“I don’t know, Mark.* Your parents have never even met me, and I’ll just bet they are a little torqued off at you for getting engaged to me before they do!”
“I know, but they’ll get over that. Besides, that’s why I think we should do it. When they do meet you, they will fall in love with you as quickly as I did.”
It had been pretty damned fast. We started dating in the fall of 1965, my senior year at a small, liberal arts college in the prairies of Wisconsin. He was a junior. Even back then I had started manifesting my cougar tendencies.
He asked me out for a beer just a day or two after we arrived back on campus from summer break. I was free as a bird at the time, and open to new horizons. My previous fling with a frat guy to whom I had been pinned for most of my junior year hadn’t officially ended; it had just fizzled out. Absence made my heart grow forgetful, so in my still adolescent mind, he was history.
“Have you told them about me? I mean, you know, TOLD them?”
“Lez, they read the article in the Milwaukee Journal. They saw your picture. They know.” He looked as sweet and innocent as he actually was. His black eyes glistened with excitement at the idea of me going home to Neenah,Wisconsin with him for a long holiday weekend.
Mark was not a novice when it came to racial prejudice. Our complexions were identical in color and tone. His hair, although as straight as an arrow, was as black as his eyes. Problem was, Mark is white. His French mother donated all the swarthy melanin, and it easily overtook his father’s recessive blond genes.. She was reportedly not amused, though, by the nickname “the guys” had given Mark in high school: “Nig” For that matter, neither was I.
“I know you believe it will all be fine, but I’m kind of scared, Mark,” I whined, admiring the small diamond ring on my left hand.
A young man of few words, Mark responded as he often did. He pulled me closer and planted a passionate kiss on my slightly trembling mouth. Not much taller than I, he was 20 times stronger. He played defensive line on the football team. His compact body was tight with muscle and definition – the kind that makes a girl of 116 pounds feel safe.
“At least you are Catholic!” That was Mark’s idea of a joke. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned about taking his black fiancée home to mom and dad and the small, lily-white town he grew up in.
Of course, being in love and all, I agreed to go. My own parents had not met him either, but they probably had the good sense to know if they didn’t make a big deal out of it, it would probably just blow over. Based on my track record since entering college, ‘this too shall pass’ seemed a good strategy for them to take, even if this was the first time I had ever gotten engaged.
Mark’s parents couldn’t have been more welcoming. There were hugs all around and the same beautiful smiles their son had inherited so nicely. We had dinner on Saturday night, chatting about school doings, courses I took, and the usual polite small talk. It looked for all the world like I had worried for nothing; that I should have listened to Mark. After all, they raised him, didn’t they, and look how “open” he was.
Bedtime came. I was shown to a small, dormer-style guest room upstairs. Mark, after a lingering kiss goodnight, wandered into his childhood bedroom downstairs. Sleep for me was about as likely as my waking up blonde the next morning, so I just lay there thinking about walking into that packed Catholic Church the next morning. Not an hour went by before I heard footsteps on the stairs. He knew I was worried. He came to “comfort” me.
I searched his mother’s face the next morning to detect signs of “knowing” what had occurred under her roof the night before. If she did, she wasn’t giving it up. All seemed well. All that did was set up a guilt trip for me to take along to Mass with us.
“Lez, you know there is a good chance my parents have told their friends you were coming this weekend, right?” We were walking toward the car at the curb in front of the house. I stopped and swiveled my head around to look at him, panic rising to the next level, if there could be a higher level.
I summoned all the poise and confidence people seemed to go on about me having. I squeezed my hands and dug my nails into the palms of my hands, letting my arms hang limply by my sides. That’s what I did whenever an adrenaline rush caused my hands, knees and voice to quaver. It wasn’t working!
For some reason, we were delayed getting to the church until minutes before the start of Mass. Mark pulled my arm into the crook of his arm and led me down the center aisle toward one of the few open pews. For a nanosecond, I wondered if this would be how I’d feel when I walked down the aisle of my own church to marry him.
All whispering came to a stop. Row by row, people turned to watch the four of us walk. It lasted for about 4 hours! Or so it seemed. Once seated, my mind refused to focus on the proceedings. Instead, I imagined the thoughts of the parishioners, the after-Mass table talk at their respective houses and the judgments they would heap, not only on me, but on this sweet-natured man who cared more about me than he did about what they thought.
And I didn’t care what they were thinking, saying or judging. From that moment on, I was immune to the fear of social judgment based on my race.
I broke the engagement just before I graduated that next June. I just didn’t feel he was the right fit for me, and I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I was going to have to by pretending any longer. But I have never forgotten what it was like to be loved by a stand-up guy who wasn’t intimidated by anything.
*Not his actual name.
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I got a little taste of that years ago on a trip to India, down south, where the people are very dark, out to small villages where lots of them had never seen a white person before. Or even in Madras. Stared at constantly. People would stop dead in the street and gape. At least I didn't have to worry very much about possible hostility - it was just amazement and curiosity.
Great read as per always
Thank you for sharing.
A fair proportion of people up there at that time would have never seen (in person) anyone who even looked remotely like you (their loss, I am sure). Except the Packers and their families.
Yeah, you gots courage.
A quick aside, first: Your mentioning his passivity I found interesting too....my husband is more mellow than me, it has been a huge learning of a softer dance for me, and I'm better for it, I think. I find it interesting you caught on to the dance you might be dancing with him early on -- I took awhile to catch on.
I've been to Wisconsin, my in-laws live there, it is a white-y state. My in-laws, the ones who stood at the airport gate and wondered to themselves "What if she's black?" before they met me, even before they wondered "Is this one a Christian (unlike the previous Jewish girlfriend)?"
(There's a reason my preacher's kid husband wanted to live in Ca. since he was 5...)
...my niece who is a lesbian will be working there, in WI, next year, I find myself wondering how she too will be received in the great state of Scott Walker...hell, saying I'm Episcopalian in Wisconsin has brought me some looks...
...yet still I read all this and first wondered, "How do you know there was only judgment toward you and not curiousity?" I think I wondered that as I do know how rare a mixed couple would have been there, esp. in the 60s, how curious most would have been to see you together -- I've also seen how pretty you are and were when you were in your 20s -- a woman to look at!
When I brought my white, long-haired husband home to a reception in Ga. the room went completely silent. I know there was some judgment towards him as some refused to shake my husband's hand, refused to look him in the eye or even greet him at all -- it's my own great pride that these same men grew to like him very much over a couple years and confessed they expected a druggie who was lazy, but!! -- the largest judgment that day actually turned out to be for me, for being divorced at all and having the gall to bring home a 2nd husband! This in late 90s Atlanta. I misread the room entirely, assumed too little or too much -- assumed I'd be accepted, regardless (guess not...).
When my nephew brought his gorgeous girlfriend to our town and I took her to the Farmer's Market, she could have been parting the sea, she caused such a ruckus with her gorgeous ebony legs, her brilliant smile, her stunning presence -- but there was silence because she was unusual, unusually gorgeous -- it didn't feel like judgment, just a bunch of stunned, mostly white people...we talked for hours whether there was judgment about her in our town, and she admitted she was just anxious about judgment happening (so was my nephew, one reason they came to friendly Aunt Anna's in Oregon in the first place), but hadn't felt any at all, even when stared at in town...
All this backstory added in to ask: Other than it being the 60s, you are black in white-y Wisconsin, did you feel judgment coming off these people or curiousity? What about the fiance -- was he naive that 'his' people would accept any fiancee he brought home because he was loved? Was there maybe a mix of all the above? Or you understood, and not assumed, it was purely judgment(which is certainly possible if not probable if not certain)...?
Am I being naive to even ask, as this was the 60s, Wisconsin, etc., etc...?
Sorry for the long comment...but I do wonder these things and have not learned, or I refuse, to not even ask, or to not bring up a tricky nuance in a tricky topic.
And yes, I will bring up politics, race and/or religion in an opinionated crowd.
...depending....
Exactly why I wondered...
I don't even know (and I never will) what his parents were really thinking/feeling. At the time I took them at face value; in retrospect, they could have just been excellent actors.
All these Wisconsinites who are commenting and are the same age or close are pretty much confirming what I feared at the time. Chicken Maaan lived very close to that town and another steve s has lots of relatives near there. We are talking about small-town 1960s in the state where the Republican Party was founded. In fact, it was founded at the very college I attended!
I thought it important to know what reception you were actually getting rather than how you felt -- and I get that it is likely it was prejudice given the era and place, but you didn't say how they looked at you, or their expressions, or about waves of tension or dislike coming off them -- or not....and it's why I asked.
It would matter to me if I'd been you, and when I've been the sole 'other' in a group, as happened in Georgia, in the late 60s, early 70s, it's what I noticed first: am I just the obvious other or am I hated here?
People in Wisconsin, in my experience, were not openly hostile or even cold toward me. However, there were several instances when parents intervened and prevented me from visiting their homes, refused to allow me to serve as a bridesmaid ... that sort of thing, which could be executed from a distance, putting their children in a terribly awkward position.
Interesting your response, it reminds me: (somewhat of an aside here) As I've gotten older, when certain friends and family members keep choosing to steer their own agenda through manipulation or avoidance of situations, I've noticed I grow less and less tolerant of the controlling games and find I look for other, more open, company.
Did you learn this lesson earlier than I?