Simone

This past weekend, I was pulling into the parking lot of my local Quick Chek when I noticed of an older white woman verbally berating a group of three teenagers—all whom I go to school with. This isn’t uncommon, even for a suburb proclaiming its safety. But the boys were all black. And, as observation or experience has taught all of us, being young and black in public is dangerous. I walked over to investigate the situation, to find the woman, clearly intoxicated, stumbling, and screaming vulgarities.

A car pulled up full of girls from my school who’d just come back from celebrating one of their 18th birthdays. They, too, had noticed her blatant racism and violent demeanor. They told her to calm down and leave the kids alone. She responded by calling one of them a whore, and threatening to punch the girl standing beside her. Someone had started dialing the police when we noticed a sheriff car patrolling the parking lot.

I ran over with three others and told the police what was going on; that they needed to intervene before someone was hurt. They told us to go home or they’d call our parents and tell them where we were. (It was 9:30 PM and we were at a convenience store. Apparently parents and the law are not OK with that.)

I walked back to the woman. By now, three more people had showed up, one white, and two black. She wailed a few illegible statements and mocked us screaming, “Shut the fuck up, motherfucker,” in some kind of gross attempt at a “black” accent. A brief break from racism was offered when I asked how she planned to get home, and told her I’d do everything in my control to keep her out of a car. She came close to me, and yelled “You’re ugly!”, spraying my face with spit.

Her abuse continued, worsened by the prevalence of socially aware girls very willing to call her out for it. At a certain point I gave up, just staring at her. She took notice and approached me again, this time standing even closer, and far more intrusive.

Maybe it was adrenaline, maybe I just really wanted to tear her down, but I said to her, “I pity you. You look like you have a nice life. What makes you do this? Why are you bullying teenagers? You’re pathetic.” I turned away and she grabbed my shirt, then punched me in the back.

Like the snitch I am, I ran away without hitting her back, laughing nervously, and told the police she’d assaulted me. My desire to get this woman home without any legal action had completely dissipated.

They responded, “Get in your car. Go home.” They sat in their militarized SUV for the entirety of the interaction, showing no concern or sympathy—offering no support.

The group of spectators had expanded during my frustrating interaction with the cops. By now, one of the girls she’d called a whore was holding back a white kid from fighting her after she’d called his black friend the N-word during a rant of support for Donald Trump.

Finally, she was subdued by a stranger offering her a ride. She stumbled into the back seat of car, and I’d realized he’d probably convinced the police not to act. The stranger, who I’ve yet to decide was a good samaritan or not, drove her home. He was black.

The boy she almost fought followed her car with his friends, and my friends and I followed him. Eventually, all three cars stopped on a narrow residential street. The woman noticed us, and approached the boy’s car. There, she made her boldest proclamation of the night: That she wanted to kill all black people.

Her helpless guardian told us not to listen to her, and that we should home because if the police became involved, they’d vilify us. I wish he hadn’t been right about that.

Now, it seems a lot less funny and way more serious than it did when I slo-mo’d the video of her hitting me and recounted the story to my friend over FaceTime. I keep thinking about this woman: how normal and put together she looked, what it felt like when she hit me, how the cops would’ve reacted if she were black and the kids were white, how in the context of the situation, the extremity of her addiction could only be handled with an arrest, how quick she was to use the N-word, the hate and anger in her voice as she addressed three 16-years-olds drinking slurpees, how close she lived to my high school—a block away. ♦