The Human Stain

Coleman went over to East Orange to see his mother. Mrs. Silk did not know of Iris Gittelman's existence, though she wasn't at all surprised when he told her that he was going to get married and that the girl was white. She wasn't even surprised when he told her that the girl didn't know he was colored. If anyone was surprised, it was Coleman, who, having openly declared his intention, all at once wondered if this entire decision, the most monumental of his life, wasn't based on the least serious thing imaginable: Iris's hair, that sinuous thicket of hair that was far more Negroid than Coleman's—more like Ernestine's hair than his. As a little girl, Ernestine was famous for asking, "Why don't I have blow hair like Mommy?"—meaning, why didn't her hair blow in the breeze, not only like her mother's but like the hair of all the women on the maternal side of the family.

In the face of his mother's anguish, there floated through Coleman the eerie, crazy fear that all that he had ever wanted from Iris Gittelman was the explanation her appearance could provide for the texture of their children's hair.

But how could a motive as bluntly, as dazzlingly utilitarian as that have escaped his attention till now? Because it wasn't in any way true? Seeing his mother suffering like this—inwardly shaken by his own behavior and yet resolved, as Coleman always was, to carry through to the finish—how could this startling idea seem to him anything other than true? Even as he remained seated across from his mother in what appeared to be a state of perfect self-control, he had the definite impression that he had just chosen a wife for the stupidest reason in the world and that he was the emptiest of men.

"And she believes your parents are dead, Coleman. That's what you told her."

"That's right."

"You have no brother, you have no sister. There is no Ernestine.

There is no Walt."

He nodded.

"And? What else did you tell her?"

"What else do you think I told her?"

"Whatever it suited you to tell her." That was as harsh as she got all afternoon. Her capacity for anger never had been and never would be able to extend to him. The mere sight of him, from the moment of his birth, stimulated feelings against which she had no defenses and that had nothing to do with what he was worthy of.

"I'm never going to know my grandchildren," she said.

He had prepared himself. The important thing was to forget about Iris's hair and let her speak, let her find her fluency and, from the soft streaming of her own words, create for him his apologia.

"You're never going to let them see me," she said. "You're never going to let them know who I am. 'Mom,' you'll tell me, 'Ma, you come to the railroad station in New York, and you sit on the bench in the waiting room, and at eleven twenty-five A.M., I'll walk by with my kids in their Sunday best.' That'll be my birthday present five years from now. 'Sit there, Mom, say nothing, and I'll just walk them slowly by.' And you know very well that I will be there. The railroad station. The zoo. Central Park. Wherever you say, of course I'll do it. You tell me the only way I can ever touch my grandchildren is for you to hire me to come over as Mrs. Brown to baby-sit and put them to bed, I'll do it. Tell me to come over as Mrs. Brown to clean your house, I'll do that. Sure I'll do what you tell me. I have no choice."

"Don't you?"

"A choice? Yes? What is my choice, Coleman?"

"To disown me."

Almost mockingly, she pretended to give that idea some thought.

"I suppose I could be that ruthless with you. Yes, that's possible, I suppose. But where do you think I'm going to find the strength to be that ruthless with myself?"

It was not a moment for him to be recalling his childhood. It was not a moment for him to be admiring her lucidity or her sarcasm or her courage. It was not a moment to allow himself to be subjugated by the all-but-pathological phenomenon of mother love. It was not a moment for him to be hearing all the words that she was not saying but that were sounded more tellingly even than what she did say. It was not a moment to think thoughts other than the thoughts he'd come armed with. It was certainly not a moment to resort to explanations, to start brilliantly toting up the advantages and the disadvantages and pretend that this was no more than a logical decision. There was no explanation that could begin to address the outrage of what he was doing to her. It was a moment to deepen his focus on what he was there to achieve. If disowning him was a choice foreclosed to her, then taking the blow was all she could do. Speak quietly, say little, forget Iris's hair, and, for however long is required, let her continue to employ her words to absorb into her being the brutality of the most brutal thing he had ever done.

He was murdering her. You don't have to murder your father.