I
I don’t remember why Melanie said the n-word that morning, under the gym’s fluorescent glare. The smell of old sweat rose from the floor as we seventh graders warmed up. Unfolding from a hamstring stretch, the one Black girl in class looked our way, eyebrows arched. Melanie laughed when she saw the Black girl had heard her, a girl I thought was her friend. Melanie yelled Call me honky! with cheer, like it would even things out. I didn’t say anything. My uncles said the n-word, our neighbors said the n-word, and it didn’t seem right but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t smile that morning in PE but I didn’t say anything. None of us did. The Black girl’s smile didn’t look real. I don’t remember her name. What was her name?
II
That winter I watched Roots with my family, along with more than half the country. For eight nights the American slavery saga erupted in our living room. A few months later our combined middle school/high school held a Slave Auction Prom Fundraiser. Maybe the mini-series had sparked a Prom Committee member’s imagination. To pay for the DJ we could do what they did on Roots, the way they sold slaves at the marketplace. Spectators in the auditorium bid on a volunteer student or faculty member to be theirs for the day, to do whatever their “master” wanted. The audience laughed when winning bidders yanked their pretend-slaves across the stage in plastic chains. One volunteer was my social studies teacher, Mr. Moskowitz, who taught us about the Civil War. None of the few Black students were onstage but they were at the assembly. What do they remember about that day? About growing up in a mostly white small town?
III
I can still picture the young mother in the only Black family at St. Luke’s—her navy wool coat, softly waved hair, and gentle smile. Every Sunday she and her husband and two children sat in a pew at the front of the church. To pass those plodding hours I studied the dozens of congregants, imagining who they really were. I thought about how I often didn’t fit in, even when surrounded by people who looked like me. I wondered about the loneliness the Black family might have felt. They listened or pretended to listen with the rest of us, as old Father Remus raged about our devilry. They sang or mouthed hymns with the rest of us, that Christ our savior would rise again. One evening, the Black woman from church opened her front door to a white man she didn’t know and he stabbed her to death. My mother told me this, her voice small and halting. No one said hate crime back then. Afterwards, there were three members of the family in church every Sunday: a little boy, a little girl, and a father. I watched them pray on their knees with the rest of us, pray for God to forgive our sins.
