Imported from Detroit

Let me provide some background first.

I was born in Pontiac ("the yak"), Michigan, a fact for which I hold a sort of scrappy pride. Pontiac was once a thriving factory town, but now, sadly, not so much.  

The last time I drove down my old street, there were boarded-up houses and empty lots where homes had been demolished. The street looked like the grin of a gap-toothed skeleton, and I sobbed all the way home. 

But people still live on that street, some of them my old neighbors, and where there's life there's hope. I still love Pontiac. I would never have had some of my best memories and many of my best friends without it. 

The other day I was loading groceries into my car when a woman who was parked nose-to-nose with me yelled, "Hey! Excuse me!" I walked toward her. She was a black woman, middle-aged, with glasses and a not quite trusting smile.

"What's that mean on your windshield?"

I looked and saw that she was talking about the decal at the top which read: IMPORTED FROM DETROIT. It was there when I bought the car, used, a year or so before. The salesman explained that it was part of an auto industry marketing campaign and meant that the car was as good as any import. Once he said that, I didn't give it a second thought.

"Oh!" I smiled with naivety, "It was there when I bought the car. I think it's just a little poke at the imports."

"You sure it doesn't mean Detroit's no better than a third-world country?" 

She didn't look like someone trying to pick a fight. Instead, she seemed to be trying to avoid a fight when there was a potential affront staring her in the face.

My eyes got very wide. "Honestly, ma'am, I never took it that way at all, and if I'd thought that's what it meant, I would have had the salesman take it off. I bought the car used and it was already on there. I always took it as pro-Detroit, not anti."

"Oh!" she smiled. "That sounds better to me. You see, I'm from Detroit, and I was just about to go a few rounds with you if that was your opinion!"

I smiled back. "Well, ma'am, I'm from Pontiac, and I think people like you and me ought to stick together."

"I think you're right!" she laughed. "You have a blessed day now!"

Life would be a lot better for everybody, and maybe last a lot longer for some, if we talked things out before jumping to conclusions. 

I know that two men could have defused this tense situation just as amicably; still, I think it's a good argument for pumping estrogen into city water supplies just to help things along a little bit. 

  

While Black

I was standing in a hotel elevator in Columbia, Maryland headed to the lobby. A black adolescent male stepped in shepherding a gaggle of five or six kids; cousins and siblings, I assumed. His charges were no older than eight with the smallest, the only girl, about four. The adolescent doing all the shepherding was as tall as a man, but his facial features said he was about 15. All of them were dressed for the pool. The elevator doors closed.

Image Copyright, Teece Aronin

"Wow, it looks like you guys are going swimming," I said to the younger ones.

"Yeah!" the goslings chorused.

"You are so lucky," I said. "I'm hoping that I get to go tomorrow."

The young man and I exchanged smiles. He spoke to the goslings softly and with a tone of bottomless patience.

"Now, listen to me very carefully," he said, and amazingly  they fell silent and all the little faces tipped attentively to his. "When we get to the lobby, we're going to be very quiet." His index finger rested gently against his lips and the thought struck me that this was a kid who lived his whole life gently.

"Okay!" the gaggle promised.

The young man looked at me and sighed. "All I can do is tell them, and know that it probably won't go well."

"You are doing a really great job," I told him.

When the doors opened onto the lobby I waited because one of the little boys was darting off the elevator. The young man in charge stopped him.

"We let the lady go first," he explained.

As I stepped off the elevator, the words, "Thank you sir," exited my mouth as naturally as if the young man had been an old one.

Behind me, the gosling protested. "Why did I have to wait?"

"Always be a gentleman," I heard as I walked away.

I got in my car thinking of a neighborhood boy who was a friend of my kids in what felt like another lifetime. His name was Paris and like the young man on the elevator, Paris was black, tall and mannish-looking. The last time I saw him he was 12. He was a little younger than my daughter, Sydney and a little older than my son, Jon. He spoke softly and had a dry sense of humor.

One day I was driving with the three of them in the backseat. Jon found a cereal bowl back there and put it on his head.

"Look! I have a bowl for a hat!"

Drawled Paris wistfully, "I wish there was milk in it."

Paris had a younger sister named Maya. Maya was very little and hadn't been around me much, so at her birthday party, fully expecting her to shy away, I asked, "May I pick you up?" And Maya shot her arms up in the air as happily as if I'd offered to take her for an airplane ride. 

One time my then-husband and I took Paris with us on a weekend trip. He, Jon and I were watching the news where one of the top stories was about someone's insistence on using the N word as part of his right to free speech.

"Jon, change the channel please," I said.

Paris' expression was even more serious than usual. "Thank you, Mrs. Aronin. You know, that word is offensive to people like me."

"It's offensive to me, too, Paris."

"What do you mean, people like you?" asked Jon.

"Black people," explained Paris.

Jon leaned back for a better view of his friend and looked astonished. "You're black?" he gasped, dead serious.

Not long after Paris' weekend away with us, his mother learned she had terminal cancer. She moved out-of-state with Paris and Maya to where they had family.

The night they left, Paris gave each of us something to remember him by; I got a "rock formation" from his aquarium and a can of Planter's peanuts. Maya gave the kids her hula hoop. When Paris' mother put the kids in the moving van and literally drove into the sunset, it was one the bleakest times the kids and I had ever known.

Paris' mother died soon after, and Paris and Maya moved in with the extended family. He and the kids keep in touch, but only sporadically.

The day after my exchange with the goslings, my daughter and I were in the hotel lobby. In walked the young man with four of his charges. 

"Syd, that's the kid I told you about," I whispered. "Doesn't he remind you of Paris? I still can't get over how well he handled all those kids."

"You really should go speak to him, Mom," she said. They were in a snack shop near the hotel entrance. The young man was patiently guiding the younger ones through their choices. I walked up to them.

"Excuse me," I said. Despite my smile, they all looked a little startled so I addressed the goslings first. "I was in the elevator with you last night, and I just wanted to compliment each of you on how grown up you all acted. You guys are pretty impressive kids."

"Thank the lady," the young man prompted.

"Thank you!" they chimed.

The little girl put her arms around my waist and laid her head against my side.

"And I wanted to tell you," I said, looking at the young man, "that you have a gift for working with little ones and it's obvious how much they respect you."

He looked shocked, then relieved, then delighted. Did he think I was about to criticize him? He put his hand over his heart and thanked me. I walked back to my daughter.

"Whoa, Mom, the woman working at the front desk was eyeing you like you would not believe."

I glanced over and saw that she was a young black woman.

"Probably thought I was harassing them for 'shopping while black,'" I said. "You know what I mean, right? Driving while black, running while black, walking while black. She probably thought that white woman better not accuse those kids of stealing."

"She was right to be suspicious," Syd sighed. 

"Yup, I know." I sighed too.

I wondered if that young man's parents had felt the need to teach him what so many black parents teach their already law-abiding kids: to keep their hands out of their pockets whenever they're in stores, to keep them visible if pulled over by a cop, and to be careful where and how they run. I'm sure there are lots of other lessons, too, ones I'm too white to have thought of. 

You know, we can argue until we're blue in the face, instead of whatever color we were born with, about the past acts of both sides, but children like Paris, and that kid at the hotel have to live through the present before they can live in the future and be the kinds of young, black men who'll help break the stereotypes.  

Paris was awfully young when his mother died. I hope she had time to teach him all the lessons.