I catch a glimpse of a red pickup and bumper stickers before I notice I am furious.
I had seen a pickup like this before, driving through my neighborhood, Confederate flag streaming out the back. You knew it was only for decoration because it slowed the truck down considerably. This pickup might have been that pickup without that stupid flag, but it made no difference to me, not in that moment.
I watch him curve down the road, slipping between lanes, driving fast but not dangerously. I set my jaw. We roll up to a stoplight.
I switch my music from Hall & Oates to something with more teeth in it, turn it up and roll down the windows, and I stop next to him at the stoplight and wonder.
Are you one of them? Are you responsible for this? Are you? Have you any idea what’s going on?
I had sat in a cafeteria that morning, a room full of rich white people, all except for exactly three women: one Indian, one black, and one Mexican. Like the beginning of a horrible joke that I would walk away from before I heard the punchline. I had talked to my dad about Charlottesville all the way there.
The red pickup makes my blood sing in my veins.
Months earlier, I had cracked a joke about Robert E. Lee and received a complaint at work. I had no idea it was such a crime to mock a long-dead Confederate general. At what point did Confederate become a title of honor? When had state’s rights become more important than human rights? My friend told me that Lee was a Virginian war hero and I said nothing.
The red pickup’s engine hums and my hands scream into the steering wheel.
A long-time family friend sat at our dinner table. He wondered aloud why they were having a Spanish Mass that night. He asked why they didn’t know English. Weren’t they in America? I ground my teeth and poured the water and said nothing. I let my parents do the talking. He told me to watch out, that cup’s ’bout to overflow. I smiled and set the pitcher down, sat myself down, and set myself aside and said the blessing.
I watch the boy in the pickup drink from a water bottle.
Violence on both sides. I stare at the white boy in the red pickup, his scalp pink through his buzz cut. He sits with the windows down in silence. Violence.
Call me a romantic, but I believe in the first amendment and that it should be protected under the law.
But I am not the law.
And I don’t have to be fair.
And I’ve thought more than once about driving the end of that Confederate flag through the window of that idiot’s truck. And I would go to jail for it, and it would be right, because he’s got the freedom to have a flag and I don’t have the freedom to use the business end to beat the racist ignorance out of his head.
But I say nothing. I just sigh sharply when I see that flag waving me down the road.
I had watched a video of a man degrading Catholics, and I had never heard anyone say anything like that before. I read Harper Lee’s new book, and every word against my faith cut into me deeper than anything had before. I wondered if I had ever truly cared about the Civil Rights Movement until that moment, if I had ever understood what it meant to be hated for no other reason than what you are. I hated myself for not having truly cared or understood until I had been under attack.
The boy in the red pickup seems to shimmer in the Georgia heat.
I sat in a different car, years before, when my mom was driving my sister and me to the beach. We stopped at a gas station. We rolled up next to a huge SUV filled with black people, dressed to the nines in the middle of nothing-but-horizon Alabama. They were blasting music and talking and laughing, having a great time. My mom told me to lock the car and not go to the bathroom there. I watched the black people in their cheetah print and boas, and I didn’t lock the doors. My sister pestered me to lock the doors, but I wouldn’t. When she came back, I asked my mom why she’d wanted me to lock the doors, but she didn’t answer me. It the first time I had ever known my mother to be a flawed human being. We drove on, and I said nothing.
I watch the guy in the red pickup. I wonder if he could hear my rock music through his thick skull. Then I remind myself that my brother is white and drives a pickup truck and he doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body. And who am I to judge a stranger on his car, and isn’t that a form of prejudice in and of itself? I turn the music down.
The red pickup moves ahead of me. I scan the bumper stickers, looking for the bars. In my search, I nearly drive my little Hyundai into his tailgate, his brake lights glaring, condemning.
I stop inches from him.
When did a stoplight become about race? Had it ever not been about race?
I move ahead of him and turn down my street. I watch out my rearview to see if he’ll follow, if it’s the same truck with the flag, if the disease is contained to the one person in my neighborhood or if there are more of them out there, waiting for me to speak up.
The pickup drove on.