, dance, dance, dancin' machine.  Watch
her get down, watch her get down."

Rednecks, goat-ropers, and kickers looked on in scornful amusement.

They were the whites who refused to be intimidated by their minority
position.  They usually wore ten-gallon cowboy hats, snapdown work
shirts, heavy belt buckles, pointed-toe snakeskin cowboy boots, and
military buzz-style haircuts.  Their lower lips bulged to one side and
brown drool seeped from the corners of their mouths as they looked
around for a suitable place to spit their wads of Skoal.

Their favorite target was the back of a well-raked Afro.

The only way you could tell a kicker (derived from "shitkicker" and the
old Texas expression "to kick a nigger's ass") from a regular redneck
or goat-roper was to look at their pickup trucks.  If the bumper
sticker read 0Goat-ropers need love too," then the answer was
obvious.

If they drove viciously around the parking lot hurling empty LoneStar
beer cans at clusters of blacks, then you knew they were kickers.

Rednecks were a little less violent unless they had been out
honky-tonking too long and started a fight by accusing someone at the
bar of being an NL (nigger lover).

One day a kicker managed to get near the jukebox, surreptitiously
dropped in a quarter and pushed A-4, 0I'm Proud to be an Oakie from
Muskogee."  He laughed as he was chased from the school by an angry mob
of blacks threatening to kill him if he ever put on such "honky trash"
music again.

esperate to reduce racial tensions, the school launched a campaign
called Partners.  Every student was supposed to find someone of another
race to be their partner, and the school would provide free
transportation and food for a picnic at Barton Springs or Lake
Travis.

I was afraid to ask any of the black girls in my classes.  They were
too cool, too tough, and too popular and I was just a skinny white girl
who came from the North and had no idea what was 0going' down."

The picnic was canceled when a Partners meeting turned into a race
riot.  It always scared me to see kids climbing onto the tops of
lockers so they could have better aim when they jumped, knife in hand,
into the middle of a hallway fight.

At the sound of the three o'clock bell, I would rush out of the school
ahead of the others.  If I were lucky my bicycle tires would still be
inflated and I could escape before the crowds of students made their
mass exodus to see the after-school fighting sessions in the parking
lot of the Baptist church across the street.

One boy at school was neither white nor black.  He had a light brown
Afro and skin that was covered with dark brown and very white
splotches.  Looking back on it, he was probably the product of a
genetic fluke similar to albinism.  His schoolmates teased him
mercilessly.  They nicknamed him 0Patches."

"How did he get like that?"  I asked my friend Kelly.

"I bet his mom is white and his daddy's a nigger," she replied.

"Is that what happens when whites and blacks... you know...

do it?"  I asked.

"Sure," she said sagely.  "What'd you think?"

From that day on, for at least two years, I thought the children of
mixed marriages were covered with black-and-white patches.

Ironically, Mexicans dated either whites or blacks and no one cared.

Mexican boys, with their long, shiny black hair and heavy Spanish
accents, were very popular among white girls.  They had romantic names
like Felicio and Fernandez and Emilio.  My friend Kelly's older sister,
a beautiful Baptist with green eyes, dated a Mexican.  She drove a baby
blue Mustang with her long blond hair flying in the wind and made all
the white boys hot with desire.  But she turned them all down and
remained true to her Mexican companion.

Dating Mexicans was fine, even 0cool," at least among white students,
but if a white girl did so much as speak for more than five minutes
with a black boy she was labeled an NL.  Blacks and whites never
touched each other, never danced together, never came in close contact
with each other except through sports like football and wrestiing.  If
a white did not laugh at a racist joke, he was shunned as an
outsider.

Racist jokes (which I recount here only to reveal the twisted attitudes
of white adolescents during that period in Texas) usually ran like
this: How can you find a nigger in the dark?"

Tell him to smile."

"Why do blacks always have sex on their minds?"

0Because their pubic hair is on their heads."

The taboo against touching a white was so powerful that some blacks
took it as a dare.  At the public swimming pool my friends and I always
had to be on guard against adventurous black boys.  One scorching
summer day Jill, Kelly, and I-three young blonds-were bobbing up and
down, splashing, laughing, and chasing each other in the shallow end of
an Olympic-style swnnming pool complete with three diving boards and
several lifeguards.  Kelly and Jill were developing more quickly than I
was, and their bikini tops were just starting to get round while mine
hung flat and shapeless.  Suddenly I felt a hand squeeze me between the
legs.  I screamed.  So did Jill and Kelly.

We whirled about and saw three black boys swimming away underwater.

UGoddamned niggers!"  Jill shrieked, pounding the water furiously with
her fists.  "I'm gonna tell my brother!"

"You horny black bastards!"  Kelly shouted.

The three boys, no older than fourteen, climbed out of the pool, shook
the beads of water from their Afros, slapped each other's backs, and
looked back at us, laughing triumphantly.  White pussy!"  one of them
shouted, jogging along the side of the pool with his fist in the air.

"I got me a handful of white pussy!"

From that day on I stayed away from the swimming pool and ran through
the sprinkler in our backyard instead.

One night when my mother was working late and I had cooked my father
and brother Dan a meal of Hamburger Helper and frozen string beans-the
one meal I could prepare-I rode my bike down to the twenty-four-hour
Minit Mart to buy some candy.  Like most twelve-year-olds, I was
addicted to Life Savers, Sugar Babies, MOM's, Clark bars, and Zots-the
hard candy that fizzes in your mouth.

When I reached the store I realized I had forgotten my money.  I looked
at the candy longingly, then left the store and headed home.

It was about eight at night and already dark.  I had to ride through
the valley first, then ascend the hill to Greensboro Drive.  Too tired
to ride uphill, I got off and walked my bicycle.  Suddenly I heard a
male voice behind me.

Want some money?"

I turned around and saw a black boy of about fourteen riding a
ten-speed bicycle.  He was so dark I could only see his clothes and the
bicycle.  I'd never been addressed by a black before; I'd never been
alone with a black before.  Frightened, I started walking faster.

"Girl, I seen you in the candy store," he said, getting off his bike,
dropping it on the curb and hurrying after me.  "I seen you lookin' at
the candy.  You din't buy nothin'.  Why come?  Don't you got no
money?

I'll give you some."

"I don't need any," I said over my shoulder, quickening my pace.

"I'm going home."

"What's your name?"

"Jane Smith," I lied.

"I know that ain't right.  What's yo real name?"

"Who wants to know?"

"Tiki."

One of those boys with the funny names.  I wondered how long he had
been following me.

"I been watchin' you."  He grabbed me by the arm and started dragging
me away from the street.  My bike made a clanging sound as it hit the
curb.  I tried to run, but he clutched me firmly.  I struggled.  He
tightened his grip.

"What do you want?"  I asked, feeling helpless.

"I wanna give you some."

I knew he was not talking about money.  He pulled me across the yard
between two houses, then pushed me up against the brick wall and
pressed himself against me.  His thick lips seemed to cover my whole
face.  I could barely breathe.  I had never been kissed before and was
not sure what he was doing to my face with his mouth.  I thought about
screaming, but I was afraid people would come and see what this black
boy was doing to me.  Shame would follow me all the days of my life.  I
pleaded with him instead.

He shoved a clumsy, fumbling hand under my shirt and felt my flat,
boyish chest.  He immediately let go of me and stepped back.

Apparently he did not realize I was so young and undeveloped.  He
seemed apologetic.

"Want some gum?"  he said, handing me a stick of Wrigley's spearmint.

I stared at him in disbelief, then ran back to the street, grabbed my
bike and bolted, trembling with shock and fear and, I must admit, a bit
awed that a boy had kissed me.

"Don't be like that!"  Tiki called after me.  "I din't mean no harm."

No one was home: My father had gone to a meeting and my brother had
gone out with friends.  I ran over to Jill's house, breathless and
shaken.  I told her that the black boy down the street, Tiki, had
forcibly kissed me.

Jill looked horrified.  "You let that nigger has you?"  she cried.

"No, I didn't let him.  He pulled me-" Her father called to her from
the next room.

"Yes, sir, I'm coming, sir," Jill said.  Like many of my friends in
Texas, she had to address her parents as "sir" and "ma'am."

I tried explaining what actually had happened, but Jill said, "You'd
best leave now."  I wondered why she was so abrupt.  I went home to an
empty house and brooded.

The next day the news was all over the neighborhood.  Everyone but the
adults knew.  Jill had told her sisters and brothers, who had told
Kelly's sisters, who had told the boys next door and down the street.

I was an outcast.  Jill and Kelly did not want to be seen with me, yet
Jill's brother Eric continued to play basketball with Tlki, Mojo, and
Dookey.

My parents and two older brothers were rarely home, and some
neighborhood boys knew it.  My father was juggling several jobs at
once: as the minister of a tiny white church near the Gulf of Mexico,
as a professor at Austin Theological Seminary, and as a full-time
graduate student in psychology at the University of Texas.  My mother,
who was working on a master's degree and had a full-time job as an
elementary school teacher for kids with special learning disabilities,
came home late and sometimes with bruises from hulking
eighteen-year-old sixth graders with "emotional problems."

One evening when I was home alone the doorbell rang.  I left the chain
on the door and opened it cautiously.  I saw Tiki's face and
immediately tried closing the door.  His foot was in the crack.

"I gotta use your phone," he said urgently.  "It'll just take a
minute."

"Leave me alone," I said.

"Please, it ain't gonna take but a minute.  I gotta call someone.  It's
important.  Our phone's busted and I don't know no one round here."

"I can't let you in."

"You still mad bout what I done, ain't you?  Like I tole you, I din't
mean no harm.  All I wanna do is use your phone.  I won't mess
witchoo."

I was used to obeying my father and brothers, and I was also used to
trusting people, so when he persisted, I finally undid the chain, let
him in, and showed him to the kitchen phone.  He picked up the
receiver, dialed a few numbers, then hung up.

"I gotta check something first," he said, then ran down the hall,
flicking on all the lights and looking into each room.  It was not hard
for him to tell my brothers' rooms from mine.  He stared around my
yellow room, then turned out the lights and just sat there.

"What are you doing?"  I asked from the hallway, keeping a safe
distance from him.

"Shhhh!  Just a minute."

He sat there in the darkness, peeping through my curtains from time to
time and telling me to "Hush up!"  every time I asked what he was
doing.  A few minutes later he stood up, walked down the hall and left
the house.  I locked the door again, wondering why he had never
finished making his phone call.  He was up to something, but I was too
young and naive to realize he was ingeniously trying to convince his
friends he was having a white girl.  A few minutes later the doorbell
rang again.  This time it was a black boy I had never seen before.  I
left the chain secured.

"Why don't you give me some?"  he said.

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"How come you give him some but not nobody else?"

I looked beyond him and saw Tiki and a group of young blacks standing
in a circular pool of light under a street lamp.  It was then that I
realized why Tiki had insisted on getting inside the house, turning on
my bedroom light, turning it off and waiting.  He had fooled his
companions.  I slammed the door in the boy's face.

The summer that followed was painful for me.  My friends no longer
called, and when they saw me coming they turned the other way.  They
made jokes about my family, particularly my mother, who subscribed to
Ebony so she could better understand her black pupils and would
reprimand anyone who used the word tter in her presence.  I spent my
time alone, bewildered, wondering what I had done wrong.  Nothing I
said seemed to change my friends' poor opinion of me for having been
kissed by a black boy.  I did not tell my parents what had happened out
of fear of being scolded: I was not supposed to ride my bike to the
candy store after dark.

Fortunately we moved from Texas to Minnesota in August, and I was able
to start a new life free from the stigma of being an NL.

We settled in a predominantly white suburb of Minneapolis with the
idyllic name of Golden Valley, next to New Hope and Crystal.

Everywhere I looked I saw whiteness: white people, white snow, white
sidewalks, Scandinavians with hair so blond it looked white.

Everyone's last name seemed to end in "son" or "sen"-Anderson,
Danielson, Swensen, Erikson.  Suddenly there was no "color problem."  I
forgot about race.  It was taken for granted that whites went to the
Dinosaur roller-skating rink on Saturday night and blacks on Friday.

I knew there were sections of Minneapolis where blacks and Native
Americans lived, but I was in the suburbs where it is easy to forget
inner-city problems like poverty, violence, and racial strife.

The only time I had to deal with black men was in encountering them on
my way to Blake School, when I transferred from the suburban bus to the
city bus in front of a windowless building on Hennepin and Twelfth
called Rap-N-Romp.  To avoid them I waited for the Number Six in a
nearby post office, but even there I was not safe from the mildly
retarded white man who daily tried to guess the color of my
underwear.

I had heard of the 4Minnesota Pipeline"-the network of pimps who lure
young blonds of Nordic descent from their wholesome lives in the
Midwest, make them emotionally dependent on them or physically
dependent on their cocaine or heroin, then funnel them into New York
City to work as prostitutes.  I was wary of all black men, but
particularly those in flashy clothes who muttered lewd comments about
my "lookin' good, mama."

For a long time I succeeded in forgetting that unwelcomed first kiss.

The taboo against associating with blacks was now firmly entrenched in
my mind.  I thought any white girl who dated a black boy was throwing
herself away like a piece of garbage.  She was crazy and needed a
shrink.  Who, in her right mind, would give up all her white friends
and the love of her family for a black boy?

I took racial segregation for granted.  It seemed only natural that
blacks should stay with blacks and whites with whites.  People were
more comfortable among their own kind, and I was no exception.  I did
not miss Texas, did not miss the race riots, the "nigger jokes," the
underwater assailants, the terror of being part of the intimidated
minority at school.  Though I had adopted liberal, democratic political
views from my parents and believed in the ideal of racial equality, I
saw nothing wrong in having only two or three blacks in my private high
school of four hundred.  I felt it was justified by the fact that only
two percent of the population of Minnesota was black.

I did not become aware of the black population in Minneapolis until I
was seventeen.  After doing some Christmas shopping downtown one day, I
paused in front of the Orpheum Theater on Hennepin Avenue to examine a
poster portraying a young white manor was he black?  The poster read
PRINCE-Live in Concert.  I had vaguely heard of the twenty-one-year-old
musician, knew this was his home town, and knew he had attended Central
High, but I had never heard his music.  I had no idea his latest hit
album was called DirtyMind.

Curious, I bought two tickets, one for myself and one for a friend of
mine, a painfully shy and sheltered Jewish doctor's son who was
cocaptain with me on the Blake cross-country ski team.  The concert was
like nothing I had imagined.  I looked around the crowded concert hall
and realized that, as far as I could see, my friend and I were the only
whites.

Prince strutted around the stage, nude except for boots and
leopard-skin bikini bottoms, moving his narrow hips back and forth like
a piston.  His bare-chested guitar player wore skin-tight black leather
pants.  The crowd was shouting something in time to the music, and I
strained to hear what it was.  With amazement I realized they were
shouting, "Head!"  and that the entire song was about oral sex.

I could not comprehend the blatant passion, the explicit sexual
vibrations emanating from the stage that ran like electricity through
the sweating, clapping, chanting crowd.  My Jewish friend gasped,
blushed, and covered his face with his hands in embarrassment.  He
could hardly wait to get out of there.  I, too, barely out of puberty,
felt overwheimed by the bold and bacchanal celebration of sex, by the
primal beat and hip thrusts, by the chanting and moaning that filled
the cavernous theater.  That night I concluded that blacks burned with
superhuman sexual urges that made them dangerous, threatening, and far
more capable of rape, incest, and adultery than whites.

The image of the black rapist, influenced subtly by TV images of black
violence, became embedded in my mind.  Like many white women, I began
to see black men as predators, capable of horrendous acts of crime and
passion.  Many white women become paranoid around black men after they
have been mugged, held at gun point, attacked, or sexually threatened
by one; others grow to fear them simply out of rumors, the whispered
warnings of their mothers, spouses, or boyfriends, and social
innuendoes.  Try as we may to be open-mmded, liberal, and accepting, I
doubt there are many white women who can honestly say they have never
felt uneasy or terrified at finding themselves alone in an elevator
with a black man.

When I attended Brown University in the early 1980s, I never wondered
why blacks sat on one side of the Ratty (the cafeteria) while whites
sat on the other.  I never considered taking a course in Afro-American
studies; those, I thought, were for blacks.  Only once did I set foot
in the Third World Center, and I quickly retreated when I saw black
faces look up and stare at me, as if demanding an explanation for my
intrusion.  I was intimidated by militant black fraternity members who
marched single file around campus and had orders not to speak to
whites.  When I became interested in feminism and started using the
library at the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, I did not question the
absence of black women.

It surprised me that so many students were arguing, shouting,
gesticulating, and generally getting themselves all worked up and angry
over the debate raging on campus about Third World Week-a special
orientation week for minority students held at Brown each fall before
white students arrive on campus.  Many white students argued that Third
World Week was unnecessary and contributed to campus segregation by
allowing minorities to make friends with each other before whites
arrived.  Blacks retorted that they needed the extra week to prepare
themselves mentally and emotionally for life at a predominantly white
institution.  I did not take a stand one way or the other.  I was
convinced that whites would inevitably befriend whites and blacks would
stick with blacks, regardless of Brown's orientation system.

Segregation was too deeply ingrained in all of us, both black and
white, to be removed by eliminating or lengthening something called
Third World Week.

I had many friends, but none of them was black.  When one of my best
friends, Carol Abizaid, told me she was attracted to a black man, I was
horrified.  Carol was a beautiful young woman of seventeen when I met
her, the daughter of an American woman and a Lebanese businessman who
had met at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  She had the looks
and build of a high-class model.  She was raised in a huge house in
Beirut until she was fourteen, grew up amid the booms and blasts of
bombs and machine guns, and was often protected by armed guards.  She
spoke English to her mother, Arabic to her father and his friends,
French to the maids, and Spanish to several of her relatives.  When I
first saw her she was driving a jeep around the Brown campus with a
black Labrador puppy in her lap and her long brownish blond hair flying
in the wind.

We became close friends.  She lived with me at my parents' home in
Minnesota the summer after our freshman year.  We roomed together
sophomore year.  The summer following our junior year, after I had
spent a semester at the University of Budapest, I visited Carol in
Paris, where she was livIng in the plush apartment of a vacationing
couple.  Carol wanted to be a professional dancer and was doing all the
things such aspiring performers often do: She deprived herself of food,
trained vigorously throughout the academic year, and took classes in
Paris during the summer.

One day I was resting in the apartment after a tour of the Pom padou
Art Center when Carol came home from dance class, threw herself onto
the couch, gazed up at the ceiling and murmured, "He's gorgeous."  She
grinned.

"Who's gorgeous?"  I asked.

"A black dancer in my class."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know his name, but he's exquisite.  Huge, really built.  I've
never seen a finer specimen of manhood.  You should see him move.

You can see every muscle in his legs, arms, abdomen.  . . . And he
speaks perfect French."

I laughed and rolled my eyes.  "You've got the hots for a black man?

Come on, Carol.  You must be kidding."

Carol had just broken up with the prototype all-American white male: an
extremely handsome football player from Ohio with dark curly hair, a
strong chin, and brown eyes capable of melting any woman's heart.  He
had been the star running back for the Brown team, had been drafted by
the New England Patriots, left football after a knee injury, and became
a professional model for the Ford Agency in New York.  He wrote long
and heartfelt letters to Carol in Paris begging her to come back to
Providence eariy My friend was beautiful, rich, and self-assured enough
to have her pick of white men.  Why in the world would she choose a
black?

"He's really beautiful," Carol repeated, still gazing rapturously at
the ceiling.  "If you don't believe me, stop by the studio and watch
our dance rehearsal."

Curiosity lured me to the dance studio.  I walked through narrow
streets in a section of Paris where stone buildings might have toppled
over if they had not been so tightly wedged together, found the dance
studio, and ascended a flight of dimly lit stairs.  The smell of sweat
and the rhythmic thudding of feet guided me to Carol's class.  I
watched her bend, stretch, and leap with dozens of other dancers in
time to piano music as the teacher shouted directions in French.

I spotted the black dancer.  He was indeed a perfect example of
physical fitness and moved with remarkable grace, but I still did not
understand how Carol could find him sexually attractive.  The energy he
exuded and his dark skin made him seem alien, intimidating, and
untouchable.  I could not imagine kissing those big African lips or
touching that wiry hair.  As Carol and I walked toward the Metro, I
teased her mercilessly for having a crush on a black man.

A short discussion I had once had with my father had deepened my
aversion to black-white mixed couples and made me think Carol's
attraction to the dancer was perverse.  One day in Minneapolis I asked
my father about the mixed couples gathered at one end of Lake
Calhoun.

The black men were thin, wore flashy clothes, and drove large cars like
Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals, while the women were usually large
peroxide blonds with big hips and double chins.  My father told me the
women were most likely prostitutes and the men were probably pimps or
drug dealers.

This made me hope that Carol would forget her strange crush and return
to "normal" once we got back to Providence.  But upon her return to
Brown, Carol became completely infatuated with a tall and muscular
biracial student named Paul.

"Why do you find black men so attractive?"  I asked.

"Because I admire blacks," Carol replied.  "They have to struggle a lot
harder than whites.  They have more strength of character.  They
weren't fed from silver spoons all their lives like so many students
here.  But don't get me wrong-I don't feel sorry for them.  A lot of
whites go out with black people because they pity them and want to fix
their lives for them.  It puts the white partner in a position of
superiority.  It's racist.  That's not what my relationship with Paul
is about.

I feel I can relate to him because we both live in two different
worlds.

He's both black and white.  I'm both American and Lebanese.  I feel
closer to people who have multicultural backgrounds.  We share a
bicultural experience, which is both a strength and a struggle."

I scrutinized Carol from a distance.  In a matter of months her
boyfriend, roommate, and friends were all black or biracial.  She often
loaned her Toyota to her friends, and since I was accustomed to waving
whenever I saw her car approach, I found myself greeting a car filled
with blacks I did not know.  I wondered why she let people take
advantage of her and her possessions.  Carol and I had been very close
our first three years at Brown, but her attraction to blacks drove a
wedge between us.  I thought she was just going through a phase and
would soon come back to the white world, which was safe and free of
conflict and oblivIous to racial tensions.  I thought she was dating a
black just to get back at her mother, with whom she constantly
argued.

As graduation neared I spent more time with Carol and her boyfriend
Paul.  As I got to know her roommate Ellen, a kind and sensitive young
biracial woman, I understood how Carol could feel very connected to
her.  I admired Carol for bridging the gap between the races with such
honesty of emotion.  She stayed in Providence to do graduate work in
African cultures and be with Paul, and I moved to New York to attend
graduate school at Columbia.

My parents came to my Brown graduation in May 1984, and I took them to
Carol's cocktail parry My father, using his psychologist's mind off
duty, listened attentively to Carol's conversations with her mother and
carefully watched her interact with Paul.

"I think I know why Carol is with a black man," he said to me.

"She's angry at her mother for taking her away from her father in
Beirut, and she's acting out that anger by dating a black man.  It's
her way of really irking her mother."

"Have you ever considered the possibility that Carol simply fell in
love with Paul?"

My father merely smiled, apparently amused by my na1vetO about such
complex, subconscious, subliminal matters.  "There are always hidden
motives behind interracial relationships," he said.

After the graduation ceremony, as we drove to Massachusetts to spend a
weekend with relatives near New Bedford, my father again brought up the
topic of Carol and Paul, as if fascinated by the relationship.  He had
counseled mixed couples before, but the fact that Carol was such a
close friend of mine may have shaken him up.  He seemed to want to
convince me that their attraction for each other was unnatural and
driven by dark motives.

"Did you hear the way Carol's mother criticized her hair style?"  he
asked.  "No wonder Carol's trying to get back at her."

"Look, Dad, you don't even know Paul.  Maybe Carol sees in him all the
qualities she would admire in any man, regardless of color."

My own words surprised me.  There I was defending a relationship that
even I had considered strange and unnatural just a few months
earlier.

But it was not until I met Mark that I truly began to understand what
Carol had gone through.  From the moment he sat down next to me in the
International House cafeteria and began talking to the Belgian across
from him about his struggles growing up under apartheid, I was
captivated.  As the months went by and Mark and I grew to know, trust,
and respect each other, it seemed only natural to express our
affection.

One night, two weeks after we began seeing each other, we decided to go
out and celebrate the fact that fate had brought us together.We dined
by candlelight in a seafood restaurant in Midtown called Pier 52 where
a blind black jazz musician played piano, cracked jokes, and reminisced
about life in Harlem during the 1920s.

Mark became silent and serious.

"What are you thinking?"  I asked.

"Someday, if we're still together, I will marry you," he said.  "I want
so much to see you grow as a writer and to be with you, as a companion,
forever."

I reacted to his words with a shy smile on the surface and a mixture of
love and fear in my heart.  Everything had happened so fast.  I feared
that I might someday hurt him if I could not muster the courage to
marry across racial lines, and I also feared that if we married I might
alienate my family.  The other fear I had was of losing my identity
somewhere along the road to his fame.  Though he was a poor graduate
student when we met, and was still, my instincts told me that he would
become a great writer and an eloquent orator.  He was a survivor.  He
had tenacity, ambition, and integrity.  I had little doubt that he
would succeed in life, especially because he believed in himself.

One Sunday morning Mark and I walked two blocks to Kiverside Church to
hear Reverend William Sloane Coffin preach about the injustices of
legalized racism in South Africa and the need for sanctuary churches
for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees.  As we sat side by side in that
cavernous church filled with stained glass and candles, Mark slowly
entwined his pinky around mine.  For the rest of the service I was
happily aware of our embracing pinkies.  Touching felt right, and I
knew then that our love was nothing to be ashamed of.

That night we stayed up late watching the film Ntcho and Alernndra in
Mark's tiny dorm room, sitting on his single bed and leaning against
the wall.  Just as the Russian revolution began and Trotsky and Lenin
were arguing, my eyes grew heavy and I fell asleep on Mark's
shoulder.

When I awoke a few minutes later and asked what I had missed; Mark
smiled at me in the near darkness, wrapped his arms around me, and we
kissed.

I awoke with a start as the first gray fingers of dawn touched the
window.  In the dim light I saw Mark's face inches away from mine,
nestled into the downy pillow.  I stared with curiosity at his wide
nose, his little ears, the tiny eyelashes that curled rather than lay
straight, the contrast between his unblemished black skin and the white
blanket draped across his shoulder.  I felt warm and full of love.

Then doubts crept in.  "What would my parents say if they saw me now,
lying in the arms of a black man?"  My parents were liberal Democrats
who had voted for George McGovern in 1972, but would they understand
this?  My father, a graduate of Wesleyan and Yale Divinity School who
felt no one was good enough for his little girl, had disliked each and
every one of my boyfriends.  If he did not like those white men I had
dated, what would he think of this black man?

Isn't it every white father's worst nightmare to find out his only
daughter loves a Negro?

I crawled out of bed in a panic, pulled on my boots and sweater, combed
my hair hastily with my fingers, and headed for the door.  I hoped no
one would be in the halls.  Mark's room was on an all-male wing of the
dorm, and rumors spread fast.  The hinges creaked.  Mark awoke.

"Hey, Sweets," he said lovingly.  "Don't leave yet.  It's too early."

"I have to go."

"But it was so cozy.  Is anything wrong?"

"No, it's just that I ... I have to go."  I gave him a quick kiss and
left.

The coast was clear.  I dashed down the hall and had almost made it to
the stairwell when the door of the men's john swung open and a fellow
ournalism student walked out wearing a bathrobe.  He was startled to
see me in the men's wing.  I smiled in embarrassment and ran up four
flights of stairs to my room, locked the door, and faced my sunny view
of Midtown, my guitar, my dusty stereo, my stacks of mail, Russian
assignments, magazine articles, typing paper.

I immediately missed Mark and became upset with myself.  "Why do you
care so much what Dad thinks of you?"  I said angrily to my reflection
in the mirror.  "When will you free yourself of your mental enslavement
to this patriarchal, bigoted society?  Follow your heart and forget
about the rest!  Think of yourself for once.  You've fallen in love
with a man.  If people disapprove, that's their problem."

Stating a resolution is much easier than abiding by it.  I continued to
act paranoid every time I visited Mark's room.  I would poke my head
out the door, glance quickly both ways, listen for the sound of
footsteps, then scuttle down the hall to the women's wing as fast as my
legs would carry me.  I carried my shoes so I could steal silently down
the corridor.  I always reached the women's bathroom breathless.

"Don't you live on the tenth floor?"  one woman asked.

"Yes, but I like this bathroom better," I said.

As I brushed my teeth she looked quizzically at my bathrobe, a brown
and red men's robe that belonged to Mark.

Sometimes I would get exasperated with myself.  "Who am I hiding
from?

My parents?  Myself?  A society that sees mixed couples as morally
unfit to appear in public?  It's all in my head.  I'll say it now and I
hope it sticks: I don't care what anyone else thinks!"

MARK'S VIEW.

Walking through Manhattan side by side, Gail and I blended into the
diverse crowd of pedestrians, who ranged in color from as dark as I to
as light and fair as Gail.  Moving down the jammed sidewalks of Fifth
Avenue at rush hour, we were inconspicuous in a throng that had to walk
eight abreast to keep from tumbling off the curb and into the steady,
noisy stream of traffic and honking yellow taxicabs.  People bumped
into each other in their mad dash for a vacant cab or a late
appointment.

The smell of hot dogs and pretzels, blended with the malodorous steam
rising from manholes, stung our noses; the blare of honking horns and
corner evangelists shouting into loudspeakers deafened our ears.  In
such confusion and cacophony, it was easy to get lost in the anonymity
of a crowd and still retain our individuality, without once letting go
of each other's hand.

The subway was a different story.  In a crowded train rumbling,
rattling, and racing through the bowels of Manhattan, I would cling to
the center pole and Gail would wrap her arms around my waist and hold
on for dear life.  She seemed oblivious to the fact that we stood out,
and held onto me with unselfconscious ease.  I, on the other hand, was
hyperaware of people staring at us.  Some would lift their weary eyes,
ponder us for a moment, then resume reading the sports pages of the New
York Post, The New York Times, or the Daily News.  Older women would
lean their faces together, gossiping in whispers, looking disdainfully
at us from time to time.  Others had seen it all before and were too
jaded by New York even to cast a curious glance at us.

One evening as Gail and I hurried arm in arm from IftRh Avenue toward
Port Authority, we passed two young black men.

"Hey, look at him," one young man shouted to his friend.  "He got
hisself a white gin.  She be damn good Iookin' too."

Such comments upset and saddened me.  They reminded me of the pervasive
stereotype that all black men are, at least subconsciously, out to "get
a white girl."  What did those two young men know about our
relationship?  Nothing.  All they saw was black man, white woman.

Our first major evening out in public was to attend the 1985

Front Page Dinner Dance thrown by the Newswomen's Club of New York.

Because she usually wore jeans and owned a scanty wardrobe of formal
wear, Gail had to go out at the last minute and buy a new dress and
shoes in which to receive her $2,500 Anne O'Hare McCormick
scholarship.

The dinner, an extravagant affair held in the Empire State Ballroom of
the Grand Hyatt Hotel, was followed by an award ceremony for top
journalists from NewsY, New York Times, Tie New Yorker, ABC News
"Nightline," and "20120."  I was the only black in the ballroom except
for those stacking the dirty plates and clearing the clutter from the
tables, which gave me a disquieting feeling of being back in South
Africa, where blacks toiled as servants while whites were lavishly
entertained.  What was I doing in such a place?

But I quickly remembered my reason for being there when I watched Gail
ascend the steps onto the stage to receive her scholarship award.  I
felt proud: That was my "Sweets" up there.  The president of the
Newswomen's Club, Joan O'Sullivan of King Features, made a short speech
about Gail's off-beat accomplishments: mastering Hungarian, German, and
Russian; traveling alone to Budapest and talking her way into the
university there; graduating from Brown; and writing for Minneapolis
City Pages.

Few couples were dancing, but Gail, in her exuberant mood, dragged me
onto the dance floor.  We must have looked strange, a black man and a
white woman, dancing together in the middle of a high-ceilinged
ballroom while the white faces of the American media's movers and
shakers looked on.  I had been the only black in a room filled with
whites many times, but never when I was dancing with a white woman.

Some people gaped at us, a few with bemused indifference.  I did my
best to forget them and to focus on Gail, her happiness at receiving
the award, and our joy at sharing a special moment.

Whenever I traveled to Long Island to lecture on South Africa and
apartheid before various groups, Gail would accompany me.

During these trips, we would never let on that we were anything more
than friends.  We wanted to keep our relationship private and,
therefore, kept it a secret.  It was easier to pretend to be platonic
friends than to deal with people's prejudices.  When we spent the night
at a white minister's home, we requested separate rooms, despite his
wife's attempt to coax us into revealing the true nature of our
relationship.

"You do want to stay in the same room, don't you?"  she said
insinuatingly.  "It would be fine with Us, you know.  We understand."

We insisted we were just friends and wanted separate rooms.  In the
morning at breakfast the minister spoke to me, in a confidential and
fatherly tone, about the problems mixed couples confront and how
difficult it is to stay married.

"I had a good friend once, a black man like yourself," the minister
said.  "He wanted to marry a white woman.  Oh, I assure you I warned
him against it.  But no, he wouldn't listen to me.  He went ahead and
married her.  And you know what happened?  They're divorced now I knew
it would happen all along."  He looked hard at me, then at Gail, then
back to me, as if to say, "Don't make the same mistake."

Spring arrived and the weather grew warm.  Gail and I went for regular
runs along the Hudson River through Riverside Park, past rotting
benches, screeching seagulls stained by the polluted air, and I,
graffiti-covered stone walls.  Whenever the exercise and warm weather
made me sweat, I would peel off my shirt to cool down.  Peo pIe often
stared at us, but we never heard a negative comment.  Many were simply
curious.  Almost nothing can shock a New Yorker, not even people with
pink hair, black lipstick, painted faces, or safety pins in their
cheeks.

I felt completely natural around Gail when we were alone together, but
as soon as we stepped out the door I became acutely sensitive to the
way people regarded us.  It was difficult for me to regard our love as
an aberration in social norms.  Only when people stared did I remember
how deeply race as an issue still permeated American society.  At times
it seemed that the only difference between white attitudes in South
Africa and America was that white South Africans had made the mistake
of institutionalizing their racism.

It seemed half the audience turned around whenever we sat down in a
movie theater or concert hall.  When we asked to be seated at an
elegant restaurant on Fifty-second Street, the waiter led us to a bad
table directly in front of the kitchen's swinging doors-there were a
couple of empty tables in nicer locations-next to the only black couple
in the restaurant.  Gail was outraged and wanted to insist on better
seating, but I was so accustomed to prejudice that I saw no point in
arguing.  We left without ordering.

"Racism makes me so mad," Gail said, still upseL "Why do people do this
to each other?"

"I really don't know," I replied.  "The best way to deal with racism is
not to be obsessed by it.  It can make you paranoid and even drive you
mad.  It gives racists satisfaction to know they're messing up your
life.  Life is simply too short to let bigots spoil its few moments of
happiness with their venom."

"But shouldn't we fight to change people's attitudes?"  she asked.

"Yes, we should," I said.  "But let's be realistic.  For some people
racism is a way of life.  It's deeply ingrained in their psyches.  No
amount of argument and reason will change attitudes based on ignorance
and fear."

We fell silent for a while, and continued walking through the streets
of Manhattan, looking for another place to dine.  Suddenly Gail looked
up and said, "Do you sometimes wish I were black?"

The question surprised me and made me somewhat defensive.  "I fell in
love with you as you are!  Why in the world would I want you to be
something you're not?"

"It would be easier for you, wouldn't it, if I were black?"  uEasier
how?"

"I mean, we wouldn't be so odd and conspicuous as a couple.

Therefore people wouldn't mind us."

"Why are you obsessed about what other people think?"  I asked.

"I thought you were the one who said nothing matters but the way we
feel about one another."

"I did say that, and I meant it.  But Mark, tell me the truth.

Doesn't it bother you that I'm white?"

I denied that it did, but deep down I was troubled that people,
especially blacks, misconstrued my reasons for dating a white.  I knew
that should I enter the limelight after the publication of He/fir Boy,
the issue would become magnified, especially as I might be regarded as
some sort of spokesperson for the anti-apartheid struggle, a voice for
the black community.  What effect would my relationship with Gail have
on my career as a writer?  What sacrifices would it entail?  Was I
willing to make those sacrifices?  Only time would tell.

The two friends I was eager for Gail to meet were Stew and Claudia, a
mixed couple on Long Island with whom I lived for a summer.  Stew, a
black stockbroker for a major national firm, grew up in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina.  His wife, Claudia, an elementary school teacher from
New England, was disowned by her parents for marrying Stew.  They had
two children whom I was sure Gail would adore.

I wanted the visit to be a surprise.  As Gail and I rode the Long
Island Railroad toward Bellport, she kept asking me questions about
Stew and Claudia.  I told her a little about each of them, but not
enough to give away their races.  I wanted her to meet my friends with
fresh eyes and an open heart, and to assure her that we were not the
only mixed couple on earth.

GAIL'S VIEW That weekend visit to Stew and Claudia's home on Long
Island was both enlightening and troubling.  First of all, it gave me a
glimpse into suburban married life, which made me, a young graduate
student with a fear of commitment, imagine that I would suffocate in
such an environment.  Like many women of my generation, I had not
escaped the influence of radical feminism and was convinced that
marriage and a house in the suburbs were nothing more than a paralyzing
trap that transforms even the most talented and energetic women into
unrespected housewives and overworked mothers.

Since the day I finished Betty Friedan's book Tie Femini Mystique my
sophomore year at Brown, I vowed I would never let myself become one of
those complacent women with the frozen smiles in the laundry detergent
commercials who derive their happiness from seeing dirty socks turn
white.  I swore I would never make the same mistakes as my mother, a
brilliant woman who graduated from Mount Holyoke College at twenty;
taught for a year; married a minister; then gave up her career
ambitions under social pressure to devote herself to the church, her
children, and her husband's career.

She ended up feeling trapped and depressed for almost two decades.

Perhaps getting involved with a black man was my way of stating to the
world that I would never succumb to the stereotype of the suburban
housewife dressed in pink with the fake smile on her face hugging her
three blond children.  Falling in love with Mark, a nonconformist who
throughout life had swum against the tide, gave me the feeling of being
different.

But when I met Stew and Claudia, I realized that even mixed couples
settle down at some point and have a fairly normal and routine life of
grocery shopping, feeding the kids, washing the cars, and mowing the
lawn.  It upset me to learn that even mixed couples, those rebels
against society, cannot avoid the numbing effects of allAmerican family
life, with its mortgage payments and church meetings and football
games.

That weekend I turned twenty-three.  I felt old all day long.  I
realized I had reached adulthood and that I should be very careful with
my heart.  I could not continue to fall in and out of love with men
indefinitely.  I felt I had to consider my relationship with Mark as
potentially permanent or flee.  I sensed Mark had partly taken me to
Stew and Claudia's house to test me, to see how I would react to
interracial marriage.  If by the end of the weekend I felt life was too
hard for mixed couples, I knew I would have to break up with Mark.

It would not be fair to either of us to carry on a relationship that
could not lead to marriage.

What disturbed me most about our visit was something Claudia said at
dinner one night.

"A mixed couple is viewed as a black couple," she said.

I stared at her milky skin, thin nose, and almond-shaped eyes and
wondered how on earth people could consider her black.

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"The white woman becomes black in the eyes of the community," she said,
then went on to explain the trouble they had finding a real estate
agent who would show them homes in white neighborhoods.

I stared at Stew and Claudia's children.  Both the boy and girl, Sudi
and Leta, had skin the color of cafe' all lait, dark brown eyes, and
curly black hair.  To the outside world they were black; their mother's
white skin would never change that.  They would be as ths- �i'
criminated against and stereotyped as any black child in America.

The night was long and dark.  I tossed and turned, deeply troubled.  I
struggled to understand how a white woman like Claudia could so
willingly relinquish the love of her parents and give up her identity
as a white person to become a black man's wife and the mother of two
black children.  Claudia had been cut off emotionally and financially
from her parents when she married Stew, had sacrificed the approval of
society to be with the man she loved.  I admired her strength and hoped
that someday I too could learn to love as deeply and selflessly as
Claudia, but that night I knew I was wavering, tossed back and forth
between my strong attachment to Mark [Ix,] and my ingrained desire to
please my parents and do what was expected of me.  My parents still did
not know I was dating a black man.

As I lay awake watching Mark sleep, I realized, with a stab in my heart
that took my breath away, that I wanted a baby with pink cheeks and
blue eyes someday.  I wanted what many of us want: a child that reminds
us of ourselves as we once were.  I always pictured my child having
straight blond hair and big, bright eyes.  I thought, I want a baby who
won't be labeled, categort::ed, or discriminated against.  It would be
selllsh of me not to think of my child's tuture.

Shouldn't I marry a white man for my baby's sake?  It may be morally
strengthening to battle societal stereotypes, but I want a baby with
blue eyes.

Gaii, age four, with selfinflicted haircut.

Gaii, age twelve, in backyard of her family's , ,,- home in Austin,
Texas.

(Dr. David).  Emsbergr'r) , Gail, her father, and Bianca.  (Mark
Mathabane) I fell asleep fantasizing about traveling through Finland
and Russia, meeting strong, blond men with blue eyes.  In another dream
I stood in a group of tall blond Russian intellectuals on the steps of
the University of Moscow.

When I opened my eyes the next morning I saw Mark's dark handsome face
kissing my lips and whispering, 0Oh, Sweets, I love you."  I threw my
arms around him with more passion and vigor than ever and shut my eyes
tight against his shoulder, trying desperately to force out all
thoughts of race and society and blue eyes.  I loved Mark, the human
being, and that was all that mattered to me.

That afternoon Mark and I went for a walk on the beach, holding hands
and feeling the warmth of the sun on our upturned faces.  The waves
rolled in rhythmically and crashed on the smooth, packed plane of
sand.

Ocean blended into sky and land like one immense orb.  We were sitting
on the sand, half-leaning against each other, when five-year-old Leta
snuck up behind us and hummed the wedding march.

"I now pronounce you man and wife," she said in her girlish voice,
grinning from ear to ear.  "You may kiss the ..... . on the lips!"

Leta burst into giggles as Mark chased her around the beach trying to
kiss her.  "Im not the bride!"  she shrieked.  "You're supposed to
marry Gail!  I wouldn't marry you for all the candy in the world!"

Mark caught Leta in a bear hug and gave her a kiss.  She started
screaming and crying so hard she hyperventilated, then sat up laughing
with tear-filled eyes.

trShes pretty smart for a five-year-old," I said when Mark returned.

"That's nothing," Mark said.  "When she first heard I had a girlfriend,
she asked me, Does she have big boobs?"" We burst out laughing.  Leta
came skipping gleefully down the beach to join us.  Little did we know
her playful marriage pronouncement would come true, and that two and a
half years later she would be the flower girl at our wedding.

That evening Stew and Claudia threw a party for Mark and invited
numerous friends: writers, peace activists, Unitarians, teachers.

Mark sat on a sofa between me and best-selling romance novelist Phyllis
Whitney, a small and sprightly woman in her eighties who gazed up at
the young African with admiration.  In the living room Gaii's mother
and Bianca playing with Nathan.

the five guests listened with rapt attention to Mark expounding his
views on politics and life.  I turned my attention to the eyes
transfixed on him.

At such moments, I sensed that Mark was too overpowering for me, too
much the focus of attention, too strong and talkative and persuasive.

I wondered if my own identity, still developing and tentative, could
flourish beside his.  I sometimes felt a need to be away from him in
order to grow.

After the crowd dispersed and we were alone together, I watched Mark
read beside me, his head nodding sleepily and his short curly eyelashes
shutting his tired eyes, and thought how much I loved him, though I
loved in an envious, competitive, adoring, worshiping way, constantly
wracked with doubts about our future as an interracial couple.

I did not understand the complexities of interracial love, because I
was, for the most part, unaware of what it meant to be black in
America.  Like most whites, I rarely had to concern myself with race
issues.  My knowledge of civil rights and the 1960s had taught me that
racial tensions could explode into riots and bloodshed, and talking to
frustrated and embittered blacks in Harlem and black teenage mothers in
the South Bronx had enlightened me further, but I still could not grasp
what it truly meant to be discriminated against or oppressed simply
because of one's skin color and the texture of one's hair.

In an attempt to think and feel, if only briefly, like a black person,
I began reading the works of black writers: Alice Walker, Zora Neale
Hurston, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Claude Brown.

A certain line in Baldwin's Tie flre Next Time struck me: "He was
defeated long before he died because at the bottom of his heart, he
really believed what white people said about him."  It was then I
realized that color consciousness is deeply rooted not only in whites,
but in blacks as well.  When you are treated all your life as an
inferior being, it is easy to believe you are indeed inferior.

As I walked across the Columbia campus in the early spring of 1985 I
began encountering groups of people gathered in tight circles, deeply
involved in heated discussions, around card tables labeled Coalition
for a Free South Africa.  Their tables attracted considerable
attention, and soon I saw a large number of students, both black and
white, wearing the colors of the African National Congress and pins
reading Free Mandela.  I sensed they were up to something.

On April 3, 1985, on the seventeenth anniversary of the assassination
of Martin Luther King, Jr I saw a huge group of students gathering on
the steps of Hamilton Hall, the main administration building.  It was
around eleven o'clock on a crisp, sunny spring morning.  Out of
curiosity I slipped through the crowd to see what was happening.

Students had just finished wrapping a silver-link chain around the door
handles.  The building was barricaded for the first time since the
student protests of 1968.

"What's this all about?"  I asked a young man clad in faded jeans and
wearing a huge Free South Africa button.

"We want Columbia to stop supporting apartheid," he said.  "This
university has thirty-three million dollars worth of stocks invested in
companies that do business in South Africa.  We're not unlocking this
building until they dump those stocks.  Some of the people here are on
a hunger strike.  They haven't eaten in two weeks.  If you support us,
boycott your classes.  We're not leaving these steps until President
Sovran listens to us."

For weeks they camped out on the steps, made tents to protect
themselves from the rain, kept warm in cold weather by staying in their
sleeping bags all day.  The massive divestment protest lasted all
month, received national media coverage, and sparked similar protests
at universities across the country.

Our professors at the journalism school warned us from getting involved
in the protest.

"A good journalist has to be objective," one of the deans said
sententiously.  We were assembled in the World Room for a special
meeting, and he spoke from behind a podium.  We could hear the
protesters chanting at the rally below the window.  "In a political
controversy, you cannot advocate only one side," he said.  "You must
present a balanced vIew.  You have to be professionals.  You should
weigh the statements made by the trustees against the slogans those
students are shouting in that uproar out there."

Most of us were too curious and excited to heed the dean's warning, and
knowing how Mark had suffered made me determined to do whatever I could
to help stop apartheid.  Whenever we J-school students could, we would
cross the campus to Hamilton Hall and join in with the others as they
chanted, "Aprthid kills, Columbia pays the bills" and USouth
Africa's stocks have got to go."

Six members of the Coalition for a Flee South Africa were fasting to
protest the university's investments.  tuo of them, both white, were in
my Russian class.  They stopped attending class, but I saw them every
day on the steps of the administration building, growing thinner and
more gaunt each day.  Eventually they had to be hospitalized for
dehydration.

Rumors spread that the administration threatened to deport any South
African exchange students participating in the protest, so Mark kept a
cautious distance from the rally.  I attended for both of us.  I was
amazed by the large turnout of whites.  Watching blacks and whites work
together to fight injustice made me feel hopeful that racism might
someday be defeated, not only in South Africa, but in this country as
well.

By May graduation, the protest had lost its steam and still the
university had not divested.  Several months later, Columbia finally
withdrew its holdings in companies that do business in South Africa,
but the administration denied that its decision had anything to do with
the student protests.

The protest made me think more deeply about the oppression of blacks,
and in doing so, I thought about what it means to be a woman in
America.  Just as it bothers a black person to be seen only as a Negro
rather than as a human being with dignity and pride, it bothered me
when men saw me only as a female, as a sexual object for their
fantasies.  Knowing that many men read porno magazines, I often felt
vulnerable when a strange man stared at me.  But I never felt that way
with Mark.  I knew that he saw me as an individual first, not as a
female or as a white woman.

In fact, Mark was repulsed and astounded by the emphasis Americans
placed on sex.  In his culture, lovemaking was natural and spontaneous,
not associated with sin and scandal and fitness and baby oil and hot
tubs and fraternities and Ireud.  It was part of love, but it was not a
major component.  It was a fact of life, but it was not an obsession.

It had not been analyzed, studied, surveyed, written about, and
mutilated into a mechanical act as it had been in America.

It had not been advocated and promoted and overemphasized by a sexual
liberation movement, therapists, sexologists, stimulating music with
lewd lyrics.  It was one of life's most precious mysteriesa mystery
that was best left unexplained.

My strong desire to become a foreign correspondent led me to apply to
Reuters News Service, based in London.  Soon after I applied, a fellow
journalism student from Texas congratulated me on getting the
internship.

bat do you mean?"  I said.  0Al1 I did was apply.  There are thousands
of applicants and they'll only select a few."

-I know," Jody replied.  "But people are saying that if anyone at
Columbia has one chance in hell to get into Reuters, it will be you."

All my hopes for the future were wrapped up in that one application to
Reuters.  When the letter from Reuters arrived, it was thin.

They did not need me.

By are you so troubled?"  Mark asked.  -I don't know why you even
applied to Reuters."  "I want to work abroad," I said.  4I've studied
German and Hungarian and Russian for so long.  I want to use them!" 
"But if you had joined Reuters, you would never have had time to
write.  You don't need a boss.  All you have to do is choose a
long-term goal and divert all your energy toward achieving it.  One
needs only two things: confidence and self-motivation.  With those you
can do anything you choose.  You've already told me you want to become
a writer.  Why don't you focus on your writing?"

I smiled at his advice, not understanding how one could focus on
writing without first having an income.

"Look at that!"  Mark said, pointing to my two-foot stack of typed and
bound journals I had kept since I was thirteen.  "Look how much you've
written already.  All you have to do is harness that energy, discipline
it."

His encouragement made me cry.  None of my previous boyfriends had
believed in me as much as Mark did.

in!  care for you too deeply to see you this unhappy," Mark said,
lightly rubbing my arms and looking at me with concerned, sad eyes.

"I've never felt so precious to anyone besides you outside my
immediate family.  Of course, I'll miss you if you find a job abroad.

But we could write to one another.  If it's what you really want, I'd
never stand in your way."  to be an intern at DLe Neue Presse newspaper
in Hannover.  When I showed Mark my letter of acceptance, he was
delighted that I had the opportunity to do what I wanted: travel to
Europe, practice my foreign languages, and get journalism experience.

It amazed me that his love was so unselfish that he was not afraid to
let me go.

On the plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean, I gazed into the darkness,
but saw only the image of my face reflected in the small window pane-a
face expressing deep sadness.  All I had to remind me of Mark was a
black-and-white photograph I had developed and printed in the I-House
darkroom.  He was standing on the roof of the dorm on the first warm
day of spring, bare chested, wearing a camouflage army hat.  His
longshot application for a green card as a writer was pending and I
wondered if he would still be in the country when I returned.

Those first two weeks in Germany before I received a letter from him
were filled with regret at having left New York.  I missed my soul
mate.  During the first week the nine other American journalists and I
were kept busy touring government buildings in Bonn, meeting reporters
and editors, and reading German newspapers.  The language around me had
a new and exciting ring to it, the bakeries and shops were quaint and
welcoming, and most of the Germans I met were well educated,
philosophical, politically aware, and fond of conversation.

It was only at night, when I lay in the darkness thinking of Mark and
feeling terribly alone in a foreign world, that I would ask myself if I
had done the right thing, if I truly wanted to spend my life moving
from place to place, clinging to nothing but my career and leaping at
every chance to advance it, breaking off relationships whenever they
grew too constraining.  Suddenly all the maxims I had learned while
coming of age in America-Love them and leave them, Live life to the
max, Indulge, Love the one you're with, Live for the moment, Be free
and unfettered-grated on my ears like a pack of senseless formulas
designed to produce the most intense feelings of misery and
emptiness.

One morning when I passed a newsstand in Hamburg, I spotted the cover
of a 5pA1 magazine that read, "Ren HrS in Sild Mho-Race War in South
Africa."  I immediately bought a copy and learned what had happened:
The South African government had declared martial law.  The country was
closed to foreign journalists.

Children were being rounded up and detained without trial.  I feared
for the safety of Mark's family and wondered how Mark was taking the
news.  I wanted to be there for him.  Was he still in America?

As soon as I had a chance I sat down and wrote him a long, heartfelt
letter.  I didn't care anymore that we were different colors.  I loved
him and wanted to commit myself to our relationship.  I signed my
letter No ku rondo ngop, his native language for "I love you very
much."

Three weeks later I received the following reply, and felt excited and
jittery as I withdrew it from its envelope.

Gail, my dearest, I miss you terribly.  Your trip to Germany has leit
my soul destitute of serenity and confidence.  Never have I felt such a
wretch emotionally.  The first week without you was a nightmarish
phantasmagoria.  One moment-from reading, say, a good novel or poem, or
listening to an upliiting classical music record-my heart and mind
would be drunk with joy and hope and a sense of control and a love for
life, all of which often lead young people to believe they can never
die; the neMirom thinking of you and longing to touch you and kiss you,
to hear the wisdom of your mind and heart-I would be plunged Into the
deepest gloom and despair.

As the second week rolled around, reality still appeared discordant,
like a punctured scan drum, and meaningless, like the suffering of
children.  It was pure torture to contemplate the miles and miles of
ocean and land, the hot months made of tedious days and minutes and
seconds, that separate us.

One thing I did learn from those lonely days and nights of sunken
spirits is that I'm madly In love with you.  So much in love that It
tern lies me.  You possess me wholly, you know me deeper than I know
myself, I hide nothing away from you.  You know the taste of every drop
of my bleeding heart-bleeding because of man's inhumanity to man.

Think of me as I think of you, for inspiration against life's trials
and tribulations.

P.S. My Immigration situation looks promising.

We wrote to each other regularly: ten-page letters full of longing.

The time apart strengthened our relationship.  Through letters we could
communicate on more profound levels, exploring our feelings and seeking
to describe our thoughts on writing and literature with greater
precision.  We sent each other lengthy quotes from the books we had
read, excerpts of poems, long descriptions of our thoughts and
dreams.

I carried the photograph of him with me everywhere.  I did not feel
complete without it.  The aching hollowness in my chest did not go away
no matter where I was or how many people were around me.  Our
correspondence inspired me so much I began writing short stories and,
later, a novel.  As I reflected on the months I had spent living in
Budapest, in an old apartment overlooking the Danube, I came up with a
plot for a novel about two Hungarian lovers fleeing the east bloc in
search of artistic freedom.

When I was well into the first chapter, I wrote in a letter to Mark:
inlt seems the only way to escape the hectic rush and tense routine of
life is to be creative.  The only way to gain a feeling of control over
the chaos of our lives is to express our inner selves."

Confident in our relationship, I threw myself into my work, submerged
myself in German culture, read books in German, reported stories with
seasoned journalists on the newspaper's staff, traveled to conferences
with the other nine interns scattered all over Germany, and made trips
to Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Vienna.

When I was not traveling, I lived with a German family in the farming
village of Borssum, south of Hannover near Hildesheim.  I did not hang
my treasured photograph of Mark on the wall but kept it hidden.  I did
not think my host family would understand.  They were conservatives who
supported Chancellor Helmut Kohl's rvling party and believed that
Turkish workers should be deported back to Turkey, in the same manner
many whites in this country believed blacks should be sent back to
Africa.  The father had been a leader in the Hitler Youth when he was
young.  Like most Germans, they had lived in fear of Nazi informers and
felt compelled to hang portraits of Hitler all over their house and
greet neighbors with "Heil, Hitler!"

The grandmother, who lived on the second floor, had lost her husband
when the American troops landed in Normandy and barely said a word to
me the whole three months I was there.

When the last day of my internship came, I took the train to
Irankffiirt and excitedly boarded a plane for New York.  Flying back
across the Atiantic, I reread some of Mark's letters to me and wondered
how we would combat the prejudices many people have toward interracial
couples.  Above all I wondered how my father would react if I ever
mustered enough courage to tell him about Mark.

"How are things, darling?"  Mark had written.  "I got the letter in
which you hinted that you might be willing to have us share an
apartment in New York.  I'm delighted."

At this I cringed, for I had changed my mind and decided to live with
my brother Paul and sister-in-law, Debbie, on the Upper East Side.  I
was afraid of rushing things with Mark, and I wanted each of us to have
enough space to maintain a healthy sense of independence.  Most of all,
my conscience had plagued me after I agreed to live with him.  I could
not fight the fact that I was a minister's daughter and that, deep
down, I believed living together out of wedlock was somehow wrong.  I
continued reading: in!  hope that your father (what a complex man!)
will understand and give you his blessing."

I closed my eyes and imagined my father's probable reaction to the news
that I was living with my boyfriend, who happened to be black.  Would
he rant, rave, question, pry, fume, apply pressure in all the right
areas to make me leave Mark forever?  I thought of my mother, who had
once refused even to spend the night at a home in which the man and
woman were not legally married.

I recalled my father's reaction when he met Carol's biracial boyfriend
at a cocktail party during the weekend of Brown's 1984 graduation.  He
seemed to think interracial love should be addressed by textbooks on
abnormal psychology.  He was so absorbed in his career as a
psychologist that his conversations were peppered with words like
schhren nlan incestuous tendencies, iotent homose:ruolity,
biedback, repressed onger, and psrchotic bevior He and my brothers,
who are also psychologists, seemed to speak a foreign language.

I gazed out the airplane window, picked up the letter from Mark, and
read on.

"It is about time your father reconciled himself to the fact that he
can never mold you after his own heart.  You are a grown woman now,
free to make your own decisions and choices and bear all
responsibility.  Though I have no doubt your father means well, he has
his own life to live, and you have yours.  I do not mind if your father
chooses to hate me implacably; some day he will come to understand the
depth of our feelings for each other, and understand too the spiritual,
emotional and creative bond that has made our souls one, and made us
such perfect complements of each other."

I smiled at Mark's optimism.  I was not at all as confident that my
father would accept my falling in love with an African.  I was still
not strong enough to follow my heart's desire, not courageous enough to
live with Mark and risk the censure of my parents and relatives.

Mark believed I was.

"One of the reasons I love you so much," he wrote, "is that you're a
fighter for your rights as a woman, equal to, and as capable as, any
man.  Your attitude reminds me of my mother.  That is why being with
you has made me grow in so many ways.  My mother was the first feminist
to have a profound influence upon me.  Your uncompromising defense of
your womanhood is one reason I believe in you as a writer."

"Oh, Johannes, my love," I murmured as the plane touched down at
Kennedy Airport, using Mark's middle name, the name he went by in his
youth.  "I've let you down.  I wish I had your courage."

When Gail returned from Germany I sensed that our relationship was
poised to enter a difficult phase in which our feelings toward each
other would be severely tested.  Would our love survive the test?

I heard someone knocking on the door of my basement Staten Island
apartment one sultry morning in August.  I had just moved into a
two-room apartment, sparsely furnished with a rickety kitchen table,
two chairs with torn cushions, the cheapest bed I could find, and
disorganized piles of books.  The apartment was dark and dismal,
crawled with mice and roaches, and cost more than half my monthly
budget of nine hundred dollars.  But it was home.  Finally I had a
place of my own where I could read and write and think without
interruption.

The day before I had received Gail's letter telling me she had decided
to live with her brother instead of me.  This perplexing change had
caught me off guard.  Was she finally backing off?  Had she met someone
else?  Distraught and confused, I was in the middle of attempting to
write a coherent reply to her letter when I heard the knocking.  I
turned off my typewriter and, looking like a Rastafarian with my
uncombed hair and wearing a Free South Africa T-shirt and rumpled
running shorts, I went to the door, expecting perhaps a door-to-door
salesman or the landlord.

Gail stood there, tan and smiling in shorts, a leopard-skin print top,
Yugoslavian sandals, and long dangling earrings made of seashells.

Suddenly I felt almost afraid to hold the woman I had longed to see.  I
squinted in the harsh summer sunlight and simply said, 0Hello,
Sweets."

She rushed into my arms and we held each other tight for several
minutes, too overcome to speak.

"Did you get my letter?"  Gail asked.

"Yesterday," I replied.  "That's why I'm surprised you're here.  I
thought it was over."

0Over?"  She cried.  "How could it be over?"

"I thought that since you didn't want to live with me... I thought...

we...."

"Just because I can't live with you right now doesn't mean I don't love
you."

At hearing those words I embraced her once more, again without
speaking.  We stepped inside the apartment, made breakfast, and talked
for hours.  She asked me endless questions about the state of emergency
in South Africa, how my family was doing, how the editing of HA BE was
going, how I had survived the summer heaL In turn I qulzzed her on her
travels and the novel she had begun.  We talked on and on.  Finally
exhausted, we sat on a couch by the window, wrapped ourselves in a
blanket, fell silent, and listened to the falling rain and the
footsteps of strangers passing my windows in the night.  It was
completely dark but for a single candle.

The morning light seeped through the blinds.  It was the first morning
of a fall that would pass like a dream, as if we were enveloped in a
haze that the outside world could not penetrate.  Gail and I created a
mutual inner world that challenged and inspired us.

The only time I felt fully human, understood, and accepted in all my
idealism was when Gail and I were in that dark Staten Island apartment,
reading and talking and laughing.  We had neither steady jobs nor much
money, but we did not feel we needed any more than was necessary to
survive.  The only thing we had of value was each other.

We typed side by side, read aloud to each other, dreamed together.  We
often became so excited by our ideas that we would rush about in search
of pen and notebook, eager to capture thoughts on short stories, twists
in plot, character development, setting up a disciplined reading and
writing schedule, themes in Richard Wright's books, the greater social
significance of art, or the individual rebelling against the
suffocating demands of custom and authority.

We traveled by ferry and subway to the midtown Manhattan library across
from MOMA where we checked out recordings of Shakespeare, Dunbar,
Langston Hughes, Milton, classical music, and Russian poetry.

Every day I worked on the ifr BE manuscript, and Gail, on her growing
first novel.  We dined each night by candlelight while listening to
folk music by Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, and Mahalia Jackson.

Three times a week we jogged ten miles up Victory Boulevard and around
Silver Lake Park.  Saturdays we lugged our laundry down the street to
the laundromat and Sundays we walked three miles to the grocery store
and back, carrying the bulging brown bags on our heads in the same way
African women carry jugs of water from the river.  Neither of us had a
car, and for weeks I had no phone, until my editor and agent insisted I
spend part of my advance to get one installed.

Whenever I had to go into the real world, that is, to meet with my
editors at Macmillan, Gail would accompany me and wait outside the
towering building, leaning against the wall reading nineteenthcentury
French novels or books about Indian women in deWos speaking Punjabi.

When I returned I would find her sitting on her knapsack outside the
lobby of the publishing house, engrossed in her reading and oblivious
to the constant stream of formally dressed men and women flowing
through the revolving doors of the major New York firm.

As far as her parents knew, Gail lived at her brother's apartment on
the Upper East Side, but actually she spent most of her time with me.

As pressure grew for her to help her brother Paul and sister-inlaw,
Deb, pay the rent and buy groceries, and as her Protestant work ethic
began accusing her of being indolent, she started hunting for steady
jobs.  After a short stint as an intern at Heoith magazine, she landed
a job translating, writing, and editing German news stories for the
Manhattan-based branch of the German embassy.  They paid her a decent
wage for a twenty-hour workweek and gave her great benefits.  She felt
she had imposed too long on her brother and his wife and was eager to
find a place of her own.

When Gail called me and said she had found an apartment to rent, I was
disappointed.  I worried about her safety in a city as large and
dangerous as New York and would have felt more at ease if she shared my
place.  Besides, it would have been less expensive if we split the
rent.  But I did not want to stand in the way of her independence.

"I'll help you move," I said.

When I saw the room she had rented I was shocked.  It was on the first
floor of a dilapidated house in the slum section of Stapleton, a Staten
Island neighborhood of roaming gangs and abandoned buildings used as
crack houses.  She had a view of the junkyard across the street, strewn
with rubble and tangled bedsprings, and of rows of gutted and
boarded-up buildings.  Exposed electric wires hung from the ceiling.

The doors and windows were flimsy and did not lock.  The floors were
caked with filth.  There were gaping holes in the walls.

The whole apartment reeked of stale tobacco smoke.  The white emaciated
live-in landlord down the hall, with whom she had to share a kitchen
and bath, was a chain smoker.  The house, which had been abandoned and
boarded up for months, turned out to have been a favorite hangout for
drug dealers.  Graffiti was scrawled in the closet.  When Gail asked
why the glass shelves had been removed from the bathroom cabinet, the
landlord told her the former tenants had used them to divvy up
cocaine.

"What has come over you?"  I asked Gail as soon as I had recovered from
my speechlessness.  "How can you live in this horrible place?  Don't
you have any self-respect?  Even the homeless wouldn't touch this
dump."

"It's the only place I could afford," she said.  "It's only two hundred
dollars a month."

"Why don't you sleep on a subway grate?"  I asked.  "That would be
free, and it would be a lot better than this."

She looked disappointed, then said, "I liked it because I would be
nearyou."

"Being near me is not the issue.  You would have to walk through a war
zone to get to my place from here.  I came to America to get out of the
ghetto, not to move back into one.  I hope you don't think I'm going to
visit you here."

Gail and I sat down.  I told her that she deserved better, that it was
one thing to be independent and another to recklessly endanger one's
life.

"I would never stop worrying about you knowing you lived in this
hovel," I said.  "Especially since it reminds me of my family's shack
back in Alexandra.  With these differences: We didn't have to deal with
rugs, and our neighborhood, though poor and squalid, had some soul.

American ghettos are soulless, inhuman."

Alone in my apartment that night I couldn't sleep.  I had nightmares of
Gail being raped, forced to take drugs.  I had half a mind to wake up
and go fetch her.

The next morning I heard a knock at my door.  It was Gail, looking
defeated and tired.  Happy to see her safe, I took her by the hand and
led her inside.  There was an awkward silence before she said, "I know
I'm being bullheaded.  You're right.  I don't think I can live there.

I couldn't sleep all night."

"I couldn't either."

"The noise kept me awake," she said.  "An old Buick cruised back and
forth dragging its muffler; stray dogs barked as they dug through the
junkyard; the faucet kept dripping into that stained sink; derelicts
outside my window kept laughing and shouting and breaking bottles; the
street lamp shot a blinding beam of light straight into my eyes through
the uncurtained window."

I begged Gail not to return to that dreadful place.  I prepared her a
sandwich; she had not eaten since the day before.

"For some reason I thought having a place of my own was more important
than anything, even my safety," she said.  "I guess there are certain
limits to a woman's independence."

I set the sandwich down in front of her and sat down beside her.

"I think you have to stop and ask yourself what you are doing to
yourself and why.  What are you trying to prove?  And to whom?"

Gail ate in silence, deep in thought.  Finally she said, "I'm so afraid
of living with you."  She looked up at me with tears welling in her
eyes.  "I'm terrified of what my parents will say when they find out.

I mean, they don't even know about you yet.  I told my brothers not to
reveal anything to Mom or Dad about you, and they haven't.  I haven't
mustered the courage to tell them."

"You'll have to Fend the courage, Gail," I said, "if you believe in our
relationship."

Gail started crying.

"What's wrong?"  I asked.

I love you very much," she said.   but I also love my family.  My heart
tells me I should move in with you.  It also tells me that I have to
confront my family soon, for the sake of our relationship."

For three weeks we were happy and secure in our small apartment.

Several times Gail attempted to write a letter to her parents informing
them of our relationship but she always ended by tearing them up.

Though I believed in our relationship, this was her battle: If she
believed we were meant for each other, she would muster the courage to
do it, and face the consequences.

Finally Gail decided to tell her parents in person.  At Thanksgiving
she flew home to Minneapolis.  When she returned to Staten Island, I
could tell something was wrong.  Her mood had changed.

She resumed searching for her own apartment and announced she would
move out January first.

Gail's parents flew to New York City for Christmas, but I timed my
annual visit to Hilton Head Island, where I visited Stan Smith and his
wife, Margie, so that I would be out of town when her parents
arrived.

I was not ready to meet them.  Their opposition to our relationship was
clear.  And Gail had chosen to heed their advice.  I saw no future for
the two of us as long as she did what was expected of her, rather than
what she truly felt and believed.

Gail shared the third floor of a brownstone building in Park Slope,
Brooklyn, with a twenty-seven-year-old graduate student named Michal, a
petite woman from Chicago who owned a smug and corpulent cat called
Charles.  Though Gail was in an adjacent borough, she seemed hundreds
of miles away, wrapped up in her job, in free-lance articles, in new
female friends.  I could feel us drifting apart.

That dreaded feeling was confirmed when I met Gail's mother, Debbie
Ernsberger.  She had flown to New York in March for a solo visit.  Not
long after we were introduced, Gail, her mother, and I were riding the
subway.  In the jostling crowd, Gail's mother leaned toward me and
asked, "So, what is your immigration status?"

The directness of her inquiry put me on guard.  Why did she want to
know?  Had her husband, Gail's father, requested that she ask this?

Suddenly I felt the sole purpose for Debbie's visit was to investigate
the nature of our relationship.  The question made me suspect that
Gail's mother, and particularly her father, regarded me with great
suspicion.  They seemed afraid some African was out to marry their
daughter so he could get himself a green card.

"My application for a work permit is still being processed by the
I.N.S" I said.

"Do you think you'll get it?"  Gail's mother asked.

"I don't know," I said.  "It's a long shot.  They have stringent
requirements now.  I'm hopeful though.  It's my only alternative."

Gail's mother looked at me and said, "I wish you luck."

0Thanks."

For days after Gail's mother returned to Minneapolis I was downcast.

My relationship with Gail appeared to have no future.  Rather than
pretend that her parents would approve, especially after that train
conversation with her mother, I started preparing for the worst.

I stopped calling Gail.

it's better that it end now, I thought to myself.  Why continue a
relationship in the face such opposition?  it wouldn't be fair to ask
Gail to choose betweenyou and herfamilr In the midst of my brooding
over the possibility and consequences of Gail and I breaking up, I
learned that two of my brothersin-law, the husbands of my sisters
Florah and Maria, had been murdered by a policeman one afternoon as
they sat outside our shack in Alexandra.  A motive for the dastardly
killings was never found.  I became distraught.  I thought of my little
niece Angeline and nephew Given, still in diapers.  How would my
widowed sisters cope alone?

Who would protect and support their little ones?  I blamed myself.

Perhaps, I thought, my activism against apartheid had led to their
untimely deaths.  Just a week ago I had published in News day an
article critical of President Botha's much-heralded "Rubicon" speech.

Maybe these deaths were only a warning of what might happen if I
continued to write and speak out against apartheid.

Following the tribal custom of my family, I mourned by shaving my head
until I was as bald as Yul Brynner.  It was a time-honored way of
expressing grief and solidarity with the dead.  The tighter my heart
strings bound me to my homeland, the farther away I felt from America,
its frenzied life, its empty materialism.

When Gail called to find out why I had not called lately, one
misunderstanding led to another.  We could no longer bridge the gulf
between our cultures and our races.  When I met her at the Strand
Bookstore to talk, she was shocked and repulsed by my shaved head,
amazed by how much of a hermit I had become.  I felt she would never
fully understand, no matter how much she loved me.  I remained alone in
my shell, torn by pain and guilt for being safe in America while my
family suffered and mourned.

I had half a mind to leave America, to return home, but I knew that to
do so would be tantamount to signing my own death warrant.

The Pretoria regime had made it known that I was its enemy, someone it
would dearly love to grab in its claws because I was doing damage to
its image by the words, the truth, I revealed in what I wrote and
spoke.  My passport had already been revoked; the mysterious
threatening phone calls hadn't ceased.

As the publication date of the Boy drew near, I became more and more
convinced that I should let the flame die between Gail and me.  I
should devote all my energies to the anti-apartheid struggle.

The only way I could expiate the deaths of my brothers-in-law was to do
my utmost to bring about the complete destruction of the evil system
that had caused their untimely deaths, to help galvanize Western public
opinion against apartheid.  A serious relationship now, especially with
a white woman, would only complicate things.

Kas'fir Boy finally came out and I left on a grueling two-week
publicity tour without even saying good-bye to Gail.

GAIL'S VIEW It is very difficult to keep a relationship alive when the
souls of both partners are in turmoil.  While Mark was mourning the
loss of his brothers-in-law, I was lamenting the tragic loss of a best
friend.

Tvo weeks before Mark left on his publicity tour, my close friend Naomi
Vogel died in an auto accident on an interstate while driving from
Wesleyan to New York to visit me and her boyfriend, Andrew Hollander.

A toolbox slipped out of the truck in front of her, she swerved to
avoid it, and the car broke through the guard rail and tumbled end to
end into a ravine.  She was killed instantly.

I had met Naomi at the University of Budapest in the spring of 1983, at
a time when I was so lonely and overwhelmed with having to speak and
think in Hungarian that it was a rellef to meet another American.  The
year following our adventurous sojourn in Hungary, we had traveled back
and forth between Brown and Wesleyan to visit each other.  When I was
in Germany I visited her in Heidelberg, where she was spending a
semester abroad.  Less than a month before her death she had spent a
week at my place in Brooklyn, and we had stayed up past midnight many
times sipping Hungarian wine and reminiscing boisterously over our days
together in Budapest.

When Naomi's boyfriend Andrew called me at work to tell me about the
auto accident, I thought he was joking.  I laughed.  When he repeated
the grim news, I was incredulous.  When his words finally sank in, I
wept uncontrollably.  As days wore on I became more and more pensive.

I listened to Pachelbel over and over again, for Naomi had put on the
album during her last visit.  I stared vacantiy at the wall, with
tear-filled eyes, wondering why God had chosen Naomi instead of me.  I
wondered if Naomi could see me or hear me.  She visited me in dreams
and told me she was not really dead.  Every day was cold, rainy, and
dreary.

I could feel Mark distancing himself from me, and it hurt.  I felt I
had no one to turn to.  My novel, the one I had written with such
enthusiasm and confidence, was being rejected by publishers who saw no
commercial value in a literary work about the search for artistic
freedom set in foreign lands.  Naomi had read the manuscript and loved
it.  My descriptions of Budapest and Hungarians, of Eastern European
culture, reminded her of our days there.  But now she was no longer
around to encourage me with her bursts of enthusiastic praise and
laughter.

I did not know exactly why Mark had pulled away from me, but I sensed
it had something to do with my parents and his commitment to the
struggle against apartheid.  I had tried my best to make my parents
accept Mark without having met him but I made little headway.

I longed for those few weeks when Mark and I had lived together on
Staten Island, after he had rescued me from the Stapleton slum.

During those brief weeks in November when we lived together, I would
return each evening from the suffocating moneymaking hustle of
Manhattan and enter the basement apartment, whose atmosphere Mark kept
congenial with elaborate vegetarian dinners; wonderful folk music from
Africa and America; and interminable discussions of politics, life, and
creativity.

Mark's companionship had brought peace to my soul and a measure of
security to my life.  For the first time since I began living in New
York, I felt safe, despite the fact that we lived in a crime-ridden and
dangerous section of Staten Island.  The ferry terminal was home to
mental patients, drunkards, and other homeless persons who were
sometimes hostile and threatening.  But they never bothered me when
Mark was near.  On one occasion Mark grabbed the wrist of a man who had
surreptitiously unzipped my purse and was reaching for my wallet.

Another time he calmed me when I thought my end had come.  The trunk of
the unmarked cab we had taken would not open, so the black driver
hopped out, pulled out a switchblade knife, and, as I tried to catch my
breath and convince myself I was not really about to die, he used the
knife to open the trunk.

I had grown accustomed to living in.  a predominantly black
neighborhood.  When I entered the nearest beauty parlor and requested a
trim, the three black hairdressers stared at me in surprise.  It seemed
none of them had ever cut a white person's hair before, but one
eventually volunteered.  As she snipped away with the circumspection of
a brain surgeon, I gazed at posters advertising Soft Sheen, curl
activators, Murray's Hair-Glo, Vita-Gro, and fade creams.

My haircut was terribly lopsided, but it was definitely a unique cut,
so I gave her a tip and left well pleased.

Being in love with Mark had filled me with an adoration for black
children.  I would stare at little girls on the ferry, admiring their
tightly woven braids decorated with colorful beads, the way their white
clothes contrasted with their eager faces, their exuberant spirits and
their energy.

"Look, Mama!"  one child cried, pointing to the Statue of Liberty
through the crimson evening mist.  "It's the liberty lady!"

At ease in both the black and white worlds, I had felt confident that
our relationship would last.  Though Mark devoted his life to the fight
against apartheid, constantly worried about his family and sought ways
to help them, there were moments when he could let go nfhio m,:1� l,
The only disruption of our happiness was the nagging knowiedge that I
had not yet found the courage to tell my parents about Mark.

Telling them over the phone seemed inadequate, so I decided to fly home
to Minneapolis and have a heart-to-heart talk with them.  During the
four nights before my flight, I was awakened several times by the image
of my father's angry face.

It was late November 1985, the air was crisp and clear, and the wind
gusted across the flat plains of southern Minnesota.  My father,
wearing a thick coat with broad shoulders, loose galoshes, and a
ridiculous hat, picked me up at the airport and drove me directly to a
Presbyterian Church in the suburbs for the Thanksgiving service.

During the drive he told me he was still active in the ministry and
deeply believed in God.

I gazed out the window as we drove past the neat yards and huge houses
of Edina, and wondered if he intended to use religion to force me to
change my mind about Mark.  As a minister's daughter religion had
always exerted a powerful influence on me.  I began regretting having
come home.  The suburbs of Minneapolis reminded me of the provincialism
and narrow-mindedness of Gopher Prairie in Sinclair Lewis's Main
Street.

My father was born and raised in Minneapolis, and damn proud of it, so
I made no unkind remarks about the Midwest.  I had enormous respect for
my Iather and had always been much closer to him than to my mother.

But now that I had made a life for myself in New York, had lived in
Hungary and Germany, and had fallen in love with an African, the
closeness we once shared had begun to wane.

The church had vaulted ceilings, a booming organ, a satinrobed choir,
and majestic stained glass windows that made one instantly feel meek
and sinful upon entering.  As I stood beside my father, singing from
the hymnal he held rigidly before me, my hopes for telling him about
Mark seemed doomed.  I expected a religious browbeating, laced with
snide comments about "shacking up"-his favorite expression for living
together.  I looked about me at the faces of the all-white
congregation; I saw smiles and expressions of placid contentment.  I
told my father everyone looked too happy.

"You've been living in New York too long," Dad replied.  "When are you
coming home to the Midwest, where the women are strong, he said,
quoting his favorite lines from Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home
Companion" radio show.

We drove to our split-level home on Xerxes Avenue, a few blocks south
of Lake Calhoun.  Everything was familiar except for a new couch and
new paintings: the large living room with the gold-framed fireplace,
the stereo cabinet, the piano room that my father sometimes used as a
counseling office, the Flying Scot sailboat in the backyard, the skis
and camping equipment in the garage.  Upstairs in my old bedroom,
filled with high-school athletic trophies and textbooks from Brown, I
paced back and forth, rehearsing what I would say.

Mom, Dab i'm living with my black boyfriend.  I said to myself.  No,
no!  That will never do.  I don't want to give them heart attacks.  I
tried again, but the news always sounded shocking, no matter how I
worded it.  I thought of my mother's mother, Susan Stork Scott, an
active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution who was proud
that her relative John Hopkins sailed to America on the Mayflower How
would my mother's relatives, descendants of pilgrims and Protestant
ministers, react to the possibility that the purity of their English
and Scottish line of descent might be "stained" by Negro blood?  After
all, they had given my mother a hard time just for marrying a German.

In my nervous despair, I believed my parents might disown me for being
in love with a black.

"Don't tell your parents," a friend from Brown had said to me one
evening as she leaned toward me over her cappuccino in Cafe Reggio in
Greenwich Village.  "You'd have to sacrifice your whole family.

I should know-I had to.  My father called me a whore for marrying
down' to someone who was poor and non-Jewish."

I continued to pace, thinking of Prince Myshkin's honesty in
Dostoyevsky's novel The idiot.  He had kept no secrets and was
incapable of lying.  I thought, isn't it better to be honest, and run
the risk evokingpain, gri'f, disappointment, and anger than to live a
JOe -secrets Iand hatruths, cowering in the shadows like a
guilt-ridden criminal?

Tell them now!  I said to myself that evening.  I was in the backseat
of our Volkswagen Rabbit and my parents were in front.  Slowly and
carefully, I told them about the terrible room I had rented in
Stapleton, how my friend Mark had worried about my safety, and how he
had been gracious enough to invite me to move my things into his place
in St.  George.  I held my breath and waited for their response.

My father was struck dumb.

"What is Mark's last name?"  my mother asked, breaking a long and
uncomfortable silence.

"Mathabane," I replied.

"What kind of a name is that?"

"South African."

"Is he of English or Afrlkaner descent?"  my mother asked.

Before I could reply, my father asked, "Is Mark an American citizen?"

"No."

"Does he have any plans to become one?"

"I don't know.  That's his business, not mine."

I already knew my father's suspicions: A foreigner was out to trick his
daughter into marriage so he could get a green card.  Irom their
questions, I could tell the possibility had not yet dawned on them that
Mark might not be white.

"Why don't you go to a local church and find an old woman who will take
in a boarder?"  my father asked.

I choked on my reply.  I realized he would never understand.  I
abruptly switched the topic.

The next morning I awoke determined to accomplish "Phase Two" of my
plan to brief my parents on my personal life: tell them Mark is
black.

My mother was alone in the kitchen heating tea in the microwave.

"So, tell me more about Mark," she said with the curiosity every mother
has toward her daughter's love life.  "Where did he grow up?"

I described the ghetto of Alexandra, the shack his family lived in, his
six siblings, and how his illiterate mother had cajoled him to go to
school because she regarded an education as a powerful weapon of hope
and a way out of a dead-end ghetto life.  As I described Mark's mother,
she asked nervously, "Oh, you mean, do you mean to tell me-Is his
mother black?"

"Yes."

"And his father too?"

"Yes."

"Both of them?"

"Yes."

My mother's eyes widened with amazement but she quickly smoothed over
her surprise and, speaking rapidly and nervously, told me that Winnie
Mandela and Nadine Gordimer were to be awarded honorary degrees by her
alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.  She asked more questions about
Mark.  I told her how Mark had learned English through reading comic
books, how he happened to pick up tennis, how he met Stan Smith at an
international tennis tournament in Johannesburg where he was the only
black player, and how Stan arranged for him to leave South Africa on a
tennis scholarship.

"And Mark respects me for being a feminist," I said.  "He says white
women are seen as weak and submissive compared to black women, who are
raised to be tough and assertive.  He says I have to be strong and
stand up for my rights as a woman, especially in a place like New
York."

0That's so true," my mother said.  "He sounds like a really nice guy.

Do you have a picture of him?"

I bounded upstairs two at a time to fetch a color snapshot of Mark,
taken as he raised his fist for emphasis during an antiapartheid
lecture.

"He's cute," my mother said.

Happily chatting, we finished our breakfast and my mother left to do
errands.  She returned two hours later with a stack of library books by
Nadine Gordimer.

"Mom, what are those for?"  I asked.

"I have to read up for the day I meet Mark," she said smiling.

I knew then that I had won my mother's sympathy.  I joyfully threw my
arms around her neck and laughed.  Mom laughed too, and hugged me in
return.  Still embracing her I said, "I was afraid you wouldn't
understand."

"Love is complex," she said.  "Sometimes it doesn't need to be
understood.  It needs only to be accepted."

I spent the entire afternoon with my mother, talking, drinking tea,
listening to records, and recalling shared memories.  Both of us felt
close and light-hearted, but as evening approached and the hour of my
father's return from the office drew near, I grew tense.

"What do you think he'll do, Mom?"  I asked.  "I know he won't accept
it as easily as you have."

"You're right," she said.  "He couldn't sleep all night just knowing
you were with a foreigner."

"Does he suspect Mark is black?"

"No, of course not.  He'd have gone through the roof."

"Will you tell him?"

"It's your life, honey.  You have to tell him."

"Will he disown me?"

"He loves you too much ever to do that, Gail.  You're his orly daughter
and youngest child.  He treasures you.  He doesn't want to lose your
love.  Maybe that's why he's always disapproved of your boyfriends and
told you they're not good enough for you.  He loves you too much to let
you go.  He's afraid you'll get hurt."

I did not tell my father that evening, or the next.  I almost told him
one morning when we were shoveling two feet of snow off the driveway,
then changed my mind.  My father and I went to the Calhoun Beach Club
together to lift weights and sit in the whirlpool, but neither of us
brought up the topic of Mark.  We went to some indoor tennis courts and
played mixed doubles with another father-daughter pair.  I was enjoying
our time together and did not want to spoil it by bringing up a topic I
knew made him uncomfortable.  All he did was give me his advice: "Why
don't you keep looking for a place of your own, honey?"

He probably already knows Mark is black, I thought to myself on the
plane as I headed back to New York without having told him.

Now that Mom and my brothers know, it won't be long until heflnds
out.

Every other day I went to my brother's apartment to type more chapters
of my novel into his computer.  I could tell my father had talked to
Paul, for my brother started sounding more like my dad each day.  He
stood behind me at the computer.  I could feel his presence as I tried
to concentrate on the screen.

"So, are you looking for another place to live?"  Paul asked.

"No," I replied.

Later his wife, Debbie, sat down beside me and said, "Gail, we both
feel living together is a big deal.  There needs to be a commitment,
and we just don't get the feeling that you're ready to make such a big
commitment.  We feel protective toward you.  We don't want to see you
make a mistake or get hurl."

Was my father trying to apply pressure on me indirectly by getting Paul
and Debbie to agree with him?  At first it was easy for me to tell
myself, They just don't understand our relationship.  But with time I
began to miss my solitude and independence.  I was not ready to invest
what little money I had in joint ventures with Mark-in buying a vacuum
cleaner and dishes and a toaster oven and a down cornforter.

The growing intensity of our commitment to each other made me panic.  I
was only twenty-three.  I liked to meet my girlfriends for dinner in
East Village cafes.  I enjoyed going to parties in Soho and dances with
Carol Abizaid and other friends from Brown.  I felt an occasional need
to flee from Mark's brooding concern�with apartheid and injustice and
indulge myself by having fun.  Besides, I was not convinced I had the
strength to stand up to the social pressures against interracial
couples.  I decided it would be best for me to search for a place of my
own and let my commitment to Mark grow at a more gradual and natural
pace, if it was meant to.

Carrying a tattered map of New York City in one hand and the Village
Voice apartment share ads in the other, I searched for affordable rooms
in Hoboken, Queens, and Brooklyn.  At last I found a warm, sunny room
in Park Slope to share with an honest, intelligent young woman named
Michal.

My father was overjoyed to hear the news.  He was particularly happy to
hear that Michal was a graduate student at the same school he once
attended-Union Theological Seminary.  My brother Dan and his
girlfriend, Lisa, helped me move.  Mark looked morose as he helped us
load my belongings-a tent, a sleeping bag, boxes of books and journals,
a guitar, a pair of cross-country skis, and a box of artist
supplies-into the trunk of Lisa's car.

As soon as I got settled into my new place I invited Mark to dinner.

He made excuses not to come.  Weeks went by, then months, and still he
had not come to Brooklyn to see my new room or meet Michal.  After my
mother's visit to New York in March, during which she quizzed Mark
about his immigration status and told me that Dad disapproved of our
relationship, Mark became distant.  After his brothers-in-law were
murdered in Alexandra, he pulled away Theyond reach.  When he stopped
calling me, I knew something'was wrong.  When I pressed him to tell me
what was going on in his heart and mind, he told me it was pointless to
continue our relationship.

"Gail, your father doesn't approve!"  he said emphatically.  "We can't
go on pretending he does.  You have to understand my position.

Your father might do something drastic, like calling the I.N.S. and
having me deported."

"He wouldn't do that," I said.

"Wouldn't he?  I can't talk now.  I have to go."

Mark started cutting the conversation short each time I called.

Once he told me he could not talk to me and listen to the news at the
same time.  When he left for his promotional tour without calling to
say good-bye, I knew he was determined to end our relationship.

In despair over losing Mark, I became angry at my father.  It's all his
fault, I thought to myself.  All my misery and hurt over being
abandoned by Mark was channeled into an uncontrollable rage against my
father.  One April night my anger became so intense that I could not
sleep.  I got up at four in the morning, switched on my desk lamp, sat
down, and wrote my father the following letter:

April 20, 1988

Dad, I'm writing regarding the lack of emotional support I receive from
you.  I don't feel as though you believe I will ever become a writer.

In your "commandant" style you have always tried to mold me into what
you wanted to show off to the neighbors: a doctor, a TV anchorwoman,
anything but what Fwanted to be.  You have even tried to direct and
must entrust to a worthy owner.  I'm not anyone's possession!

manipulate my affections for men, as if I were a possession which you
As for your latest move, sending Mom out here to ask Mark about his
status in this country and to tell me that "Dad does not want to
encourage Mark in anyway," I have to respond the only way I can-in pure
hate.

I'm sure you will be rubbing your hands in glee to ilnd that since
Mom's visit, Mark has distanced himself from me.  Our relationship,
which Is of immense importance to both of us, Is almost over.  Wlly?

FIrst of all, he is hurt that you won't approve of him even though you
have never met him.  Secondly, he is afraid you will approach the
media, tell them that a black SouthAfrican is trying to use his
daughter to gain citizenship, and that he will be kicked out of this
country and be sent to prison or executed in his own.

Whether his fear is founded or not, it is very real to him.  I know
this news probably gives you great joy, but I'm going through hell, and
decided to send you some of it.

GNL P.S. Of course I remember the times when you were a good father to
me, and they make me cry.  Perhaps because I wish it were always so.

A few days later, when I returned home from work, the phone rang.  It
was my father.  He was crying.

"I love you so much," he said between breathless sobs, "but I feel like
you don't even know me.  I feel as if I were a stranger to my own
daughter."

Tears sprang to my eyes.

"How could you think I'm not supportive of you as a writer?"  he
asked.

I tried to sound angry at first, but my feelings rushed up to squeeze
the words lodged in my throat.

"What's wrong, honey?"  he asked.  "You sound all choked up."

"I?ve had a terrible month," I said.  "I didn't mean to hurt you.  I
just had so much rage and pain inside I wanted to blame it on
someone."

0That letter hurt me very deeply.  I feel like there's a huge, red,
gaping wound between us."

As we talked he began to realize that the angry letter had arisen from
the depths of a profound depression that I had not even realized I was
in.

4If you love Mark, go after him!"  my father said.  "I'll never stand
in your way.  I never wanted to interfere with your relationship with
Mark.  Mother was very impressed with him.  She said he is another
Gandhi.  If you love him, go after him.  GO after HIM!!"  Kis voice
faded, he sounded emotionally exhausted.  "Do you think your father is
a racist?  Me?  What do you take me for?"

We talked for a while longer about Mark, about my novel, about my
roommate and having my own room.  Suddenly he asked, "Do you still hate
me?"

"No," I said.  "I love you very much."

We were both crying when we hung up.  First I wept for having hurt my
father so deeply.  Then I wept over the fact that, now that we had my
father's blessing, Mark was out of my life.

I survived the next week like a zombie, trying to come to grips with
the fact that I was now alone.  Every Thursday I went to my Russian
tutor on Seventy-second Street, Inessa, who corrected my Russian essays
and had me read to her from Pushkin.  This week's essay was about my
father and his suspicion that my foreign boyfriend just wanted American
citizenship.

"Your boyfriend, he is Russian?"  Inessa asked in broken English.

"No, South African."

"He is black?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then I think your father has right.  I'm not a racist, but I think it
is not good to have relations with these people.  Look how he abandoned
you when he found out your father's feelings.  It means he only wanted
citizenship.  They may be good in the bed, but there are more important
things."

I must have looked downcast, for Inessa continued, "But you are a very
young girl.  When I was your age in Moscow, I had many boyfriends.  I
went to the theater, to concerts, to films, but never to the bed.  You
must have self-respect.  You could get a disease or get a baby.  A man
will give you money and say, Here, go get an abortion."

You are an educated girl from a good family.  You must be selective."

"But I loved him," I said, feeling the tears rise.

"I don't think it was a real love," Inessa said firmly I left that
tutoring session feeling vulnerable and sad, as if I had foolishly
exposed my innermost self to someone who would never understand my true
feelings.

One night when Michal was visiting her parents in Chicago, the doorbell
rang.  As usual, I opened the third-floor window, stuck my head into
the night air, and tried to see who was on the stoop.

Mark was standing there in his maroon Adidas sweat suit with the white
stripes.  He held a suitcase in each hand.  My heart began to race.

"What are you doing here?"  I yelled down to him.

"I got lost!"  Mark replied, his wire-rim glasses gllnting in the
streetlighL He was smiling and laughing, obviously overjoyed to see
me.

"Why do you have those bags?"  I asked.

"I came straight from the airport."

I went downstairs to let him in.  He stood in the doorway expecting a
kiss.  Disguising my delight with indifference, I picked up his bags
and hauled them upstairs without even pausing to say hello.  He had
hurt me deeply, and I was not planning to let him off the hook
lightly.

He talked a mile a minute about his publicity tour, which had taken him
to all the major cities in America, then he began praising the oil
painting I had been working on to take my mind off him.

"I had no idea you were such a fine artist," he said.  "You should have
been painting all along.  You should be selling these.  I like the
colors.  How did you get the proportions right?  I had no idea..  ."

He went on and on.  "Can I put my juice in the refrigerator?"

"I don't think it would be worth the effort.  You can't stay here
tonight."

Mark looked hurt and pouted innocently.

"You can't just pull away and then reenter my life at will!"  I said.

"I've spent weeks trying to get over you, and now you come back as if
nothing happened."

"My feelings for you haven't changed," he said.

"It's a fine time to tell me that now."

"While we were apart I realized that the book, the publicity tour, even
my career as a writer are meaningless compared to the feelings that we
share.  Love, truth, simplicity, integrity-those make up the kernel of
life.  Everything else is worthless chaff."

"You wanted to break up with me.  Is it because I'm white?"

"To be honest," he began, then hesitated.  "To be honest I did think,
for a while at least, that it would be better for both of us to marry
within our race.  I felt my life would be much simpler if I married a
black woman.  And yours too if you married white."  He paused for a
moment, awaiting a response, then continued, "I don't want to be
accused of betraying the black race or of turnjng my back on the
struggle in South Africa.  But that was my head speaking, not my
heart.

I love you," he said, taking my hand and squeezing it.  "We belong
together, no matter how misunderstood we might be.  Anyone who truly
knows me will know I'm not betraying my people by loving you."

"I wish you had realized that before I wrote my father that letter," I
said.

"What letter?"

I had kept a copy of the letter I sent my father, so I read it aloud in
the angry tone in which it was written while Mark sat on the edge of a
chair, head bowed, listening intently.  When I looked up I detected
tears in the corners of his eyes.  He covered his face with his
hands.

I told him how my father had called, cried, and begged me to understand
him.  This made Mark weep even harder.

"My father told me that your fear of him is not paranoia," I said.

"He says it's a real reaction to fears created by your cultural
background.  You've been conditioned to fear big white men."

"Hold me," Mark whispered.

I could not move.  I was still too hurt to reach out to him.  Before I
reopened a wound that had begun to heal, I wanted some sort of
guarantee that he would never again pull away from me.  He threw his
arms around me and squeezed me tight, burying his face between my neck
and shoulder.

"I'm glad you finally confronted your father with your true feelings,"
Mark said, "but I wish it hadn't been so painful.  I never thought you
could write such a letter to your father.  And I believe it's your love
for me that made you write it."

We talked late into the night, and I told him about the pain and
anguish I had felt in the weeks he had withdrawn from me.  I explained
why I felt like an emotional clam, afraid to emerge from my shell and
risk being hurt again.  In earlier relationships I had always done the
breaking up.  It was the first time a man had tried to break up with
me, and it shook me to the core.

"You can sleep on the futon couch," I said, waving down the hall toward
the living room.

"All right," he said.  "I need to shower first."

When I returned to my room from the kitchen, I saw a damp towel hanging
over my chair and found Mark under my covers, freshly showered.

"What do you think you're doing?"  I said, trying to sound stern.

He grinned.  "I got lost."

I laughed, shattering my facade.  He knew I loved him and so did I. We
talked and giggled and held each other until the room grew light.  We
could hear children calling to each other on their way to school.  We
finally fell asleep mid-morning.  We ate breakfast at four in the
afternoon.

MARK'S VIEW For several weeks after my return from the publicity tour,
Gail and I were blissfully content.  We reflected on the struggies we
had been through and drew strength from them.  We convinced each other
that our relationship would endure, no matter how vilified or isolated
or misunderstood we might become.  We did our best to shun the frenzy
of the outside world, its materialism, its rewards for conformiry We
saw everything as so much chaff, seldom leading to true happiness or
growth of the soul, that part of ourselves we believed immortal.  We
vowed to resist, with all the strength our love could furnish us, the
pressures and prejudices of such a world.  Our spirits yearned to
breathe free, to mingle with each other and with all that was True,
Beautiful, and Good in life.

"Before, we were trying, without realizing it, to fit in," I said to
Gail one evening as she sat across from me during a candlelight dinner
at my Staten Island apartment.  "We were attempting to satisly
society's impossible demands.  We were obsessed about what people
thought of us.  You longed to please your family and I wanted to
protect my public image.  But we can't hope to change society if we
suppress or hide or compromise what we deeply feel."

Gail looked up suddenly and asked, with a slightly worried expression,
"Do you think our relationship will withstand all the pressures?" 
"Of course it will," I said.  "We must make it work.  It won't be
easy.  But our love is something worth fighting for, worth dying
for."

Gail raised her wineglass and said, inlill drink a toast to that."  Our
glasses clinked.

We slow danced around the kitchen to Fleetwood Mac, talking and
laughing as we spun around the room.

"I've never felt this happy," Gail said.  "My cheek muscles are sore
from smiling.  We don't need anybody or anything else, as long as we
have each other."

For the first time in our relationship, we dared to hold hands and put
our arms around each other in public.  In the Museum of Natural
History, while touring the prehistoric wing and examining the dinosaur
skeletons, I kissed Gail in front of a staring brontosaurus.

Stares and disapproving glances no longer fazed me.

But certain obstacles, both internal and external, kept cropping up.

Gail had a hard time completely ignoring the opinions of outsiders, nor
could she cease wondering what people were thinking when they stared at
us.  She became even more self-conscious after taking a tour of
Forty-second Street with a group of women called Feminists Against
Pornography.  The tour was designed to educate women about pornography
by taking them into adult book stores and sex shops, showing them the
curtained booths where mini porno films were shown and pointing out the
various categories of porn magazines.  Gail was amazed at finding a
whole rack of magazines devoted to in5altnCppp pornography,
showing blacks and whites in all sorts of crude and kinky positions.

Some of the black men were depicted as slaves.  The salt-'n'-pepper
section was right beside the sex-with-children magazines.

"I can't believe people get their thrills from imagining all sorts of
horrible things about interracial couples in bed," Gail said after
describing to me what she had seen.  "How awful!  What kind of
perverse pleasure do they derive from it?"  "I really can't tell," I
said.  "MyEN their prejudices and the taboo against interracial love
combine to conjure up all that trash."  "Do people actually see us
that way?"  "There are lots of sick minds out there."

We frankiy discussed our feelings whenever we encountered stereotypes
against mixed couples in books, in the news, or in daily life.  It was
our way of supporting each other through emotionally trying situations,
of reaffirming our commitment to each other despite the social
pressures against us.

"Listen to this," Gail said, excitedly pacing my apartment with a copy
of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks in her hand.  She read aloud
from the chapter titled "The Man of Color and the White Woman."  in "I
wish to be acknowledged not as black, but as white,' " she read.

in Now, who but a white woman can do this for me?  By loving me she
proves that I am worthy of white love.  I am loved like a white man.  I
am a white man.  When my restless hands caress those white breasts,
they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine.""
"What!"

I exclaimed.

"Wait, there's more," she said.  "CHgAB by degrading ostracism,
mulattoes and Negroes have only one thought from the moment they land
in Europe: to gratify their appetite for white women."" "Thats
ridiculous," I said.  "CH5BAtly ridiculous."

Gail went on.  in The majority of them tend to marry in Europe not so
much out of love as for the satisfaction of being the master of a
European woman.  And a certain tang of proud revenge enters into
this."" I was astounded by what I heard.  "Why do people search for
hidden motives when a black falls in love with someone white?  No one
tries to psychoanalyze why same-race couples fall in love.  Yet there
are endless theories and psychological studies to explain interracial
love."  "And this chapter doesn't say anything about the feelings the
woman may have for her man," Gail said.  "Shes just an object of
innocence and purity to be despoiled by black hands.  Women are human
beings.

They have complex emotions, they fall in love.  They don't just sit
around and wait to be conquered by a master.a She looked down at the
book.  inlt says here they used to castrate black men when caught with
white women."

"In colonial Africa, sure," I said.  "By the way, that was also done
by the Klan down South."

"But why?"  Gail asked.  "What if they both loved each other?"

0That's the unanswered question of human history."

One warm day in May, as we sat on a blanket overlooking Staten Island's
Silver Lake and eating a picnic lunch, I wondered what it would be like
if Gail and I moved into one of the apartments above the park.

Whenever I looked up, there she would be.  And whenever she looked up,
there I would be.  We could gaze out the window each mornmg at the
seagulls gathering on the banks and skimming the surface of the
sparkiing water.

For weeks I wanted to ask Gail to marry me, but I did not know Ihow to
say it without frightening her off.  Her need for independence, her
fear of commitment, and her love of solitude gave me the impression she
was not yet ready to make any firm decisions about our future.  Then
there were her parents.

That spring Gail started going camping alone every other weekend.  She
would take her backpack, tent, and some food to Grand Central or Penn
Station and catch a bus or train to Bear Mountain, the Catskills, or
Montauk Point.  She would return to the city after a weekend of hiking,
reading in her tent by flashlight, and gazing into campfires looking
healthy and fresh and alive.  But her hours alone only served to
strengthen her resolve to be on her own.  I, on the other hand, yearned
for more stability in our relationship.

Especially because I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the
stress of living in New York City.  It was making me worry too much
about money, distrust people, feel uptight most of the time, and harden
my heart in order to rationalize the ubiquitous pain and misery of the
homeless and the poor.  My health was beginning to suffer from the
pollution, the constant noise, the crowds.

I wanted to leave New York, and I wanted Gail, if she loved me, to come
with me.  If we were to get married, we would definitely not want our
children raised in a place where they could not afford to be children:
innocent, trustIng.  I had already been down South on a visit to High
Point, North Carolina, and found the Piedmont area congenial, more
humane than New York City, despite its lingering image among many
Northerners as backward and racist.

How can you ask for a commltmentm Gail when her heart is still torn
between her love for you, her family, and her need for lndependence?  I
asked myself.  Yet I knew we had to choose a course and follow it, or
our relationship would just flounder and cease to grow.

One afternoon Gail and I had just returned from a long run when the
phone rang.  It was my sister Florah calling from a neighbor's house in
Alexandra, where most of my family had gathered to speak to me.  They
told me that a day ago the police had opened fire and hurled tear gas
into a crowd of blacks gathered at a mass funeral for victims of a
previous police massacre.  Children were among those injured and
detained but fortunately my siblings were among those who escaped.  My
father had fallen ill from some undiagnosed ailment that was thought to
be tuberculosis.  My mother got on the phone.

"Hello, my child," she said in Tsonga in her caressingly sweet voice.

"Hello, Mama."

"When are you getting married?"

I smiled and looked at Gail, who had taken off her running shoes and
was stretching out.

"I don't know, Mama," I said in Tsonga.  "Maybe in three years."

0Three years!  But I want grandchildren right away!"

"Okay, one year," I said.

"So I have to wait that long before coming to America?"  my mother
said, sounding disappointed.  "What's wrong?  Don't you have enough
money to pay lobola?  How much do Gail's parents want?"

I laughed.  "Mama, men don't have to pay for their brides in
America."

"What, no lobola!"  my mother exclaimed.  "How do Gail's parents hope
to get back the money they've spent raising such a beauty?  If there's
no lobola required, don't wait that long to get married.  She may
change her mind and leave you, you know."

I looked at Gail and laughed heartily.  My mother knew from previous
conversations that Gail was white, but not once did she make her color
an issue.  This hardly surprised me.  Her judgment of people had always
been based on one criterion: their character.  As long as Gail was a
good human being, was not lazy, did not smoke or drink, was respectful
and compassionate, and loved me as much as I loved her, my mother
unreservedly approved of our relationship.  Each time I spoke to her on
the phone she kept reminding me that there African ghetto and a few
black-and-white photographs of me alone was no longer any "apartheid in
marriage," by which she meant that the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages
Act had been repealed.  and with Stan Smith and his family.  It was an
odd feeling to pass a Gail looked up.  "Why do you keep looking at me
and laughing?

What is she saying?"

"She wants a big tribal wedding, and she wants it soon," I said.

"And, oh, she also wants a tribe of grandchildren."

Gail groaned and rolled her eyes.

We had now been together for one and a half years.  At the end of June,
after hinting about living together for several weeks, I finally sprang
my version of "the big question."  Gail was working in her office at
the German Information Center when I called.  She had found out two
weeks earlier that her parents were getting divorced, but I did not
think their divorce would have much of an impact on our relationship.

If anything, I thought, she might be more ready for some stability in
her life.

I asked if she were ready to live with me.

"I can't make that decision right away," she said.  "I need time."

"But we've had plenty of time," I said.  "This should have been
uppermost in our minds.  I want to be able to say, this is my wife,'
and I want you to be able to say, this is my husband,' and I want us
to be able to say, this is our baby."" "Are you asking me to marry
you?"

"Yes."

There was a pause, as if my words took her by surprise.

"Mark, I want you to know that I love you very much.  But marriage is
such a big step.  You'll have to give me a little time.  I'm only
twenty-four."

"It's not age but maturity that counts."

"Still, I'd like to go home and talk to my parents about it.  Not to
ask for their advice and then obey them, but to discuss it openly with
them.  Besides, tonight is the last night they are staying under the
same roof.  I want to find out what has happened between them and if
they can be reconciled."

Gail's request was reasonable.  I supported her decision to fly to
Minneapolis for the weekend.  I did not want her to have to choose
between me and her parents.  I wanted us to have their blessing.  Gall
flew home the day the July 1986 issue of People magazine hit the
newsstands.  It contained an article about my growing up in a South
newsstand, pick up a copy of the magazine, and open it to find a large
photo of me, naked to the waist and covered with sweat, holding a
tennis racket and smiling shyly.  It made me feel exposed but I was
told by the editors of People that titillation sells magazines.

It was a long, hot, lonely Fourth of July weekend as I eagerly awaited
Gail's return.  It was impossible to get into Manhattan from Staten
Island because the ferry was jammed with tourists taIling snapshots of
the tall ships brought into the harbor to celebrate the unveiling of
the newly refurbished 100-year-old Statue of Liberty.

Some madman pulled out a sword on the ferry that weekend and started
slicing up tourists.  I'm glad I decided to stay in SL George.

Tuesday came, then Wednesday, and still no word from Gall.

Doubts began creeping into my mind.  Why had she not called?  How did
her visit with her parents go?  About a week later I received a letter
from her.

July 7, 1988

Dear Mark, You seemed to want a firm answer one way or the other as to
whether our lives are converging or diverging.  My reply is that they
must diverge completely for at least five months if they are to
converge at all.  I need time, space, and solitude in which to think
clearly, heal, and reflect.  This is a very difficult time for me.

Seeing my parents go through a divorce Is frightening, bewildering, and
anger-provokIng.  I know that I never want to go through such an
experience.  I never want to make the mistake of choosing the wrong man
as my life partner.

None of this Is your fault, I know, but it ailects me and subsequently
our relatIonship.  I have decided it would be best If we do not see,
speak or write to each other until mid-December.  I realize that I am
taking a huge gamble-you may move to North Carolina andlor find another
woman by then.  But it Is a risk I feel I must take if!  am ever to
love you without reservations and Internal conflicts.

Sincerely, GNL The letter shocked me.  More shock and bewilderment
awaited me when I learned that Gail had moved out of the apartment she
shared with Michal.  Neither her friends nor her brothers would reveal
her new address or phone number.  I could have called her at work, but
I refrained.  If she wanted to speak to me she would call.  I felt new
depths of pain.  I could not imagine what could have made her abruptly
sever all ties with me, especially when I knew how much she loved me.

1 waited.  There was nothing else I could do.  Muggy July ended and
sultry August began and still I held out hope.  But by the end of
August I could stand the city no longer.  Every street and every museum
and every cafe brought back memories of Gail that tormented and mocked
me with their lucidity and force.  Finally I decided to leave the city
and memories of Gail behind.  I hired an Iranian driver and loaded all
my belongings into his truck.  He drove me to High Point, North
Carolina, where I had seen several apartments I liked.

My agent and publisher kept urging me to write a sequel to the Boy, but
my mind was distracted.  I could not force myself to be productive or
attend to the simplest household tasks.  I let bills lie unpaid on the
table, and would then take a check to the telephone or utility company
only after my phone or power had been cut off.  I felt restless,
aimless, gloomy.  Life became insipid and meaningless.  What used to
give me pleasure no longer did.  I would pick up a book, start reading
it, then immediately drop it and reach for another, then another.

Always my thoughts were on Gail.  I wondered what she was doing and
whether she had met someone else.  Whenever the Southerners who had
helped me get settled in High Point politely asked if I had a
girlfriend, I told them my heart was with a woman in New York.  I kept
Gail's picture in my wallet.  I would not give up hope.  I waited.

September arrived: no word from Gall.  I had to see her.  I flew to New
York and stood outside the glass skyscraper on the corner of Third
Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, waiting for her to get off work.

When she saw me she smiled and I could detect a sad yearning in her
eyes, but she quickly forced a change in her expression and headed for
the post office.  I walked along beside her, telling her about my new
place in High Point and how much she would love the South.

"I have to be at track practice at six thirty," she said brusquely.

"I've joined the Astoria Track Club."

0Can't you skip that?"  I said.  "We'll have dinner."

"No, Mark.  You don't understand."

"You've built quite a fortress around yourself.  It's like the Berlin
Wall.  You're acting like such a stoic.  Why are you trying to hide
your true emotions?"

"I'm simply more skeptical of marriage," Gail said.  "I mean, when you
see the two people who brought you Into this world split up, you feel
rootless.  At this point in my life I'm afraid of intimacy, I'm afraid
of counting on another person to always be there."

"But marriage has nothing to do with dependence."

"Besides, you have such a strong personaliry How can I ever stand up to
it?  My mother couldn't stand up to my father, and now they're
divorcing."

"All right, it's true that I have a strong personality," I said.  "But
that's because of where I came from and what I had to fight.  But
you've fought your own batties as a woman!  You're not like other
women.  You're a nonconformist, an individual.  Or am I mistaken?

Didn't you go to Budapest alone and live there for six months?  Didn't
you travel all over Europe and America alone?  Don't you hike and camp
alone for days at a time?  Didn't you reject your father's choice of a
career for you?  Those things take strength, they build character.

You're much stronger than you reallze."

Gail averted her eyes and fell sileni Iiinally she said, "But what
about the other difficulties?"

"Such as?"

"I hated the way we had to hide our relationship from others."

"I hated it too.  But we had begun to change that.  We were becoming
ourselves.  You remember how many times we pledged to live as we
desired and not as society dictated."

"But it's so hard to fight society," Gail said.  "I can't help it-I'm
still dependent on the opinions and approval of others.  It's difficult
not to be."

"I understand that," I said.  "But I know that with time, if we remain
true to our convictions and to each other, enough people will come to
accept us on our own terms.  Remember the progress we had already
made.

We started by denying our relationship, then we tried hiding it from
the public.  But that's all changing.  You know, some mixed couples
continue to act like strangers to each other for fear of losing their
jobs or meeting with public disapproval."

"You see?"  she cried.  "I don't want to live that kind of life."

"We won't.  And neither should they!"

As we descended the grimy steps of the subway I tried to convince Gail
that two people who truly love each other can overcome all obstacles.

The subway was crowded.  The stale, musty air was suffocating.  People
were pushing with all their might to get into the train before the
doors closed on them.

"Oh, let's get out of here!"  I said.  "Let's have dinner somewhere.

"Here comes my train to Queens," Gail said.

The train screeched to a halt and the doors slid open.  She looked at
me, and I thought I detected a tear in her eye.  She hesitated,
obviously at war with her own emotions, then stepped onto the train
just as the doors were closing.  She vanished from sight.  I returned
to North Carolina with a heavy heart.

October arrived, bringing with it the smell of falling leaves and the
rain-soaked earth.  The trees outside my balcony, once green and
dancing in the breeze, began to turn brown and wither.  I furnished my
apartment, learned to drive, and did a few lectures, but still my
spirits were low.

One day Marion Salzman, a friend of Gail's from her days at Brown
University, called me to ask if I were willing to give a speech at a
private dinner in New York before a group of top investment bankers,
including the president of Citicorp.  They wanted to know the truth
about black life in South Africa and my views on divestment and
sanctions.  Faintly hoping that Gail might attend, I accepted.

GAIL'S VIEW When I flew to Minneapolis for the July Fourth weekend, I
simply wanted to let my parents know how serious Mark and I had become
about marriage and to find out the real reasons for their breaking up
after thirty-five years of marriage, three grown children, and
countless precious memories.  I had no idea the divorce would turn my
whole world upside down and make me suddenly fear making a commitment
to the man I loved.

The news of their divorce stupefied me.  It was June 1988 and I was at
my grandfather's home, a rustic cottage in the White Mountains of
northern New Hampshire, when my parents called.  Grampa had prepared a
sumptuous meal of glazed Cornish hens and the two of us were sharing a
bottle of Hungarian wine, clinking glasses as we made silly toasts and
swapped stories.  Thunder boomed and lightning flashed across the
mountains as Grampa told me, in vivid detail, about the day in 1927 he
and his sweetheart Susan Stork got married.

He was studying to be a minister at Union Theological Seminary and she
was a Barnard College undergrad, a flapper who wore her hair bobbed.

They knew their parents would disapprove of their marrying when they
were still students and before Grampa was ordained as a minister, so
they took the subway from 116th Street to City Hall and got married
secretly.  It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet stealing away to Friar
Laurence's cell and getting married without either family's knowledge
or consent.  I wished that someday I might marry in such a romantic and
private way.

Grampa had just finished telling me the emotionally riveting story when
the phone rang.  "Your parents have something they want to tell you,"
he said, handing me the phone.

After some hesitation, my mother said, "Your father and I have begun
divorce proceedings."

Stunned silence.

"Is this the first you've heard of it?"  Dad asked.

I struggled to get a grip on my emotions.  I tried to sound rational.

"We're all adults now and, therefore, friends, right?"  I said
slowly.

"I guess that means I have to stop seeing you as parents and start
seeing you as two individuals.  People go through changes, and friends
accept those changes."

"You sound as though you were thirty-four, not twenty-four," Dad
said.

"I've grown up a lot in the past two years," I said.  "I've known a lot
of sorrow and a lot of pain."

There was not much more to say.  No one had any good news.  "I love you
both," I said.

"We know you do, honey," my father replied.

I hung up and sat down on a kitchen stool feeling glum.  Grampa and I
discussed the divorce, then I went upstairs to bed.  Sleep was long in
coming, and I had shed tears before sleep finally stole away my despair
and twisted it into confusing dreams.  Are is the love that transcends
all misery and hardships?  I wondered.  How could they just walk away
fom each other thiry-five years marriage?  Why?

In an attempt to find the answers I went to Minneapolis.  My mother
picked me up from the airport, and when I told her about Mark's
proposal, her reaction was not what I expected.

"Dad is very concerned about you," she said.  "We both are.  He thinks
that if you marry Mark, the chances of divorce are high.  And he asked,
What are her chances of remarrying when she has black children?"" "Why
does he think we would divorce?"

0Because it's so common, and mixed couples have to endure extra
pressures.  He's counseled a few mixed couples and wasn't able to save
the marriages.  Besides, honey," she said, reaching across the front
seat to touch my arm, "you should wait and be sure.  You don't want to
go through a divorce.  It's a living hell."

What I saw and heard in the next few days convinced me of this fact.

When I was with my mother I heard one side of the story; with my father
I heard a completely different one.  It was easy to sympathize with
both of them, which confused me.  They argued about money.  They argued
about where I should stay.  One pressed me to reveal what the other had
said.  Each blamed the other.  At times I went outside, feeling
unwanted, and asked myself, Why did I come home?

are divorcing.  They have no time or emotional energyfor me.

"Your mother did her best, Gail," Dad said, sitting beside me on the
couch with his arm around me.  0She gave everything she could.  I
harbor no ill will toward her.  She's a brilliant woman.  It's just
that we're so darn different, that's all."

I tried to talk to him about Mark, but I did not know how to broach the
subject.  Without a word I pulled the current People magazine out of my
purse, opened it to the article on Mark, and handed it to my father.

He stared at it for several minutes.

He wants to marry me," I said.

My father closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and broke
into an unexpected, chest-deep sob.  He was as emotional as he had been
when he called me in New York after receiving my hate letter.  This was
not my father.  He had changed completely.  In place of the controlling
patriarch was this sensitive fifty-five-year-old whose inner turmoil
could boil to the surface in an instant.

I threw my arms around him.  He held me tighlly and sobbed even more
vehemently.

"I'm so glad you came home, Gail," he said between breaths.

"What a godsend you are to both of us at this time."

 but why are you crying?"

0Because Mark is such a prince, and you're such a princess.  It's the
first time you've gone out with someone who's a real class actwho's on
your intellectual and creative level.  He's a real prince.  And one
assumes that princes and princesses belong together.  But that's not
always true.  There are other issues to consider and, oh"-he sobbed
again-"it's so tragic."

 but why don't princes and princesses belong together?"

4Look at your mother," he said between gasps.  0She's intelligent, well
bred, sophisticated.  And look at me-I'm a hardworking minister and
psychologist with an Ivy League education.  But we don't work
together.

That's what's tragic.  We're cutting each other down instead of
building each other up."

I wondered how my mother must have felt watching us embrace each
other.

I looked up.  She was standing in the doorway, her brow knit and her
eyes full of sorrow.  Later, when I was alone with her, I stared at the
People photograph of Mark, at his limbs and eyes and smiling lips.

"I don't think I'm strong enough to break up with him," I said.

"Why not?"  my mother asked.

"I'm too much in love with him."

 but you can find a support group to help give you strength, can't
you?"  she asked.

0Have you ever tried to kill a love you've felt for someone?"  I
asked.

No."

"It's hard to force your heart to listen to your head.  All I'll have
to do is hear his gentle voice and I'll melt."

"If you want to stay with him, go ahead," she replied.  But I've
learned that staying together with the wrong man is a poor excuse for
living."

The trauma of seeing a divorce unfold before my very eyes was enough to
peak my fear of commitment.  And the way my parents were pleading with
me to slow down, pull back, and rethink my relationship with Mark gave
me the feeling I needed some time to reflect and sort out my
feelings.

To heighten my dilemma, it seemed that everywhere I looked in
Minneapolis I saw a mixed couple.  As I dined with my father in a
restaurant one night, I could not take my eyes off the beautiful milk
chocolate skin of a little girl sitting between her black father and
white mother.  She smiled with little baby teeth, her black hair hung
in tight ringlets, and her charcoal eyes glittered.  I missed Mark.  I
did my best to hold up my end of the conversation, but my deepest
thoughts lay elsewhere.

At last I decided to wage an all-out war against my emotions.  I swore
I would smother my love for Mark before it consumed me entirely,
leaving only a trace of my former self.  I reasoned that if I could
survive on my own for five months, without leaning on anyone for
emotional support, then I just might be able to love Mark with no
reservations, without the slightest worry about the odds society might
stack against us as a mixed couple.

I moved to a dingy railroad apartment in Astoria, Queens, which I
shared with an aspiring singer named Tammy and her cat, Reebok.

I gave orders to my friends and brothers not to reveal my new address
or phone number to Mark.  I tried to convince myself and my relatives
that I was fine, but I sorely missed Mark and felt miserable.

Sometimes I asked myself why I was torturing both of us so much by
insisting on this separation.

Night after night I had a recurring dream: Mark and I lay side by side
on the deck of a boat, floating on a lake.  He caressed my cheek; I
said I had better go.  "When will you return?"  he asked.  "In five
months," I replied.  He tried to prevent me from leaving, but I pulled
away and dove into the water, terrified of my feelings for him.  As I
swam away I felt sorrowful, for I had left a large chunk of myself
behind on that boat.

Summer passed and heavy rains ushered in the fall.  I received an
occasional note from Mark, and wrote him once, when he moved to North
Carolina, to tell him I missed him.  I knew I was sending him mixed
signals, but I could not help letting my true feelings slip out once in
a while.  In early October Mark surprised me by calling me from North
Carolina.

I was at my part-time job doing word processing for a group of
consulting scientists.

"I have a surprise for you," Mark said.  "Can you guess what it is?"

"The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor."

No, guess again."

London Bridge is falling down."

No."

"You're moving to France."

Not in the near future."

"I give up."

"I'm going to arrange to have you fly down to North Carolina this
weekend.  I want you to see my new place."

I was silent.  I did not know how to respond.  My heart cried YES!

but my head restrained me.

"Sweets?  Are you there?"

"I can't."

"How about meeting me in Boston on my birthday?"

"No, it's the same thing.  I don't want to see you," I said, but at the
same time I wondered, What am I so afraid of? Why am I running?

I heard nothing but silence, then a sort of whimper.  Oh, Gail.  I
love you so deeply.  I really do.  Do you know that?"

Tears welled in my eyes.  I wanted to believe him so much.  Part of me
wanted to give up and revive our relationship, but something powerful-a
fear of disappointing my father, a fear of being part of a mixed
couple, a fear of getting married and then divorced-held me back.

Hello, Gail?  Are you there, darling?"

"Yes," I whispered, barely audible.

"Do you know how much I love you?  Do you really know?"

I looked up as my boss came in from lunch and walked by my desk.  "I
really can't talk right now," I said.

"Don't go.  You can't go yet.  Please talk to me.  How are you doing?

What are you feeling?  Don't you feel anything at all for your little
bushman?"

"I'm sorry it had to be you," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm just sorry you had to be the man in my life when all this happened
to me.  I didn't want to hurt you."

"I've felt a lot of pain in my lifetime," Mark said.  "It clarifies
things, shows me what is real.  And I've realized lately how deeply I
love you.  I left New York to give you space.  You know that, don't
you?"

I did not respond.

"But I couldn't get away from you, even down here.  I carry your spirit
in my heart."

"Mark, I have to go," I said, becoming aware of the office around me.

"Will you come to North Carolina?"

"I don't know.  I'll write."

I hung up, flustered and confused.  The office manager, Sandy, a very
emotional and caring woman who had suffered through eight years as a
heroin addict in the 19705, tried to comfort me.  When I told her it
was Mark, her jaw dropped.  She had been my confidante and knew the
whole painful story of our tenuous relationship.

"I'm afraid no one will ever love me as much as he does," I said
sadiy.

"Gail!  What are you talking about?!"  Sandy cried.  "Everyone who's
met you has told me what a beautiful, intelligent, delightful person
you are.  Half the men in this building would jump at the chance to go
out with you.  But it's not only your physical attractiveness.  It's
what's inside that's most important."

"Thanks," I said, too miserable to let her kind words fully soak in.

My father called me the following Saturday, told me he was reading
iffr Boy, then said he detected a certain sadness in my voice when he
mentioned Mark's name.

Sounds like you're still grieving, honey," he said.

It was the first time during the entire separation from Mark that my
father showed any compassion for what I was feeling, for the pain I was
putting myself through.  I could feel a tear roll down my cheek.

"Why don't you date around?"  he asked.

"I don't want to," I said, then paused.  "Dad, I feel strange talking
to you about my relationships."

"Yes, well, I guess that's my fault."

There was a silence.

"It's okay," I said.

"No, I don't think it is," he said.  "I don't know why I felt so
possessive, so..  ."  He stopped talking and I could almost hear the
crack of the emotional whip as he flogged himself for having been so
overprotective and jealous.  When I was a teenager he called me "Babe,"
or Hey, Beautiful."  He told me boys just want to get in your
pants."

"In your opinion no one was ever good enough for me, were they?"  I
asked.

"I don't know if anyone could have been," he said, sounding defeated.

I knew I needed to make peace with my father, the first man in my life,
in order to have a fulfilling adult relationship with a man.  I needed
to get rid of any deep-rooted anger I might harbor against him, admire
his strengths, and understand and forgive his weaknesses.

In October I began to see Carol Abizaid twice a week, for she was
teaching a dance class in Soho I was taking.  She could not understand
why I was pushing Mark away when she knew how much I still loved him.

Carol was falling in love with a French-speaking black man named
Robert, a dancer who had grown up an orphan in West Africa.  There was
only one problem: Robert had a wife.  Carol seemed distracted during
dance class, and after we had finished she borrowed a quarter from me
and went to make a phone call.

In the locker room I spotted Ellen, Carol's gorgeous biracial roommate,
and asked, What do you think of Carol's falling in love with a married
man?  I think she's setting herself up for a lot of pain."

"Well, she's a grown woman," Ellen said, bending down to strip off her
leg warmers.  "I guess all we can do is be there for her when she feels
down.  He tells her certain things, and she believes him, so I guess we
have to respect her feelings."

"She's really falling seriously in love, isn't she?"

Fallen-past tense.  I haven't seen her like this since we were at
Brown and she fell for Paul.  She's far gone."

But even the fact that Carol, one of my dearest friends, dated black
men and seemed to feel comfortable with that did not make me feel at
ease with the prospect of interracial marriage.  The stronger my love
for Mark grew, the more I feared marriage and commitment.  At times I
wished I could fall blindly and irrevocably in love with a white man,
as if that would solve everything.  But in my heart I knew I would
never meet another man like Mark in all the billions of this world.

That autumn I spent endless hours in Cafe Dante in Greenwich Village,
sipping cappuccino and scribbling feverishly in my journal, trying to
compose short story plots, writing notes for a second novel.

The manuscript of my first novel was with Kim Witherspoon, a fellow
Brown graduate who had just become a literary agent specializing in
young fiction writers.  She had submitted my manuscript to six major
houses and promoted me over lunch meetings with book editors.  It was
Kim who told me that Mark was lecturing in Midtown.  I had dropped by
her office on Broadway to see her.

"You will come to Mark's speech with us, won't you?"  Kim said,
standing up from her desk and pulling on her long black coat.  "Marion
is waiting downstairs in a cab."

I felt torn.  I yearned to see Mark, yet I was afraid of what it might
lead to.  My heart, which was constantly at war with my head, finally
triumphed and I found myself in a cab between Marion and Kim, bouncing
down Park Avenue on our way to the New York Men's Club.

I spotted Mark, politely nodding to an elderly gentleman, across a
crowded room filled with investment bankers in black suits who
conversed in low and distinguished voices.  His eyes widened in
amazement when he saw me.  In seconds he was beside me.

"I can't believe you came," he whispered.  "You look lovely."

We were called in to dinner and seated around a long U-shaped table.  I
sat at the farthest end, separated from Mark by the length of the
entire room, but even at that distance he looked more handsome and
self-assured than I remembered.  As he spoke about black life under
apartheid, about the imperative need to pressure the Pretoria regime to
change, his jaw seemed more square and forceful than ever, his words
more eloquent and powerful than I'd ever heard.  The bankers dared not
set a teacup on a saucer for fear of disturbing the silence of Mark's
dramatic pauses.

"You'd better leave," my head whispered to me.  "This is dangerous.

You still love him too much to be here."

"What's wrong with love?"  my heart retorted.  "Why should I suppress
my feelings?  What for?  To please whom?"

"But he's black, and you'll have mulatto babies," my head replied.

"You'll be ostracized from society.  No one will invite you to their
homes.  Your mother will say, "I told you so,' and your father will say
he approves in order to keep your aflection, but he'll privately hate
Mark."

"Do I have to spend my whole life hAD from the man I love?"

0Not your whole life.  Just long enough to stop loving hiln."

"You're coldhearted."

"I'm Gail's mind.  You're her heart."

FInally I could take it no longer.  I was torn in half.  The bond
between us was so strong that I could feel Mark's gravitational pull
from across the room.

"I have to go," I whispered to Kim.

"You're really afraid to be left alone with him, aren't you?"  Kun
asked.

I nodded.  We left before Mark's speech was finished and headed down
the spiraling marble steps.

"It must be difficult to break up with such an incredible man," Kim
said.  "I mean, he's not just a person, he's a cause.  It must be hard
to separate the two.  And he's not just talking about apartheid, he's
talking about being hun."

I knew immediately from the look in her eyes that Mark's full impact
had hit her.  It was the same impact that had first held me, and still
held me, in his power.  As I was leaving I saw Mark, in a crisp dark
suit and tie, quickly descending the stairs after me I frantically
tried to push open the door, but it stuck.  I saw Mark's eyes widen,
his mouth open.  The door burst open and I dashed outside, looked both
ways, then ran down Sixty-ninth Street toward Lexington Avenue.  I did
not feel safe from the whirl of my emotions until the doors of the bus
had closed, and even then I could not believe I had left the man I
loved standing on those steps, aghast.

The next day Mark called me at work at the scientists' association and
invited me to lunch.  I accepted before my head could object, and I
took Sandy along as a chaperone.  But when Sandy had to leave early to
get back to the office, I found myself alone with Mark, walking down
Forty-second Street.

"So where do we go from here, Gail?"  Mark asked.  "What is to become
of us?"

We stopped in front of the office building where I worked.  My fears
took control.  I said I had to go, that our relationship would never
work.

"Why, Gail?  Why don't you think it can work?  Let's give it another
try.  I know it will work out.  I've learned a lot in these past three
and a half months."

Thoughts of my parents and relatives loomed in my mind.  My head said,
"You have to be strong, Gail.  It was a mistake to see him."

"Is this good-bye then.  . forever?"  he asked.

"Yes, this is good-bye."  I ran inside the building.  He followed me.

"Do you want me to forget you?"

"Yes."

"I can never forget you, Gail."

"It would never work."

"Then please, give me one final farewell kiss."

UThat would only make it harder," I said.  But inside my heart was
breaking.  I wanted to throw my arms around him, I wanted to take him
home with me, I wanted to talk about writing and traveling and make
plans to visit him in North Carolina and shout, "To hell with the
world!  I don't care what anyone thinks of us!  I don't care that I'm
white and he's black!  I have to follow my feelings!"

But I remained stoic, even when I saw tears welling in Mark's eyes.  I
turned toward the elevator to hide my own tears from him.

"Let's try again," he said.

"No, no, no!"  I cried, then rushed past him and into the elevator.

"Good-bye, Gail," he said softly as the elevator doors slid shut.

Sandy was in the office when I arrived but our boss was not yet back
from lunch.  I burst into tears and Sandy did her best to comfort me.

She put her arm around me.

"Oh, Gail!  I can see why this must be hard for you.  He's the nicest
man I've ever met."

My heart was so heavy I could not bear it.  I had no desire to go out
and battle the New York crowds, no desire to do anything but wrap my
arms around Mark.  But he was gone, on his way to the airport to head
back to North Carolina, probably gone from my life forever.  I felt I
was to blame.  I was too stubborn.  I began crying, hysterically.  My
face was red, my eyes swollen.  I hyperventilated from sobbing so
hard.

"Oh, kid," Sandy said.  "You got it that bad, don't you?  Can't you
call him?  Can't you reach him somehow?"

I called Ellie Spiegel, the programs director at International House on
122nd and I"iverside.  I knew Mark had spent the night at her home
across the George Washington Bridge in Leonia.  She said she was not
sure whether Mark had left yet or not.

When I stepped onto the streets of New York at five o'clock, I said to
myself, "I must see him!  I'll go to Leonia.  Perhaps he's still
there."  I was irrational with grief as I boarded the A train and
headed north through Manhattan.  I spent my last dollar on bus fare to
cross the bridge.

"I don't care what anyone says anymore," I said to myself as tears slid
down my cheeks.  "My heart has won, and I'm glad.  If he has left for
North Carolina, then Fate meant for us to be apart.  If not, then we
belong together."

Ellie, a gray-haired and pert woman, was on the front porch getting the
mail as I came up the tree-lined walk.

"Hello, I'm still looking for Mark," I called to her.

"Oh, come in, Gail.  Let me see if his things are upstairs."

I stood at the foot of the stairs, almost reeling with suspense.

"Oh, please, dear God," I whispered.  "Let his bags be there.  Oh,
please!"

"His bags are still there," Ellie said, coming down the stairs.  "I
think he's staying until... oh, dear!  What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing," I said, blinking back tears of joy.  "It's just
that...

well, it's kind of personal but I think you should know.  Mark and I
fell in love while we were at International House.  My parents
disapproved, at least my father did, and I broke up with Mark in July
under all kinds of pressure.  It's so hard to be a mixed couple in this
world."

"Oh, you poor girl," she said, throwing her arms around me.  We stood
there hugging for a moment.

Ellie, her husband, Hans, and I were halfway through dinner when the
phone finally rang around nine o'clock.  Ellie answered it.

"Oh, hello Mark, where are you?"  She nodded toward me excitedly and
winked.  "Yes, I'll pick you up outside the terminal.  You're just in
time for dinner."

As she ran to get her coat, I said, "Don't tell him I'm here."

Ten minutes later Mark walked into the dining room, took one look at
me, and broke into a grin.  "Oh, Ellie!"  he said, "You should have
told me!"

"I was under instructions," she said.

"Oh, what a surprise!"  He was beaming and made no attempt to hide his
joy.

When he went upstairs to wash up for dinner, I went up after him.  We
wrapped our arms around each other tightly.  Our lips met for the first
time in nearly four months.

"Oh, Gail.  I love you so much," he whispered.

"And I love you."

"I was so miserable.  I've been wandering around Manhattan in a stupor
of depression.  But now..  ."  He could do nothing more than smile.

We went downstairs and joined the dinner conversation, while under the
table his toes massaged my stocking feet.  As soon as we could get away
we went for a walk around the neighborhood in our socks, holding hands
and discussing the tumultuous four months we had spent apart.  The
night was warm and tender and compassionate as we whispered back and
forth.  And I asked myself, Why do you fight your love/or him/ for so
long?  Accept yourself as you are, Gail.

Accept the/act that you're in love with a black SouthA'rican.

We spent the weekend in North Carolina, just the two of us, deep in
discussion, walking hand in hand through the woods, picnicking by a
lake, sharing an umbrella in the pouring rain.  The leaves overhead
made a canopy of crimson and gold as we ran down a trail through the
forest.  We talked excitedly about writing a book that would encourage
mixed couples to choose love and disregard the world around them.  My
feelings for him were so real, so genuine.  I now saw that all my
desperate struggles to break away from him had been artificial, based
on a fear of what others would think, say, do.

Back in New York, I was heading up the stairs to the office I shared
with Sandy two days a week, when a young executive in a starched white
shirt and tie spotted me.  Ryan worked in an office one floor below me
and had been hinting for months that we date.

"You look unusually happy today," Ryan said.

"I do?"  I laughed.

"Yes!  You're exuberant.  You're radiating light."

"I am?"

"Well, what happened this weekend?"

I felt like shouting, "I got back together with my boyfriend and we
love each other like crazy!"  But instead I simply smiled and said,
"This is my usual exuberant sell You usually see me on Fridays when I
can't wait to go home."

"You get like that without drugs?"  he asked.

I laughed.  It amazed me that drugs had made cocaine addicts like Ryan
forget the experience of real joy.  The bullding crawled with coke
heads, supplied by the elevator operators who would stop the car
between floors to make the exchanges.  The sound of sniflling filled
the bathrooms.  I worried that Sandy, who had resisted the temptation
of heroin for years and was still taking methadone through a drug rehab
program, might be pressured back into snorting or shooting up by the
addicts who came to work with bloodshot eyes and chain-saw smiles.

When I entered the office, Sandy was alone with the elevator
operator.

I suspected they had just completed an exchange, for they quickly
switched their conversation when I entered.  I looked to Sandy for an
explanation, but she just smiled and asked me if I had found Mark
before he left for North Carolina.

"We're back together again," I said, unable to contain my joy.

"He must be happier than a pig in shit!"  she cried.  "And he deserves
to be, too!"

My friend Carol, too, was delighted that Mark and I were back together
again.  She could tell just by looking at me.

"I finally decided that all the external pressures mean nothing
compared to what I feel inside," I whispered to her in the darkness of
a movie theater where we were watching a Spike Lee film.

"Yeah!  Forget what other people think!"

"And what my parents are going through shouldn't have to allect my life
so much."

"Hooray!  Gail's being a rebel!"  Carol cried, making several heads
turn to glare at us in the dark theater.

But my family and many of my friends, who had encouraged my
independence, were shocked and then disappointed to learn I had
suddenly changed my mind about Mark.  They felt I had turned against
them, and I knew I had set them up to feel that way.  My father called
my apartment when I was away, and, learning from my roommate Tammy that
I was with Mark in North Carolina, immediately called my mother and
brothers to alert them.  I dreaded trying to explain to them the
painful and joyous twists of emotion that led to my decision, but I
knew that for once in my life, I had made a choice, alone, that it was
my own, and that it made me happy.

The dreaded call from my father finally came.

"So, you're back together with Mark again.  What does this mean?

Are you going to move to North Carolina?"

"No, not yet.  He has his life and I have mine.  For now, we'll visit
each other and talk on the phone."

"Are you still free to date other men?"

"I suppose so, but I don't feel like it."

There was a long silence.

"Well, I don't know what to say," he said.

"Don't say anything.  I'm not asking for your opinion."

"Okay."  He paused, then started talking about my mother, casting her
in a negative light.  I bristled.

"Did you ever love Mom?"  I asked.

He reflected for a moment, then said, "We were fond of each other.  We
were companions."

"You married her for appearance' sake, didn't you?  She was good wife
material for an aspiring minister.  Am I right?"

"Yes," he said.  "We made a good-looking pair.  I didn't realize the
importance of love in a relationship."

"I feel like you expect me to go out and find some socially acceptable
mate, even if I don't love him."

"No, I don't.  I wouldn't wish that on anybody."

"Mark and I love each other, even though we may get strange looks
walking down the street.  In society's eyes, we're not a perfect
match.

But at least I've learned to choose love over social acceptabiliry" My
father was silent.  I knew I had won my case.  The struggle to overcome
my need to be guided, led, controlled, taught, and protected had been
long and difficult, but I finally felt I was out there My mother, after
recovering from her surprise at our reunion, accepted my invitation to
spend Thanksgiving in North Carolina with Mark and me.  She flew down
from Minneapolis for a weekend of hiking in the woods, walking beside
Oak Hollow Lake, feasting on turkey, and dining at a Moravian Inn at
Salem College in WinstonSalem.  As the three of us wandered through a
High Point furniture store, we passed through a room filled with baby
cribs.

"Pay special attention to this room, Sweets," Mark said.

My mother laughed, finding Mark's comment charming.  I blushed in
embarrassment.  Having a baby was the furthest thing from my mind.  I
had no idea that less than three years later we would purchase a crib
from the very same store.

"It's rather crowded in this apartment, isn't it?"  Gail said one
morning to Tammy, who immediately flew into a rage.

MARK'S VIEW Gail lived in an all-white neighborhood in Queens,
inhabited mostly by Eastern Europeans and Italians accustomed to poking
their heads between faded curtains and shouting down to their children
playing baseball in the middle of the street.  The block was one solid
building, divided only by walls and floors into railroad apartments.

Sagging clotheslines crisscrossed the courtyard outside the kitchen
window, where her roommate's cat, Reebok, sat for hours watching
birds.

Leaving the subway at the corner of Steinway and Broadway in Astoria,
on my way to Gail's place, I'd walk several blocks past gangs of white
youths who glared at me suspiciously.  I sensed this was whites-only
territory.  Occasionally I was followed for a block or so but luckily
was never harassed.  A few months later, in another section of Queens
called Howard Beach, a gang of white teenagers chased a black man onto
a highway and to his death.

Gail's "apartment" was the living room, without privacy.  Her roommate,
Tammy, passed through it whenever she needed to use the kitchen or
bath.  Whenever I was there, Tammy and her boyfriend, Billy, tried
staying out of our way, but conflicts invariably arose.

"It's strange that you should say that!  You weren't inconvenienced at
all until your black boyfriend came along!  Do you know what we have to
do to accommodate you two lovebirds?  Billy has to go outside to pee
and I pee into a trash can.  Yet this is my apartment."

By December Gail and her friend Carol Abizaid were looking for an
apartment to share in Brooklyn, a place large enough and private enough
to allow visits from Carol's West African boyfriend, Robert, and me.

They found a sunny, five-room place with hardwood floors and freshly
painted white walls on the second floor of a beauty parlor on Flatbush
Avenue near Prospect Park.  It belonged to a sweet, understanding woman
from Trinidad named Cecilia, who' also owned the beauty parlor.  Gail
and Carol moved in a few days after New Year's 1987.

I was glad Gail was now living with a trusted friend.  The only
inconveniences were the mice denizened behind the refrigerator, the
barking and growling of Windy, Carol's black Labrador, in the middle of
the night, the clanking heating pipe by the head of Gail's bed that
awoke us at six on cold mornings, and the constant flow of traffic and
screaming sirens on Flatbush Avenue.

It was a predominantly black neighborhood, accented by a handful of
white yuppies living in recently renovated brownstones toward the
Slope.  With such a cultural mix in the neighborhood, we were just
another couple each time we walked down Flatbush Avenue to the park on
Sunday afternoons.

A third roommate moved in with Gail and Carol.  Mandy was black, a
dancer, and a native of Brooklyn.

"I've never lived with two white girls before," Mandy told Gail and
Carol.  "But I guess you two aren't really all that white, I mean, you
both got black boyfriends."

Her room was separated from Gail's by nothing but a large piece of
plywood that sealed the opening between the two rooms.  On some
weekends there were six of us, three women and their three black
boyfriends.  Behind the plywood from Mandy's room came the thumpthump
of rap music and boogie funk.

Down the hall we would hear Carol and Robert arguing.  His

English was not half as fluent as his French, so they had difficulty
communicating each time a conflict arose.  When his anger completely
took over, Robert could be heard repeating a belligerent "Fuck you!"

But Carol loved him with passionate devotion.  He was light-skinned and
handsome, was adored by many young women, had a shy and pleasing smile,
and had just opened his own business.

Beyond these aspects of his life, Carol knew very little except that he
had grown up as an orphan and been abused as a child.  He seldom
answered questions about his wife, but he hinted to Carol that he would
soon leave her.

I found myself contrasting my relationship with Gail with that of Carol
and Robert.  Carol believed that marrying Robert would put an end to
her emotional turmoil and doubts.  She would be his wife, not his
mistress.  She would be able to call him on the phone and not have to
hang up if his wife answered.  She would see him more than once or
twice a week.  They would build a life together and become closer each
day.  She clung to these uncertain hopes and refused to let them die,
no matter how many lies Robert told her.  Carol's mother and father
urged her to break off the relationship but she angrily refused.

One morning in the kitchen, Carol turned to Gail and said, "Robert and
I are getting married today."

"Really?"  Gail said with surprise.

"His divorce was finalized yesterday.  We have to marry right away, for
his green card.He says we'll have a public wedding later."

Carol came home that night alone, carrying a bottle of champagne and
calling for a celebration.  But the bottle remained unopened and she
spent her wedding night watching television alone in her room.

"What was it like?"  Gail asked the next day.

"It was sort of anticlimactic.  Not that I expected much anyway," Carol
said.  She then described the marriage bureau at City Hall, thronging
with people, mostly foreigners, waiting to get married.  She described
how she had felt faint at the weirdness of it all when the preacher
read the lines, "Do you, Carol Abizaid, take this man to be your
lawfully wedded husband?"  And how she had given Robert a "serious"
kiss when the City Clerk said, "You may kiss the bride."

Carol fell silent and stirred soup on the stove.

Getting Married.

"Has anything changed?"  Gail asked.

"Nothing's changed," she said, staring into the pan, expressionless.

"He still lives with his ex-wife.  We'll see each other once or twice a
week.  Things won't change until she goes back to West Africa."

"When will that be?"

"Soon."  She continued staring vacantly into the pan.  "At least,
that's what he told me."

"Did he give you a ring?"

"No.  But I didn't expect one."

Gail stared at her for a moment, confused by the strangeness of Carol's
relationship.  FInally she said, "Wow, you're a married woman.  You're
a Mrs.  Somebody."

"Shut up!  Now don't you start teasing me!"  Carol said, then managed a
faint laugh.

The next day Robert's ex-wife called Carol and thanked her for marrying
Robert.  "That was a big favor you did," she said.  "We really
appreciate iL Now he can get his green card."

This phone call upset Carol, but Robert explained to her that he had to
tell his wife certain white lies to get her to agree to the divorce.

Carol told no one about the marriage, perhaps hoping that someday, when
Robert "grows up," they would live together and plan an actual
wedding.

In the meantime, she spent many of her nights alone, waiting for Robert
to call and crying herself to sleep when he did not.

Gail and I tried to include Carol in our conversations and invited her
to join us for home-cooked dinners of baked chicken, rice pilaf, and
special sauces, but the intimacy and contentment between Gail and me
seemed only to exacerbate Carol's misery and loneliness.

She later confessed she was terribly envious of us.

Weekends at my apartment in North Carolina were much more relaxed.  We
would cuddle under an afghan before the fire, dine by candlelight while
discussing Dickens and the French revolution; talk about the importance
of keeping a journal, having convictions, and speaking one's mind; skip
rocks across a lake; take floral-scented baths after working out on
Nautilus machines; and listen to Paul Simon's Gracelaad album and to
Bob Marley.

We would wander aimlessly through the grocery store, oblivious to the
stares, shocked expressions, and raised eyebrows of elderly Southern
belIes and disapproving Confederate gents.  I rarely called her Gail
anymore.  To me she was always "Sweets," a nickname that never failed
to draw a smile from her lips.

Neither of us welcomed the arrival of Monday mornings.  Mondays meant
that one of us would have to go to the airport and return home.

Long-distance relationships are difficult, especially when days of
intense closeness are interrupted by weeks of being alone.  We were
ready to marry, but Gail was not yet ready to leave New York, her
friends, and brothers in the city or her job as an editor, and I was
afraid she might feel unhappy and isolated if she did so.

One Monday morning in Brooklyn, I canceled my flight back to North
Carolina.  I postponed it a day, then two more, then a week.  I could
not tear myself away, especially as it was the week of Gail's
twenty-filth birthday, and she did not want me to leave either.

One February afternoon as Gail and I strolled through Central Park,
among joggers, cyclists, and patches of melting snow, we started
talking seriously about marriage.  She squeezed my hand and said,
"Let's just do it."

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"We're always talking about getting married.  Why don't we just go
ahead and do it?"

"How?"

"Like my grandfather and Grandma Sue did, back in the 1920s when they
took the subway from Columbia down to City Hall.

Wouldn't that be a great way to marry?"

"But that's how Carol and Robert got married, and they're miserable.

I've hardly seen Robert over at your apartment since the wedding."

"Their relationship is the problem, not where they married," she
said.

"I've always thought of my grandparents' marriage as being romantic,
unconventional.  Just think of it: It would be just the two of us.  And
that's what it's all about, after all, isn't it?  It's a promise
between two people, not a social event.  I was sitting in my office
today, making a list of guests to invite to our adding.  Then I stopped
and tore it up.  I don't want anyone else to be there, just the two of
us."

I was surprised but pleased by her sudden readiness.  After all we had
been through, it was hard to believe we had finally reached that level
of confidence and trust to decide to make the final commitment, despite
the obstacles that still lay ahead.

"Are you sure you want such a quiet wedding?"

"You wouldn't mind, would you?"  she asked.

"No, not really.  Since I can't afford to bring my family to America,
and since they probably could not get passports anyway, I guess it
wouldn't matter if we don't have a big wedding.  But what about your
family?  Won't they feel left out?"

"We can send them announcements, after the fact."

"Gail, what's the real meaning behind this?  Are you afraid to tell
your family we're getting married?  Do you want a fait accompli so they
can't pressure you into changing your mind?"

My remarks disturbed her.  She averted her face, walked a bit faster,
and stared across a windswept field toward Central Park South.  Then
she turned to me and said, "Yes, that's exactly what I'm afraid of.

I've let my father push me this way and that for too long.  I want to
go ahead and make a decision alone for once.  I love you.  And I'm
never going to let anyone manipulate my feelings for you any longer.

My father calls once in a while to express his concern' about me, as
if I were throwing away my life by loving you.  He's been sending me
books.  One of them was Women Who Love Too Much and the other was Women
Who Love Men Who Hate Women."

"Why would he send such books?"

"He read the Boy, probably with a red pen in one hand, searching for
your behavioral patterns and trying to psychoanalyze your childhood.

He thinks that anyone raised in such a brutal environment will
inevitably become brutal, and that anyone with a father like yours will
definitely become a controlling tyranL I didn't let him finish.  I hung
up on him and then screamed at the phone, Bastard!"

"But why would he think I hate women?  My book flows with praise and
admiration for my mother and grandmother.  Women have shaped my
character and made me grow in ways I never could have.  Most important
they taught me how to survive the horrors of apartheid with my soul
intact.  It is their values and example that helped me overcome my
anger and hatred."

"I don't know.  I think he's just trying whatever he can to make me
question my relationship with you."

"Don't let it bother you," I said, drawing her toward me by the hand.

She was trembling.  "Let go of your anger.  He'll grow to understand.

He hasn't even met me yet.  And we don't need to rush into anything.  I
don't want you to have to choose between me and your family.  I don't
want you to marry me out of fear that someone might convince you to
stop loving me."

"It's not out of fear," she said.  "I'm sure of my feelings for you.  I
just want to protect those feelings from the pressures of the outside
world.  I want it to be just the two of us.  At least for a while.  You
see, everyone in my family seems to know what's best for me, and I know
I feed their malleable image of me with my words, my timid smiles, my
hesitations, my silences.  I have to be bold in making my own
decisions.  The future seems so vague and a bit frightening.  I've been
so afraid of making the wrong choice that I've made no decisions at
all.  I want to change that."

GAIL'S VIEW The subway ground to a screeching halt and the doors jolted
open.

We were spewed onto the platform at City Hall in an oozing stream of
harried commuters.  We ascended the pee-stained, littered steps slowly,
clasping each other's hands with the desperation of children clinging
to their mothers' skirts in a milling crowd of strangers.

City Hall loomed over our heads as we stepped up to the revolving
doors, hesitant, peering through the glass.  I spotted a sign that
read: "Marriage Licenses."

"To the left, up those stairs," I said.

Mark's hand felt warm and moist in mine as we made our way to the
second floor and walked down the corridor, our footsteps echoing on the
polished linoleum.  He was dressed in his best suit and shined brown
shoes; I wore slacks and a blazer.

As we waited in line for a marriage license application, I reflected on
a phone conversation I had with my grandfather four days earlier.

Eager for the opinion of someone older and wiser, I had called him at
his home in New Hampshire.  I started by talking to him about my
strained relationship with my father.  I did not talk about Mark, so my
grandfather assumed the major trouble between my father and me was my
reaction to the divorce.

"Look, kid," he said.  "He divorced my daughter and I don't plan to
renew my relationship with him.  But you've got to renew your
relationship with him.  He's your father!"

"I don't know how to go about it," I said.

"He hasn't handled his problems very well," Grampa said, "and he's
dealt with them at the expense of my daughter, and you.  I feel
resentment, sure.  It's a disappointment, a lifetime shock.  The
relationship between your mother and father can't be healed, but your
relationship with him can be salvaged.  I pray for him every night, not
because I'm a great Christian, but because I hope he finds whatever it
is he's looking for.

"I wish your father well," Grampa continued.  "And you should do more
than wish him well.  Don't try to correct him.  tive your own life.

And in living it, try not to hurt the lives of others.  I think your
father's a bastard, but that's all right.  I don't support his
decision, but I won't limit him one bit.  You've got a tough road ahead
of you, kId.

Internally.  We're talking about feelings, and there's no microwave for
that stuff.  It has to develop slowly."

"It'll take time."

"More than time, it will take effort.  On your part as well as his.

But c'mon, kid," he said.  "I'll tell you what marriage is really all
about.  I thanked God every night I lay in bed next to Sue.  And I
said, May it always be like this!"  Not only when things were good,
but every night, even during the bad times.  That's what marriage is
all about."

He paused, and I reflected sadly on the fact that he had lost his wife,
Sue, to cancer when I was still a small child.  As we talked about
marriage in general, I brought up the topic of interracial marriage,
which is what I desperately wanted his advice on.  A retired minister
who had been President Richard Nixon's pastor in Washington, D.C 11 my
grandfather had married mixed couples in the nation's capital when it
was still illegal in many states.  He seemed to comprehend immediately
that I was talking about marrying Mark.  My mother had told him a great
deal about Mark.

"You've got to find out what the reasons are for each of you to be
together," Grampa said.  "I think you should back into it, march toward
it, and go sideways all at the same time.  It's complicated.

You've got to make sure you're not marrying for a cause or to prove
something to someone else."

"I guess I should just follow my feelings and not worry about other
people," I said.

"No, that's not the solution either.  You're not only marrying one
person, you're marrying a set.  Unless you expect to live in
isolation.

Sue and I got married quietly, but we also knew we wouldn't mind having
a big public wedding later.  My friends were her bends.  But you can't
very well marry interracially and keep it a secret," he said,
laughing.

I had not mentioned anything about a secret marriage, and it made me
wonder whether he was predicting one.  And here I was with Mark,
filling out marriage license applications, most likely in the same room
Grampa and Sue did about sixty years earlier.

Besides calling my grandfather, I had also gone to the New York Public
Library to do research on mixed couples.  The main questions in my mind
were: Do interracial marriages last?  Are they common?

How do mixed couples feel about their marriages?

I did not find much, and most of what I found was negative.  Socalled
experts on interracial relationships had a plethora of absurd theories
and explanations about white woman-black man marriages.

The woman was too fat and ugly to get a white man, was acting out
against a racist parent, had already been ostracized by white society,
or had such low self-esteem that she felt like trash that belonged in a
black ghetto.

The black man was denying his skin color and attempting to be white.

He was trying to avenge himself against white oppression by defiling a
white woman.  The children of such mixed up marriages suffered the
cruel fate of being caught, trapped between two worlds, rejected by
both races, traumatized by a perpetual identity crisis.

Anger and disgust made me slam shut each book I read.  Where was the
human story?  Why were mixed couples constantly analyzed?

When will they finally talk openly about who they really are and what
they truly feel?

Mark and I waited on hard wooden chairs amid smooching coupIes for our
names to be called.  It was a jovial atmosphere, full of love, hope,
and shy joy, though the office was rundown and cluttered and most of
the exhausted-looking employees were probably under At the window we
had to raise our right hands and pledge that all the information
provided was true.  Then they sent us away with our typed license,
littered with typos, and told us to come back on Monday for the actual
wedding ceremony.

Mark teased me as we wandered through Chinatown, calling me "wifey" and
"Mrs. Mathabane."  It was all rather surreal and humorous, but it was
also a nice, warm, stabilizing feeling.  I just turned twenry-five, and
I'm about to be marred, I thought to mysetr How strange.  In college my
friends had predicted I'd be the last one of us to let myself get
snared.  This made me the first, besides Carol, and she did not
consider herself married in the true sense of the word.

That night, as Mark and I sat in my room in Brooklyn eating Ben Jerry's
ice cream and discussing Boris Pasternak's poetry, we could hear Carol
and Robert arguing down the hall.

"He's jealous of her male friends," I whispered in explanation.

"That's not it," Mark said.  "He's trying to drive her away."

We were silent for a while, listening to the angry shouts.  I felt
sorry for Carol.  She always did everything she could for Robert, who
was ungrateful and inconsiderate in return.  He never lifted a finger
to help her in the kitchen, he accused her of staring at other guys on
the street, he showed up hours late without calling, he wheedled her
into borrowing thousands of dollars from her mother to finance his
suspicious business ventures.  Carol had been giving selflessly up to
that point, but she was reaching her limit.

One night Robert called Carol and accidentally asked for Maureen, one
of his many lovers.  Carol flew into a rage, then, feeling helpless,
hung up and wept bitterly.  All Robert's girlfriends, except Carol,
were black.  It had finally dawned on Carol that Robert, a militant
black, was having serious problems dealing with his relationship with a
white woman.  Whenever Carol referred to herself as white, he would
angrily insist she was Lebanese, and Third World like himsetr But he
had a hard time deluding himself, so he spent less and less time with
her.

Monday arrived.  Carol, who had agreed to be our witness, was unable to
meet us at City Hall, so I turned to the only other person who knew our
secret: my coworker Sandy, from my part-time job.  I hadn't seen Sandy
in several weeks.  Mark and I waited in a room on the second floor of
City Hall, holding hands and nervously waiting embarrassed proclaiming
my love for Mark in such a formal and public way.  Blushes constantly
swept my face.  Most of the people around us were speaking Spanish or
some other foreign language; some had photographers, bouquets, and
families; one even had a veil.  For five dollars, it wasn't a bad place
to get married.

Our name was about to be called and Sandy was still nowhere to be
seen.

I panicked.  We needed a witness, quick.  I approached a group of young
men and women sitting on a row of chairs.

"Excuse me," I said politely.  "But our witness didn't show up.

Would one of you mind being our witness?"

"I will," a young woman replied.

"Do you need a husband too?"  asked the young man seated next to her.

At that moment Sandy burst into the room, wearing a tight black
sweater, tight red pants, and purple lipstick.  She seemed rushed and
panicky.  I feared she was high on something, especially as she now
dressed and acted as if she had slid back to her old life as a
streetwalker and addict.  Our names were called.  Sandy followed us
into a dim chapel where we stood before the City Clerk.  I showed Sandy
how to focus my manual camera.

"Hurry up!"  the clerk snapped.  "Do you know how many other people are
out there waiting to get married?"

I ran and took my place beside Mark.  There was no introduction, no
organ, no choir, no sermon.  He got right to the point.  After asking
the empty room if anyone had any objections to this marriage, he said,
"Do you, Mark Mathabane, take this woman I watched Mark as he said, "I
do," then turned to listen to the clerk say, "Do you, Gail Ernsberger,
take this man Sandy ran around taking photos from all angles.  The ring
she had loaned Mark to give me got stuck on my knuckle, and as I
wrenched it on the rest of the way, I heard the words, "You are now
officially man and wife.  You may kiss the bride."

"Oh, wait, wait!  Hold that kiss!"  Sandy cried, snapping away.

After the clerk had wished us well and complimented Sandy on her camera
work, the three of us stumbled out into the hall.  A black woman smiled
and said, "Congratulations!"

I was in a daze as we descended the spiral steps.  Sandy wished us
well, kissed us both, and disappeared as suddenly as she had "Are you
sure you don't need a husband?"  the young man yelled to me aswe left
City Hall.

That afternoon, as we lay reading side by side in my Flatbush Avenue
apartment, Mark said softly, "It's begun to rain.  Do you hear the
tires whirring on the pavement?"

I nodded.  We were enjoying our first lazy afternoon as husband and
wife.  He reached over and stroked my back lightly, unconsciously,
still concentrating on his book by John Dewey.

I felt different, somehow, unexpectedly.  I told Mark so as we sat
across the table from each other, having our wedding feast by
candlelight.  The whole time I sat there, spinning the borrowed gold
band around my finger, I felt very much in love, rooted, calm.  The
bubbles in the champagne were too much for us, so we added orange
juice.  Unaccustomed to too much alcohol, the champagne knocked us both
out.  We fell asleep on our wedding night fully clothed in a happy
embrace, on top of the covers.

In the morning Mark's first words were, "I forgot to brush my teeth!"

Nothing ever turns out the way you expect it to.  As a girl I had
imagined a tall white groom, people throwing rice, a black limousine
with streamers, and a three-week honeymoon on a tropical island.  I
cannot say I missed any of that, because this wedding was more real,
private, honest, and based on love, not show.

The shop windows on Forty-second Street are filled with diamond rings
and wedding bands.  We stared at them one by one, shook our heads at
the exorbitant prices, as we moved slowly down the street with our arms
around each other.  FInally we entered a jewelry store and asked for
service.  I felt vulnerable, as if we were shopping for condoms, not
wedding rings.  Marriage, in my mind, was like publicizing your
sexuality, which the church and my upbringing had taught me was dirty,
vile, low-down, and unacceptable.  Mark bought me a diamond ring-the
diamond was so tiny one needed a microscope to see it.  I bought him a
gold band.  Both were under one hundred dollars.

"Do you think I should send out wedding announcements?"  I asked Mark
as we left the jewelry store.

"Not yet.  Let's savor the privacy of our marriage a little longer.

We don't want to shock people.  We have to think of a way to tell them
get some money, I can bring my family over for the wedding."

This suggestion sounded so absurdly far-fetched that I simply smiled.

How in the world would we ever get that kind of money?  And why would
the white South African regime issue passports to an impoverished black
family it does not even regard as citizens in the land of their
birth?

Because I was in no hurry to upset my family and friends, I let the
marriage remain a secret.  Being legally married prepared me mentally
for confronting life as a mixed couple and standing up to the
opposition of family members, which I knew was inevitable.  I was the
youngest of all my cousins, the youngest child in my family, and the
only girl.  Everyone was used to guiding and protecting me.  It would
take a lot of strength to stand up to all those people who cared about
me, had watched me grow, and felt they knew me more than I knew
myself.

Carol congratulated me on the marriage but couldn't understand why I
wanted to keep the news a secret when Mark and I had such a solid
relationship.  She had kept her marriage a secret from her parIents and
friends only because she didn't know where her troubled relationship
with Robert would lead.

"Why don't you just tell people you're married," she said.

"The idea of saying I'm married makes me uncomfortable," I said.  "I'm
afraid of what people would think."

"But you married because you love the man!"

"Yes, of course."

"What then are you afraid of?"  Carol asked.

I was afraid of my father.  I could not even imagine telling him that I
was married, let alone to a black man.  He had never even met Mark.

Yet he was flying to New York to visit me and my brothers in one
week.

I realized it was an issue of honesty.  How would I feel if I found
myself in the position of having to lie?  Wouldn't it be easier to Ibe
honest, proud of the marriage, proud of my husband?  The only thing I
needed was courage.

My mother called, asked how Mark and I were doing, and, as if the words
came of their own accord, I said, "We're engaged!"

Mark turned toward me, his eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement.

"Oh, conGratulations!"  she said excitedly "Let me speak to I handed
the phone to Mark, who cleared his throat Then pressed the receiver to
his ear, and greeted my mother.  She w' and on about how happy she was
for us.

Before long various family members knew of the engage and called to
congratulate us.  I was taken aback by their p response.  Maybe I had
been mistaken in my judgment of my 1

But there was still my father.  I still hadn't heard his reaction news
of our "engagement."

Carol's father, a wealthy Lebanese Christian, flew to Nev from Beirut
to visit her.  Carol's older sisters were all married Carol had always
been her father's favorite daughter.  Cart father, and Robert went out
to dinner, then father and da' returned alone to our Flatbush Avenue
apartment.  The d Carol's room was open, and I could hear her father
gentiy exp her that she must lead her own life, separate from Robert'
become self-reliant.

"How can you sit here and tell me this?"  she cried.  "I tru person in
this world, and that's Robert.  Now you're telling to trust him!  But I
do, and I will!  It's true I had no interest if ness before I met him,
but it's something I'm willing to try, a as much my thing now as it is
his.  But now because you'v these things to me I'm going to look at him
twice, I'll be doubt him."

"I didn't say you had to doubt him," her father said gentiy.

"Yes you did!  And you know how much influence you have me.  I rely on
you more than Cindy or Allison or Linda does.  � all married and have
husbands to turn to.  But I turn to you it port."

"And I give that support gladly," he said softly.

"I know!  I'm not questioning that.  But you have a lot of inf over me,
and it's not fair for you to use it this way.  If you told C: divorce
her husband, she would do it in a second!"

"I never told Cindy to divorce her husband."

"No, you didn't.  But I'm just telling you that what you say ences
me-influences all of us..  ."  She wept when despair c: her voice.

"I've invested a lot in my relationship with Robei now you're telling
me to throw it all away and not trust him because of his wife.  I don't
care about his wife!"  let myself out of the apartment quietly,
wondering if what I had overheard was a dress-rehearsal for my own
confrontation with my father over Mark.  My father was arriving in New
York in a week.  He still didn't know that Mark and I had announced our
"engagement."

MARK' $ VIEW I rode the subway to Central Park, where I would meet
Gail, her brothers, and her father.  Her father.  I tensed at the
thought How would this complex man receive me?  What were his true
feelings about my love for his daughter?

Was his tearful response to Gail's letter genuine, or was there latent
racism in him, carefully masked by his intelligence and urbanity?

But Gail had had lunch with him the day before and told him of our
engagement and showed him the ring.  He had responded not angrily and
suspiciously, but with congratulations and he seemed ready,
enthusiastic, to meet and to accept me as a future son-in-law.

I could understand how, looking at our relationship from the outside,
from a psychologist's point of view, Gail's father could have doubted
its staying power, especially against deeply rooted prejudices.  He
knew the depth of racism in white society.  He knew that the attitudes
of many Americans had changed very little from those that thirty years
ago condoned segregation and the dehumanization of blacks.  Yes, the
laws and institutions had changed, but few hearts had changed with
them.

At times it seemed to me the attitudes of many whites in America were
little different from the attitudes of most whites in South Africa.

White Americans were simply more adept at hiding their true feelings.

Crude, apartheid-style racism was not their preferred weapon of keeping
the black man down.  It was in the subtle kind of racism, often hidden
by a veneer of liberalism and tolerance, at which they excelled.

This type of racism was more insidious because not only did it continue
to deny blacks equal opportunity in housing, in the workplace, in
schools, and before the law but it had blacks constantly wondering how
many of their problems were due to racism and how many to their own
failings.

If black and white Americans had not yet learned how to get along, how
to respect cultural differences, how to talk to each other rather than
always about each other, what chance did mixed couples and their
children have of being accepted, let alone understood?

It was easy to see how both sides in the racial conflict could turn
their venomous arrows of hate and anger and fear at us.  After all, we
were a reminder of the ideal of racial harmony they had abandoned; we
were a reminder of how much work still had to be done, on both sides,
before racial concord could truly exist.  But also, and most important,
we were a reminder that it could be done.  That Americans, despite
their racial and cultural differences, can find common ground, can
treat each other with respect if not with love.  Though Gall and I were
husband and wife, at the bottom of our relationship there lay a genuine
friendship founded on mutual trust and respect for each other as
individuals.  And reciprocated trust and respect are prerequlsites for
racial harmony.

During the two years Gail and I had been together, we had, like most
couples, experienced ups and downs, games of tug of war-I would pull
away, then she would pull away.  But the odyssey and ordeals had taught
us much, had made us grow.  Now that we were married, and accepted the
responsibilities that accompanied our union, we had begun moving about
naturally, sure of our feelings for each other.  We moved forward
together, rather than pulling in opposite directions.  I hoped her
family would notice these important changes and give us their
unqualified blessing.

Two weeks earlier Gail had received from her father a copy of a sermon
on desegregation he had delivered at a church in Saginaw, Meeting the
Family.

Michigan, in 1961.  The gist of the sermon was that white Christians
should let blacks move into their all-white neighborhoods.  Whites
should not worry about their children marrying blacks, he argued,
because it seldom happens that a girl marries "the boy next door."

Gail and her brother Dan puzzled over their father's motive in sending
it.  Gail's father had a history of being criticized for being too
liberal and pro-black in his sermons.

It was a warm, blue, and beautiful weekend in early March 1986.

The Ernsbergers had arranged to meet at the Museum of Natural History,
but in typical Ernsberger fashion, this entailed one-and-ahalf-hour
waits at three separate entrances.

At last Gail found me wandering about the cavernous entrance hall.  She
took me by the hand and led me down the broad stone steps to meet her
father.  The moment he saw me he threw his arms wide open and embraced
me.  I was flabbergasted.  I glanced at Gail; tears of joy filled her
eyes.

Years later Gail asked her father about his changed attitude toward
me.

Dr. Ernsberger replied that there had been "no change whatsoever.  At
least, no conscious change."

"My earlier reservations had nothing to do with accepting Mark as a
future son-in-law," he said.  "It's just that like any father, I wanted
my little girl to have the most hassle-free, stress-free existence.  I
wanted her to have the best possible start out of the blocks."

"Why did you think I'd have all sorts of problems if I married Mark?"

"I specialize in marital therapy, babe, I should know," he replied.

"I've counseled mixed couples before.  Being an interracial couple adds
external stress to a marriage, and marriage, by nature, has a lot of
stress already bullt into it.  Coming out of a failed marriage myself,
I'm very aware of the stresses and strains involved in any marital
relationship.  Then there are additional strains between the couple and
the envlroning society.  The stress placed on mixed couples in a racist
society is considerable, at times intolerable.  And when a coupIe
becomes socially isolated, that really creates stress."

"Then why did you embrace Mark?"

"It was a spontaneous act of admiration.  I had some worries and
concerns at first, but that doesn't mean your father is a bigot.  Why
shouldn't I have embraced my future son-in-law?"

Gail's father, brothers, and I left the brilliant sunshine and entered
the museum.  We began at the African cultures wing.  I explained the
significance and symbolism of various ceremonial masks and artifacts.

Throughout the museum visit Dr. Ernsberger kept watching Gail and me,
as if studying how we interacted.  His occasional remarks suggested
that he was well satisfied with what he saw.  At one point I furtively
and quickly removed my gold wedding band: Gail and I were, after all,
not yet "married."

The highlight of the weekend was Sunday brunch overlookIng the water at
South Street Seaport.  Gail, her father, her two brothers, Paul's wife,
Debbie, Dan's girlfriend, Lisa, and I splurged on a gourmet,
all-you-can-eat, free-champagne brunch in a breezy room flooded with
light.  A black woman played romantic tunes on a grand piano and sang
in the background.  We were all relaxed and smiling as we made
champagne toasts.

"To Gail and Mark," her father said, raising his tall narrow glass.

"Hear, hear," the others said amid clinking glasses and again
congratulated us on our engagement.

Following brunch the seven of us strolled lazily through the crowds of
southern Manhattan and rode the Staten Island Ferry across the bay.  A
thousand memories flooded my mind as I thought of those months I lived
on Staten Island, those months of struggle and emotional turmoil.  Then
I looked up and saw the woman I had shared it all with, the woman who
was now my wife, and I smiled.

Now that I felt welcomed by Gail's parents and her brothers, I
fervently wished she could someday meet my own dear family.  It would
complete the circle of our marriage.

GAIL'S VIEW

In late June 1987 the phone rang in my Brooklyn apartment.  Stumbling
out of bed, I groped for the receiver and managed a hoarse "Hello?"

"Sweets?  I have a surprise for you.  Can you be at JFK Saturday
morning around ten?"

"Yes, but what for?"  uMy family is arriving from South Africa."

"What!"

"Yes, darling, they're on their way," Mark said.  "It's all arranged.

Oprah Winfrey is paying for their airline tickets and putting them up
at the Sheraton in Midtown for a few days."

"How did Oprah get involved in all this?"  I asked.

"It all happened so fast," Mark said.  "She was walking down some
street one evening with her boyfriend and saw the Boy displayed in the
window.  She bought it, read it, and was deeply moved.

She then began a nationwide hunt for me.  At last she found me here in
High Point.  We talked for over an hour.  She asked about the family
and I told her that I hadn't seen them in nine years and wanted dearly
for them to visit America.  Oprah was eager to help and she arranged
and paid for everything.  What a wonderful soul she is."

I could hardly believe my ears.  It was not only the coincidence of
everything and the mention of Oprah's name that surprised me.

What astounded me most was that Mark's mythical family would soon
become reality.  I could not imagine Mark surrounded by his mother,
grandmother, and siblings.  To me he had been a solitary intellectual,
a loner in an American world of bewildering extremes and contradictions
that had severely tested the down-to-earth values his family had
instilled in him.  Sometimes it seemed his closest friends were dead
writers: Gibbons, Wright, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hughes, Shelley, DuBois
, Keats, Tennyson.

To me his family members were characters in Her Boy.  There was a
long-suffering and courageous mother; a dignified, queenly atriarch
named Granny, resplendent in colorful African garb and bracelets; a
younger sister named Florah who had lived through the same hunger and
terrors Mark had; and a brother George whom Mark nearly smothered to
death in an attempt to keep him quiet during a police invasion of their
ghetto neighborhood.

The youngest two, Linah and Diana, had been so small when their eldest
brother left South Africa at age eighteen that even Mark had only a
vague idea of what his own sisters would be like.

"You must be excited to see them," I said.  "It's been nine years.  I
can't believe I'll finally get to meet your mother."

"I'll probably want to spend some time alone with them at first," he
said.  "You understand, don't you?"

"Of course," I said.  But, deep down, I had already begun to fear that
I might lose Mark to a group of loving strangers I had not yet met.  Up
to that point, I felt that I alone, besides Stan and Margie Smith, had
been his family in America.  Now his real family was coming-full of
love and eagerness to see him and hold him again.  Perhaps, I thought
anxiously, he will never again need me as powerfully as he did when it
was just the two of us against the world.

I went to the airport on the JFK Express train.  It was Saturday.  I
wore a casual blouse and matching skirt and fastened my hair, now grown
long, with a barrette.

Once in the airport, it was not difficult to spot Mark, Oprah, and her
boyfriend Stedman Graham.  The ABC network crew surrounded them,
shining bright spotlights on the double doors leading out of customs,
pointing a large microphone at Mark, then at Oprah, then at Mark
again.

Oprah's presence created quite a commotion, and travelers pushed
through the crowd to snap photos of her.

Ellie Spiegel, the director of programs at International House, arrived
with her husband, Hans, to witness the grand event.

"Have you met Oprah yet?"  Ellie asked me.

"Oh, no, of course not," I said.  I had been hiding in the back of the
crowd behind a pillar.  Even Mark was not aware of my arrival.  I
wanted to stay out of the way as much as possible.  This was Mark's big
event, not mine.  And I certainly did not want to draw any attention to
myself, especially because I am white and Mark is black.

Before I could express any of these trepidations to Ellie, she had
dashed through the crowd and was tugging at Oprah's arm.

"Hi, Oprah," Ellie said with her usual zest.  "Have you met Mark's
fiancEe?"

"Iiance!"  Oprah exclaimed.  "No, is she here?"

I looked for a way to escape, but Ellie took my hand and pulled me
through the crowd toward Oprah.  I saw Oprah's large brown eyes grow
even larger when she spotted me.  Stedman glanced at me and seemed to
stiffen.  I almost died of embarrassment.

Before Oprah and I could exchange more than a hello, a cry of
excitement arose from the crowd and Mark's family emerged from customs
wearing acrylic knit caps.  I quickly withdrew to my original place
behind the pillar to watch, unobserved.  I could not believe how small
and malnourished they all looked as they walked up the ramp on thin
legs.  George's hair was yellowed at the ends, probably from a lack of
protein.

Granny, Mark's mother, Florah, George, Linah, and Diana all descended
on Mark in a pack, wrapping all twelve arms around him.

Watching him hug his mother touched me deeply and I could not keep
myself from smiling and laughing and crying along with them.

Oprah snapped photos of the reunion as ABC reporters jockeyed for
position, interviewing those who could speak English-George and
Florah.

As I stood watching the melee, IIorah surged toward me, having
recognized me from a photograph Mark had sent them.  She cried, "Are
you Gail?"

I nodded slightly, and was hugged with more vigor than I had ever been
in my life.  She turned and called to Mark's mother in Tsonga, who gave
a cry of delight, rushed toward me, and planted a kiss solidly on my
lips.  Florah and Mark's mother, whom I quickiy learned to call Mhani
ffsonga for "Mother"), took both my.  hands and escorted me out of the
airport along with the rest of the throng.

Oprah threw her arm around Granny, who was walking slightly ahead of
us, and said, "Hey, Granny!  I'm Oprah."  Granny nodded, bewildered by
the loving gesture from a total stranger who was speaking to her in an
unintelligible language.

Mark's mother was determined to get me into the limousine with them,
but it was already crowded with Mathabanes and I knew Mark wanted to be
alone with his family.  I said good-bye to everyone and turned to head
back to Brooklyn.

"How are you getting into the city?"  Oprah asked.

"The same way I arrived," I said, embarrassed to say, "By subway."

"You can ride with us," she said.

"No, that's all right.  Mark wants to be alone with his family."

"Well, you're part of the family now," she insisted.  "Come on, hop
in."

As I stepped into the long black limo I wondered, Am I really part this
huge /amily?  Can I, a white woman, ever truly become integrated into a
tight-knit scan clan whose language and customs I don't yet ally
understand?  I did not yet realize how much mutual admiration, trust,
and affection can be communicated without words.

I sat beside Debbie DiMaio, the producer of the "Oprah Winfrey Show,"
and across from Oprah and Stedman, who did not remove his sunglasses,
though the limo had tinted windows.  Oprah asked me questions about
myself and about Mark's family as we rode.  Stedman did not say a word
the whole trip, even when Oprah teased him to take off his
sunglasses.

He refused.  I never saw his eyes.  I found it strange that he was so
uncommunicative, that he kept his face rigid the entire ride into
Manhattan, no matter how many times Oprah tried to make him laugh by
cracking jokes.  She even kicked off her shoes and threw her legs
playfully across his lap, but still he did not smile.  I had the awful
feeling that his solemn mood had something to do with the fact that I,
Mark's fiancEe, was white.  Two years later I learned the reason for
his silence, but to reveal that now would be to get ahead of the
story.

As the limousine raced down the highway toward Manhattan, Oprah lowered
the window and snapped photos of the limousine in the next lane.

Through a half-opened window I caught a glimpse of Mark in the
backseat, surrounded by his siblings, his head thrown back in laughter
and a smile on his face broader than I had ever seen it.  I felt a pang
in my chest.  Why had I never bare seen him so happy?

Mark seemed an entirely different person.  He was no longer the
guilt-ridden and brooding loner I had known.  A dramatic change had
taken place within him, and I felt more than ever that I was losing him
to these laughing, loving Africans, who made him happier than I ever
could.

When the limousine arrived in front of the Sheraton, Mark was busy
ushering his family into the hotel through the revolving doors.

Granny almost got trapped in one: she had never used such doors
before.

Knowing that Mark wanted to be alone with them, I slipped away
unnoticed, descended into the subway, and waited for the Number 2

Express to take me home to Brooklyn.

That night I watched the reunion on the local news, then crawled into
bed, feeling terribly alone.  I tried to convince myself that Mark
loved his family differently from the way he loved me, that I was still
as important to him as they were, but I gave up in despair and fell
asleep fearing our relationship would never be the same, fearing he
would never again need my love as he once did.

"I'm not surprised you feel that way," Carol said when I shared my
feelings with her.  "You're going to have to live with certain things
for the rest of your lifeertain aspects of African culture that are
entirely different from American culture.  One of those things is big
families that are very close and take care of each other."

I listened attentively to her, for she had done graduate work at Brown
in anthropology and had studied Middle Eastern and African cultures
closely.  Having grown up in Lebanon, she had lived and breathed Arab
culture, which in many ways is similar to African culture.  Her
Lebanese father had always been more devoted to his country and his
mother than he was to his American wife.  Carol's mother realized this
when he refused to leave Lebanon, even when the lives of his wife and
children were endangered by constant bombing and gunfire in Beirut.

Carol's mother packed up her six children in 1979 and moved back to the
United States.  Carol's father stayed in Lebanon.

"How can you expect me to leave my mother and family?"  he asked.

"If, after twenty-two years of marriage, your children and I are not
your family, then I guess our definitions of family' will never be the
same," Carol's mother replied angrily.

"Mark's mother will always be more important to him than you," Carol
told me.  "He owes her his life.  Sons treat their mothers with a type
of respect that borders on awe and reverence.  You can't compete with
that.  You'll just have to accept it.  Now that his family is here,
everything will be different.  It may never again be just the two of
you.  I bet you anything some of his family members will stay in
America.  What do they have to go back to?"

I listened to her words with a heavy heart and wondered if Mark and I
would ever again be as close as we were when it was just the two of
us.

Two days later Mark came to Brooklyn, alone, late at night, to stay
with me.  He seemed farther away than ever.  He would try to kiss me,
then burst out laughing and relate yet another tale about his family's
adventures in department stores, elevators, escalators.  He fell
asleep, chuckling to himself, filled with warm thoughts of his family-a
family he hadn't seen since he left South Africa nearly a decade
agwhiIe I sat up in bed, watching him drift away.

In the morning I tried to discuss with him my feelings of being pushed
aside, but when I said I feared his family had supplanted me, he became
very defensive.

"How can you feel that way toward people who love you?"  he said.

"Love me?  But they don't even know me!  We can't even speak to each
other."

"It doesn't matter.  They love you!  Unconditionally."

This statement startled me.  Could it be true?  Or was Mark simply
attempting to molllly me?

We descended the narrow staircase to Flatbush Avenue, squeezed
ourselves into a crowded subway car, and were soon entering the
Sheraton in Midtown.  While Mark went off to talk to George, I was left
in a hotel room with Granny, Mhani, Elorah, Diana, and Linah.  They
were speaking in rapid Tsonga, getting dressed, rearranging their
suitcases.  I sat in a chair in the corner, feeling out of place.

Mark's mother patted the bed beside her and beckoned for me to "Come,
sit."

I sat down beside her.  Elorah made a list of common words for me in
Tsonga so I might learn to understand at least a little of their
conversation.  Linah and Diana sat on the bed watching me with their
large, dark eyes, eager to know me.

Mark and I took his family for a walk in Central Park.  As we left the
hotel, a black woman ran up to us and cried, "Are you the African
family I saw on TV last night?  You are!  Oh, I'm so happy you're
together again!"  She hugged Mark, George, Florah, Linah, and Diana.

She hesitated when she got to me, then said, "Oh, I don't care if
you're white!"  and she threw her arms around me as well.  I felt it
was one of the nicest things any black woman had ever said to me.

During our walk Linah and Diana laughed at the different shapes and
sizes of women's legs.  In South Africa it is a tribal custom for women
to dress modestly, so they had never seen grown women in shorts.  Diana
was accustomed to walking barefoot, so she had difficulty keeping her
shoes on.  We had to keep checking her feet, and once had to send her
back up to the hotel room when we discovered she was barefoot in a
fancy restaurant.

Iinah and Diana stared in horror at the salad placed on the table
before them.  "How come it's not cooked?"  they wanted to know.  Back
home, with their scanty diet, they had never had the luxury of eating
salads.  The only vegetables they ate and could afford were boiled
greens called murogo.  During hard times, poignantly described in
KrBoy, the family even drank boiled cattle blood as soup, and ate
prickly worms called sonjas along with the staple, pap (cooked
porridge).

The next day Mark and his family flew to North Carolina, and I remained
in New York to continue my job as an editor at the German Information
Center.  His mother and sisters simply could not understand why, in a
free country like America, two people who love each other have to be
separated.  They thought it was only in South Africa, where black
workers must leave their homes to seek jobs as migrant workers in
distant gold and diamond mines, that couples and families are torn
asunder.

Mark called me when he was at his wits' end.  "Everyone keeps asking
me, Where's skwiza?  Where's skwt:a?"

"he said.  (Skwl::a is an affectionate term for "sister-in-law.") "I'm
getting jealous.  They didn't come to America to see me.  They came to
see you!  All they can talk about is you and the wedding.  Please come
down this weekend.

They're all eager to see you, and... so am I."

That weekend I experienced more love than I had ever known in my life;
not only from Mark, but also from his family.  Just as my own family
was falling apart, sparked by my parents' divorce and the fact that we
children were now grown and going our separate ways, I found this new
family-a tight-knit and loving group of people with deeply genuine
emotions, no facade, and nothing to hide; with immense patience,
compassion, and infinite understanding.  They accepted me without the
slightest reservation, without giving a moment's thought to my race,
color, or social class.  To them I was simply human.  I now understood
the powerful forces that had shaped Mark's character, especially his
open-mindedness and lack of bitterness and hate.

Florah, Linah, Diana, and I spent hours in the apartment complex's
swimming pool, laughing, and splashing, playing keep away with a pink
plastic ball while Granny and Mhani watched from the deck.  I had
noticed over the months I had been visiting Mark that most of the white
sunbathers, who lounged about the pool takIng only occasional dips to
cool down, would abruptly leave whenever one or more blacks entered the
pool.  It seemed some sort of unspoken rule.

"You see what I mean by white attitudes not having changed much," Mark
said to me one time.  "And yet these same people who can't stand
swimming alongside blacks will self-righteously condemn apartheid.  It
is interesting that when they point two fingers of a hand at white
South Africans for being racist, three fingers are pointing straight at
them."

As I entered the pool with Mark's sisters, I always felt the eyes of
white strangers on me, filled with what I imagined was curious disdain
or disgust, as they grabbed their towels and left.

But I tried not to let such things bother me.  I was part of a new
family now.  tinah and Diana both hugged me and hung all over me.

The whole family began calling me "Sweets" in imitation of Mark.

One night we ate a Southern dinner of biscuits and beans and fried
chicken at the home of a black woman named Edmonious, who had
befriended Mark's mother and Granny.  As we sat in the living room
after the mial, discussing racial tensions in the North versus the
South, I was aware that I was the only white in a room filled with
blacks.  But I felt, to my amazement, completely at home.  Diana was
fast asleep with her head in my lap and Florah was leaning against
me.

Every morning Granny would greet me with a long, drawn-out "Kunjani?"

("How are you, my dear?") And I would reply with an equally slow,
"Nikone Kokwana."  ("FIne, my beloved Grandma.") Hearing me speak
Tsonga would send Granny into paroxysms of laughter; she would clap her
hands together, making her bracelets clink and clang, then heave a deep
sigh of contentment after her laughing had subsided.

Mark's mother, when she was not playing cards with Granny or
reminiscing about her life, would sit on the living room floor studying
an ABC book.  "A-apple," she would say proudly.  She listened
attentively to English conversations, and by the end of her threemonth
visit she could speak English tolerably well.  Her dearest wish as a
child had been to attend school, but as a girl, she was dissuaded from
such a pursuit.  Women at that time were regarded largely as the
possessions of their future husbands and, therefore, not worth
educating.  When I realized that she used the word she to refer to
anything from he, she, it, and you to they and these, I was able to get
her meaning.

"She's toooooo big," Mhani told me, pointing to a box I just brought
into the room.  It took me a few minutes to understand that she meant,
"That's a very big box."

"She's washing," she said to me, handing me some dirty clothes when I
was loading the washer.  She meant, "These need to be washed."  Her
pidgin English, however, masked an astounding Intelligence.  I was awed
by how much she knew of life, especially about human nature and
emotions.  Mark credited her mesmerizing storytelling with inspiring
him as a writer.  "The way she weaves a story and infuses it with all
the elements of tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy, and morals rivals
anything I have read by Shakespeare, Homer, and Plato," he once said.

The family laughed and teased me about the approaching wedding.  Iinah
and Diana serenaded me with a song in Tsonga about how sisters-in-law
cook and clean and wash for the husband's entire family.  After much
insistence on my part, Florah translated the song for me.

"Is that song designed to praise sisters-in-law or degrade them?"

I asked.

George burst out laughing.

"It's a terrible song," Florah said.  "No woman wants to do all that
work."

Granny came out of the bedroom carrying a traditional tribal wedding
dress and tied it around my waist.  It looked like a big bush of
colorful yarn and sat on my hips like an innertube.  Then Granny
wrapped a huge piece of colorful cloth around me so I looked like an
enormous bell.

George was dying of laughter.  "She says you must wear that on your
wedding day!"

I danced around a bit, making the big bushy dress jiggle.  Granny
clapped her hands in delight and exclaimed in Tsonga that I reminded
her of herself as a young woman on her wedding day.

When we were together in Mark's apartment, I felt like one of the
family.  But when we went out in public, especially in the South, I
often felt uncomfortable.  One Sunday morning we went to services at an
all-black AME Zion Church in High Point.  When the minister called Mark
into the pulpit and asked the Mathabane family to please stand,
everyone rose except me.  I sat in the rigid pew petrified, never
having been the sole white in such a large crowd of blacks before.  I
thought they would soon sing "We Shall Overcome" while glaring at me.

"Come on, Sweets, get up!"  FIorah whispered, hauling me by the arm
into a standing position.  We stood there in a row, being introduced
one by one.

"That's my mother, Magdeline," Mark said.  "Next to her is my sister
FIorah, and next to her is my fiancEe, Gail."

I felt dozens of black faces register looks of shock.  I felt my face
flush crimson.  I could not wait to sit down.  The service dragged on
for two hours and I almost passed out from hunger, heat, and boredom.

The music was a motley mixture of Mozart and gospel, and the minister
delivered a sermon on marriage.

"You shouldn't marry for looks," the minister bellowed from the pulpit,
beads of sweat glistening on his forehead.  "Looks can't cook a
meal."

"Amen," the black women around me murmured.

"Looks can't clean the house!"

"Praise God," they muttered, fanning themselves with their bulletins.

"Looks can't do the dishes!"

It depressed me that the only prerequisites for marrying, as cited by
the minister, were good looks and domestic abilities.  "What about
love?"  I whispered to Mark.  "He said nothing about love."

"That's reality," Mark replied.  "Many people don't have the luxury of
falling in love.  They have to think of necessities, of survival."

At long last the service was over and we were invited downstairs to a
reception in honor of the Mathabane family, where we were fed fried
chicken, black-eyed peas, cornbread, squash casserole, collard greens,
and peach cobbler-traditional Southern soul food.

The wife of a prominent black businessman walked up to me and said, "I
hear you're from New York.  Have you ever been to the South?"

I made a polite reply, but in her question I heard another: "Don't you
know it's rather unusual down here for a white girl to marry one of our
boys?"

As my last day of work and the day of the official wedding approached,
I tried to erase from my mind all thoughts of black and white
opposition to interracial relationships.  I wanted it to be a beautiful
wedding, a celebration of the love that different cultures and races
can have for each other.  I did not want to reflect on why the KKK
lynched black men accused of raping white women or on black militants'
opposition to one of "their men being snared by a white Circe" or on
mixed couples being victimized by the growing racial polarization of
Northern cities.

Like most brides-to-be, I spent a great deal of my time tryIng to
coordinate all the arrangements for the flowers, wedding invitations,
music, catering, church bulletins, ceremony details, bridal registry,
reception hall decorations, plates, and utensils.  I had my mother's
wedding dress altered to fit me better and searched for a veil.

Sometimes it struck me as absurd that women have to preoccupy
themselves with so many ridiculous details just to get married.  What
made it all seem aggravatingly superfluous was the fact that we were
already married.  I much preferred the quiet, intimate way we first
married to this big to-do.  But I also knew that in the eyes of
society, we would not be considered truly married unless there was a
wedding, and I must admit, a part of me did not want to miss out on any
of life's official rites of passage.

There was only one thing more difficult than planning the wedding, and
that was handling calls from "concerned" relatives, people I had grown
up among, respected, admired, and loved.  One relative got right to the
point.

"Gail, just remember, it's never too late to call off the wedding," she
said in a confidential tone.  "If you have any doubts, any at all, you
can call the whole thing off.  Even if it's two minutes before the
wedding is to begin, you can just say, "I'm not coming."  Don't thInk
you have to go through with it just because it's all arranged."

When I assured her I was not going to call it off, she seemed a bit
disappointed.

One of my cousins called, twice in one week, to vent his strong
opposition to my impending marriage to a black South African.

These calls hurt me deeply, because I had been very close to my
cousin.

When I was eight I had even convinced myself I was in love with him.

Throughout college we confided in each other about our love lives and
hopes for the future, went sailboarding together on the Atlantic Ocean,
and visited each other in Boston and Providence.

But now my cousin spoke in such a loud and aggressive tone I had to
hold the phone away from my ear.

"Mark went through some horrific experiences at the hands of white
people," he said.  "He must have a deep, latent rage against everyone
white.  His book is very angry.  I just hope his anger doesn't erupt
against you."

"He's never laid a hand on me," I said.  "And if he did, I'd leave
instantly."  I was shocked.  at the very suggestion that Mark would
ever use violence against me.  I felt my cousin's "concerns" were
unfounded and rather racist.  My cousin, an Ivy League graduate who
lived in Boston, was admirably tall, handsome, and blond with a classic
WASPness about him.  lIe's probably aid o/blacks and doesn't know any,
I told myself.  You should try to allay his /ears.

"What happens after Mark becomes a citizen?"  he demanded.

"Might he dump you?  is his family going to stay here?  Where will you
fit In with all those Africans?  He's doing well now, but what happens
when the money runs out?  How's he going to support his whole family
and you?  How will your views of him change when you're the main
breadwinner and you're supporting him and his family?"

The questions came in a barrage, and he hardly listened to my answers
before jumping to the next.

"I'm concerned mostly about the fact that he's South African, from a
totally different country, and that his father was totally dominant and
controlling," he said.  "He must be so angry at whites.  And now that
he has a white woman under his control-" "Hey, wait a minute!"  I cried
angrily.  "Wait, hold on!  I'm not under anybody's control."

"Yeah, all right, but he's from a patriarchal society and has an
Incredibly strong will."

"And he saw his mother and grandmother stand up to that male dominance
and win.  He admires strong women.  He's not looking for someone to
control.  Far from it.  He's looking for a friend, a woman who is her
own person, whom he can respect, trust, and love."

I felt beaten down by the conversation.  I said I was tired and had to
go to bed.  I could have refused to answer his questions, hung up, told
him to mind his own business, or simply made an excuse to get away from
the phone, but I decided to stand firm right in the firing line, and as
he hurled his concerns at me, I did my best to shoot them down one by
one.  I wanted to prove to him that I wasn't afraid to answer his
questions, that I wasn't avoiding serious issues, that I fully
understood what I was getting into by marrying a black foreigner.  I
only hoped he got my message and would learn to accept my decision.

"This is a difficult but strengthening process," I wrote that night in
my journal.  "I'm glad I did not turn and run from talking to him.  I
want my family to understand me, and the only way to do that is by
communicating with them."

But my dreams that night were filled with images of black-white
clashes, race riots, my escape down a long twisted chute into another
world, my mother, my father, Mark.  I was trying to go somewhere, find
someone to talk to, to listen to me, but my attempts were in vain.

I tossed and turned, torn apart by vivid dreams of endless fights and
arguments.  It was mid-July, hot and humid.  My fan creaked as it
Sirens, horns, and the constant roar of traffic below my window kept
rotated back and forth, pushing warm air over my sticky body.

sleep at bay.

That night was the beginning of the two-week period before the wedding
during which I did not have a single night's sleep.  I was a walking
zombie by day, a restless insomniac by night.  My dreams were
alternately wild, majestic, beautiful, confusing, grand, strange, and
surreal.  I dreamed of parading triumphantly down the aisle leaning on
my father's arm, of saying my vows in a blur of joyful tears as I gazed
into Mark's dark and startled eyes, of dancing to my favorite songs in
my mother's satin wedding dress as beads of sweat slid between my
breasts, of seeing the smiling faces of my family and friends.

The minister who was to marry us, Reverend A. Wayne Benson of Middle
Island Presbyterian Church, insisted that Mark and I go through
premarital counseling with him.  This was difficult, as Mark was in
North Carolina, but we made it to one session.  Sitting calmly side by
side in front of the minister in a small book-lined office, we were
quizzed about our expectations, fears, and hopes in relation to
marriage.  The whole time I kept thinking, Should I tell him?  This is
ridiculous.  Who ever heard o/premarital counseling/or people who are
already married?

One week before the wedding, I could keep our secret from the minister
no longer.  I went to the church and told him he did not have to bother
with securing a marriage license for us.

"What do you mean?"  Rev.  Benson asked.

I told him, in a roundabout and hesitant way, about my reluctance to
face my family's opposition head-on and our decision to go down to City
Hall quietly.

"You mean, you're married?"  he said with a start.

"Yes."

"Oh, well," he said, leaning back in his swivel chair and chuckling to
himsetr "This changes things a bit."

"But I don't want anyone to know," I said, leaning forward.  "It would
spoil the wedding.  You see, I wasn't ready for a public wedding then,
but now I am."

"I won't tell a soul," he said.  "I'll give your father a church
wedding certificate, but it won't be an official one registered with
the state, since you already have one of those."  He smiled
knowingly.

I thanked him profusely.

A few days before the wedding my mother called from Minneapolis just to
tell me she was proud of me and loved me very much.

"Oh... thanks," I said, a bit overwhelmed.  "But, why are you so proud
of me?"

"You're so grown up.  You've planned this whole wedding by Iyourseu
You're so organized and efficient and, most of all, you're able to do
what you feel is right."

"Thanks," I said, feeling a warm glow within me.  "And I love you,
too."

Over the next few days several people told me they admired my courage
and were proud of me.  In spite of the negative stereotypes about white
women who date and marry black men, I realized that most of my friends,
family, and acquaintances truly admired me for what I was doing, for my
courage in marrying interracially.  And yes, it did take courage for me
to marry a black man, just as it took a lot of courage for Mark to
marry a white woman, but we knew the bond woon iiQ wPfl ctn0 And
nip.

I did not sleep at all the night before the wedding.  I was in a hotel
room with FIorah, whose shower cap crinkled on the pillow beside mine
each time she moved, and my mother, who occasionally snored and knocked
the phone oft the nightstand in her sleep.

The next morning, surrounded by my bridesmaids at breakfast, I could
not keep my leg from bouncing up and down in nervous agitation.  Joanne
Matzen, my maid of honor, kept putting her hand on my leg to keep it
from shaking.  As I walked down the aisle beside my father, my bouquet
vibrated and I tried in vain to control my trembling.  I felt a sea of
faces turned toward me.  Were they smiling?  Who had decided to come?

Which relatives had boycotted in protest?

One of my bridesmaids, Brita Heimarck, played flute for us, our friend
Phyllis Reed sang a tune she had written lyrics for, my father stepped
into the pulpit and gave us his blessing to be "fruitful," and Rev.

Benson led us in our vows.  As I looked into Mark's gentle eyes,
clasping his hand and promising to love him in sickness and In health,
for rich or for poor, my trembling ceased and the onlookers faded from
my consciousness.  I felt it was just the two of us standing there,
whispering promises into the hollow emptiness of an echoing
cathedral.

Through my tear-fllled eyes the wedding gnests appeared to be one huge
mass of smiling humanity as I walked down the aisle arm in arm with
Mark.  It was not until we were standing in the reception line that I
was able to look around me.  What I saw overwhelmed me: every single
one of my relatives, except those who had sent gifts and notes of
apology, had come to the wedding-that is, all but one uncle.

My cousin, the one who had plagued me with his concerns over the phone,
threw his arms around me, hugged me tight, and whispered in my ear,
"You look beautiful."  Later he apologized to both me and Mark for the
phone calls, said that he had overcome his reservations and wished us
happiness.  Those words, coming from someone who grew up with me and
who had to struggle so desperately with his own prejudices and fears in
order to accept my decision, meant a great deal to me.  It showed me
that the prejudice of some people is not inborn but the result of
ignorance and unfounded fears.

The reception was held at the Bellport Unitarian Fellowship, a small
white building overlooking Great South Bay, which was a bright and
shimmering blue, studded by white caps.  The hours passed quickly,
speeded on by animated conversation, an array of food, tall glasses of
champagne, and heartfelt toasts, dancing and laughing, hugs and smiles,
the cutting of the wedding cake, the throwing of rice, and the tossing
of the bridal bouquet.  My cousin Debbie caught the bouquet but Diana
tore it out of her hand.

Carol, who was one of my bridesmaids, whispered in my ear from time to
time exactly what I was supposed to do and when.

"you freeze the top layer of the cake and eat it in one yearn your
anniversary," she whispered.

I grimaced.  "you mean eat this a whole year later?"

Later she whispered urgently, "you and Mark need to leave right
away."

We hurried out of the church under a shower of rice.  I had rice in my
ears, rice sliding down my back, rice in my bra.  As Mark and I drove
off, In a car loaded with wedding gifts and wrapped in pink and white
streamers, I turned to get one last look at all those beloved people
who were cheering the two of us on, who not only accepted us and our
love, but who genuinely celebrated it.

Why was I so to have a public wedding?  I asked myself.

Look at them, waving and wishing us happiness.  Perhaps there's little
to/ear as long as you/ollow your heart and stand byyour convictions.

Mark and I spent two very rainy but wonderful days of our honeymoon at
the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, then rejoined his fainlly and headed
down to Hilton Head, South Carolina, to visit Stan Smith and his
family.

Laaving my friends and coworkers at the Gerihan Information Center was
dilflcult, but the worst part of leaving New York was saying good-bye
to Carol and leaving the apartment we shared.  Carol was still
embroiled in her painful relationship with Robert, which ended a year
later in a divorce as secretive and quiet as their wedding had been.  l
regretted that I would no longer be there to support her on the days
his constant absence and numerous affairs particularly depressed her.

She helped Mark and me carry boxes loaded with my belongings downstairs
to the rented van on Flatbush Avenue and, wishing us the best, gave me
one last long hug good-bye.

Despite leaving my friends and job, part of me rejoiced at leaving New
York.  As I lost some of my Midwestern naivete and became more acutely
aware of the dangers and pressures of living in a large city as a
single woman, I had begun to feel harried.  At times my fear of rape
rose to such a pitch that I wished my breasts and hips and blond hair
would all disappear and that I could become invisible.  I would cringe,
shudder, and walk faster across Central Park or down Flatbush Avenue,
my head bent and eyes averted, whenever I heard men murmur from a park
bench or from the shadows, "Hey, baby, you lookin' damn good, you make
me wanna..."

A few days later we were on Hilton Head Island.  In all my wildest
childhood dreams I had never expected to go on a honeymoon with seven
South Africans.  But there we were, all eight of us, stepping onto an
exclusive but crowded beach on one of Hilton Head's many plantations.

The beach looked like a scene out of any grade-B summer film: teenagers
playing volleyball and Frisbee, Coppertone-covered bodies clad in
skimpy bikinis baking and burning in the sun, motley towels strewn
across the hot sand, couples strolling along the shore as waves crashed
and swirled around their ankles, seagulls screeching and fighting over
bread crumbs, transistor radios blaring.

As we walked across the beach I was acutely aware that there were no
blacks in sight except Mark and his family.  People stared at us
intently, probably wondering how so many blacks, some dressed in
African tribal garb, had managed to gain access to their exclusive
vacation site and what I, a blond American in a blue bikini, was doing
with them.  Were they my servants?  After all, most blacks on Hilton
Head were servants of one sort or another.

Granny stared about her in dismay.  She probably wondered how so many
women could get away with wearing so little, and why whites, who
usually seem so proud of their light skin color, were trying so hard to
turn her color.  She wrapped her long African print mucheka closer
about her legs and headed for the shade of an umbrella.  She was
immediately confronted by a muscular lifegnard with white cream smeared
on his sunburned nose.

"you have to pay to rent one of those," he said.

UHow much?"  Mark asked.

uTen bucks.  But these ones aren't for rent.  You can take one of
those," he said, pointing to the last row of umbrella chairs nestled
close to the sand dunes, far from the water, with broken handles and
missing slats.

"What about this one?"  Mark said, pointing to the one on which Granny
was resting.

"These are reserved," he said.

We spent several hours at the beach that afternoon, and no one came to
claim the ureservedtt chairs, which were in much better condition than
the ones Mark ended up renting near the sand dunes.  My senses having
become keen to the subtlest discrimination, I burned with anger and
resentment, ashamed that members of my own race could behave so
abominably to my new family, or to any blacks for that matter.  But
like Mark and his family, I was learning that such discrimination was
too subtle and pervasive to fight.  Granny, who, to appease an irate
bus driver in South Africa, had once wiped the steps of an all-white
bus onto which Mark had innocently clambered as a child, gathered her
belongings in silence and moved to the last row of umbrella chairs.

The typical Southern atmosphere of Hilton Head made me more aware than
ever that I, now a member of a black family, had forfeited my rights
and privileges as a white person.  I could no longer ignore the fact
that racial prejudice exists.  The predominantly white plantationthe
retention of this name from a master-slave past seemed more than a
coincidence-with their elegant ocean-front mansions and summer homes
were worlds apart from the rvndown shacks where the black natives of
Hilton Head Island lived.  Also, the smooth, clean beaches with golden
sand were paradisiacal compared to the rocky beaches strewn with trash
and broken glass, where blacks swam.  To enter the white plantations
and swim on their beaches one needed a permit.  There was apartheid
again, without the name.

By the end of our trip I was fed up with plantations and permits and
eager to return home to North Carolina.  Being checked by guards in
booths every time we went anywhere reminded me of the months I spent in
Budapest in 1983, when it was still under Communist rule, and reminded
Mark of his days in South Africa, when he had to show his passbook on
demand to the police and anytime he left the ghetto and entered the
white world.

In late August Linah and Diana wept at the Piedmont International
Alrport in Greensboro when Florah, Granny, and their mother boarded a
plane to return to South Africa.  A few days later Linah and

Diana headed for Long Island to live with our friends Marty and Anita,
a childless white couple who were eager to educate and support them.

George moved into a room on the bottom floor of a large rambling house
in High Point, belonging to a Christian ministry, while Mark and I
packed for our move to Ithaca, New York, where Mark had accepted a
teaching fellowship at Cornell University.

Mark, who had always been close to his family, had serious reservations
about their being so scattered.  He wanted to be there when they needed
him in their difficult task of adapting to American society.  But our
financial situation made that difficult.  Also, we had our own lives to
live, our own careers to pursue.

The day we were supposed to leave for Ithaca, he changed his mind.  His
siblings needed him, he explained.  It would be selltsh and wrong for
him to abandon them at this time.

 but what about us and our needs?"  I said.

"Sweets,fl he said, "I know the sacrifices we'll be making.  But I
need your support in this.  Please try to understand."

I gave the issue more thought.  The rental truck was already loaded, we
had already been to Ithaca and rented and paid for our new apartment,
and the fellowship was important for Mark's career.  But his family was
more important.  I relented.

We immediately began looking for another apartment In High Point.  Mark
called the English Department at Cornell University and explained his
decision to the people who had ollered him the fellowship.  They were
very understanding.  We found a vacant townhouse after three days of
looking and moved in.

After only one week of living together, just the two of us, as a
typical newlywed couple, George had problems with his housemates and
moved into our apartmenL A week after Thanksgiving IItiah and Diana
left Long Island and moved in with us as well.  The apartment, which
had seemed enormous at first, now felt crowded.

"What's it like to have three grown children just a few months after
you marry?"  people would ask me.  inlt must be terribly hard on you." 
"Poor girl," said another.

inlf I were your mother, I'd be very angry," said a middle-aged white
woman.  "It's unfair for such a young woman, newly married, to have to
assume such a heavy burden."

I cannot deny that it was, at first, difficult to give up my dreams and
expectations of having my new husband all to myself, of feeling free to
dance around and act silly together in privacy, of being able to run
downstairs in the middle of the night for some juice without having to
pull on a robe or worry about tripping over George, who slept on the
fold-out couch in the family room.

Mark and I could no longer fall asleep together under an afghan on the
living room floor while watching old black-and-white movies.

No more romantic candlelight dinners with beading goblets of white
wine.  No more spontaneous tackling or surprise kisses.

Suddenly we were surrogate parents.  I had to take on roles I'd never
known.  I became role model, teacher of English as a fifth language
(after Tsonga, Venda, Zulu, and Sotho), homework tutor, house chef, and
family accountant.  To make the situation even more unusual, I was not
only part of a mixed couple, I was now the only white member of a
five-person family, a wife and "mother" of three.

Of course, Mark shared in all responsibilities.  Also, he not only
supported the five of us but he also supported the rest of his family
in South Africa.  All this without a steady income but that of a
free-lance writer and lecturer.

At times I would go into the woods behind our apartment complex, sit
down to listen to the rustling leaves, and weep.  Though I had no hard
feelings against George, Linah, or Diana, it took a lot of time and
effort for me to come to terms with the changes in my life, to realize
that I had to give up certain expectations in exchange for new, and
perhaps better, realities and sources of happiness and fulfillment.

For as long as I could remember, way back to my childhood in Ohio, I
had always had a room of my own, privacy, independence, and a great
deal of freedom and security.  I was the youngest child, so I never
learned to reprimand, teach, or guide a younger sibling.  Taking on so
many adult responsibilities, and so suddenly, made me fantasize about
packing up a few necessary items and hitchhiking to Alaska or Sante Fe
or California, wherever I could find peace in solitude and nature, set
down new roots, and live a life of my own.

I recalled how much Frau Lange, the mother of the German family with
whom I had lived outside Hannover in the summer of 1985, had envied my
freedom to travel around Europe.  The day I returned from a week in
Vienna, she cried, Ach, WAn!"  and explained how she had longed all
her life to see the famous city.

"Then why don't you go?"  I asked, perplexed.

"Meine Pflichte!  Meine Pflichte!"  she cried despairingly.  "My
duties!  My responsibilities!"

At the time I was twenty-three and single and could not imagine that
any human being could be so tied down by circumstances that they could
not fulfill their lifelong dream of seeing a city that was only six
hundred miles away.  I vowed I'd never let myself get so burdened with
duties that I would not be free to travel and explore.

But an hour or so of reveling in such memories, or imagining future
travels and adventures in foreign lands, inevitably ended as soon as I
heard Mark's gentle voice or Diana's laughter or Linah's excited
chatter emanating through the open windows, beckoning me to leave the
dark woods and come into the warmth of a loving home.

Mark and I, twenty-seven and twenty-five, respectively, were In many
ways still kids ourselves, often casting off our robes of parental
authority and simply becoming big brother and big sister.  In the
spring Mark, George, Linah, Diana, and I would play baseball In a
nearby field with a horde of neighborhood kids.  We would pack up the
grill, Frisbee, hamburgers, potato salad, and neighbors and have
picnics at Jamestown Park.  We played practical jokes on each other,
like the time Linah fell asleep in a chair while reading and Mark tied
her shoelaces together and turned her book upside down.

We laughed over the mistakes Linah and Diana made while struggling to
learn English.  For instance, Linah always talked about the
"disgusting" questions they talked about in school, not knowing how to
pronounce discussion.  She often sang songs she heard on the radio, and
went around the apartment singing, "Every time you go away, you take a
piece of meat with you."

"No!"  I exclaimed, laughing.  "The words are you take a piece of me
with you!"' When Mark said grace before a meal, he often ended with,
"And provide food for those who lack it."  When it was Diana's turn to
say grace one evening, she ended with, "And provide food for those who
like it."  She was bewildered by our laughter.

Iinah and Diana sometimes ran into trouble when they used South African
words to refer to American things: they used the word cocks for "soccer
cleats" and rubber for "eraser."

When Diana asked her male history teacher for a rubber, he stared at
her in shock and told her to sit down.  She went back to her desk
without the much-needed eraser.  When Linah asked the soccer coach,
"Don't we need cocks to play on the team?"  he replied, "No, we have a
girls' team too."  Of course Mark's sisters had no idea their words had
a double meaning, and they would ask me what their teachers meant.

"Never mind," I said, stifiing my laughter.  "Just call them erasers
and soccer cleats from now on."

Diana, Linah, and George usually spoke to each other in Tsonga, and
aware that I sometimes felt left out of the conversation, Mark would
often translate for me.  He was also teaching me the language.

But translating from one language to another was usually not enough to
close the vast gulf that separated my white middle-class background
from their lives in South Africa.  One Saturday morning when I entered
the kitchen I found Mark making omelets for everyone and reminiscing
with his siblings about life in Alexandra.  I caught snatches of what
they were saying because, though most of it was in Tsonga, they threw
in enough English words for me to follow.

"Remember that fat man who wanted to marry our sister Merriam?"  tinah
said.  "He would get Dad drunk instead of paying lobola.

Each time Dad went over to his house to drink, the fat man was getting
closer and closer to paying off the lobola and getting Merriam for his
wife.  Boy, Merriam was so mad when she found out!  It turned out the
fat man.already had two wives.  Merriam screamed at Daddy, What do you
take me for?!"' They laughed uproariously, interrupting each other in
an attempt to relate yet another story.

"What happened to that studious boy who lived near the bus stop on
Fourteenth Avenue?"  Mark asked.  "The one with the older brother who
was knifed in the shebeen?"

"He was run over by a truck," Diana replied.  "He was helping it
backup."

"Didn't the driver see him?"  Mark asked.

"He did, but he was jealous of him because he made more money than he
did, so he ran him over."

They talked about how Florah and Maria used to cheat at card games and
gamble, how their mother was poisoned by a neighbor who was jealous
that her children were all so intelligent and studying in America, how
mean older boys used to rob children on their way to the store, how
certain migrant workers would take new wives on coming to cities,
leaving behind in the homelands large families starving and struggling,
and how young men known as Thotsis and Comrades harassed those who
defied the school boycott and often killed each other in senseless
disputes over girls, money, and turf.

Mark stopped the conversation and said, "Okay, Gail.  Now that you've
heard all about Alex, why don't you tell us all about your home
town?"

I thought of the happy hours I spent in my sandbox outside our duplex
in Green Hills, a suburb of Cincinnati.  I thought of rollerskating
down Brookhollow Lane in Springfield, Ohio, past mowed lawns and
freshly painted homes and well-fed pets.  I thought of the pleasant
faces of the old ladies who smiled down at me on Sunday mornings at
church, and the way my father would step into the pulpit in his long
black robe, open a huge Bible, and clear his throat before delivering
the day's sermon.

"There's not much to tell," I said.  "At least, not compared to your
stories."

While George, Linah, and Diana were at school, Mark and I would write,
sharing the same cramped study, reading each other's work and making
suggestions.  I was working on my third and fourth novels
simultaneously, while Mark worked on if Boy in America.

We were at our computers by seven every morning and, pausing only for
breakfast and lunch, would write until two or three in the afternoon,
then go to the gym together to jump rope and lift weights.  At night we
read like maniacs, going through several books a month, underlining,
writing down ideas, discussing them, just as we used to do on Staten
Island.

We had plenty of time to ourselves, and we also had the satisfaction of
knowing we were sharing our good fortune with Mark's sibIings, who were
trying their best to master English and do well in school.  The
violence and unrest in the black townships, which disrupted schooling
and every other aspect of black life, would have made it impossible for
them to get a decent education in South Africa.  The more Mark and I
helped them with their homework;

made them aware of the dangers of too much television and materialism;
and reminded them of the importance of retaining the values of
responsibility, respect, discipline, and hard work they had been taught
back home, the better we felt.

Each day I realized the truth of the adage: It is in giving that we
receive.

MARK'S VIEW Few events have enriched my life as much as fatherhood.

From the instant I learned the surprising, joyous, and bewildering news
that Gail was pregnant, I made the leap from being a friend and husband
to the exhilarating position of a father-to-be.

There was an added dimension to the thrilling news.  What Gail and I
had long believed in theory-that humankind is one and the races are but
individual members of a large family-became reality.

Our child stood to inherit and to benefit from the best of all worlds
and cultures because we the parents had worked hard at bridging the gap
that separated people from each other on the biologically irrelevant
basis of skin color.

With the birth of our firstborn a cycle was now complete.  I had grown
from a child, to a son, to a parent.  I couldn't help but contrast my
own experiences as a father with those of my own father, Jackson.

Though in his own way he deeply cared for my mother, he was never
present during the birth of any of his seven children.  Tradition
forbade it.  Even had it not, his strange sense of manhood would have
disdained being beside his wife during childbirth.

For my father and most tribal men of his time and culture, the noca nT
nhi1nh,r"D w,c atrint]v a Cryaryc atrir It wac tahnn fnr them to
be present even in the house.  They would be contaminated and their
manhood would be weakened by the mysterious, almost magical
experience.

All the husband needed to know were the end results: Is it a boy or
girl child, is it alive or dead?

The wife's emotional need for her husband's presence during the birth
of a joint responsibility-her need for his love, his encouragement, and
his supportould not be accommodated in a relationship where the
husband was master of the house and "owner" of his wife and where
society taught him to hide, suppress, and even deny his true
feelings.

But as a child I set out to be different emotionally from my father.

My heart yearned to feel, to love, to care, to cry, to laugh.  I
resisted and endured enormous pressure designed to teach me that boys
and men never show their emotions.  My father would sometimes beat me
for crying when hurt.  But his attempts to truncate me emotionally
failed.  I could not stop feeling.  In my mind and heart to feel was to
be human.

Each one of my mother's later pregnancies deeply affected me.  I pitied
each new child for coming into a world full of pain, hunger, suffering,
injustice, and the early death of innocence.  I pitied my mother for
the risks, the pain, and the difficulties of each pregnancy.

The lack of prenatal and postnatal care, the absence of basic
sanitation in the ghetto In which we were quarantined, and her frequent
flights from the police (even late in her pregnancies) to escape
arrest, endangered not only her life but also that of the growing life
within her.

It pained me to see her, when she was pregnant with her third child,
set off at dawn, trudging barefoot through the township, begging for
food or odd jobs.  She even had to beg pennies from neighbors to buy
diapers because my father, in a futile effort to drown the unimaginable
pain and sorrow of his emasculated life, had squandered his meager
ten-dollar-a-week wage on dice and alcohol.

When she became pregnant for the seventh time, I was distraught.  Not
only had previous difficult pregnancies taken their toll on her body
(she was also a diabetic and didn't know it) but the family's poverty
and miseries had worsened.  Food was scarce.  The tworoom shack offered
neither space nor privacy and my father was in and out of prison for
such "crimes" as being unemployed and liar Birth of a Child.

boring illegal aliens in the form of his wife and children.

At school things were going badly for me.  I was constantly being
whipped and humiliated for lacking books, school fees, and proper
uniforms.  I had half a mind to quit school and find a menial job
somewhere so I could ameliorate my mother's suffering.  But she
wouldn't hear of it.  She insisted that I stay in school.  "All will be
well," she would say.  "God will provide."

Barely two months after her seventh child, Diana, was born, my mother
had the baby strapped to her back and returned to her laborious work
cleaning the house and washing and ironing the laundry for a
Fifteen-member Indian family.  She was paid three dollars a week.

My mother became seriously ill under the straIn.  The Infant became
afflicted with strange diseases caused by an inadequate diet.

Miraculously both mother and child survived.  I remember vowing to my
mother that if I ever got married, I would never allow my wife to
suffer as she had suffered.  I would be by her side at all times, even
during childbirth, taboo or no taboo.

"I know you will, my child," my mother said.  "That's the right thing
for a father and a husband to do.  God will bless you for it all the
days of your life."

When Gail first told me that she was pregnant, one of the thoughts that
came to mind was the vow I made to my mother.  It was a lovely spring
day in May 1988, nine months after our public wedding.  I had just
returned home from a long run around Oak Hollow Lake.  I pulled off my
wet sweatshirt and bounded up the stairs to the small bedroom I shared
with Gail.  She was in a gray armchair, not reading or writing as
usual, but just sitting and staring contemplatively at the budding
trees outside our small window, twisting a strand of blond hair with
her fingers.

"What's the matter?"  I asked.

She glanced up at me with a worried look in her eyes.  She let go her
hair and clasped her hands tightly together, betraying her
nervousness.

She paused for a moment before whispering, "I'm pregnant."

"Really!"  I exclaimed.  "Are you sure?  How did you find out?"

She pointed to a white box on the dresser that read, "Home Pregnancy
Test Kit."  I qulckly picked up the box and read the Instructions: a
blue stick indicates pregnancy.  The stick in Gail's hand was blue.

"Oh, Mark, I'm so scared," Gail said.  "I know we don't have any health
insurance and we're financially strapped.  I know we weren't planning
for a child so soon.  Please don't be angry."

"Angry?"  I cried, dropping the box and rushing toward her.  "Me
angry?

How could I be angry?  I'm thrilled!  I'm so proud of you, Sweets.

Remember, there's never a perfect time to have baby.  Money or no
money, this is our baby, our firstborn."  I threw my arms around her,
pulled her up from the chair, and we danced.

Though both Gail and I are pro-choice, we never once discussed having
an abortion, despite our precarious financial condition and our fears
that an unexpected pregnancy might drown our career ambitions in a sea
of diapers and baby wipes.

Over the next several months I shared every strange phase of emotional
and physical change Gail underwent.  I was alternately in awe,
fascinated, and bewildered.  My life became transformed as I strove to
understand and contribute to the joy Gail felt as a motherto-be.  Once
so full of energy and eager to get up and write at seven each morning,
Gail now slept until ten, dragging herself from the warm bedclothes
only at the prompting of hunger pangs.  I made her elaborate meals,
only to see her sicken at the smell of food, become nauseous at the
sight of fish or salad, push her plate away after forcing down only a
few bites at dinner.

In the first two months she lost ten pounds.  Worried that her weight
loss would endanger her and the baby, I constantly begged her to eat-to
no avail.

It was the summer of 1988: hot, humid, and muggy.  In June, to have
some room for the additional member of the family, we moved from our
apartment in High Point to a fartnhouseur first real home-in
Kernersville.  It had a long front porch, sat on a huge lot filled with
trees, perfect for a child to grow up loving the outdoors.

George, Linah, Diana, and I did the moving.  Our belongings filled a
U-Haul truck.  I was unable to drive a stick shift; George tried and
stripped several gears.  Gail, despite my protestations, drove the
rumbling truck the twenty miles up Highway 66 to Kernersville.  "I may
be pregnant," she said, "but I'm not an invalid."

Exhausted from our efforts, the five of us collapsed amid the piles of
moving boxes and furniture, wolfed down a bucket of fried chicken, and
fell asleep on hastily assembled beds.

As winter approached, Gail's stomach resembled an eggplant.

The baby was fully formed and near term.  Gail left her temporary job
at RJR Nabisco in Winston-Salem.  By now the slight rumblings within
her belly had become vigorous kicks and punches.  Several times a day I
would pause to press my ear against the little creature and tap.

My light knockings and words of greeting were always answered with a
powerful punch to my head.  Each night we read to the baby.

Gail and I attended childbirth classes in the basement of an old church
in High Point.  We were the only mixed couple and I was the only
black.

We were always the last ones to arrive, shuffling into the large,
brightly lit room wearing winter jackets and clutching pillows.

The female instructor would pause to smile at us as we made our way to
the back of the room, past the two dozen or so couples seated in
folding chairs.

Sometimes the husbands and wives were told to split up for group
discussions.  I found myself sitting in a circle of white Southern
men.

We were asked to come up with a list of emotions we felt at the
prospect of becoming fathers.

"I feel excited," one said.

"I feel scared of the responsibility," said another.

"I feel so goddamned horny all the time I don't know what to do," said
a third.

The men broke out laughing, nodding their heads in agreement.

I made a comment about how close to Gail, and more respectful and proud
of her, the pregnancy made me feel.  Everyone stopped talking and
stared at me with curiosity, either because my accent took them by
surprise or because they were unaccustomed to hearing a black man
express his opinion, especially about such an intimate matter.

I'm certain some of the men felt I had no right to be there, or worse,
but most of them were open-minded and regarded me only as a fellow
daddy-to-be.

As the weeks went by I lost much of my self-consciousness.  I would be
down on the floor with the rest of the young fathers in the class,
holding Gail's ankles, stuffing pillows under her at the appropriate
places, counting aloud for her as she panted and breathed, telling her
when to take her deep cleansing breath, and diligently studying the
handouts we were given on relaxation techniques and different breathing
rhythms.

I spent a good deal of time wondering what our child would look like.

Would it have a big blond Afro and blue eyes?  Or would it look more
like I did as a child, with chocolate brown skin, nappy hair, and large
brown eyes?  How would Gail feel carrying around a biracial child?  How
would I feel carrying a child lighter than myself?  What kinds of
stares and comments would we get when we appeared in public with our
baby?

CAlLS VIEW Ever since those troubled nights before our public wedding,
when I tossed and turned in a restless sweat in my bed on Flatbush
Avenue with my mind full of wild visions, I had dreamed many times of
giving birth.  In one dream I was whisked from the chapel in my white
satin wedding dress to a delivery room across the hall, where I
promptly gave birth to a small brown baby amid the shouts, hoorays, and
champagne toasts of all our wedding guests.

And now, as I lay on the hammock strung between two towering trees
beside our home in Kernersville, a mug of steaming Ovaltine balanced on
my rounded belly, I recalled all the recent dreams I had had of
childbirth.  As if my subconscious mind could not decide whether my
child would be black or white, I dreamed I bore a little panda bear:
pitch black in parts and snow white in others.  Besides a mother's
natural curiosity to know whether she will have a boy or girl and
whether it will have all ten fingers and toes, I was dying to know what
strange combination of pigments and facial features was forming within
me.

Whenever we spoke on the phone with Mark's family in South Africa, they
were full of suggestions for what we should name our baby, which
everyone assumed would be a boy.  Mark's mother insisted we call him
Lazarus, after the biblical character who arose from the dead.  His
sister Merriam urged us to call him Remembrance.

The naming of a child in Mark's culture was a major affair.  Relatives
often competed with gifts for the right to give a child its seldom
used, sacred, African name.  Such names always stood for something.

One of Mark's grandparents won the right to name him and called him
7hanyan which means "The Wise One."  George was named Ndwakhulu, which
means "Big Wars," because he came at a time when Mark's parents were
constantly fighting and argning.  Elorah was named ondeleli, which
means "Endurance"; she was born at a time when the family was
experiencing hard times.

Whenever Mark and I went for walks at night down a lonely dirt road
between open grass fields at the edge of which were fish hatcheries,
breathing in the misty, fresh North Carolina country air, I loved the
feeling of his warm hand gently holding mine, and of the baby stirring
within me, hard, bony, and substantial.  Sitting on the front porch,
wedged together on a narrow wicker loveseat, we would talk hopefully
about our child and the future, watching the winter rain pelt the brick
steps, soaking into the moist earth, enriching it.

Mark was convinced our child already loved classical music and African
folklore, so he would pop a Bach cassette into the stereo and press the
headphones against my rounded belly or relate one of his mother's
stories.  Each day he would kiss my stomach good morning and good
night, usually when I was half-asleep and unaware that he was having a
lengthy conversation with the baby.

About one month before the baby was due, Stedman Graham came to our
house for lunch.  Mark had been playing tennis with him regnlarly since
he moved down to High Point to head a public relations firm, but I had
not seen him since June 1987 in New York, when Mark's family arrived.

He was much taller than I remembered, and he smiled down at me, shook
my hand, and said, "Been a long time.

When's the baby due?"

"January twentieth," I replied.

By the time we sat down to eat, Mark and Stedman were engrossed in a
discussion about South Africa, life, and acting on one's instincts.  As
they talked, Stedman kept looking at me as if he wanted to say
something.

At last he paused and, after a great deal of hesitation, said, "I have
to confess something to you, Gail.  When I first met you at JFK that
day Mark's family arrived, and I saw that you were white, it really
upset me.  It upset me so much I couldn't even finish reading Mark's
book.  I kept asking, Why?  Why does he want to blow his future by
marrying a white woman?  He could have so much more power and
credibility if he focused on his role as a black leader in the struggle
against apartheid."" He paused and waited for my reaction, but I was
too surprised by his straightforward admission and frank manner to say
anything.

"I don't know if you sensed this, but that's how I felt," he added.

"I didn't realize," I began.  "But I did wonder why you wouldn't remove
your sunglasses in a car with tinted windows, even when Oprah teased
you about keeping them on."

He laughed at the memory, then said, "I remember that.  And it was
because of what I'm explaining to you."  He turned to Mark.  "I wanted
to call you, Mark, and tell you not to go through with the marriage.

But I felt I didn't know you well enough."

I looked at Mark.  He said nothing but was listening attentively.

"But that was all before my life changed," Stedman continued.

"Now I see that you two really care about each other, and love needs no
justification.  It doesn't have to be aware of race or prejudice or
what other people may think.  You two have set an example, an admirable
example, of how we should see each other-as human beings."

I was touched by Stedman's confession, and, after a long discussion in
which Mark and I revealed the internal and external pressures we had to
overcome to go through with the public wedding, I thanked Stedman for
being honest and having the courage to admit how he had truly felt.

"I always like to clear the air," he said.  "I couldn't come to your
home and eat your food without first letting you know how I once felt
and how I now feel."  He leaned back in his chair with a sigh, as if he
had just relieved himself of a great burden.  "I'm flying back to
Chicago tomorrow.  I can't wait to tell Oprah that I confessed to
you."

I laughed, but felt grateful to him and very glad that he and Mark were
becoming good friends.

By the middle of January I could not sleep.  I tossed and turned
restlessly, extra pillows stuffed between my knees and behind my back
and along my side, unable to get comfortable.  Considering how pear
shaped I had become and how many pillows I had, I'm surprised I did not
pitch Mark out of bed every time I turned.  I tried in vain to relax.

All I could think about was a newborn baby screaming drifted off to
sleep, I was awakened by a dull pain in my lower abdomen that went
around to the small of my back.  It went away, then came again.

Contractions.

I sat up in bed and watched Mark, sleeping like a baby in the gray
early morning light, swaddled in a white comforter.  When Mark awoke I
scratched his back and said, 0Hi."

"Hi," he replied sleepily.  0Did you get any sleep?"

"I've been up since three," I said.  "I've been timing my
contractions."

His eyes opened wide in amazement, and he started shaking.  I could not
tell how much was real fear and how much was a theatrical attempt to
make me laugh, which I did.

"D-d-did you s-s-say cc-con-contractions?"  he gasped.

"It's all right.  They're not painful yet.  Just uncomfortable.  This
could go on for twelve hours.  No need to rush to the hospital."

Mark pranced around happily all morning, talking nonstop to my stomach,
saying such things as "Finally, boy, you'll be coming out to deal with
the real world and earn your keep.  No more perpetual fiestas and
siestas."

The contractions kept going all day until, at one in the morning, I
realized it was time to head for the hospital, which was half an hour
away In High Point.  Mark gripped the steering wheel nervously,
glancing at me with concern whenever he could take his eyes from the
ice-crusted road, asking every two minutes, "Are you all right?

It's not going to be born in the car, is it?"

Twelve hours passed in a phantasmagoria of white walls, the faces of
nurses and doctors, strange voices asking me questions, the rapid beat
of the fetal heart monitor, music, the soothing sound of Mark's voice
reading me a Sherlock Holmes story I was too distracted to follow.

The pain came in waves, rising to a crescendo and then fading.

At the peaks I thrashed back and forth in agony, felt Mark's hand
gripping mine, heard his voice coaching me through it.  Strands of damp
hair stuck to my sweating face and neck.  I breathed so hard and
rapidly I hyperventilated: Faces and hospital equipment swirled before
my eyes and my limbs went numb."It's a girl!"  the doctor said.

I looked down to see a tiny blue creature, with groping hands and
kicking feet, resting in Dr. Farabow's hands.  Mark cut the umbil let
out a shrill cry.  Tears of joy rushed to my eyes.  Mark kissed me.  I
stared at Bianca Ellen (named after Mark's grandmother Ellen Mabaso) in
amazement when they put her in my arms.  She looked so tiny, so
helpless, so fragile.  She was the same color as I, with blue eyes and
thin, straight hair: It would be months before her hair would grow
thick and curly, her eyes would turn brown, and her skin would darken
into a beautiful light brown.

That night after Mark left the hospital, I lay in the darkened room and
longed for Bianca, who was fast asleep under the harsh fluorescent
lights of the nursery down the hall.  She had been a part of me for
nine months, and I missed having her close to me, feeling her roll and
kick within me.  A powerful feeling of love for my husband and my baby
rose within me and grew stronger and stronger until, by dawn, I was
giddy and weeping with happiness.  Because my mother had suffered from
intense and long-lasting postpartum depressions after the births of my
two brothers and me, I feared that I too would fall into dark
despondency.  To my surprise I was flooded with a joy so intense it
made me sob.

"What's wrong?"  cried a middle-aged nurse in a gleaming white uniform
as she rushed into my room and turned on the light.  She had heard my
sobs and come to my rescue.

"Oh, it's... it's nothing," I said, red-faced and gasping for breath.

"It's just that I'm so happy I can't bear it!"

The nurse smiled knowingly.  0It'5 your hormones," she said.

"They're out of whack.  You'll come back to earth soon enough."

But I didn't come back to earth-I remained perpetually high for days.

As soon as the nurse left my room I took out some paper and wrote a
note to Bianca's father.  It read, Dearest Mark, Thank you for holding
my hand through the pain, for brushing the hair away from my forehead,
for coaching me through it all, and for loving me and Baby Bianca so
much.  My heart is so full of love that it brings tears to my eyes just
to think about our baby, about you, and about how deeply I care for and
need you both.  I love you more than words can say.

Forever yours, Gi When the day staff went home at three and the new
shift came on, a young woman in white, fresh out of nursing school and
with her hair high in a sand-colored pony tail, burst exuberantly into
my room and, after chatting ceaselessly about sundry topics I've long
since forgotten, caught sight of Bianca fast asleep in the padded cart
beside the hospital bed.  Stepping closer to examine the baby, the
nurse fell silent.

"She's a cute little thing," she said.  "My, she's sort of got a brown
tinge to her, doesn't she?  Is your husband dark?"

"Yes," I replied, then smiled to myseu I knew she probably meant dark
in terms of having an Italian's olive skin, brown hair, and brown eyes,
as in "tall, dark, and handsome."  The nurse, being the talkative type,
lingered in my room long after her duties were done, telling me all
about her Southern upbringing.  She spoke quickly, jumping from topic
to topic with ease like a monkey swinging from one tree branch to
another, and with her Southern accent and Southern belle mannerisms,
reminded me a bit of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.  When the
door swung open and Mark entered the room, she seemed petrified.  She
leaped backward a little.

"Are you looking for someone?"  she inquired.

"Yes, my wife," Mark replied.

"Have you checked at the front desk to see which room she's in?"

"Here I am," I said, smiling at Mark, who came toward me, took my hand,
and leaned over to kiss me.  The nurse, trying to mask her surprise,
hurriedly excused herself and left the room.  About fifteen minutes
later she returned with a group of nursing students, saying she was
giving them a tour of the maternity ward.  I felt the three of us-Mark,
Bianca, and I-were on display like some curiosity exhibit at a fair.

But I was too absorbed in Mark, my new baby, and my own happiness to
care what strangers thought of our black-brown-white family.

For the first two weeks after Mark proudly and ceremoniously brought
Bianca and me home from the hospital, none of us got a solid night's
sleep.  Mark and I slept in the bed directly beside her crib, jumping
up at each squeak and squeal she made in her noisy slumber, making sure
the blanket was tucked snugly about her little face, making sure her
little knit cap stayed on her head, making sure her diaper was dry-even
as she slept.  We played the role of the worried, anxious new parents
to the hilt.  Mark enjoyed changing diapers so much that I kidded him
about making it his permanent responsibility.

after two weeks of walking around like zombies, pacing the nursery by
night and quieting Bianca in the sun room by day, our lives regaIned
some normalcy.  In February, which is Black History Month, Mark
traveled to various colleges across the country.  He was loath to leave
us but he had committed himself to the lectures months ago.

I tended to Bianca and welcomed the steady flow of cards, flowers, and
baby gifts that arrived at our doorstep, including a huge wicker basket
from Oprah and Stedman filled with teddy bears, baby clothes, lullaby
tapes, powder, and chocolates.

The other young mothers in my neighborhood, who had held a surprise
baby shower for me, wished to see Bianca.  They called on the phone and
asked if they could "drop by."  Being new to motherhood, I had no idea
it was customary for friends and neighbors to deliver baby gifts in
person and take a peek at the infant.  I thought they wanted to see the
baby merely because they were burning with curiosity, as I had been all
through my pregnancy, to find out how a baby with such
different-looking parents would look.  They would bend over the crib or
stroller and, seeing dark hair, a fairly wide nose and tan skin, would
exclaim, "Oh, she looks just like Mark!"

But she's my child too, I would think to myself.  Seeing my hurt
expression, they would sometimes add, "Oh, but she has your long
fingers" or "She has your cheeks."  Mark was the only person who
thought Bianca resembled me.  He would lean over the baby and whisper,
"Why do you look so much like your mommy and so little like me?  You're
just as pretty as your mommy, too."

Eager to get back in shape, I started exercising as soon as possible
after delivery.  I ran the same route I had before Bianca came along,
but now I would run it while pushing a stroller.  I still went for long
bike rides along the winding country roads north of Kernersville, but
now I would ride with Bianca right behind me in a cushioned bicycle
seat and wearing a child's lightweight biking helmet.

To save gasoline and get in an extra workout, I would sometimes ride to
the grocery store and bring home bread and other items in a backpack.

One day, as I fastened Bianca into her bike seat outside the grocery
store, an elderly Southern gentleman strolled by and stared at my
baby.

It was a hot, sunny day in the middle of summer.  I was wearing shorts
and a tank top and Bianca's arms and legs were bare.

He gazed at five-month-old Bianca for several minutes, then said in a
slow drawl, "That baby sure is turnin' brown."

"Yes, she has a nice color, doesn't she?"  I said.  Bianca had slowly
been getting darker as the melanin came out in her skin.

"You must set her out in the sun an awful lot," he commented.

When he got no reply he said, "You set her out in the sun?"

"No, she's only outside when I am."

"I don't know that it's healthy for a baby to be out In the sun so
much."  He shook his head in wonder, and turning to walk away muttered
to himself, "That baby sure is brown."

Small children were always the first to make some remark on the
difference between my color and Bianca's.  One little boy tugged
insistently at his mother's skirt, pointed to us and shouted, "Hey!

Look!  That's a white lady and that's a brown baby!  Mommy, how come
that white lady's got a brown baby?"

The mother bent over her child and whispered, "Don't point!

How many times do I have to tell you-" "But how come there's a white
lady with a-" "Some children are adopted," the mother explained.  She
looked up and, seeing that I had heard everything, asked, "She is
adopted, isn't she?"

"No, she's mine," I said proudly.

It surprised me how many mothers boxed their children's ears or scolded
them whenever the kids would ask, out of innocent curiosity, how a
white mother could have a brown baby.  The mothers probably thought
they were training their children not to point, pry, or be impolite,
but their scolding might later have a harmful effect.  It might serve
to teach them that it is wrong for a white woman to have a brown
child.

Instead of scolding and chastising, I wished the mothers would explain
and reassure.  Many of our prejudices, I believe, develop in this
manner.  Children have a natural curiosity to know, they are seldom
judgmental, but we adults instill in them our prejudices and narrow
views.

I envied Mark, who never had such encounters when he took

Bianca out in public.  A proud black father with a cute, curly haired,
light-skinned brown baby in a frilly dress draws only praise and
admiration from passersby.  Bianca's lighter skin did not necessarily
mean that her mother was white: She could have been a lightskinned
black woman, which, in the eyes of society, was perfectly acceptable.

But when I appeared in public with Bianca, there was littIe doubt that
the father of the child was black.

My white friend Connie, who has a black husband, James, and three
biracial children, is frustrated by the constant stares and comments
she gets when she takes her children out in public.

"I just get so sick of it sometimes," Connie said.  "The reality of it
hit me after having three.  I'll be loading three kids, two strollers,
and five bags of groceries into my car and someone will walk up to me
and say, Oh, they're so cute.  Are they yours?"  What am I supposed to
say to that?  No, I'm just their nanny?  Of course, they're mine,
lady!"

"I didn't really see James as a black man, I just saw him as a man I
loved," Connie said.  "Now my kids have to grow up.  They have to face
the fact that they're mixed.  Are they going to be black or are they
going to be white?  Since they have their father's last name, I assume
they'll be black.  But my son says he's not black.  He says he's
brown.

I say, Dylan, you can be anything you want to be, as long as you're
proud of who you are."" One day as Connie drove down a major boulevard
in Greensboro with her children, the driver in the next lane leaned out
of his window toward her and yelled repeatedly, "You goddamned nigger
lover!"

"I was in shock," Connie said.  "Tears gnshed down my face.  Long after
the man stepped on the gas and took off, I was still in shock.

Another time I was sitting in my car at an intersection, waiting for
the light to change, and a pickup truck pulled up in the next lane.  I
heard someone say, Look at the nigger lover and her baby niggers!'
Then I heard a second voice, "I think I'm going to throw up."" "How
does it make you feel when you hear things like that?"  I asked.

"Angry.  I hate it.  My motherly defensiveness makes me want to beat
the crap out of them.  I know it's their problem, not mine, but they're
saying something about my family.  But if I've had a really good day, I
just feel sorry for them and pray for them.  God forgive them.  They
don't know what they're doing."  She pushed her thick wavy hair away
from her face and watched her curly headed one-year-old daughter, Lily,
play with Bianca on the carpeted floor before us.

"To me everybody is the same, they only look different," Connie said
after a thoughtful pause.  "I think God created everyone different to
see how much love we can have for each other.  I believe He intended to
find out how much people could love and care about each other even
though they're different on the outside.  Your blood is red whether
youre green, red, polka-dot, or whatever."

Having friends in situations similar to mine helped me accept the fact
that my daughter did not look like me and never would.  But she was my
daughter, my own flesh and blood, and I loved her deeply.  A white
American college student named Marya, whom I met through Mark's
brother, George, was engaged to a black South African and, on seeing
Bianca, expressed a strong desire to someday have a little brown baby
of her own.

"Do people stare at you at the grocery store when you're carrying her
around?"  Marya asked.

"Yes, and they're probably thinking, Poor white trash."

Marya fell over laughing.  "That's so funny.  It can really make you
crazy, Gail.  You have to keep laughing.  As serious as it is, you
can't let it bother you."

"They probably think, She must live in an abandoned mobile home on the
edge of town.  A single mother on welfare with a whole brood of
half-breeds."" "Got raped or something."

"Poor thing."

We laugh, and it is our laughter that saves us from being harmed by the
venom of racists.

When Bianca began to walk and then run, she would often run excitedly
around stores and airports, exploring stairs, escalators, and
hallways.

Wanting her to grow up to be adventurous and brave, I would let her
wander, keeping an eye on her from a short distance.

Whenever she headed for trouble, I'd run to catch up with her and take
her by the hand.  When other adults saw me heading toward her they
would say, "Are you looking for this child's mother, too?"

"I am her mother," I'd say with a laugh and a smile.  Because, after a
while, I no longer cared that people could not immediately tell I was
Bianca's mother, and such questions began to amuse rather than irritate
me.  It struck me as particularly humorous whenever someone thought
Mark's little sister Diana was Bianca's mother.

The more I grew to know and love my baby, the less skin color and hair
texture mattered to me.  In fact, I began to envy Bianca for her
beautiful year-round tan, big brown eyes, and dark little curls.  I
would take her for long walks in the woods when she was just a few
months old, holding her close to my chest in a SnugIi and talking to
her about my childhood, my writing, my dreams.  I vividly recall one
day in late April, when I walked with her in the saturated, dripping,
moist green woods around Salem Lake on the outskirts of WinstonSalem.

It was raining, and as I held my child tight against me Inside my
windbreaker to keep her warm and dry, I told her of my long struggle to
become a writer and why I loved writing.

"A writer uses everything she's ever known, seen, thought, felt,
believed, experienced," I told Bianca, who closed her eyes when she
heard the soothing sound of her mother's voice.  "Nothing lived is
wasted.  In any other career, the past is only important in so far as
it helped you get to your current position.  But not for a writer.

Everything in the past and present is vital in creating the future and
all its amazing possibilities, every detail and gesture and memory."

Bianca had fallen fast asleep.  Her soft cheek rested on the edge of
the Snugli and her head bobbed slightly with each step.  I stood on a
jagged rock jutting into the lake.  Lightning flashed and thunder
clapped and the soft rain became hard, pelting the stony surface of the
water.  Bianca stirred and awoke, then looked about her with blinking
eyes.  I bent down to touch the warm water with my fingertips, then
sprinkled a few droplets on Bianca's head, which was still soft and
throbbed with each heartbeat.

"I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit," I said, repeating the words I had heard my father recite
so many times.  I hoped my baptizing her might somehow protect her from
the barbs and pitfalls she would encounter in life and help her grow to
be strong, loving, and hopeful.  But baptizing her myself, in the
atmosphere that combined solitude and nature-the two elements that
never failed to fill me with inspiration and awaken my inner spirit-was
more meaningful to me than any church baptism could have been.

When the rain subsided I held Bianca up so she could see the pine
trees, the cloudy gray sky, and the silvery expanse of the lake.

0God made all this, Bianca," I whispered in her tiny ear.  "And He made
you too."

Bianca looked about her in wonder during our long walk back home along
the winding dirt road circling the lake.  I talked to her the whole
time, telling her things I probably could never have told my closest
friend.  I talked on and on, about how secure I now felt in my marriage
and how I suddenly felt certain Mark and I would weather all storms,
would find our own happiness and purposes in life.  In a way, being
part of an interracial couple- made me less dependent on society's
goals and rewards for those who blindly obey its authorities and
customs.  It made me less eager to please, to see my whole life as
preparation for subordination to my socially approved husband.  It made
me look inward, to the spirit, to the heart, to the mind, to the
soul.

If at the end of our brief days here on earth, we are able to say
honestly, with a clear conscience, that we -have loved, that we have
given, that we've helped others less fortunate than ourselves, that we
have grown, that we have obeyed the golden rule, then our souls will
look forward with eagerness to whatever lies beyond the grave.

"I never really believed that before, Bianca," I said.  "Ever since my
parents' divorce, I didn't believe that love could last.  I used to
think that people inevitably grow apart, and that it's only a matter of
time before things fall apart.  But now I know, deep inside me, that
love can last a lifetime.  Perhaps I never knew how deeply I could feel
attached to someone until you came along."

My faith in my relationship was strengthened not only by the birth of
Bianca but also by the publication of the Boy in America.

Suddenly our marriage was public knowledge, and I no longer felt a need
to hide the fact that I was married to a black man from anyone, ever.

Mark, too, began to blossom into a truly dedicated and proud husband,
father, friend.  When six-month-old Bianca and I accompanied him on
much of the promotional tour for his book in June 198Coining him in New
York, Long Island, San Francisco, and Minneapolis-I saw a profound
change in him.

During a book signing at International House, the dormitory where we
had lived as journalism students, Mark did something he had never done
before.  I stood in the back holding Bianca while Gordon Evans,
president of I-House, introduced Mark.  Mark discussed apartheid and
described the effects of America's lingering racism and his struggles
as a foreign student in America.  His tone was gentle and thoughtful.

As he ended his speech, in front of a room crowded with people, he
thanked I-House for providing the environment in which he could meet
someone "as intelligent, beautiful, talented, and caring" as I. Mark
looked directly at me as he spoke, and I blushed.  Following the speech
everyone congratulated us on our 0beautiful" daughter.  Mark and I
beamed with pride.  We had come a long way from the day we met in this
very building, pledged our hearts to each other, uncertain what the
future held in store for us.

)" ""<")"    " " .-"-"-   
"""""" MARK'S VIEW.

Not too long ago across the South, interracial relationships were not
only forbidden by law but black men were often lynched by white mobs on
the slightest suspicion of being involved with a white woman.  Even
after passage of the 1963 Civil Rights Act, the Ku Klux Klan and its
sympathizers continued terrorizing interracial couples and families.

One young man Gail and I met, Trevor Nightingale, was only a toddler in
1974, but he vividly remembers the burning cross.  He and his white
father and black mother returned to their modest home in York, South
Carolina, one night to find a blazing wooden cross in their front
yard.

The cross burning was just one incident in a string of harassments
meant to drive the family out of town.  Trevor's parents, Charles and
Alice, received obscene phone calls and were shouted at from passing
cars.  Klan members held rallies in a vacant lot near their home.

Charles assured the FBI he would be willing to testify in court,
because cross burning without a permit is a federal offense, but the
case was mysteriously dropped.

Townspeople spread the rumor that Charles was an ex-convict who had to
settle for a black woman when he was unable to get a white wife.  When
the Nightingales dared to join an all-white square dancing group, they
could not find three other couples willing to form a square with
them.

When traveling across the state, they were sometimes stopped by
suspicious state troopers who asked them questions and checked their
identifications.

At that time in York, many businesses illegally maintained separate
white and black entrances.  York is a small town twenty miles east of
Gaflney, the location of Limestone College, the school that I first
attended when I arrived in America in 1978.

York was the county seat and had a history of racial bigotry.  The
races simply did not mix on any level.  The only other mixed couple in
town could not stand the persecution and fled to nearby Charlotte,
North Carolina.

"Believe it or not, my parents actually liked living in York,"
eighteen-year-old Trevor said in his deep voice, leaning back in his
chair in the Ridgewood, New Jersey, home where he lived with friends of
his parents.  "My father just laughed at the threats.  My parents could
not believe people could be so backward and intolerant.  My parents
were BahT'i pioneers, and felt they were setting a good example for
racial harmony simply by being a mixed couple."

The Bahai Faith is an international religion that strives, through
nonracial and nonviolent means, to create world unity and a peaceful
society free of all forms of prejudice.  It encourages interracial
marriage, pointing to it as one of the basic steps toward racial liar-'
mony and integration.

"As Bahais, we try to love everyone," Charles explained in a letter
to Gail and me.  0Even, at times, the unlovable-the so-called red
necks.  As a couple these challenging experiences unified and
strengthened us.  Many fine people approved of what we were doing.

We tried to show blacks that they must forgive, and to teach whites to
overcome their inherent but false sense of superiority."

The couple has since moved to the Bahamas, where they run a BahT'i
peace council in Marsh Harbour on the island of Abaco, which was
settled, ironically, by white South Carolinians.

Many defenders of the New South would argue that this cross burning
incident occurred seventeen years ago in a small, isolated town in
rural South Carolina.  Such things do not happen anymore, Il they would
say.  But how much has the South really changed?

Being a Mixed Couple in the South.

The first few months after moving from New York to North Carolina, my
senses were keenly on the lookout for the rnNew South."  I behaved with
the same tense wariness and suspicion as your average Northerner.  When
cashiers made eye contact with me, smiled, asked me whether I wanted
paper or plastic bags, and told me to have a good day-I walked away
bewildered by their congenial demeanor.

Was it authentic or mere show?

Each time Gail visited me from New York, I watched people's eyes and
tried to gauge their reactions to us.  In the supermarket Gail would
laugh and joke with me, touching my arm affectionately from time to
time, talking rapidly about her week in Manhattan, completely oblivious
to the eyes of strangers fixed on us.  Sometimes I would send her to
find an item I knew was on the other side of the store, just to
separate us so people would stop gaping.  It made me feel denuded.  I
didn't know what they were thinking or how they might react.  Though I
had lived in and traveled throughout the South, Southerners were still
foreigners to me.  I needed time to feel them out on the subject of
interracial relationships.

Gail and I provoked the most attention when we exercised together at a
local fitness center, perhaps because there is something erotic about
straining, heavy breathing, and stretching and bending one's body.  We
went to the gym every other day.  By the end of each hour-long workout
both of us were usually drenched with sweat.  I had nothing on but
running shorts, a tank top and a towel draped around my neck.  Gail
usually wore a Lycra bodysuit and tights.  As in most gyms, the walls
and pillars were plastered with plate glass mirrors.

Each time I walked over to Gail to correct her technique on a
particular Nautilus machine or give her encouragement, I saw, by
glancing in the mirror, that nearly every eye in the gym was fastened
on us.  Some white men occasionally muttered under their breath.

But as time went on and people saw us together often, most stopped
staring.

Though we behaved normally in public, Gail and I were not reckless.  We
knew that many people were opposed to our union and that some of them
were capable of showing their opposition in violent acts.  We were
aware of the vicious murders that took place in Salt Lake City on
August 20, 1980, when two black men, eighteen and twenty, were gunned
down near a city park by an avowed racist while they were jogging with
two white girls.  The murderer, Joseph Paul Franklin, publicly admitted
to the killings in a television inter view from prison.

"I'll say that it was just because they were race mixing," said
Franklin, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi
party.

"Had they not been race mixing, you know, it would have been a totally
different story."  Though he claims to spend most of his time in his
cell reading the Bible and praying, he said he did not regret the Utah
slayings.

In 1986 Frankiin received his fifth and sixth life sentences for
killing an interracial couple in Madison, Wisconsin.

One day an old pickup truck pulled up alongside our Honda Accord as we
were driving from High Point to Winston-Salem.  Gail was sitting beside
me in the passenger's seat.  It is interesting to note that whenever
she drove and for some reason I had to sit in the back, we encountered
almost no stares: I was, perhaps, presumed to be her servant.

The truck kept pace with us, not attempting to pass, which made me turn
to examine the driver.  I saw a wild-haired, sunburned white man
grinning down at the two of us from his bouncing rig.  Suddenly the
truck lunged ahead, swerved in front of us and slowed down abruptiy.

In a flash I saw the Confederate flag draped across the back window and
the chained tailgate heading straight for us.  I slammed on the brakes
to avoid crashing into it.  I stretched my arm across Gail to keep her
head from sailing forward into the windshield.  The man's laughing face
loomed in his rattling rearview mirror.

"What does he think he's doing?"  Gail cried.

"Don't ask," I said, switching lanes and dropping behind to create
distance between us and the pickup.

"Did you see the way he Ieered at us?  He looked like Mr. Hyde with
that maniacal smirk on his face."

"Just forget about it," I said.  "These people get their kicks out of
harassing mixed couples.  Don't get all flustered over it-that's exactly
 what he would want."

We drove on in silence, but I knew neither of us could simply for get
the experience.  We could not when there were other white men [I in
North Carolina who felt the same way about us.

Many of the incidents that once disturbed us now make us laugh.

When we were Ftrst married, Gail and I walked from our apartment to the
nearest bank branch and said we would like to open a joint checking
account.

I'mm sorry, that's not possible," said a well-dressed middle-aged white
woman behind a large shiny brown desk, staring at us as if we were a
pimp and a prostitute trying to set up a business account.

0Not possible?"  Gail said.  "Why not?"

"We can only open joint accounts for people who are related by blood or
by marriage."

 but we are married," Gail said.

This news discomposed the bank officer a bit, for she shifted In her
chair and shuffled through some papers on her desk.  Finally she said,
"Well, you have to have at least two hundred dollars to open a checking
account."

I looked down at our clothes, which were casual but neat, and wondered
what she took us for.

"Yes, we have that much," I said.

"I'll need some identification.  Do you both have North Carolina
driver's licenses?"  the officer asked.

"I do," I replied, "but my wife hasn't yet exchanged her Minnesota
license for a North Carolina license."

"Then I'm sorry, we can't open an account."

"Let's go," I whispered to Gail.  I knew the woman had a problem
dealing with us as normal human beings and I did not want to waste our
time arguing with her.  We went to another branch of the same bank and
had no trouble at all opening an account.  In fact, the officer at the
second branch, a young white woman, said there was no rule that
required a North Carolina driver's license to open an account.

Several humorous incidents involved my sisters Linah and Diana.

Whenever Gail, my sisters, and I went out in public together, people
automatically assumed that one of my sisters, not Gail, was my wife.

This occurred quite often in crowds of elderly women who flocked about
us after church services.

"So you must be Mark's wife," one woman said, clasping
fourteen-year-old Linah's hand with both her own and grinning through
her perfume and powder.  "We're so happy to have you living In High
Point."

"I'm Mark's sister," Linah said, glancing at Gail and trying to contain
a fit of laughter.

But the woman was apparently hard of hearing, for she continued her
speech, informing Linah that "you and your husband" would make
wonderful new church members.

These incidents were not confined solely to the South.  Whenever we
traveled in the North we encountered similar obstacles.

When I traveled to Philadelphia during a book tour, Gail accompanied me
and checked into the hotel room with our suitcases in the afternoon.

Because I was the scheduled guest on an evening call-in talk show, I
was unable to join her at the hotel until later that night.

When I arrived at the reception desk, I identified myself and requested
a key.

"I'm sorry, but someone named Mathabane has already checked into that
room," a clean-cut white man, not long out of college, informed me.

"Yes, that was my wife," I replied.

The young man looked puzzled, then suspicious, and I knew he was
wondering how a black man could be connected with the tall blond woman
who had checked in hours earlier.

"May I see some identification?"  he said.

I showed him my driver's license, which he examined carefully.

He conferred in whispers with two other employees behind the desk, both
young white women, then picked up the phone.

"Hello, Mrs. Mathabane?"  he said.  "There is a man here who claims he
is Mr.  Mathabane."

"Great.  Send him up," Gail said.

"Well, you see, uh, there might be some mistake here and I wouldn't
want to .  . . I mean, just as a precaution, uh, could you describe
your husband for me?"

"He's wearing gold wire-rim glasses and a suit, and he's black!"

"Oh, all right, ma'am, I'll send him right up."

The young man, with reddening cheeks, apologized profusely for the
inconvenience and handed me the key without delay.

Once I reached our hotel room, Gail and I fell into each other's arms
and laughed over the incident, but we also knew that we never would
have experienced that insulting scene if she had been black or I
white.

Gail, who had never been discriminated against because of the color of
her skin, was getting her first taste of racism and it bedeviled her.

I wished I could protect her from it, but I knew this was only the
beginning of the trials she would have to confront for being married to
a black man.

These trials of the white partners in interracial relationships, though
just as frustrating and dehumanizing as those experienced by the black
partners, are seldom acknowledged.  Black critics of mixed couples
especially fail to realize how much the white partner has to endure,
has to sacrifice, to remain true to his or her beliefs.

When Gail and I moved to Kernersville in June 1988, it was a small,
rural town twenty miles north of High Point.  Sandwiched between
Winston-Salem-home of BJ Reynolds Tobacco Companyand Greensborsite of
the first civil rights sit-In at F. W. Woolworth's downtown lunch
counter-Kernersville had slowiy evolved from a town of small tobacco
farmers into a bedroom community for people who commuted to work in the
larger surrounding cities.

Despite an influx of corporate Northerners into Kernersville's new
housing developments, the town retains much of its provincial Southern
feel.  Barefoot children still play in the yards of large dilapidated
farm houses along winding country roads; white-haired men with
weathered faces and faded bib overalls still gather at Farmer's Feed
and Seed to shoot the breeze in their drawling North Carolina dialect;
flocks of blond children and their parents still crowd the Moravian and
Methodist churches on Main Street every Sunday; loyal citizens read the
biweekly Kernersville News cover to cover and keep up with the latest
weddings, church picnics, and high-school sports scores; groups of
shirtless young men still harvest the tobacco fields and hang the
leaves to dry in fragrant bunches; old women In floppy hats and
gardening gloves still prune their meticulously groomed flower beds at
dawn; horses and goats graze peacefully in the pasture around the
corner from our home.

"What is it like living in the South as a mixed couple?"  Scott Ross,
host of CBN's "Straight Talk" asked me on camera in his Virginia Beach
television studio.

I explained, just as I did to all our Northern friends, that despite
having to sometimes deal with remnants of the Old South, we liked the
slow pace of Southern life; the friendly politeness of strangers;

the abundance of fresh air and trees; the low cost of living; the
tranquility in which one can relax, read, think, and write; and the
strong sense of community among neighbors indispensable to raising
healthy children.

Many people, particularly Northerners, seem disappointed when we cannot
relate harrowing stories of persecution at the hands of hooded
Klansmen.

There have been times, though, when I have wondered just how tolerant
people truly are in the South.  One Sunday morning in 1990, two days
before Christmas, I took a stroll alone.  Dressed in a white jogging
suit and a heavy winter coat, I went farther than usual, into a new
housing development, absorbed in listening to poetry on my Walkman and
admiring bare tree branches against a leaden sky.  As people drove past
me, dressed in their Sunday best and on the way to church, I would wave
and cast them a neighborly smile.

I had walked nearly half an hour in the new development when a
sheriff's patrol car suddenly pulled up beside me.  The deputy, a large
mustachioed man in a blue uniform, rolled down the window, and said,
"You live around here?"

"No," I replied.  "I live just beyond those trees."  I pointed in the
direction of our home about a quarter mile away.

The policeman stepped out of the car and hovered before me.

0Three people have called the police station to report seeing a
suspicious man," the policeman said.  "You fit their description."

"Really?"  I said, startled.

"May I see your ID please?"

"I don't have any with me," I said.  "I usually don't carry an ID when
I go for a walk in the neighborhood."

The officer continued looking at me, presumably baffled by the accent,
the self-assertiveness.  I saw the confusion in his face.  I proceeded
to explain who I was.  There was only one South African black writer in
Kernersville.

The officer, apparently recollecting my name (I had been featured
several times in the local media), said in an apologetic tone, "Listen,
I was only doing my job.  I was told to come out here and find out who
you are."

"I'm curious-who called?"

"There goes one of them right now," the officer said, nodding to a
white man driving past who stared straight ahead.  It was a man I had
waved to and smiled at as I walked past his home.

I returned home, upset and shaken by what had happened.

uSee what I mean about white stereotypes toward blacks?"  I said to
Gail.  "Those three whites who reported me to the police thought of
only one thing when they saw me: thief.  They hardly gave me the
benefit of the doubt.  To them every strange black man in their
neighborhood is simply a robber scouting their homes.  This is what I
mean when I say there's little difference between white attitudes In
America and in South Africa.

"And to think that some of those whites saw me on their way to
church!"

I continued.  "They presumably called about me from the church phone,
just before singing all about loving one's neighbor and being followers
of Christ's teachings.  What hypocrisy.  And, Sweets, it's two days
before Christmas!"

After my anger subsided, I attempted to come up with other explanations
for the incident.  I always did this to avoid seeing racism behind
every white man's wrong action against blacks.  Homeowners, I
reflected, are always worried about theft, about the safety of their
homes and families.  Strangers-regardless of race-walking through their
neighborhoods are bound to raise suspicions.

I recalled that on two separate occasions I had seen strangers walking
through our neighborhood-in one case a white teenager and in the other
a young black man.  I had felt an urge to notily the police immediately
as part of the community watch program, but I did not.  Instead I
approached the young black man and spoke to him.  He turned out to be
an ambitious entrepreneur selling home cleaning products.  But when a
neighbor and I approached the white teenager, he panicked and fled.

The police caught him as he headed for the highway.  He turned out to
have a police record for burglary.

There was an interesting twist to my encounter with the police.

Three days after the incident a white man approached me in a department
store and introduced himself as one of the people who had called the
sheriff on me.

"I'd like to apologize," he said.  "Someone broke into one of the
houses in our neighborhood recently and I guess all of us are a little
on edge.  I didn't mean any harm.  I hope you understand."

"I do," I said, shaking his proffered hand.  The man ended by inviting
me to visit his home.

GAIL'S VIEW When Mark said he wanted us to move to the South, I thought
he was deranged.  The race riots I had witnessed in my junior high
school In Texas remained indelibly in my mind, and I was as well versed
as any Northerner about the Klan and its persecution of blacks and
mixed couples.  Under no circumstances could I see myself settling In
the South.

"The South has changed, Gail," Mark said, trying to convince me to move
with him to High Point.  "When I was in North Carolina I saw more
progress than up here.  You won't believe some of the things I saw."

"Yeah, like Ku Klux Klan rallies full of Confederate flags, rednecks,
and racial slurs."

"That's the stereotype," Mark said.  "I went to North Carolina full of
them, but many were dispelled.  I felt more at home down there than up
here."

"Of course you felt at home," I said.  "It's probably just like South
Africa.  And who wants to have Jesse Helms for a senator?"

"Gail, you don't understand," Mark said.  "You just have to see things
for yourself.  I'm not saying the South is a paradise.  Far from iL
There's still awful poverty, ignorance, and racism in many places.

But I've finally realized that the North, with all its liberal
professions, hardly practices what it preaches.  Up here there's the
kind of racism that leaves black people numb with rage and
schizophrenia.  In the South at least you know who your true friends
are.  In the North people smile in your face and then stab you in the
back."

"But what about us?"  I asked.  "When I come down to visit you, I don't
want people staring at us bug-eyed wherever we go.  At least in New
York City we just blend in with all the various shades of white, brown,
and black."

Despite my opposition and the warning of friends that he was making a
serious mistake, Mark moved to North Carolina.  I remained in New York,
where most of my family and friends lived.

For several months I coped with the stresses of a commuter
relationship.

But with each visit to High Point my attitude toward the South
changed.

The greatest transformation was in how I felt physically; after only a
few hours, I would shed all the tensions and anxieties I had
accumulated by living in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn.

Mark and I went for walks at night, sat on the balcony gazing at stars,
often left the apartment door uniocked, breathed fresh air until it
made me drowsy-things almost impossible to do in New York.

These simple changes had a profound effect on my personality.  I became
aware how three years of a fast, hard, and competitive life in a big
city had dulled my sensibilities and blinded me to two of the most
important things in life: health and peace of mind.

I joined Mark in North Carolina following our wedding on Long Island.

Once settled I became used to the relaxed pace of Southern life, found
new interests and challenges, made new friends, and no longer missed
New York.

I began noticing the different ways In which racism manifests itself in
the North and South.  During occasional visits to New York I could feel
the racial tension in the air.  The city's blacks and whites were
becoming increasingly polarized with each racial incident: Howard
Beach, Bensonhurst, Central Park, Teaneck.

Traveling by subway from the Upper West Side to Midtown during one
visit, I found myself trapped in a tunnel during a race fight.  A
Hispanic woman had jostled her way into the crowded train at 116th
Street, irritating many of the sardined passengers who had boarded in
Harlem and were already drenched with sweat and gasping for air.

"Don't you be pushing me!"  a young black woman shouted at the Hispanic
woman as she entered.

"I din't push nobody," the woman replied.

"You lyin' spic!"  the young black woman said, angrily pushing the
Hispanic woman off the train.

The Hispanic woman fought back and managed to get aboard just as the
graffitied doors slammed shut.  "Stupid nigger," she muttered under her
breath.

"Say what!"

As the train jolted into motion the fighting continued with threats and
taunts and racial epithets, then came to blows.  Trapped in the crowd,
I was struck repeatedly by flailing elbows and fists but could not move
out of the way.

Another young black woman, apparently in solidarity with her black
sister, stood up on the bench and cried, "Here, use this!"  then threw
a closed switchblade over several heads to her friend.

Others followed suit.  I looked up and saw a dozen knives flash open,
waving in the air like bayonets over an army.  I had never imagined so
many people carried weapons on the subway.

0No knives!  No knives please!"  someone shouted.

Passengers panicked.  Mechanical difficulties forced the train to grind
to a halt in the tunnel, hallway between two stops.  The lights went
out and the fan stopped.  The scuffling and screaming continued in the
dark, airless cage, several feet below Manhattan's sidewalks.  Hispanic
passengers jumped into the fray, fighting with any black who shouted
encouragement to the young black woman.  The crowd shoved me about as I
evaded blows.

As suddenly as they had gone out, the lights came back on and the train
jerked into motion.  When we reached the next station, the doors slid
open and people practically stampeded over each other to get out of the
train, away from the knives and fighting.  I staggered onto the
platiorm, breathless and shaking, then sprinted up the stairs onto the
street.

I was thankful I had moved out of New York.  But I did not yet feel at
home in the South.  Sitting in a High Point truck rental office one
afternoon shortly after we were married, I waited for the secretary to
process some forms so we could rent a moving truck to carry our
belongings from one High Point apartment to another.  Mark had come
briefly, then gone outside to wait in the car and finish listenIng to a
library tape of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."

"Hey, did you know they got niggers up in Canada?"  a male voice
shouted to the secretary from a back room.  "I didn't know they got
that far north!  I'll be damned.  Niggers in Canada!  Niggers
everywhere!  Aln't no place you can go these days to get away from
em."

The secretary, who had seen Mark come in with me, flushed crlmson.

"Aw, shut up, you damn redneck!"  she shouted toward the back room.

The man, who happened to be one of the mechanics, came to the door of
the office and stared in disbelief at the secretary.  He glanced around
the room and, seeing no one but me and the secretary, no blacks,
appeared more bewildered than before.

"Since when did you get to be such a nigger lover?"

"I ain't!"  the secretary retorted.

0Then what the hell'd I do to bring on such a storm of fire?  I was
just tellin' you a bit of news I just got from readin' the papers."

"Well, you don't have to shout so everyone can hear ya," the secretary
replied.

He eyed me carefully.  Satisfied that I was thoroughly white and,
therefore, not offended by his remarks, he walked away shaking his head
in dismay at the secretary's impudence.

I took every opportunity to speak confidentially to older whites, born
and bred in the South.  I questioned them about race relations and
hostilities that might be left unspoken.

"What do most white Southerners think of my being married to a black
man?"  I asked a middle-aged white woman who had spent most of her life
in Kernersville.

"Oh, that's easy," she replied.  "They think you're a whore."

Her blunt reply took me aback, and I marveled at her honesty.

She went on to relate stories of her Southern upbringing, how she was
taught to speak to blacks In a tone of authority, how some of the boys
she had dated are now members of the Klan, how the Klan still holds
meetings frequently in many North Carolina towns, which she named.

"I'd be careful if I were you," she said with a meanIngful look, then
paused.  "You know, I had to think twice after you invited me to come
to your home for dmner.  When I mentioned it at work, one of my
coworkers said, you're not going, are you?  She's married to a black
man.  You don't approve of race mixing, do you?"  It threw me off a
bit, made me remember all the things I was raised to believe.  But I've
always been somewhat of a rebel, so I decided to come."

This, too, surprised me, for I had no idea she considered she was doing
me a favor by coming to my home and eating food I had prepared.

On another occasion I asked a balding but vigorous white man, raised In
Virginia and the Carolinas, what Southerners thought of my marrying a
black man.

"They pity you," he said without hesitation.  "They feel sorry for you
because a black man raped your mind and brainwashed you into marrying
him, against all your best interests and every remnant of reason and
good sense."

Eager to understand the source of such twisted attitudes in
Southerners, the contradiction between their public smiles and private
scorn, between the all-embracing Christian love they felt on Sunday
mornings at church and their inherent belief In segregation and white
superiority that still governed their daily lives, I read various books
about the South, among them Killers -the Dream by Lillian Smith.  In
this thoughtful and well-written autobiographical work, I found answers
to most of my questions about the explosive issues of race and sex in
the South.

Born in Jasper, Florida, in 1897, at the end of a decade in which one
thousand Negroes were lynched, Lillian Smith and her eight siblings
were raised to believe in God, the Bible, democracy, and freedom, but
were taught to stay away from colored children and shun the warm breast
of their black mammy when they reached a certain age.  Glowing memories
of a pleasant Southern childhood spent in Florida and Georgia, well
protected from the disturbing world of sex and race, are laced with
bitterness toward the South for its hypocrisy and ignorance and
provincialism and for teaching her to deny the humanity of blacks.

Just as white children were taught in South Africa, Smith was taught
that her white skin was her glory and the source of her strength and
pride.  She was also told that white is a symbol of purity and
excellence, that her white skin proves that she is better than all
other races on this earth.

Her skin gave her certain "privileges," which she began to see as
limitations to her freedom.  It dictated which entrances she used,
where she should sit and stand, what part of town she lived in, where
she ate, which theaters she attended, which swimming pools she used,
and whom she could love.

When Smith was just a child, her mother spotted a little white girl
living in a shack in Colored Town.  Believing that the child had been
kidnapped by blacks, Smith's mother "rescued" the girl and raised the
child in her own home.  Smith and the little girl, who were about the
same age, became best friends.  Then one day Smith's mother received a
letter from the colored adoption agency stating that the child did
indeed have some Negro blood.  The little girl was swiftly sent back to
Colored Town, and Smith was never told why she was not allowed to see
her best friend again.

The South has changed a great deal since Smith's childhood.  But the
attitudes she described still fester.  One measure of how much they
still exist in a particular area is the introduction of a mixed couple
onto the scene.

On May 26, 1990, the Greensboro News Record did just that.  The paper
published a color photograph of four teenagers: two ginthe black, one
whiteanced on a low wall beside a black boy In high-top sneakers and a
baseball cap tenderly holdIng the hand of a white girl with long blond
hair wearing an oversize T-shirt and bobby socks.

The photograph provoked a flood of angry letters, most of them from
white readers.  The debate raged for more than a month in the "Letters
to the Editor" column.

"The picture entitled Dancing in the Park'... was embarrassing," one
letter read.  "Why did you allow staff photographer Joseph Rodriquez to
choose such a distasteful, demoralizing, suggestive pose for the
newspaper?  I have heard many derogatory remarks from friends and
out-of-state visitors regarding this picture.  It was an awful picture
and I'm disappointed in your newspaper."

Another letter began, "I was startled by the picture on the local front
page.  Why did you show a picture such as this?  This promotes race
mixing and shows what kind of paper you print.  I have talked to
several people in my area and they, too, were very upset.  This kind of
edia coverage is not appreciated by the general public.  I think there
should be an apology."

A third read, "I'm sure you've managed to fan the flame of racial hate
with the photo of Dancing in the Park."  What's next, photos of
burning crosses?  Very poor judgment."

A few letters, in response to the above three, argued that the
photograph portrayed racial harmony and urged Greensboro residents to
be more tolerant toward mixed couples.  These letters were all penned
by women, perhaps because women are more likely than men to accept love
in whatever form it takes, even black-white.

One insightful response came from a woman who wrote "In those 13
years have I seen any progress in the fight against racism in this
area.  I am constantly embarrassed by the racist attitudes of those
whom I otherwise consider to be good, decent, moral, loving people.

The saddest testimony of all is my willingness to tolerate this racist
attitude In my friends, because after 13 years I realize I might very
well be friendless ill didn't."

"Disillusioned people such as the reader who opposed race mixing' need
to re-examine their own moral values and decide if what they believe is
truly right," wrote a black female high-school student.

"I find it distasteful and demoralizing that such attitudes continue to
exist.  Instead of seeing a group of young people having fun, they
chose to view the scene in their own twisted way."

A white Southerner in Siler City, a rural community thirty miles
southeast of Greensboro, rebutted this and other conciliatory
letters.

"Interracial marriages are unbiblical and immoral," he wrote.  "God
created different races of people and placed them amongst themselves.

To abolish racial separatism and promote interracial marriages is to do
away with God's workings.  ... If mixed marriages are necessary for
racial harmony, count me out.  I will not sing or dance to that tune.

There is nothing for white Americans to gain by mixing their blood with
blood of other peoples.  There will only be an irreversible damage for
us."  The letter sounded as if it had been written by an Afrikaner in
support of apartheid.

Mark and I have often wondered if we are partiy protected from many of
these hidden, hostile attitudes because we recently moved to the South
from New York and, therefore, don't "know any better" or because Mark
is a black South African and is thus not regarded with the same
unjustified contempt as the descendants of slaves or because Mark is
friends with Stan Smith and Oprah Winfrey and has written two
bestsellers.

To find out whether white Southerners did indeed treat us differently
from other mixed couples, I proposed to write an article on interracial
couples in North Carolina for Winston-Salem Magaune.

The idea was readily accepted by the magazine's editor, Mary Rearden,
and I began my research.

What I discovered startled me: Mixed couples were hard to locate.  Of
the handful I found, most refused to be interviewed.  Others agreed to
be interviewed but wanted to remain anonymous for various reasons: fear
of losing their jobs, fear of losing respect, fear of disappointing
members of their family who do not yet know about the relationship, and
even fear of losing their lives.  One white guidance counselor at a
Forsyth County high school spoke of death threats from his black
girlfriend's former black boyfriend.

There were courageous exceptions.  When Madelyn Ashley, a white
clinical nurse specialist who works at Bowman Gray School of Medicine
in Winston-Salem, married her husband Richard, a black graphic artist,
she was hesitant to tell her boss.

"I didn't want to hide anything, yet I wondered how my boss would
react.  I didn't really fear losing my job.  Richard was more important
to me than my job.  I don't tell my patients that my husband is
black.

When they make racist remarks I have to bite my tongue and change the
subject.  I don't understand racists.  My grandmother encouraged me to
be a nurse but told me, you don't want to take care of Negroes.  They
have a special disease, you'll catch it if you touch them."  But I
don't care what others say or think.  I'm proud of Richard.  I get
angry at myself for feeling the need to hide him from some people."

When Madelyn finally told her boss, he reacted not only with
congratulations but he drove all the way to Chapel Hill to attend the
wedding.  But Madelyn was one of the lucky few.  Most of the mixed
couples I interviewed for the article lived in fear that their
superiors at work would discover that they had fallen in love across
racial lines and fire them.  Thus loving human relationships are
transformed into "dirty little secrets."

Jane, a slim young woman with blue eyes and waist-length blond hair,
applied for a job as an exercise instructor for the elderly at an
exclusive North Carolina country club.  During the interview, the
employer quizzed Jane on her private life, and even asked who her
boyfriend was and where he worked.  Her black boyfriend, Hal, is a
member of the top forty band called The Society.  She was not offered
the job.

"To this day I wonder if I didn't get the job because Hal is black,"
Jane said.  "All they had to do was find out that The Society is a
black band."

Paula, a black teacher who is in love with a white man named

Rudy, feels uncomfortable going out in public in Winston-Salem where
she may run into coworkers or people from the black community who know
her, out of fear that word may get back to a former black boyfriend who
has threatened Rudy's life.  They began dating in 1986 and broke up for
a year because of the enormous pressure Paula was feeling.  During the
breakup Paula nearly married a black doctor, but returned to Rudy
instead.

"I'm still very aware that Rudy's white, but I thought that in time I'd
get over it," Paula said.  "It's getting better.  I'm not as afraid to
go out with him as I used to be.  But I've gotten criticism from black
males.  They say, There are a lot of black guys out there who are
dying to be with you.  Why do you stay with that white gny?"  I explain
that I'm with Rudy not because he's white but because he's a really
nice gny.  They just can't accept that as a reason."

I met another mixed couple, whom we'll call "Nat" and "Kate," at the
Dixie Classic Fair who let me interview them only if I kept their names
secret.  Neither of them took off their dark sunglasses throughout the
interview.  Kate, who is white, is afraid her parents in New Jersey
will somehow find out about the relationship.

"Nat visits me a lot," Kate said over the din of screaming children and
game vendors shouting for customers.  "He once answered the phone when
my mother called.  She asked, Who was that?"  I told her it was a
neighbor who didn't have cable who came over to watch a ball game.  A
lot of excuses have been made.  A lot.  I hate lying to my parents but
my mother would go nuts if she knew.  When I was one year old my
parents bought me a black baby doll so I wouldn't be prejudiced against
black people.  But as far as dating and marriage go, I'm sure that's
out of the question.  I don't want to hurt them, and what they don't
know can't hurt them."

Nat, who had been shooting baskets in an attempt to win a huge
fluorescent stuffed animal for Kate, joined our conversation.

"I just wish everyone would accept us," Nat said.  "My family knows
we're dating, but as long as I'm happy they're happy.  They used to
think one-dimensionally, you know, blacks gotta be with blacks and
whites gotta be with whites.  But once they got over the Initial shock
that I was dating a white woman, they accepted it.  The people I work
with feel the same way I do: It doesn't matter if the person you love
is black or white or tan or purple.  My friends accept it because I
pick friends who aren't prejudiced.  They wouldn't be my friends if
they didn't accept it."

Many interracial relationships in the South don't survive the pressure
exerted on them by society.  Both Nat and Richard had previously had
relationships with white women that failed.

"They just don't want to take it," Nat said.  "The relationship usually
ends mutually.  I don't know which side gives in faster, black or
white.  They're just not willing to make the effort to make it work."

"It takes a very strong-willed, independent person to be part of a
mixed couple," Richard told me.  "One has to be confldent in one's self
and one's feelings.  You have to have the firm conviction that what you
are doing is right and that anything against that is their' problem.

I don't think a lot of people have the individual strength it requlres
to be part of a mixed couple.  To be an individual in America is very
difflcult."

My completed article appeared in the January/February 1080 issue of
Winston-Salem Mogaune beside a large black-and-white photograph of
Mark, Bianca, and I under the heading "Color-Blind Love."  The phone at
the magazine started ringing off the hook, and letters came pouring
in.

"We find this sort of thing disgraceful," one caller told my editor.

She introduced herself as a representative of a group of thirteen
female senior citizens who were upset by the article.  "And that
photograph-why, it looks like an advertisement for that sort of
thing!

Just what exactly are you trying to promote?"

My editor, Mary Rearden, was asked why she printed an article by
someone as "brazen" as I, was grilled about my credentials as a writer,
and was told she lacked good judgment in running the piece.

"Don't you read the Bible?"  another caller asked Mary.  "It states
right there in the good book that God doesn't want any race mixing."

"Who's your publisher?  Is he from South Africa?"  another asked.

"No, he's Italian," Mary replied.

"Oh, I guess he would be a foreigner."

From call to call Mary held firm and, after the controversy had blown
over, told me she was glad she had run the piece and shaken the dust
off some old beliefs.  She even had long conversations with some of the
callers, listening patiently to their arguments and then refuting them
point by point.

For my part, I received numerous letters from the sisters, mothers, and
friends of mixed couples as well as some from mixed coupies themselves
thanking me for writing the article.  Those letters in themselves were
enough to negate all the ridiculous criticism the article provoked and
convinced me that we mixed couples, if we ever want to be fully
understood, accepted, and respected by society, have to be willing to
tell our human stories in order to combat stereotypes about us; we have
to speak out against bigotry, black and white, wherever we may live.

MARK'S VIEW I have written at some length about external events that
happened to Gail and me, but much more occurs internally, inside each
partner in a mixed couple as they adjust to life together.  At first,
once I entered the limelight, I had difficulty reconciling the private
life I shared with Gail with my public persona as a writer increasingly
considered by people as a spokesperson for the anti-apartheid
struggle.

This conflict reached a peak following my family's August 27, 1987,
appearance on the "Oprah Winfrey Show."  A few weeks after the show
aired nationwide, the Boy reached number three on The New York flmes
bestseller list and number one on the Washington Post list.  Suddenly I
was catapulted into the limelight.  People felt justified in intruding
on my private life.  They expected me to behave in a certain way and
say things that confirmed their perceptions of me as some sort of black
leader.  I have never claimed to be such a person.  Everything I have
written and said on the issues of apartheid and racial justice have
been at the prompting of my conscience.

Scores of letters began arriving at my High Point apartment each week
from readers across the country.  Dozens of other readers wanted more
immediate contact than letter writing afforded, so they started calling
at any hour of the day or night, often bubbling with emotion.

I was deeply touched by this show of support.  It strengthened my
belief that when political issues are presented to the American people
in human terms, many of them really do care and seek to do something.

At first I responded to each caller, sometimes spending hours speaking
to total strangers about my life, the situation in South Africa, the
importance of education to young blacks, and how concerned Americans
could help the struggle against apartheid by sending books and
educational supplies to South African ghettos.

But soon the calls became too many and disrupted my family life and
writing schedule.  I was in the process of writing the Boy in America
and was facing a deadline.  Gail offered to start screening the
calls.

Most came from black women desperate to speak to me.

"Is this where Mark Mathabane lives?"  one young woman asked Gail one
afternoon.

"Yes, it is," Gail replied.

"Oh, my God!  Really?  Is he home?  I've just got to speak to him.  I
just finished reading the Boy.  I couldn't put it down.  I feel like I
know him."

"He's not here right now," Gail said.

The caller was deeply disappointed.  "I saw him on Oprah's show and ran
right down to the store to buy his book."  She talked excitedly about
the Boy for several minutes, then said, "Who's this?  His secretary?"

"No, his wife."

"Wile?"  the caller exclaimed.  "I didn't know he was married'" after a
short silence, in which she was apparently recovering from her shock,
she said, "Well, you sure are one lucky woman."

Many of the calls ran along these lines, and it was hard to tell
whether Gail was flattered or annoyed by them.  The most bothersome
calls were the ones that interrupted our sleep at about two or three in
the morning.  Some came from women who had met me briefly at a lecture,
whose names and faces I could not recall, and who attempted to get me
on the phone by telling Gail they were good friends of mine or had
recently visited Alexandra and had important information regarding my
family.

It soon became clear that in the minds of many readers of the 0 I iA
.

 .  .

In the Limelight: Am I Betraying My Race?  1193 they had left me on the
last page of the book.  Part of my appeal, I believed, was that many
female fans assumed I was still single.  I knew the appeal would fade
when they learned I was married and might eventually turn to
disappointment and even scorn when they learned I had fallen in love
with and married a white woman.

Some black male friends who knew of my relationship with Gail and were
eager to see my career as a writer blossom, bluntly told me that my
credibility as a black spokesperson would be seriously undermined if it
were known that I was married to a white woman.

"The careers of many black leaders have been ruined by such
relationships," a black friend said one afternoon.

"But I'm not a leader," I responded.  "And Gail is my wife.  I married
her because I love her.  Surely people will understand that."

"Not in America," my friend said.  "Especially not in the black
community.  Your relationship with Gail, especially given what you and
other black South Africans have suffered under apartheid at the hands
of whites, will be seen as the ultimate betrayal of your blackness.  I
know the origin of your relationship with Gail, but many people
don't.

They'll simply conclude that you're another black man who, on becoming
successful, marries white."

"But Gail fell in love with me when I was dirt poor, unknown, and
repeatedly rejected by all the compatible black women with whom I
sought to have serious relationships."  My friend knew of the
rejections.  "Don't I have a right to wonder what is now so attractive
about me-my success or my own person?  I think it would be foolish to
abandon, in the name of racial solidarity, friends who stood by my side
during hard times."

"I understand and sympathize with your position," my friend said.  "But
I'm advising you as a friend, as someone who knows the black
community.

Gail will prove a liability."

Unsure how to take my friend's advice, I decided to play it safe until
I could reconcile the demands of my private and public life.  At times
I subtly discouraged Gail from attending my lectures, especially before
black audiences.  Whenever she was present, I asked her to sit in the
back of the auditorium and be as inconspicuous as possible.

Aware of my confusion about how to best present our relationship to the
public, and not wanting to make me or herself uncomfortable, she
complied.

Virginia, attended by a predominantly black audience, I was angry with
her, though I had invited her.  She was the only white at the table of
black students who treated me to dinner after the lecture.

Their faces did not conceal their shock on hearing me introduce her as
my wife.  There were awkward silences, gaps in the conversation and I
could tell many of the students were ofiended and wondered how she
could possibly relate to the issues of race they were discussing.

Our drive from Virginia to North Carolina was miserable.  I was
defensive of my base actions all the way home.  I insincerely accused
Gail of a gross lack of knowledge of African-American history, of an
inability to truly understand what it is like to be discriminated
against all your life just because of the color of your skin.  I told
her that I stIll had doubts whether it was right for me to marry a
white woman, given the black community's expectations of me.  Aware
that such remarks wounded Gail deeply, and ashamed of my actions, I
tearfully apologized to her.  But the tug of war between my public and
private life continued.

Sensing that she was the reason behind my strange shifts in moods, Gail
started voluntarily staying away from my lectures, even if I were
speaking right in High Point.  When I was asked to speak in support of
High Point's black library, which the city was threatening to close in
order to build a new library in a predominantiy white section of town,
part of me wanted her to be there.

Would you like to come?"  I asked as I straightened my tie.

"I'd like to, but I'm not going to," Gail said.

There was a strained silence.  I felt torn.  She was, after all, my
wife.  I knew she enjoyed attending my lectures.

you can come if you want," I said.

"I'd probably be the only white person there," she said.  "They'd
resent me.  They'd resent you.  Not everyone in High Point knows about
me yet.  I don't want to turn the black community against you."

I went to the lecture alone.  My speech was well received and many
people flocked around me afterward to compliment me on my book and ask
what they could do to help blacks in South Africa, but as I signed
autographs and answered questions I could not help wondering how
different my reception would have been had Gail been there.  Would it
really have mattered?

In the Limelight: Am I Betraying My Race?  I 195

My public image kept growing.  In different American cities, large and
small, complete strangers, black and white, would accost me, with
amazement in their eyes, and say, "Hey, didn't I see you on the Oprah
Winfrey Show'?"  They stopped me in airports, grocery store aisles, on
the street when I was jogging, at check-out counters, in the post
office, in the library.  On a visit to Manhattan, Gail and I were
stopped half a dozen times as we made our way down Fifth Avenue.

Hey, look!  It's Kaffir Boy!"  some would shout.

It startled me to hear those words, for I had not been called a
"kaffithe equivalent of the American word nigger-since I was In South
Africa.

Whenever strangers engaged me in a conversation, Gail would often walk
ahead several paces and wait for me, inconspicuously.

She did it voluntarily, believing that her presence would detract from
my popularity.  I hated this dual, secretive life and vowed to put an
end to it, one way or another.

It was not until 1989, with the publication of my second book KS /r Boy
in America, that I finally proudly made my marriage to Gail public
knowledge.  I insisted that my publisher, Scribners, include in the
photo section several pictures of Gail and me, including our wedding
photo.  I devoted one chapter of the book to the essentials of our
relationship.  The back flap of the book mentioned that our first
child, Bianca, had just been born.

Again friends warned me that the book would never sell, that people who
otherwise eagerly wanted to read about what had happened to me since
coming to America would be instantly turned off by the sight of the
photos.

"There's no reason you should include those controversial photos,"
someone said.  "Let people buy the book and Fend out about Gail upon
reading it."

"My love for Gail is more important than the success of the book," I
said.  "Those readers who won't buy the book just because of Gail are
probably identifying with me for the wrong reasons."

In June I appeared with Stan Smith on Oprah's prime-time special "Just
Between Friends," which was broadcast nationally.  Again, rather than
have Gail stashed away during the taping, she was there beside me and
my siblings, cradling Bianca in her arms.  The issue of my marriage
inevitably came up.

In one scene Oprah lay on her bed, having one of her regular marathon
long-distance phone conversations with her own best friend, Gayle King
Bumpus.  They were discussing me.

"Mark married a white woman, you know," Oprah said.

rnOh, really?"  Gayle replied.

As Gall and I watched the program, I was sure Oprah's friend was not
the only black woman to express surprise at hearing Oprah's words.  In
fact, I felt that many black women across the country reacted with far
more than a mere one-line exclamation: Many reacted with shock,
disappointment, and outrage.

I had a confirmation of that when I began a nationwide publicity tour
for the book shortly after the special aired.  During an appearance on
a talk show on one of New York City's popular radio stations, the
interviewer, a young radical black man very much into Afrocentricity,
surprised me by how he led the program.  He didn't explain KS/r Boy in
America nor ask me what it was all about.  He simply introduced me and
then opened the phone lines.  Angry calls from black women poured in.

I suspected a setup.  I had half a mind to walk out but decided to stay
and state my case, without apology.

rnHow dare you marry a white girl?"  someone said.

I asked the caller if she knew what sort of person Gail was.  She
didn't.  But that didn't matter, she said, the fact that Gail was white
was enough to make her an enemy" I told the caller that all whites
were not my enemies and that I judged them as individuals.  Failure to
do so, I added, was not only wrong, it was racist.  It made it easy for
white racists to rally whites behind their pernicious agendas in the
name of us against the'em.

dour marriage to a white woman is an insult to your mother and every
black woman in this country," another caller said.

I responded that the last person to blindly hate whites or anybody
because of the color of their skin was my mother.  She valued her soul
too much to harbor hatred in her heart.

My forthright answers surprised many.  But I was fed up with playing
games with my emotions, with hurting a woman whose love of me was
unqualified, with apologizing for a friendship that was above reproach
and that people had no business prying into.  Just as I had opposed
tribally arranged marriages in South Africa, I opposed racially
arranged marriages in America.  I could never live with myself knowing
that I had married someone not because I loved that person, but because
society approved of the match and it was the politically correct thing
to do.

The next day I was to appear on the uToBy Show."  I awoke early that
morning in a New York hotel room to find Gail fast asleep beside me,
her head resting on my shoulder.  Bianca slumbered in the crib next to
our bed, a five-month-old bundle nestled in a soft pink blanket.  I
slipped silently out of bed, showered quickly, and dressed In a dark
blue suit.

Watching my two darlings asleep, I wondered if I would, once again,
have to defend my love for them, this time on national television.

I kissed both gently and left the hotel room.  The cab pulled up in
front of NBC and I got out.  The studio was brightly lit and buzzing
with activity.  I was taken to the powder room and received facial
makeup.  From there I returned to the greenroom and waited, reading the
morning papers and watching other guests grab a hurried breakfast of
doughnuts and coffee.  I was informed that my interview had been
shifted to the next segment.

This is the "Today Show," I thought, the number one morning program in
America.  How will this important interview go?

Finally I was led on stage.  Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley greeted me
cordially.  During a commercial break I was miked and Bryant took a
seat beside me and we chatted.  The cue came on that all was ready.

Bryant's questions came in rapid succession, for we only had a few
minutes.  I answered them clearly and succinctly.

bat expectations did you have of America before you arrived?"  bat
parallels do you see between the lives of black South Africans and
American blacks?"  dour parents and other family members are still in
South Africa.

Has their situation improved at all?"

The interview ended without Bryant once alluding to my marriage to
Gail.  He had stuck to the issues raised in the book.  I shook hands
with him warmly.  He had won my respect for his sensitivity and
professionalism.  Off camera he did ask me, with an unassuming air of
friendly curiosity, how Gail was doing and what it was like to be a new
father.

One afternoon in the fall of 1989 I received a small package postmarked
Jamaica, Queens.  Its contents jolted me.  They consisted of a gruesome
photograph of a lynched black man dangling, bloodied and beaten, from a
tree limb.  His neck was broken, his legs and arms contorted.  On the
back someone had scrawled, "This is what happens to traitors of the
black race!!!"

The photo and note horrified and frightened Gail.  My editor at
Scribner's, Ned Chase, suggested I contact the police for protection,
but I decided against it.  I refused to be intimidated.

Yet it pained me to think that there were blacks in America who used
the same tactics that the Ku Klux Klan used to intimidate, harass, and
deprive blacks with whom they disagreed of their civil and human
rights.  To me both attitudes were racist and to be condemned.

More evidence of black prejudice came in letters.  A woman from PIano,
Texas, wrote that she enjoyed reading my second book until she noticed
it contained photographs.  When she saw the wedding pictures, she
immediately stopped reading.

"Seeing you married to a white woman was shocking," she wrote.  "The
problem I have with you and others of your kind is that in talking
Black and sleeping White, you betray your audience."

Someone sent me an article that appeared in The Black American that was
supposedly a reprint of a speech made by South African President P.

W.

Botha to his cabinet.  The following paragraph was underlined: Our
Combat Unit is now training special White girls in the use of
slow-poisoning drugs.  Ours is not a war that we can use the atomic
bomb to destroy the Blacks, so we must use our intelligence to effect
this.  The person-to-person encounter can be very effective.  As the
records show that the Black man is dying to go to bed with the White
woman, here is our unique opportunity.  Our Sex Mercenary Squad should
go out and camouflage with Apartheid FIghters while doing their
operations quietly, administering slow-killing poison and fertility
destroyers to those Blacks they thus befriend.  We have received a new
supply of prostitutes from Europe and America who are desperate and too
keen to take up the appointments.

No letter accompanied this unbelievable article.  I assume the In the
Limelight: Am I Betraying My Race?  I me that Gail was a spy hired by
the white South African regIme to kill me or weaken my resolve in the
fight against apartheid.

Not every black woman who read the Boy in America responded this way.

Some wrote me and said that after initially being angered and
embittered at learning that I had married a white woman, they later,
after their visceral reactions had subsided, found it in themselves to
accept us and respect our feelings for each other.

Dothula Baron-Butler, a black writer in Richmond, Virginia, who raised
her two teenage sons alone, wrote to tell me about the evolution of her
feelings toward my mixed marriage.  "I understand the criticism and
ridicule you may have received for marrying a white woman," she
wrote.

"I must admit that when I first heard the news, I felt like many
others-that you had been tempted by the forbidden fruit."  But after
reading your book [the Boy in AmerIca], I understand.  You and Gail are
truly soul mates.  It just so happens that one of you is white; the
other black.  True love knows no color."

GAIL'S VIEW.

When Mark and I first married, I knew nothing about the shortage of
available black men or the pain my love for and commitment to Mark
might cause some black women.  I thought the most vehement opposition
to our relationship would come from whites.  Once I convinced my family
that I was doing the right thing by marrying Mark, I believed I had
overcome the greatest hurdle I'd ever have to face.

Having been warmly and lovingly received by Mark's family, I assumed
the African-American community, too, would see and judge me as an
individual.

It was not until I accompanied Mark on a publicity trip to Philadelphia
that I realized that I-an individual-was regarded as "the white woman"
who stole a black man.  I was made to feel that I had committed some
sort of unspoken crime against the black community, particularly
against black women, by marrying Mark.  I felt it as soon as I followed
Mark into an all-black radio station.  The faces I saw did not greet me
with smiles but stared at me coldly, with an air of revulsion.  Mark
must have sensed it too, for he quickly went into the sound booth with
the radio technicians without a word or glance For Black Women, the
Pain Runs Deep The term militant black took on a threatening new
meaning for me.  For the first time I felt like an intruder, an enemy,
who had wandered into hostile territory, surrounded on all sides by
people who hated the color of my skin and all it represented.  No one
spoke to me, not even to tell me where I might sit down and wait.  I
found an empty conference room in the back, cluttered with dusty
equipment and stacks of paper, and collapsed in an ancient overstufied
armchair.  The minutes crawled by like hours.  I longed to be black, if
only to save myself from such torment.

Later that day, while Mark was doing another interview at the student
radio station at the University of Pennsylvania, I crossed the street
and entered a campus bookstore to kill time.  My interest in the 1960s
led me to pick up a thick book of black-and-white photographs and thumb
slowly through it, studying pictures of hippies, yippies, political
activists, and riots.  Paging through a section on civil rights, the
image of an angry, defiant black woman caught my eye.  Reading the
caption, I realized what had provoked her anger: Black men were
"turning against" their black sisters, "abandoning the struggle," and
"betraying their race" by sleeping with white women.  I imagined the
furious black woman leaping from the pages of the book and shaking her
fist in my face.  "You honky bitch!  You slut!  White trash!"  I could
almost hear her shout.  "Why don't you leave that black man alone?

Mark is one of US.  He should belong to a BLACK woman!  You stole
him!

You had no right!"

I slammed the book shut, shoved it into the row of books lining the
shelf, and hurried back to the radio station, shaken and bewildered.  I
was so upset I could barely articulate my revelation to Mark.

When I finally did, he seemed surprised.

"Didn't you know?"  Mark asked.  "Of course black women are going to be
upset at you, at us.  I know it's unfair.  But we just have to get used
to it.  Maybe someday, when they get to know you as an individual,
they'll think differently about us."

Knowing that I was loathed by black women made me feel miserable.

Since my days as a minority white student at Pearce Junior High in
Austin, Texas, I had admired black women.  At Pearce, where I felt
insecure and lost, I envied the black girls for their strength,
confidence, toughness.  They had the courage to challenge teachers,
make demands, and speak their minds.  I envied them for their hair, all
knotted up with colorful beads and transparent colored balls.

I watched in awe and admiration as they danced down the long tables in
the cafeteria, where a jukebox belted out Motown tunes in the corner.

They made up the cheerleading squad, the basketball team, the track
team.  They were full of life and laughter, while I, on the other hand,
felt stifled by the puritan streak that deprives so many whites of
their vibrancy and emotion, riddling them instead with guilt complexes
that make them go through life perpetually in need of shrinks.

When I got to Columbia Journalism School I was sent, along with most of
my classmates, into rough New York neighborhoods, often alone, to cover
story topics ranging from teenage pregnancy to prostitution and drug
addiction.  While reporting in such neighborhoods I met some incredibly
strong women-all of them black and determined to survive in a cruel,
unpredictable world of violence, poverty, and desperation.

One night in a lower Manhattan twenty-four-hour court of arraignments,
notoriously known as "night court," I sat on a hard, wooden bench under
buzzing fluorescent lights watching a long line of defendants,
practically all of them young black men, stand before a white judge one
at a time, with anger in their eyes and their knitted caps baIled up in
clenched fists.

Suddenly the young black woman beside me, who appeared about eight
months pregnant and with whom I had briefly spoken during a break,
burst into tears.  I knew she was there to see her boyfriend appear
before the judge.  Instinctively I slid down the bench and put my arm
around her, trying to comfort her.  Hot tears rolled down her cheeks.

"He got six months," she murmured, trying to catch her breath.

"He won't be with me when our baby is born.  He din't have to do it.  I
tole hIm I got money.  But he be too proud.  He say he won't take none
of my money, that I'm his woman and that it ain't right to take money
from your woman.  Ain't that just like a man to be so stubborn?"  She
looked up at me inquiringly, her large, wet brown eyes gazing directly
into mine.

"Just like a man," I replied.

"Jostling," she muttered.  "What the hell's that?  That's what they
charged him with.  Jostling.  I swear they come up with the strangest
charges, then they never explain what they's meanin'.  I could do a
better job than that judge.  He don't know what he's doing.  You got to
look them in the eyes.  It's the eyes that let you know.  My boyfriend
din't mean nobody no harm.  But murderers go free and he gets six
months."

Her anger seemed to dry her tears, and a look of determination came
into her eyes.  It was about three in the morning when she and I left
the court building and headed for the uptown subway.  As the train
rumbled and raced through Manhattan, she talked openly and quickly
about her life in Harlem, her excitement over her coming child, and her
boyfriend.  The farther we got from night court, the more confident she
became.

"I din't need him anyway," she said.  "He was a pushover.  He was
always in my face.  I guess it's better like this.  I can handle my
life on my own, you know.  Men just get in the way, always getting' in
trouble.

And it ain't like I'll be alone.  It'll be me and my baby from now
on.

We'll be out there together, takin' on the world."  She looked at me
curiously.  "You Pisces?"

Her sudden question took me aback, but I replied, "Yes, I'm a
Pisces."

"Yeah, I knew it," she said.  "So am I. I could tell cause you
understand.  You know what I'm tellin' you."

I had to get off at Ninety-sixth Street to change for the Broadway
local bound for Columbia.  She remained on the train, bound for the
darkest reaches of Harlem.  As the train pulled out of the station, I
saw her wave.  I realized then that we didn't even know each other's
names, yet she had left an enduring impression on my mind: an
impression of fortitude, determination, and strength in the face of
utter despair and hopelessness.  Again I wished I had some of the
strength of a black woman like that.

I thought of Mark's sister lIorah, who is only one month older than I,
and how readily we had become close friends and confidantes during the
summer of 1987.  I particularly remembered her grit when we found out
she had the early stages of cervical cancer.  "Don't worry, Sweets,
it's nothing.  I'll pull through," she had said.  And pull through she
did.

I realized in that bookstore in Philadelphia, with a sinking heart,
that it was going to be far more difficult to make friends with

African-American women than I had anticipated.  The twisted history
lips,' a friend once told me.  His hair smells like a wet dog."  of
America's race relations, the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, all
kinds of things like that when I was growing up."  made them see me as
the enemy.  By marrying a black man I had Sylvia came to a book signing
at a High Point bookstor stepped over the line, I was suspect.  And the
fact that Mark was in afternoon and, while Mark was talking to fans and
signing the public eye, a powerful writer and friend of Oprah Winfrey,
only graphs on the title page of the Boy in America, she walked seemed
to exacerbate their resentment of me, "the white woman."  me, asked if
I were Gail, and introduced hersetr She talked rc Over the years I have
come to understand why my marriage to as if eager to express myriad
ideas at once.  Several weeks Mark has so deeply wounded, disappointed,
and angered many black Sylvia called me and we had a long phone
conversation.  She ta women.  I read the grim statistics about the
rising death rate of young what it felt like to find out I was white.

black males, but I did not make a connection between them and my mamage
to Mark until I was confronted by the anger of black women.  Their
anger reached me through anonymous hate letters to "I knew Mark was
married, but I didn't know you were N she said.  "I found out when I
read an article in the Greensboro Record.  For a while I was just
stark raving mad.  That was my Mark, through the questions they asked
Mark during call-in radio natural reaction.  And I have to tell you, a
lot of other black wo shows, through phone calls made directly to me.

I opened my eyes, I know felt the same way.  I don't know if it's good
for me to listened, I struggled to understand their feelings.

incredibly honest, but there it is.  I have to get it out.  I was
torn.

One of these women was a Greensboro professional in her thirties, whom
I'll call Sylvia.  After years of striving in vain to find an eligible
black man, Sylvia chose to remain single rather than accept I dinner
invitations from white men who showed a strong interest in " her.

Having grown up black in a small town in eastern North Carolina, and
acutely aware of enduring taboos about interracial relation- "I still
go through struggles when I see a black man with a ships, she grew
irate when a white man asked her to dinner.

cially since Mark is successful.  The more successful the black the
greater the resentment among black women.  My friends were extremely
stunned when we found out you were white, I passed.  We shrugged, shook
our heads, and said, He's just ai black man with a white woman.

woman," she continued in her urgent, rapid style of speech.

"I was so mad at him," Sylvia said.  "The nicer he was, the mad- are
over a million more black women in the United States than der I
became.

I didn't go to dinner with him.  I thought he really wanted sex, and my
mind went back to slavery days.  Few white men back then married their
black mistresses.  They just wanted casual sex and often took it by
force, as if it were their right.  I felt safe conversing with him on
the phone, but if I saw him I'd get mad.  He had men, and a lot of
those black men are in prison or living streets.  My attitude is based
on statistics.  It may also be the 'forbidden fruit' syndrome: that the
black man wants a better' womar "Do you still hate me?"  I asked.

"Not really.  You see, I assumed, at first, that you were a Soi blond
hair, which made it worse.

"I was raised in the Deep South, where racism is ingrained into just
about everybody, black and white," she said.  "I grew up in a Icounty
that is reputed to have the highest number of KKK members in North
Carolina.  You had your place.  You could live only in certain areas.

I believed in separate but equal."  It didn't matter to me that in
school we got used books from the white schools.

"When I was coming up, everyone made sure I knew to avoid white men.

We were told the white man was no good in bed anyway, (I that he had no
penis.  A white man's penis is as pitiful as his thin belle.  But when
I found out you were a universal person, that traveled, that you were
worldly and probably open-minded, was able to understand a little
better.  But it still hurts."

"In what way?"

"In every way.  Slavery-time notions are still so deep.  In Bt hurst a
black teenager was killed just because someone thought he was going
to see a white girl.  Hey, he was just looking at a used car!  In America,
people, both black and white, can't st see a member of their race cross
the color line.  Those feeling: die.  They just don't.  Some ideas in
the South are as old as Con the Wind.  People still hang up their
Confederate flags, which to me is a symbol of slavery.  Those attitudes
are classic, just like the film."

"So, are you saying that you still feel blacks and whites shouldn't be
together?"  I asked.

"You know, there's an interesting twist here," Sylvia said.  "In a way,
black men and white women naturally belong together.  They've never
really had any power.  They've both served the white man, either as
slaves, domestic servants, or duty-bound wives with no legal rights.

And, in a way, black women and white men belong together.  They are
both dominant and strong.  Black women had to be incredibly strong
during slavery.  Their husbands and children were auctioned off and
they had to work hard in the fields to survive.

They were poor but they still had power, pride, and dignity."

"So you still wouldn't date a white man?"  I asked.

"Right now I just couldn't.  But maybe I will in the future.  For now
I'll keep looking for that special black man."

One year later, Sylvia began dating a white man-a divorced
professional.  It was not an easy decision for her to make, but she had
grown tired of waiting.

"I'm still going through what I call a metamorphosis stage," she
said.

"I feel like a hypocrite-but it was just a matter of numbers.  I m
doing this because there are more available white men and I wanted to
expand my options.  It's so hard to find eligible black men, and the
competition for them is unreal."

When she and her white friend go out in public, Sylvia can feel the
disapproving stares, especially from black men, but she sees it as just
one of the many pressures of being black in America.

Sylvia was not the only black woman to express her strong, and rather
mixed, feelings toward me.  June Steward, a black woman living in
Oakland, wrote a review of Mark's second book for the San ncilco Post,
a black newspaper, and sent hIm a copy of the published piece: I was
delighted to see Mathabane's tln'ely sequel, ifr BE in An'erica,
displayed among the new arrivals in the bookstore.  I immedi lately
scanned the photos and saw... to my amazement and, I must adniit,
horror, a photo of his wife, Gail, a white woman.  Stunned, I turned
through the pages thinking, "It just can't be."  Bui there she was,
blonde and probably blue-eyed as she could be.  I put the book back on
the shelf feeling betrayed.  How could he have done this to us?  How
could he, in the most intimate sense, take up with the very race whose
brutality he described so clearly and convincingly In the Boy?

For days I was angry.  I refused to buy the book and I felt that I had
learned as much as I wanted to know about Mark Mathabane.  I hate
racism and its simple-minded tenets and those people who uphold them,
but I am not a black racist.  I do not hate white people.  So why did 1
feel betrayed?  Because after luring me into the unutterable horrors
of apartheid and making me weep and angry and determined to lIght
racism and all its ugliness until the day I die, he seems to turn
around and embrace the Nordlc Ideal.  He seems to be saying white South
AIricans are right.  The blonde ideal is superior, It Is the one worthy
 of his love, not the lowly black, kinky-headed race.

All of this simplistic thinking soon gave way to a more complex view.

We are not simply black or white, we are human beings with thoughts,
emotions, and spirituality that make us who we are.  Indeed, we are
part of a group, a family, but most importantly, we are individuals
and it is to this that we must be true no matter how out of step we
may be with others.

Moved by her frank discussion of her feelings toward Mark's marriage to
me, I wrote a letter to June asking her to explain to me why so many
black women feel betrayed and angry when they discover I'm white.  June
replied, The female ideal in this country has always been the nubile
blonde, girl-woman.  Black women always took a back seat to this
image.

Our beauty, no matter how spectacular, could never stand up to the
blonde goddess.  So for Mark, one of the most inspiring black writers
of the decade, to embrace that Ideal was for me, and apparently other
black women, an insult.  It took a bit of personal grappling for me to
get over it.

I am sorry that you have had to experience all the hatred just because
of your color.  You don't deserve it.  None of us do.  What is
important Is that you maintain your dedication to your ideals, be true
to the love that you share, and use that love to give you courage to
lIght this nonsense.  As James Baldwin said, "From my point of view, no
label, no slogan, no party, no skin color and indeed no religion, Is
more important than the human being."

Having spoken to Sylvia, exchanged letters with June, and communicated
with other black women who had the courage to be can did with me, I
learned to be sensitive to the feelings many African American women
have when they see me with Mark.  But I did not feel right forcing
myself to feel guilty for having fallen in love with him.  After all,
Mark is far more than a black man and I am not simply a white woman.

Black women, I realized, would have to make an effort to try to
understand my position, too; I can't spend my life apologizing to
black women who are upset with me.

When Mark spoke at North Carolina A&T University in Greens boro in late
November 1990, where controversial black MuslIm minister Louis
Farrakhan had spoken a couple weeks earlier, I stayed home despite my
strong desire to hear my husband's lecture.  I knew that someone in the
crowd would ask Mark the inevitable question: "How could you have
married a white woman after all you've suffered at the hands of
whites?"

As soon as Mark returned I said, "Did anyone ask it?"

"Yes," he replied.  "I get that question everywhere I go."

He sounded relaxed and surprisingly carefree about the matter, as if
the question no longer bothered hIm.  But it was not until the following
 week, when I read about the lecture in a newspaper article by
Greensboro News & Record columnist Bill Morris, that I realized that
Mark was at last completely at ease with my being white, even before a
crowd that included bitter and militant black students.  Part of the
column ran as follows: It was astonishing that such a small,
solt-spoken, elegantly dressed man could deliver such an overpowering
message.  But as I sat in an auditorium at N.C. A- State University
recently and listened to Mark Mathabane address an audience of 600
soul-blacks and whites, students and teachers, even a few blue-haired
matron-I was, quite simply, astonished.  I was also Iilled with joy
and with something that can only be described as awe.

Though he grew up with the horror and brutality of apartheid, the
message he brought to ACT was one of compassion, understanding and
love.  He told the story of how his mother struggled against an array
of "Kafkaesque" laws to get him enrolled in school when he was a boy.

But it was only when a white nun intervened that Mathabane's mother was
able to secure the coveted birth certificate that enabled him to enter
school.

"You see, child," his mother told him at the time, "not all white peo(I
pie are bad."

The lesson of that nun's act is with him to this day.  "It made me
realize that the most Important thing you must judge people by Is their
character-the color of their heart," he said.

That remark Inspired a question from a black woman in the audIence at
ACT She wanted to know how Mathabane, who grew up under codilIed white
racism, could possibly have married a white woman.

"In judging," he said In a calm voice, "I look not look at skin color, but
at who people are.  One of the things I lInd disturbing, having grown
up in South Africa and then coming to this country, are its
contradictions.  We blacks say to white South Africa, you are
monstrous and evil' for denying the humanity of black people.  Yet
simply in the name of black soIldarity, we begin to enforce the same
criteria.  If you are black you cannot marry or befrlend a white
person.  It's the same thing I experienced in South Africa-in
reverse."

Then he looked the questioner in the eye and said, "I am proud to have
Gail as a friend and as a wife."

When he said that, I understood the source of my awe.  Here was a man
who has every reason to be full of rage toward whites but who has
transcended those feelings and now works toward bringing people of all
races together.

"Of all the places I've been," he told his audience at A- "Alnerica is
one of the few places where people always talk about each other.

That's how stereotypes persistbecause people don't talk to each
other.

It Is Incumbent on us In a democratic society to try to understand each
other, including our differences."

Wesley and Brenda Root-he's white and she's black-unintentionally made
national headlines when they tried enrolling their fourteen-year-old
daughter, Mahin, at Page High School in Greensboro in August 1989.  The
Roots ran into problems because they refused to identify Mahin's race
on the registration form.

"Our daughter is mixed," Brenda said of Mahin.  "To pick one race over
the other would misrepresent her heritage.  Whatever I would pick is
likely to follow her into high school and for the rest of her life."

Brenda's beliefs challenged the Greensboro school system, the federal
bureaucracy, computer technology, and society's obsession with
classifying people, as in South Africa, by skin color.

It was the first time a parent had refused to identify a child's race,
and the school did not know how to handle the situation.  The computer
would not process Mahin's registration form unless she completed the
block that asked her to select from one of five options-Native
American, Asian, Hispanic, black, or white.  Brenda Root marked through
the question.

"They did not have a space for other,' " Brenda said.  "But even if it
had been there, I would have reacted the same way.  I don't believe
anyone should ever have to identify their race.  We are all human
beings.  What does race have to do with who we are?"

Brenda was told Mahin would not be registered for school until she
identified her race.  Mahin had spent the previous four years at
Greensboro Day School, a private school where the issue of race was
never brought up.  like her parents, Mahin said she never thought of
herself as black or white.

"I'm both black and white," she said.  "I can't pick one without
denying the other."

Greensboro school officials said they needed to report the race of all
their students to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights
(OCR), which has collected racial information since 1967-1968 to
deterntine if schools are complying with the Civil Rights Act of
1964.

The principal at Page referred the matter to the superintendent, who
handed it over to the school board's attorney, who called the Office of
Civil Rights in Washington, D.C for advice.  John Woods, a public
altairs officer in the OCR suggested the school "do the eyeball check"
to determine her race.

flme magazine picked up the story, and National Public Radio's "All
Things Considered" twice broadcast interviews with Mahin.  We saw the
article in the Greensboro News & Record and wrote a letter to Brenda
Root congratulating her on her courage.  This began an exchange of
letters between us, and before long she arrived at our home for dinner
with her daughter Mahin and a white friend named Chris Tifiany.

The Brenda we finally met surprised us.  We had Imagined her as a
militant crusader against racism.  After all, this brave woman had
challenged the state of North Carolina to abandon its practice of
requiring race identification on driver's licenses, marriage licenses,
and birth certificates.  When she discovered that a local supermarket
was using shorthand to indicate black or white on the back of checks,
she made sure the store's management in Charlotte knew she
disapproved.

When Mahin was classified as a black female after a thumb operation,
Brenda wrote letters to the doctor who operated on her, the Guilford
County Medical Association, and the American Medical Association,
demanding that black be removed from Mahin's medical records.  It was
done.

In place of the outspoken radical we had Imagined, we met a petite,
reserved, soft-spoken woman with hints of gray in her hair.

She was dressed in red knit pants and a casual sweater.  Her daughter
Mahin was unusually tall for fourteen.  She wore a short skirt, hose,
and a pullover, and her jet black hair was in a long jerry curl.

She sat down and scarcely said a word all evening.  Her large eyes took
in everything.  She glanced from one object to the next, as if
painfully shy and uncomfortable.  She was not with us long before she
left the room to be with Linah and Diana.

"She won't stay in here because we're talking about race," Brenda told
us.  "She gets terribly upset when she hears the words black, white,
and race.  We didn't raise her to think in those terms.  We lived in
Nigeria for six years, until 1985, and it was never a problem there.

It's only since we returned to America that she's been forced to think
in terms of race."

Brenda was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, in a musical
household.

Though she is black and grew up during the reign of JIm Crow, her
parents, she says, were never obsessed by race.  They taught her not to
limit her aspirations simply because of her skin color.  "Racism," her
father told her, "is their problem, not yours."  As an undergraduate at
Oberlin College, Brenda majored in music and went on to the University
of Illinois to pursue a graduate degree in music education.  In her
quiet, determined manner, she makes it clear to everyone that she is a
human being first, not a woman, or a black, but a whole person.

Sheena Williams, the teenage daughter of a black American and white
Iranian in Teaneck, New Jersey, encountered a situation sImilar to
Mahin's when she signed up to take the California Achievement Test.

Under ethnic background, she checked both black and white.

The proctor returned the test to her saying, "You can only check
one."

"What are you supposed to do if you're a biracial child?"  Sheena
asked.

"Put down what you look most like," the proctor said.

"Wait a minute," retorted Sheena, who has long wary black hair and skin
the color of cafe all lait.  "A lot of people think I'm Hispanic.

You're saying that if I look Hispanic, I should check Hispanic,
right?

But I'm not Hispanic.  I'm black and white.  Children of interracial
marriages should either be able to check both or have our own separate
category.  And I'm not going to check other' because I don't want to
be a nonentity.  What is an other'?"

The proctor became so exasperated that Sheena finally relented and
checked black.

Sheena's black friends tell her, "You have black blood in you, so
you're black," to which Sheena replies, "But my mother gave birth to
me, and she's white."

One day in her African-American history class at Teaneck High School,
the discussion turned to interracial dating and marriage.

Some of the students disapproved of such relationships.  Sheena asked
the class, "Then what do you think of me?"

"Oh, your mother's not white," the students said.

"Then what is she?"  Sheena asked.

"I thought you said she's Iranian."

"Yes, but she's still white."

"No she's not."

Sheena made a photocopy of a page in her brother's world history book
that stated that Iranians are Caucasians.

"It's not that I'm bragging that my mother's white," Sheena told
them.

"I'm just trying to prove a point: that my parents' marriage is just
the same as anybody else's.  There's nothing wrong with it."

Despite society's hang-ups, children of mixed couples, contrary to
popular belief, grow up with a healthy sense of who they are, a fact
which, interestingly, the combatants in America's race war find hard to
accept.

"I was taught to be proud of who I am, and who I am is mixed," said
Trevor Nightingale.  "I don't try to avoid the fact that I'm mixed and
say,'Yo, I'm black,' or "I'm white."  I tell people with pride, "I'm
mixed."  I don't really care how other people see me because I have a
strong personal identity from having been raised in different parts of
the country by strong individuals.

"I think I've had the best of both worlds with my mother being black
and my father being white," Trevor continued.  "I have black
grandparents and white grandparents, so I've gotten to know both
cultures.  I was raised to believe that obstacles become problems only
if you let them.  My parents gave me a lot of their strength and pre
pared me to confront prejudice.  They were nonconformists, pioneers.

They empowered me."

Sheena's father, Alton Williams, Jr is a coach for a baseball league in
Teaneck, a New Jersey community that integrated voluntarily in the
early 1960s and, because of its reputation for racial diversity and
tolerance, has attracted many interracial couples.  Several of the
young players are the biracial children of these couples.

Most opponents of interracial marriage make the same arguments over and
over again: "The children will suffer.  They'll be caught between two
worlds.  They won't fit in anywhere.  They'll be lonely and
isolated."

But speak to any biracial child or their parent, and you'Il most likely
hear a different story.

"When I read articles about the problems biracial kids supposedly
have, I have to laugh," Williams said.  "I look at my own children and
the biracial kids I coach.  I mean, these kids are ready to take on the
whole world.  They feel so sure of themselves.  They hold their heads
up.  They've learned to be strong from their parents."

"I have white friends, black friends, mixed friends," Trevor said.

"Having white relatives, I don't feel uncomfortable or out of place
around whites.  I'm not acting when I'm around them, like some blacks
do.  But sometimes my white friends will ask me why I hang out with
blacks.  That really bugs me.  But it also provides me with the
opportunity to explain to them who blacks truly are."

"You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner
strength, and say, "I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just
going to be myself,'" said singer Mariah Carey, whose father is a black
Venezuelan and whose mother is Irish.  Carey, who was named Best New
Artist of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocalist for her song "Vision of
Love" at the Grammys in February 1991, proudly asserts that she is not
just "another white girl trying to sing black."

"Some people look at me and they see my light skin and my hair," she
told a reporter, running her fingers through her long, wavy,
honey-brown tresses.  "I can't help the way I look, because it's me.  I
don't try to look a certain way or sing a certain way.  I'm just trying
to be me.  And if people enjoy my music, then they shouldn't care what
I am, so it shouldn't be an issue."

Her parents divorced when Mariah was three, and she grew up ii' in New
York with her mother, a vocal coach and former singer with the New York
City Opera.  Because she and her mother moved often, she didn't have
many close friends or get involved in high-school music programs.

"It's been difficult for me, moving around so much, having to grow up'
by myself, basically on my own, my parents divorced.  And I always felt
kind of different from everyone else in my neighborhoods.  I was a
different person, ethnically.  And sometimes that can be a problem.  If
you look a certain way everybody goes, white girl,' and I'd go, No,
that's not what I am."" Children of mixed marriages are often accused,
mostly by blacks, of trying to deny their black roots and "pass" for
white.  Critics say they do so for economic, social, or career gain.  A
biracial adult who refuses to choose between the white and black within
her and prefers to be called "mixed" is unfairly accused of denying her
"true race," that is, the black race.

Singer Paula Abdul, whose 1989 debut album Forever Your Girl sold
millions, bears the brunt of many such attacks.  The daughter of a
French-Canadian and a Brazilian-Syrian, Abdul and her style of singing
and dancing immediately appealed to African-Americans, who flocked to
record stores to buy her music.  When Abdul said publicly that she
considers herself "Third World"-neither black nor white-many black fans
felt disappointed and betrayed.

If a dark-skinned person has an Italian or Japanese ancestor, there is
no reason he should deny this fact and focus his entire identity on his
African ancestry.  Yet Prince, the multitalented musician from
Minneapolis, has been vilified by some blacks for mentioning in his
press bio that he is, among other things, part Italian.

Actress Jennifer Beals, who starred in the film Fashdance, has been
criticized for not claiming to be black.  Yet she has never claimed to
be white, either.  Her father, a black grocery-store owner on Chicago's
South Side, died when Jennifer was nine.  She was raised by her mother,
an Irish school teacher, on Chicago's North Shore in an
upper-middle-class white environment.  Having grown up in both white
and black neighborhoods, and having one white and one black parent, why
should Jennifer be forced to choose between her father's heritage or
her mother's?

With the rise of crossover music-tunes that appeal to both black and
white audiences-came an increase in the number of female vocalists who
cannot be, and who rightly refuse to be, categorized as black or
white.

Neneh Cherry, whose debut album Raw Like Sushi was one of the
best-selling recordings of 1989, is the daughter of a Swedish woman and
an African.  Sade, Sheila E, Apollonia, and Vanity are other singers
who are either biracial or happen to be very fairskinned and who have
been criticized for 0pretending" to be white and "denying" their
African roots simply because they look beyond race and consider
themselves as human beings first, not as black or white.

MARK'S VIEW One of the things I quickly learned after arriving in
America in 1978 was that this nationespite its freedom, democracy, and
claims of being a melting pot where differences are not only tolerated
but celebrated-was far from the racial utopia I had imagined it to be
while I groaned under apartheid oppression.  This shocked and
disappointed me.  Yet it also challenged me.  Having witnessed
firsthand the bitter fruits of racism, intolerance, and separateness
under apartheid, I vowed that, just as I had done in South Africa, I
would never allow America's racial politics to shape my destiny by
determining my values, where I should live, what I should believe, what
work I should do, whom I should befriend and whom I should marry.

I knew it wouldn't be easy.  Race consciousness was deeply ingrained in
the psyches of most Americans.  The strength of the tide I had to swIm
against to fully realize my individuality, to acknowledge, respect, and
share in the cultures of others, was daunting.

Falling in love and marrying Gail proved a formidable test of my
convictions that true friendship knows no color and that humanity is
one.  Another challenge, as the father of two biracial children, has
been to raise them to embrace, appreciate, and affirm the best in the
cultures of their parents, and by extension the best in all other
cultures, against a backdrop of increasing and sometimes vicious racial
polarization in America.

The most important thing I wanted our firstborn, Bianca, to know was
that she was first and foremost a human being.  Her worth and identity
should derive from that fact and no other.  Whatever she if, does in
life should be toward helping her become a better human being-feeling,
caring, tolerant, giving, loving.  That way, no label can diminish her
humanity nor contaminate her soul.

"Your father is black," I often tell her.  "And your mother is white.

You unite the best in both of us.  You're a testament to our belief in
the oneness of humankind.  Never allow society to force you to choose
between one or the other.  You're both, you're beautiful and be
proud."

The obsession with racial labels and categories is remIniscent of the
Nazi era.  It can be easily perverted even in modern tImes, as in South
Africa where, in an interesting twist, historians and researchers are
discovering that many Afrikaners, including architects of apartheid,
are not pure white but have black relatIves in their pedigrees, the
result of their ancestors' intermarriage or illicit relationships with
blacks.

In America, the irony about forcing biracial children to choose between
black and white is that few black Americans can honestly claim to be
purely black.  Many have European, native Anterican, Asian, and Spanish
blood somewhere in their ancestry.  Their culture and values are almost
entirely American.  And few speak an African language, a skill without
which it is difficult to fully understand the fundamental tenets of
African culture.  One of these tenets, African humanism, affirms the
universality of the human experience and maintains that a rejection of
the humanity of others is a rejection of oneself.  This has been the
principle behind my condemnation of both white and black bigotry.

I never would have survived the horrors of apartheid with my soul
intact had I been forced to choose between the culture of my father,
who is Venda, and my mother, who is Tsonga.  My father - sought to mold
me after his image, as a man devoid of feelings.  My mother taught me
that to feel is human.  Interestingly, apartheid, in pursuit of its
divide and conquer strategy, wanted me to believe that the Vendas and
Tsongas were sworn enemies, that I had nothing to gain and everything
to lose by claiming to belong to both, just as the purveyors of racism
in America want biracial children to believe that the black and white
cultures are antagonistic.

True culture, I believe, encompasses what has preserved and nourished
the best in a people: spiritually, intellectually, artistically.

And taken collectively, the cultures of the world are what has
preserved and nourished the human race since time began.  Thus as human
beings we all have a claim and a stake in each other's culture.

Aware that the identity and well-being of our children, their capacity
to weather the misunderstanding and accusations of society about who
they are, will ultimately depend on the sort of home they were raised
in, Gail and I have sought to provide a loving household in which they
can grow up secure and confident, at ease among both blacks and
whites.

Gail and I would have had a hard time creating this nurturing
environment had it not been for our decision to involve both our
families, especially both sets of grandparents.  Because Gail and I
live in America, it has been easy for Bianca to be with her maternal
grandparents.  Gail's mother visits us regularly at Thanksgiving and
Easter, and we see her father at least once a year.  From both she
regularly receives letters, phone calls, gift subscriptions to
children's magazines, stuffed animals, books, and even biracial
dolls.

Though Ilnah, Diana, George, and I have done a great deal to expose
Bianca to the richness, beauty, and complexities of the Tsonga and
Venda cultures of our parents, she had the greatest exposure when Gail
and I decided to bring both my mother and father to the United
States.

What I wanted Bianca and Gail to know were not only the traditions and
customs of my parents, but also their characters and the complexities
of their emotions, especially my father's.  I had not seen my father
since I left South Africa twelve years before, and our relationship had
been a difficult and painful one.  Memories of the verbal and physical
battles between us during my teenage years, of his hatred of white
people, were still vivid in my mind.  I wondered how he would react to
my new life, wife, and child.

On August 12, 1990, Gail, Bianca, Linah, Diana, and I welcomed my
parents to North Carolina.  After a grueling seventeen-hour flight from
Johannesburg, my seventy-two-year-old father, Jackson, a short, gaunt
man with wisps of gray hair, stepped off a USAlr flight from New York
holding hands with my fifty-two-year-old mother, IMagdelene.  Seeing
them together brought tears to my eyes.  It Iseemed an appropriate
symbol of how much their relationship had grown, of how they had stood
by each other through the trials and tribulations of thirty-seven years
as a black couple under apartheid.

My father first hugged and kissed Linah and Diana, his two youngest
daughters whom he had not seen in more than three years.

Much to my surprise, he then hugged and kissed Gail and
nineteenmonth-old Bianca.  As I embraced my father he felt warm,
gentle, accessible, and human.  His eyes glistened with tears of joy as
he muttered, "My son, my son, God is alive, God is alive indeed!"

His words took me aback.  The father I knew back in South Africa had
seldom referred to me as his son, and he used to scoff at Christianity
as a ploy through which white people had stolen land from black people
and enslaved them.  The father I now beheld was a far cry from the
tormented soul whose twisted life I chronicled in the Boy and its
sequel.  The changes that had occurred in his character were
remarkable.  His affectionate holding of my mother's hand, his public
display of emotion, was something new.  Even the smile that lit up his
brown eyes and softened his hardened face was new.  I was amazed and
delighted to confirm the news I had been hearing from home about the
miraculous transformation of my father from an alcoholic, chronic
gambler, and wife batterer into a loving father and husband, a
respected member of the black community in Alexandra, devout Christian,
and church deacon.

The father I remembered was a distant, stoic, inscrutable, and menacing
stranger.  His emasculation under apartheid had poisoned his hIe and
turned him into a tyrant.  His seven children tried desperately to love
him but found his heart cold and unreachable.  Whenever he came home
drunk and started physically abusing my mother, I would intervene.  He
would turn his wrath on me, beat me, and threaten to kill me.  I hated
him for being so unfeeling, and he detested me for challenging his
authority in the house.

But the day I left for America, something happened to make me believe
that despite all the shocks my father had subjected me to, he loved
me.

He cried.  For the first time in my life I saw tears in his eyes.  He
wished me well and asked that I write often and remember the family.

Little did I know how hard my father would work, during my twelve years
in America, to mend his life and regain his dignity and humanity.  As
we caught up with our lives during long conversations on hot afternoons
in Kernersville, the story of his transformation unfolded.

After I escaped from apartheid through a tennis scholarship, my father
began realizing he had been wrong in disparaging my love for books and
tennis, and in belittling me as "a woman with a penis."

"I found myself taking pride in what you had done," he said one evening
as we took a walk around the quiet neighborhood.  "I even claimed
credit for it, though I knew it was mostly your mother's sacriflces
which made everything possible."

My mother had never been one to bask in the limelight.  She let my
father boast that "a son who had inherited his brain is now a famous
and successful man in America."  Never one to miss an opportunity, my
mother seized the moment to convince my father that his
behaviorrinking, gambling, and abusing the family-was incompatible
with his claims to being my father.

"You should stop drinking and come to church with me," she said.  "Then
people will believe that you're indeed Mark's father."

My father had angrily rejected such invitations in the past, but this
tIme he relented.  He began attending the Twelve Apostles Church of God
in Alexandra, where my mother had been a member for many years.  At
first his attendance was sporadic, but in the last three years his
faith has strengthened.  He is now a deacon and helps the minister
counsel church members with their problems.  His enthusiasm and
proselytizing have brought dozens of new members into the church.  And
his strong will to live-a will that enabled him to bear so much
misfortune and suffering under apartheid without breaking-helped him
effectively fight alcoholism.

Bianca took an immediate liking to my father.  She constantly followed
him around our four-bedroom farmhouse, its wraparound porch, and the
yard, calling him "Dada" and conversing with him in baby talk while he
responded in pidgin English and various -African languages.  Whenever
he called her name she would run to him, and he would teach her African
games and songs in his native Venda.

Each evening as we sat down to dinner, my father and Bianca would sing
a little song in Venda, clapping their hands and patting their
foreheads to the rhythm of tutu na-nana, tutu na-nana.

Because my father hates being cloistered indoors, he would pace the
yard or shovel mulch in the garden, even in ninety-degree heat.

Bianca was right there at his heels, picking up clods of dirt to give
him as gifts.

My mother adored Bianca, the first grandchild born to one of her
sons.

Under Tsonga tribal tradition, only grandchildren born to sons are
considered true grandchildren.  The children born to daughters are
considered the grandchildren of their husband's parents.  For this
reason Bianca holds a special place in my mother's heart, though my
three sisters still living in South Africa-Ilorah, Maria, and
Merriam-all have children who are deeply loved by my parents.

My mother would take Bianca's hands and sing and dance with her in the
kitchen to African songs about the joys of childhood.  Bianca, sucking
her thumb and playing with the smooth hem of her pink blanket, would
snuggle up against my mother on the couch as she sat knitting sweaters
and caps for her, studying the alphabet, or watching television with my
father.  And the two often took Bianca along on their marathon daily
walks.

As the weeks passed I began to see that Bianca was comfortable in all
four worlds that make up her identity: white, black, American, and
South African.  She was growing up without stereotypes against race or
culture, completely open and trusting of new people and kind strangers,
unafraid and self-confident, candid in her expression of feelings.

For months her favorite phrase was "I love you," and she says it not
only to Mommy, Daddy, Grampa, Grandma, Uncle George, and her aunties
Linah and Diana but also to her little girlfriends at play school, her
teachers, and other relatives who call and ask to speak to her.  She's
been maturing into a beautiful, trusting, tolerant, nonjudgmental,
happy child popular among the neighborhood children, both black and
white.  I have no fear that she will be "caught between two worlds," as
so many opponents of interracial marriage argue.  Instead I'm confident
she will be a much better person from growing up amid so much
diversity.

GAIL'S VIEW The only image of Mark's father I had came from the Boy,
photographs of him we occasionally received from Alexandra, and hearing
his voice once or twice on the phone as he spoke in Venda to Linah or
Diana.  So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I rode to the
Greensboro airport to meet him.  I imagined an angry man who would hate
me for being white, who would frequently argue and come to blows with
Mark, and who would try to run our household according to his own
rules.

I was surprised when I met him.  He was of a much smaller stature than
I had imagined, with a gentle disposition and kind eyes.

When I saw how readily Bianca sat on his lap in the van, and how he
listened attentively to her toddler's babble and showed her his broken
watch, I knew my initial fears were unfounded.

He impressed me as being a very proud, dignified man, who seldom let on
that he was surprised or excited by new experiences.

Having just completed his first flight in an airplane, he yawned and
said flying was nothing remarkable.  When we pulled up in our driveway,
he silently got out of the car and roamed around our house, both
outside and inside, without revealing that he was the least bit
impressed by its comfort or size, though it was about ten tImes the
size of the home in which his children grew up, a
fifteen-by-fifteenfoot shack.

He went for long walks with Mark's mother around the neighborhood each
morning and evening, and wondered why Americans remain cooped up inside
their homes so much.  He also wondered why we drive to the grocery
store instead of walking, when it is only three miles away.

I was amazed and puzzled by many of his habits: the way he would lie in
the blazing sun for hours, deep in thought, with a handkerchief over
his face; the way he would carefully peruse magazines and newspapers
even though he couldn't read; his saying grace at each meal; and his
expectation that all the women in the house serve him.  Despite his
idiosyncrasies, he was extremely affable and respectful.  I grew to
call him "Papa."

The Mathabane children had always been expected to address their father
in Venda, to show respect for his native language and his authority,
but Linah, Diana, George, and Mark were much more fluent in Tsonga,
their mother's language.  When Mark tried, after twelve years without
hearing the language, to speak to Papa in Venda, his speech was so
halting that Linah and Diana burst out laughing.  Mark's father merely
smiled, and from then on it was understood that everyone could speak
Tsonga without offending him.

I heard Tsonga, Venda, Sotho, and Zulu so much that I began to
understand a bit of the languages, which always made Diana exclaim,
"How did you know what we were talking about?"  Sometimes, just for fun
or to show off his knowledge, Papa would speak in Afrikaans.  This,
too, I could often understand, for Afrikaans has many German words.

Papa and I would point to various things on the dinner table-bread,
butter, glassomparing the names for them in German and Afrikaans.  I
hope to learn as many African languages as I can-they're so poetic, so
melodious-as a way to fully sharing in the rich cultures of blacks in
South Africa and effectively communicating with my other family.

As the months went by, Mhani's English improved, and we were able to
discuss increasingly complex topics.  A diligent student, she daily
studied the alphabet and the beginning readers I borrowed from the
literacy center at the public library.  When I listened to NPR on the
car radio, she would pay close attention, smiling proudly whenever she
was able to catch a word or phrase she understood.

She sat for hours on the floor of Diana's room, wearing headphones,
listening to English-language tapes and repeating what she heard.

"Give me your address," the tape said.

"Give me your dress," Mhani echoed proudly.

Communication between us was not easy at first, and there were a few
disastrous misunderstandings, like the time I said, "Those towels are
dirty," and she thought I said that she was dirty.  She sulked alone in
the laundry room all day before I found out why she was [I upset.

"How could you think I'd have said such a thing!"  I cried.

"Oh, Gail, I didn't want to believe it.  But my heart," she said,
pressing her hand to her chest as if in pain.  "My heart-so sorry."

We embraced and laughed over the misunderstanding.  After that, each
time we inadvertently hurt each other by not making our meaning clear,
we always made up by embracing.

Unlike many foreigners who try to speak English, Mhani was not afraid
to make mistakes as long as she could get her meaning across.

Soon I was able to interpret her sentences and she, listening carefully
 as I spoke slowly and clearly, was able to interpret mine.  Mark was
amazed by how much we could communicate.  I'd describe to him some
in-depth conversation between Mhani and me and he would refuse to
believe it.

"How could she have told you all that?"  he said.

At that time I was pregnant with our second child, so Mhani and I often
spoke of the differences between bearing and raising children in
America and in South Africa.  She described the births of each of her
seven children, telling me how difficult each had been, how Granny and
some women from the neighborhood had acted as midwives, how much each
child had weighed, and how each had got its name.  One time, while we
were doing laundry, she said confidently, I.

pointing to my rounded belly, "This one is a boy."

"How can you tell?"  I asked.

"From the way you look and feel," she said cryptically.

"I don't understand."

She laughed.  "There are things you cannot yet understand," she said.

"Look at it this way.  My firstborn was a boy.  Then came a girl.

Then a boy, then a girl.  You see?  You have a girl, so the next one
will be a boy.  After that you'll have another girl, then another boy,
and so on."

I laughed.  How could I tell her I was not planning to have as many
children as she had?  I got the feeling, from talking to Mhant, that it
was customary in an African woman's life to raise many loved, strong,
and healthy children.  This was an admirable goal.  But the world can
no longer support too many of us, as shown by the cruel life of
deprivation and early death many children in underdeveloped countries
face.  Also I don't know many American women of my generation who could
bear the strain of raising more than three.  Many don't even find the
time to have one child before their biological clock runs out.  Most of
my friends from Brown were amazed that I was already married and had a
child, not to mention a second one on the way.

Every time Mhani told me I would have a boy, I cringed inside.

Would she be doopointed U I had a girl?  Would Mark?  He had assured
me that he wouldn't.  Yet I felt the full weight of African tradition
on my shoulders, a tradition that values sons more highly than
daughters.  Personally, I wanted a little son so much that I was afraid
to hope for one, and I kept my preference a secret, even from my
journal.  I was afraid that if I wrote about my desire for a baby boy
and then had a girl, my daughter might be deeply hurt if she read my
journal years later.  Whenever someone referred to my protruding
stomach as "he," I would quickly correct them by saying, "she."  I
prepared myself psychologically for a girl.

Because of my condition, Mhani pampered me.  She forbade me to pick up
Bianca, who now weighed more than twenty-five pounds, and would insist
I take long naps in the afternoon and not subject myself to undue
stress.  She was the perfect midwife.  She possessed more earthy
knowledge about the emotions and psychology of childbirth than anyone I
have met.  She often accompanied me to my monthly checkups and thought
much of what was done by the doctor unnecessary.

"A strong woman should be able to bear healthy children," she would
say.  "So take care of yourself and the baby will be fine."

I was surprised by how indulgent Mark's mother was toward Bianca.

Because Mark and his siblings are so self-disciplined and hardworking,
I assumed she had raised her children with strict guidelines and
punished them when they were naughty.  But she let Bianca run about
freely, cleaning up her messes as she made them.

She never said, "Naughty girl" or "Bad girl."  In fact, Mhani would get
upset if Mark or I scolded Bianca.  She told me she felt "a pain in her
heart" whenever she heard Bianca cry.  Yet she always seemed to find a
way to get Bianca to behave.

"Treat children like children and not adults," she would say.

When I saw Mhani constantly praise Bianca and call her, "Beautiful
girl, clever girl, well done," I realized how she had managed to raise
self-confident, secure children amid the terrors and deprivations of
South African ghetto life: She had given them a strong sense of
self-worth in their early years.

Whenever Bianca cried, Mhani would kneel down beside her, embrace her
and ask, "Who hit you?"

At first I was offended by this, for I thought Mhani really believed we
hit Bianca.  Then Linah explained to me that asking, "Who hit you?"

was her mother's way of comforting a child.  She had frequently asked
the same thing of Angeline, Given, Lionel, and Sibusis her
grandchildren back home in South Africa.  It allowed the child, who
most likely was simply frustrated at not getting whatever she wanted,
to pin the blame for her distress on someone else and then quickiy
forget it.

When Mhani played games with Bianca, like the African version of hide
and seek, or tossing stuffed animals for her to catch, she would roar
with laughter, thoroughly enjoying herself.  Bianca would clap her
hands, laugh, and jump up and down, unable to contain her excitement.

Though I felt completely at ease with Mhani and Bianca, I became a bit
self-conscious whenever the three of us went out in public.  It seems
an interracial couple has to adjust to stares three tImes: first, when
seen with one's spouse, then with one's child, and third with one's
in-laws.  People would stare at us-a white woman, a black woman, and a
brown child-trying to figure out the connection between us.

Every week I took Mhani and Bianca to the Forsyth County Health
Department.  We were desperately trying to get Mhani's diabetes under
control.  The patients and clinic employees were predominantly black,
and many took me for Mhani's welfare case worker or some volunteer
do-gooder.

"Are you from Crisis Control or social services?"  they would ask.

The black women behind the desks and in the lab had little patience
with me.

"Why don't you let her talk for herself?"  one nurse snapped at me when
I kept answering questions about Mhani's medical history.

"Can't she talk?"

"Yes, but I can tell by the expression on her face when she doesn't
understand a question.  She's still learning English.  She speaks
Tsonga."

"She speaks what?"

"She's from South Africa."

"And who are you?  Her interpreter or something?"

"Her daughter-in-law," I said.

As we continued to go to the clinic each week, however, the employees
got to know us and began to treat us kindly.  When we told Mhani's
doctor that she would soon return to South Africa, he was distraught.

"Oh, but you can't leave!"  he said.  you're my best patient!"

When Mhani came to the United States, her blood sugar count was between
400 and 50between 60 and 120 is normal.  By following a strict program
of diet, exercise, and regular doses of insulin, her blood sugar count
steadily dropped.

I did not realize how attached I had become to Mhani until the night
she collapsed on the floor, faint, dizzy, sweating, and shaking.

She had been on insulin only three days, and we feared she was having a
reaction.  I phoned the clinic and the doctor on call told us to make
her drink some sweet juice and rush her to the hospital.

"Otherwise she might die," the doctor said.

"Die!"  I exclaimed.  My heart started pounding and I trembled all
over.  No one had told me an insulin reaction could be
lifethreatening.

Shivering and too weak to sit up, Mhani crouched under a comforter
complaining of the cold.  She refused to drink any juice, insisting she
would vomit if she did.  Mark, Diana, and Papa carried her limp body
downstairs, into the garage, and placed her in the backseat of Mark's
car.  Mark sped down the highway toward the hospital while I sat in the
backseat with Mhani, trying to keep her from lapsing into a coma.  Her
eyes were half-closed and her lips were dry.  I watched her chest rise
and fall, afraid it might suddenly stop.

"Please don't let her die," I chanted to myself.  "Please, God."  I
tried to calm myself, knowing that panicking would be of no help.

We became lost in a maze of side streets and nearly ran out of gas by
the time we reached the emergency room.  A nurse and an orderly hauled
Mhani from the car into a wheelchair and whisked her through a pair of
heavy swinging doors labeled "Patients only."

Mark was permitted only because they needed a translator.

I was left to sit alone in the waiting room, stunned and quaking.

"If anything happens to her it will be all my fault," I thought.  "I'm
the one who's been taking her to the doctor.  I should have known about
insulin reactions."  The baby kicked restlessly within me, and I
realized I was right in the middle of two generations-the one that is
about to be born and the one that gave us birth.  "If we should lose
her..."  I thought with tears in my eyes.

After what seemed like hours an emotionally exhausted Mark came out and
told me her condition was stabilized, but that she would have to remain
in the hospital a bit longer.  I hugged Mark as tightly as I could with
a baby between us.  Knowing how deeply the prospect of losing Mhani had
shaken me, I realized she had truly become a second mother to me.  A
few weeks later her diabetes was Fmally stabilized through a
combination of diet, exercise, and insulin.

Mhani sorely wanted to stay for the birth of our second child, but
Mark's father was eager to get back to Alexandra, back to his friends
and family, back to the familiar sights and sounds of his homeland,
back to his native language, back to being the head of his own
household.

Mhani and Papa departed for South Africa in late December, laden with
Christmas gifts from us to the rest of the Mathabane clan.

Mark accompanied them to New York to help them with their numerous bags
and boxes and to make sure they safely boarded the proper Alr Zambia
flight at JFK Airport.

Mark's father was almost left behind.  While Mark was in line waiting
to check their luggage and confirm their seats, Papa, who was squeezed
into a corner with Mhani at the back of the teeming crowd, insisted on
going to an upstairs bathroom unaccompanied.

Upon leaving the bathroom, he became confused as to which door he had
come through as there were several doors that looked the same.

He took the wrong one and wandered all over the airport, lost, for
nearly an hour.

I cannot Imagine how confusing and strange such a modern international
airport must have seemed to someone who cannot read, write, or speak
anything fluently except a minor African language.

All of us, especially Bianca, missed them as soon as they had left.

"Where's Grandma go?"  she would ask, looking pleadingly into my
eyes.

"Where's Grampa go?"

"They flew away in a big airplane to a land far, far away, but don't
cry.  We'll go visit them someday soon."

There is a tacit understanding among interracial couples that make
friendships between them both natural and spontaneous.  They have
weathered similar trials, confronted the same prejudices, sought to
ignore similar stares and derisive comments.  Together they can laugh
over the experiences they once found alienating and painful.

Since our marriage we have befriended several mixed couples, �many of
whom are proud of the racial harmony they represent.  They have
confirmed our belief that there is something profoundly moving �and
beautiful in love shared by people from two worlds often at oddsthe
black, one white.

The black women we know who married white men are usually �very upbeat
and optimistic about their relationships and what the future holds for
their.  children.  They encountered little resistance from their
parents and siblings when they announced their marriage plans, and most
were eventually accepted by their husbands' families, even the most
conservative and wealthy of white families.

Evelyn and Rainer Zawadzki say they have always gone wherever they
pleased and never encountered any prejudice or hostility against them
in their twenty-two-year marriage, despite the fact that Evelyn's skin
is the color of dark mahogany and Rainer is a fullblooded German.  They
met in Mexico, where Evelyn was teaching English and Rainer was a
graduate student in chemical engineering Evelyn was born and raised on
the South Side of Chicago in an all-black neighborhood.  One year out
of high school, at nineteen, she married her childhood sweetheart.  The
marriage lasted less than two years, but it produced a little girl.

Evelyn supported herself and her daughter, working full-tIme, and
taking college courses at night.  Eventually they moved to Mexico, for
Evelyn had always dreamed of living in a foreign country.

"I met Rainer at a time in my life when I wasn't interested at all in
marrying again," said Evelyn, a tall, beautiful woman and former
model.

"I didn't trust a man with something as serious as marriage.  I didn't
think there was anything a man could do for me that I couldn't do for
myself.  Besides, I hadn't met anyone I really wanted to devote the
rest of my life to.  But Rainer was totally different from anyone I had
ever met before.  He made me believe he was interested in me as a human
being.  He appreciated my thoughts and ideas.  We had very nice
intellectual conversations."

"I was fascinated by Evelyn," Rainer said.  "She has a very sharp
mind.

I love it.  Besides, I've always believed the way to a woman's heart is
through her intellect," he added, smiling mischievously.

"We were at a party, and I was wearing a hot orange minidress," she
said, laughing.

Born in East Germany, Rainer moved with his parents to a German colony
in Mexico in 1948 when he was three years old.  He attended an elite
German private school, reputed to be the most exclusive in Mexico.  The
Germans formed a tight-knit community and never socialized with
outsiders.

"Germans who married Mexicans were ostracized," Rainer said.

"From society and friends I heard, Don't you ever try to come here
with one of those darkies,' meaning a Mexican.  We had to keep
ourselves white-white."

Rainer was relieved when he graduated from the private school and could
enroll in the University of Mexico.  "I loved it," he said.

"For the first time I was free of that German domination.  Yet I was
cast into Mexican society, which never fully accepted me.  I found my
German friends too snobbish and discriminatory, so I chose to make
friends with Americans.  I spoke German and Spanish fluently, but I was
still learning English when I met Evelyn.

"I was fascinated by black people," Rainer continued.  "If you're
different from me, I want to find out what makes you tick.  I want to
know how you feel, and maybe I can share some of my feelings with
you.

I do the same thing when I see a Japanese or Indian.  I wonder, What
do they think?  How do they perceive things?"  rinding out what the
difference is between us shows me something about myself I hadn't known
before.  The only way you can find out about yourself is by contrasting
your experiences with some one else's.  It's incredibly fascinating."

Evelyn's daughter liked Rainer immediately.  When Evelyn and Rainer
decided to marry and move back to the United States, she knew her
parents would accept him, though it might take some tIme for them to
get used to the idea.

"I was very close to my father, and I knew that if he didn't approve of
my marrying Rainer initially, he would at least be very kind and polite
to him," Evelyn said.  "That's exactly what happened.

But about one year after our wedding, when we were visiting my parents,
my father came into the room and invited Rainer to go out and have a
beer with him.  I started to get my shoes, but my father gave me a look
that said, "I didn't mean you could come too."  I knew then and there
he had accepted Rainer.  I knew it was okay.  From then on they were
almost inseparable."

Rainer had more difficulty convincing his family to accept Evelyn.

"Evelyn's parents may have had as many doubts as mine, but unlike mine,
they did not voice them.  My family pitched a bitch.  But my decision
to ask Evelyn to marry me took race into account.  I had no
illusions.

I knew what I was getting into.  I knew she was black, I knew I was
white, I knew we'd live in the United States, I knew I was going
against everything I had been taught."

"His sister had just become Catholic," Evelyn said, "and she went to
the priest to confess OUR sins.  The priest told her we had committed a
moral sin, a social sin, and a racial sin.  If the priest had told me
that, I would have told him what he could do with his sins."" Despite
opposition in Rainer's family, Rainer and Evelyn have had few, if any,
problems as an interracial couple.  They don't even mind the stares.

"When we go out, we know people are going to look at us because we're a
good-looking pair," Evelyn said.  "We dress and look the best we
possibly can.  It's only sometimes that I wonder, Why is that person
staring?  Is something wrong?  Is my blouse unbuttoned?"

But for the most part I want them to look.  We've had a lot of
peopleboth white and blackome up to us and say we make a striking
couple.  We were in Penn Station one day and a black man asked Rainer,
Excuse me, but is that your woman?  She's so pretty and chocolate.

You're all right, man, you're all right."" Vickie Nizin, another friend
of ours, is married to a white surgeon named Joel whom she met when
they were both students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. They
are members of the BahT'i Faith.  A petite black woman and the mother
of two young girls, Vickie says she and Joel have encountered no
problems as a mixed couple and actually enjoy the stares.

"I love having attention, because I feel it's an opportunity for me to
provide a fresh, more wholesome, healthy perspective.  We're setting a
good example.  It's a chance to say, Yes, we're a mixed couple and
we're healthy and happy, we're not suffering and crazy and weird.

We're not hiding.  We're not freaks."

Vickie was born in Richmond, Virginia.  The state's governor, Douglas
Wilder, is her father's relative and, as a child, played with her
father, Ellsworth Johnson.  Though historically the maternal line of
Vickie's family had been very light-skinned and well-off by black
standards, the wealth was dissipated in one generation and her mother
and nine siblings grew up in poverty in Richmond, under the
unpredictable tyranny of an alcoholic and abusive stepfather.  Vickie's
mother was sent to live with relatives, who were well educated for
blacks at that time.

Vickie's father, a brilliant man with a master's degree in zoology who
yearned to be a physician, tried for fourteen years to get into a
Virginia medical school, but it was closed to blacks.  Frustrated, he
gave up and studied dentistry instead.  Her mother was trained as a
secretary, but no one would hire her.  Desperate for work, she
eventually pleaded with a Jewish doctor, who trained her to prepare
slides in a pathology lab.  From there she went on to the National
Institutes of Health and became a specialist.

Before moving to Washington, the Johnsons had three children: Vickie
and her two brothers.  A refined female relative made sure Vickie took
ballet, wore beautiful clothes, sang in public, acquired poise and
sophistication, and understood how to behave "properly."

Vickie was aware her family tree included Irish ancestors and native
Americans as well as Africans, but she quickly learned that nothing
mattered to strangers but the fact that she had brown skin and kinky
hair.  To the world she was simply black.  She shopped at segregated
stores, lived in an all-black, inner-city neighborhood, and attended
segregated schools.  As a student at Roosevelt High in Washington, D.C
in the late 1960s, she saw many of her classmates come to school high
on marijuana or heroin.  Only a handful went on to college, but Vickie,
who expanded her world by reading voraciously, went on to Oberlin
College in Ohio, then transferred to Howard.

"I am by nature friendly and outgoing, but at that school I belonged to
no group," Vickie said.  "I belonged to myself.  I found that was the
only way to survive."

Growing up in a segregated world and hearing her parents ths-.

cuss civil rights and social justice, Vickie was aware of racial
tensions from an early age.  "My parents did not want us to hate
anybody, but we could see and feel how wounded they had been by
racism."

There is one story Vickie heard quite olten.  When he was fourteen her
father happened to be in an all-white neighborhood right after a
robbery.  A police officer saw him and, because "all blacks look
alIke," gunned him down.  Her father lay in a coma for a week, then his
heart stopped.  On the way to the morgue he groaned, startling everyone
around him.  He had a long difficult recovery, but he made it.

"You can imagine my father has no reason to love anybody who's white,"
Vickie said.  "And yet my father is a man of great vision."  He
accepted Joel, and if he has any reservations, they spring not from the
fact that Joel is white, but from the fact that Joel attended medical
school and is now a practicing physician: He is doing all the things
Vickie's father dearly wanted to do but wasn't allowed to do.

Joel's parents, Conservative Jews from the Bronx, urged Joel to break
up with Vickie and, for a month, succeeded in making their son have
second thoughts.  They wanted their son to prosper more than they had,
to marry a woman who would advance his career and raise their
grandchildren in the Jewish faith.  They arranged dates for Joel with
Jewish women.  They did not even want to hear Vickie's name.

"The first time they met Vickie they liked her, because she's a very
likable person," Joel said.  "But as soon as they realized we were
talking about marriage, their attitude switched one hundred and eighty
degrees."

"They thought it was okay as long as he didn't marry me," Vickie
said.

"He could have lived with me, and disgraced me, and it wouldn't have
mattered.  It would have been okay as long as he didn't marry me."

During a long separation, when Joel was in New York doing his
internship and Vickie was still in Washington, D.C finishing her college
 degree, Joel realized his feelings for Vickie were more important
to hIm than his parents' disapproval.  But Vickie insisted they not
marry until his parents gave their consent, which was required under
BahT'1 Law.

"I wanted very much for us to be married," Vickie said.  "I couldn't
Imagine going through life without Joel.  Yet I didn't resent his
parents.  I wanted them to accept me, and there was no way I'd let
hostility come between us.  I went out of my way to be pleasant and
loving toward them.  His parents are truly good, kind, generous people
, and I could tell it bothered them that they couldn't find it in
themselves to accept me."

Realizing how committed Joel and Vickie were to each other, his parents
finally gave their consent.  "We were very strong," Vickie said.

"People could sense it.  Our relationship grew very solid from all the
tests we were put through.  We could sustain."

When Joel's father fell ill from cancer, he gave up the last of his
reservations and treated Vickie as a daughter.  They're now grateful
they waited for his parents to come around, for it gave them time to
get to know each other better, in hard times as well as good.

"I think you have to be very sure that what you are doing is right,"
Vickie said.  "You really have to believe that we are all one people,
and that interracial marriage is a very positive thing.  It's more than
just two people who find one another and fall in love.  By your
marriage you are saying, We are all one humanity, and we can grow
closer together, even to the point of marrying.  And our children will
be the fruit of that common humanity that brought us together."" L.

"People don't bother us because we don't present ourselves as meek
little wlinpettes," Joel said.  "We don't ask for anybody's
permission.

We are accepted because we accept ourselves.  We're here to accept you,
we're not asking you to accept us."

Though white parents usually resist when their son announces his
intention to marry a black woman, one couple we know has had no problem
at all.  When Eric Asimov, nephew of science fiction writer Isaac
Asimov, told his father he had a girlfriend named Jackie Lee whom he'd
met at Wesleyan University, his father asked, "What is she, Chinese?"

"Nope, she's black," Eric replied.

After a momentary silence his father said, "Oh, really?  Well, that's
nice."  Eric describes his parents as "two of the best-intentioned
liberals in the world."

Jackie's mother accepted the news readily, and her grandfather, though
not quite as accepting, only commented, "Oh, he's white?"

Jackie grew up in an integrated neighborhood in Philadelphia, attended
an integrated Catholic school, and was used to being around whites.

When Jackie and Eric moved to Austin, Texas, in 1983, Jackie expected
trouble, but they had none.  In fact people were so friendly to them
they couldn't believe it.  They now live in Manhattan with their son,
Jack.

A photograph of the couple appeared on the wedding announcements page
of The New York Times while they were honeymooning in Bermuda.

Tourists who had seen the photo shouted their congratulations and
waved.

While black women with white men seem to have a fairly easy time as
interracial couples, the white women we know who have married black men
have often had to struggle against enormous difficulties.  Despite the
fact that about 75 percent of interracial marriages in the United
States involve black men and white women, it is the black man-white
woman combination that sparks the most widespread condemnation among
both blacks and whites.

Few things can be more difficult for the average white Ainerican than
to see his daughter marry a black man.  It places even the most loving
and liberal white father in an emotional quandary, as it did Spencer
Tracy in his role of the white father in Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner?

The desperate despair of a daughter over losing her father's love and
her father's agonizing disappointment are the painful themes that often
surface whenever a white woman marries outside her race.

When our friends Madelyn and Richard Ashley decided to marry, Madelyn
had to sacrifice her good relationship with her father.  For years
after the wedding, Madelyn's father refused to meet Richard.

One Christmas Eve at her sister's house, when Madelyn and Richard
dropped by without knowing her parents were there, Madelyn's father ran
down to the basement and refused to come upstairs until Richard was out
of the house.  Madelyn went downstairs to persuade hIm to come up, but
it was no use.

uEveryone tells me Richard's a fine young man," Madelyn's father
said.

4But I just can't bring myself to meet him.  I can't.  He's stepped
over the line by marrying you."

Her father, an engineer and a Methodist, was born and raised in
Columbia, South Carolina, and her mother, a Baptist, was born�just
outside Winston-Salem.  Though they raised Madelyn to believe in racial
equality, they oppose interracial marriage.

"When I graduated from Chapel Hill, my parents did not come to my
graduation because they knew Richard would be there.  They didn't even
call.  My parents raised me to be a broad-minded individual, but that
only went so far.  I knew they would never accept my marrying a
black."

When they first began dating, Madelyn let her parents believe Richard
was white.  Because he sounds white on the phone, he was able to
develop a good relationship with Madelyn's parents by having phone
conversations with them.  Madelyn's mother even told her, 4Richard must
be good-looking, judging from his voice."  Her parents invited Madelyn
and Richard to visit them.  Richard refused to go unless Madelyn told
her parents he was black; he did not want to shock them.

When Madelyn told her parents they reacted with, 4How could you do
this?"  and retracted their invitation.  In the wedding photos,
Madelyn's parents are conspicuously absent.  Richard was forbidden to
set foot in his father-in-law's home.

It was not until Madelyn's mother had a heart attack that her parents
had a change of heart.  Lying in a hospital bed, confronting the dark
abyss of death, and troubled by an uneasy conscience, Madei, rnrt�ho
tOAd tH her husband and asked, "Why have we done Her father wept.

Fortunately Madelyn's mother recovered, and as soon as she was home
from the hospital, Madelyn's father invited Madelyn and Richard to
visit.  When the young couple arrived, Madelyn's father eagerly shook
Richard's hand, as if hungry for the companionship of the son-in-law he
had so long denied.  He and Richard talked nonstop and spent the entire
weekend fishing together.  Both Richard and Madelyn are amazed by her
father's complete transformation, and happy that their baby boy, Colin,
has a kind and loving grandfather.

Not all white fathers learn to accept their black sons-in-law, but many
of them do eventually come around.  It is often a slow, gradual, and
painful process, and requires parents to come to terms with their own
prejudices and fears.

It took nine years for Connie, a lithe and beautiful white woman with
high cheekbones and luminous eyes, to win back the affection of her
father after she started dating James, now a black service manager in
Greensboro.  Connie, who is the middle child of seven children, drew a
lot of criticism from her five sisters, who always told her she was
ugly and stupid and would never amount to anything.

They made fun of her and called her a nigger lover when she started
dating James, whom she met at a Greensboro high school.

0My parents hated me when they found out," Connie said.  4Daddy used to
say he was going to shoot him.  He said, "I'll shoot the nigger."  I
just sat there and gaped.  I couldn't believe those words had come out
of his mouth.  When I first started dating James I didn't really think
about how my parents would react.  I thought it was no big deal."

Her father, an alcoholic who used to beat his wife and children,
terrified Connie so much that she used to leave the house quietly and
meet James at the end of the road to avoid a scene.

0He used to beat all of us," Connie said.  4He just went down the
line.

He beat us over anything, nothing in particular.  With belts and
sticks.  I always thought the reason he drank was because of us kids.

We were pretty obnoxious.  I mean, we weren't the 4Leave It to Beaver"
family.  He used to beat my brother so bad I had to clean the hair and
blood off the bathroom wall.  We would run from him.  If we saw him
coming we'd run upstairs and hide in our rooms.  If he got irritated
over something he'd just come upstairs and smack one of us upside the
head.  He's been sober for more than ten years now, and Of all the
girls in the family, Connie was the only daughter who fought back
against her father's violence and rebelled against his authority.  Her
friends believe that, because of her defiance, Connie is now much
stronger than her sisters.

James's parents did not approve of his dating a white woman, but he was
twenty at the time and financially independent, working his way through
college, so they had little control over him.  Baised in government
projects in Greensboro in the late 1950s, James says he lived in a real
rough, all-black neighborhood.

"You grew up fast there," said James, the middle of six children.

"I always ran with boys a lot older than I was.  I had to do what they
did.  Toughened me up.  Breaking in, stealing, causing trouble, you
know, going into people's windows and taking stuff, then taking it to
the playground and breaking it, just to be foolish.  I used to wake up
early in the morning and come back when it was dark.  I loved to
fight.

I fought all the time, every day just about.  I'd start fights over
nothing, just to fight.  It's just something you did.  You didn't think
about it."

James attended an all-black elementary school, for JIm Crow laws still
ruled the South.  His father sorted letters by zip code at the post
office all day, then worked at an all-black university at night as an
assistant programs director.  But these two incomes were still not
enough to keep the family out of government housing.

Busing began when James entered fifth grade.  rnThat first year was
wild," James said.  "We more or less just stared at each other, trying
to figure out what was really going on.  It was the first tIme I?d had
contact with white kids.  It took me only about three weeks to make
some white friends, cause I was aggressive and outgoing from hanging
out with those older boys.  But after that first year of integration,
we came back for sixth grade and it was completely segregated again.

All the white kids had left.  They'd gone to private schools or schools
across town.  By seventh grade there wasn't even a white teacher
left."

By the tIme James entered high school, attempts at integrating the
Greensboro public school system were starting to work.  He was bused to
a predominantly white high school, and, though he had had very little
contact with whites, he began dating white girls.

WcnUt nne to listen," James said.

"My parents never talked to me about stuff like that.  I've always
done what I want."

James knew Connie's father was against him, but he continued to date
her.  When Connie's father found out his daughter was still seeing
James, he kicked her out of the house.  One day her mother came home
from work and told Connie, "You've got to leave."

"Why?  What have I done?"  asked Connie, then nineteen.

"Your daddy just wants you to get out.  You've got to be out of here by
five o'clock."

Connie, shaken and crying, hurriedly packed her things and, with her
mother's encouragement, moved in with James, who had a job delivering
pesticides to tobacco farmers.  Her mother, knowing Connie had nowhere
to go and no money, pleaded with James to let Connie move in with
him.

"Can Connie stay here?"  her mother asked James in a hysterical tone,
still huffing from carrying suitcases up two flights of stairs.

"She doesn't have any place to go.  Do you mind if she lives here for a
while?"

Connie began living with James, though neither of them felt ready for
such a commitment.  They felt the decision had been foisted on them by
circumstances.  Connie found a job waiting tables at a steak house and,
to make their money go further, she and James decided to look for a
more affordable apartment.  Connie found a one-bedroom apartment on
Spring Garden and signed the lease in her name.  When James showed up
with his belongings, he was accosted by the landlord.

"We stayed in that apartment only one night," Connie said.  "The
landlord told us to get out.  James came to the steak house and told me
what had happened.  I was hysterical, crying, mad.  We were real
naive.

We didn't know a landlord could react like that."

They finally found an apartment that would accept them, and after
settling in, Connie discovered she was pregnant.  She kept this fact
from her parents until she could no longer hide it.  The pregnancy made
James feel restless, uneasy, and trapped.  When he began attending
college, he stayed away from home most of the time.

James started dating another woman, a blond-haired, browneyed woman he
met in his art class.  He would spend hours talking to his new
girlfriend on the phone in front of Connie and his infant son.

He would take weekend trips with her.  Then he left for Chicago.

Connie remained in Greensboro, the unwed mother of a biracial infant
she named Dylan.

"I couldn't go home after James left me," she said.  "I found a
roach-infested apartment on McGee Street and moved in with my baby.  To
pay rent I had to work two jobs, as an aerobics instructor by day and a
waitress by night.  I never saw Dylan.  He stayed in the nursery from
eight in the morning until ten at night."

Connie, feeling deeply wounded and angry at James, tried to go on with
her life.  -I was so depressed.  I wanted to kill myself.  I knew I
couldn't work two jobs and raise a child.  I never made more than
enough money to survive, and I saw Dylan only on Sundays.  I was still
hurt.  I thought, this isn't right, this isn't fair.  I had his
child!

What's he doing leaving me for her?"  I never hated like I hated him.

If I had had a gun, he'd be dead.  I'd go through spells of crying and
loneliness.  It was hard to raise a child when I was so depressed."

James returned from Chicago after two years of working for an
advertising firm there, and tried to make amends.  He had had a change
of heart, turned to religion, and accepted his responsibility as a
father.  He was eager to establish a good relationship with his son,
but Connie was still too hurt to let him back into her life.

"He'd come over anytime, never call," Connie said.  "I'd try to keep
the door shut on him.  He would come by to take Dylan to church.  He
said he was praying for me.  I thought he was joking.  I didn't know
he'd been saved.  FInally he told me he'd been born again.  That didn't
mean anything to me.  I wasn't going to church then.  I was mad at
God.

I was mad at the world."

Connie confided her problems to her friend Nancy, the manager at the
gym where she taught aerobics.  Nancy, also an ardent Christian,
started ministering to Connie, telling her that religion was the only
answer to her problems.

"Every time she said the name Jesus I'd weep," Connie said, inbecause I
knew in my heart that she was right.  I knew I had to learn to forgive
James and his girlfriend.  It says in the Bible that you have to
forgive one another, faults and all.  It took me a long time to forgive
them.  It drove me crazy just to think of them together."

Gradually Connie and James started living together again.  They did not
sleep together for months.  "We had to learn to be friends all over
again," Connie said.  "Jj took forever to trust him again.  When we
Fmally decided we were ready to get married, Dylan was five.

Everyone who knew our story-all the struggles we'd been through-were
wild with joy.  The wedding was great, a real celebration."

In the wedding photographs, Connie's father beams proudly, apparently
delighted by the way everything turned out.

After Dylan was born my relationship with my father started to
Improve," Connie said.  "I mean, you can't refuse a child, not a baby,
mixed or not mixed."

Nine years into their relationship and four years into the marriage,
James and Connie now have three children and a home of their own.

James works for Connie's father, and the two of them have become good
friends.

The trust between James and Connie grew slowly but steadily.

When Connie was pregnant with her second child, a little boy named
Joshua, she awoke from a nightmare, gripped by panic and drenched in
sweat.  She grabbed James by the arm and whispered, you're going to
leave me again, aren't you?  Just like the first time.  I know
youwill!fl 0No, it's different now," James reassured her.  "We both
know the Lord and I love you.  I'm not going anywhere.  We're
married."

By the time Connie bore her youngest child, Lily, she knew everything
would be fine.  "James is such a good father.  I mean, he's
wonderful.

He's the only one who puts up with me," she says with a laugh.

It is not only white fathers in the South who have trouble accepting
their daughters' decision to marry across racial lines but it happens
in the North too.  And even the birth of a grandchild is sometimes not
enough to move the stony hearts of disappointed fathers.

Our friends Sarah and Amil are a case in po"L Sarah, the daughter of
hardworking second- and third-generation Irish Catholics who had
settled in New England, was disowned by her parents when, at age
seventeen, she fell in love with Amil, a nineteen-year-old black
student at Wesleyan University who had grown up in the South.

Twenty-two years and three children later, she and her parents are
still estranged.

"It did hurt to be rejected by my parents," Sarah said.  "For me it was
like going through a divorce.  I went through the same phases: hurt,
anger, resentment, fighting, grief, sadness.  I wrote letters to them
at certain points in my life; I showed an openness to reconcile.

They never responded.  It's been such a long time, I don't even cry
about it now."

Sarah met Amil in 1968 at a college dance when she was a student at
Hartford College for Women and Amil was at nearby Wesleyan.  Both of
them were very active in protests against the Vietnam War.  0In 1968
young people were very open," Sarah said.  "They spoke their minds.

Amil and I were totally open with each other.

We're each other's first loves."

Even before she met Amil, Sarah, who was living at home and commuting
to college, had clashes with her parents over her political activism.

She was involved in a Puerto Rican rights group, had traveled to Puerto
Rico, and had tutored impoverished black children in north Hartford for
no pay.  When she was only twelve and thirteen Sarah would argue with
her father as they watched civil rights marches on the evening news.

"He would make some negative comment about blacks and I would
disagree," Sarah said.  "It was just something inside me.  As I got
older I acted on it: I became active in the black consciousness
movement."

The year 1968 was, in Sarah's words, "a pretty heavy year."  Like many
of her generation, she went through that phase of rebellion that
created what came to be known as the generation gap.  Her parents
supported America's involvement in Vietnam and she opposed it.  Parents
and daughter were on opposing sides of nearly every politicalissue.

"But our arguments over Vietnam had no deeply personal meaning," Sarah
said.  "My relationship with Amil, on the other hand, became a major
issue."

Sarah began visiting Amil at Wesleyan on weekends.  Afraid of their
reaction but feeling compelled to speak the truth, Sarah told her
parents all about Anti!  only one month after meeting him.

"They freaked out," Sarah said.  "They forbade me to see him.

They ordered me to come straight home after school.  They threatened to
take away my car, but they knew I needed it to get to my classes.  I
was living at home to save money so I could afford to transfer to
Mount Holyoke, but I decided to put that goal on hold and move out."

Her parents told her, you'll end up in the gutter.  You'll be on
welfare.  You'll have lots of children.  No one will accept your
children.  All blacks are in the gutter.  Are you going to pull this
whole family down into the gutter with you, after we've worked so
hard?"

Desperate to put an end to their daughter's relationship with Amil,
Sarah's parents took her to a Catholic priest and explained the whole
situation.  The priest counseled Sarah to Honor thy mother and father,
and told her that this commandment was more rmportant than caring about
people of different races.

"I wanted to stick with Catholicism, but it became impossible," Sarah
said.  "Priests who counseled me after I moved out always said the same
thing: Honor thy mother and father.  They didn't have a world view or a
political consciousness."

Her parents cut off all financial support and all ties of
communication.  Sarah moved in with a family and worked for her keep,
but �caring for five children and a household, working a part-tIme job,
�and keeping up with her studies was too much for her.  FInally she
found a family that took her in and treated her more lIke a fanilly
member than a domestic servant.

Sarah and Amil traveled to Washington, D.C for nearly every major march
or political protest; they helped organize student strikes in 1970,
educational programs on Vietnam, and black history seminars.  At the
time many whites actively supported the black consciousness movement,
so Sarah was seldom the only white at a meeting.

Sarah started getting feedback from black women who knew she was with
Amil.  While some of them were supportive, others accused her of
tearing the black community apart.  They asked, "What do you want with
him?"

"When you care deeply about someone and you believe in a world of
interracial harmony, it's not pleasant to be told you've stolen a man,"
Sarah said.  "Sometimes the pressure would make me pull back from the
relationship, and we'd let things cool off.  We wanted to make sure we
weren't wrong for each other.  But we were never wrong for each
other."

Antil was part of that subculture of black intellectuals who did not
have the traditional goals of making a lot of money and establishing
himself in a career.  He let his hair grow into a huge Afro.  He had no
car, little money, and no concern for material things.  He wanted to
explore ideas; search for his true identity, spend more years in
college if need be.  While these characteristics did not attract black
women who sought men who could provide them with stability and
financial support, they appealed to Sarah and deeply impressed her.

In many ways Amil was more comfortable with radical-both white and
black-than with the black middle class.

Yet Amil felt strong ties to his heritage and to the black community.

He believed in the philosophy of black self-help.  He felt the
African-American community had to unite and work together.  At times he
felt tremendous pressure coming from within himself to break up with
Sarah.  He was torn between his love for her and his commitment to the
movement, to his people.

In 1871, during one of their periodical breakups, Amil moved to
Halifax, Nova Scotia, to attend graduate school in oceanography.  He
dated a black woman for a while, but did not have the same feelings he
did for Sarah.  He and Sarah began writing again and were soon
engaged.

After graduating from the University of Connecticut in December 1972,
Sarah moved to Nova Scotia to be with Amil.  FIve months later they
were married by a Unitarian minister in a gathering of adozen
friends.

Sarah, with her long flowing brown hair parted in the middle, wore
purple and Antil wore white.

One year after the wedding their first child was born, a son.

Sarah wrapped the baby in blankets and put him in an open dresser
drawer, for they could not afford a crib and there was not much room in
their basement apartment.  They were given a used baby carriage that
had no tires; only the metal rims of the wheels were left.

Sarah sent her parents a note announcing the birth of her first
child.

For weeks she was hopeful that her parents might be gladdened by the
news and have a change of heart.  When she received no response she
went through another period of grief over the rift between her and her
parents.  When their second child was born, a daughter, Sarah hoped
that perhaps the thought of a little girl might make them want to
visit.  Still, no response, followed by another period of sadness for
Sarah.

"It doesn't matter to my parents that time has proved them wrong,"
Sarah said.  "They know we don't live in the gutter.  They know I'm a
college graduate and a schoolteacher.  They know my husband is a
successful businessman.  They know we own our own home.  Yet they've
shunned their grandchildren.  They're racists.  They just don't like
children of different races.

"It's not sad to me anymore," she continued.  "Time heals the wounds.

It's as if my parents died a long tIme ago.  I regret having fought
with them so much.  I don't like fighting and anger.  But you can't
divide yourself to please your parents.  My parents have a negative
world view and no respect for my husband or children.  It would be more
damaging to have a relationship with them now than not to.

They would have to change.

"You have to make what you can of your llle," she said.  "If you please
racist, intolerant parents, does that mean you would then have a happy
and successful life?  No!  You should make a better world with your
husband and the family you create.  It's far more important to really
love the person you marry than to please others.

You need that rock to make it through the storms of life."

In "City Lovers," a famous Nadine Gordimer short story, the South
African Nobel laureate powerfully depicts the complexities and often
tragic consequences of interracial love affairs under apartheid.  In a
scene repeated many times in real life, the clandestine affair between
a German geologist and a young Coloured (mixed-race) woman is reported
to the police by suspicious neighbors and the landlady.

One night, just as the woman is stepping into the bathtub, there, is a
loud knock on the door.  She pleads with her German lover not to open
the door, even threatening to jump out the window if he does.

But, insisting they have nothing to fear, he locks her in his wardrobe
and answers the door.  A group of police officers, introducing
themselves as the vice squad, barge in with a search warrant and begin
scouring the premises for evidence, tearing the sheets from the beds
and gathering feminine toiletries and underwear.  I, 1"We have reason
to suspect you are cohabiting with a Coloured female," the head officer
says.  "In defiance of the Immorality Act."

After a tension-filled search, the policemen discover the locked
wardrobe and demand the key.  The German, acting forgetful, claims to
have left it at his office.  Their suspicions aroused, the police break
the lock and open the wardrobe.  The Coloured woman is squatting, naked
but for a towel, beneath a row of men's shirts.  One of the officers
zooms in with his camera and shoots a series of photos of her in her
misery and degradation.

After being taken down to the station, they are led to separate rooms,
fingerprinted, ordered to strip, and examined by a physician for signs
of sexual intercourse.  The moving story, which was made into a fiim,
ends with a shot of the Coloured woman's grimacing face as she lies,
naked and humiliated, in a sterile room, her heels in stirrups, as a
white doctor prepares to search for further "evidence," with cold metal
instruments, inside her vagina.

This story might be seen in a different light now that apartheid is
crumbling and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality
Act were abolished in 1985, but it loses none of its power.

Mixed couples may have become a more common sight on the streets of
Johannesburg and Cape Town, but their relationships still provoke the
same indignation, the same scrutiny, the same sense of tragedy, and the
same intense emotions as in "City Lovers."

One mixed couple in South Africa, a black man named Jerry Tsie and his
white Afrikaner liance, Annette Heunis, has drawn so much attention
that the story was featured in People magazine in June 1988.  Jerry, a
security guard at a gold mine who dreamed of coming to America to study
martial arts, grew up in a black township outside the small mining town
of Odendaalsrus.  He met Annette, who worked at a photo shop in the
white section of town, when he went there to drop off a roll of film.

Soon he was visiting the photo shop frequently, and the two fell in
love.  Annette felt confused, for she knew her father and stepmother,
Afrikaners who were so strict they forbade Annette to date a white
seminary student because she was "too young," would vehemently
object.

On Valentine's Day 1987 Jerry, then twenty-one and two years older than
Annette, declared his love for her.  Testing the waters, Annette asked
her stepmother, "What would you do if a black man came to the
apartment?"

"FIrst I'd shoot him dead," her stepmother replied.  "Then I'd give you
the biggest hiding of your life."

The couple conducted their relationship in secrecy for months, then
Annette moved into Jerry's family home in the black township.

Thrilled to have his palesa-"beloved flower," in the Sotho
language-with him at last, Jerry excitedly told neighbors and
friends.

Overnight the pair were local celebrities, and black people stopped by
just to see them kiss.

Because it was illegal for whites to live in black townships under
apartheid law, their life together was precarious and often
terriiying.

Each time a car pulled up outside the house they thought it was the
police.  They were harassed by anonymous callers.  Taxi and bus drivers
in the township were not licensed to transport whites, so Annette had
to quit her job and tend to domestic chores with Jerry's mother in the
cramped shack, shared by fifteen people, without electricity or an
indoor bathroom.

Annette's parents were furious and refused to accept Jerry.

Despite Annette's attempts to reconcile with them, they rarely spoke to
her.

"I could choose Jerry or I could choose my parents-I could not have
both," she said.  "It was terrible, because I love my parents very
much."

At last report the couple was living in Bophuthatswana, a black
homeland where mixed-race couples were allowed to live together even
before F. W. de Klerk repealed the Group Areas Act in 1991.

Susan Bazilli, a white Canadian lawyer, went to South Africa in 1986.

For two years she worked in defense of black activists from Alexandra
accused of seeking to overthrow the apartheid regime.

She has helped hundreds of black South Africans; has become familiar
with Alexandra, Soweto, and other black townships; and has won the
respect and affection of many families, including Mark's.

Since her arrival in South Africa, Susan has seen a sharp increase in
the number of mixed couples on the streets of Johannesburg.  She
related the story of an acquaintance, a white South African lawyer we
will call Nan, and her black South African boyfriend, ITsepo.

Nan fell deeply in love with Tsepo, one of her defendants.  She was
delighted when she learned she was expecting a child, but a month
before her due date, Tsepo was sentenced during a major treason trial
and sent to prison on Robben Island.  The baby was born while Tsepo was
in prison.  Nan brought the baby to the prison, but Tsepo was not
allowed a contact visit.  He could see his child only through a glass
window.  He yearned to hold her.

Nan's family disowned her when they learned of the interracial
relationship.  After Tsepo's release from prison, he and Nan were
married in 1990 in Johannesburg.  They now live with their child in
Mayfair, a Johannesburg community that was once white Afrikaner and is
now predominantly Indian.  Quite a few mixed couples live there as
well.

Johannesburg, South Africa's New York City, has slowly changed from a
predominantly white city to a largely black one, in the same manner in
which American inner cities evolved.  In Hillbrow, a downtown section
of Johannesburg, there are now sixty to eighty thousand blacks.

Mixed couples are a common sight in Countrvview, South Africa's first
truly integrated community of about 150 families, located halfway
between Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Andrew and Mary Moorosi-he's a black South African and she's a white
Canadian-moved to Countrvview after a landlord evicted them from their
apartment in Hillbrow.  One time when Mary was sick and had to lean on
Andrew as they walked down the street, an irate white man ran up to
them and shouted at Andrew, "What the hell's going on here?"  They've
had no such problems in Countryvlew, which they believe is leading the
way in showing that South Africans can live together as people with no
racial strings attached.

"White hostility against mixed couples iA based on protecting our
women,'" Susan said.  "A white woman and black man walking down the
street are subjected to verbal, and sometimes physical, attacks by
white men.  It's happened to me lots of times, even when I'm just
walking with one of my defendants and discussing preparations for a
trial.  I've been called a if boetie ["nigger lover"] many times.  But
now that so many blacks live in Johannesburg, it doesn't happen that
much.  It still happens in the dorps' [small Afrikaner towns]."

Susan says that some liberal whites in South Africa are so eager to
appear free of prejudice that they prefer to date black people.  "It's
suddenly trendy in anti-apartheid circles to be with a black person.  I
think it's even becoming a problem.  A lot of whites seem to think
having a black lover proves they're not racist.  Realizing this, some
of the more sexist African men use it to their advantage.  They may
say, Prove your nonracism to me, baby."  You see more and more white
women with biracial children, and they're usually not married."

At the memorial service for David Webster-a white antiapartheid
activist and lecturer at the liberal University of Witwatersrand who
was assassinatedusan saw more than half a dozen biracial babies with
their white mothers.

While some mixed couples choose to live in Coloured neighborhoods or in
integrated areas like downtown Johannesburg, the black townships were
legally off-limits for mixed couples until the Group Areas Act was
repealed in 1991.

"If you two were to live in Alexandra," Susan told us, 0it would be the
white system that would create problems for you, not blacks."

Unlike the United States, where the black power movement has caused
many blacks to oppose interracial relationships, South African blacks
are usually very accepting of them.

"There is no doubt the black community in Alex would accept you," Susan
said.  "But there would be legal issues and questions of safety.  With
the increasing violence in the townships, nothing's predictable.  I've
driven through Alex at night hundreds of times.  People know me, they
recognize my car.  But I drove through Alex in a rental car one night
and they saw me as just a white woman in a car.  They smashed my back
and side windows with bricks.  A girlfriend from Los Angeles was with
me and she was scared to death.  She wanted to get out of there as fast
as possible.  If she hadn't been with me I probably would have stopped
to Fend out who threw the bricks and let them realize they'd attacked a
friend.  But the violence is starting to scare even me."

The more polarized blacks and whites become, the more dangerous it is
for interracial couples to be seen together.

"It's the instability and uncertainty of lile here that makes life
stressful, maybe even life-threatening, for mixed couples these Idays,"
Susan said.

Though the instability and violence of the ghettos has made life 1hard
and dangerous for the few white women living with black men in South
Africa's townships, circumstances are much better for white men who
marry or live with black or Coloured women.  The reasons are obvious.

White men hold the best jobs and receive the highest incomes in South
Africa.  In South Africa a white man earns roughly ten times more than
a black man.  And white men who marry across racial lines are usually
not rejected by white society or forced to relocate.

It is interesting that two of South Africa's leaders who for years had
regarded each other as enemies have interracial relationships within
their families.  Tembi, the daughter of President Oliver Tambo of the
African National Congress, is married to a white London banker.

Willem, the younger son of President F. W. de Klerk, is married to
Erica Adams, the daughter of a mixed-race Cape politician.

Only five years ago such a marriage would have been more than illegal;
it could have destroyed de Klerk's political career.

Interracial love, while not new in South Africa, is just coming to the
surface now that the last apartheid laws have been scrapped.  As a
result, it still enjoys a sort of vogue with the media and the
public.

Yet mixed couples across the country, once their relationships are made
public, face the same problems with families, friends, and employers as
in America.  There is also the constant threat of violence from white
right-wing groups, and most decline to be named in the press because of
fear for their safety.  In the liberal northern suburbs of
Johannesburg, where racism is still widespread, mixed couples are
frequently invited to parties, where they are exhibited by hosts eager
to show how "progressive" they are.

Another much-publicized Johannesburg interracial marriage has been that
between black South African singer Mara Louw and her Scottish husband,
William Thomson.  The couple shares a three-bedroom home in
Johannesburg's all-white northern suburbs, where Mara is often mistaken
for a hired gardener by whites and black domestic workers when she
tends her flower garden.

"That's because they don't expect a black housewife in a white suburb,"
Mara said, laughing.

"0 senya makgowa, one Tswana-speaking elderly domestic told her
repeatedly.  "You're spoiling those white people."

Despite the occasional awkwardness of having a white husband and living
in the white suburbs of a country rigidly divided along racial lines
for decades under apartheid, Mara believes that the fact that she and
her husband come from different cultural backgrounds and have different
skin colors is "no big deal."

"Life gets simple when we don't look at the color and culture of a
person," Mara says.  "The more we regard ourselves as people, live
together and aim for harmony, the quicker we'll build a peaceful South
Africa."

William, who emigrated to South Africa ten years ago, praises South
Africa's blacks.  "They are warm and friendly with an interesting view
about life.  There is a strong indication from their part that there is
a possibility South Africans can live together in peace if apartheid is
scrapped."

William has been to Mara's home in Soweto many times, and the
neighborhood seems proud of him.  "They find me interesting," he said,
"especially when I start juggling Zulu words in an attempt to Impress
them."  He laughs about the time he tried to excuse himself by saying
"I'm tired" in Zulu, but accidentally said "I've soiled myself."

Mara and William met at Club 58 in 1985 in the Hillbrow section of
Johannesburg, an area that has shifted from all-white to racially
mixed.  By then Mara had released her first single, "Good Love," and an
album titled Ipi Ndela and was also working as an actress.  Mara, who
was then appearing in My Name Is Alice, went to the club for a drink.

It happened that both she and William had just ended their respective
relationships.

Their friendship blossomed into a relationship, though it would have
been illegal for them to marry.  Shortly after the Prohibition of Mixed
Marriages Act was repealed, the couple married at the Johannesburg
Magistrate's Court in March 1987.

As often happens when a mixed couple lives in a hostile environment,
the couple leads a rather isolated existence.  They seldom socialize.

Mara hardly knows her neighbors in the wealthy northern suburb and
remains locked in her house much of the day for security reasons.  The
only welcome gift she received from her neighbors was an anonymous
letter in which a neighbor complained about their dog.

When the couple goes out in public, William says, most whites assume
that Mara is his maid, not his wife.

Mixed marriages are even occurring in conservative parts of South
Africa, strongholds of right-wing and Fascist parties where residents
are known for their vehement opposition to even the slightest changes
in apartheid and the status quo.  Robert Beyi, a white businessman, and
his black bride, a Soweto taxi owner named Stella Nkhethoa, were the
first interracial couple to marry in Orange Free State, a vast
territory settled in the mid-1880s by trek-Boers, the forerunners of
today's Afrikaners.  Orange Free State is one of the areas white
opponents of integration and democracy in a unified South Africa want
to turn into a whites-only homeland.

Stella met Robert in 1983 when she first brought her taxi to his
service garage for repairs.  After a two-year friendship, they fell in
love but kept their relationship secret.  Once they decided to marry,
the couple ran into a number of difficulties-for instance, the Group
Areas Act made it dlflicult for them to find a suitable place to
live.

They eventually bought a house in 1889 in the Coloured township of
Bronville, halfway between Welkom and Virginia in the northern Free
State, but this was possible only after the couple was legally
married.

Despite the obstacles, Stella is confident the union will last.  "If
you love each other you never have to worry about problems or what
people will say," she said.  "Your love will be strong enough to get
you through."

In another rigidly conservative area, in the East Rand town of
Boksburg, a thirty-two-year-old, Afrikaans-speaking white man named
Percy Button married a Zulu woman, Mabel Tshoko Zwane, in magistrate's
court.  The mayor of Boksburg, Beyers de Klerk, and one of his
councillors were present to "observe President de Klerk's five-year
plan in action."  It was the third mixed marriage to take place in
Boksburg in the two years since the Mixed Marriages Act was
abolished.

Though the numbers are small, these marriages are significant.

They represent a change in the way whites and blacks in South Africa
view each other, pushing them to see each other as human beings with
needs and emotions, rather than as enemies in an impending race war.

Some of the pressures on these couples are different from those felt by
mixed couples in America.  For instance, among South African blacks
there is very little opposition to interracial marriages.  On the
contrary, such marriages are joyously celebrated, with great fanfare
and tradition.  The white partner in the marriage is made to feel
welcomed and a member of the family and community.  Despite the color
differences of the partners, their marriage is seen as a celebration of
love between two human beings, seldom complicated by questions of
racial politics and power.

One ;nterracially married couple, Tahirih Senne and Bill Linton, talked
about the differences between the way they are treated in South Africa,
Tahirih's homeland, and in America, where they live.

Bill, an architect and Yale graduate from Boston, and Tahirih, a
programmer analyst for the U.S. Congress, have helped start an
interracial marriage support group in Washington, D.C to create a forum
where couples can share common concerns and experiences.

When the couple arrived at Jan Smuts International Alrport in
Johannesburg in December 1989, on their way to get married in Mmabatho,
Bill was overwhelmed by the warmth and affection showered on him by
Tahirih's family and friends.

"I was kissed, I was embraced, I immediately felt I was part of the
family," Bill said.  trvery place we visited I found myself treated
with kindness and respect.  I was frequently introduced to neighbors.

My love for Tahirih was being reciprocated by everyone who knew her.  I
was made to feel at home and accepted without doubt or suspicion.  It's
different in America.  When you live in the United States you 1
breathe in racism every day.  It's so deeply ingrained that most whites
can't even recognize the extent to which it affects their lives.  The
racially charged atmosphere in America still generates irrational fears
that tell me I'd be in danger in a place like Soweto, especially during
an upheaval, but I'd probably have nothing to fear.  As a white you
really stand out in a black township, you're watched closely at
first.

But once people find out who you are and why you're there, once you
treat them as equals, you're accepted without hesitation.

Blacks would even want to protect you."

"We walked hand in hand around Johannesburg," Tahirih said.

"We got a lot of stares, but people were polite enough not to say
anything.  The white community is slowly changing.  While we were there
I heard of another mixed couple, a white lecturer and his black wife,
who applied to the city council to move to a white suburb.  The council
granted them permission.  I think that, eventually, whites in South
Africa will deal with mixed marriages better than many whites in
America.  Afrikaners don't deny their prejudices.  In the United States
overt bigotry isn't socially acceptable anymore, so there's a big gap
of denial."

One of Tahirih's black girlfriends from South Africa said, "It's �h�
inn and Rill are eettme married, but that's not for me."  An

American acquaintance said more directly, "How could you have grown up
black under apartheid and marry a white?"

Tahirih grew up in the Transvaal, the daughter of two schoolteachers.

The family moved every two or three years from one black township to
another, from Rustenburg to Hammanskraal to
Kgabalatsane to Ga-Rankuwa.  At fourteen she enrolled at a boarding
school in Rustenburg, and at sixteen she moved to Johannesburg, where
her father had been appointed Consul General by the Bophuthatswana
government.  She attended an integrated university in Mmabatho,
pursuing coursework toward her bachelor's degree in economics.

Her parents were members of a local group of BahT'is.  The BahT'i
movement began spreading in South Africa's black townships in the
1950s, despite the barriers posed by apartheid laws.

By attending meetings with her parents, which were racialiy integrated
and therefore under surveillance by the police, Tahirih came in contact
with whites on a human level, which rarely happened in the lives of
most black children growing up in racially polarized South Africa.

Most whites, having grown up isolated from the townships and homelands,
do not believe blacks are fully human, and in turn many blacks, seeing
only the brutality of the white police, believe whites are inhuman,
devoid of compassion or sensitivity.  At these meetings Tahirih saw
whites and blacks relating to each other as human beings with shared
hopes and fears for the future of South <1

Africa.

"We used to wonder if the white kids were real, and they wondered the
same about us," Tahirih recalled.  "We would touch each other's hair,
just to see what it felt like.  When they skinned their knees, their
blood was red, like mine.  The barriers between us started to break
down."

As a child in South Africa, Tahirih heard rumors about the tragic fate
of mixed couples that circulated through the townships.  She heard the
story of a German man living in Johannesburg who fell in love with a
beautiful black woman.  The man was arrested under the Immorality Act
and died in police custody.  Other mixed couples were forced to flee
South Africa.

Tahirih left South Africa in 1982 on a Fulbright scholarship.

When she arrived in America she attended Hood College in Frederick,
Maryland, completing her bachelor's degree before going on to American
University for her master's in economics.  Initially she felt let
down.

"Because of the way America was portrayed in South Africa, I had high
expectations of harmonious race relations in this country," she said.

"When I got here I realized that attitudes have hardly changed-only
laws have."

After graduating from American University in 1987, Tahirih went to the
Green Acre BahT'i School in Maine for a weekend seminar on women's
rights, history, and racial issues.  While playing volleyball she met
Bill, a tall, white American.  They became engrossed in a conversation
that seemed to have no end.

Born and raised in the Boston area-first in Westfield and later in
Acton, Massachusetts-Bill had almost no contact with blacks.  There
were only one or two blacks in his high-school class of four hundred.

"Growing up in the sixties I was aware at an early age that racism was
wrong.  In school we learned about the civil rights movement, and my
parents taught me to treat all people fairly, but in Acton there was no
way to practice my beliefs in equality because there were virtually no
minorities."

After graduating from high school Bill went to Yale University in New
Haven, where he had a black roommate who became a close friend.  After
graduating from Yale Bill moved to St. Louis to pursue a graduate
degree in architecture at Washington University, became active in St.
Louis's BahT'1 community, then returned to Boston.

During the summer of 1987, Bill often went to the Green Acre BahT'i
School in Maine about an hour from his home.  When he met Tahirih on
the volleyball court, he was struck by her British-African accent and
wondered if she were from the Caribbean.  After the volleyball game
they had lunch together.  The atmosphere was open and warm, the
friendship spontaneous.  They returned to their respective homes and
jobs but began corresponding.  They arranged another weekend visit to
Maine, then attended a three-day conference together at Princeton.

They started visiting each other on weekends, shuttling back and forth
between Washington, D.C and Boston.  This commuting went on for more
than two years.

When they had been dating three or four months, it suddenly dawned on
Bill that the relationship might fall apart.  He started feeling
self-conscious with her in public.  He wondered how strong their
commitment would have to be to weather the obstacles they would
inevitably face.  He knew his parents would not be happy about it.

Without realizing it, I started wondering what people were thinking
about us," he said.  "And the fact that some might disapprove bothered
me."

But one weekend things changed.  While visiting Tahirih in D.C. for a
couple of days, it started snowing harder and harder until a fullblown
blizzard developed.  His return flight to Boston was canceled three
times.  Instead of leaving him alone to wait for the next plane,
Tahirih took time off from work.  During those days together, they
recognized the depth of their feelings for each other.

"I became aware that I had been worrying too much about other people's
opinions and had overruled my own feelings, so I told myself, "I don't
care what they think."  Getting past that threshold changed the
relationship for me.  It became my conviction that, this is the right
thing for Before they decided to marry, Bill and Tahirih talked to
other mixed couples about their experiences.  They learned it would be
a challenge, but that with patience, persistence, and love even
difficult situations could be resolved.

"In an interracial marriage, all normal marital problems are attributed
to race," Bill said.  "Being forewarned of this makes it easier to work
out your problems as individuals, not as a black person versus a white
person.  One of the main benefits of being a mixed couple is that
you're constantly learning from each other.  You're reassessing your
cultural assumptions all the time."

Bill's parents were reluctant at first to grant him permission to marry
Tahirih.  They had many concerns: "Where will you live?  What about the
children?  You won't fit in.  You won't be accepted.  What do you have
against white girls?"

Because Bill and Tahirih were BahT'Is, they had to seek their parents'
permission to marry.

Instead of arguing with his parents, Bill planned dinners and events
during which each of them could become better acquainted with
Tahirih.

This forced his father to interact with Tahirih and the barriers
between them gradually came down.  Tahirih ceased being a stereotype
and became an individual.  When Bill's parents finally gave their
consent to the marriage, it was given unreservedly.

Bill's father told his son, 4I'm so happy for you.  As a father I have
to say that I feel closer to you through taking the time to get to know
Tahirih.  I feel I'm part of the wedding now."

Tahirih and Bill, in expressing their dream of someday seeing truly
nonracial societies both in South Africa and America, offered these
observations: 4Today black-white marriages are shunned," Tahirih
said.

"Tomorrow they'll be appreciated.  Reasonable people of all races feel
comfortable with a mixed couple, because they know they're in the
presence of people whose relationship is a testImony that color doesn't
substitute for character, that prejudice can be overcome, and that
people of different races can find common ground in mutually respectful
friendship."

"Racism is completely emotional and irrational," Bill said.  "Most
people agree, at least intellectually, that it's wrong.  But they
seldom do anything more than just talk about it.  Many of the most
prejudiced people adamantly deny being prejudiced.  My grandmother
insists she's not prejudiced because she chats and has tea with her
black cleaning woman."

"A lot of people believe in racial harmony as an ideal, but that only
goes so far," Tahirih said.  "Intermarriage is not part of their idea
of racial harmony.  They can form shallow friendships at work with
coworkers of other races, but those tenuous ties end when it's tIme to
go home.  We are one human family, but the divisions between us seem so
real to us now, and so deep."

It is Iitting that Love in Black and White be published in 1992, the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision
legalizing interracial marriages.  Yet two-and-a-half decades after the
1967 court ruling, as has been shown by the stories in this book and by
movies such as Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, the issue of interracial love
is still highly charged and riddled with taboos, misconceptions, sexual
myths, and stereotypes.

There still is intense pressure not to date or marry across racial
lines.  Even platonic interracial friendships are increasingly frowned
upon, particularly on high-school and college campuses.  Political
correctness, racial exclusivity, and cries for racial purity, from both
blacks and whites, have smothered the idealism of the sixties, a decade
when many advances were made in fighting bigotry and Improving
tolerance and race relations in America.

Many Americans seem to have given up on the ideal of an integrated
society.  Two segregated, opposed, and hostile camps have emerged.

More and more, blacks and whites are hurling accusations of racism at
each other and arguing rancorously over civil rights, affirmative
action, and racially motivated violence.

With such tension and acrimony, it is not surprising that individuals
who dare to fall in love across the color line find themselves caught
in the cross-fire.  They're doubly detested because they are proof that
racial harmony can become a reality, that the misunderstanding,
suspicions, fears, and hatreds between black and white can be replaced
by trust, cooperation, mutual respect, and even love.

It's ironic that as the battle lines between blacks and whites in
America become sharply drawn and entrenched, in South Africa, once the
prototype racist state, the walls of legalized segregation have
crumbled.  As a result, interracial relationships are finding greater
acceptance.  African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo has a white
son-in-law, and l'resident de Klerk's son is marrying a Coloured
woman.

While a new era of hope in race relations has dawned in South Africa,
many in America believe that the best days in racial cooperation and
harmony are past.  Some have even given up on the dream that
visionaries lIke Dr.  Martin Luther King, Jr died for.

Appropriately, in these trying times for race relations, interracial
couples have begun speaking out against racism and feeling proud of the
racial harmony their union reflects.

Children of mixed marriages, fed up with being labeled and forced to
identity with the race of one parent and reject the other, are forming
support groups at universities across the country.  At the University
of California at Berkeley, the Multi-Ethnic Interracial Student
Coalition, known as Misc has sixty members.  Multiracial student groups
have also sprung up at the University of Michigan, Harvard, New York
University, Stanford, Kansas State, and UCLA.  There are twenty
chapters nationwide of the Association of Multi-Ethnic Americans, based
in San Francisco, which is fighting for the creation of a 4multiracial"
classification on standardized forms.

Births to black-white couples increased fivefold between 1968 and
1988.

When our second child was born, the unease and self-consciousness we
had felt at Bianca's birth was gone.  Color, Fmally, no longer mattered
to us.  With tears of joy filling our eyes, we hugged and kissed each
other in front of the entire hospital's childbirth staff the minute our
son Nathan Phillip arrived January 20,1991.

We called Diana at home to tell her she had a new nephew.  She screamed
with delight and got Bianca equally excited.  Diana dropped the phone
on the floor and jumped around the room with Bianca shouting,
"Nathan!

Nathan!  It's a boy named Nathan!"

"Nafen!  Nafen!"  Bianca echoed.

When the family in South Africa was informed of Nathan's birth, Mhani
and Granny ululated and danced with joy.  They shared the Epilogue.

good news with practically the entire ghetto, and held a celebration to
which friends, relatives, neighbors, and strangers were invited.

"I told you you'd have a boy," Mhani said jubilantly over the phone.

"I prayed so hard for you, my American daughter and my son Mark.  Now
God has blessed you.  Now, when are you bringing my beloved
grandchildren over to visit me, to see Africa?  They're half African,
you know."

"Soon, Mhani, soon," we assured her.

Grampa, now in his late eighties, eagerly welcomed his new great
grandson into the world.  When he received the birth announcement he
sent Nathan a letter which read:

Dear Nathan Phillip, I am sure that you know in your very bones and
blood and brains that even beyond the love that just greeted you at
your birth, you are a part of a larger wholeur family.  We love you.

We believe in you.  We will give you the best of what we are and of our
love.  Thanks for joining us, and for just being you.

None of us are really "on our own."  We must share, or we cannot
live.

We n,"'er can do It alone.  For now, we want you to be as cozy and
close to us as you can.  As you grow up and away from us, we will miss
your being that close, but you and we will fInd ways of sharing what we
both need-to have, to be, and to give.  You have taken the gilt of
life, which love has given you, and, with your heartbeat and breath and
sigh, you tell us how glad you are to be alive, and to join us.  You
already know, down to your tiny toes, that we need each other love,
GGsMn'fr Time and understanding have healed the rifts we once felt
between ourselves and our extended families.

Gail's father flew down from Minneapolis to see his new grandson.

Bianca led him around the house, from her tape player to her toys to
her kiddie videos, saying over her shoulder in an insistent voice,
"Grampa, c'MON!"  He followed her obediently, marveling at how much her
confident, adventurous, and fearless personality reminded him of Gail
as a child.  After all the pain and misunderstanding Gail and her
father had been through over our relationship it is heartwarming to see
him affectionately and unreservedly embracing his biracial
grandchildren.

We appreciate the kind words from initially skeptical family members
and friends, though we long ago agreed that whether society accepted us
or not, as long as we had each other and faith in our love, we would
find ways of being happy and fulfilled.

Writing this book has meant far more to us than merely telling a story
about interracial love.  Reading each other's versions of our early
relationship led to a greater understanding of one another and our
past, strengthened our love, fueled our dedication to fighting bigotry,
and made us hopeful that blacks and whites can relate as human beings,
can reduce and even eliminate the tensions and barriers that now divide
them.  Meeting and interviewing other mixed couples inspired us, made
us proud of our relationship, and confirmed our belief that we are not
fugitives from the 4real" world or social outcasts, but living proof
that blacks and whites do not have to hate each other.

Racism is essentially a problem of the heart.  Pervert the human heart,
which was made to feel and to love and to care, and you get cancers
like racism and injustice.  If in our hearts we truly accept one
another as fellow human beings, many of our intractable problems would
have solutions, and there would be no limit to the good we could do in
making our world a better place for all.