Lessons in Race Relations...

My last day at the priory I had breakfast with my uncle, Ro made me the usual two eggs over medium with a dry English muffin, and afterwards Vinny and I went upstairs and watched "The Song Of Burnadette", an old film about Saint Burnadette of Lourdes that won 4 Oscars in its time. It was really good.

After the movie, I took a shower and dressed up for mass, which meant throwing on a black Volcom t-shirt and a pair of jeans, my tight, all-of-a-sudden-I-have-a-booty jeans. I was going out of my way to piss off these three old ladies that kept staring at me disapprovingly, I think because I crossed my legs once or something. Anyway, they kept giving me these dirty looks during masses, so on the last day I really stuck it to them.

After mass it was time to go. Ro came to my room to say goodbye and she and I talked for awhile. She told me that she, like Janet, had fostered children and told me about the different kids, their ages and such. She asked me if I had a boyfriend, I told her "up until Monday I did." She said I’m better off alone and I know it. Breaking up with Brian and being lonely is easier than staying with him and putting up with his crap. She lost her husband almost twenty years ago and said she was never lonely because she had Jesus in her heart.

She mentioned being tired from holding vigil over her best friend two nights before; her friend died at 5:30 in the morning. "My other good friend died last weekend," she said.
"That must be awful, I’m so sorry," I said.
"Well, I’ve had foster kids die on me after they get placed permanently. At least my friends led longer lives. And I’m not really lonely. I know they’re with God now."
We hugged goodbye and she reminded me, like every single person has without fail so far, to be safe. I’ll admit, it gets tedious, but it proves they care and it does always help to be reminded.

After loading the car and kissing my uncle goodbye, I headed up Rt. 17 towards Binghamton. I was surprised, upon leaving, how honestly saddened I was to be heading away from my little cast of characters at the priory that I had come to love over the days: Father Vincent, my uncle, of course; Father Francis, the prior, who always has a joke on his lips and slips in and out of a Julia Child accent on a whim while tending his gorgeous garden; Father Christopher, who reminded me of a male version of Estelle Getty’s Sophia from "The Golden Girls"; Father Esteban, The Mighty Puerto Rican, whose thick Latin accent and funny stories kept me giggling and whose fat chiuaua I let lick my face; Father Daniel, who was blind in one eye, the eye that bugged out a little bit and pointed askew, giving him the look of a tall, bald, kindly Igor - he called himself "The Evil One" and kept to himself a lot, but was more than willing to offer me scotch and a smile everyday at 5; and sweet Brother Jim, a gi-normus man who also used a walker. He made me crack up one afternoon when Vinny remarked to me, "Oh, how cute you look!" and he said, "Why, thank you, Vinny, I’ve been working out."

The drive on 17 was beautiful, bordering the Catskill Mountains at times. I saw rows of fisherman in waders standing in the creekbeds throughout the hills, enjoying the crisp Friday afternoon. Actually, come to think of it, crisp is the wrong word. It was overcast but damn hot, and my car heater would not turn off. As a matter of fact, upon a quick armpit check, I realized I was anything but crisp. Crusty.... creepy.... Cro-Magnon, even.... but not crisp. But I digress.....

Anyhow, I went from 17 to 14 North, passing a lot of llama farms along the way. At one I saw mini- horses, donkeys, and a huge, shaggy dromedary in addition to llamas. (A dromedary is a shaggy camel with two humps instead of one.) It was stunning. I tried to get a picture but it ran and hid. If you can picture a dromedary running, you have a very active imagination, because watching it I thought to myself, "I never would have imagined that animal running!"

I got into Geneva - again - and found my Aunt Karen’s house - again - and this time she and her roommate Barb were sitting on the porch, enjoying cocktails. I soon joined them and we just sat on the porch, catching up on things and watching the cottonwood trees send their white seeds swirling through the air, making it snow on the flowerbeds. Big band music was playing softly from the radio. It was gorgeous. I honestly love Geneva - each time I visit I like it more and more. Eventually I’ll probably give in and move here (I’ve been researching it for some time). I just have to convince the one college in town to start offering post-graduate coursework.

After awhile we - myself, Karen, Barb, and Barb’s cousin, Linda - went to "The June Happening", a church fair a few streets away. They had cheap food, beer, games, and a classic car show. They also had a really crappy band playing obnoxious White Stripes and Green Day covers, badly. We were happy when they got offstage, but by that time we had seen all there was to see, including someone walking around in a giant Elmo costume. Still, it was great fun. I liked watching the interactions of the people, since it was such a mixed crowd. Some of the people there were church members, and the rest were just local yokels who came out of the woodwork for the cheap food. I can’t blame them, really. And I honestly enjoyed seeing the obviously-poor enjoying themselves. It was a reminder for the starch-collared church crowd of the lesson in not judging others lest ye be judged.

After the fair we went to the local Knights of Columbus hall. Karen bartends there sometimes and she introduced me to everyone there. They were all very, very nice. We spent the rest of the night there, Karen and I getting pretty blasted by the end of the night and trading stories on the other people in our family. Just like I had with my grandmother, and with Uncle Vinny, I learned a lot about our family that I had never known. I wonder now if this information has always been readily available had I only asked, or if it’s the kind of stuff that had to wait until I was old (and jaded?) enough to handle.

This morning, after riding with Karen to 84 Lumber and eating the best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever had, which she made, I took a walk to the downtown area. I poked in and out of the little shops, most of which were secondhand stores so I was in secondhand heaven, went to the used record shop again and said hi to Poor Man’s Jerry Garcia, and briefly contemplated getting a new tattoo (I’m still debating. Tell me if you think is dumb - since my breasts aren’t exactly large, there’s this flat space in between, right? And I’m always falling in love and getting miffed because it’s not perfect, time and again, so I was thinking of getting a little ying-yang in the shape of a heart on that flat space, to remind myself to go slowly and that nothing is ever perfect. And maybe not even tattooed in black and white.... maybe in burnt sienna or something. It’s a very original spot, yeah? I don’t know.... tell me if you think that’s ugly/stupid/marvelous....)

Anyway, I ended up sleepy, slightly hung over, and wanting a huge glass of water, so I went to the first bar I saw. It was called Trotta’s Castle, and it looked like the antithesis of a castle. It was a complete dive, but then again I love me a good dive. I chose a seat close to the door for the sunlight, and opened my book, getting lost in Sarah Vowell’s explanation of the correlations between the McKinley Administration and the current barrel of monkeys that is the Executive Branch. The bartender was a large bald man with a mustache, and after making fun of me for just ordering a diet soda and for reading, he went to the other end of the bar and told the customers about the smarty-pants girl who was too good to order a beer. As though I couldn’t hear him. Seriously, the guy was a dick but I didn’t care; I had my nose in a book and I was too tired to go somewhere else.

I noticed a voice, gravely and loud, bellowing over the rest of the patrons, and I traced it back to a small dark woman with her back to me. She was wearing a black tank top and had her dark hair in a smooth bun high on her head. Every other word was "fuck" but I was only half-listening. Eventually she came down to my end of the bar to make a fuss over a quiet old man sitting in the corner by the window. She carried a huge hodge-podge of keychains and possibly even a couple keys and a pack of Newports. The black tank top turned out to be a floor-length tight jersey dress that fit her lean frame well. She looked to be about 35, and Hispanic.

"FRANKIE!" she hollered, her voice sounding rampant with emphysema. "FRANKIE, I LOVE YOU! HOW ARE YOU?" The man was smiling but still quiet and I realized that he didn’t speak English very well. I hadn’t had him pegged as Hispanic, I thought he was just "weathered", but it turns out that he was both.

When Emphysema Lady was done with Frankie, she turned to me. "You’re reading in a bar." It was a statement, not a question, as though she were informing me of something I didn’t know. I agreed, and she launched on a diatribe about "THIS BOOK I WAS READING I COULDN’T FIND THAT SHIT ANYWHERE BUT THEN I DID AND GIRL, IT IS GOOD SHIT ‘CAUSE IT’S BY THE LADY FROM ‘ONE LIFE TO LIVE’ AND GIRL, I COULDN’T PUT THAT SHIT DOWN!" It was a book that ran parallel to the plotline of the soap opera. She said she would lend it to me, but I declined. She seemed nice, not the hardcore, nasty type of woman she appeared to be at first glance. We ended up talking for hours.

Her name is Melinda. She is mulatto. I mention that up front only because it seemed to be such an ever-present thought on her mind; every sentence, every topic of conversation somehow came back to race. "My daddy is black but my momma white. We was living in Harlem, and this was 1960, so everything the kids said to me was ‘cracker-this’ and ‘honky-that’ and I was like ‘hell no bitch I will kick your m*ther-f*cking ass!’ and then my momma, she moved me up here, and everything was like ‘nigger-this’ and ‘nigger-that’ and I whupped some bitches up. That first night I heard some shit outside and I said ‘Momma, what the f*ck is that?’ and she said, ‘That’s crickets’. I said ‘oh hell no! You know we don’t be having no crickets in Harlem!’"
"We have roaches!" we said in unison, laughing. Other people in the bar, biker-types by appearance, stared at us.

"I married a guy in prison," she started, at one point.
"Wait," I said. "Were you the one in prison or was he?"
"Oh, no, girl, he was in prison and I married him to get back at a bitch. She wanted him and she didn’t think I could hold onto him so I was like, ‘bitch, watch this’ and I married him in the jail. ‘Cause no bitch can take my man. Hell no. But it took me 19 years to get out of that f*cking marriage."
I didn’t ask why so long.

"I put myself in a foster home when I was 14, I ran away."
"Why?"
"‘Cause my momma be trying to make me this little white girl and none of them would have it. I was in gymnastics and ballet and shit and sure, some-a them little bitches were damn happy to have a friend with a cute little tan, but I didn’t want to be that girl. I was too black to fit in with them and too white to fit in when I visited my daddy in Harlem. Parents don’t even think about how having mixed kids is gonna make it hard on the f*cking kids. Plus my momma said I was a mistake. So I ran away and the cops caught me f*cking behind the library. They called my momma and she come down to the station acting all sad and shit but I was like, ‘bitch, don’t be coming in here with no fake tears, you’re the one that said I was a mistake!’.

"The f*cked-up thing now is that my momma had a husband and a son before she met my daddy. And when they split up the husband took the son and skipped town. So my momma didn’t see her son, didn’t even know her son, until last year when he looked her up. And now all of a sudden she has this wonderful WHITE son, and she’s all bragging about him and shit. And I have a new WHITE brother. The first time he saw me his jaw was on the damn floor. My momma didn’t even tell him about me, or that I’m half black. So he’s all shocked and whatnot and I was like, ‘Were you expecting someone prettier?’ I don’t like him one bit. One time I asked him, ‘So how do you feel having a black sister?’ and he said, ‘You’re very pretty’ and I said, ‘Bitch, that’s not what I asked you. I asked you how it feels to have a black sister!’ He didn’t answer me.

"When I was little I hurt myself doing some gymnastics shit and I had to go to the hospital. The survey they give you said to check off, ‘Black, White, Other’. I said, ‘Momma, what do I put?’"

Despite the subject matter, I loved listening to her go on and on in her expressive, sandpaper voice. She looked me right in the eye when she told stories of getting in fights, acting out her part, what she did, what she said, as though I were the other person. Sadly, that was almost every story. I also noticed that she made eye contact when acting like the big dog. But when she told stories without violence or besting someone at something, she looked away, as though trying to detach herself. I figured it out after awhile - anger was her divining rod, her connection to other people. It was her power, her defense. Anger was the conduit through which all of her other thoughts flowed. Without it, she was left open to insecurity.

"I like you. I want to show you off as my new little white friend," she said at one point. "Let’s go over to the black bar, this place is too full of ugly white people." I was amazed that race permeated every single aspect of her life, to the point where I felt transported back to the 60's or 70's. Have I just been raised in places where interracial relationships are passe? Is the tension this high everywhere else is the country? I hope I never find out.

So off to the other little bar, the black-er bar, we went. It was called Al’s Inn. I liked it more than the other place - it was surprisingly well-lit, having windows in the front and back. I didn’t want to stay too long, maybe 15 minutes, because I was very tired. Still, I wasn’t nervous because it was broad daylight on a Saturday, and both bars were in the center of town. Melinda and I were good friends by this point, walking side-by-side. Jaws dropped when we came through the door. She is a regular and knew almost everyone there.

Before we could even grab a seat, a baby-faced black guy about my age was upon us. Looking me up and down, he shouted, "Damn, Auntie Lindie! I wanna be a pimp like you!"
"You can’t never be a pimp like this, honey!" she retorted, telling me, "This my nephew, Javell. He crazy."
Javell wore one of the popular street "uniforms", a huge white t-shirt, black jeans, black Timberlands and a black baseball cap. His long hair stuck out from under the cap on all sides, as though he had just taken out some cornrows, and he had a curly goatee and mustache as well. His smooth, almost perfect skin was a lovely, rich shade of cocoa and he had wide-set deep brown eyes, like a deer’s eyes. I liked to watch him goof around and make everyone laugh. He did little dances and charmed Melinda into giving him a dollar for the jukebox.

Watching him, I was reminded of one of the worst films of all time, a silent film called "Birth of a Nation", in which the plantation slaves are just so darn happy to be slaves that they dance and sing for the white folk, because they were so darn grateful to have the priveleges of picking cotton and being raped and keeping their bundled infants in nearby pig troughs while they worked the fields, but not nearby enough to save the babies when a sudden rain came and filled the trough to the top, drowning the lot. I was glad that nowadays a cute, funny black guy could dance and laugh and not have to worry about pleasing anyone, thank you.

Javell let me pick out some songs to play and I chose Marvin Gaye’s "Mercy, Mercy Me". "I have to leave after this song," I told Melinda when it came on.
"Are you going to come back tonight? I prob’ly still be here. I’ma get f*cked up tonight, girl! It’s Saturday night and my man locked up in rehab in Rochester! I’m a free woman!"
"Unfortunately, no, honey. I’m going to a barbeque with my aunt tonight. But didn’t you say you wanted to go camping? Give me your number and maybe one of these weekends coming up you and me can take your grandkids camping. But be aware, there’s gonna be crickets. Can you handle that?" I teased.
"Girl, you too much!" she said, looking away. Her eyes became liquid and she tried to hide her smile. She gave me her address and number, and I promised to get in touch and try to take her and her two grandsons camping. I could tell it meant a lot to her.

I kissed her caramel cheek and said goodbye. All of a sudden, she couldn’t speak. This brash, almost terrifying woman was dumbstruck. I hope it was in a good way. I hope having "a white bitch" be nice to her will ease her mind a little bit. Maybe when I send her a postcard I can find out.