Separate and Unequal

I'm very pleased to introduce Jonnie Martin to you. I invited some other writers to share their race and culture experiences, and Jonnie is the first. If we cannot view our experiences through the lens of honesty and forthrightness, we cannot begin to heal our shameful history of racism and look forward to a new unified America.

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They say that fish do not know that they live in water – it surrounds them, cradles them, feeds them -- it is all that they know.  Growing up in the south in the 40’s and 50’s was not so different.  We white southerners lived in a segregated world that cradled and fed us and it was all we knew.  It was all I knew until I was 16 and a brave man challenged me into awareness.

The year was 1955 in Arlington, Texas; I was a sophomore studying history and current affairs under one of the most popular teachers, a freckle-faced sandy-haired man we all lovingly called “Coach” because he also taught P.E. and managed the B-team in football.  He never berated or punished – only his encouragement led the boys to resounding victories on the gridiron. 

The year prior, the Supreme Court had issued its Brown v. Board of Education ruling calling for the desegregation of schools, but there was resistance throughout the south and a raging debate to maintain the “separate but equal” worlds of black and white.  On this particular day, Coach opened civics class with a counter to this popular notion:  “There is no such thing as separate but equal,” he softly drawled.

Most of my fellow sophomores reacted silently with a shrug – whatever – and continued passing notes or exchanging playful jabs.  A few were concerned with the threat of busing, but most of the heat of this issue was generated by parents.  Most of us did not even know a Negro, the common term for African-Americans in that era.

My reaction was different, however.  I had been known for my strong opinions and my sometimes-unpopular editorials as a teenage journalist and I was a force on debate teams.  Like any good debater, I could unemotionally take either side of an argument, but on that particular day I found myself taking the side of the “separatists” and with a vengeance that surprised and confounded me.

From my front row vantage point, I began to pepper Coach with separatist views.  Perhaps as a child of the south, these were the only views I knew, or at least the ones that echoed most loudly in my ear.  They were the words I had heard many a time, from friends, neighbors, family – even preachers.  They felt right and righteous as they spilled out with energy.

Coach responded to each salvo in a slow, tranquil manner, each answer well-reasoned.  I immediately punctured each peaceful response, mutilating the air with a barrage of sharp-edged retorts and piercing accusations.  “Negroes will be happier with their own kind, their friends, and we with ours.  Isn’t social development a part of our education?” I heard myself say in a snarky tone.  “Wouldn’t your children want that?” I added.

The class fell into a rapt attention as the debate heated up.  No one stirred; ears tuned to the strange war; eyes frozen on Coach, sitting immobile at his desk.  His voice continued in gentle registers but his pale and freckled complexion began to reflect inner pressure.  Red seeped from shirt collar to receding hairline.

“Equality means treating people the same,” he said.  “Negroes are the same as us.  We cannot pretend that separate schools, separate neighborhoods and restaurants and water fountains compare to any form of equality,” he intoned.  Calm.  Still.  No outward show of animosity.  Softness in his gray eyes.

Even though I had a scrappy personality, I normally respected my elders so I am not certain what caused me to ratchet up the debate with such vehemence.  My encyclopedic mind sifted through all that I had been taught in my 16 years of southern living and with the debater’s keen sense of the kill, I unleashed the mortar:  “If you believe Negroes are your equal, would you marry one?”

Coach began to slowly nod his head and through pursed lips expelled some of the growing pressure.  “Yes,” he said.  “If I loved her, I would marry her.”

A gasp escaped the room.  In an instance they all knew, my fellow teenagers – whose parents ran the community and the Baptist Church.  The PTA and the School Board. Whose parents decided the fate of Coach.  They all knew that this most gentle of men had taken a dangerous stand for what he believed in.

And I knew.  Other things as well – more than I could sort through quickly.  Somehow we went on with class that day but my mind absorbed none of it.  I do not even remember leaving the room or getting through the rest of my schedule.  I do recall that my life was upside down and it would be a long time before I sifted through the teachings of that day in 1955 and righted myself.

I do remember deep feelings of sorrow that I had placed Coach in such a precarious position and that I had the greatest of admiration – adoration-- for a man of such deep and unswerving goodness.  I felt a deep and abiding shame.  But the overwhelming emotion was one of confusion for I was certain that I did not believe a single word I had said in the debate.  I was fairly certain I was not prejudiced but unforgivably ignorant.

Certainly I had been programmed to bigotry in those first 16 years and by some of the people I loved most dear.  I recalled an incident just two years prior.  I was 14 and in that era it meant I could not car-date, and one of my joys of life was to accompany my grandfather and his fiancé to “family” dances – held in simple halls with broad-planked floors and fiddlers music—where other families knew ours and I was treated as a princess.  It was my weekly joy.

That same year I had a crush on a 9^th grade boy named Mike Lopez and asked him to go to a church hayride with me.  He accepted – but when my grandfather learned about this he forbade me to go.  “No granddaughter of mine is going to date a Mexican” he declared and threatened to withdraw my dancing privileges.  I went to the hayride with Mike – maybe it was because I was stubborn; maybe I knew it was the right thing to do.  And I gladly suffered the consequences.

What difference did it make that Mike was Mexican, I thought at the time, and that incident flooded back to me in 1955.   Then I realized I did not care what color a person was, or what religion, or what country of origin.  All I cared about was the goodness in their heart, and was that not the lesson I had learned in church?

The fact that I had argued the wrong side of a moral issue came quickly into my understanding, but it took much longer to forgive myself for not seeing the truth sooner.  Yes I was only 16, and an imprint of the south, but how did I pass by those black-or-white-only water fountains hundreds of times in the department stores and not wonder aloud or ask questions?  How could I have sung in church that Jesus loves the little children. . . yellow, red, black and white . . . and not questioned the status quo, the culture, the laws that were very different than the song.

Eventually I had to stop berating myself and move on to a new challenge – bravely revealing my opposition to racism, my tolerance and liberalness, to those people who had not gone through the same epiphany.  The challenge of living with and loving people whose views were so different than mine.  And the challenge of trying to do my small part in eliminating bigotry.

Fifty-eight years later I am still surprised and disappointed that as a people we have not erased racial prejudiced.  I am shocked when someone speaks out at a 2013 CPAC meeting and defends the benefits of slavery, and the room does not explode with objections. 

And though I abhor bigotry in its every form, by my very background I understand the challenge of pulling ourselves away from the biases of our culture.  It is hard for us to be a rogue fish, to see what is going on, to say “hey, I am surrounded by water – fetid water – and I’m going to change this.” 

It does seem that progress has been made in the years since my school experience, although not nearly fast enough for those who are the targets of prejudice.  Of that I am sure. But it seems to me more fish are doing this now, more than in my day, and for that I am thankful.

Jonnie Martin is a former journalist, now a novelist and blogger at www.jonniemartin.com.  She holds a BA in Literature and Creative Writing from Marylhurst and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Queens of Charlotte. 

Passionate Martyr

I remember my parents taking me to the Buster Brown Shoe Store when I was little, maybe four or five. It was in downtown Albany, probably on or near Central Avenue, and I’m not sure why they brought me there as usually my shoes were bought at the nearest big box discount store, not Wal-Mart back then, but similar.

The shoes we bought were Mary Jane’s, and they were for Easter. The salesman walked behind the counter to ring up the shoes, and he told me I could come on back and choose a plastic egg with pastel beads inside of it from the glass case beneath the counter.

I squealed, ran behind the counter, pulled out an egg with a clear top and blue bottom, and clutched it to my chest. My excitement and urgent determination made the salesman laugh, and I felt my cheeks warm, embarrassed that I had shared my emotions with a stranger.

Today, I’m that same person, shy of temperament but teeming with emotion. I can’t help but communicate it. When I speak or write about race, culture, injustice, and the human condition, I feel the urgency, and I want to share it in spite of my fear of strangers. Afterwards I feel different emotions: remorse for burdening others with our sometimes painful experiences; sadness that I cannot reach more people; hope that I’ve opened the eyes of even one person; frustration that change is slow; anxiety that I’ve revealed too much; desire for solitude; longing for connection; doubt feeding my insecurities; and fear roiling my insides.

If I listened to my fears, I would not have accomplished one thing in life. They scream at me. They predict failure, danger, and death.  I cover my ears, try to calm my breathing, focus only on the next moment in time, and keep going.

I used to tell myself that I could do anything temporarily, for seconds, then minutes, then longer, and that helped keep me going, too. I keep my goals in site: go to college even though neither parent graduated high school; don’t go back home where I feel abandoned and unloved; meet and marry a man whose race is different from mine and know this fact will cause many people to question my sanity, directly impact our life through racism (affecting our economic and quality of life opportunities), and socially spurn us; have children when others express the irresponsibility of bringing mixed race children into a racist society; choose to leave the comfort of academia and move into the corporate world to grow my career, contribute substantially to the family finances, and become well-known in my field as an expert, leader, and trainer; speak up and fight when injustice, racist actions, or prejudice affects our family or others; choose to be dissatisfied with middle-age weight gain, lose 50 pounds, and keep it off for over ten years; start a master’s degree at 45 and finish a second one at 53; move to another state where we know no one; and start a blog that relies on personal experience to talk about race, gender, and culture.

Every person has stories of triumph, failure, and moving through fear to obtain goals. I love hearing people’s stories. Usually within a short time of meeting people I’ve asked enough questions to learn what stories are important to them and define who they are.

In a marriage and family counseling class that I took during my first master’s degree, the professor asked us to introduce ourselves in a few sentences.  I said, “I live a multicultural and interracial life. I’m Italian and Irish-American. I bill myself as a passionate martyr.”

It was a nod to my interethnic upbringing and how it shaped my view of the world and my place in it.

My introduction caused many classmates to laugh. Pretty good for a woman who had a panic attack outside the classroom of the first counseling class I registered for a few years before then.  Back then I wondered why a middle-aged woman, secure in her career and job, would think about going back to school with students who were about the same age as my daughters. Could I contribute anything of value to the classroom discussions? I discovered I wanted to know more about myself, about our multicultural world, and about people in general, and this was one way to gain the skills to do that.

I am that passionate martyr.

(Excerpt from essay Creating a Cultural Context in American Memoir)

Many Americans are not aware they are surrounded by a cultural context that uniquely molds them and colors their perceptions of their experiences and of others. This is particularly true of white Americans. They may say, “I’m not ethnic, I’m white,” for example, but what does being “white” mean? Every individual has an ethnicity, the heritage and social/cultural customs, beliefs and values of a particular group, and has also been influenced dramatically by “social class, religion, migration, geography, gender oppression, racism, and sexual orientation, as well as family dynamics (McGoldrick, Giordano, Garcia-Preto, p.1).” Add personality and temperament to the mix, and no two people are exactly alike.

Every American came from somewhere else. Some traveled over a strait that connected the continents thousands of years ago. Others traveled to escape oppression in their home countries. Some were brought here by force. People settled in areas they felt comfortable in, maybe choosing to live with people like themselves, or near places of worship, or certain topographies that felt familiar, or a particular climate, or where the jobs were. Some people were forced to live on the plantations they labored at, or on reservations, or in urban ghettos, or in rural isolation. These circumstances created a cultural context in which people lived and developed and learned about themselves and others.

Monica McGoldrick emphasizes in her book, Ethnicity and Family Therapy, how important the legacy of migration is when she says, “All Americans have experienced the complex stresses of migration. And the hidden effects of this history, especially when it goes unacknowledged, may linger for many generations. Families’ migration experiences have a major influence on their cultural values (p.19).”

The legacy of ethnicity is passed from one generation to the next, sometimes clearly, as in speaking a native language or practicing traditions. Other ethnic clues are passed down subtly: maybe the turn of a phrase or an unattributed tenet or a story shared from one generation to the next. Sometimes traditions and language are lost over the generations, perhaps through forced or voluntary assimilation into a dominant culture or through physical distance from one’s origins.

Stereotypes are negative generalities that become internalized by the people they are about and by the people who construct them. Their intention is often to hurt, oppress and segregate ethnic or cultural groups. They may be grounded in a bit of truth, but their intent is dishonest and disingenuous.

But there are generalities about ethnicity, race, culture and gender that can enlighten and normalize. These generalities are never meant to define a person, because so many forces in life shape a unique individual, and each of us is unique. Yet knowing that a certain ethnicity or culture tends to think in similar ways, shares a common belief system and historical legacy, or acts in collective synergy, can lend understanding or the ability to step into the shoes of another and experience the world through his or her point of view. The more an individual can learn about the unique lens through which he or she views the world, the more such knowledge can engender tolerance for other perspectives and people and a better understanding about oneself.

McGoldrick describes stereotyping this way:

Although generalizing about groups has often been used to reinforce prejudices, one cannot discuss ethnic cultures without generalizing. The only alternative is to ignore this level of analysis of group patterns, which mystifies and disqualifies the experience of groups at the margins, perpetuating covert negative stereotyping, as does the failure to address culture explicitly per se, considering socioeconomic, political, and religious influences more important. Others avoid discussion of group characteristics altogether, in favor of individual family patterns maintaining, “I prefer to think of each family as unique” or “I prefer to think of family members as human beings rather than pigeonholing them in categories.” Of course, we all prefer to be treated as unique human beings. But such assumptions prevent us from acknowledging the influence of cultural and group history on every person’s experience (p. 13).

As a memoir writer, I think it is even more important to understand one’s cultural legacy. A memoirist is writing a particular story from a particular point of view and a particular perspective. The story is singularly unique yet it resonates beyond the writer.

I do not believe every story must be written from a cultural perspective, but acknowledging that it is one lens through which a life is experienced enriches the depth of story. For example, I was raised in a bicultural family. My father was a first generation Italian-American, and my mother was a war bride of Irish descent from Australia. Being raised in a family with recently immigrated parents definitely had an impact on how I experienced mainstream American culture. In fact I often felt on the fringes, an outsider, with many of my peers.  When I first began to study the ethnic tension in my home life, I did not account for the legacy that my Irish heritage contributed. I only thought about the cultural aspects of being Australian and Italian, but a deeper search revealed that my mother being Irish-Australian mattered just as much to my story.

When I read the following in McGoldrick’s book, Ethnicity and Family Therapy, as I studied toward a master’s degree in counseling, I felt a sense of understanding for my mother I had not experienced before:

The Irish people are a people of many paradoxes. While having a tremendous flair for bravado, they may inwardly assume that anything that goes wrong is the result of their sins. They are dreamers but also pragmatic, hard workers… They are good humored, charming, hospitable, and gregarious, but often avoid intimacy. They love a good time, which includes teasing, verbal word play, and sparring, yet are drawn to tragedy. Although always joking, they seem to struggle continuously against loneliness, depression, and silence, believing intensely that life will break your heart one day (p. 595).

This simple paragraph, perhaps feeling stereotypical to some, felt as if it were specifically talking about my mother.

When my husband and I met freshman year of college, a new cultural and racial construct contributed to the perspective through which I view the world. My husband is African-American. His family is descended from Africans brought here against their will to be used as slaves. It’s important to note that his historical legacy sets him apart from African-Americans who immigrated to the US by choice, and how new they are generationally to the US. His family also migrated from the South to the North. This had a cultural impact as well. Interracial marriage, though more common, is still statistically rare. “Factoring in all racial combinations, Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld calculates that more than 7 percent of America’s 59 million married couples in 2005 were interracial, compared to less than 2 percent in 1970.”^[1]

McGoldrick has this to say about intermarriage:

Although, as a nation, we have a long history of intercultural relationships, until 1967 our society explicitly forbade racial intermarriage, and discouraged cultural intermarriage as well, because it challenged White supremacy. But traditional ethnic and racial categories are now increasingly being challenged by the cultural and racial mixing that has been a long submerged part of our history. Intimate relationships between people of different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds offer convincing evidence that Americans’ tolerance of cultural differences may be much higher than most people think (p. 26).

She goes on to say, “Couples who choose to ‘marry out’ are usually seeking to rebalance their own ethnic characteristics, moving away from some values as well as toward others (p. 27).”

When we had children, we created yet another cultural, racial and ethnic dynamic. My daughters straddle race and culture in a way neither my husband nor I ever could.

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[1] After 40 Years, Interracial Marriages Flourishing, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18090277/ns/us_news-life

Facebook Sedition 2: I Gotta D'Agata

Yesterday I responded on Facebook to a blog posting about John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain. The posting was very astute – it was, after all, written by one of the preeminent teachers and writers of creative nonfiction essay. I, however, stated my ambivalence and said I understood D’Agata’s point that facts in creative non-fiction don’t always have to be absolutely accurate. It’s not journalism and it’s not biography. And in terms of writing a disclaimer of such in the form of a preface in order to alert the reader, well, I thought that was akin to a TV program alert that states, “Don’t do this at home,” as if the audience is too dumb to figure that out.  If you are reading memoir, then you might suppose that some things are not 100% accurate, or as my mother-in-law says, “Why you gotta tell every little fart (pronounced “faht”)?”

With D’Agata’s book, I remember feeling like I was in on the secret as I read it – his writing sounded reportorial yet I sensed his play and exaggeration of certain things as the book went on. Besides, as I flippantly pointed out, his omission of the preface allowed him to publish two books rather than just one.

My post was removed minutes later. It’s removal put me in a stew.

One of the other posters asked me (after my post was removed) if I wouldn’t be upset if the date of a loved one’s passing was changed to make the story better. I said no, but, maybe upon thinking about it, I would be upset if the date was wrong in the loved one’s obituary, which, by the way, would be written at the time of the passing and not as a memory.

Thinking about it more, I realize that I always remember the date of Ronald’s and my first meeting as January 20, 1976. Thirty-two years later (I had that as thirty years originally, but I didn’t want you to think I was lying – it was December 2007) as we were packing to move south, I pulled out all my old journals (and shredded them! My God, I was histrionic!), and happened to come across the date that we actually met. To tell you the truth, I still don’t remember it, and for always in my mind, it will be January 20, 1976. Am I lying? And does it matter what the exact date was? I don’t actually say the date in my memoir, and many other dates are just referred to as spring of 1978 or winter of whatever. I’m terrible at dates. Ask any of my friends and they will tell you I’ve called them and said, “I know you have a birthday sometime around now. Did I miss it?” I changed majors in undergraduate school from journalism to drama (and then finally to English education) just because the facts didn’t particularly interest me. I was more into the human aspect of the story, and I still am.

When the human aspect is considered, facts get blurry. Just sit at the table of any family reunion and listen to variations of the same family story. “No, it wasn’t Uncle Tony, it was Uncle Joe,” or “No, they didn’t go fishing, they went hunting.” Or what about the stories that never really happened, but they’ve been told so many times they have become family lore? Are they lying? No, because memories become truth and our memories are faulty and changeable.  They are dependent on so many things, as elucidated in my last post, and I didn’t even list all the variables that impact how an event is remembered.

Isn’t that what readers are seeking when they read memoir? Don’t they want to learn of that particular author’s perspective on events in his/her life? And do the particularities – the truths or facts – really matter, if the story is placed in context and in time and the author elicits feeling? Did you really believe everything you read in Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club? Didn’t the title hint at least a little that she was a member of the club she wrote about? It didn’t make me like the book less.

Facts will always matter to some people, of course, but not to all. I’ve learned I can’t please everyone, but I can work at pleasing myself through my most honest and heartfelt literary representation of my story.

Maybe all that thinking isn’t what got my post deleted. Perhaps it was my audacity at posting my blog’s URL. I didn’t realize that it would post a giant photo of me and look like an ad. I’m not technically proficient in social media, and I swear I’ve posted the URL before and it was just an address. I posted it because I had touched on D’Agata in my own post that week. It was relevant to the discussion, even if not as astute as the preeminent writer/teacher’s post.

An agent, the one I stopped contact with because she wanted me to rewrite my memoir as some sort of exposé, told me that I had to build a social media presence. Was I wrong to post my URL? Did I overstep some invisible barrier? Did it have to do with the social media hierarchy of who’s who? Classism? Elitism? Yes, the preeminent writer/teacher has credentials, many credentials. He is well respected and sought after. Do I not know my place?

I have a few credentials, too, but I don’t refer to them much because why do they really matter? They were degrees and milestones I wanted to accomplish. Do they make me smarter? Am I a better person for having completed them? Two of the smartest people I ever knew were my parents, and neither one graduated high school.

My first and greatest credential is that I am a fellow human being. One thing I learned over the years is that I don’t assume anything about anyone, which is why I’m trying really hard not to assume I know why preeminent writer/teacher deleted my post.

When I sold jewelry on commission in retail, I was one of the few associates who did not size up potential customers. I treated people with exactly the same attention whether they planned to spend $1.99 or $1,999.00.  Oftentimes the very people that other associates snubbed ended up spending the most money. It was the human interaction and the chance to be of service to another that motivated and excited me. It didn’t make me the best sales associate by a long shot, if commissions were the only measure, but it made my customers feel valued and me feel good. All humans deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, even when they sometimes make it difficult to do so. Social media was supposed to be the great equalizer, but it is not.

There’s the rub. When we talk about truth and facts in the social media world, how many people present their lives truthfully? They are already editing and altering their life stories by what they post and what they don’t. Some create whole personas and life stories, often for bad intent. We live in an untruthful world because we are human and flawed. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t help that we view the world through a particular lens or that our memories are fluid or that we are inherently selfish and egocentric. Every major historical event comes down to someone’s ego being offended, and don’t even start me on how biased history is. Or how blatantly politicians lie to gain supporters. Talk about untruths!

How I feel about people is my greatest ambivalence. I have a strong motivation to serve. Yet people disappoint, and I know I disappoint them. All we can do is listen to another’s stories with respect, an open heart, and an open mind, just as they are told to us, whether orally, written, or through action, art, music and dance.  The way they are told and what is told are as important as the stories themselves, lies and omissions not excepted.  They define who we are and give us common ground. They are the great equalizer.

Reality Check

I’m swimming in the muck of my emotions this week. It’s tiring and I can’t see the shoreline. You might imagine that it sucks to be me lately. But I’m not feeling that. I’m all in for the journey. Sometimes I just let go and allow my feelings to sling some shit, and this is one of those times.

I think we are veering away from emotions lately except for anger maybe. I know lots of people who are angry. They’re angry we have a black president. They’re angry the dag gum government is making them pay taxes. They’re angry the dag gum government isn’t imposing Christian beliefs in the bedroom and in women’s vaginas. They’re angry because they can’t conceal weapons while picnicking in the state parks. They’re angry ethnic minorities are growing in numbers in our country. They’re angry because they are white and it doesn’t matter like it used to.

Others quash their emotions with drugs – prescription, legal or illegal. Then they don’t have to feel a thing.

Others keep it light: OMG, LMFAO, SMH (what does that even mean?).

Some live vicariously through reality TV. Okay, I admit my infatuation with it, but I promise you, I don’t inhale.

But why are we so fascinated? Do you remember the first reality show? It was called The American Family and it ran on PBS in 1973. I partook. The Louds, the family filmed for the show, claimed editing emphasized the negatives. Others thought they used the presence of the cameras as an opportunity to behave badly. Oldest son Lance came out in front of the cameras while mom Pat asked her husband Bill for a divorce.

The show led the way for other shows such as Real World that debuted on MTV. Now we are bombarded with reality shows, but I think reality has gone for a swim.

I watch three shows regularly: American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, and Dance Moms. I have partaken in occasional voyeurism with shows such as Toddlers & Tiaras, Dancing with the Stars, Pawn Stars, Call of the Wildman and a few others as well as several shows on HGTV. Aside from sometimes sapping my emotions and my intelligence (I can only hope they are regenerative), I can’t quite figure out why I am so drawn to these types of shows.

Maybe I am drawn because the shows are like memoir, aren’t they? They don’t show every agonizing moment, thank you very much, but edit it all down to fit into a defined time frame and particular topic or event. The dramatic content is there for effect, to make the viewer feel something.

The genre of memoir has felt the sting of slung shit. John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain, is in the ring of reality right now. He is defending his right to alter facts in order to serve the literary art of essay writing. Now he didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s how I perceive the fight. I read About a Mountain and I liked it, even as I came upon escalating statistics and variations of the truth. The book made me feel something. But I cannot say what I feel about the altering of verifiable facts because, as D’Agata argued, facts are often biased, just ask any politician. I’ve been guilty of it myself, and I can’t imagine a single one of you, readers, who can honestly say you’ve never used a fact that is purposely slanted to support what you wanted to say. Go back up to my paragraph on angry people. See what I mean?

My sister emailed me to tell me, among other things, that she read my post about our library visits when we were kids, but she told me I had the library wrong. It was not the NYS Public Library but the Harmonus Bleeker Library on Dove Street. She said she loved that place, too. Did it matter in my reminiscence that I got the library wrong? Is it considered an untruth because my child’s mind and my adult memory melded two places into one? I don’t think so. I recalled the feel of the place and the memory, and Peggy, my sister, knew exactly what I was talking about. As for the rest of you readers, does the exact place really matter?

So where does that leave truth and reality? We are mere humans, and truth is elusive because it will always be perceived through the lenses we wear. Those lenses are prescribed by ethnicity, culture, race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, education, religious beliefs, experience, nature and nurture. Reality? Still viewed and perceived through those same lenses. We are flawed. That’s why I don’t mind swimming in the muck every once in a while.

Here’s some reality for you, readers, from my memoir. And, no, I wasn’t there.

(Excerpt from Chapter 6: Being Black All by Myself, Salt and Pepper: A Memoir about Interracial Love – still waiting to hear your opinion on the title)

A week later Ronald was on overtime duty at Fire Station 6. They responded to a fire call at the parking garage of the hospital – smoke on the roof, origin unknown. A blizzard pelted the region, the accumulation of snow already over a foot. The temperature was somewhere in the teens. The smoke was heavy, the snow was heavy, and visibility was zero. Ronald and his partner carefully made their way through the snowy, smoky fog, looking for the source of the fire.

I had left work early to pick up my parents-in-law. Sylvester Sr. had an appointment for a biopsy of his prostate gland, and he would not be able to drive afterwards. Though I hated driving during a snowstorm, I wanted to be there for both Sylvester and Bertha.

Ronald found the source of the smoke and fire – the equipment room – and turned to head toward it when he slipped on hard packed snow, slid backwards, and fell. He suddenly felt water all around him. His seventy pounds of fire equipment dragged him down, down, down, below the surface, and he wondered if he would touch bottom. He did – seven feet down. He wore his breathing apparatus, and he pushed and fought his way back up. When he broke the surface, he found himself trapped in a watery, oily, debris-filled drainage pit with smooth concrete sides and the edge of the pit three feet above him. He closed his eyes.

“Tread water,” Ronald said in his mind, remembering the first time we took adult swim lessons and the instructor nicknamed him “the Rock” because he immediately sank to the bottom of the pool. Ronald could not reach his radio and stay afloat, and he wondered if anyone knew that he had slipped into the drainage pit.

His partner had seen him disappear and radioed for help. There were men in the bucket truck parked at the side of the garage and they had seen him disappear, too. They sent a search and rescue crew. After several minutes of searching through the snow and smoke, they located the drainage pit – the grated lid had been removed to plow the large amounts of snow directly into it, but the discovery of the smoke had led to emergency calls and the lid was forgotten. They made their way toward it.

Ronald began to tire and thought he might slip back under the surface. He looked at the oil swirling in rainbows around his arms and the garbage closing in on him. The chill drilled into his bones and made them ache and grow heavy. Anxiety tightened his chest and, despite his breathing apparatus, no air reached his lungs. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his arms and legs slowing to near inertia.

He thought, “This is it; no one will find me.” Then he felt his mother’s hands tying his hood just the way he remembered her doing it when he was a boy; he smelled the lotion on her hands; and he heard the comforting sound of the string running through the hood of his jacket. Peace lay gently over him. The sound of voices, muffled as if deep inside his head, and the feel of hands yanking him out of the cold, wet tomb broke the memory’s spell.

Parenting Creativity Part 2

I’ve been thinking a lot about the arts and creativity again this week as I began to reread my memoir yet again. I hadn’t meant to reread it, but I had asked Ronald to read it again. After all, it is his story, too. When I printed it out to give to him, it felt and looked so inviting. Even as an avid Nook user, I find I still like to hold a physical book, feel the paper, and run my eyes over the words as they make patterns on the page.

As a child I loved the smell of libraries and the touch of books. Here’s a little reminiscence I wrote about one of my visits there when I was around four years of age:

A couple Saturdays a month Peggy (my big sister) walked me to the city bus stop. When the bus rolled to a stop in front of us, we climbed on board. Peggy dropped coins into the coin slot, we took seats side by side, and we rode into downtown Albany. We got off at State and Pearl Streets. Then we crossed State Street and climbed the concrete steps of the massive brick building fronted with Greek-styled columns that housed the New York State Museum of Natural History and the New York State Public Library.

 Once in a while we would turn away from the library and go into the museum. A life size model of a sperm whale skeleton hung above the entrance high in the air. We wandered through the circular paths from one exhibit to another. There were taxidermy animals set in natural habitats and wax figures of Indians sitting in long houses around campfires. One room was called the Gem Room, and each case held samples of sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds. An Ellis Island exhibit portrayed immigrants arriving on US shores for the first time as my grandparents had arrived from Montemurro, Potenza, Italy: wax mannequins crowded around steamer trunks, valises, and duffle bags that fit everything they owned, awaiting check-in.

Round and round we went, stopping to look at each exhibit while Peggy read the placard describing it, lost in the enormity of time and place. Soon the gift shop would be ahead of us, and sometimes Peggy would let me pick out a tiny museum memento, maybe a tiny plastic whale or wooly mammoth or a coin purse decorated with Indian beads, to take home with us.

Most Saturdays we did not go to the museum but to the NYS Public Library. The smell of musty books overwhelmed and the quiet enveloped me. On this day Peggy left me in the children’s section while she went searching for books to please her tastes. “Stay right here and don’t move,” she whispered. But there was no way I was going to go anywhere.

The library floor was cold dark tile. I sat cross-legged on it in the middle of the aisle, my dress pulled over my knees in a triangle, with books on either side of me in long wooden four-level shelves. I smelled the books, the pungent mustiness burning my nostrils; I touched their plastic jackets, and ran my fingernails over them, scratching the surface.

The pictures held me spellbound. Some were just line drawings; others were in color; and still others seemed to jump off the page. They spilled over into the words I could not yet read, and their colors and lines were textured with movement.  Make Way for Ducklings, Madeline’s Rescue, Ten Apples Up On Top, Are You My Mother?, Curious George, Happy  Birthday Moon – I knew them by the pictures on their covers. I scrambled on my knees up and down the aisle, pulling books off the shelf, and looking for ones I hadn’t taken out before and whose covers and pages attracted me in some way.

Peggy wandered back with a few books in the crook of her arm. “Let’s pick some books to take home, just four,” she said. I knew Peggy would read to me whatever books I chose. I picked just four because I knew she would take me to the library again when the books were due and let me take out more.

We checked the books out and walked back to the bus stop on the opposite side of the street from where we had gotten off. On the bus, Peggy dropped more coins into the slot and we took our seats for the ride home. Often a visit to the library exhausted me as no other play could, and I slept with my head on Peggy’s shoulder for the duration of the ride until she roused me at our stop on Central Avenue and Locust Park. “Come on, we have to get off now, “ she coaxed.

The walk home always seemed longer than the walk to the bus stop, and my feet felt heavy as bricks. I held my books against my chest, my arms tightly wrapped around them, lest I drop one in the road. They were my treasures found.

****

This week Cara astounded me with a beautiful short memoir film, a memoir in motion. It aroused and recalled my emotions and what it was like to let my seventeen-year-old twins Cara and Mackenzie move twelve hours away to pursue intensive dance training at a conservatory. The memory elicited tears as I recalled how, that first year, Ronald and I repeatedly wondered if we had done the right thing by sending them there. I cried that first year almost as much as they did. But the film was joyful as I witnessed Cara’s exploration of how she grew to love and emulate the very teacher she had at first questioned and for whom she felt anger, distrust and dislike. The dance duet between teacher and student, and then teacher peers, is evocative and moving. I showed it to Ronald and he said simply, “It’s beautiful.” Cara intuits her way through her artistic pursuits and through life, a whimsical, beautiful, artistic being.

Here’s the link, if you’d like to watch it: http://vimeo.com/36345833.

I wanted to share a photo of Mackenzie doing the very thing I shied her away from as a child when she begged to take gymnastics – “you’ll get hurt,” I admonished each time she brought it up. But I cannot figure out the technology to include it, so I will include a short piece from my memoir describing the circus arts she now performs in addition to dance:

(From Chapter 8, Watch Our Show – possible new book title: Salt and Pepper: A Memoir about Interracial Love – let me know your thoughts on it)

We would sit through many performances over the years: piano recitals, dance recitals, dance performances at the conservatory, and then their own productions and dance films.  We went to New York City to watch Mackenzie fly on fabric that was suspended from the ceiling, secured with giant carabiners. She spun in graceful circles. Then she scaled the fabric twenty feet up, twisting and turning it around her body, the long fabric tails flipping through the air.  Near the top she released her hold and spiraled downward, the fabric unwinding as if she were a spool and it the thread. Just as it looked as if she might not stop, she did, the fabric flexing bungee-like, her back arched, her legs and arms hanging backward toward the floor, looking like a spider in a web.

*****

Ronald and I had no map to follow when we grew up as artistic people. We had no mentors. We did not know about nor have access to special schools or conservatories that can immerse one in art and where one can meet other artists. We lacked drive perhaps, to push ahead anyway, as many, many artists did and continue to do. Maybe we were too sensitive and worried too much about the response to our creative endeavors. I still worry and feel disappointment. Maybe we needed stability more than the satisfaction one gets from creating. Or maybe we were too afraid of failure or what might lie ahead. No matter though, we still live artistic lives, now maybe a little more comfortable with our artistic endeavors than we were as young adults. And we raised two artists who forge ahead, not always sure of where they are going, but who are committed to living creatively and artistically.

Parenting Creativity

I had conversations with each of my daughters this week about their artistic pursuits. I originally wrote that sentence by describing the conversations as “nice” but that isn’t accurate. They were conversations about struggle, frustration, the process of sharing work and passion, and how hard it is to be an artist of any kind. We spoke about how an artist’s work is affected by where you present your work and who sees it. They’ve watched their own parents struggle with this as well and witnessed our feelings of failure and lack of personal satisfaction. There has been growth, but if it is only internal or only at home with no audience in sight, there is a sense of incompleteness about the process.

I’ve felt my own love/hate relationship with my creativity. As a writer and a daydreamer, my creativity isolates me. Yet I feel the urge to share my writing and then oftentimes end up disappointed by rejection (one agent told me to rewrite and “tell me how you feel.” Isn’t that the clichéd counselor’s exhortation?) or arguments (family and friends telling me what I experienced and how I perceived that experience is incorrect). That’s hard to take because it is my story, my memory, my vision, my perception, and my expression of what happened and how I processed it. The feeling is innate in the telling and the choices made during that telling.

Then I think of my husband, the most creative, sensitive, and artistic person I know. He’s been a successful artist. He’s led bands and recorded music.  He is driven to try repeatedly to collaborate but each time he feels that disappointment, the failure of not reaching a shared vision, his sense that others don’t have or want the same intensity of experience, and there he is, a musician left alone with his instrument. He has told Cara and Mackenzie time and again, “Do your own thing. Don’t wait or rely on others.”

One other thing he tells them, that I agree with and often repeat, is, “Amateurs help amateurs remain amateurs.”

Cara had her own bit of wisdom to impart today, to me, her mother. I told her I was rereading my memoir, going over it again, reading it out loud, and looking for weaknesses in the structure and the writing. I said, “I’m not liking it now. I think the second half is complicated.”

“Mom,” she said. “Don’t over edit. You’ll ruin it.”

 I know that. She’s right. My story is braided and complicated. That’s how my brain perceives things, too. It wouldn’t be my story if I edited that out. I saw that as I finished reading the last few pages of the memoir out loud an hour or so ago. It’s authentic and true to who I am and the story I’ve chosen to tell about me in all its complexity. It’s not a story about just race and racism; it’s a story about two creative, imperfect people who feel the impact of differentness in a racially constructed world.

We need that differentness that we bring to the creative process, else it would just be the same artistic product over and over, like thousands of same model cars made on the assembly line.  Some are blue, some are silver, and some are black, red or white, but they are the same damn car. There would be no individuality, no authentic emotional exchange, no true sharing of culture, spirit and humanity.

Mainstream culture embraces the car theory of artistic pursuit. Find a good artist that appeals to the masses; then duplicate him or her until the masses tire and want something else. Artists don’t choose to be tragic figures, but I understand how many end up that way.

Nurture your creativity. Accept its differentness. And when it grows mature and it gives you good advice, be open to it. That’s good parenting.

(Excerpt from essay Mother Mother)

I had a terrible fight with Ma when I was fourteen. I hung out with a group of girls, all living middle class lives. They spent their weekly allowances at the mall and bought T-shirts, Snoopy and Mickey Mouse stickers, Tiger Beat, a fan magazine, and 45s with hits by David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman. I didn’t get an allowance. Ma and Dad couldn’t afford to give me one, and our house looked nothing like their houses. It was cluttered, dusty, and greasy with worn-out furniture and raveling rugs covered in animal fur over asbestos tiled floors. A film of cigarette smoke blanketed every surface.

My newfound friends enjoyed ice-skating at the tennis courts on Locust Park. Just three blocks from my house, the tennis courts were flooded each winter by the village and the skating was free. The girls kept asking when I was going to come, and I wanted to go so I would not be left out or forgotten. They had already expressed their displeasure at my eccentric behavior when I spent a sleepover at one of their houses hunkered down in the corner with the novel Knock on Any Door, by Willard Motley. They couldn’t understand how an old, moldy paperback with a torn cover, taken from Ma’s bookshelf, could possibly be more interesting than looking at a centerfold of David Cassidy in the latest Tiger Beat issue.  But I found Nick “live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse” Romano much more intriguing. I couldn’t put the book down.

I asked Ma for ice skates, and she wandered into the cellar and pulled out a musty pair of skates from beneath a pile of junk. Peggy had used them a decade or so before. The leather was cracked and brittle, and they smelled bad. I hated them in comparison to the other girls’ brand new skates. When I put them on, the other girls sneered and said they were ugly. I had not skated before, and my ankles leaned inward and grew sore and tired within a short time. I struggled to hold back my tears and formulated my plan for getting new skates.

When I got home, I started crying. I told Ma how my ankles hurt from wearing the old skates and how much I needed a new pair. Ma lashed out at me, saying the kinds of things I was used to hearing like how selfish I was. I lashed back. Then I ran into my room, and sobbed for all I stood to lose by not having those skates.  In a few minutes, as I choked and blubbered, Ma came into my room, sat on the edge of the bed, hugged me, and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how much the skates meant to you. I’ll find a way.”

My victory felt shallow and tarnished, but I got my skates the next day. I know now that Ma had no money for skates and was more worried about putting food on the table. And she was right I was selfish. The minute I had those new skates on, though, I forgot about it. My ankles still sagged inward and hurt, but my skates were shiny and new.

I made sure, even if I went into debt, that Cara and Mackenzie never suffered my shame. It caused fights between Ronald and me as my store credit cards hit their limits, but I never wanted them to feel unworthy. In principal I didn’t allow them to wear the more expensive popular brands that many of the middle class kids wore. It was my way of keeping them grounded, and I reminded them how some of the other kids they went to school with might never have a new winter jacket or a warm pair of boots. Each year we donated clothes they had outgrown to the school nurse, so she could give them to students who needed them. I explained that their old winter jacket would become someone else’s new jacket and that if they saw someone wearing something that used to be theirs, they should never mention it. That’s how parenting is done sometimes, as a correction of the past. It doesn’t make it better or even right, but it happens just the same.

Fatal Attractiveness

Ashton Kutcher, sixteen years younger than his ex-wife Demi Moore, is grieving the end of his marriage by partying in Brazil with a bevy of young, beautiful models. In the meantime Demi struggles to heal and move on. This week she was hospitalized for a reaction to some drugs she took at a party she hosted at her home and is now headed to rehab for “exhaustion.” It is also rumored she is suffering from an eating disorder, possibly anorexia. She remarked in an interview with Harper’s Bizarre, "I would say what scares me is that I'm going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I'm really not lovable, that I'm not worthy of being loved. That there's something fundamentally wrong with me.”

At forty-nine Demi is five years younger than I am. I remember how beautiful I always thought she was and still is, but even beautiful women are plagued by vulnerability and insecurity. Society has us brainwashed, and men, too, to believe a woman is less than if her physical attributes don’t match a certain standard or when those attributes begin to change and fade with age. No matter how rationally and intellectually I view this issue, my emotions rule, and I find myself wondering if age will render me unlovable.

What can we learn from other cultures? That age brings the beauty of wisdom and the character of a life well lived.

(Excerpt from essay Staying on It: Beauty and Aging)

Norma, you're a woman of 50, now grow up. There's nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25.

~ Joe Gillis played by William Holden

Sunset Boulevard (1950)                                               

Just a few months shy of nineteen, I held Ronald’s hand as we strolled across the quad at Syracuse University in the early spring of 1976. The day was unseasonably warm, and the sun turned my brunette hair a golden red. 

“Yo, Ronnie,” a light-skinned black man, whom I would discover was Ronald’s childhood friend, called out from across the quad.

“Yo, Bill,” Ronald shouted back, his voice giddy. “This is Dianne.” He held my hand up and twirled me around so his friend could see his girl.

Ronald made me feel beautiful that day and he still does when he pulls me close to him and says, “You look very Dianne today” or when he talks about my eyes and laments how they bedazzled him.

Ma didn’t make me feel beautiful. She made me feel ugly from the inside out. She called me Witch Hazel, banshee and a hateful child. I thought that meant I was so filled with hate no one could ever love me. I imagined the hate seeped out of my soul through my skin and hair, making dirt cling to me and my hair twist and knot.

Ma’s German-born friend, a member of the Overseas Wives Club, looked at me one day when she was visiting us and shook her head. “She’s pallid. She looks sickly,” she said, as if I weren’t sitting right in front of her.

I can only remember two times when Dad said something about the way I looked. The first was when I was seventeen, and I cut my waist-length hair. He drove me to the beauty salon, the first time I had ever been to one and the first time someone who wasn’t Ma or a neighbor cut my hair. Dad sat out in the car and waited. I watched in the mirror as the hairdresser, a small, olive-skinned, deaf man, sheared off my long locks. I had asked him to save my hair, but he had misunderstood or forgotten, and piles of hair lay on the floor around the chair. Then he curled and sprayed, and I didn’t recognize myself. I thought maybe it was because he was deaf, and he hadn’t understood the style I wanted. As I approached the car, I saw Dad with his arm resting atop the open window, staring straight ahead. When he heard me, he turned, looked me up and down and said, “I don’t like it.”

I cried on the way home, and Ma led me into the bathroom and wet down the curls so they looked more natural.

By my eighteenth birthday, I had let my hair grow to my shoulders and had learned how to style it using a newly marketed handheld blow dryer and a round brush. That evening, dressed to go out with friends, I posed for pictures. In one of them I sit on the arm of the dark green sofa, leaning back seductively, my left hand on my hip, my chin up, and my legs crossed. My hair is feathered a la Farrah Fawcett. I wear aviator glasses, a fitted red T-shirt tucked into a denim miniskirt, and four-inch cork-heeled wedges.

When I came out of my bedroom, Dad whistled.

“Wow!” he exclaimed and my Uncle Rocco, who had stopped over for coffee, nodded approvingly. That was the first time I felt beautiful.

As I matured, Ma pointed out my flaws. “If I had a nickel, I’d stick it in the slot and get on the bus,” she mused while looking at my backside one day.

I don’t think Ma really saw me as ugly; she was bemoaning her own loss of youth and looks and taking it out on the person who most reminded her that they were fading. As a young woman during World War II, she had captured the attention of the soldiers stationed in her hometown of Ryde, Australia, including Dad, with her buxom figure, long legs, and her bawdy sense of humor.

She fretted as I matured, and maybe hoped if I remained a child, she might stop aging. I fought in vain with her to buy me a training bra when I turned twelve. It was embarrassing to be one of the few girls still wearing undershirts. I was so thrilled when I finally got one that I lifted my shirt up to show Dad.

Ma wouldn’t teach me how to pluck my brows or shave my legs, despite the teasing I got in middle school from the boys.  She worried I was too young to handle tweezers and a razor, but I solved my brow problem.  I squeezed two quarters together and yanked, over and over, until I had made my unibrow into two smooth brows that framed my large eyes. My soon-to-be sister-in-law taught me how to use Nair on my legs one day during one of Ma’s many hospital stays. Forty-two years later, I pluck my brows daily and call Sundays my hair removal day: top lip, under arms, legs and pubic area.

Now I see my own loss of youth and beauty. In seven years I’ll be the same age Ma was when she had a heart attack and died at sixty-one years old.

Rumble Jumble

My brain is rolling around loose in my skull this week.  It feels like a rumble jumble up there. It’s that time of year.

It’s coming off the Christmas holiday and going on a soup diet so I can get control of my sweet tooth and my fat cravings.

It’s having a nightmare about zombie heads that roll around and kill people. And the heads were people I knew. Somehow I was able to turn a few of the heads back into whole people not infected by the zombie germ. Can’t remember how I did it though.

It’s being back at work after a week and a half off and remembering how much I have to do and feeling frightened but up for it at the same time.

It’s about getting a bug to write another essay and letting the idea cogitate while reading up on my topic of interest. The research gives me a frame of reference and helps build structure to my  “pursuit of mental rabbits” (that’s Scott Russell Sanders’ phrase) as I start to pour out all my thoughts and emotions onto virtual paper.

It’s about getting a rejection for my memoir manuscript and licking my wounds and thinking about what I want to do next, even as I work at producing more writing. I did not submit to multiple small publishers, just one, even knowing that multiple submissions would have been more efficient. But I’m not sure what I think about the publishing world and if I want to be a part of it. I’m not looking to publish the next great bestseller. I’m not trying to be a full time writer. I’m not trying to gain credentials to get a great teaching gig.

It feels hard enough sometimes to be part of the corporate world in my day job and my career is on it’s downward ride to retirement, though I’m not sure when that will be. I’m a humanist in a capitalist society. I never did fit in, and I’m not sure I want to fit in, but I believe I have something to say and a unique way of saying it. I’ll be cogitating a lot on this in the next few weeks.

It’s about racism that creeps into my life when I’m not even thinking about it. Like when I was reading about the hateful people in Alabama who talk of terrorizing people by profiling the Hispanic population. Children are frightened to go to school and adults are afraid to go to work. How is this helping? It’s helping to “take back the country.” Except the people that want it back are the descendants of those who took it in the first place. Why can’t we all just get along?

Then Ronald and I went to Best Buy. I had my purse on my shoulder and Ronald had his man bag on his. He carries his Nook and a notepad and his phone in it. It’s about the same size as a small shoulder bag for women. As we entered the store, I turned my head to smile at the greeter, an older white male, but his expression stopped me short of smiling. He looked frightened and ready to flee or press the button on his walkie talkie to notify security.

“Do you have a return?” he asked, looking directly at Ronald.

“No,” Ronald responded. He never stopped walking.

After we left the store we looked at each other.  “Really?”

It’s not like we haven’t talked about it before. One incident, and we shrug it off as someone’s mistake or bad day. But add up a whole day’s, week’s or month’s worth, and I can see how a person of color can jump down the throat of someone who asks a seemingly innocent question. Celebrities lose their freedom to shop and spend leisure time because they are constantly recognized and swarmed by their fans. If you are a person of color in America, you never had that freedom in the first place. You are always being watched. What would it take to earn the freedom to experience stress free shopping, dining out, movie going? And why would one have to earn it? Isn’t it an inalienable right of being American and being human?

Maybe I’ve had too much soup. I’ve got that rumble jumble in my brain.

(Excerpt from Chapter 7, The Ubiquitous They, Shades of Tolerance: A Biracial Love Story)

I graduated with a dual degree in English Education and Speech Communication. I took the first job offered to me after graduation –bill collector – so I could continue to stay in Syracuse. I hated it and hoped a teaching position would come along soon.

That fall I was offered a teaching position in a rural school district outside of Syracuse right during the interview. I was too inexperienced to realize that should have concerned me. My first day, a chilled November day in 1979, was disastrous. I had strep throat, and I drove the forty-minute commute with a three-day old driver’s license in my purse. A bit shaky on the highway still, I talked to myself the whole way. I arrived at the school thinking how great it was that I had survived the drive only to discover that the other teachers had walked out due to an expired contract. When they finally came back in the building an hour later, the teacher, whose place I was filling, gave me a tour. She was quitting to have a baby.

As she guided me through the crowded halls, her hand instinctively held in front of her belly, she rattled on about the students.

“A lot of the students are going to be your age,” she said.

“Oh?” I said, feeling feverish and overwhelmed.

“They come from farms, and lots drop out during planting and harvest seasons,” she responded. “And I should tell you, we don’t have a drug problem like they do in the city schools. We have an alcohol problem. Not much else for teens to get into around here.”

Oh, no, anything but alcohol, I thought to myself, trying to keep up with the perky teacher, her belly seeming to propel her forward rather than slow her down.

She pointed to a student going in the opposite direction down the corridor. “She’s from the only black family in town,” she said, as if it were special news. “We don’t associate with them.”

My head swirled and all movement around me seemed to slow and stop. I lagged behind the teacher now, and she stopped to wait for me.

“Are you okay?” she asked, looking concerned.

“Fine, I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve got a sore throat.”

“It’s the cold weather. There’s a blizzard due this afternoon. Do you plan to move here? It’ll be a lot easier for you.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

I drove home in the blizzard, the wind howling and pushing my car sideways on the highway, my visibility near zero. But there was a blinding darkness in my mind, too, and I wasn’t sure which was worse.

Two hours later I pulled up to Peggy’s house, where I had been living again since graduation. I was exhausted, discouraged, and crying.

“What’s wrong?” Peggy asked when I came in the back door covered in snow. She was pregnant with her second daughter, and she seemed all belly like Ma had been when she was pregnant with Andy.

“I can’t go back there,” I said.

“Why? What happened?”

“They’ll be burning crosses on my car,” I said. “They don’t like black people. They’ve got no teacher’s contract. I almost died driving home. My throat is killing me.”

“Slow down. What are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do,” I said, sucking in air and wiping my hand across my eyes, smearing mascara across my face. “Quit.”

I dialed the number to the superintendent’s office and told her I was submitting my resignation.

“You can’t quit,” she said. “You signed the health insurance form.”

“There’s no contract,” I said. “You misled me.”

“Did you get offered another teaching job?”

“No,” I said.

“Did you know it is New York State law that you have to give thirty days notice?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll come teach for the thirty days, but that’s it.”

“Don’t bother,” She said, disgust oozing through the phone lines. “I better not find out you are taking another teaching job. I’ll have you blacklisted.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” I said, and hung up. Then I sat on the floor and cried.

“Dianne,” Peggy said, “What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll figure something out,” I said. I stood up to grab the phone and called Ronald.

“You should have stuck it out,” he said. He would, for twenty-five years, after he got on the Fire Department.

“I couldn’t.”

The next day I applied for Christmas work at J.C. Penney. I swallowed Orajel just before the interview so I could speak through an enflamed throat. Disappointment must have shown in my expression despite my best efforts.

“Don’t look so sad,” the chubby personnel manager said, rubbing his hand over his balding head. “I just offered you a job on the spot, and I don’t usually do that. The least you could do is smile.”

“I’m grateful, really,” I said, but I doubt I convinced him.

Out on the floor in the women’s accessories department, I was told to keep a special eye on black shoppers. The black undercover security guard would trail them if we called his number and let him know they were in our department. One day I told him off.

“You know,” I said, “if you stopped wasting your time chasing after all the black shoppers and followed some of the little old white ladies carrying tote bags, you might actually catch someone shoplifting.”

I continued to apply for teaching jobs and was offered a substitute teaching position that started in February 1980 at a wealthy suburban middle school. My hope was that the teacher, who was pregnant, would end up quitting and I would get the position full time. In 1980 there were too many teachers and not enough positions. The baby boom generation had all graduated from high school, and the next generation was what would come to be called the baby bust generation. Schools closed and getting tenure as a new teacher was difficult. Oftentimes substituting was a way to become known to the administrators in the case that a rare opening occurred.

I taught three English classes and one Special Skills class. Of my ninety students, only one was black. He was a small, quiet boy, maybe trying to blend in and not be noticed.

I quickly discovered how difficult it was to take over classrooms mid-year. Every comment from the students seemed to be, “Mrs. Smith didn’t do it that way.” But I was determined to succeed, and though I kept my job at J.C. Penney just to be sure, and then stayed up until 2:00 a.m. each morning reading and correcting papers, I stayed with it. That spring I moved into my own apartment.

Ronald borrowed my car one day to go on job interviews; he was still waiting to hear if he passed the firefighters’ exam. He picked me up after school had been let out. One of my students stayed late for an after-school activity and saw me getting into the car.  She must have spent the evening telling friends the juicy news. The next day she confronted me.

“I saw you yesterday,” she said, her red hair, the same color as her freckles, gathered into a half ponytail, her glasses shielding her eyes with glare.

“Oh?” I said.

“Is that your fiancé?” she asked, twirling a strand of hair. Two of her friends stood next to her, giggling self-consciously.

“Yes,” I said.

“My mother said she would kill me if I ever dated a black man,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but I already knew this was a career-ender. I imagined she had told her parents, and I had no doubt her parents, in the name of protecting their child, had called the administration. I felt my heart drop.

“Well, what do you think of that?” she coaxed.

“I think your parents have a right to their opinion,” I said. “I don’t feel the same way. I believe you love the person, not the skin color.”

“That’s interesting,” she said, and she and her friends giggled and left the classroom.