A few nights ago, I had the wonderful pleasure of sharing kisses with a black woman. (She is also of American indian descent.)
Ohh...mmyyyy... sttaarrrrrrssssssss. Her lips were so very full and so very soft I could have died. I was weak in the knees afterwards.
I've come a long way... ... from the first memory I have of an African-American woman.
Queen, her actual given name, stood in my grandfather's kitchen in a starched white dress. I was probably knee-high to her and she looked like a statue to me. She was immaculate and she laughed at whatever it was I said when I noticed her.
The year? Let's say... 1971.
There was a table in the kitchen and she sat there as we ate, having her supper also. I asked her to the table and she said "No." She was okay at her own table, she told me.
Her hair was coiffed and she had big dimples and shining eyes. She cooked and cleaned for my grandfather. She made his eggs, bacon, grits, toast, juice and coffee in the morning. She put together his lunch, and dinner, too.
It wasn't until many years later, when I was in my 20s that I saw how and where she lived.
Her brother, O.C., was Grandaddy's yard man. He raked the sand beneath the mango tree into smooth rows and cleared fallen palm leaves away from the rocks under which the roly-polies I loved to observe congregated.
I didn't have a sense of superiority or inferiority, just wonder. Queen and O.C. always smiled at me. I remember them laughing and smiling.
They may have walked to Grandaddy's house from "Colored Town." The neighborhoods that make up that area are in the center of town, not on the outskirts. They may have been dropped off. I know that they lived less than a mile from Grandaddy's 1928 Spanish Revival-style house.
I don't remember the first time I heard the "N" word. When I did hear it, it usually wasn't pronounced correctly. The last syllable was more like "-gra" than "ger." I don't remember who or where or why. I just remember it was vitriolic.
When I attended kindergarten and elementary school, some of my classmates were black children. I attended school with a boy named "Major" and his pretty little sister named "Toy." I can'tremember their last names, but I can't remember anyone's last names from that far back... except the kid who slammed me in the head with a heavy metal truck and the boy next door and my sister's best friend.
Somehow, afterward, I learned fear and distrust. I can't see any reason why.
My grandfather was a physician who fought to offer hospital access to everyone in the community regardless of their ability to pay.
My father is a good man who supported Civil Rights by reporting on the violence in Alabama and Florida. He was nearly strangled by a farmer who caught him taking pictures of beatings while a police officer turned his back.... Ever since, he wore clip-on tie until he started working in Miami and abandoned button-down shirts for the breezy guayabera shirts favored by the Cubans.
But I digress... somehow along the way, it happened. It snuck into the schoolyards, it floated through a family reunion, it weaseled into a conversation, it climbed the tree where my friends and I watched passing cars.
I've said it. I have known this cloud of stupidity in my own heart.
I'd say from the innocence that started with an ebony goddess in white, I'm coming back around... to bringing someone beautiful to share the table, to having the honor of sharing the table....
I have learned to stop fearing and meet the people I fear. I have learned that softness trumps fear and it's response, violence, in animals, and in people. Not always, but almost.
There is a bunch of local kids who come to the library and play on the computers all day. Usually we have to tell at least one and sometimes many that they have to go home.
Today the kids were so good, just a little loud. I even told the children's librarian that I wish I had a prize for them. Well, the day was going great, and then... in 45 minutes after that contumacious co-worker of mine went on the desk, that the biggest instigator, who'd been good, was getting up and yelling as he left... having been told to go.
It's her intolerance that sets the mood. It's her inability to put up with anything outside of the realm of her little world that paints things to the unhappy and the violent.
It's only thought... the decision to move to the positive... that makes all the difference.
AllIcan say is I can't wait to kiss my friend again. And I don't think I will ever look at a black woman again without cracking a smile.
The title of this entry is from the last line of the poem "Snake" by D.H. Lawrence.
1 comment:
very thought-provoking entry. Growing up in the north I had my first real brush with racism when I was about 10 and visiting my oldest brother in Florida. My family was at a small grocery store in the middle of nowhere, and an old black woman was leaving the store with her bags. She was old and had so much to carry that I rushed ahead of her to open the door.
She stood there and would not leave while I held the door... there we were, on opposite ends of a continuum that I did not understand. I saw no color, and she could see nothing but color. My mother later explained that this woman had probably never had a door held for her.... and definitely never by a white child. She said what I did made the woman uncomfortable.
Even then I knew that there was something very dark and evil here... that I could not help someone who needed help...... that she could not trust me, a little kid. When I came to live in Florida as an adult, I quickly learned the southern custom of calling everyone ma'am and sir..... the respect granted to elders... even strangers. Every person of every color. And as an adult I was finally able to open doors for people and help people that needed help, regardless of our skin colors.
I never forgot that...... that life has been so bad for some people that they cannot trust a child. Bless that wonderful old woman in that store so many years ago, and the lesson she taught me about the world. I live every day trying to be worthy of trust.
judi
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