Louisiana: A Story I Can’t Tell, An Unsolvable Mystery, and the Joy of Acceptance

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Yesterday I sat on a boat dock under the Louisiana sun with *Mary, a 68 year-old woman who was hoping to catch her dinner from the depths of an eerie green lake. Mary wouldn’t let me take her picture, and she wouldn’t give me permission to tell her story, but she had one that took nearly two hours to tell. It wasn’t a kind story – it was edged in bitterness, and I’m not sure I could write it with any sort of compassion – but the way Mary told it, it was as breezy and light as the dandelion fluff blowing in the air.

She sat with her balding head bent toward an ancient fishing pole. The little hair that remained on her head was gray and stringy. She wore a silver cross around her neck, and a pair of red plaid pants with a white Saints t-shirt. Her pale skin was mottled with brown and blue spots, and she had the kind of leathery wrinkles that spoke of a life spent laboring.

In between tugs at her splintered pole and long draws from her L&M cigarettes, Mary spoke jovially, almost sweetly, about her disappointments. Her frustration was centered on her only daughter, who had given Mary two mixed-race grandsons to help rear. Mary didn’t have anything nice to say about the fathers of the children. She whispered the words “Black men” as if she were saying something else. Her daughter wasn’t thought of much better – she was foolish and and didn’t think of anyone but herself. The boys, though, were good boys. Not like their fathers or mother at all. They didn’t cause any trouble, but Mary didn’t expect to be living with teenagers at 68. She didn’t expect, especially, to be embarrassed. It was bad enough that her grandkids were colored, but it was worse that people stared.

I listened to Mary as she detailed each of her grandson’s accomplishments and best qualities. One was hard-working and serious, the other was funny and smart. Mary smiled as she spoke about them, and I didn’t sense that she found any irony in loving two children who came from a race she was deeply prejudiced against – or in her feelings of embarrassment.

Love. Family. Color. Race. I grasp at these things in ways that many other people, including my two older sisters, will never understand. My little sister might understand somewhat – she’s half-Samoan – but at least she knows that. I do not know who my real father is, and the only possible clue I have is this old picture, taken a few years before I was born. The girl in the dress is my eldest sister. The child standing in the background, in flowered shorts, looks just like me, and just like my son. No one knows who he or she is, and my mother, who always refused to tell me the truth anyway, is long dead. I have a Japanese-American friend with features similar to mine, but that’s also true of a Mexican friend, and a person I met from Iceland. I have no idea.

I do know that whoever my dark-eyed, olive-skinned father might be, my mother despised him. I know that she was embarrassed by the questions that were asked about my paternity, and then my younger sister’s. I grew up uncomfortable in my own skin. I wanted green eyes and thin lips. I wanted pale skin. I wanted acceptance. It wasn’t until I was out on my own that I came to appreciate the difference. I eventually grew into my lips, and they became fashionable. I turn brown instead of red in the sun. I like my almond-shaped eyes, even if I do have to wear glasses.

I didn’t tell Mary any of this. I listened to her and tried to understand. Most of all, I wondered about the teenaged boys whose color was a source of embarrassment to their fervently Southern Baptist grandmother.

On my way out of Lake Charles and into Shreveport, there were a lot of churches. One had a sign that said “Dusty Bibles = Dirty Lives”. It has always seemed odd to me that that so much prejudice flows from the mouths of the supposedly devout. Dirty lives, it seems to me, don’t come from dusty bibles, but from minds so small that they seek to exclude and diminish others. What color is God?

I’m going to the Naked Bean Coffee Shop in Shreveport tonight to listen to some music. A sign across the street advertises a meeting of the Red River Tea Party, a group that claims to be non-partisan but that clearly isn’t. I started writing political articles a couple of years ago because I was so excited about the possibility of a more inclusive, less divisive America. So were hundreds of thousands of other people. I find it depressing that the level of divisiveness – and intolerant rhetoric – has only risen since Obama was elected. I am grateful to be on the road and largely away from the media, which can’t seem to stop themselves from propagating hatred.

The sun is shining. There’s joy to be found, music on the horizon, and the kind of peace that can only come from accepting that the only corner of the world I can really manage is my own.

*Not her real name.

Tagged as: Louisiana, Road Trip Stories