Blackness, at the beginning of the year

I almost took my son to see the Mummer’s parade. It’s his first real New Year’s Day, he spent the last one in my stomach. We live in Philly and it’d take a small effort to get there, a ten minute train ride, maybe. I knew he’d marvel at the colors and the costumes. But we didn’t go. We didn’t sleep well last night, hardly slept at all. My new upstairs neighbors threw a party without warning and there were a dozen belligerent drunks stomping up and down our stairs all evening.

Our ceiling shook. My baby woke up every fifteen minutes or so, tossed and moaned in his sleep. After hours of it, I went into the hall and kindly asked a few of them to be respectful of the fact that there was a baby sleeping on the other side of the wall they were pounding against with their voices. They seemed shocked to see me. They didn’t apologize, they blamed someone else, and halfheartedly mumbled down the stairs to their friends to be quiet. No one was quiet for another four hours.

I think most people might have called the police for a noise complaint, but I didn’t because I’m Black and my neighbors are White. A woman got murdered in Chicago for answering the door for the police and being Black. So I didn’t do anything. And I didn’t know what to do with the powerlessness. I didn’t know what to do with my invisibility, with them having no regard for me, or my sleeping baby. I didn’t know what to do with the hardwired consideration I had for them when they had none for me. While their party was raging above me and my son wailed into the night I thought,

“They just moved in, it’s New Year’s Eve, they want to enjoy it and show off their new apartment. That’s human of them.”

I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t being slighted, that they weren’t being rude. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. Erasing the offense was easier than an anger I could do nothing about.

But they were being rude. What about the fact that it was my first New Year’s Eve with my son? What about my humanity? It didn’t exist. I got in bed and fumed myself to sleep to the sound of my son’s white noise machine, their drunkenness booming above it. My more-expensive-than-I-can-afford apartment became a metaphor for existence as a Black person:

My ceiling is their floor, and they stomp and stomp and stomp.

When I woke up today I wanted to do nothing. I felt dismayed. I got out of bed and then got back in. I had been feeling empowered the past few days, I got paid for the first time for my writing, I got some recognition. But the rug was pulled from beneath me last night when I faced, yet again, the stark reality that I don’t have the same rights that White people do. I’m not a #carefreeblackgirl. I’m an anxious, cautious, nervous one who is always aware of what’s at stake.

I laid on my couch at noon and thought about if they had a baby and lived on the bottom floor. I thought about if we had had a loud and raging party, if I populated the house’s shared space with a bunch of Black faces at 3am. I thought about if they called in a noise complaint. I thought about what that would mean for me or my hypothetical guests. I spent the morning angry and bitter, ruminating on it. Time passed, and we missed the thick of the parade.

But one of my resolutions was to make sure to take my son to see somewhere new everyday, so we went for a walk to get lunch instead. I wanted to get my mind off things. We decided on a local Mexican spot. Our waiter was a white man, hip, like the restaurant we were at. He was short with us. He placed two waters down.

“I’ll take your drink orders in a minute.”

Left, returned, we ordered.

“OK,” he said, and left again.

He came back with our coffees and placed them on the table. I said thank you and he didn’t respond, again, he just walked away. When he came back 
he took our orders, only asking the necessary questions.

My husband looked at me.

“Is he being weird?”
“Maybe he’s just an introvert.”

He returned and placed my margarita on the table. I said thank you and smiled. He said nothing and walked away. He checked on the table behind us, asked them how their coffee was.

“That guy definitely doesn’t like black people,” my husband said.

I thought about the study on tipping, and how servers think Black
people don’t tip well, and in turn give them bad service, and then Black
people don’t tip well. I thought about whether or not we should tip
well.

“Nah, he’s probably just not a server and doesn’t know how to engage. It’s New Year’s Day, someone probably called out hungover and he’s filling in and is pissed about it.”

I concocted a reality in which he wasn’t being rude because of our Blackness. Then, I watched him drop a check on the table of the family next to us without a word.

“See! It’s not just us.”
“They’re Hispanic, Dom.”

He was right. I looked over my shoulder and the waiter was squatted down next to a table of white people, engaging them.

“I don’t want to talk about this, anymore. It’s putting a damper on the day,” I said.

He agreed and changed the subject.

“You know what I hate? When I’m at work and we get gunshot victims from North Philly, usually black dudes. We wake them up after surgery and they moan and wail and cringe from the pain. The Anesthesiologists always talk shit. I hate it. They say they don’t get how the victims get all these tattoos and then come to the hospital and complain about pain. I never say anything, I don’t know why, but next time I’m going to say: Hey, you do realize that tattoos don’t feel like gunshots? This man was SHOT.”

I thought about the other study I read that said that Whites perceive Blacks to have a higher tolerance for pain.

“It’s not that they don’t think tattoos feel like gunshots, babe. It’s that they don’t want to acknowledge the fact that we feel things. Anyway, I feel like shit, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Any of it.”

“I know I’m sorry, Dom. It’s just, I don’t know what else to do with it, who else can I talk to about it? Sometimes I just need to talk about it.”

And he was right. He couldn’t keep it in. It’d sting, it’d burn him up. But I couldn’t take any more in either, because it stung just as hard. It’s the conundrum of Blackness. Not only is there no justice, but there’s a constant onslaught of injustices. It’s the first day of 2016, and I’m tired. I’m full to the brim. The most I can muster is to try to be tender with the ones I love, because the world sure as shit isn’t. But I’m struggling with tenderness. I’m struggling with not becoming stone. I’ve been angry all day. For months, for years. My brother is 25 and on blood pressure medication. I’m 23, and I get it.

I’m glad we missed the Mummer’s parade. Before writing this, I read an article about how this year some of the paraders dressed up in blackface and mocked the Black Lives Matter movement with #wenchlivesmatter signs. I read that the word nigger ran rampant through the crowd.

I don’t know what I would have done if my son saw it. Probably nothing. I’d want to do the safest thing I could for him, and there’s nothing more dangerous than confronting drunken White rage. I’d probably sulk home, lick my wounds with the fact that my son is too young to remember today. I’d probably go back to bed, burn up on the inside, my humanity unprotected, my memory unmade, my heart hurting.