With all this upheaval in my childhood, I guess I started brewing my own version of an innocent and loving revenge. It happened unintentionally, almost like the slow seeping of Granny Tab’s summertime “sun tea.” It’s just what happened to the development of my thoughts after my dad’s wedding to his former mistress. It was unpleasantness I never liked to think of, the truth of him leaving my mother and me for his “other” family that grew its own roots in my mind, eventually grafting itself onto other thoughts of insecurity that teenagers develop, making ugly knotty turns. Eventually, those thoughts grew new vines and branches until it became my mind’s interpretation and conclusion that this new family was his “better” family, one that he chose over the one filled with just my mother and me.
Where in school and studies, I found a near immediate way to channel the loss of the home life and family structure that I had known, it took my mother some time to get there. Living with her in the time just after my father left was a series of dark days. She was never cut out to work or struggle, so having to do both eroded the essence of the dignified beauty that she had always prided herself on being. He had turned us into castaways, on the raft of a life unmoored from its only purpose—my mother was a planet spiraled off into space without the rotational gravity of the sun.
When stability was lacking, in the midst of all of the tumult and my mother’s challenging window of self-doubt and confusion, Granny Tab was always a safe haven for me. When things got too heated or too cool at home, she was a short bus ride away. On the worst days, especially when I was younger, I would go straight to Granny Tab’s house and climb into bed with her, bury my head in her shoulder crook and cry. If I didn’t have to go to work, that’s exactly what I’d do today. She’d wrap her arms around me with no words, just holding the space for me and for us. She was strong in that way, the quiet way, the way of just being there and not needing to fix what couldn’t be fixed by anything other than tears and time.
The blaring sound of a horn behind me pulled me out of my reverie and stopped my accompanying hypnotic mascara application at the green light in front of me. I was just five minutes from work now, but the flood of difficult memories and the swirling in my mind had taken my attention off of the flow of cars ahead. I dropped my hand holding the wand to my lap and held the bottom of the steering wheel while I screwed the tube back into a single piece. Pulling my thoughts and my eyes back to my reflection in the mirror, I could see that I was just one lipstick application away from being presentable—except my lipstick, wasn’t in my makeup bag. Crap—it was in my purse—on the seat.
The sudden acceleration of my car combined simultaneously with a clumsy reach for my purse, catapulting it onto the floor, open side down. Out of the side of my eye, I saw the contents scatter in a Rorschach pattern all over the passenger side floor. Oh crap. I allowed myself a quick glance down and then quickly brought my eyes back to the road and eventually to the rearview mirror. I saw the lights before I heard the siren. That can’t be for me…I thought to myself. But, there it was, the patrol car, behind me, definitely behind me.
No. No. No. No. No. Not today Lord. I had no idea why he would be stopping me. And in this current climate, wearing brown skin, nothing about seeing the black and white pattern of a police cruiser made me feel safe. Nothing at all. Now, more than ever, it made me feel like my life was in danger.
Immediately, my heart started racing, creating a throbbing in my ears and lending a hollowness to the sounds all around me. I turned down the radio, and looked for a place to pull over to the right side of the street. I couldn’t help that my hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles looked almost white underneath the usual golden brown of my skin. My breath was now shallow and quick, even though I tried to slow it down to avoid full on panic. Dammit. My purse and all of its contents were on the floor—including my wallet. At some point, if he asked for my ID, I was going to have to reach for it. Oh my God. I don’t want to reach…for anything.
My cell phone was on the passenger side floor as well. I can’t even record this. Who will be my witness? What if he thinks I’m reaching for a gun and it’s just my cell phone? I’ve never even held a gun…never…not even a toy gun like Tamir Rice, but he still got shot, didn’t he? Of my greatest concerns in the moment, I couldn’t control what or who he saw or thought when he looked at me. There was no good way to explain that I had parents and friends and a whole office of people who were waiting for me. As disjointed and dysfunctional as they may be, I did have a family. I had some kind of a family. I hoped that he understood that whether or not I showed up for work, or for dinner, it would matter to someone. It would. I’d be missed—I knew that much. I couldn’t explain to him that…oh my God, he’s coming. I looked up from the array of lipsticks and loose change scattered around my upside down purse on the floor and into the rearview mirror and saw that the officer was walking toward me. He was tall, with a solid build—close-cropped blonde hair and he was wearing mirrored sunglasses that looked cold and invincible. His hands were at his utility belt as he approached—the belt that carried his weapons, so many weapons. I could only pray that he didn’t use any of them on me today. I had no idea why he would, which was just as scary as the fact that, based on everything I’d seen, I also couldn’t name why he wouldn’t. I just wanted to get to work. How could I know whether or not I would make it there safely today?
I saw him approach the driver’s side of my car and I was exceedingly careful not to move one inch from my positioning with my hands on the 10 and 2 position on my steering wheel. He motioned for me to roll down the window. I whispered silent prayers as I slowly moved my left hand to the window controls. The window obeyed and descended into the door.
“Ma’am, can I please see your license and registration?” the Officer asked. I hesitated, near tears. Try to hold it together, Tabby. But you can’t reach, not for anything. You already know what they do to black people who reach. I was petrified. Everything was on the floor, everything. What if he thought…
“Ma’am—license and registration,” he repeated, a little more insistent this time. I struggled to manage my breath and to find words at the same time.
“I…I…can’t…I can’t—I don’t want to reach…It’s on the floor…I’m sorry, I’m just really scared right now,” I blurted. The words all came out of me in a blustering hurry of word dribble. My mind was racing, my heart was racing, and my hands were wrapped so tightly around my steering wheel at exactly the 10 and 2 spots that I could imagine that callouses were starting to form. I didn’t want to die and suddenly I found myself in a situation where I had no idea how to stay alive. The widely-played video of Philando Castile ran through my mind…the sound of the gunshots ringing as he reached for his wallet, seemingly obeying the officer’s command, echoed as a warning that the wrong breath, the wrong move, the wrong anything could end me in a cloud of unwarranted bullets. All I wanted to do was to go to work. All I wanted to do was to make it out of this situation alive.