whitegirlmistakes

Blue Baby

My infant daughter died fifty-three years ago last week. She was born not getting enough oxygen, which made her lips purply, the way kids look when they’ve stayed in the pool too long. Writing about Carolyn in my forthcoming memoir, White Wife/Blue Baby, has finally quieted my heart. After she died, her father and IContinue reading “Blue Baby”

White Girl Mistakes: The Gun

The doorbell finally rang. I’d been waiting, hurt, while my entirely Midwestern baked chicken and Idaho potatoes dinner cooled in the kitchen. I was going to definitely tell Emmon how I felt. But when I swung the door open, he came in hurriedly with hunched shoulders and without meeting my eyes. Sitting on the edgeContinue reading “White Girl Mistakes: The Gun”

Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith

It was St. Patrick’s Day. With her jaw set, my mother dripped green food coloring into our little glasses of orange juice. We were careful not to smirk unless her back was turned, but she picked up on our irreverence anyway. “A million people died, and the British could have stopped it,” she hissed softly.Continue reading “Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith”

Buffalo

On a Saturday in May in Buffalo, ten people died trying to buy groceries. Survivors told us how it happened: Blacks hunted down in the aisles and blasted with what was essentially a weapon of war, a young guy with curly brown hair carrying out his grisly mission. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has told us, LatinateContinue reading “Buffalo”

White Girl Mistakes #5

We arrived in DC as fugitives from the law. Emmon had jumped bail after cops staked out our apartment and arrested him for unpaid parking tickets. Tsunamis happened often in Black Chicago; there was no point in counting on things not being swept away. So when we rolled up to his old friend Vernon’s new,Continue reading “White Girl Mistakes #5”

White Girl Mistakes #4

Our Saturday newspaper was folded to the real estate section, and I was wearing my trusty Keds. In the sixties, a lot of Chicago apartment leases ended October 1, so September was like a city-wide game of musical chairs, with the best places going to the quickest, most organized players. The bright morning skiesContinue reading “White Girl Mistakes #4”

White Girl Mistakes #3

Ahmaud Arbery’s Murder Trial “Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Defense Attorney Laura Hogue said in her closing arguments. Though Hogue has been aContinue reading “White Girl Mistakes #3”

White Girl Mistakes #1

The Accident When I started dating across the color line in 1967, I was pretty sure that I could deal with Chicago racism. Losing my father to drink and being sexually assaulted by my pastor were probably my fault, so being disapproved of – well, so what? One night my boyfriend Emmon borrowed a car.Continue reading “White Girl Mistakes #1”

White Girl Mistakes #2

State Street Where I came from, a suburb right outside Chicago, people knew we had done the wrong thing to Negroes. Still, they weren’t sure they could side with Martin Luther King, whose namesake had defied the Pope. And how bad were the problems, anyway? The Catholic schools I attended mid-century taught Chicago history thatContinue reading “White Girl Mistakes #2”