If You Like It Then You Should Have Put A Ring On It

Wayne and I visited his cousin in Oakland, California in the spring of 1987.

I was wearing his ring.

I still wear it.   I'm a practical person.  The ring had a beautiful sapphire in the middle of two diamonds.  I tried to trade it when I got engaged to Roger but they offered me nothing for it.  So I had them replace the center diamond.   Roger was cool with that.  To be honest, he had asked me once about the ring and I told him it was an engagement ring.  

He had forgotten about it. 

I knew nothing of black history.  I attended an integrated private school in North Carolina up through 2nd grade.  There was one black girl in my class named Sabrina.  The teachers were mean to her.  I asked mom.  Mom said that she had dark skin.  I could not figure this out.  There were darker skinned students in the class from India and she was nice to them.?

At night I used to stare at my ghostly arm and stroke it and whisper to God, "Thank you for giving me white skin so my Teachers will be nice to me."

I started 3rd grade in 1967 at a newly integrated public school in Blacksburg, Virginia called Gilbert Linkous.    I spent 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade there.   Every week a bomb threat would be called in (I am serious.  Every week.)   We students thought it was great fun.  I'd bring a Scholastic paperback in my purse and read it on the bus while they brought the dogs over to sniff out the school.  Then we'd all cut up and have fun.

I was stunned when I learned about Brown v. Board of Education because the decision was issued in the mid fifties.   I could still hear the sirens and the dogs panting with excitement as they prepared for another fruitless hunt for a bomb.  Couldn't they have integrated the school earlier?   Sure, the bus trips were nice, but I paid for that when my math SAT scores came in.

Needless to say I learned nothing of Black History in those days.  I remember pictures of slaves in the cotton fields and I got to see Gone With The Wind when I was 10.   It looked like the slaves had a lot of fun joking with each other.  And after all, Ellen O'Hara took such good care of them.

Woo alert!!!!  I visited a reputable, licensed psychologist with a PhD from the University of South Carolina, approved by Blue Cross,  and she conducted a past life regression. I flashed back to being a house slave, a mulatto who was sleeping with the master.   He eventually bred me to the biggest slave on the plantation and I died in agonizing childbirth because the son we created was too big.  

And I always wondered why I had no real desire whatsoever to give birth in this life.  Wayne was my true love in that lifetime.  He was a slave.  He caught me shopping in town one day (I had special privileges being the master's girl) and begged me to come with him to the North and marry him.  Terrified, I refused.  My master had told me that he would throw lye in my face if I was caught having a romantic relationship. 

It sure sounds like some dreadful paperback novel but I dropped everything to move to New York almost as if I was in a trance.  I walked away from my law career, my family, my friends, my entire life without a second thought. 

Okay.  I was naive.  When I first visited Wayne he had a picture in his foyer of a black man.  It was a picture merging Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  I said, "Is that you?"

He patiently explained that the two men in the picture were merging and it was meant to symbolize that at the end of his life Malcolm X and Dr. King began to see eye to eye on their philosophies.

Back to Oakland.

Carol took us to a wonderful restaurant called the Gingerbread Man.   I was happily shoveling in food when the discussion turned to discrimination.

"I've been reading Malcolm X, " I chirped, "and he seems to think that the black man should never wait patiently for the white man to move over and voluntarily grant him room in his garden.  White men aren't ever going to voluntarily say, 'Here! Here's what you rightfully deserve, sorry about that whole slavery thing.'  Black people ought to support their own communities, visit their own professionals, and create power by building their own house.  I think he's right."

She sprang to her feet.

"YOU GD MF B!" * she screamed quietly, if that makes sense.  "HOW DARE YOU ACT LIKE YOU KNOW ANYTHING, YOU SPOILED LITTLE WHITE GIRL FROM THE SOUTH!"

The evening progressed from horrible to Defcon 10.  Wayne and I slept in separate beds that night.

It was over, but I didn't know it.  We continued to live together.

Spring 1988 was coming, and I wanted to hear wedding bells.  Now.   I was ready to start my family.

Wayne kept wavering.  Finally he said that he would tell me his decision in May, 1988.

I bet you can guess the ending of the story when I show you this picture.   Body Language much?

One Sunday morning we went out to brunch and over pancakes he told me that not only were we not getting married, I was officially dumped and I should start apartment hunting.

I left New York in July of 1988 a broken woman.  I spent three years mourning him.  I should have gotten psychiatric help, but in those days, I believed that only crazy people did that.

Would you believe that we continued our "friendship" for another several years?  We chatted on the phone, I visited him three times, and it was just as wonderful as when you slooooowwwly rip off a bandage that's stuck to some hair on your skin.

Finally I had my happy ending when I married a nice white boy.  My parents were delighted.

Their prodigal daughter had come home.

Looking back, if I had kept my mouth shut in 1987 and not asked for marriage I believe we would still be together.  We'd have two kids and we'd be living happily ever after.

But you know what?

I believe in marriage.  I did not want to have children with a man who refused to put a ring on it.

Beyonce agrees with me.

And I believe the same thing today.

And maybe one day loving homosexual couples will be able to legally say their vows in South Carolina.

Naw.

That's about as unlikely as having a black President.

Oh.

My bad.

....to be continued.  9/11, Stalkers R' Us..Visit to Wayne's apartment in August 2010

*I agreed to not curse on the blog as a condition of my advertising contract with Blogher.