The Chicken Bone

I’m not going to have a good story this week. I’m just not. My apologies. I’ve waited too long over a subject that is too hard to write about. Racism. I just can’t come up with anything heroic or life-changing. I had a week too. But my thoughts and words stumble along instead, sentences incomplete, hanging there. All these conversations with no resolution or conclusion.

Write a story about inaction, I think. There’s irony for you. I’m pushing the deadline because I can’t get started.

I could tell about how I once offended a friend by telling her I didn’t like the color black. This didn’t bode well for us.

I don’t remember how we met. It was forty years ago at least. Perhaps we were in seventh grade together. I think we were. I know it wasn’t eighth grade because that year I was at a Catholic school in St. Augustine and she was at the public middle school. However we met; we became friends. When we were at the same school we walked home together. It was 1979 and she used to tell me silly stories about a chicken bone.

“There once was a chicken bone,” she’d say, “and it liked to dance the jig. It ran away with the fork. Everyone said it was ugly. No meat on it.” Nonsensical stuff in this high-pitched voice that made me laugh until I nearly peed my pants. We used to walk to her house. Do our homework today, things like that. She wasn’t allowed at my house. Not because of my parents. If they were home I could bring over whomever I liked. It was her parents. They never allowed her to go to my house.

I wish I remembered more. I wish I’d asked them what their problem was, but I was too young to argue with adults then. We weren’t friends long. A year, I think. Now I only remember unfinished bits of conversation.

The color incident I do remember.

We were walking along St. John’s Avenue and going under a train bridge. We had to pass through a tunnel perhaps a quarter of a block long. The roof and sides were metal. It smelled bad. Now I think perhaps homeless people used it to piss in. I didn’t think that then. We usually shouted in it to hear our voices echo. Then we were out blinking in the hot Florida sun. She asked me what my favorite color was. I pointed at the bright sky. “Blue. Like that. What’s yours?”

“Green, like the grass. And your least favorite?”

It’s amazing how innocent answers hurt.

“Black,” I said. Because at that time to me black meant depression, death, darkness. I didn’t like dark colors.

She went cold. I could feel it. “How can you say that?”

“Say what? I don’t like the color black.”

“I’m black.”

Until that moment I hadn’t thought about it. “What? I didn’t mean skin color.” She glared at me. “Well, I didn’t. It’s not the same as black clothes. I don’t like to wear black clothes.”

She was silent as we walked on.  So, I said, “Look, June. Your skin color is different than the black I don’t like. I like the color you are. Don’t you see that?”

She finally shrugged. “I guess so.”

The inability of hers to come to my house would doom our friendship. My parents became angry. They were born in New Jersey. I’m not sure they understood the history her parents must have faced, growing up in the south. Maybe it was too soon after Jim Crow laws. I don’t know. This whole thing was the elephant no one would acknowledge. I didn’t understand and I didn’t think to ask her or her parents. I knew about Martin Luther King. I’d even written a report on him because I admired the man. So, I knew but it wasn’t real to me. Neither June nor I knew segregation but I’m sure her parents did. My mother finally mailed a written invitation to have June come over. Her parents was offended and dug their heels in harder. At first, I blamed my mother for causing the problem. Now I blame neither of them. Eventually, we drifted apart. I, to my shame now, joined a girl’s Masonic organization called The Order of the Rainbow. I did it knowing full well they were segregated. I think they still are. I joined although I admired Martin Luther King. I wanted friends, to belong somewhere. So, I joined this group of cliquish girls for all the good it did me. I still didn’t belong, felt alone, out of place.

So much for action.

The subject of race didn’t truly come up again for years. Oh, I’m sure it was discussed. Dismissed. Of course, it’s bad. That goes without saying. Even when 9-11 happened I agreed with most folk I knew that not all Middle Eastern people were bad. But it didn’t get personal until I had kids and had to face it head on. We’re in Sam’s Club, sitting at the lunch tables they used to have. My son John has some kind of little plastic figures of different colors. They were like Shopkins but not exactly. For lack of a better term, I’ll call them ghostkins. They looked like ghosts with legs. They were the size of my thumb. Anyway, the name isn’t important. What is important is that my brother had gotten him a box of gold ones. They were supposed to be rare, not easy to find. John brought them with him to Sam’s Club. After we ate pizza and hot dogs he opened the box and separated them. He was nine at the time.

“They can’t be mixed,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because the gold ones don’t mix with the others.”

“Wait a minute.” What the hell is this about? is what I’m thinking. “Why do you say that? They’re in the same box. Of course, they’re going to mix.” I’m sure my voice was loud and shrill. Meanwhile, there were two voices in my head. One saying you idiot, he’s talking about toys.

The other voice was saying you idiot you need to teach him better.

“People can mix with each other,” I said. “That’s all right you know.”

“I know Mom,” he said, raising his eyebrows like Mom are you crazy.

My older son, Sam summed it up. “You’re taking this too seriously.”

I threw up my hands, hoping that I wouldn’t be thrown out of this store. Why do these conversations always happen in public places anyway? “Fine. Put those away and let’s go finish our shopping.”

Well, I thought, at least we’re having some sort of conversation. Better than nothing I suppose.

Yeah right, Michele said my other voice. Devil, whatever. It’s hard to tell my angel apart from the devil on my shoulder. People will go home talking about the crazy lady at Sam’s Club.

None of this is coming together in any kind of coherent form. On this subject, I’m struggling along. I’m trying to find some sort of conclusion, answer. Some idea that anything I do or say has any meaning or makes a difference. So far I’m not sure it does. I didn’t even go to the last protest. I didn’t feel well. Neither did Sam. I’m out and about. The boys have begun to socialize somewhat, but I’m not stupid either. I don’t want to expose my children to anyone with Covid-19. So, for better or for worse we’ve stayed away. More inaction.

Never mind talking to a child in a public place. I’m sitting in a tire store waiting for my car to be finished. It’s 2017 and there was a shooting on the TV. I think it was the Las Vegas one. Too many back then. A woman was sitting next to me. “A shame about this,” she said.

“Too many shootings,” I told her.

“He’s a terrorist,” she said. I believe she was older than me but not by much. A grandmother I found out later. And African American.

Her words angered me. She was right, I thought but…I gestured at the anchorwoman on the TV. “They will never say that.” I wasn’t thinking. If I had I would have simply agreed. But I was fed up. They never called these homegrown bastards what they were, far as I was concerned. I had forgotten about her. I talked to myself, to the anchorwomen. “He’s not Muslim. He’s white.”

She shouted at me. I’m sure everyone heard her although they tried not to look directly at us. “Thank you!”

I shrugged at her. “Well, it’s true.”

“Damn straight.” She was glaring at me, but I don’t believe she was angry with me. “They’ll make excuses for him.”

“I’m tired of it. Doesn’t matter the race. Just call him what the hell he is,” I said. “And these homegrown idiots frighten me more. We’re creating them.”

She hadn’t heard the rest of my statement. There were cracks in whatever dam she had holding back her feelings and it was breaking. “Oh, trust me. Race matters. You don’t understand.”

“If you’re speaking about police profiling,” I said, “I’m sure they do.” And probably make all kinds of judgments. Are you a single mom? What neighborhood are you from? What kind of car are you driving? I assumed they made these judgments because, to be honest, I do. So, if I do it I assume everyone does it.

She described an incident where her grown son, a soldier, was certainly racially profiled. He was pulled over for having a taillight out. And treated as if he might be a thug. Questioned as to his whereabouts, where he was going, and why he was driving where he was. I just listened. I don’t know if that counts as action. I don’t know if it counts for anything, but I hope so. Eventually I told her my son, when eleven, had been involved in an accident. He had been hit by a car while on his bike. The driver had not stayed. Sam wasn’t hurt, I said but the bicycle was mangled. I said when I finally found out and got him I called the police to see if they could help find this guy somehow.

“He was less than helpful,” I told my tire store friend. “At first he thought Sam was lying, that he had hit the car, not the other way around. Then he asked me what I expected him to do. I said, ‘I don’t know what you can do but I hoped for witnesses.’ But he didn’t seem to care. So,” I sighed, because I knew this wasn’t the same as she was saying. Still, it bothered me. “I believe you. I’m sorry it happened. The police worry me too sometimes. They’re getting too jaded, judgmental.” But she and I both knew we didn’t experience it the same way. I don’t fear them and she, reasonably or not, does. For all I know even a reasonable police officer might be met with suspicion. It’s a long hard road both sides must fight and travel, to trust again. If they ever do. But I didn’t say that and neither did she. I didn’t say it because it wasn’t the time, I thought. It was time for listening. That’s the beginning. We showed each other pictures of our children, like mothers of a certain age do. Eventually her car was finished, and she left, thanking me for talking to her. I smiled and wished her well.

So, what does this all mean in the end? I don’t know. About as much sense as a chicken bone running away with a fork I guess. The problem is there. I acknowledge it. My own contributions to it. We’ve all contributed to it. I have, most certainly. I’ve just described how and didn’t even mention the jokes I’ve told or heard. Inaction. And when I do act, I’m not sure what I accomplish. Even these stories I write tonight, I’m not sure what they’ll do. It’s thirty minutes to deadline, and this is just a rough draft. Because none of this I really wanted to write. I do it because I must. It could be better but it’s the best I could do.

It’s better than no action at all.