The Thief of Lost Time

Chapter 23: "But You Can't Invite the Negro"

The next weekend, I detour from my usual route to the nursing home to ride through my old neighborhood in the Heights. I haven't been back in years. Everything seems narrower: the width of the streets, the distance between houses, and the houses themselves. Everywhere I look, memories clamor for attention.

The street in front of my childhood home is paved now. Years ago, it was a dirt road filled with stones, some as large as baseballs. During the winter, snow plows pushed the rocks to the side of the road where we found them in the spring like giant eggs fallen from nests in the trees overhead.

We were not allowed indoors during the summer except to eat meals, use the bathroom, and go to bed. When thirsty, we rang the bell and asked Mom for a drink. Sometimes it was lemonade but usually ice water. The streetlights coming on in the evening was the signal to go home.

The neighborhood was our playground, quiet and safe. No one locked their front door. There was never a burglary. The only ironclad rule: don't accept rides from strangers. Other warnings were made as circumstances required. Next door, a neighbor's brother was staying in her home while finishing his Ph.D. Without explanation, Mom told me I was not to be alone in the house with him. And one day Larry Crockett, a neighborhood boy five years older than Leslie, lured her behind the bushes in his backyard and told her to pull down her shorts. Frightened, Leslie ran home. Mom calmed her telling her it wasn't her fault, but to never to talk to Larry again. Case closed. Nowadays, the FBI would be called in by local police. And when she was seven, Leslie rode her bike down our steep hill. She gathered speed and panicked, forgetting how to use the pedals to stop the bike. At the bottom, she flew across Gray Street, normally busy, into the woods adjacent to the junior high. The bike hit a rock and Leslie was thrown to the ground. She escaped with her life and a few scratches. Mom had a drink to steady her nerves and Dad taught Leslie how to use the hand brakes on her new bike. Despite these rare instances, once we left our houses in the morning, our mothers went about their chores assuming we looked after each other.

The wives in our neighborhood did not work outside the home. Sometimes Mom invited them for coffee in the morning. She'd give Leslie or me money to buy a coffee cake from Chapman's. Their delivery car, long and black like a hearse, stopped each morning at the head of our street. "Are you from the yellow house?" the driver asked us, irritated that Mom refused to buy overpriced bread from him. We dreaded this chore because the man always scowled like he might arbitrarily refuse to sell us the cake or pastries.

***

Prejudice, both religious and racial, was an undercurrent in our childhood.

By the time I knew my grandmother, her anti-Catholic feelings had abated. I never heard her speak against the Jews, probably because they were foreigners whom she had never met.

Our family went to the Congregational Church on Pleasant Street. Although attending church every Sunday, we weren't a religious family and never spoke about faith. I doubt my parents believed in the myths surrounding the life of Jesus. Years later, our parents came to despise the new minister, left the church, and only contributed to keep him away. Growing up, Mom had internalized her mother's Catholic prejudice which the priest's treatment of Dad as a Scout only reinforced. She complained about the students from the parochial school who walked home through our neighborhood. The boys threw rocks and jumped over our hedges along the sidewalk. The girls, wearing their uniforms of white blouses and plaid skirts, 'dolled' themselves up, as Mom would say, applying makeup as soon as they left school property. They were boisterous, and their conversations easily overheard. I don't remember what they said, but Mom insisted that, despite attending a religious school, they had mouths that needed washing out with soap.

The other incident was more serious because it involved Trudy, our asthmatic playmate. One day, for some reason, Leslie annoyed her. When Trudy invited us into her basement to play ping pong, she excluded Leslie. She peered in the cellar window, her face against the glass. "You're doing this because you're Catholic!" Leslie shouted. I was shocked and embarrassed. Mrs. Donnelly told Leslie she would not be welcomed in their home if she talked like that. Leslie ran home in tears.

When I returned home, I found Mom consoling her in the living room. "What happened?"

"Leslie said mean stuff about Catholics and Trudy's mom wouldn't let her in the house."

"You shouldn't be mean, Leslie, even if Catholics always think they're right. We don't agree with them. They believe non-Catholics will go to hell; they're not allowed to attend our church; and if they don't eat fish on Friday, it's a sin."

This was true. My cousins were Catholics and I'd heard them say the same things. Leslie had once fled to our parents' bedroom in tears to say that Mickey had told her she was going to hell and she didn't want to go to hell, and he said she would and never escape. Mom calmed her down and demanded that Dad tell his sister to stop her sons from upsetting Leslie. Religion was a delicate subject around which we tiptoed for many years.

***

To my grandparents' credit, I never heard any prejudice against Blacks, or Negroes as they were called in those pre-Civil rights days. When Mom's brother married Alice Leland, a girl from Virginia, this issue became front and center. Alice never considered herself to be prejudiced. She fondly remembered the 'Negros' who worked on her father's farm, at least those who remained farmhands and lived with their own kind, didn't attempt to improve themselves or complain about their wages.

One Sunday after dinner at Aunt Ellen's house with all the family present, Mom made an unfortunate comment. In my great-aunt's candy dish, she found black jellies shaped like gingerbread men covered in sugar. "My favorite." She helped herself to four of them. "I love nigger babies."

Aunt Alice bristled and attacked. "We never called our Nigras 'niggers.' When I grew up, I loved our cook and my nanny and the yard man. We took care of them and they were happy. They wanted to be part of our family."

Mom meant nothing insulting by calling the candies 'nigger babies.' That's what they'd always been called, and she felt unfairly attacked. Leslie and I, at five and seven, were unaware of the gathering storm. Words, then opinions, and finally accusations were flung back and forth criticizing the South's treatment of blacks and the North's hypocrisy. The Civil War was relitigated, and the current social order was challenged. Whatever was said, the words stung. Bursting into tears Mom retreated with Dad to a bedroom. Aunt Alice and Uncle Neal hunkered down in the kitchen. Leslie and I were in tears. Leslie fled to be with Mom. Aunt Ellen comforted me, assuring me that everything would soon be better. We left shortly thereafter. Race relations never came up again.

During a summer arts festival while in high school, I had the role of Rodrigo in Othello. My family left on vacation before the play's run ended and I stayed with Aunt Alice and Uncle Neal in Weston where the play was performed. My uncle and aunt graciously offered to host a cast party after the last performance on Saturday night. "But you can't invite the Negro." The 'Negro,' a Harvard law student, was both the director of the play and the actor playing Othello. I said a cast party was already scheduled at the theatre and the matter was dropped.