The Rest of Wednesday

We went to Solomon’s Island for an afternoon trip. I picked up two new rocks. I also got to talk to my mother and the lovely Atalanta by phone. :)

Patricia and Ana Maria’s readings

Patricia read from her YA novel. It was about two families that had just been joined, and the narrator’s relationship with her new stepsister, Luna. Luna calls the narrator fat after discovering her hiding in her closet to eat. They tussle on the bed. Later, they head to an alligator farm so Luna can take pictures. The narrator is sullen and unfriendly, feeling that Luna gets special treatment and that her new stepmother doesn’t like her. I had trouble identifying with her. The tension is nice, though, and she picked a great place to end the reading where we really wanted to know what happened next.

            Ana Maria read from the book she’d been using in other talks about her father attempting to desegregate a bus. The bit she reads is about an interview with a white man who rode the bus with her father. She feels more comfortable talking to him than she did with the black man who rode the bus with her father—perhaps, she says, because she’s already been in contact with this guy. Probably, though, because he is white, and she doesn’t have to be constantly aware of race differences all the time, which makes her feel guilty, because she knows that if she were black, she’d have to think of them all the time. The guy’s story is radically different. The black man had said that the driver was cordial about calling the cops, and the cops about arresting them, but the white man says the driver drove so recklessly they ended up on two wheels until they got to the police station. “Were they cordial?” asked Ana Maria. I totally got where she was coming from on racial tension. I, too, hate having to analyze my every thought, word, action whenever I’m talking to someone not white, hate feeling marked by my whiteness and wondering if the person I’m talking to is thinking silly white girl even as they smile at me. My friend group is predominantly white, and I frequently imagine people asking me why I don’t have friends of color. The easy answer is I don’t seek people out for what they look like, I seek out people who have minds like mine, and if they happen to end up mostly being white, how is that my fault? My best friend is Asian. No, seriously. But there’s always a part of my brain that wonders if that’s because I’m not looking hard enough outside my race, if it’s because people outside my race don’t feel comfortable sharing the parts of their personality that push away so many people and attract me. 

            Finally, she read an essay from one of her several books of essays about her life. I have one of them, Potluck. It discussed how in her hometown, there ae no street addresses, not really. If you want to send a postcard, you’ll be fine with a name and a zip code. A package is harder. They don’t have house numbers, but they do have signs. Ana Maria and her housemates have the sign “Runaway Truck Ramp” which confuses the tourists and irritates the bus driver who has to explain, “It’s a joke” every time they wonder why one exists where it isn’t needed. She talked about her house sitter, who was a brave woman and unfailingly honest, who accidentally set a forest fire once and went to the ranger’s office to report herself. As always, her essays capture the perfect humanity of people, especially when they live in the middle of nowhere.