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overwhelmedbyskeletons · 4 years ago

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A Chance to See What’s Out There

I wake up Saturday morning at around 7am. The AM radio DJ told the local news; A dog was arrested for somehow stealing a delivery truck while the driver was dropping off a package. The driver called in to say how he ran down the road after the truck. He ran for a few moments before the truck stopped, he caught up with it and found the dog sitting there, panting, as happy as a dog can be. I could almost imagine myself witnessing it take place in my head in real time. Luckily, no one was hurt and the dog only made it down the road before his attempted GTA was brought to a halt. He was a Boxer named George.

The sweet, cool scent of a winter’s morning rain was permeating throughout the room. The sound of rain drops on the wide french windows of our bedroom were a never ending symphony. The overwhelming smell of the moist mud and grass fields outside the second-story windows were a clear sign that we’ve come to know that the rain had not let up all night.

The bedroom walls were forest green, complimented by photos of my wife and I, and of her photography over the years. Shelves were filled with books and various handcrafted knick-knacks that we found humorous. A large lounge chair sit in the corner where a throw blanket and book would be placed most everyday.

I yawned and stretched, reaching next to me, but grabbing nothing but bedsheets. My wife was up already, normal routine for her morning was to make coffee as the sun was rising. I sat in bed for a few moments more before I heard the approaching, un-socked footsteps of my wife heading up the stairs.

“MY DEAR FUCKING LORD” I muttered out in a voice of definite confusion.

My wife, Miranda, bursts through the bedroom door in a panic.

“What the fuck is your deal?” She asks.

“Honey… I’m Blind.” I reply, with absolute certainty, reaching towards her.

“Oh fuck off.” She hands me my coffee.

I take it with a smile on my face with what what most would call a shit eating grin.

“Wipe that shit eating grin off your face, before make you mute as well.” she replies, sitting down next to me in bed as we both enjoy our coffee, listening to the rain.

The Incident, as we began to call it happened one week prior on an odd, but welcomed sunny winter day. We were both resting after a deep cleaning of our ever-growing backyard garden space. Weather resistant succulents and cactus were scattered all over on varying metal shelves and repurposed chairs. Monstera plants provided the area a zen-like atmosphere of which took us almost a year of collecting and soil-observing care to achieve.

Our two-story, cabin-like home sat at the end of a one-car mile long road that forked from off an already forgotten highway, winding and curving through trees and bushes. The seclusion was what attracted us the most. Noises of the human nature were something we had lived with before for years prior and the quiet of the two of us existing among the trees and all that reside within them was a necessary change in our lives.

We had spent many days of the year inside and the sun’s light was showing just how defined my farmer’s tan was. The idea of tanning was always a joke to me in the city, but in the security of the high-fenced backyard, the idea didn’t seem to half bad.

I sternly stood upright from my lounging and declared, “I’m gonna sunbathe.”

I began to undress. The removing of my shirt and shorts got the usual oo’ing and ah’ing from my wife.

“Should I go full on naked?” I asked.

“I don’t care.” Miranda replied, barely looking up from her book now.”

In one quick motion of pride, I was back to the way the gods had sculpted me.

“Exquisite.” Miranda said, through a chuckle.

“You know you love it.” I replied.

A moment of fidgeting in my seat before finding a comfortable position, but in the end, it only took a few minutes before my eyelids grew heavy in the warm sun.

“Wake me if I’m out for more than an hour, will ya darling?” I tried to ask through sleep.

“You got it, babe.” She replied.

“Thanks, mama.”

I was awoken with a sharp pain slicing across my face. I groggily shot up out of the seat, barely standing up right as I tried to open my eyes. Dark crimson began pooling in both eyes, blinding out my view of the world in front of me. I was trembling with fear of what was happening to me. The pain from keeping my eyes open was immense, so I shut them as tightly as I could. I screamed and hollered for help, but I heard nothing but birds chattering and the hiss of wind flowing through the trees. Once the pain subsided enough to allow movement, I noticed my face cold from liquid, I was bleeding so much even with my eyes shut. I was blind, helpless, and nude.

I had walked this garden hundreds of times, but for the first time in my life I was truly lost and alone. I wandered and bumped for what felt like hours. Finally, I had found the door handle thanks to the shower door inside the house being shut. I was navigating fully with sound, a trait that one surprisingly catches on quick.

Inside the kitchen area with the door shut behind me, I watched my every step hoping to not spill any blood from my face onto the tile floor. I already couldn’t see, the last thing I needed was a slip-and-fall concussion.

I made myself known, hoping my wife would come to my aid. “Miranda, can you help me? Please don’t freak out.”

“Of c- wait, what’s wrong?” She replied. Her footsteps I heard hastily walked towards me from down the hall. She gasped with absolute fear.

“I don’t know what happened.” I said, trying to smile to alleviate any fear she might have. “I think Thomas Shelby finally got to me.”

“Oh my god.” Miranda replied, unimpressed by my comment. “Okay, let’s get a clean cloth, we have to clean you/ you’ll be okay/ let me get the keys, we have to go to ER/ oh fuck, you’re still naked.” I could hear tears starting to form with her words.

I held out my arms to hug her. She embraced me so quickly, I stumbled from loose footing.

“Grab me a wet cloth, and get my shorts from out back and let’s drive to the hospital. My pain is okay. I’m okay.” I said in a calm voice to ease her nerves.

I was quickly dressed decent, in the passenger seat of our Honda with a wet rag on my face. The drive to the hospital was quick and silent.

We arrived, parked, and my wife guided me to the entrance.

“We need to be seen right away.” She exclaimed.

A nurse sat at a desk cut her off, handing her a clipboard and piece of paper to fill out. I removed the rag from my face a moment to show thick strands of blood sticking from my face to the bloodied towel. I was put into a wheelchair immediately and was soon in my own room.

Not much time went by before several voices entered the room, to help clean my face and understand what they were dealing with. Their voices were that shrill, fake-assuring tone that would deafen you at a theme park. Coupled with the sterile smell of everything and the loss of one of my senses, to say I was nauseated would be an understatement. But, I held through, asked my wife for an advil from her bag and laid on my paper bed. A couple of needle pricks of painkillers and many gauze wipes later, and I was being operated on.

The first procedure was quick. It involved cauterization of my slice eyelids to seal the wounds shut and to stop bleeding and a quick stick in the bridge of my nose. The second one, not as simple. Both corneas were damaged, sliced by whatever the hell it was that shot through them. I required eye reconstruction and I would be practically blind for a week post-op. 13 hours later on a Saturday and I was back home, with gauze taped to both my eyelids and a joint in my hand, doctor’s orders.

That night, We both slept like a animalistic hibernation was in order. When we both were awake and ready for the day, I opted to stay in the bedroom and practice walking to the bathroom, a trek of only nineteen steps there and back. Miranda went out back to try and find whatever it was that blinded me. With a retelling of what I felt from the bedroom window down to her, she set up a at-home crime scene. Within an hour she was able to identify the blood tinted smoking gun. A sharp piece of dark grey metal, what Miranda called ‘A Crow’s Prized Trinket’. We laughed it off as a freak occurrence, and put the piece of scrap in a baggie in my bedside drawer.

It took a little bit to get used to, but by Monday morning, I found my routes to the bathroom and the dining room table. I still bumped here and there, but I only ever tripped once.

By Wednesday, my Stevie Wonder impression grew old. Thursday night, My Roy Orbison impression required a google search and a realization that the Oh, Pretty Woman songwriter could indeed, actually see. Who knew.

Thunder rumbled and lightning crashed outside as if the gods were fighting on how to fix the water leak that is the rain beating down upon my house.

“Weatherman hopes for it to be through before night.” Miranda said, sipping her coffee and reading her book; a highlander smitten by the beauty and grace of a time-travelling housewife from the 20th century.

“I like it, gives me something to listen to.” I replied, still sitting in bed, soft jammies and all.

I went for the last gulp of my creamer with coffee, when Miranda quickly gasped in shock.

“Oh my god, that one was so close.” She said before cut off by the thunder that was at a previous six-Mississipi’s away, crashing at a deafening volume.

“Fuck me, blind and now deaf as well.” I said, jokingly through a chuckle. At that moment, through my laughing, for the first time in a week, movement of my eyelids. Nothing monumental, but I could see the warmth of the lamp near my wife, across the room. I quickly removed the gauze pads from over my eyes and opened them. Sight. It was all fuzzy, but I could finally see shapes again.

“Holy crap, babe.” I said with excitement. “I can see, not well, but shit, it’s a start.” I fiddled around at my bedside table, looking for my phone.

“It’s okay, I’m calling him.” Miranda replied, now at my side, petting my hair as if I was the family dog.

A quick phone call later, and I had my head in the bathroom sink, rinsing my eyes out with lukewarm water. The doctor had told us that my recovery was more speedy than expected, but nonetheless a good sign. Rinsing of my eyes would remove any crusty buildup over the week and help with the final process of healing.

I’ve never had the elusive 20/20 vision that only those gifted by the gods of sight allowed such a a trait, and after several minutes of washing, I was still far from where I was before the accident. Our excitement was put away, slightly defeated, but still pleased of my progress.

I wandered downstairs, testing myself with the readings of the backs of cereal boxes and old magazine covers while my wife remained upstairs, reading. This went on until sundown, when our bed was sending out it’s siren’s song of comfort. I slowly waddled upstairs and around the corner into the bedroom.

“So, I was able to read the cereal boxes and labels of most of the cans, I think.” I said while removing the decorative pillows placed neatly on our king-sized bed.

“That is so good to hear.” Miranda replied halfheartedly joyous.

I could tell she was upset that I wasn’t fully cured, but I remained positive to help her understand that all will be better soon. We laid under our soft blankets, cuddling one another. My arms wrapped around her from behind, I slowly guided my hands to her legs and tickled her to a pure state of relaxation. I could feel her frustration of my inability to see slip away as her eyelids grew heavier. She was asleep within minutes. I continued for twenty.

The ever-persistent rain had remained beating down upon the roof and trees outside all day. Mud puddles had began forming in the garden, but with how hot the summer was, excess was welcomed. I contemplated reopening the window, to hear the sounds more clearly, but I fell victim to the sandman’s spell before I could make up my mind.

That night I dreamed of something I had never thought I could imagine. I was in the walls of a dark and long hallway with not much in it. The walls around me smooth and reflective; it was basically a mirror in tube form. At the end of the room, was a door that never opened, but beyond it I could hear the grumblings of two, maybe three voices. In between their incoherent conversation was the stomping akin to that of a unsavory upstairs apartment neighbor. I’d usually think nothing if it, but for some reason I feared those steps. With every new set, my heart began to race at the thought of them opening those doors and showing themselves to me. I couldn’t take it anymore and began shouting, trembling with fear.

I was quickly awoken by Miranda who had shook me awake. I was halfway crawling out the window, drenched. I looked back and she was horrified, latching onto my shirt, pulling me back in. It took me a moment to realize all of this, when I did, I made my way back inside and shut the window. Miranda ran and grabbed me a towel.

“I was having a strange dream.” I described my dream to my wife in the best detail that I could at the moment. She was perplexed by how the two incidents were connected. She helped dry me off and get me warm.

“So I don’t understand, were you crawling out a window in the dream?” She asked.

Before I could answer, a flash of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder. This time was different than any lightning I had ever seen in my life. The flash was a bright green that illuminated the trees and land out the window instead of the sky. As for the thunder, it remained at a steady rumbling hum for a minute coming from the direction of the green light. We were stunned by what we were seeing. The window was fogging from our breathe so we cracked it enough to see outside.

I did my best to watch, but any amount of vision couldn’t deny that this was a strange occurrence. We watched for several minutes, observing the strange oddity deep into the forest. The light was persistent in it’s glow, but the sound would alternate in it’s pitch from time to time. Miranda and I remained silent, barely breathing the entire time we watched.

All of a sudden in an instant, the humming stopped, and the light shifted it’s focus towards us, our home. We shielded our eyes, but peeked through our fingers. That was when we saw it. Running faster than any athlete could, weaving through the forest floor, sometimes jumping off of a trunk for speed, and it was coming straight towards us. I quickly shut the window and bolted the lock. Whatever was headed towards us was ��fast and it didn’t take it long to reach the garden fence. I shut the blinds in hopes that that would somehow protect me from the whatever it was outside.

We heard a bang followed by a crash downstairs. It was in the house. The security alarm system began yelping, ringing in our ears. I ran up to shut the bedroom door, bumping the foot of the bed on my way and grab a bat beside it. Just before I slammed it shut, I heard the creature downstairs screeching along to the alarm, as if it was speaking to alarm. I slammed the door and backed into the chair where my wife usually reads. She was crying under the blanket. I wanted to join her, so I did.

It began it’s ascent up the stairs. The sound. It’s feet. It was exactly what I heard in my dream. The alarm finally shut itself off and I could hear it talking to itself. It was the same sound I heard in my dream. I was sobbing, shaking with fear when I bumped into my wife’s foot uncovered by her blanket. I shook her, stood her up and told her to hide in our closet. She resisted, but I finally got her in behind the door and I stood, ready to fight and slightly blind.

The creature scratched on the wooden bedroom door. It could hear me or smell me or whatever it was doing, it knew exactly where I was. It didn’t kick down the door, or blast a hole through it, but it instead turned the doorknob. I had forgotten to push in the button to lock it.

I readied my swing when it pushed open the door. I wiped away tears from both eyes, which cleared my vision a little more. I saw it standing there, hunched over with scales all over. It’s face covered in holes, in the center two large, clear eyes that blinked alternately. A large mouth, filled with teeth stayed agape, dripping fluids all over the floor. Tentacle like limbs had no significant placement on its body. It slapped on the floor with it’s constantly moving ‘feet’ tentacles. Standing seven feet tall, the creature purred at me, unmoving from the beyond the doorframe. We had a stand off for a moment before I made my move.

“What the fuck do you want?” I yelled.

It did nothing, it remained a statue. I repeated myself. It screeched back. I let out a scream and rushed it. I made two steps before it shot out one of its slimy tentacles around my neck, holding me in place. The smell was a horrible, rotting carcass smell. I gagged, but couldn’t restrain and vomited on its arm and myself. It pulled itself in closer to my face. It was observing me, looking for something. It starred for a while before it chirped with delight, raised a small tentacle and quickly slid it behind my left eye. I felt no pain somehow, not even when it yanked my whole eye out. It observed my plucked eye, dropped me to the floor, and then headed back down the stairs. Miranda rushed out the closet, and saw me bleeding from my eyes for the second time in a week.

I was calm and without pain, which somehow transferred to Miranda and we were both fine with what had happened. We heard a crashing coming from outside the window again, and we walked over to look. The one was making its way through the broken doors while another was sliding all along the floor and walls of our backyard. They soon both began speaking that incoherent mush again before quickly scurrying off towards the green light.

Not too much time passed of us starring out into the darkness. The green light began to flash, the thunder grew louder and stronger, knocking books off the shelves. The power shut off. We were in total darkness as we watched the dark object rise from the ground, hundreds of feet away, blowing branches and rain in every direction. It was high in the sky, hovering for a moment when I closed my eyes, well eye. I was back in that dark, mirror place, but this time It wasn’t as clear. I heard the creatures talking again, and a whirring sound. Before, in my dream, this place sounded distressed, incorrect. Now it was complete, whole somehow. A few more glimpses and it was gone.

Miranda and I cleaned up the bedroom in silence. We mopped up the water and blood and drool of the creature, fixed our bedroom to the best of our abilities. We would clean the downstairs in the morning. For now, we would sleep.

Every night since that night, I will take one meaningful look out our wide, french windows, making sure that flash of green hadn’t returned. I lay in bed and listen closely for that rumble that shook the walls remained gone. When I would finally shut my eyes and fall to rest however, I would hope I’d see that place one final time. That last chance to see something that no one could define. An otherworldy place.

#short story #scifi #horror #short-story #comedy

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rhondaadorno · 5 years ago

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Double Consciousness

“One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” ― W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

For many years, I’ve dodged commitment to the identity of a writer because I’ve been afraid of the backlash that would come with my words. I tend to have an out-of-body experience when I put words on paper. They become 3D powerful images, a kind of synesthesia occurs, and arrows whistle towards a target...and there are always casualties.

So, I stopped writing, avoiding opinion articles, blogs like this one, essays, controversial FB posts, because, if people actually read what I had to say beyond the armor of poetry or a creative piece, they’d feel quite different about me as a black female. And I couldn’t risk that.

2.5 Words

I’ve been conscious of myself as a black female since the third grade. Once, I had forgotten something on the PE field, and while walking back to get it, a little boy, on the other side of a fenced in playground, yelled out to me, “you're black.”

2.5 words without an ounce of hostility or error in them.

He didn’t taunt or provoke me, but when I got back to the car, I just remember feeling... wrong. Not different, just faulty or wrong somehow.

I dreamed up a clever retort too late which was, “...black is a color in the crayon box.” I guess I’ve always been a creative and insightful thinker....

This boy was 6 or 7 years old, riding a schoolyard tricycle; I didn’t even know him.

Yet, after that non-hostile experience, I was terrified to walk by that playground again.

Remember, he only vocalized his observation that I am indeed black. I still recall those sharp feelings I felt despite the words being true and true.

But I wonder why he believed it was his prerogative to point it out, to make me notice I was not the same skin color.

Safely Black

This experience was pretty much my introduction to learning I was black. Of course I knew I was not white, but I didn’t know that other people, especially kids, cared that I was not white. From there, it was being laughed at because I said “ax” instead of “ask.” One of my classmates saying, “ew, gross” because of the product in my hair, which was touched without permission. Years later, it was the shade of my knees, which are darker than the rest of my legs. Now, it’s trying to decide if I should purchase a wig for an interview or self-identify on a job application, never sure if my natural hair or shade of melanin will be the undisclosed reason behind “not the right fit.”

From K - 12th grade, I attended predominantly white, private Christian schools. Overt racism never happened to me. Yet, not once did I ever feel safe among my teachers and friends to be a black female... to fully explore what that even means. I was always hiding something.

Yes, I had meaningful friendships and positive experiences, but never as my self.

I feel that I have lived my life dressed up by a host of unsolicited tailors specializing in the way I speak, how I present myself, how I must act inside of stores, the opinions I voice, and the list goes on.

I have learned how to become invisible and nondescript so that I can be “safely” black.

And it’s been to my detriment.

An Angry Black Woman

Many people are feeling shocked by the recent events caught on video and shared via social media. Without me even mentioning the race of this little boy, it will be inferred that he was white. Because, even if some “don’t see color,” everyone knows that Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, Caucasians, and every other group of people, have worked very hard to point out how we are not the same skin color, and somehow a lesser pedigree of human, for generations.

Until a few days ago, I had remained pretty quiet on the topic of racial injustice--always looking for ways to share my experiences, relate my double consciousness to friends, while not offending anyone.

But right now, black people are being threatened and murdered on live cameras by white people.

And for some reason, despite my coveted relationships with white friends, for several years, I have nursed a fear that it would damage something between us if I commented on any news story about race.

I’ve believed it would alter our friendship if I became a fist-raised Black Power advocate. It would make things awkward if I were to steadily post black injustice on my newsfeed. That, if I said I’m so angry that police are killing little boys and young men, I would be viewed as, wait for it, an angry black woman. Nevermind the truth that I feel wrecked from my core; I’d just rather not make any waves.

That’s what’s been on my mind. Not exclusively the horror of the murders I’ve been stockpiling in my conscious since a young girl, but the fact that I actually know people who would eventually wish I’d stop posting the “angry racist stuff,” and stop trying to “take us back to the past.”

Bullets of Truth

But this is my own mess, my own web of nonsense because I have cultivated and catered to this twisted sense of peace among all men when I shonuff’ know there ain’t been no peace cuz no cops are walkin’ around viewing my black brothers as men.

My shame is that I know I have denied myself and my friends the conversations about what it really means to be black in America BEFORE we were shown these awful attacks. It’s not like I didn’t know it was happening.

But I have been so afraid to put my bullets of truth out there--mainly because you learn, way back in elementary school, when you are black, you just don’t talk about being black with white people because they will somehow make it about how they feel wronged and attacked. You just lock up that door and know what you know.

Except, I can’t feel anything but sick lately-- like I have to projectile vomit my self up from the place I’ve swallowed my self to become fiercely black, once and for all, and unabashedly own what that little boy “accused” me of being.

To finally say out loud, ”No, I am not the whitest black friend you know.”

To shoot down, “You sound white on the phone.”

To reject, “You don’t act like other black people.”

To refuse, “You’re very articulate for a black person.”

To say, “I’m disinterested in being the official tour guide of Black History month” because to be honest, I am still trying to understand what it means to even be black.

Black in America

My mother’s hard decision for my life was to go the route of private education on the other side of town, or attend the public schools we were zoned for in a less desired part of town (by no fault of the town, because lines were redrawn on purpose.) The outcome was me, immersed in a homogenous environment where I got a pretty decent education, but striving to fit in, losing my cultural heritage, pride and identity in progressive stages to the point my mother actually asked me in high school did I want to be white. Whenever I spent time in the black community, I couldn’t quite find my foothold there either, because they too thought I was “trying” to be white.

I don’t regret her choice, but I, as a parent, now know what choosing the first one meant. There are times I am not sure who I am when it comes down to the spectrum of black identity, and it’s sad, confusing, and alienating.

And honestly, I, along with many in my community, don’t have enough moments of peace to experience true self-discovery, to nurture who that person really is.

As soon as we’re proud of Barack and Michelle Obama or overjoyed about the historical Black Panther film or inspired by the shocking legacy of Katherine Johnson or choose to kneel with Colin Kaepernick or feel paranoid by the Confederate flag or unified under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter -- a whole lot of people, including the president of the United States, feel it’s their prerogative to tell us who we are for us [re:thugs]--and that narrative is never, ever good.

We are constantly trying to push it out, fighting cops for our kids’ lives, warding off suspicions, navigating extreme violence and poverty in our own community, and trying to prove our value and worth for school and career, while raising our babies to be proud of their skin color, our beautiful brown babies, who, as soon as they graduate Kindergarten, will cease to become non-threatening.

By the way, we are processing all of this, while watching white people protest masks and quarantine with assault rifles. In 2014, Tamir Rice was shot dead for having a toy gun. He was 12.

Under the Radar

So, I’ve come to this point, feeling like it’s crazy and impossible that I’m literally living through some of the things in my mother’s lifetime, that I must raise my daughter with a keen awareness that not all people are treated equally, even when the Constitution declares we are.

That I must actually teach her that even though the “colored only” signs are gone, the stone place of men’s hearts from where the words originated still exist. And they will mean it and enforce it with all the boldness of the Jim Crow era, just under the radar.

I’ve been trying to understand why in the world I am being so affected by this now, so much that it alters my mood and impacts productivity, why I feel like I have to force myself to be positive and hope for change. Is this what it also means to be black? To stir up my ancestors’ concoction of will, determination, resilience, and sing my own kind of Negro spiritual, and march my way to freedom? No wonder they were so strong!

I am cognizant of the fact that there are many great white men and women who work in the armed forces, and in law enforcement to protect all people in America. And I know there are those have worked in the past to abolish laws and helped to enact civil liberties for people of color.

I also know that it took the braveness from the likes of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman and W.E.B. Dubois to shed light on the black experience...so together these powerful people could push change forward with a vengeance.

I am nowhere near as proficient in elocution as they, but this is my piece. I’m finally saying something about what it means to be black in America, but I am also feeling like that’s not enough.

The White Wall

I have many friends who are parents and who are educators and who are the complex cocktail of both.

Black people have not ever wanted to educate their white friends about what this terror feels like, and honestly, we shouldn’t have to because-- internet.

But I am realizing, with my own education in a predominately white environment, I didn't learn anything from my teachers about me and my world.

Nothing truly existed beyond the white wall--white writers, white poets, white leaders, white composers, white heroes, and Martin Luther King Jr.

From K - 12th grade, what I learned about the realities of being black wasn't taught by teachers or textbooks. The little I did learn was by being in the midst of my community, and eventually reading and pursuing and chasing after knowledge.

Therefore, it’s positively unrealistic to imagine that white people know much at all about the black experience. And both public and private education do not place importance on real diversity. Now, with the visual horror of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I venture to believe, for many white people, these past few weeks have been pretty much earth shattering.

But why is knocking down this wall and learning about the black experience (and other races and ethnicities) important?

When a white person’s basic lifestyle is free from external conflict, the tendency is to want to live there and only there. Problematically, she will grow increasingly out of touch with the world beyond her (and perhaps surrounding her if people of color have come into her world). But she will fail to see the good and the bad, except for this: negative media will only show her the bad, and tell her how to think, and what to believe about everyone else who looks different than her, subliminally, judgmentally, until eventually she behaves in the audacious, debased manner of Amy Cooper, a white woman who knew what the fatal consequences would be for a black man if she simply called the police to say she was feeling threatened, and to have had the presence of mind to wield it like a weapon.

A Gaping Chasm

Learning about the black experience is important because Amy Cooper probably did not wake up believing she was a racist or even had a racist bone in her body. But she knew that she was white and he was not, and in her anger, decided to weaponize her whiteness by calling the police on a black man, which depending what “bad apple” was on duty, could have ended his life--too.

That is how it works. It doesn’t always end in loss of life, but always ends in loss of masculinity, loss of spirit, loss of soul, loss of faith, loss of trust; it just ends in loss.

When you don’t fight to change the system, you become part of the system.

So, unless (or until) a white family has been very intentional, they and their children are not learning about the black experience.

Even when teaching my child about the origins of America and the Civil War and Reconstruction, I had to be intentional, essentially going back to school because there are things that were blatantly omitted from my years of learning and were still being omitted for hers if I did not break out from the wall.

To put this in perspective, I was in college when I learned there were accomplished black leaders besides Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. I was in my 30s when I heard black women and NASA in the same sentence together.

My mom had Black America encyclopedias, and she wore her Afro proudly with a fist in the air, but she trusted my education to the school system--the private, Christian school system, and they emptied out all of the other crayons in the box, and asked me (and my classmates) to only color with the white crayon.

So, for white families, between choice of schools, places of worship, and by not having or seeking out any predominately black cultural experiences, there is a gaping chasm between us.

One that I’d like to lay a log across for my part.

Gateway for Change

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for kids. I’ll bleed for them. I’ve spent the better years of my life surrounded by them. And from them, I’ve learned they are not afraid to learn something new when it’s presented to them in a digestible manner. I’ve been thinking a great deal about kids lately--my nephews and nieces, my former English students and chess kids, my friends’ children....They have heard the chatter, seen our reactions, and may have even seen the same videos on YouTube.

All of these kids, our kids, are being shaped by this society, and they will one day become adults who must interact and deal with each other politically, socially, emotionally, physically, spiritually, economically, and mentally.

So who is educating them? Who is explaining empathy and justice and teaching love and acceptance? One thing this virus has taught our nation is that parents are capable of teaching their children too. No matter how great your school system is, they are not going to teach your children about race relations with any consequence.

Education is the single most important gateway for change. Yes, there are people who will perpetuate ignorance regardless because they are blocked in by their incestuous beliefs, but for those who wish to break out of that crippling heritage or emerge from the silos of their communities -- with empathy and insight, you have to learn something new and share the wealth.

You have to know what’s being taught inside the homes of black families, multi-racial families, Arab families, Asian families, and most recently, the Navajo nation. Buy books with diverse characters by diverse authors --for yourself, your children, your students. Watch films with diverse casts. Find positive images and media that celebrate the success and vitality of black excellence.

Listen to the lessons and conversations we've been having amongst ourselves for generations and still teach today. White society is not a bad society. Black society is not a bad society. We are not going to see eye to eye on many many things, but we can agree that every life is valuable.

I do not represent every black person, nor does every black person hold my same views.

But absolutely, we do not live or experience life the same way as our white friends and family. This truth is not a victimhood or disadvantage we seek to revel in or exploit, nor does it devalue the privileges others know and experience. Within our own community, we definitely have very real problems to address, but right now, daily life should not be a mental obstacle course that’s filled with active minefields laid out for us everyday.

Lately, it just feels like no matter what we do or don’t do, the fatalities are adding up, and wicked people in this country are treating the taking of our lives like points in a video game.

As you think about these words, and listen to the stories of these young black men, who are being hit the hardest with racial injustice, dare greatly to share widely within your community.

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“But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.” ― W.E.B. DuBois

Pixabay photos used by permission. Video sourced by New York Times.

#blacklivesmatter #ahmaudarbery #george floyd

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