conversations
I heard him talking before I saw him.
The kind of booming voice that New York teaches you to avoid, looking for a willing audience. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him scanning the faces of passengers. I knew even before he sat down that it would be me, the easy target. Something in my face has always attracted strangers that no amount of staring-straight-ahead has ever been able to curb.
“Are you into African American studies?”
I paused, looked his way. Take it all in instantly the glasses, the gray hair, the steep angle of his nose. The thick clean nails as the ends of his long stubby fingers that remind me of my grandfather. “Um…I mean…generally speaking. But not actively now…”
“You just have a look about you. Real…natural, you know, just real relaxed and beautiful.” So I just, smiled as big and as wide as possible and said, “Thanks. That’s nice to hear”
“It must give you time to relax in the morning. To get your spirit in order. See my sister, she takes 45 minutes with her what’d you call it, all on your face, you know.”
“make up?”
“Yeah! With the make up and the…the…the…horse hair and the tight clothes. You must have a lot of extra time in the morning to just think and relax. I saw you and I thought, yeah there goes a beautiful sister that has it together, like in the 70’s. All the sisters were natural, we should get back to that, they were so beautiful. In my day the brothers and the sisters stood by one another. It was all about Unity and respect and pulling each other up. We didn’t call each other ‘N’ words and ‘B’ words, I don’t even say those words. My Uncle… when I was four years old in the south, in North Carolina. I saw my uncle LYNCHED from a tree. Strung up, with the ‘N’ word written across his chest. And now we go around calling each other, ‘N’ word this and ‘N’ word that, you know?”
I nod.
“It makes me sick. You know, in my day we didn’t do that. I…I marched in the civil rights marches and we fought for change. And today there just isn’t any unity. We didn’t fight…ok…well we fought, but it wasn’t any of this, I’m gonna kill you. We fought and then we made up the next day. And today, today? You know I fought in the Vietnam war, and that wasn’t our war, that wasn’t a war for the black man…in the beginning they wouldn’t shoot a black man. They’d say, ‘our war is not with you.’ So they’d send the blacks and the hispanics out first. We went there and we came back in worse shape. See I fought in the war, but I’m scared today sometimes when I see a bunch of black youth coming toward me. I’ve been harassed by them on the street. Had them call me names and push me around. And its just sad. Sad. It shouldn’t be that way.”
“It shouldn’t”
“And some of those kids, they go to high school and they come out and they can barely read, talking about, ‘I’m not going to college’ ”
“Like they’re proud of it.”
He slapped is knee, “Like they’re proud of it! I don’t understand. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Texas.”
“Texas? Texas! I trained in texas. I was at Fort Hood, before they sent me off to Vietnam.”
“Both my parents trained at Fort Hood when I was a little girl. They were both in the military. But um…this is my stop coming up. It was a pleasure to meet you sir.”
“Is this Penn Station!? No, no. I’m sorry, I’m just talking. Just talked all through your train ride.”
“Its fine. I appreciated it. I didn’t mind listening one bit,” I stood up to leave. He rose as well and we shook hands, a brief strong handshake.
“Just remember that you’re beautiful. No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what society says. Its in here,” He beat his chest. “It comes from in here and shines out.”
Good morning, Thursday.
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