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How I Discovered My Mother’s Hidden Superpowers
One afternoon in Pre Civil Rights America
My mother was about to serve lunch when the commotion began. We were in the kitchen, which was in the back of the house. And the house sat several feet from the street on a treed, up-slanting lawn. Any disturbance outside had to be pretty loud for us to hear it. And we could certainly hear this one.
“Stay put,” my mother warned. So naturally my brother and I followed her to the front door. Peeking past her apron, we saw several of our neighbors in the next block hurling various household objects — empty paint cans, buckets, garbage can lids — from their porches and lawns, shouting angrily the whole time. Unseen backyard dogs barked ceaselessly, adding to the commotion.
We were new to this all-Black formerly-white neighborhood and the only Catholics. Something our neighbors did not know until the parish priest, who was white, showed up to bless our home with holy water. I suppose we stood out a little after that. But not enough to change the tranquil atmosphere of the neighborhood. A lunchtime outburst was strangely out of character.
It was a piping hot Saturday in late August, the kind of humid southern day that turns your skin sticky as soon as you step outside. Up and down the street, green lawns looked trim as fresh…
