October 1, 1975
Beach City, DM
It took Pearl several days before she was ready to return home. While Garnet, Greg and Amethyst gathered her from the hospital, Peridot and Lapis threw a small celebration which mostly involved cocktail weenies and some hastily drawn "Welcome Home" posters.
"Sorry, I'd have done better if I had any paint supplies," Lapis apologized.
Pearl was still too worn out to care. Dr. Maheshawaran said it might take a few weeks - time they really didn't have - for Pearl to get better. Though she protested she was fine and would be up sooner than that, Garnet made sure she was bundled up into her
"You don't have to dote on me, you know," Pearl insisted as Garnet gave her a glass of water.
"It's not doting," Garnet insisted. "You're hurt, you need rest and help."
"I can walk to the next room and get myself a glass of water."
"But you shouldn't have to."
It had taken awhile for Garnet to truly like and respect Pearl, to tolerate her lapses into prejudice and stereotypes and dated vernacular (explaining why she preferred black to Negro was particularly frustrating, especially the sixth time), not to mention her nitpicking and high-strung personality. But Garnet found her admirable qualities outweighing her shortcomings: her brains, her talent for organization, her hard work and commitment, her loving, almost motherly dedication to her and Amethyst. And most of all, her willingness to disavow and break with her background, her previous life, everything she'd stood for and believed in, in order to serve a greater good they both wanted.
But, Garnet reminded herself resentfully, Pearl had the choice of disavowing everything. Garnet, and Amethyst for that matter, didn't. No matter what they tried or how they acted, society would always treat them the same way. It didn't have any more use for Garnet, clean-cut, educated black woman than it did Garnet, renegade sister with a shotgun.
Garnet put down a pair of painkillers next to the glass of water. Pearl stared at them, her face a strange mix of surprise and resentment, then washed them down with a quick drink of water.
"About time someone mother you for a change," Garnet joked.
"Too bad it couldn't be under better circumstances," Pearl grumbled.
Garnet looked down and regarded her friend's injuries. Though a loose-fitting t-shirt covered up her body, she seemed thin and pale, even more than usual, and without her usual pep or nervousness despite her feeble protests. She looked like a wounded bird. And Garnet knew that, whatever Pearl's strengths, she needed support more than anything right now.
"Miss Scofield, we pride ourselves on tolerance in this school district, but we do have limits from what sort of actions and behaviors we'll accept from teachers. Children's lives and futures are at stake, and we have some serious questions about your conduct."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't you? We had a parent of one your children complain that you used disparaging words about former President Johnson in class."
"I mentioned that he, as President, was responsible for escalating the Vietnam War. I don't consider that disparaging."
"In what context, may I ask? That's certainly a heavy subject of conversation for middle schoolers."
"A student asked me why American troops were in Vietnam. I explained that the war started a decade ago, that Kennedy and Johnson escalated it and that the current President says that he's going to end it but hasn't done anything yet to show that he's planning to."
"I have authority that you did a bit more than. Did you stop to explain the Communist aggression and atrocities occurring in Vietnam?"
"No, I didn't. But to be fair, I didn't explain American or South Vietnamese atrocities either..."
"Alleged atrocities. Did you explain Communist efforts to subvert democracy and commit genocide against the people of Vietnam?"
"It didn't come up."
"Huh. Did you explain how Vietnam is part of our global war to contain Communism?"
"I'm sorry, are you being seriousness right now?"
"Why would you assume we weren't?"
"I feel like I'm trapped in a Kafka novel."
"Miss Scofield, we know you're well-educated. You don't need to remind us of that."
"Evidently I do."
"Did you attend a rally held by Stokely Carmichael in Chicago last year?"
"...What on Earth does that have to do with anything?"
"Did you attend a rally held by Stokely Carmichael in Chicago last year?"
"You know, Bob Scarlet is a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society and I don't see you asking him..."
"Answer the question, please."
"Yes, I did."
"Are you aware that Mr. Carmichael advocates a radical restructuring of American society, exclusionary policies towards whites and a pan-African state?"
"I am aware that his words and actions are willfully misinterpreted by the ignorant and insecure in an effort to discredit all efforts at racial progress and equality."
"Would you consider Spiro Agnew, our Vice President, to be ignorant and insecure for criticizing Mr. Carmichael?"
"I think he is better at alliteration than coolly assessing racial politics."
"Could you please just answer our questions?"
"Could you please stop asking insulting, loaded questions? Are you going to ask me whether I stopped beating my boyfriend next?"
"Well, since you mention it..."
"Jesus Christ."
"Language, Ms. Scofield. Let me remind you that you're on exceedingly thin ice already. Now, there is an accusation here that you have had improper relationship with one of your students..."
"You had damn well better have evidence of that."
"Testimony of a child's parents."
"Who? Which parent?"
"I can't tell you that."
"Which student?"
"I can't tell you that, either."
"...Then how am I supposed to...?"
"Because you should be able to answer whether or not you have improper relationships with students, without knowing the specifics of who accused you."
"Did a student accuse me?"
"I said I'm not going to answer..."
"Or just a parent?"
"It doesn't matter."
"This is outrageous."
"I hardly think so, Miss Scofield. Because these cases are only the tip of a very big iceberg. You make politically provocative statements in front of your students, you consort with extremists..."
"Attending a speech is not consorting with extremists..."
"If that's all you'd done, maybe you could make that case. But there's a consistent pattern of this sort of behavior, both in and outside of your classroom. Did you once advocate teaching Soul on Ice to your class?"
"I mentioned that I was reading it to one of my students and told him what I thought of it."
"Do you really think Eldridge Cleaver is appropriate reading for eighth graders?"
"For most eighth graders, no. That's why I didn't assign it."
"That implies some eighth graders."
"I didn't assign it. I discussed the book with one student, one time."
"Okay. Let's rephrase the question. Do you think it's appropriate to discuss with children a book about a black criminal who calls raping white women a "revolutionary act"?"
"Is it the black part that you object to?"
"Of course not."
"Then why would you mention it? You know Cleaver's black, I know he's black..."
"That's evading the point. Accusing us of racism won't help your case. After all, I have made a point of hiring Negro teachers for the past ten years in excess of recommended state guidelines."
"That is wonderful news. Almost as wonderful as your using the arcane phrase Negro in conversation with a black woman."
"Your conduct here today is wholly inappropriate and accusatory."
"Attitudes you would know a great deal about."
"Miss Scofield, we've tried being patient with you but you have defied all efforts to act in good faith. You're suspended for the next two weeks with pay while we review your case and consider long-term disciplinary action."
"I'm going to the teacher's union about this. I won't answer any more questions..."
"We've already taken care of that."
"What?"
"We've already consulted the teacher's union and considering the charges against you and your past history, they're giving us leeway to act as we see fit. They requested that we give you a chance to explain yourself before acting."
"You can't do that!"
"We already did. Now, I must admit that I'm not overly impressed with your conduct here today..."
"This meeting was a waste of time."
"I expected better from you, Miss Scofield. You'd been a hard-working woman - you'd shown that even a Negro...er, a black woman could be a capable educator, despite what some people think..."
"Anything else?"
"I just thought you'd be more concerned about being a credit to your race. I thought you were one of the good ones."
"Fuck you, honky."
Garnet didn't regret the conversation one bit. She'd endured condescension and occasional slurs for almost two years before then; only her students and her love for teaching prevented it from happening sooner. The only problem was that it pretty much closed the door on her career; she was formally banned from teaching not only in Chicago but all of Cook County. And in the world of education, whispers, rumors and informal blackballing spread farther than that.
It reinforced a lesson she'd known her whole life: that the North was just as racist as the South, even if it didn't codify its bigotry into laws and elect gnarl-mawed rednecks as leader. It simply insulted and demeaned you, day in and day out, by forcing you into substandard housing, providing you the most menial, dehumanizing work, labeling you a criminal and a troublemaker, occasionally lynching or killing you, then blaming you for not being able to instantly, easily transcend all these shortcomings and become rich and successful.
Garnet Scofield knew she had it better than many. Her father had immigrated to America from Trinidad in the '20s, spending a brief amount of time in Virginia before the cruel indignities of the Jim Crow South. He joined a slew of other blacks in moving north after World War I; unlike many, Jarvis Scofield found a relatively decent job working as a teacher (albeit a poorly paid one in an unofficially-segregated school), passing his love for literature and learning on to Garnet. He and Garnet's mother, a taciturn woman originally from Jamaica, would read their daughter the classics from an early age. She loved Jane Austen and William Shakespeare as much as any white girl, while retaining a window into her own heritage.
There wasn't much politics in Garnet's house growing up. Her dad avoided protests and activists and voted Republican in the era they were still, nominally, the Party of Lincoln. Only in 1964, faced with Barry Goldwater's repudiation of the Civil Rights Act, did he become a Democrat, and he could still never forgive Lyndon Johnson for his friendship and alliance with Southern segregationists like Richard Russell. But he kept these opinions largely to himself; Garnet had to learn them on her own.
She learned them through reading books, first works by liberal and American black authors explaining in calm, measured language why inequities existed; than more radical works by authors like Frantz Fanon, whose class-and-race based analyses of society seemed more convincing to Garnet's own experience. In 1967 she attended a rally held by Martin Luther King in support of fair housing practices, and saw that venerable Civil Rights leader pelted with stones and garbage by angry whites - all while Mayor Daley, a cretin disguised as a liberal, denied that racism existed in Chicago.
Despite witnessing this, and the million other horrors of that era - the race riots after King's death, the chaos at the Democratic National Convention, assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy and the turmoil of Vietnam witnessed vicariously - Garnet strove to keep her head down. She received her teaching certificate in late 1968, shortly before Richard Nixon's election as President, and managed to teach for two years at a small, mostly-black school in the South Side of Chicago.
She was a good teacher. She loved her kids and gave energetic lectures on all manner of topics, though English and literature remained her subjects of choice. Her exotic West Indian accent gave her an especial allure to students tired of the grim flatness of Chicagoan patois. She could make ghetto kids appreciate Ralph Ellison (whose Invisible Man had been reluctantly approved by the school board a year prior to her arrival) and Shakespeare in equal measure.
But for all her virtues, she rubbed a lot of her colleagues and kids' parents the wrong way. Especially the white ones. Those who, beneath their patina of tolerance, couldn't stand to see an uppity Negro getting ahead in life. One who read Eldridge Cleaver and mourned Fred Hampton's murder by the FBI with an armband worn into class. Who would breach topics like Vietnam and social inequality with her class of students, far more curious than anyone had the right to expect. Who dated a man who, while hardly Sidney Poitier, worked hard at a factory and acted like white coworkers were his equals.
It was easy enough to provide real offenses, provided the definition be broadened to "independent thought" and "being black." The charge of misconduct, dreamed up by a Bircher faculty member and an angry parent, provided an artificial sweetener. Exeunt Garnet Scofield's respectable life.
Once she'd been formally fired, Garnet drifted into hazy indecision. She worked menial jobs that she hated while dressing in more African-styled clothing, styling her hair into an Afro, drifting in and out of different circles. Always reading, always learning the latest, cutting edge. She spent some time around Black Panthers but couldn't stand their macho swagger or recklessness. She found a slightly more mellow group of Black Power advocates, whom she associated with, dating their leader and debating the role of women in the movement, until they ran afoul of law enforcement and police raided their building. A shootout erupted, leaving two criminals and a policeman dead, and Garnet on the run, even though her own crime was merely being present.
Garnet slowly drifted across the country, winding up in DC where she bunked with a friend from college. It's there that she met Rose Quartz, bumping into her at an antiwar rally following the Kent State shootings. (Pearl, still with the FBI at the time, would not appear.) Like Pearl and Amethyst she remembered that first meeting with crisp, picture-perfect recollection, mostly because it involved a National Guardsman striking Rose with a rifle butt.
Her initial reaction was to laugh at the fat honky, likely a weekend protester who didn't care about society enough to protest until some kids got shot. But she saw the bewilderment and pain in Rose's eyes, refusing to fall despite the blow. And Garnet's compassion, and combativeness, and years of endless, pent-up anger overtook her.
"Hey turkey, why don't you pick on someone your own fucking size?" she had yelled at the Guardsman, stepping between them and Rose.
"Step back!" the Guardsman commanded, leveling his rifle.
"Yeah, of course you aim your rifle at a black woman," Garnet said angrily, defying him and presenting her body as a shield. "As if you lot aren't reprehensible enough, you're going to start massacring people a few blocks from the fucking White House."
A few photographs captured the tableaux of Garnet shouting defiance, with two Guardsmen's bayonets dramatically framed at the bottom of the picture. She was "unidentified black protester" in the Washington Post the next day, "Angry Negro" in more conservative papers. She admitted that she had liked the latter more.
"Please, don't hurt yourself," Rose begged Garnet, pulling on her arm.
"I'm fucking fed up," Garnet admitted. "If these honkies are gonna gun me down, might as well be here and now."
"Please don't hurt yourself on my account," Rose insisted.
"I already told you..." Garnet started to protest.
"Let's be smart about this," Rose said, pulling her back as the Guardsmen moved on to a more seemingly immediate threat - a pair of youths carrying a Vietcong flag. "There's no reason either of us needs to be hurt or killed in a peaceful protest. We'll find another way."
Everyone who knew Rose knew that she could persuasive and soothing and reasonable in a way few other human beings managed. Even hunted, angry Garnet, now the stereotyped Angry Negro, was reduced to second thoughts and nearly to tears. Feeling how stupid she was.
"My name is Garnet," she said.
"Rose," Rose responded.
"If you have any better ideas of fighting these PIGS!" - she yelled that last word - "then I'm all ears."
Rose smiled. "Let's go somewhere more private and we can talk it over."
As they left, the youths with the VC flag burst across the, shouting "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!" Unseen by Garnet and Rose, police responded to their invoking a dead communist by beating the shit out of them.
"I don't know how you ever put up with me," Pearl mused, sipping a glass of water. "I'm such a doofus..."
"Pearl, you're not and you know you're not," Garnet said. "We're not having this argument again."
Pearl sighed and laid back down. "I just wish that I could be as strong as you think I am. Strong like you."
Garnet sighed, not quite feeling in the mood to reassure Pearl again. "If you really aren't that strong, you certainly do a nice job pretending."
Pearl smiled, then winced as she felt a stab of pain. "Guess I'm not going to be much use if Jasper's friends get on our tail."
"Not unless you learn how to fire a gun while you're recovering." Pearl crinkled her face, indicating to Garnet that was out of the question.
"Fair enough," Garnet said, smiling. "Either way, you need to rest. Amethyst and I should be fine on our own. And if need be, I think Lapis can take care of herself."
"I hope you're right," Pearl groaned, turning over in bed. "I'm certainly not going to be much help like this."
Garnet reached over and fluffed Pearl's pillow. "Well, you rest. That's what's important for now."
Pearl smiled and clasped Garnet's hand appreciatively. The two shared a knowing grin, then Garnet exited the room.
She literally bumped into Peridot, who was standing outside.
"Oof! Hey, uh, Garnet," Peridot said blandly.
"Perry," Garnet responded.
"Sorry, I didn't see you there." Peridot fidgeted nervously at her shirt collar.
"Say, listen...Is it alright if I talk to Pearl?"
Garnet greeted this suggestion with a stony glower.
"Like..." Peridot sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry even to bring it up. And I'm sure that you don't want her talking to me. But..."
Garnet turned this over in her mind, knowing what her instinctive answer would be. It would make her feel uncomfortable, to say the very least. But then she thought about Pearl.
"She's resting, so try and be brief," Garnet said, nodding and moving aside. Peridot just smiled appreciatively and scampered nervously into Pearl's room.
Garnet could hear Peridot's nasal voice greeting Pearl and starting her impromptu inquisition. She still didn't entirely trust their new acquaintance, but her heart seemed to be in the right place. Besides, even if she didn't want Pearl talking to her, that was Pearl's decision to make. Not hers.
Trust. She was still a little disappointed that, after all this time, she, Pearl and Amethyst still needed to work on it. Though having two women added to the mix certainly complicated things.
But she had to trust that things would turn out right. She felt she didn't have a choice.
If Garnet couldn't rely on her friends when everyone else had let her down, the world was well and truly fucked.