[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img] “Are you together?”
It's the one question I am asked more than any other, especially in retail settings. Even more than, “Do you want paper or plastic?”
My husband and I often shop together, or rather he tags along when I go shopping. When we get to the checkout, whether we are buying milk or housewares or socks, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the cashier first looks at me, then at him, then at me again and asks, "Are you together?"
It is almost impossible for people to get their mind around the fact that this white man and black woman are indeed together. So much for forty years of post-Loving progress.
Yeah, Loving is the name of the 1967 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that made it legal for people like my husband and I to marry. Loving won out. I guess some people still don’t know.
Once we went to a mall out of town to buy something I needed right away – I think it was shorts in unexpectedly hot weather, but that part of the story always slips my mind.
Bracing Myself
Here I was, alone in a mall store dressing room, trying on and discarding various items, lamenting as women often do about size. As store help is often non-existent except when they’re following me around keeping an eye out for theft, I often ask my husband to get different sizes or colors of clothing for me.
This weekday morning, the store was as quiet as a tomb. He started to walk into the empty dressing room to give me the clothes when the suddenly visible salesclerk accosted him.
“Sir!” she shouted. “There's only one woman back there.”
My husband, who was possibly, just possibly, being deliberately obtuse, kept walking toward the dressing room. At this point, the clerk was apoplectic.
“Sir, the woman back there,” she said sotto voce, "she’s black.”
He looked at her, paused, and said, “I know. She's my wife.”
This Was Not Unique
Then the spill of “I’m sorry” did not stop. It was nothing new.
People are always falling all over themselves to say they are sorry. Sorry they bullied my husband for “cutting in line” to join me at the craft store.
Sorry they tried to keep him from my side at the doctor’s office. Sorry for their assumptions.
Sorry they look so foolish. Sorry we peered into the dark part of their soul.
I try to give people ample warning. When I’m getting to know people, they often ask about my husband what he does, where he works. I find the questions kind of intrusive, but I make an effort to accommodate people’s curiosity. They want to know what he does, read: how do you afford your lifestyle when you stay home all day?
Questions for Him
He gets the same questions (who knows how he answers), but at some point when we meet each other’s colleagues or acquaintances, there’s that moment when people lose their composure.
I call it the startle factor. I introduce him, and they falter, sometimes even dropping his hand in mid-shake, as the word “husband” escapes my mouth, because they had expected a black man. For me, it’s like a bad 1950s screwball comedy where people do a double take – “You’re his wife, Jessica?” they ask skeptically. “Yes,” I smile. “I am.”
The time it takes people to regain their composure is purely comedic. I imagine they are no doubt replaying what they may have said to offend in the few days, weeks, or months, they’d known one of us.
In the name of well-meaning help, mostly from folks whose embrace of stereotypes has them thinking all black men are struggling, I often get unsolicited advice to help boost my husband’s career. He doesn't need any help.
He seems to be doing very well on his own, but I listen politely.
Would they be offering the advice if they knew he was white? Once an acquaintance from my alumnae association suggested that, my husband would have a good chance getting an interview at a predominately Jewish firm because they were open to hiring minorities.
I had to pause. I did. Because for a moment, I couldn’t quite figure out how he would bring diversity to the firm.
When I finally got her point, I didn't have the heart to say to her very earnest face that I didn't think hiring another Jew would be diverse.
When my husband is not with me, I don’t ever bother to challenge people’s erroneous assumptions. The auto mechanic who looked at my personal check and said, “I knew a guy with your husband’s name in high school, but he was white,” I just left alone. There is not enough time in the day.
Many years ago when my husband started work for a huge international firm, we went to a barbecue at a partner’s house on the far opposite side of town.
My husband had been hired, but wasn’t scheduled to start for another month or so.
He had not told anyone I was black, and we were both nervous about how we would be received.
I told him I didn’t have to go. He, however, followed the advice of his mother — you should never hide.
We were the picture of assimilation. He wore a navy striped polo and khakis. Even I toned down and accessorized with a silk scarf.
We walked into the virtually all white gathering, and he introduced me, "This is my wife, Jessica."
Almost everyone within hearing range paused in mid-action.
At the time, we lived in a city that was half African American and I didn’t think it was that startling for a black person to show up at a suburban barbecue.
It was like one of those movie moments when the action freezes around you. I knew then he was going to be fired before he could start work, such was my faith in human behavior.
When the action resumed, an older man walked up to me and shook my hand.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, "Law School Supports Drug Use"—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
