THE NARRATIVE ARC
Dad Was Pulled over Because of His Skin Color… And Mine
Summer 1977 — A white adoptee’s day with her dark-skinned daddy.
“Want to pick some cotton, Peep?” Daddy points a crooked brown finger over the steering wheel, gesturing to an endless white blanket rolling by my window. Picking my head up from his soft shoulder, I peel my legs off the sticky leather and tuck them under me. Too big for the armrest anymore, I can hardly see over the dash, but sitting on my heels, I can spy the cotton field through the windshield.
Although I know I’m in for a long and hot day, I like joining Daddy on his meat inspection route. I enjoy the excitement of hopping in and out of the car, strapping on my white hard hat just my size, and waving hello to the butchers who scramble around in their bloody aprons trying to impress us with spotless drains and shiny sinks. “Adios, you two,” Mommy waves from the front door. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do?”
Mommy would for sure pick the cotton. “Ok, let’s do it!” I answer.
Daddy’s free arm is always stretched out across the seat and makes a soft headrest for me snuggled beside him. Sometimes, when he stops suddenly, it swings down across my chest to catch me from flying into the dash. Today I get a one-armed squeeze as he pulls onto the shoulder of another dusty two-lane Texas highway.
I wipe sweaty bangs from my eyes and peer out the rolled-down window. There it is, a bunch of white fluff stuck like cotton candy to the tops of ugly stalks, and it goes on forever. Daddy switches off the engine, and the hiss of the cooling car blends with the sweet buzz of summer. I move to lean out the window and consider the journey into the heat and the bugs.
Mommy did put sunscreen on my “precious fair face” this morning, but we forgot the bug spray. Part of me wants to explore the snowy summer field, to investigate; another part does not want to go alone. Pondering my options, I imagine each puff a vanilla-flavored snowball waiting to be plucked and gobbled up, but that’s pretend, of course.
“Go ahead Peep! Go get some!” A whoosh rocks the car with a hot whip of wind from a too-close-for-comfort semi-truck, but Daddy doesn’t seem to notice and begins clapping and singing that song Fats Domino sings about the bug that eats the cotton:
“Bo Weevil, Bo Weevil, Where’ve you been all day?
Yo mama been looking, had to stop cooking,
Since you went away.
Bo Weevil, Bo Weevil, Why did you go and stay?
You get a licking, as sure as I’m seated,
On this bale of hay!”
My Daddy loves to sing Fats Domino songs, because Daddy knew Fats a long time ago, back before Daddy got fat too. Like Fats Domino, they call my daddy “the Fat Man” cause he too “weighs 200 pounds,” actually way more. Either way, Daddy can’t walk without a cane, and he can’t move fast enough to be safe getting out on the highway side of the road.
I can see in his eyes that he would come if he could, but he can’t; so, I don’t ask. I get to be a big girl and do it all on my own! I one-hand clap my thigh along with his song, turn up a swig of orange-soda courage with the other, and send my seven-year-old self out to pick some cotton in the hundred-degree Texas heat.
The grass crunches as I step away from the car and press toward an angry-looking barbed-wire fence. I can feel my father’s proud eyes behind me as I fight to keep the scratchy, tall weeds out from under my sunflower frock. I am sure the white bloomers Mommy makes me wear are showing as I reach through the rusted wire and pluck the sticky little bulbs, careful not to “prick my precious fingers.”
It seems like only seconds, and I am back in the car, back in my spot beside Daddy, celebrating my collection. Daddy nods a “you did it” at me, swings back up on the road, and a nice warm breeze dries our sweat in no time.
As Daddy drives, I look over the puffy treasures in the lap of my dress. “So, I am right? This is where thread comes from?” I ask, twirling a little puff of it in the air.
“Yep, sure does.”
“All thread?”
“Yep, ALL thread. Well, most thread,” he adds.
“The thread in my dress?”
“Yep.”
“The thread in my bloomers?”
“Yep.”
“The thread in your shirt?”
“Yes, Peep YES! All the thread in the world!”
Daddy laughs and claps my head with a tussle under his free hand. And with that, a nice quiet sets in against the hum of the highway, and I lean my head into the sleepy crease of Daddy’s shoulder as we drive toward our next stop.
Raising my head only when we slow down to travel through the tiny towns, I like to look at the old-timey shops. If I spy ice cream or snowballs, we’ll make an emergency stop. But in this one-stop-light town, there is no ice cream. I lay my head back down, and that’s when it happens.
“Dadgummit, not again,” sighs Daddy. “Now sit tight and let me talk.”
I had smiled at the policeman beside us at the light, and he’d smiled back. But as soon as it changed from red to green, he got behind and flashed his lights. I hope he doesn’t make Daddy get out of the car.
“What’s the trouble Officer?” asks Daddy, handing over his driving card.
“Oh, no trouble. Now whose cute little girl is this?” the policeman asks, bending down to peer through the window at me.
Daddy answers fast. “She’s mine,” he says, breathing hard like he’s upset.
“What’s your name honey?”
“Patricia Ann Meyer, Sir,” I answer, “but everyone calls me PAM for my initials.”
“Is this man your Daddy?” But before I can answer, Daddy jumps in.
“She’s adopted,” he says.
“Oh, is she?” the policeman answers.
“So, Pam, where are you and your Daddy headed?”
“To do inspecting at the kill floors, to make sure the bloody sinks are clean,” I answer.
“That’s enough Peep,” Daddy butts in again. “I’m a meat inspector for the state. Here’s my license.” He hands over another card from his wallet.
The policeman looks it over, nods, and hands everything back.
“So you like going to work with your Daddy?”
“I do,” I say as seriously as possible.
“OK then, no problem. Now y’all drive safe.”
Daddy moves the gear from P to D, and we are on the road again.
“Why did he stop us?” I ask. “And why did the policeman want to know my name?”
“No reason,” says Daddy. “I guess he just wanted to meet you.”
Back then, Daddy and I were pulled over for “no reason” many times. In time, I grew to understand why people stared at us in the grocery store, wanted to meet me, and asked me if I was lost while I was standing right beside him. It was our cotton-pickin’ skin. How I wished I could’ve been brown-skinned, like my Daddy’s little lost babies would’ve been.
“People are ignorant, so you learn to forgive,” Daddy would say with a pat on my cheek, and that would be the end of it.
Until next time.
Thank you for reading this piece. By my father’s side, I learned about the cruelty of the world from a very young age, and he taught me how to walk through it with grace and kindness.
