Chapter 8B

In early June of that year she graduated with honors and a Bachelor's degree in special education. The ceremony was held on a Sunday afternoon. I was staying at my godparent's restaurant in downtown Memphis at the time and was able to get a ride to Memphis State with Aunt Frances, who grumbled about having to make a special trip all the way out there.

When we car on the main boulevard that bounded the campus, Aunt Frances sat behind the steering wheel, frowning in bewilderment. "Where are all the people who go to school here?"

Looking around, I saw students swarming all around us. I answered, "This whole crowd is students, Aunt Frances."

"This is what they wear to school? They don't have to wear uniforms on Sunday?"

"Aunt Frances, you don't wear uniforms in college."

"The nuns let them go to class with no uniforms?"

"Nuns don't teach the classes out here, Aunt Frances."

"Oh," she said, her eyes widening even more in shock and confusion. "Which one of these buildings do the nuns live in?"

"There aren't any nuns, Aunt Frances. No Nuns!"

"Look at the way these boys come to school. Hmp. No ties, no nice shoes. Look, that one boy over there, he's the only one with a tie!"

For over fifty years she had driven down the same midtown street to work and Mass and home again, oblivious to growth and change in other parts of the city; nor could she imagine an educational institution other than the Catholic elementary girls' school she had last attended in 1918. When she dropped me off near the administration building I explained to her how to get back to Central Avenue a few blocks away, a street she knew only because Immaculate Conception Cathedral was located on it, even though this was the first time she had been on that street's ten mile eastward extension that had been built in the 1940's. I gave up trying to explain college to her.

Later, seated in the balcony of the auditorium, I spotted Martha in the procession of students in caps and gowns, as well as her mom and Evelyn and another older female who sat in the audience. I hadn't seen Martha in several weeks; she looked pleased, if not visibly exhausted after the crunch of her final exams. When she walked to the podium to accept a special certificate of honor, I wondered how soon she would leave Memphis State, or if she would leave the city altogether. At the end of the ceremony I found her in the audience and traded niceties with her relatives. She offered to give me a ride back to my Aunt Frances' place downtown, which I gladly accepted -although, as she drove me in her Chevy, I found I was holding back so much of what I really wanted to say that I said little. Whether or not she noticed this, I didn't know. She seemed limp, glad that it was over. So far, she'd heard nothing from her applications for graduate aid.

Arriving at my family's restaurant on Calhoun Street, she smiled tiredly and thanked me for showing up at her graduation. I tried to be as cheerful as I could. As I got out of the car she said, "Wait a minute! Don't you dare leave me without a hug!"

She got out of the car and met me on the driver's side, where she threw her arms around me and gave me a close, long, moaning hug.

"We'll get together soon," she said. "At last, I'll have some free time."

From the street we saw my relatives inside the restaurant -- Aunt Frances and Mama Rose and a couple of visiting aunts. They waved at us through the restaurant's front window. We waved too, and as Martha got back into her car she blew me a kiss and a sympathetic smile: "Don't let 'em drive you crazy, hon!" Then she drove away, leaving me feeling rather lonely but knowing that she was leaving temporarily, and that she was headed for a well deserved rest.

A few weeks later I was again spending Saturday afternoon at the Tremont Cafe. I was completely unprepared for her excited phone call.

She squealed excitedly over the phone, "I don't believe it! Steven, I don't believe it! It came in the mail, just this afternoon! Columbia! Columbia University in New York! I don't believe it! Oh, Steven! New York City!"

I don't remember the rest of the telephone call. She had won a scholarship and a graduate teaching assistantship at Columbia. She had not expected it, and I even recalled her saying when she mailed her application months earlier that she doubted anything would come of it.

It was another week before she picked me up at the Tremont to spend Sunday afternoon with her. She drove into the county and into Shelby State Park, where we parked her Chevrolet in the tourist's lot and went for a stroll deep into the woods of the park. I was familiar with the area through my brief tour with the Boy Scouts at St. Michael's School. We were both rather subdued, but glad to see each other. For some time I did not ask the big question, but I finally summoned up the nerve to do so as we rested on the grass atop a thickly forested hill and snacked on some cold fried chicken I had brought along from the Tremont.

I said, "So when will you be leaving for New York?"

She smiled at me warmly, touching my cheek and then squeezing my arm. "I don't really know, Steven, but it will have to be soon. Very soon. You have no idea, the confrontations I had with Mr. Buchanan. It happened just yesterday, when I told him I was going to leave home to take the assistantship. It was almost a shouting match. He got down to saying: how *could* you move to New York when you have a home right here in Memphis and an *obligation* to marry and keep the family going? An obligation!"

I turned away, toward the distant valley. I had no idea she would meet with such resistance from her stepdad. It made the distance from my own family seem secondary, at least for the time being.

She went on. "He's dead set against my leaving. Especially to big, bad New York. You know how people are in Memphis, they think Memphis is the whole world, the only possible choice. Why would anyone dare run off to another city, when everything one could ever need is right here in good ol' Memphis?"

"But you can't give it up. It's what you worked for. You earned it. You broke your back for it."

"He treated me as if I were some kind of ungrateful beauty queen. I even offered to give back the Chevrolet. I never wanted it that much in the first place -- I always knew that damn car would be a symbol of trouble sooner or later."

"So, will you give it back?"

"He won't let me. Can you believe it? He wants me to keep it. He thinks he can buy me with it. He thinks that car would be as important to me as it is to him." She lowered her face and set her jaw firmly. "But it won't work. I found a friend who can sell it for whatever cash we can get. And I'll need that money in a place like New York. I haven't saved a dime and Mr. Buchanan certainly isn't going to help me out. Mother offered to wheedle something out of him, but I won't let her. I know it sounds crazy, but I still want to do this on my own."

She stopped and looked at me. Her hazel eyes were sisterly and knowing. "You don't want me to go, do you?"

"I never said that."

"Steven, I know you never said it, but..." She looked down and fingered a fallen leaf. "It's just as sudden for me as it must be for you." She looked up at me. "It's not forever."

"Not forever?"

"Only for a Master's. Only two years. I'll be teaching and working, so there won't be any crash course this time. It'll take me the full two years to get through it. So... it really won't be that long. Besides -- you'll find a girlfriend, you know. You'll forget all about me."

I gave a low, wry laugh. "Right."

"You will, Steven. You're becoming a very accomplished young man. You'll be in high school then, your social life will have changed. And you'll be older and taller. You'll be different. So very different by then."

"And you'll find somebody, too," I said, avoiding her gaze.

She sighed and shook her head and looked out over the bucolic scene before us. "I don't know, hon. I don't think so. I'm not planning on it. All I'm planning on is all the hard work I'll have ahead of me. Graduate school at a first-rate place like Columbia is no pushover. It's no picnic at all, from what I hear."

She looked back at me, apparently to check my reaction to her words. I shrugged and laughed it off. I played with a long blade of grass that I pulled from the ground.

"So," she insisted, "how do you really feel, Steven?"

"It's yours," I answered stoically. "You worked for it. You should have it."

She searched my eyes and then smiled wanly, looking away. "All right, if that's really what you wanted to say. You're unnecessarily brave about this."

"How?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I expected something else from you. Maybe something... oh, I don't know. Angry. But you don't reveal much about yourself. Do you really feel so noble and sure of yourself... or are you just accepting it for my benefit?"

I considered my answer quickly, but carefully. I wondered if she could tell that my reply didn't exactly match my feelings. I lied: "I am this noble. I am this sure of myself." Then I partly told the truth: "And I am doing it for your benefit."