Part 12 (1/2)

Our Laurie is the six-five Black Guy, the one with elaborate braids under his NY Yankees cap, the one wearing size thirteen shoes and a South Carolina T-s.h.i.+rt because he'd just gotten a scholars.h.i.+p offer from the Gamec.o.c.ks, the one who'd returned only the day before from the high school All-American basketball camp in Philadelphia, the one with brown skin almost exactly the same shade as my ex-husband's, the one we tease our daughter about because she always said the last thing she ever wanted to do was replicate my life.

”Where you from?” one officer yelled at us, and another held the barrel of his shotgun against Feets's skull, pus.h.i.+ng it farther and farther until the opening seemed to be inside his ear, under his huge Afro. It was August 1979. Westwood, California.

Where you from? Where's your license? Where's your car? Is it stolen ? Why are you here? Why aren't you in Riverside?

We'd driven eighty miles from Riverside, the land of uncool, of orange trees and dairy farms and a tiny downtown. I was ready to begin my soph.o.m.ore year at USC. Feets played basketball for Monterey Peninsula College, and our friend Penguin was a linebacker for a junior college in Riverside County. After the beach, they wanted to cruise the streets of Westwood, the paradise we'd seen only in movies.

Feets wore tight khaki pants, a black tank unders.h.i.+rt, and a cream-colored cowboy hat on his big natural. Then two police cruisers sped onto the sidewalk where we walked, blocking our path. Four officers shoved us against the brick wall.

I remember how it smelled.

He was their target, I realized quickly. Power forward. His shoulder blades were wide, dark wings; he was spread-eagled against the wall.

He fit the description.

A black man with a shotgun and a cowboy hat was seen threatening people at UCLA, one of them shouted.

The cop who'd taken me aside looked at my license. Why'd you come all the way from Riverside to L.A.? Where's your car? Whose car is it? Does your mother know you 're with two n.i.g.g.e.rs?

Penguin was talking back to the cops, refusing to give them his license, and I thought they were going to shoot Feets. Through his ear.

They said a few more things to him, things I couldn't hear. They lowered the shotgun. He lowered his arms. They told us to find our car and leave L.A. ”Go back to Riverside!” They said they'd follow us, and that if they saw us walking again, they would shoot on sight.

The patrol car shadowed us as we walked. My boyfriend walked slowly, slightly ahead of me. I knew he was afraid of the bullet that might still come, if he moved wrong. We went back to where we belonged.

What did the highway patrolman want? The Scholar had been going thirty-two miles an hour, between stops. She had always signaled.

”The right taillight's going out again,” my ex-husband said.

”My seat belt is still broken,” I said.

My ex-husband fishtailed in the dirt of the shoulder, trying to pull ahead of the van and the cruiser. The patrolman was yelling louder, his voice echoing off our door. ”Ignore the white truck,” he shouted.

”Pull behind him!” I shouted.

”No, then he'll get scared,” my ex-husband was shouting.

I knew what he thought: if the officer got scared, he might shoot us.

The Scholar stopped, and the cruiser stopped, and my ex-husband accelerated and went around one more time, a terrible dance which wasn't funny but it kind of was when the highway patrolman leaped out of his vehicle then, agitated, staring at us, holding both arms wide in the air, saying, What the h.e.l.l?

He had reddish blond hair, big shoulders, sungla.s.ses.

He looked straight at me, and frowned. And that was good.

Oddly, this summer I read Travels with Charley: John Steinbeck, riding in his truck, named Rocinante, with a camper sh.e.l.l on the back, with his large French poodle, named Charley, who is ”bleu” when clean, which means black. When they hit New Orleans, a man leans in and says, ”Man, oh man, I thought you had a n.i.g.g.e.r in there. Man, oh man, it's a dog. I see that big old black face and I think it's a big old n.i.g.g.e.r.”

Once Feets and I were camping across the country in a different truck-a blue Toyota with a camper sh.e.l.l-and we spent an uneasy hot night in McClellanville, South Carolina. At dawn, he got up and took a walk beside the Intracoastal Waterway. While we slept, the campground had filled with hunters. I lay in the camper, and from the open window near my head, I heard a father say to his young son, ”See that big n.i.g.g.e.r? That's a big n.i.g.g.e.r, right there. When you get older, I'm gonna buy you a big n.i.g.g.e.r just like that.”

I never told Feets exactly what the man had said. I just said there were scary people here and we should pack up and leave. We did.

If there's anything scarier than Fits the Description, it's Routine Traffic Stop.

The names or faces we've learned over the years. A brother in Signal Hill. Rodney King. The Baller's basketball coach's brothers, both of them. My younger brother's best friend. Shot nineteen times in his white truck as he maneuvered on the center divider of the freeway, having refused to pull over. He might have been high. Either hung up on the cement or trying to back up. No weapon. A toolbox. He'd just delivered a load of cut orangewood to my driveway.

”I ain't getting out,” Feets said. He had his hands on top of the steering wheel.

”I know! I'm going,” I said. I needed to get my wallet.

”He better not mess with her,” he was saying.

”I'm going!” I said. We both knew it was my job. I bent down to get my pink leather tooled wallet. My job is to be the short blond mom. At school, at basketball games, at parent-t eacher conferences, in the princ.i.p.al's office when a boy has called The Baby a n.i.g.g.e.r and the male vice princ.i.p.al sees my ex-husband-BIG DOGS s.h.i.+rt, black sungla.s.ses, folded arms the size of an NFL linebacker's, and a scowl-and looks as if he'll faint.

My job is to smile and figure out what's going on.

By the time I got out of the car, the patrolman was looking at me, and The Scholar was pointing at me.

The traffic roared past on the freeway, twenty feet away from the silent weigh station. I took my sungla.s.ses off and felt my mouth tighten. Who had smiled like this? (A foolish smile that angered someone. Custard inside a dress. What?) ”Why did you stop? What are you doing?” the cop said loudly at me.

”That's my mom and dad,” The Scholar said, aggrieved. She wasn't scared. She was p.i.s.sed. Her default setting.

”We're on our way to the beach for a birthday party!” I said, cheery and momlike. ”Her dad and I didn't want to get separated, 'cause in this traffic we might never see each other again!”

The little women hate when I do this. They imitate me viciously afterward. They hate that I have to do it, and that I am good at it.

”What's the problem?” I asked. ”Is it that darn seat belt?”

(Who smiled like this?) The officer squinted at me, then at the van.

”One of the male pa.s.sengers wasn't wearing his seat belt.” But then he said drily, ”He's wearing it now.”

He asked for license and registration and insurance, and I made jokes about how deep in the glove compartment the registration might be, and I pulled the insurance card from my wallet, and the registration was outdated and he glared at me but went back to his patrol car.

The Scholar started a low invective about California's urgent need for revenue, and I leaned into the window to say to our Laurie, ”You weren't wearing your seat belt? You always wear your seat belt!”

He said, ”It wasn't me. It was Bink.”

Bink is darker than he is, nineteen, wearing her hair tucked into a black cap, wearing a huge black T-s.h.i.+rt. She rolled her eyes, furious.

”He's coming back,” someone said. The officer approached the other side of the van. ”I need the male pa.s.senger to open the door. Open the door,” he said.

Bink opened the door slowly.

He asked Bink for her license. He didn't let on that he'd thought she was a guy. He didn't ask her or our Laurie to get out of the car. I stopped having visions of people lying on their faces in the dirt. He wrote the ticket, our Laurie looked straight ahead, at The Scholar's hair, and The Baller looked straight ahead, out the winds.h.i.+eld, and I knew Feets was watching in the rearview without moving. I stood awkwardly near the driver's-side window until it was done.

It wasn't until that night that I felt my mouth slide over my teeth again and I remembered. A foolish, dazzling smile. Custard.