Fire

Years ago, while I was still in college, I was dating a guy who was from PA. We went to his family's house for Thanksgiving, and in the middle of the night I heard a sound that made me think someone was getting a beating. I imagined a domestic violence situation in my mind and asked him to go check it out.

The building across the street was on fire. It was a cold November in Pennsylvania, and a woman in nothing but a button-up shirt and panties was walking up and down the street shouting while her five small children sat across the street in a running car trying to keep warm. I said, "We've got to get these babies inside." I walked over and told the lady what we were doing, and we ushered the kids into the house. I ran upstairs to find my pajama pants and slippers and rushed back out to give them to her.

We brought the kids in and gave them a little bite to eat, something to drink, and tried to distract them with drawing and stories. After the firefighters left and the Salvation Army representative came to find out the clothing and shoe sizes of the mother and children, they all left the house.

The niece of my then-boyfriend said to me after they left, "Granny's never had black people in her house before." It struck me that I might have overstepped my bounds. I might have made them uncomfortable by bringing the kids in the house. It had never dawned on me that these people might be racist. They lived in Pennsylvania, not Alabama. Later, the guy I was dating said to me, "You don't see a difference, do you? I mean, you really cared about those kids and it didn't matter to you at all that they were black."

Nope. It didn't matter. And nope, I don't see a difference.