The Shades Beneath the Shine

Sucking in the thick air via nasal inhalation, I notice something vaguely familiar about the essence of the breeze that smacks my face, cutting it into flakes like a logger’s woodchipper, rings of knowledge about the Earth crush and spew into the vapid wind as unsympathetic as the current demolition of the Environmental Protection Agency; where is Grandpa Simpson when you direly desire his senile yet completely sane shrieks of caution? Grandpa Simpson, President 2020? In all reality, I didn’t come here, mentally, to revisit my Newton County past, one that made me learn quicker about the negatives of life long before I was truly advised. Rural. Rednecks. Renaissance. Red barns. Rebels. Red brick. Racism. Red lies. Red truths. Red tradition. Red skin. Red blood. Red me.

No.

I meant to say **White lies. White truths. White tradition. White skin. White blood. White them.

Or rather…

Black lies. Black truths. Black tradition. Black skin. Black blood. Black me. Have you seen me?

*****

I shaved down the calluses bounding up my hands like the palm deforestation in Southeast Asia. My palms have dried out, too. How could I have known that a move to a new state, even though I am Indiana-born, would be the death of my shield of innocence? As rough as the skin across my body, it was the inconsistent murmurs vibrating from my molten core that continued to cause worry. In 2007, the United States’ economy tumbled like both my hope and the now-commonplace mudslides, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, tropical storms, and slants to science.

The wisp of manure that missed its placement as fertilizer in the crops, soybeans or corn (alternating each year), slumped on the side of the gravel road facing our new crib. Crib refers to the idea of a house and a supposed baby bed made with the assurance of safety for the small body and their parents. Who is the Mother though? I never enjoyed the smell of cow dung. Honestly, why would you? We make people multimillionaires to create products to mask the existence of our own. The longer I endured the foul perfume, the more I saw myself an evolving species. Do you ever drive past farmland and the odor of excrement creeps into the vents or windows of your vehicle? For your next move, you decide from a few choices: crank up the window like it suddenly transformed into a forcefield from the outside, chance holding a breath that has potentials of surpassing a world record (where is that official timekeeper? Answer: you’re in it), or snug your nose under the neck of your shirt -- anybody’s shirt to disguise your appearance as a foreign government operative. Which do you choose? Which have I chosen? I adapted. The cartoonist sketching that poop emoji on the side of a road will always remember the aroma lines, so viewers know it stinks. However, only one thing stinks about that situation. More country-fried greenhouse gases. I drove right through it, windows down, vents open, shirt torn off.

*****

I knew racism existed. And I knew I had witnessed it before. My mother, as kind as she stays, is the color of a cinnamon hazelnut macchiato with almondmilk post-stir. I had seen people stare. I had seen her vacuum tears at the bottom lid of her eye. The basic concept of ruining somebody (something?) that provides you so much creates hysteria. I didn’t know hysteria until I moved to Kentland. A house with two barns on three acres and the Confederate soul buried deep in its roots crafted my most formative years of a community norm. I thought, my mother prayed, that my brothers and I would be spared from pigment scrutiny. We didn’t look black. I didn’t look black. But just as the pines upon an evergreen rust into a brittle brown, my skin flickered color even when I held my olive tone in the summer months.

When you are driving on a highway and cruise by trucks (I mean, TRUCKS), do you ever wonder why they chose that stereotyped guzzler? Do they hate the environment? Do they use diesel as aftershave or body scrub? Are they compensating for something? Often, the answer to this series lies on the bumper, back windows, or the presence of a company logo on each side door.

· “Its easy to be pro ‘choice’ when you’re not the one being killed”

· “Global warming is a hoax”

· “Don’t tread on me”

· “Bomb Mecca”

· “CNN: Communist News Network”

Or my tell-tell:

· “Trump Pence ‘16” or “Trump Pence 2020”

I do not mean to insinuate that all trucks drivers tailgate at far-right rallies, no. But just as many truck drivers fail to skip their stereotype, a county with a school whose mascot is a confederate soldier echoed similar chants. Another perspective would be that sometimes, no matter what, people can just tell. People could just tell I was something else.

My tree ended as a cross burning in a black man’s yard. The trees outside the immediate safety of indoors haunted my thoughts. When would I awake to see a body, scarecrow or real, swaying in one of the trees that we tried to tie up a tire swing not weeks before? My dreams became fleeting like the lives of arctic species; will the next generation enjoy Coca Cola’s 90s campaign so much that polar bears become their favorite animal if not before they learn about the Amazonian arapaima like me? Penguins reign emperor, but they are black and white, too. My nightmares became my days. The difficulty of pacing in a box without holes to breathe out of nearly slaughtered me like the cows and chickens that hung slung across the barns on that property years before we moved onto it; the red barn had a clucking lazy river of blood (no sunscreen necessary) and the wooden barn held racks on the ceiling of the first floor for hooked beef. Does Buddig sell hooked beef yet? I became the chicken swimming in its ancestors’ blood. But what I feared most was the day my meat hung hooked on those steel brackets in the wooden barn.

*****

My blackness. My color. My something else.

I refuse to drive with the windows down. It isn’t because I have irrational reservations like the white men did for the natives of this land; the Iroquois ran through Newton County. It isn’t because I wish to façade my past with shiny names like the school claiming their colors as cardinal red and platinum rather than the still-used maroon and grey. It isn’t because the aroma of animal shite leaves a bitter coating on the roof of my mouth like the slurs exhausted at each pep rally.

-- I will tell you why my windows are sealed.

Because my mouth is wide open, screaming at those who have wronged the once beautiful world for me. Because the window acts as a censor for my pain. Because the window will stop me from crashing my little blue Fiat into the trunk of a birch, bark as white as the folks who tainted my emotional nature to the extent of taking away the love of a specific physical nature.

The irony pulsates; I think that is why so many tremors rumbled in the county when we arrived.