The Sign
Once upon a time a sign stood
at the entrance to a town,
the entrance to our town,
the town I grew up in.
N . . .,
the sign said,
don’t let the sun set on you
in this town.
Except the word,
the N word,
was carefully spelled out,
just in case anyone
might fail to understand.
We were not racists, though.
How could we be?
Our town lay in the heart
of the pristine North,
and racism,
surely,
is a disease
of warmer climes.
It’s possible, even,
that the sign never existed.
Perhaps it was only a dream of a sign,
a rumor of a sign,
a scandal of a sign.
Yet for all my childhood years
not a single person
walked our streets,
lived in our houses,
attended our schools,
worshipped in our churches,
shopped in our grocery stores
except those who looked like us.
Occasionally, folks of a rich brown hue
arrived to entertain us,
singing,
dancing,
playing their musical instruments,
but as soon as our applause
pattered into silence,
they took themselves away,
silently,
meekly (as far as we knew)
to another town
where a hotel was willing
to serve them dinner,
to allow their dark heads
to rest on white pillows.
Still, how could we be racists?
We hadn’t posted that sign.
No one we knew had even seen it.
We had done nothing more than live,
day after day,
someone else’s long-ago prohibition.
And this was, after all,
the North,
the righteous North!
One day, though,
my family climbed into our Studebaker—
father, mother, brother, sister,
the perfect family,
the perfect white family,
the perfect white, northern family—
and drove south and south and south.
When we reached Florida
we kept right on driving
through the soft, summer night,
the road straight,
the night dark.
Faster, just a little bit faster,
until a wail of sound
and a whirl of lights
burst behind us.
We pulled over,
stopped,
held our breaths.
That such a thing could happen.
And to us!
Slowly,
the officer approached the car.
Slowly,
he bent to peer inside.
Slowly,
he examined the family,
the white, northern family,
father, mother, brother, sister,
driving a bit too fast
through the night.
“The problem here,” he said,
leaning congenially on the sill of the open window,
“is that the N . . .s walk along this road at night.”
He paused,
shrugged,
asking our understanding.
“Best you slow down.
It’s a nuisance to clean up the mess
in the morning.”
My father nodded,
silent,
obedient.
The officer nodded, too,
and stepped back.
Then we moved on,
more slowly than before.
A mile or two without words,
then my parents looked at one another
across the deep southern dark.
“He thinks we agree with him,”
my father said,
and they laughed . . .
just a bit.
The joke, of course, was on the officer,
the ignorant southern officer,
the racist southern officer.
And we drove on,
father, mother, sister, brother,
safe inside our white, northern skins.
From time to time, I remember that drive.
Remember the officer leaning
into the open window,
so congenial,
so casually racist.
And then,
I remember our town,
our pristine Northern town,
with its sign—
or perhaps with no sign at all—
except for the one we lived,
every
last
one
of
us.
- MDB