Читать книгу Dancing at Lake Montebello - Lynne Viti - Страница 10

Biography

White girl, born in the city, grew up near the county line.

Catholic school, navy jumper, nuns in round white collars.

Negroes, only saw them when we went downtown,

on the streetcar — after North Avenue when you looked around

there were hardly any white faces. When the school day was done

the bus filled up with teenagers heading deeper into the city,

their school books stacked under their arms.

The boys gave up their seats to the girls.

I breathed the air of segregation, taking it in,

hardly knowing how it worked in this border state city

of unstated rules, takeout only, segregated pools,

separate schools, public or private, secular or parochial —

Separate movie theaters, separate stores. I graduated from saying

colored people to Negroes, still, everything stayed separate.

Brown-skinned bus drivers, trash men, busboys, day cleaning ladies.

White teachers, doctors, priests, Girl Scout leaders, hairdressers.

My black-and-white TV world:

Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, small figures

with big, rich voices coming from our Sylvania.

They looked so small.

That was the air we took into our lymphatic vessels,

our blood, our reproductive organs, it was our field vision.

It would be years before we’d awake (or refuse to),

to see we had not sensed a system behind the screen.