I imagine it was a picturesque day. Sun beaming, birds chirping, breeze swaying through whatever scrubby little patches of grass could be found in the parks of urban Rockford, IL. Mom would have been pushing a hand-me-down 1960s bassinet, well-worn but sparkling clean and dressed in ribbons, with the sunshade pulled up to protect my infant eyes. I imagine you were out walking your own little one. And as the two of you approached each other from opposite directions down the sidewalk, your eyes meeting, Mona Lisa half smiles would have etched the corners of your eyes in conspiratorial knowing, two new mothers out for a stroll in the fresh morning air. You slowed first. Mom, wary from previous encounters, slowed as well, so as not to seem unfriendly. I am sure she kept the half-smile on her face as she greeted you warmly – Mom was always the height of cordiality – but I picture her pulse speeding up ever so slightly. Good mornings were exchanged. To head off the inevitable, Mom would have commented first. “What a lovely little girl!” It would have been obvious back then, your precious bundle wrapped in the rosy pink, eyelet lace, and embroidery trim of the day. “Oh, why thank you!” And then, you would have peered into my bassinet. Perhaps your widened eyes would have been almost imperceptible, had my mother not been looking for the sign. Perhaps my mother would have sighed almost as imperceptibly, if the breeze had not stopped blowing at that particular moment. “Oh!” you exclaimed, “what a lovely child!” “Who’s is she?”
You could not have known the sound of the cracking of my mother’s heart. Buried under the sound of the now stirring breeze, it could have passed for the snap of a twig, or maybe the far-off shattering of someone’s dropped kitchenware. No matter your obliviousness to the sound, the cracking occurred. Another fissure along the growing, gaping fault line of a thousand tiny cracks come together, a web of a thousand “Who’s is she’s?” and “Is she yours?” and “Is this gentleman with you?” and “Are you alone?” and “Do you have any children of your own?” – a million microcosmic wounds. In 1971, with anti-miscegenation laws only four years a thing of the past, folks wore their opinions clearly on their shirt sleeves; my mother’s life had been a series of slaps and sucker punches that polite society insisted she grin and bear. But this, this was the one to which she would never be immune. “She’s mine,” my mother would say sweetly, and your eyes would grow just a little bit rounder. And pleasantries completed, you would hurry away.
I imagine your mind was a-swirl as you and your lily-white babe, tucked in her eyelet blankets scurried down the sidewalk away from me and my mother. What kind of woman was my mother? How could she have…? Why would she…? Who was her HUSBAND?!? I imagine you being distracted the entire rest of your walk home, feet picking up pace as you rushed to tell your own hubby of your strange, unsettling encounter.
What was it that day that you found so unsettling? The fact that my mother had clearly chosen to marry (and let’s not even consider the idea that she wasn’t married) one of those men? Or the fact that she had born forth the fruit of that union? Did you assume the baby in her stroller was just another “negro” baby, perhaps one she was generously babysitting, only to find that the creature was half white? How was one to interact with a baby who was only half white? Only half deserving of your cooing, of your ooohs and aaahs, of your doting attention? Was a baby just a baby – something to be crooned over and adored – or could it also be an abomination? Did you imagine my future? Could you? Because what sort of future does one imagine for a creature only half-lovable?
But this is perhaps not how the story ends. For history is never done being written. And so, when my own daughter was a baby, we went back to sunny Rockford, IL, to meet some extended family at a reunion at Anderson Gardens. Wandering the verdant paths, where to this day I can picture pouring my mother’s ashes into a small babbling stream, I can I feel her kindly smile, like sunlight warming the top of my head. We pass a woman my age, pushing who I assume to be her own mother in a wheelchair. They both stopped, smiled warmly at my little chestnut-colored baby, clucked their tongues, and pushed onward. Only later did I wonder if it could have been you in that wheelchair, dear lady. Smiling at my own daughter. Never hesitating before the smile. Never once pausing to ask, “Who’s is she?”
