Every Death In Between: A Confession

I forgot and I am afraid. Not because of the dead numbered on tv. Not because of people yelling. I’m afraid because I think all the bony-kneed white girls forgot

I remember I was just a girl,
a white girl in the suburbs 
with bony knees
sitting on green shag carpet
looking up at a black and white tv. 
Looking up at my hero
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..
It was the 60’s and I knew
I didn’t belong on shag carpet 
or in the suburbs.
I wanted to be with Dr. King
on our black and white tv.

I remember black and white grown-ups protesting,
teenagers and teachers protesting.
At my school, friendly teachers on Friday
became red-faced and shouted on Monday.
With their signs aimed at our bus
I was afraid.

The tv at home put numbers of dead soldiers
on the left side of the screen.
The war was far away
in another country, dad said
even so, I was frightened.
But when Dr. King talked
I wasn’t afraid
and that meant something in the 60s.
It meant something in my suburban home 
where my mom’s bouffant hair 
and afternoon coffee friends
didn’t match what I was seeing
in black and white,
didn’t match what I felt.
But Dr. King’s words matched and made sense,
even if I didn’t understand his big words-
Desegregation. Civil rights. Resistance.
Even if I thought Jim Crow was a mean white man
who hurt black people
and lived on the other side of Texas.

I remember when color tv 
came to our middle-class neighborhood.
I saw magic and happy endings 
like the Wizard of Oz.
But then they killed my hero.
I saw Dr. King on the ground, 
the whole world in shock and in color.
It hurt more than the numbers 
on the left side of the tv, 
more than my favorite teacher’s shouts 
hurt me and I was afraid again 
because no one was making sense
and I had no one to tell
because I was a white girl
and the suburbs were talking 
about marijuana and Walter Conkrite.

I knew by the time I could wash the dishes
 on my own and overhear dining room talk
that, “We don’t talk about Politics or Religion.”
But I wanted to tell someone 
that Dr. King had made me feel safe.
If they would have listened to him
people could talk about the new words I learned-
Justice. Equality. Peace.
But when they put the color in the tv
they took my hero away
and his words became silent.

In 2020 we have Ultra HD television.
There are numbers on the news 
slipping across the bottom.
People are dying from a virus.
We are all home afraid
and we are watching television.
They killed a man I didn’t know. 
Ahmaud Arbury
who was jogging alone
down a tree-lined road.
Then they killed another man.
On Ultra HD tv
they warned sensitive viewers,
but we saw him. I saw him.

His name was George. 
Mr. George Floyd.

Something broke in me.
Shame nearly drowned me
because I hadn’t seen.
I had turned off the television, 
but that did not turn off the hate.
Dr. King was not the last man they killed.

I remembered that bony-kneed white girl 
who wanted to be with Dr. King
in her black and white tv 
because his words made sense 
so she wasn’t afraid.
That girl on the green shag carpet
who knew she didn’t belong in the suburbs,
who had no one to tell 
about the mean white Jim Crow 
who broke her heart when he murdered her hero.
That girl forgot.
Even with the image of Dr. King dead 
still stuck on the color screen in her brain.
She forgot.

I forgot
and I am afraid.
Not because of the dead numbered on tv.
Not because of people yelling.
I’m afraid because I think all
the bony-kneed white girls forgot,
and the white boys, too.
We forgot to listen.
We forgot to believe in people who made sense,
in words that matched the truth.
We forgot that happy endings aren’t magic
like a colored tv.

Now there are no pandemic deaths
slipping across the bottom of the television.
There are no sensitive viewers.
But if I remember 1968 and 2020
and every death in between
I can keep my eyes open.
I can make my words match what I see-
White Supremacy. Racism. Hate.

They may have killed my hero,
but they didn’t kill how he made me feel.
Someday I will tell Dr. King
I was afraid and it hurt,
but I learned to listen,
I found someone to tell
and I refused to forget.

---

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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