I pass every day downtown I can’t pick up half of what is said by the blacks.
“I hope you don’t talk this way around Sarah,” I say, willing to score a point any way I can.
“You seem to forget she is part black.”
Marty finally puts down the knife and replaces it with a peeler and goes to work on a cucumber the size of a base ball bat. Her zest for her work makes me glad she isn’t a urologist.
“It’s not race or color, damn it, and you know it. I’m talking about intelligence and character. Remember the Chinese families we had in Bear Creek. They were smart and they worked their butts off. Henry Quon was vice- president of my senior class and editor of the annual. Mary Yee was captain of the cheerleaders the year before I graduated. Tommy Ting was a year behind you and he was the smartest one of them all. They didn’t ask for a damn thing. Their families worked night and day in those junky stores they owned selling to niggers. I guess they still are. The point is, slavery was the biggest mistake this country ever made. We should never have brought a damn one of them over here, and you know it.”
I cannot resist smirking at this final leap of logic but realize it is pointless to respond. I don’t understand either why blacks haven’t made more progress in the last thirty years. Is everything the fault of whites? She is right about the Chinese families in Bear Creek. The adults kept to themselves, and their children starred in whatever activities were available. I don’t remember that they dated, but, hell, maybe they were afraid they would bring their race down by mixing with us. I flip the empty can into the box Marty has marked for recycling. She doesn’t seem the type.
“So your solution,” I say mockingly, “is to run away from them, huh?”
Marty makes a face that suggests I have been working too long around lead-based paint.
“In this country that’s all you can do anymore. Even the black teenagers carry guns in Blackwell County. If any white public official dared to suggest aloud in public that blacks might be the cause of their own problems, it’d start a race war. This state’s become so damn “PC,” you’d think we were living on a college campus on the East Coast. No white person can say what we think without being called a racist. Hell, it’s easier just to move. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t get out of your neighborhood if you could afford it. Compared to that housing project just east of you Somalia looks like a vacation spa. I’m surprised you haven’t been killed by a stray bullet.”
“Needle Park,” she means.
“It’s not so bad,” I lie. Actu ally, it is. A person drives through the streets of the Blackwell County Housing Authority at his own peril.
Gang warfare, arson, drugs, drive-by shootings, and theft are regular occurrences. A high percentage of the units are boarded up because of the rampant vandalism and pilfering. It is Marty’s strongest argument that something is terribly wrong in the black community.
“Don’t bullshit me,” she snorts, opening her refrigerator and handing me another beer.
“I read the papers. That place is a hellhole if there ever was one. The kids can’t even play outside because of all the shit that’s going on.”
“It’s poverty,” I respond.
“The blacks in my neighbor hood don’t act like that. They’re just as middle class as they can be.”
“I didn’t say every black person is a nigger,” Marty says, washing off a handful of raw carrots.
“But tell me the truth. Ever since Rosa died, you don’t have a thing in common with them, do you?”
“I don’t really have the time to socialize much since being out in private practice,” I say, once more puzzling over the reason why I don’t interact more with my neighbors.
When I returned from the Peace Corps, I had every intention in the world of living out my ideals. After all, I had spent two years in a nearly color-blind society on the northern coast of Columbia. Spanish, Indian, and African blood came together in that area of South America like tributaries forming one giant river.
“That’s crap, too,” my sister says benignly.
“With Sarah off at school, you probably just sit in the house and drink.”
Damn. Has she been peeking in the window?
“Neither of us has led exactly model lives,” I say, more than ready to shift the spotlight off myself.
“You can say that again,” she says, with a big grin on her face.
“But the difference is that I’ve finally got my shit together.”
“And I’m happy for you,” I say sincerely.
“It looks like you’ve got a good fit.”
As if on cue. Sweetness comes in with the meat, and as he passes in front of me, she pinches him on the butt. He laughs, delighted at the attention she gives him. Though Marty and I are not on the same wavelength and probably never will be, I am pleased for her. True love has been a rare animal in her life and is worth a celebration.
We get through the meal arguing politics. Sweetness can’t stand the Clintons. Bill is an opportunistic career politician who can’t keep his pants zipped; Hillary is a ball busting feminist. Since Sweetness’s construction company has benefited mightily by low interest rates and his wife runs a prosperous business, it is hard to take him too seriously. Perot, I point out, sounds like a Peeping Tom with all his investigations of employees and enemies.
“I’d rather have a President who does it,” I say loyally, “than one who pays people to dig up the dirt on the rest of us.”
Marty laughs at me. Politics has never been my game.
I figure we get the government we deserve and usually let it go at that. I drive home, not sorry I came. For all her harshness, Marty makes sense. If I’m smart, I’ll forget Lucy Cunningham ever said a word about my grandfather.
Saturday the Democrat-Gazette is still carrying Coach Carter’s decision and the reaction to it as page-one news.
With Woogie at my feet beneath the kitchen table, I read the paper over a cup of coffee. I had hoped the furor would die down, but as one reporter noted, the women’s groups on campus have found a cause to rally around this year. A new group, WAR (Women Against Rape), has sprung up overnight. Their leader, Paula Crawford, a law student from Rogers, is a long-haired, willowy blonde whose picture reminds me of Gloria Steinem. She claims that the university, by its inaction, “is sending a message to women on campus that they are third-class citizens.” The article says over a hundred women attended.
Other reactions on campus seemed divided.
Though several faculty members who were willing to be interviewed
professed to be outraged by Carter’s decision, some students, typically males, thought Dade should be allowed to remain on the team until he was found guilty of a crime. The leader of the African American group on campus was reported saying that if Robin Perry were black, no one would be paying any attention, a fact, he claimed, which showed that “racism is alive and well on the University of Arkansas campus.”
My eyes wander back to the picture of war’s leader. She isn’t bad looking. Years ago, you used to hear more about feminists. Rosa, I recall, had mixed emotions about them.
She liked the part about equal pay, but being a devout Catholic made her uneasy about their stand on abortion. I remember that she went to a couple of meetings, but they got mad if you disagreed with them. Rosa liked men. A lot of them didn’t, she said.
While I am reading the funnies, the phone rings.
“Dad,” Sarah says, when I answer the phone in the kitchen.
“Did I wake you up?”
Instantly I think something is wrong. It is only nine o’clock. To my knowledge, Sarah hasn’t been up this early on a Saturday since she was ten years old.
“Are you okay, babe?” I say anxiously, wondering what she could want.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“I just haven’t been able to sleep very well the last couple of days. I’ve been going to some meetings that have been held by a group of women who are upset that Dade is still allowed on the team. You may have read about it. They call themselves WAR Women Against Rape.”
I pick up the front section of the paper again.
“What do you think of Paula Crawford?” I ask, squinting at her
picture.
