Between a Rock and a Car: A Childhood Memory on Racism

When someone disrespects you to your face or about you behind your back, you don’t have to accept it. You have to agree with that perception before the idea becomes a part of you. You always have to ask, “Who are you to tell me who I am?” What happens when you tell a child, over and over that they’re stupid, worthless, and unloved? They’ll grow up believing it, and they will act in accordance with who they think they are, no matter how erroneous that negative commentary was. Here is a childhood "flashback" from my book, "Quixote in Ramadi".



After moving from Key West at age four to Edgewater, Florida, we bought a house that was located in a small development that was filled with retirees. One woman across the street, Mary, who was an Irish immigrant, was quick to greet us and we instantly took a liking to her. She would dote on my sister and I and spend hours chatting with my mother about how life was in Ireland and my mom would openly and comfortably discuss her life growing up in Saipan.

However, not everyone in the neighborhood was so welcoming. The neighbor to our right, named Rose, was an elder German immigrant, and while she invited my mother over a few times to chat, she became openly militant about immigrants in this country. This was quite hilarious to my mother as her islands were owned by the US and she was therefore an American citizen from birth as well as an indigenous Chamorro and here was this angry woman from Germany, shouting about foreigners.

While my mother initially brushed off her racist remarks, it didn’t take long for her to put Rose in her place. Soon  after, Rose began burning trash in our back yard then calling the fire department and police on my parents, claiming we should be removed from the neighborhood.

One evening as my older first cousin, Ramona and her husband were visiting from South Carolina, we caught Rose dumping garbage onto our front yard as we sat outside. My mother then launched up from her chair, followed by my cousin Ramona, and walked over to Rose. I ran after them, feeling the need to protect them.

“You know, if you hate it here so much, why don’t you go back to your country? If anything, you’re the annoying foreigner who’s bothering everyone,” my mother said, seemingly ready and willing to give her another dose of her own medicine.

 “You disgusting fucking n***er! Go back to where you came from, you goddamned monkeys! This is a white’s only neighborhood!” Rose shrieked as she threw her lit cigarette at my mother.

In a split second, my cousin Ramona, who’s barely five feet tall, but a spunky Chamorrita, reached over the small, rickety wooden dividers on our lawn and grabbed Rose by the hair and began punching her in the back of her head.

“NO, MONA, STOP IT! SHE’S AN OLD WOMAN!” by mother cried as Ramona held the sobbing Rose in her left hand and pointed in her face with her right.

“You say one more word and I’ll kill you,” Ramona said to Rose while my mother now was pleading with Ramona to stop as my father, Ramona’s husband, and my sister raced toward us to calm Ramona’s temper.

 “Please, let her go, it’s not worth it,” my mother begged Ramona, who then pushed Rose back onto her own lawn.

“You want to fuck with Chamorros, you old Nazi bitch, that’s what you get! You might’ve gotten away with that bullshit when you were Hitler’s whore, but you’re sure as fuck not pushing us around!” Ramona laughed as Rose held her battered face, glaring back in defeat.

“Who’s Hitler?” I asked my sister, who then elbowed me and told me to just keep quiet.

While Rose fled to her house, my parents and Ramona’s husband consoled Ramona and advised her that Rose could call the police and instigate even more problems that none of us wanted. The police were, of course, called and two cars showed up with black and white male officers. When we explained what happened, the police surprisingly did nothing to Ramona and instead reaffirmed that Rose’s continued harassment of our family was going to cost her if it didn’t end today.

Rose’s repeating the N-word to the white officers didn’t help her case either to say the least. My father and Ramona’s husband then laughed at the insanity of Chamorro women and how they taught Rose a new lesson in world history in a few swift punches. A week or so went by and Ramona and her husband drove back to South Carolina and there wasn’t another peep out of Rose.

Weeks after the Chamorro-German brawl, one day after school when the bus dropped my sister and I off near our home, Rose’s granddaughter, Shannon, came up to us, pulled my braided ponytail and called me the N-word again. It’s crazy that even at that age, I had become so familiar with such a profane racial slur and it came out of these people’s mouths so easily, like it was part of their breathing.

The walk from the bus stop to the house was a hundred fifty meters maximum, but she did this just ten steps after the bus pulled away. My sister dropped her backpack and began to chase Shannon into the woods, yelling at her for being a coward. I ran back to our house as fast as I could and screamed for my mother who then ran with me out of the house and towards Janice. Shannon apparently went hiding in the woods and Janice, who seemed to have fallen over a tree stump, came walking out, dusting herself off from the dirt and pine needles. 

My mother asked what happened and was furious. We stood there for a few minutes as she dusted Janice off and then we began walking back toward our house. That’s when Shannon immediately sprung from the woods and ran into her grandmother’s house. Rose came out in no time, got in her car and drove as fast as she could past us.

“I’m getting really, very sick of that woman,” my mother grumbled.

All of a sudden, we heard a screech behind us, then an engine revving louder and louder. Rose was driving toward us as fast as she could. Just in time before we could be hit, my mother picked up my sister and I and threw us to the side and into the dirt. Rose, thankfully, missed. In a state of rage, my mother grabbed rocks and started hurling them at Rose’s car and screamed obscenities in Chamorro.  I'll always remember that moment.  No matter how many rocks my mother threw at the machine and the white supremacists operating it, it was never enough.

Rose peeled away with Shannon and disappeared for hours. Mary, and other concerned neighbors, came out to ask what had happened and were appalled by Rose’s persistence in menacing our family. The police were called, yet again, and another report was taken followed by another visit to Rose’s home when she returned. It wasn’t too long after the incident that my father accepted orders to relocate. This time, it was Alabama.

For the rest of this story, read "Quixote in Ramadi".