Learning the Wrong Lessons
Mourning The Talk Withheld
How old were you the first time someone spit on you because of the color of your skin? I think I was seven. Or was I eight?
The person who spit on me was an adult white man. He did so after I smiled and waved at him. I attempted the friendly exchange with him because I had just watched him making silly faces, smiling and waving at my younger brother. He is white like the man — I am not.
Seeing the fun exchange, I lit up. What a friendly face on that early morning, hours-long, boring car ride to school. Would he wave at me, too? I beamed.
Instead, from his big rig high above our car, he spewed his mouthful of chewed up sunflower seeds. Or tobacco. I couldn’t have known the difference. Though, I did get a good look. It landed at eye level on my passenger window. I watched as it barely dripped, holding its form. It was chunky, brown-tinted, thick, and sticky. If not for the glass, it would have been all over my face. For a moment I thought it was an accident. Then he did it again. A wave crashed over me. I was seven years old. Or was I eight?
“Would he wave at me, too? I beamed.”
I cried. I shrieked. I was grossed out (because it was the 80s and that’s how we talked). So many feelings came up. They all hurt. And I was scared. He waved at my brother. Why not at me? What had I done wrong? I must have done something because why else would he turn on me after being so nice to my brother? Oh, how early I learned to internalize another person’s behavior.
Through my sobbing, I heard my mom say some things that provided absolutely no comfort. I shouldn’t wave at strangers. It didn’t matter if the man was already waving at my brother. She shut the whole thing down and moved on as quickly as possible. She refused to answer my questions. She refused to pull over to clean the window and give me a much needed hug. To say I felt overwhelmed and confused is an understatement.
Get amanda spikes’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
So, since she wasn’t going to shed a light or warmth here, I thought about what she said. Sadly — but perhaps predictably — I concluded that my behavior was the problem. It was my fault the man spit on me.
“Oh, how early I learned to internalize another person’s behavior.”
The wave crashed over me again and left me tumbling in the whitewash. It was as disorienting as being swept up in the undertow, not knowing up from down. The intensity of my feelings were heavy like salt water thrashing me this way and that, slamming me down into the sand while the cacophony of bursting foam roared as loud as the tumultuous questions in my head.
Did the incident even last longer than two minutes? I am sure I’ve forgotten much of it. Perhaps my mom said a little more than I remember. What became clear to me many years later, though, was that through her choice to avoid coming to my rescue and answering my questions, the lesson I got was that I was gonna have to make sense of this on my own. And as for the feelings? Well, those were also gonna be on me to manage.
The rest of the car ride my mind raced trying to figure out what I could have done differently so that man would not have spit on me. Trying to figure out how I could show him that I was also a cute, likeable kid. Why was I being rejected? I hadn’t done anything wrong. But I must have done something wrong. This chaotic whitewash consumed me. It also distracted me from the reality that I was all alone.
Meanwhile, the gross, seemingly massive ejection was entirely obstructing any view out the window that would have allowed me to disassociate and escape to another place.
When I finally got to school, I told my friend what happened. Like me, she had brown skin. Only her hair was darker and tighter than my sun-bleached, variegated coils.
In my second surprise of the day, she was not surprised. At all. It was as if what I said was old news. And she definitely had no interest in talking about it. The undertow began to tug at me again. How did my seven-year-old oh-so-wise friend know about this kind of stuff? Or was she eight?
“Like me, she had brown skin. Only her hair was darker and tighter than my sun-bleached, variegated coils.”
When my mom picked me up from daycare many hours later, I may have somehow forgotten about the whole thing. At the very least, I had been able to shove the feelings far away or stomp them deep down. Whatever it was, I had won this battle over my anxiety. That is, until I exited daycare to get in the car. And there it was. The man’s hatred. Staring at me from the window. Greeting me as I attempted to get into the backseat. I broke down again. Why hadn’t my mom washed it off the glass? Why did that man hate me so much? What did I do wrong? I was back in the whitewash, flailing in the racing thoughts.
How old were you the first time someone spit on you because of the color of your skin? I was seven. Or was I eight?
As a child, I unknowingly grieved for this unnamed thing that might have made this whole experience less jarring, stupefying, and painful. As an adult, I know it as The Talk. And its value is immeasurable.
