I stood and looked at her for a moment. Apparently, she must have been seated nearby and had heard and witnessed the pink-necked bigot show. She had delivered her soliloquy with grace and poise................and compassion with a deep country accent. I speculated that she'd been raised by a Mammy. BUT, she appeared to be a sweet old lady, and she was ALMOST right. There was just one thing that she was leaving out.
"Ma'am. we're all servants," I said gently.
"Well, Ah guess if ya' meanz dat we're all servants of de gud Lawd, den I guess yer raght," she said after studying my words for a spell.
"That's not only what I mean. I mean, all of us are servants in one way or another. The doctor is a servant to his patients. The lawyer is a servant to his clients. The Governor is a slave to his constituents. That's why he is called a public servant. " I paused for a minute to catch my breath and then continued. "But, I get your meaning, and as for my place ma'am. It is right beside you. It is NOT behind you."
Well, she didn't like that at all. She looked down for a minute at her feet, and then she pounded the bottom of her cane against the tile floor a few times.
"Yer not from dese pahts are ye'?" she inquired with no malice in her voice. She still spoke like a compassionate grandmother trying to give advice to a loved one.
"No ma'am," I said softly. I wasn't angry with her. I could tell that she was a remnant of an apartheid state that no longer existed, but she somehow still had a yearning to set herself above someone else. Her culture had taught her that she was better than some people, and since those people that she once lorded over had found their equality and were protected by federal laws, her inherent need to feel superior was trying to exert itself over me and my kind...............but she wasn't a bad person.
"You'll learn and the quicker ye' learn how de world really is, the better off you'll be. De gud Lawd didn't make us all equal. Der is slaves in de Bible, ye know and de Lawd don't like yer kind, or you all wouldn't be dyin' right now," and she grabbed the rail of the steps and tried to turn around. I kind of felt sorry for the Lord. Everyone was always blaming all this bad stuff on him, but I was secure in knowing that God loved me, and I realized her church was terribly misled. The most popular view was not always the right one. I also knew that she was probably deep into her 80's, and her mind -- what was left of it -- would never be changed. Her English usage told me that she'd had very little education, and there was no way that I could teach her now.
"Let me help you, ma'am, " I said, as I took her arm, steadied her and escorted her down the steps. When we got her to the safety of the even floor, she patted my hand that held her elbow with her diamond dripping hand. Then she adjusted her glasses and looked up at me.
"Ye don't have thah AIDS, do ye?" she asked with some concern. I thought she was inquiring about my health out of concern because so many heterosexuals thought that all gay people had the virus.
"No, ma'am. I'm fine, " I said with a little bit of shock in my voice, but also with some understanding.
"Then, give me a hug, boy, " and she reached up and gave me a full on hug. As I patted her back, I realized that she had asked whether I was infected for her own safety. She wanted to clarify that she wouldn't catch the dreaded disease if she hugged me. Even if she only had a few more years on Earth, she certainly didn't want to die of such a stigmatized illness.
"We love our faggots, and don't ye' forgit dat, boy, " she reinforced as she hobbled away on her cane.
I turned and went back up to my window section and thought while I filled up salt and pepper shakers. She'd made me realize something in a brief instant. Yeah, I was a servant, and I hated it..............but she made me realize that unless a person was born of royal birth or won the lottery, we all worked for someone, and we really were just servants to each other if to no one else. From that day forth, I didn't feel bad about waiting tables. Yes, I had other aspirations, and I would eventually meet them...............but I made damn good money waiting tables and very few of my friends who'd graduated college with me made anywhere near the money I raked in.....SO, I was perfectly fine with waiting tables from then onward............She'd kind of cleared up things for me in some respects, and maybe I was the one in need of a lesson in humility.
She also made me realize the rampant racism of the South. I hadn't encountered racism in many years. My Great Grandpa Clint was a vocal racist who swore he'd shoot any "*iggers" who ever stepped foot on his property. He swore there were no blacks in my hometown because he'd helped run them out of the area after a black man had killed his brother. (( They'd also lynched the black man and hanged him from a tree in the middle of town. It was just and swift judgment, he said. They didn't need a trial............)) His hatred had been bred into my Father, and my sister and I got in trouble for watching "ROOTS" on TV when we were kids even though it was a school assignment. He'd told us that we couldn't watch that garbage, and that he wasn't raising "*iggerlovers".............We weren't allowed to watch "Good Times", either, but "All in the Family" was one of his favorite shows. He could identify with Archie Bunker and his thoughts, but I don't think he ever realized it was a satirical comedy.............The word satire was not in his vocabulary.
My mother's family, however, was not racist, and my mother would never allow my sister or me to ever utter the "N" word, but our cousins on my dad's side tossed it around as easily as they said "ain't" even when they were small children.............Our part of Oklahoma was absent any black people, basically, and some branches of my family were proud of the role my Great Grandfather had played in that. Sometimes, I think bigotry is a genetic disorder............... The first time I saw a "colored" person was in the Safeway in Cleveland............and she was lavendar....I'm serious, her skin tone was a light purple. Of course, children notice everything, but my mother shooshed us and told us that we'd talk about it in the car. True to her word, she explained to us that the lady had a skin disease that caused her to be purple...so we naturally thought that any coloring in a person's skin meant they had a disease..............My aunt also told us if we touched the cucumber at the Grocery store that we'd turn green and look like the Jolly Green Giant, and we believed her and never touched the produce again. We really didn't want to become Little Sprouts who Ho Ho Ho'ed in a bean field...................... There were lots of skin colors running through our minds; black was only one of them....BUT we'd confused skin color with disease...and we'd learned about germs on Sesame Street. Pretty soon, the mistaken abundance of our hearts would speak.
Not long after we saw the Lavendar Lady, we were in a Target in Tulsa. I was pretty young because I remember that I was sitting in the seat of the wire "buggy" that my mother pushed around and filled with store items to purchase. We were in the record section because Elvis' "Blue Hawaii" album had just come out, and my mother, my aunt and their mother were slitting open the plastic that was sealed over the cover of the albums because they wanted to find a blue album -- a supposed collector's item since most records were black vinyl. Well, I saw some Black people, and I saw some flies. I knew to keep my mouth shut because of my experience with the lavendar lady. But, I watched them closely. Heck, I was curious. I'd never seen people like this, and there were so many of them....................One of the flies landed on a black lady, and she waved it away....but I watched that fly, and when it started getting close to me, I started yelling and trying to get out of that buggy seat. Instantly, my mother was at my side asking me what was wrong.
"I dont' want to catch it. I don't want to catch it," I screamed. In my child's mind, I thought if that fly landed on me that it would carry the black germ from the black lady to me, and that I'd somehow catch black....like the lavendar lady's disease and the Jolly Green Giant punishment.
"Catch what?" she asked.
I looked at her like she was nuts. Couldn't she see all of those sick black people over there?
"Nigger!" I screamed...and that was the first time I'd ever uttered that word, and it was at a very inopportune moment.
WHACK! She'd slapped me right across the face and started pushing that buggy as fast as it would go. I wailed, I screamed, I cried and wondered why she'd slapped me. When she got me to the greeting card section with its high shelves that shielded us from sight, I began to settle down.
"You, stupid kid, you're gonna' get us killed. This black people will have a riot. I told you NEVER to say that word. Now, shut up," she said with some urgency and continued, "Now, what is wrong with you?"
In between sniffles, I reminded her about the lavendar lady at Safeway, and I told her about the Jolly Green Giant and the black people and the fly. Well, she clarified my confusion right there in Target in the Greeting Card aisle. Yes, the lavendar lady at Safeway had a disease, but it wasn't contagious. The Jolly Green Giant wasn't real and that my Aunt Denice had just lied to us so we wouldn't touch the produce in the grocery store, and she also told me that the black people were just like us, and they did not have a skin disease..........MiMi paid for the records while the rest of us sneaked quietly out of the Target. Those black girls were big, and my Mama didn't want to take any chances. It was the early 1970s...and she was right about the riots.........It was still kind of confusing for a kid, but she got my sister and me a subsciption to National Geographic after that, and we saw a lot of black people in it, but they were mostly naked.......so I figured black people walked around naked most of the time unless they were in public...............and if Daddy wasn't at home, we got to watch "Good Times" and later "The Jeffersons"..and I really believed those sitcoms, as well as Diana Ross and the Jackson 5 educated America about the equality of blacks more than anything else. If people who had never seen or been around something got to see it on a regular basis, they didn't think it was odd anymore. I still think it is strange that people who supported racial equality were considered the liberals of their time.
"Ma'am. we're all servants," I said gently.
"Well, Ah guess if ya' meanz dat we're all servants of de gud Lawd, den I guess yer raght," she said after studying my words for a spell.
"That's not only what I mean. I mean, all of us are servants in one way or another. The doctor is a servant to his patients. The lawyer is a servant to his clients. The Governor is a slave to his constituents. That's why he is called a public servant. " I paused for a minute to catch my breath and then continued. "But, I get your meaning, and as for my place ma'am. It is right beside you. It is NOT behind you."
Well, she didn't like that at all. She looked down for a minute at her feet, and then she pounded the bottom of her cane against the tile floor a few times.
"Yer not from dese pahts are ye'?" she inquired with no malice in her voice. She still spoke like a compassionate grandmother trying to give advice to a loved one.
"No ma'am," I said softly. I wasn't angry with her. I could tell that she was a remnant of an apartheid state that no longer existed, but she somehow still had a yearning to set herself above someone else. Her culture had taught her that she was better than some people, and since those people that she once lorded over had found their equality and were protected by federal laws, her inherent need to feel superior was trying to exert itself over me and my kind...............but she wasn't a bad person.
"You'll learn and the quicker ye' learn how de world really is, the better off you'll be. De gud Lawd didn't make us all equal. Der is slaves in de Bible, ye know and de Lawd don't like yer kind, or you all wouldn't be dyin' right now," and she grabbed the rail of the steps and tried to turn around. I kind of felt sorry for the Lord. Everyone was always blaming all this bad stuff on him, but I was secure in knowing that God loved me, and I realized her church was terribly misled. The most popular view was not always the right one. I also knew that she was probably deep into her 80's, and her mind -- what was left of it -- would never be changed. Her English usage told me that she'd had very little education, and there was no way that I could teach her now.
"Let me help you, ma'am, " I said, as I took her arm, steadied her and escorted her down the steps. When we got her to the safety of the even floor, she patted my hand that held her elbow with her diamond dripping hand. Then she adjusted her glasses and looked up at me.
"Ye don't have thah AIDS, do ye?" she asked with some concern. I thought she was inquiring about my health out of concern because so many heterosexuals thought that all gay people had the virus.
"No, ma'am. I'm fine, " I said with a little bit of shock in my voice, but also with some understanding.
"Then, give me a hug, boy, " and she reached up and gave me a full on hug. As I patted her back, I realized that she had asked whether I was infected for her own safety. She wanted to clarify that she wouldn't catch the dreaded disease if she hugged me. Even if she only had a few more years on Earth, she certainly didn't want to die of such a stigmatized illness.
"We love our faggots, and don't ye' forgit dat, boy, " she reinforced as she hobbled away on her cane.
I turned and went back up to my window section and thought while I filled up salt and pepper shakers. She'd made me realize something in a brief instant. Yeah, I was a servant, and I hated it..............but she made me realize that unless a person was born of royal birth or won the lottery, we all worked for someone, and we really were just servants to each other if to no one else. From that day forth, I didn't feel bad about waiting tables. Yes, I had other aspirations, and I would eventually meet them...............but I made damn good money waiting tables and very few of my friends who'd graduated college with me made anywhere near the money I raked in.....SO, I was perfectly fine with waiting tables from then onward............She'd kind of cleared up things for me in some respects, and maybe I was the one in need of a lesson in humility.
She also made me realize the rampant racism of the South. I hadn't encountered racism in many years. My Great Grandpa Clint was a vocal racist who swore he'd shoot any "*iggers" who ever stepped foot on his property. He swore there were no blacks in my hometown because he'd helped run them out of the area after a black man had killed his brother. (( They'd also lynched the black man and hanged him from a tree in the middle of town. It was just and swift judgment, he said. They didn't need a trial............)) His hatred had been bred into my Father, and my sister and I got in trouble for watching "ROOTS" on TV when we were kids even though it was a school assignment. He'd told us that we couldn't watch that garbage, and that he wasn't raising "*iggerlovers".............We weren't allowed to watch "Good Times", either, but "All in the Family" was one of his favorite shows. He could identify with Archie Bunker and his thoughts, but I don't think he ever realized it was a satirical comedy.............The word satire was not in his vocabulary.
My mother's family, however, was not racist, and my mother would never allow my sister or me to ever utter the "N" word, but our cousins on my dad's side tossed it around as easily as they said "ain't" even when they were small children.............Our part of Oklahoma was absent any black people, basically, and some branches of my family were proud of the role my Great Grandfather had played in that. Sometimes, I think bigotry is a genetic disorder............... The first time I saw a "colored" person was in the Safeway in Cleveland............and she was lavendar....I'm serious, her skin tone was a light purple. Of course, children notice everything, but my mother shooshed us and told us that we'd talk about it in the car. True to her word, she explained to us that the lady had a skin disease that caused her to be purple...so we naturally thought that any coloring in a person's skin meant they had a disease..............My aunt also told us if we touched the cucumber at the Grocery store that we'd turn green and look like the Jolly Green Giant, and we believed her and never touched the produce again. We really didn't want to become Little Sprouts who Ho Ho Ho'ed in a bean field...................... There were lots of skin colors running through our minds; black was only one of them....BUT we'd confused skin color with disease...and we'd learned about germs on Sesame Street. Pretty soon, the mistaken abundance of our hearts would speak.
Not long after we saw the Lavendar Lady, we were in a Target in Tulsa. I was pretty young because I remember that I was sitting in the seat of the wire "buggy" that my mother pushed around and filled with store items to purchase. We were in the record section because Elvis' "Blue Hawaii" album had just come out, and my mother, my aunt and their mother were slitting open the plastic that was sealed over the cover of the albums because they wanted to find a blue album -- a supposed collector's item since most records were black vinyl. Well, I saw some Black people, and I saw some flies. I knew to keep my mouth shut because of my experience with the lavendar lady. But, I watched them closely. Heck, I was curious. I'd never seen people like this, and there were so many of them....................One of the flies landed on a black lady, and she waved it away....but I watched that fly, and when it started getting close to me, I started yelling and trying to get out of that buggy seat. Instantly, my mother was at my side asking me what was wrong.
"I dont' want to catch it. I don't want to catch it," I screamed. In my child's mind, I thought if that fly landed on me that it would carry the black germ from the black lady to me, and that I'd somehow catch black....like the lavendar lady's disease and the Jolly Green Giant punishment.
"Catch what?" she asked.
I looked at her like she was nuts. Couldn't she see all of those sick black people over there?
"Nigger!" I screamed...and that was the first time I'd ever uttered that word, and it was at a very inopportune moment.
WHACK! She'd slapped me right across the face and started pushing that buggy as fast as it would go. I wailed, I screamed, I cried and wondered why she'd slapped me. When she got me to the greeting card section with its high shelves that shielded us from sight, I began to settle down.
"You, stupid kid, you're gonna' get us killed. This black people will have a riot. I told you NEVER to say that word. Now, shut up," she said with some urgency and continued, "Now, what is wrong with you?"
In between sniffles, I reminded her about the lavendar lady at Safeway, and I told her about the Jolly Green Giant and the black people and the fly. Well, she clarified my confusion right there in Target in the Greeting Card aisle. Yes, the lavendar lady at Safeway had a disease, but it wasn't contagious. The Jolly Green Giant wasn't real and that my Aunt Denice had just lied to us so we wouldn't touch the produce in the grocery store, and she also told me that the black people were just like us, and they did not have a skin disease..........MiMi paid for the records while the rest of us sneaked quietly out of the Target. Those black girls were big, and my Mama didn't want to take any chances. It was the early 1970s...and she was right about the riots.........It was still kind of confusing for a kid, but she got my sister and me a subsciption to National Geographic after that, and we saw a lot of black people in it, but they were mostly naked.......so I figured black people walked around naked most of the time unless they were in public...............and if Daddy wasn't at home, we got to watch "Good Times" and later "The Jeffersons"..and I really believed those sitcoms, as well as Diana Ross and the Jackson 5 educated America about the equality of blacks more than anything else. If people who had never seen or been around something got to see it on a regular basis, they didn't think it was odd anymore. I still think it is strange that people who supported racial equality were considered the liberals of their time.
In my small hometown, we rarely had any contact with black people. Sometimes, there would be a few black kids on opposing athletic teams, and they seemed like normal kids. When I got to college, I met many, many black people and befriended them. My mother was right; they were just like us. The University I attended was an Aggie school, but it was still more liberal that most of the rest of the world, and blacks, asians, gays, whites, hispanics, jews, Christians, Muslims, etc were all treated just the same. Discrimination wasn't permitted anywhere, but occasionally it would rear its head in unexpected places. On the whole though, a college town is a safe haven for people of difference. BUT, Hot Springs was not a college town, and even though it had been dubbed the "city of the arts" for Arkansas, it had a long ways to go before it was accepting of everyone. It takes a couple generations for racism to die off, and racism and homophobia were like Siamese twins.
Honestly, I didn't think the term homophobia fully defined most Southerners' feelings on the subject. PHOBIA indicated fear, and this sweet old lady didn't fear me. She thought she was my superior. HOMOGITRY would be a better descriptor. This lady was a homogit -- which I know sounds like an evil chubby creature who lives under Harry Potter's bed at Hogwarts, but it was much more accurate. Because bigotry and homophobia go hand-in-hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment