To That Racist

CAUTION: Contains explicit and strong language.

This was written for an online Creative Writing class in 2018.  I had earlier documented it in a Writing Class circa 1986, however, do not have that copy. 

At the time, I didn’t understand why you did what you did.  Didn’t understand the hate. 

I still don’t!

To trigger your memory, I am the woman, the Black woman, who was parked in your space the day I ran to pick up my daughter from her babysitter who lived across the driveway from you.  I had always been able to pull into the babysitter’s space, but as fate would have it that day, there was someone in her space, so I pulled into yours. 

My daughter was 8 and I, 30.  I am now 62*.  How old were you then?  I know not.  How old are you now?  I know not.  What did you look like then?  I know not. What do you look like today?  I can’t even guess because you are lost in the memory.

  Your action is not!

As soon as I was ready to reverse from your space and looked in my rear view mirror, I saw that you were blocking my car.  I called from my window and asked you politely to move.  Your response was, “Don’t ever park in my space again.” 

Realizing then that it was your space, I apologized still calling through the window, “Oh, I am so sorry.” 

“Don’t you ever park in my space again.” 

“I am so sorry.  It won’t happen again.” 

After the third time of telling me to not park in your space and still in oblivion, I got out of my car and asked you to “Please move your car and I will get out of your space.” 

The next time you said it, I finally heard you.  “Don’t YOU park in my space again.” 

The breath left me for a quick second and I became that angry Black woman.  “Wipe my Blackness from the pavement,” I screamed and continued to scream at you; the memory of what else was said eludes me. 

As you scurried to move your car, were you elated to know that you had gotten to me, or were you embarrassed that your neighbors had come out to see what had happened?  The former, I gather, as I was to later learn that this was the real you the neighbors knew.

I left Jamaica to reside in the United States when I was 24.   I didn’t know racism.  I hadn’t experienced it in the six years I lived here.  I never understood why my US born Black brothers and sisters were always so defensive, thinking that almost everything that happened to them was racism.  I didn’t know their history and was oblivious to their pain.

You changed it that day.  You changed me.  I should thank you.  You helped direct my path to  understanding the Black American experience.

But no, I don't thank you!

Did you care that my eight year old daughter was witness to your hatefulness?  Do you care that she was cowering in the car?  Do you care now to know that she was witness to her mother pulling out of your parking space, stopping at the end of the driveway, slumping onto the steering wheel and bawling my heart out uncontrollably as she tried to console me?  She was eight!

Do you now care that you tore away a part of my soul?

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you racist bastard. 

And the world has not been the same.

*Reminder, this was written in 2018.  I am now 64.