When I was in fourth grade, I lived in California. My school was 90% white. I am white and my best friend Tracy was black. Tracy was the only black girl in our class, and one of the few black kids at out school and in our neighborhood. She lived in the only apartment complex in our neighborhood. We always sat together in class. We ate lunch together, and walked home from school together. During class we would steal away to the back of the classroom to do our work. I remember we had a fascination with each other’s hair. I loved to braid her hair because when I got to the end, I did not have to use a rubber band to hold it. I thought that was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. She loved the color of my hair. She said only her aunt had red hair, and she looked funny.

Our classroom was set up into stations, each for a different subject. If we could show our teacher we could do our work with out having to stay at the stations, we could go anywhere in the classroom. Tracy and I used to do our work behind a tall bookshelf. It gave us just enough room to sit with our desks pushed together facing each other. We would take turns pretending to be the teacher. Our real teacher could see us working from where he sat, but the bookcase hid us from the rest of the class.

My best friend in school is a girl named Marcia. She is white and I’m black. There are hardly any other black people who go to my school, and I’m the only one in my class. Sometimes I hate it because I feel I don’t fit in, but Marcia’s fun. We play at school, and her mom lets me come over for lunch on Saturdays. At school, after we finish our reading, we play hairdresser in the back of the classroom behind the bookcase. She has long red hair, and it’s fun to brush. She thinks my hair is funny, and she braids it all the time.

I’m not entirely sure why we were so close, except that she was a really good person. It may have been that I felt badly for her when I heard the other kids making fun of her. I was not immune to being made fun of myself (I was the fat kid in class), and I think this helped to create the bond between us, though it was something we never talked about. I think my parents’ attitude about race influenced our friendship.

My father recently told me why, in the late sixties, we moved from El Segundo, where we rented a home, to Hawthorne, where I met Tracy. My father had a black friend from work who would come over for dinner every once in a while. The neighborhood we lived in did not allow blacks, and it was made clear to my parents that his friend was not welcome. My parents decided to buy a home in a more welcoming city. When I was seven or eight I remember asking my mom if it would be ok if I were to marry a black man. She told me, "A lot of people would not like it, but I would have her full support." I am so grateful my parents taught me these values.

When I started junior high school, my family had just moved to phoenix. I went to a school that was about one third black. Up until then, I had only been on busses for fieldtrips. When Tracy and I were on field trips, we always sat in the back of the bus. Our town was full of hills, and when our bus went over the top of one, we were bounced off our seats, and we would squeal with delight. I equated busses with fun and adventure, but now I was going to ride bus a to school.

On the first day of school, when I went to the bus stop, there were just three other kids there. All three were white. We were the first ones on the bus, and I ran to the back hoping for a bumpy ride. When we got to the next stop, most of the kids who got on the bus were black. They headed to the back of the bus. I smiled and moved over, but no one sat by me. I tried to strike up a conversation, but failed miserably. No one was rude of mean, but I got the feeling I did not belong there. When we got to the next stop, a boy got on. I heard someone behind me whisper, "Vern’s gunna kill her."

When Vern saw me, he stopped in his tracks. He looked at me with the most hatred I had ever seen in anyone’s eyes. He called me names and threw things at me the whole way to school. As I look back at the incident, it is not the names he called me or the things he threw at me that I remember most. It was his eyes. He never stopped glaring at me. By the end of the ride to school, his eyes looked to me like big yellow/brown daggers. I know much of my perception was fear. No one had ever had that kind of reaction to me. I looked back in my yearbook, and he looks like an average kid. He did have big eyes, but not the menacing eyes I remember.

It was the first day of school today. I got on the bus today and this white girl was sitting in the back. She just sat there with this stupid grin on her face. The bus was almost empty, I don’t know why she was sitting in the back. It’s not like she couldn’t find a place up front. White people never sit in the back of the bus. Sometimes they sit close to the back when it is really packed, but this is our place. We always sit back here together. I talked to her when she asked me a question, but my friend nudged me in the side, so I stopped. I was a little worried when Vern got on. He hates white people. He hates everybody. Vern started calling her names and throwing things at her. She pushed herself back into the corner and held a book up like she was reading, but you could tell she wasn’t reading. I felt sorry for her, but she shouldn’t have been back there anyway.

When I got on the bus that day, I felt as if I had crossed into a territory where I did not belong. Most of the kids who sat in the back of the bus were friends who liked to sit together, but I don’t think they choose to sit in the back of the bus. This was in the seventies. Even though the civil rights movement had taken place, and Rosa Parks had, many years earlier, refused to give her sit up for a white man, things have changed slowly. Too slowly. I think this is where society still expected African Americans to sit. I wonder if it must have seemed as if I was flaunting that I could go wherever I wanted, and by sitting back there, I was saying, "This doesn’t belong to you either."

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