A Different Day, A Different World
A Different Day, A Different World
On this this bonus day of Black History Month, I look back to a bonus story I was able to write beyond the scope of the original Addy series for American Girl, Addy’s Summer Place. Set in Cape May, NJ, later named Cape May, in the summer of 1866, the story is centered around 11year old Addy. In the fall she will be attending the Institute for Colored Youth, the I.C.Y., in Philadelphia. That summer Addy is trying to figure out what her place is in the world.
I wanted to tell this story because of the I.C.Y.’s connection to the history of HBCUs. Fanny Jackson Choppin would have been a teacher there during that time. Born into slavery, she was freed by an aunt who purchased her, and later became one of the first Black graduates of Oberlin College. The I.C.Y. would eventually become the first HBCU, Cheyney State.
Like Addy, I think we come to these moments in our lives where we try to find that place, that world where we belong. I surely felt that way in 1987 after graduating from Louisiana State University with an MFA in creative writing. I wanted to write. I wanted to teach, and I decided to take a job offer from Milton Academy, a day and boarding school 10 miles south of Boston.
Before going to work at Milton and initially working in summer enrichment program for public school students held there, I spent two months with my mother in Buffalo. She and my father were separated, and I had enjoyed living with her on my breaks from LSU and spending time with my father. My parents were on good terms, in fact on better terms than I had ever seen them on in their marriage. My mother lived in an apartment in a converted rectory on the east side of Buffalo, while my father still lived in the projects where I had grown up in Lackawanna.
The morning I left to drive from Buffalo to Milton, I woke up early and packed up the car, a one-way rental. The Lincoln Continental was a bigger car than I wanted, but it all the agency had left, and it did not charge extra for it. It was over 450 miles to my destination, so I wanted to leave early, to be ready to say goodbye when my mother woke up and not lineger too long. She was going to ?cry. And so was I. When I was nearly done, I looked up the long sidewalk to the front door, and there dressed in a pale blue housecoat was my mother standing behind the glass storm door. My mother was a believer in housecoats and house shoes. A Southern raised woman, she was formal, even in her casualness. She stepped aside when I entered, “Are you sure you can do this, Connie?” she asked.
And I think she meant more than the drive. “Mama, don’t worry,” I said. “I will be fine.”
I gathered the last of my belongings and my mother held the door for me to leave. Coming back inside to tell her goodbye, I saw she had started crying. I was spending a night at motel near Albany, a city I knew well because I obtained my undergrad degree there.?It was a little more than halfway to my destination, a good distance for a novice driver like me to drive in a day. My mother and I held tight to one another, and I assured her, “I will call you when I get to Albany.”
Through her tears, she said, “Take your time, and call me collect. I love you.”
In a strangled whisper, I said, “I love you.” Letting her go, I turned quickly so she could not see my tears. Pulling away, I could see her standing alone, a light behind her. I cried all way to the thruway entrance, steering that behemoth land yacht to my new home.
I had interviewed at Milton in the spring. The lawns were immaculately mown. There were innocently budding green trees, blushes of flowering bushes. The sprawling campus with its brick classroom buildings and dorms looked more like a New England college than any high school I had ever seen. There were tennis courts, an ice arena, athletics fields, a standalone library, and a chapel. The day and boarding students I saw outside between classes were like bees set out for pollen. Flitting hummingbirds on the hunt for nectar. ?
?My first year teaching, I felt like Milton Academy was a world of its own, alien to me. As it turned out, I had not arrived via land yacht but my starship. This was a different world, and perhaps I had come by mistake. I was not Lieutenant Uhura so much as I was one of those “redshirt” Star Trek characters, an unnamed member of an away team who would die before the opening credits even ran. I suspect some African Americans who have attended Predominantly White Institutions, PWIs, decades ago also felt that way—being one of few or maybe a lone one, not only in a class, but in a major, or in an entire department. I wondered if I had made the right choice to teach there. If I had made the right choice in attending LSU instead of Brown because perhaps at Brown I would have come better prepared to settle into this lush and rich world. At Brown, I may have met the Borg, engaged them, and better understood this world.
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But I have to admit that all through my years of education, I have been blessed by Graces. I do not think that in my shyness that I summoned them, but rather my praying mother radiant in her own grace, had prayed them across my paths. At Milton I was assigned veteran teachers as mentors, and there was an African American female teacher/intern a few years younger than I was. A graduate of Oberlin College, she was brilliant and funny, full of grace and beauty love. Even then, it was clear to see she was destined for great things and she has gone on to become head of a day school; she and I grew into being sistas/sisters that first year and, at times, big sisters to some of the African American girls at Milton. She lived in an apartment in faculty housing and taught middle school English and African American history. I lived in a detached cottage on the lower campus, the location of the girls’ dorms. In addition to teaching English and creative writing, I did dorm duty Hathaway House where I learned from the house parent, a woman who was married, raising her own children and teaching. She was a patient woman who laughed freely, but went by the book and fiercely loved the girls in her charge.
By the next fall of the next year, I moved into Faulkner House, the smallest of the girls’ dorms. In addition to teaching English and creative writing, I was an assistant to the dorm parents. Nestled back from Centre Street that led to the main campus, Faulkner was isolated, bordered by mature trees and fronted with resplendent lavender and pink rhododendron bushes. This converted mansion with its golden wooden floors, Oriental rugs, common room and living room, fireplace and large kitchen surrounded by windows, felt more like a home than an ordinary dormitory.
My one-bedroom basement apartment was comprised of a kitchen/living room area, a windowless bedroom with a tiny bathroom tucked inside. My front door led to the basement and was accessible from the first floor of the dorm by a set of spiral stairs; the side door leading outside was accessible by a short outside flight of stairs on the back of the building. It was a comfortable space where I could write, retreat, and think about my life—and I could break the rules.
Breaking rules had not been my intention. Had not been my plan. But the anarchy began organically on a random Thursday night with a knock on the door that led to the basement. It was study time and no one should have been at my door. When I opened it there they were, two African American girls, a junior and senior. And there was a question, “Are you gonna watch A Different World?”
Of course, I was going to watch it. It was the show to watch, but they were not supposed to watch because once study period began, there was no more TV allowed for the night. I reasoned with myself as I stood there, knowing good and well that these girls were excellent students. They were on top of their studies, but what they were not on top of was this world at Milton. I let them in.
And so it began—many Thursday nights of us gathering, and the gathering of additional girls. The younger girls had tighter restrictions, but these older girls—from the Midwest, the South, the Northeast and far away as South Africa crowded in. Brought to Milton by prayers of their ancestors. Dreams of their fathers. Tears of their mothers. Some leaving their homes, their worlds of comfort and light as young as 14 to pursue futures that wound their way through this world. Attending this elite PWI, and aiming for the Ivy League, they all longed for A Different World. For a Hillman, for a Gilbert Hall, a determined Jaleesa, a spiritual and scattered Freddie, a focussed, intelligent Kim, a cool Dwayne, and yes, even a haughty Whitley. They needed to smell the grease of The Pit, hear the fussiness of Mr. Gaines. See the swagger of the African American boys who hung out there, the style of the girls who hung out there.
Though they were not supposed to watch TV, their gathering together, their need for sisterhood, of being together was bigger than that half hour of missed study time. They needed to see themselves on those nights. Those laughs.?Those Thursday nights of my 29th year were world changing for those girls. For me. They were a gathering A place to exhale before we scattered into the light of the next morning, passing here and there.
I am not a big believer in there being a pure power of numbers. I do not believe they are magical, but as someone born of the 29th of July and writing this on Leap Day, the 29th of February, all I know is that one of my late brothers would have played this number all month.
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Towards the end of Addy’s Summer Place, Momma has a discussion with Addy after Addy a troubling interaction that leaves her angry and confused. With tears in her eyes, Momma says, “I wish things could be different for you. . . But this ain’t my world to change.” ?
One hundred and fifty-eight years as we close out this bonus day of Black History Month in a world that Addy and her Momma could have never imagined, we know this is a world that can be changed. That can be made different. On this day, if you have not vowed to find a way to make it different, take a chance. And leap!
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For Black History Month, American Girl has free PDF downloads of many of its books about African American charcters. Addy's Summer Place is included in the Addy's Stort Story Collection.