Imitation of Life, Or: The Further Adventures of the Stealth Mexican.
Eric likes to call me a "stealth Mexican" since he maintains that my ethnic heritage is not immediately apparent from my looks. I guess that's true enough, since folks back home usually thought I was either white or half Asian; out here I'm often taken for Hawaiian or another sort of Pacific Islander. That should give you at least some idea.
Back home, there are certain people, my mother included, to whom "passing" (as they used to call it in the Jim Crow days) is very important. My mother has never forgotten being forced to use the colored bathrooms in rural 1960s Texas and always implored me to preserve my ambiguous skin tone with umbrellas and sunscreen so it wouldn't get too dark and ruin my acceptability in majority circles.
So there I was last Friday night at the reception after temple, sitting around with some acquaintances. Actually, I'd just been consecrated (read: inducted) to the temple board along with about half of the new board that had bothered to show up. It was a rare evening without Sarah, since she and Hunter had been at the Tot Shabbat service earlier and Eric had taken them home before the consecration.
A fiftysomething Prominent Lady in the congregation, with whom I've always been quite friendly and who has been supportive in making suggestions and answering my questions about my new board responsibilities, someone who in fact is going to be chairing a committee for me this year, was complaining about her husband. Okay: nothing new there. You probably don't need to know that I find her husband oddly and extremely attractive, but there it is anyway, and now you know. Anyway, she's complaining about the guys her husband works with: in her words, some real "low life" types.
...I think you can see where this is going. Go there with me, won't you?
What's wrong with these guys? Oh, they don't have any class. You know. And she's worried that these lower-class fellows' behavior is rubbing off on her husband. In fact--
I wasn't really paying attention to the conversation before, but around this time I started to feel that familiar queasy panic I used to get as a kid when I heard my affluent white classmates mocking the accents of their housekeepers and gardeners. Please, God, I thought, my heart racing. Not here. Not now. Not her.
Yes. Here. Now. Her. The Prominent Lady scoffed that she might as well call her husband by the Spanish version of his name since he's picking up all these low-life habits. I had a choice to make at this point. I could say nothing, which is what I always did as a child. Or I could try to take some sort of a stand and risk affecting my relationship with this woman. Which would I want my kids to do?
I took a deep breath, spoke softly but evenly. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. "[Lady]? You do know I'm Mexican, right?"
Her eyes widened. "No, you're not!" She peered at me closely. "Are you?"
Profuse apologies followed, as well as reassurances on my part that everything was fine. But, of course, it wasn't and isn't. I went home profoundly disappointed on what should have been a proud night, and I find that, nearly a week later, I'm still pretty sad about it. I don't know what's going to happen when I see the Prominent Lady again, but I do know that I'm somehow going to have to make this work for the good of the committee and the larger community. Business as usual.
To me, the worst thing about this is that I really like her. It would be so easy if this were someone I didn't know or didn't particularly like, but when you're flying stealth, nothing's ever really easy.
Back home, there are certain people, my mother included, to whom "passing" (as they used to call it in the Jim Crow days) is very important. My mother has never forgotten being forced to use the colored bathrooms in rural 1960s Texas and always implored me to preserve my ambiguous skin tone with umbrellas and sunscreen so it wouldn't get too dark and ruin my acceptability in majority circles.
So there I was last Friday night at the reception after temple, sitting around with some acquaintances. Actually, I'd just been consecrated (read: inducted) to the temple board along with about half of the new board that had bothered to show up. It was a rare evening without Sarah, since she and Hunter had been at the Tot Shabbat service earlier and Eric had taken them home before the consecration.
A fiftysomething Prominent Lady in the congregation, with whom I've always been quite friendly and who has been supportive in making suggestions and answering my questions about my new board responsibilities, someone who in fact is going to be chairing a committee for me this year, was complaining about her husband. Okay: nothing new there. You probably don't need to know that I find her husband oddly and extremely attractive, but there it is anyway, and now you know. Anyway, she's complaining about the guys her husband works with: in her words, some real "low life" types.
...I think you can see where this is going. Go there with me, won't you?
What's wrong with these guys? Oh, they don't have any class. You know. And she's worried that these lower-class fellows' behavior is rubbing off on her husband. In fact--
I wasn't really paying attention to the conversation before, but around this time I started to feel that familiar queasy panic I used to get as a kid when I heard my affluent white classmates mocking the accents of their housekeepers and gardeners. Please, God, I thought, my heart racing. Not here. Not now. Not her.
Yes. Here. Now. Her. The Prominent Lady scoffed that she might as well call her husband by the Spanish version of his name since he's picking up all these low-life habits. I had a choice to make at this point. I could say nothing, which is what I always did as a child. Or I could try to take some sort of a stand and risk affecting my relationship with this woman. Which would I want my kids to do?
I took a deep breath, spoke softly but evenly. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. "[Lady]? You do know I'm Mexican, right?"
Her eyes widened. "No, you're not!" She peered at me closely. "Are you?"
Profuse apologies followed, as well as reassurances on my part that everything was fine. But, of course, it wasn't and isn't. I went home profoundly disappointed on what should have been a proud night, and I find that, nearly a week later, I'm still pretty sad about it. I don't know what's going to happen when I see the Prominent Lady again, but I do know that I'm somehow going to have to make this work for the good of the committee and the larger community. Business as usual.
To me, the worst thing about this is that I really like her. It would be so easy if this were someone I didn't know or didn't particularly like, but when you're flying stealth, nothing's ever really easy.