The first time I went to Washington, D.C., was on the edge of the <\/p>\n
summer when I was supposed to stop being a child. At least that’s <\/p>\n
what they said to us all at graduation from the eighth grade. <\/p>\n
My sister Phyllis graduated at the same time from high school. <\/p>\n
I don’t know what she was supposed to stop being. But as gradu- <\/p>\n
ation presents for us both, the whole family took a Fourth of July <\/p>\n
trip to Washington, D.C., the fabled and famous capital of our <\/p>\n
country. <\/p>\n
It was the first time I’d ever been on a railroad train during <\/p>\n
the day. When I was little, and we used to go to the Connecticut <\/p>\n
shore, we always went at night on the milk train, because it was <\/p>\n
cheaper. <\/p>\n
Preparations were in the air around our house before school <\/p>\n
was even over. We packed for a week. There were two very large <\/p>\n
suitcases that my father carried, and a box filled with food. In fact, <\/p>\n
my first trip to Washington was a mobile feast; I started eating as <\/p>\n
239 <\/p>\n
240 AUDRE LORDE <\/p>\n
soon as we were comfortably ensconced in our seats, and did not <\/p>\n
stop until somewhere after Philadelphia. I remember it was Phil- <\/p>\n
adelphia because I was disappointed not to have passed by the <\/p>\n
Liberty Bell. <\/p>\n
My mother had roasted two chickens and cut them up into <\/p>\n
dainty bite-size pieces. She packed slices of brown bread and but- <\/p>\n
ter and green pepper and carrot sticks. There were little violently <\/p>\n
yellow iced cakes with scalloped edges called \u201cmarigolds,\u201d that <\/p>\n
came from Cushmans Bakery. There was a spice bun and rock- <\/p>\n
cakes from Newtons, the West Indian bakery across Lenox Ave- <\/p>\n
nue from St. Mark\u2019s School, and iced tea in a wrapped mayonnaise <\/p>\n
jar. There were sweet pickles for us and dill pickles for my father, <\/p>\n
and peaches with the fuzz still on them, individually wrapped to <\/p>\n
keep them from bruising. And, for neatness, there were piles of <\/p>\n
napkins and a little tin box with a washcloth dampened with rose- <\/p>\n
water and glycerine for wiping sticky mouths. <\/p>\n
I wanted to eat in the dining car because I had read all about <\/p>\n
them, but my mother reminded me for the umpteenth time that <\/p>\n
dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you <\/p>\n
never could tell whose hands had been playing all over that food, <\/p>\n
nor where those same hands had been just before. My mother <\/p>\n
never mentioned that black people were not allowed into railroad <\/p>\n
dining cars headed south in 1947. As usual, whatever my mother <\/p>\n
did not like and could not change, she ignored. Perhaps it would <\/p>\n
go away, deprived of her attention. <\/p>\n
I learned later that Phyllis’s high school senior class trip had <\/p>\n
been to Washington, but the nuns had given her back her deposit <\/p>\n
in private, explaining to her that the class, all of whom were white, <\/p>\n
except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis \u201cwould <\/p>\n
not be happy,\u201d meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, <\/p>\n
that they did not rent rooms to Negroes. \u201cWe will take you to <\/p>\n
Washington, ourselves,\u201d my father had avowed, \u201cand not just for <\/p>\n
an overnight in some measly fleabag hotel.\u201d <\/p>\n
American racism was a new and crushing reality that my par- <\/p>\n
ents had to deal with every day of their lives once they came <\/p>\n
to this country. They handled it as a private woe. My mother and <\/p>\n
father believed that they could best protect their children from <\/p>\n
the realities of race in America and the fact of American racism <\/p>\n
by never giving them name, much less discussing their nature. <\/p>\n
We were told we must never trust white people, but why was never <\/p>\n
THE FOURTH OF JULY 24 1 <\/p>\n
explained, nor the nature of their ill will. Like so many other <\/p>\n
vital pieces of information in my childhood, I was supposed to <\/p>\n
know without being told. It always seemed like a very strange <\/p>\n
injunction coming from my mother, who looked so much like <\/p>\n
one of those people we were never supposed to trust. But some- <\/p>\n
thing always warned me not to ask my mother why she wasn’t <\/p>\n
white, and why Auntie Lillah and Auntie Etta weren’t, even though <\/p>\n
they were all that same problematic color so different from my <\/p>\n
father and me, even from my sisters, who were somewhere in- <\/p>\n
between. <\/p>\n
In Washington, D.C., we had one large room with two double <\/p>\n
beds and an extra cot for me. It was a back-street hotel that <\/p>\n
belonged to a friend of my father’s who was in real estate, and I <\/p>\n
spent the whole next day after Mass squinting up at the Lincoln <\/p>\n
Memorial where Marian Anderson had sung after the D.A.R. <\/p>\n
refused to allow her to sing in their auditorium because she was <\/p>\n
black. Or because she was \u201cColored,” my father said as he told us <\/p>\n
the story. Except that what he probably said was \u201cNegro,” because <\/p>\n
for his times, my father was quite progressive. <\/p>\n
I was squinting because I was in that silent agony that charac- <\/p>\n
terized all of my childhood summers, from the time school let out <\/p>\n
in June to the end of July, brought about by my dilated and vul- <\/p>\n
nerable eyes exposed to the summer brightness. <\/p>\n
I viewed Julys through an agonizing corolla of dazzling white- <\/p>\n
ness and I always hated the Fourth of July, even before I came to <\/p>\n
realize the travesty such a celebration was for black people in this <\/p>\n
country. <\/p>\n
My parents did not approve of sunglasses, nor of their expense. <\/p>\n
I spent the afternoon squinting up at monuments to freedom <\/p>\n
and past presidencies and democracy, and wondering why the <\/p>\n
light and heat were both so much stronger in Washington, D.C., <\/p>\n
than back home in New York City. Even the pavement on the <\/p>\n
streets was a shade lighter in color than back home. <\/p>\n
Late that Washington afternoon my family and I walked back <\/p>\n
down Pennsylvania Avenue. We were a proper caravan, mother <\/p>\n
bright and father brown, the three of us girls step-standards in- <\/p>\n
between. Moved by our historical surroundings and the heat of <\/p>\n
early evening, my father decreed yet another treat. He had a great <\/p>\n
sense of history, a flair for the quietly dramatic and the sense of <\/p>\n
specialness of an occasion and a trip. <\/p>\n
242 AUDRE LORDE <\/p>\n
\u201cShall we stop and have a little something to cool off, Lin?\u201d <\/p>\n
Two blocks away from our hotel, the family stopped for a dish 15 <\/p>\n
of vanilla ice cream at a Breyer\u2019s ice cream and soda fountain. <\/p>\n
Indoors, the soda fountain was dim and fan-cooled, deliciously <\/p>\n
relieving to my scorched eyes. <\/p>\n
Corded and crisp and pinafored, the five of us seated ourselves <\/p>\n
one by one at the counter. There was I between my mother and <\/p>\n
father, and my two sisters on the other side of my mother. We <\/p>\n
settled ourselves along the white mottled marble counter, and <\/p>\n
when the waitress spoke at first no one understood what she was <\/p>\n
saying, and so the five of us just sat there. <\/p>\n
The waitress moved along the line of us closer to my father and <\/p>\n
spoke again. \u201cI said I kin give you to take out, but you cant eat <\/p>\n
here. Sorry.\u201d Then she dropped her eyes looking very embarrassed, <\/p>\n
and suddenly we heard what it was she was saying all at the same <\/p>\n
time, loud and clear. <\/p>\n
Straight-backed and indignant, one by one, my family and I <\/p>\n
got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched <\/p>\n
out of the store, quiet and outraged, as if we had never been black <\/p>\n
before. No one would answer my emphatic questions with any- <\/p>\n
thing other than a guilty silence. \u201cBut we hadn\u2019t done anything!\u201d <\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t right or fair! Hadn\u2019t I written poems about Bataan <\/p>\n
and freedom and democracy for all? <\/p>\n
My parents wouldn\u2019t speak of this injustice, not because they <\/p>\n
had contributed to it, but because they felt they should have <\/p>\n
anticipated it and avoided it. This made me even angrier. My fury <\/p>\n
was not going to be acknowledged by a like fury. Even my two <\/p>\n
sisters copied my parents\u2019 pretense that nothing unusual and anti- <\/p>\n
American had occurred. I was left to write my angry letter to the <\/p>\n
president of the United States all by myself, although my father <\/p>\n
did promise I could type it out on the office typewriter next week, <\/p>\n
after I showed it to him in my copybook diary. <\/p>\n
The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice 20 <\/p>\n
cream I never ate in Washington, D.C., that summer I left child- <\/p>\n
hood was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and <\/p>\n
the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made <\/p>\n
me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip and it wasn t <\/p>\n
much of a graduation present after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first time I went to Washington, D.C., was on the edge of the summer when I was supposed to stop being a child. At least that’s what they said to us all at graduation from the eighth grade. My sister Phyllis graduated at the same time from high school. I don’t know what she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-92516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}