MILENA'S WEDDING ADRIENNE KENNEDY
T
he first time Milena spoke of Crawford had been at the affair at the University, a tea welcoming the new English professor, Professor Grossman, myself. Over the clatter of tea things she pursued me humming Wagner and speaking of Crawford. I had come to Ghana for peace. Yet there Milena was after me speaking of loving and wanting to marry March Crawford; Crawford the brilliant swaggering Negro sociologist from Chicago, one
of those highly extroverted men who is always followed about by ranks of students, a brutal dynamic captain, obsessed with his work. I admired him. And I noticed that he stared at me a great deal . . . . . . He stared at me the way Blake Hall had stared at me a year ago. Yes, the class had been reading Kafka. Blake had sat in the last row. He had looked younger than his eighteen years, all paleness, his body slender and of medium height. He was fair-skinned, even whitish, that whiteness that is peculiar to Negroes that
are light skinned. To add to his paleness he had golden hair, straight hair, that he wore short and cropped close to his head. His most endearing feature was his blue eyes. He had not spoken in class unless the Professor forced him to speak. His voice was soft. Most of the time he sat quite
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