“I was never afraid for myself; I know I can handle myself.” Humorous despite the painfully cocky attitude, I had to give a bit of positivity to this ride. “I’m not worried about myself.”
Curtains rise on a Toyota traveling down a lone stretch of road. No stores, no gas stations, and no familiar faces for miles — just a smattering of farms, two ladies in a car, and cows visible enough to take the place of people.
The radio station changes every few minutes, a clash between my own musical taste and my mother’s love for knowledge. Talk radio, 80’s throwback, commercials, talk radio, classic rock, talk radio, commercials, modern rock, talk radio, talk radio, talk radio… As always, my mother had won.
This was my last day of holiday break, and my mom and I are driving through the countryside to reach my campus before dark.
Conversation shifts from home life to college life: it shifts, and it stagnates, and it stops.
School’s fine, my friends are fine, my grades are fine.
Work is fine, your father is fine, your brother is as fine as ever.
At some point, we stopped conversing altogether and gave the radio a chance to fill the comfortable silence. PBS drones on, and it’s not a dreaded conversation, but an expected one: national politics and, more specifically, Donald Trump.
I remember that I had consciously turned off the news following the election results, and I stopped tweeting about him. I consciously stopped sharing articles on Facebook about him—articles that I found to be thought-provoking, but not everyone can be intrigued as easily as me. I stopped listening to the response; I stopped following the discourse, but I was never ignorant enough to believe ignoring his victory will make it disappear. Consciously, I was fully aware of my actions; fully aware that I was making an effort to ignore the future.
I couldn’t tell you what the men on the radio were arguing about. Donald Trump’s presidency, yes, but I couldn’t say what part; it might have been global affairs, or it might have been global warming. It wasn’t important to me. I had already decided to shut down.
My mother was driving the car. Beside me, eyes trained on the road, she listened with vehement intensity while she bit at her thumbnail.
“You know,” I reached, rather rudely, for the volume of the console and turned it down to a whisper, “I was never afraid for myself. When he won, I mean. I didn’t think of myself. I’m not worried about myself.”
She hummed, nodded briefly, but didn’t respond. I had caught her attention without having the decency to ask for it.
“I was worried about my brother," I continued, "My first thoughts were about Sonny. About what it means for him.”
Sonny — a nickname given to him by yours truly — is four years my junior. As a child, I piqued his interest in video games, and I scolded him for years over making his peanut butter and jellies the "wrong" way. He now insists his music taste is better than mine. His dreadlocks were the reason I dreaded my own hair. I've made him cry, and I've made him yell, and I've made him laugh, and I've made him smile during his 14 years on this Earth. He's the only brother I'll ever have. One day he’ll tower over me — even more than he does now — and I’ll still see him as my little brother with the tiny fingernails.
He’s not a monster. He wears hoodies. He’s not a villain. He’s tall, and he’s black but no one should ever see him as a threat. I am someone's daughter, and he is someone's son. If you take nothing away from these words, take away the fact that we are not a stereotype or a skin color's negative association.
I was worried for him; I will always worry about him over myself. African-American women have a slew of threats against them, but African-American men face a society just as harmful.
“You raise your children in a loving, sweet environment. And they leave home, and the world is afraid of them.”
My mother's words rattled me. Her words brought me back to the car, out of my own thoughts—she had been thinking about this more than I had. I didn't have to look up to know that she was crying. I didn't have to dry my eyes to know that I was crying as well.
And this is where it ended.
We had arrived at my campus just as the radio station decided to switch topics. She wipes her eyes, and I wipe mine.
I gave her a hug, got out of the car, and entered my dorm building.
