Kim Hunter - The Official Report on Human Activity

There is a diary entry about Belle Isle, a picnic, a family reunion. I could not tell from the words how old she was, but not very. But she was swinging on a playground close to twilight. Did she know how dark it was getting? Who knows? But, on her way back to everyone else, she lost her way or ran into a man she thought she knew or both. He said her family was looking for her. She thought he was taking her back to them. But once there was no one else around, he slowed down, began walking too close, and was on her with a suddenness that snatched her breath away. He asked her strange questions like why had she walked with him in the dark? The question and the pain of the rocks at her back finally made her cry out, though he’d threatened to kill her if she did. A group of men, not long off work, still in their security guard uniforms, playing cards by headlights on the other side of some bushes came around and through the bushes. He didn’t run. They had to pull him off of her and fought over whether or not to beat him bloody.

The diaries reminded me of my father. I don’t think he ever spoke a complete sentence. The words, commas, and periods were usually in the right places. But there was always a silent part that needed to be filled in. It was not the gaps between the times that he spoke or the days between diary entries. It was the words he spoke and the entries themselves that hold the spaces. Before they were married, my mother’s job was to help him. She was not there so much to fill in the spaces but to help him realize they were there, where he’d left something out and had continued on as if everything was in place. My father never really got over the death of his brother or the deaths of his friends in the factory during a shooting incident. It was my mother that showed him how empty space connected those things and the space behind the sadness that never seemed to leave after my uncle died. The gaps in the union lady’s diary have that sadness. She is raped. Then she spends a lot of time in church. Then she gets a job in the factory and discovers beer and other drugs that become her new church. Finally, she locks herself away for days. Food and water are placed in the room when she’s asleep. Only the tiny bathroom window remains unsealed.

While I was away, locked in the room, shaking like an old car on a bad road and throwing up everything I ever ate, they fired me. At first, I begged for my job. I agreed to meet one of the foremen at a bar to talk it over. Big mistake, not only did I almost accept his offer for a drink, but, even after I refused, he tried to snuggle up close to me in the booth. I stared dead into his face, pulled out the stiletto my daddy gave me and snapped the blade out. Then I used the knife to cut the meat on my plate. The foreman slid away and called for the check.

I went to the union hall today, like Justine told me to do a while ago. I met with this old Polish guy whose last name I couldn’t pronounce if they put a gun to my head. He kept calling me honey, but he calls everybody honey or sister. Anyway, he had me fill out a bunch of papers while he was on the phone. Every call started with, “I got this colored girl over here they fired and I need to get her back.”

I almost end up near 12th and Clairmount the other night, about two blocks from where everything jumped off. The news is driving me crazy. Not even the one black reporter (working serious overtime) knows anything about the places he’s talking about. Passing judgment and dodging bullets and that’s the ones who got the short straw and ended up on the street. Let’s not even talk about the ones at their desks. But I can’t stop watching or listening to it because I have to know what’s happening besides folks calling to tell me what’s going on. I thought this mess would be over after a couple of days. Damn fools burning their own damn places. Where the hell we gonna shop? My father called and said he was going to come get me but called back about fifteen minutes later and said he kept getting stopped by the police and turned back to the house. Just as well. I’m as safe here as I am there. Though I would love to sit down and let them fix me something. Some honey-baked chicken with some macaroni and cheese and cornbread from the pan and I wouldn’t care about nothing for a minute.

Stan, the old Polish guy, got put in a bit of a trick bag today. His white friends were teasing him about me in front of his wife, man old enough to be my damn granddaddy. But he speaks up for folks on the floor and in the union hall and they can’t stand it, especially since the riot. He’s pushing for Bernard and Calvin who should have been in skilled trades long-ass time ago and everybody knows it, just don’t want to let black men move up, even when they do right. People have started saying shit right out in the open, acting like every black person is a sniper and these supposed to be our union brothers.

Another bad day, near miss at the plant handing out literature. I had to lay into one of those crackers trying to talk shit like it was the good old days in the south. I thought I was going to have to slap him but his friend, or somebody I thought was his friend, jumped between us. Young and looked like Paul Newman but skinny as hell. He kept staring at me and trying to smile but seemed like he was afraid. Then I recognized him.

Stan finally gave it up today. His oldest called me to the hospital. The sun was out for the first time in days and when I opened the door to the hospital room it blinded me for a second. Everybody was there, even the new foreman. I was so glad all the tubes and wires and machines were gone, even if he didn’t look like himself. His grandson and wife couldn’t stop crying and that was really sad.

I drifted back to the time me and him played cards in a vacant lot over on the east side. He went with me to talk with some of the hospital security guards I knew from the attack on Belle Isle, trying to get them to start a real union. Stan must have been the only white man in miles that wasn’t a store owner.

I touched his hand before I walked out of the room. I would have give my arm to hear him call me honey.

I almost don’t believe it, but they voted me into Stan’s slot today. And guess who it was working with Justine to get the Mexicans and the Arabs to vote with the black folks? I may have misjudged the guy, even after the lunchroom incident. I still can’t feature me and a white guy going out together, especially this white guy. I don’t like folks staring. He was surprised to find out I’m in recovery. I can tell he’s new to the meetings because a veteran would know I show all the classic signs, flaring and working too much. It’s hard to let go.

I had to get on Justine today about all her teasing about being with a white guy. I told her she just wanted to make an Oreo. It was a joke and she laughed but it was a hard, sharp laugh and then she said I was sick. I laughed that off but it hurt me. It hurt me deep. I drove over there after work and we talked about stuff that hadn’t come up for years. I finally told her everything was really good but that he still seems young. Justine just smiled and asked, since when is that a problem?

Everything’s changed now, more real. It happened. That’s all I know. It was one day but it was more than a day. Everything really turned when we kissed. Nothing meant anything anymore. I know that sounds bad. The problem is I want to write about this thing but I can’t, not really.