she told me that she went to high school near the beach. her momma sent her there instead of to a closer school there in the hood
i was taking her from the airport to her little home on 60th street in south la
i love driving people so much it’s insane.
when she got in, she had her granddaughter on the speakerphone explaining how to do uber.
ok, im in baby, now what button do i push?
you don’t push anything. you just sit back and talk to the driver. we can see him taking you home. don’t worry, she said.
how can they see you? the woman asked me.
i wanted to make a slightly off-color joke about how big brother can see us all, even when we’re taking a dump, but i kept it to myself.
your daughter can see our dot on her phone
she’s my grandbaby, she said. i dont understand this technology these days. why are we a dot on her phone?
we might be a little car, im not sure. anyway, if i drive you to hollywood, they’ll see us, and they can call the police.
now why would anyone want to kidnap an old lady like me? she laughed.
are you kidding? i asked, i bet you can coooooooook.
you aint lyin boy. i put my foot in it.
tell your granddaughter we’re going to take a detour. then, lets get some, you buy we fry catfish at the corner.
she laughed. i laughed. granddaughter laughed, still on speakerphone.
he black, granny? the voice squawked from her phone.
seems so. light-skinned boy, she said.
boy? i laughed. im 57!
say what? black don’t crack, she said to herself.
black folk know. very few others do. which is nice too.
black man in a benz? does it look stolen? her granddaughter asked.
now how am i supposed to know what a stolen car look like? the woman, asked, chuckling. i never got her name because the ride was under her granddaughter’s name, anne.
yes, this is stolen. ’ll return it after i drop your grandma off, But Only If She Makes Me Some Hushpuppies with that Catfish!
oh you got a fool driving you, gran, ok bye! and she hung up, satisfied everyone was safe.
plus the dot was going the right way.
granny then told me about going to school by the airport in the 1970s:
sock hops, football games, always eating lunch outside.
sock hops?
i was so excited when i became a senior because i could sit on the senior lawn and eat, she recalled — beaming like she had just been blessed with this honor yesterday.
dont let them catch you sitting there if you weren’t a senior, she cackled.
i asked if everyone knew what year everyone was.
oh yes. don’t let ‘em catch you on that lawn, ya hear?
driving from near her high school, to the house where she grew up in the shadow of the 110 freeway, would take us exactly 39 minutes, so i asked her how long it took to take the bus to school every day.
multiple busses, she clarified. i took three busses. one to inglewood – market street, one to westchester and one to the school. it took about two hours each way, she said, but she loved that school.
what was your mascot? i asked her and she searched her memory banks.
the comets!
with good conversations like this one, i turn the stereo down to barely audible. low enough so there isn’t silence, but high enough so they dont have to yell if they want to say something.
kc and the sunshine band were playing when i caught her looking out the window as we zipped past dulan’s soul food on crenshaw
we would play crenshaw all the time. back then they were good. they hated us.
why?
because we were a white school. i was one of the few colored girls. they would wait for all us black kids to get off the bus at market to walk across the street to catch the next bus. they wanted to fight. i looked away. but i heard. i heard them call us all the most disgusting names just because we wanted to go to that school.
once, we were beating them badly in basketball. my friend saw people were whispering. the whispering got to us.
get on the bus, charlene
before the fourth quarter started, we were on a school bus
out of there.