Message from Nam Read Online Free PDF Page B

blur of grief as they cut through her heart. She had failed him. They had turned her down. All her dreams dashed in a single instant. Radcliffe had denied her. And what would she do now? Where would she go? Did she really have to stay in the South, with all its narrow thinking, familiar themes, and proximity to her mother and brother? Was that it? Had it come to that, then? Or would she go to Vassar? Smith? Wellesley? Somehow they seemed so boring.
    Hesitantly, she tore open the second envelope, feeling nervous now. Maybe it was time to give some serious thought to Stanford. But not for long. They said it in the first paragraph instead of the second, and their answer was almost identical to Radcliffe’s. They wished her well, but felt she would do better at another institution. Which left … nothing. The choices she already knew she had, and an unknown quantity at Berkeley. She could feel her spirits plummet as she stood, walked up the steps, and let herself into the house. She dreaded having to tell her mother.
    She told Queenie first, of course, and the old woman was grief-stricken for her at first, and then, finally, philosophical.
    “If they didn’t accept you, then it wasn’t meant to be. One day you’ll look back at that, and know it.” But in the meantime, the prospects it left her with were depressing. She didn’t want to stay in the South, didn’t want to go to a girls’ school, and she couldn’t even imagine going to Berkeley. Now what? But Queenie’s thinking was more advanced than Paxton’s. “What about California? It’s a long way from here, but you might like it.” One of her daughters had moved to Oakland several years before, and although she’d never been there, she had always heard that San Francisco was lovely. “I hear it’s beautiful. You won’t be cold like you will up north.” She smiled gently at the child she had loved and comforted since she was born, and it hurt her now to see her so bitterly disappointed. “Your Mama would kill me if she could hear me suggesting it to you, but I think you ought to be thinkin’ about California.” Paxton grinned. Her mother would kill both of them if she could hear half of their conversations.
    “It seems so far away … so … I don’t know … so foreign.…”
    “California?” Queenie grinned. “Don’t be silly, it’s only a few hours away by plane, leastways that’s what my Rosie keeps tellin’ me. So you think about that too. And you pray about it tonight. Maybe that school in Berkeley gonna be your solution.”
    But that night at dinner with her mother and George, they continued to believe that her solution lay a great deal closer to home, and as far as they were concerned, the answer from Radcliffe settled the question. They weren’t even disappointed for her, they were relieved. And like Queenie, they said it was meant to be. But unlike the old black woman who had cared for her, they seemed almost pleased to see her dreams ended. And through it all, Paxton felt as though somehow she had disappointed her father, as though she had let him down, because she had been turned down by his alma mater. She wanted to say that to someone, to admit how terrible she felt, but for once she didn’t think Queenie would understand, and it was obvious that her mother and brother wouldn’t either. And her own friends were wrapped up in their own miseries and joys. Everyone was totally obsessed with the schools they were hearing from, and whether they were getting turned down or accepted.
    The boy who’d invited her to the prom called that night, and she tried to share some of her feelings with him but all he could talk about was having just been accepted by Chapel Hill, and he seemed not even to hear her. It seemed to be a time for solitary grief or celebration. And that night when she went to bed, she lay there thinking of what Queenie had said that afternoon, and wondering if the idea was totally mad, or if it was worth thinking about.