I was lost in thought the other day while watering a parched patch of St. Augustine, wondering how a Catholic saint born in Africa ever managed to get a variety of grass named after himself, when my racist neighbor ambled by with her dog. Mind you, at that juncture I hadn’t a clue she was a racist. All I knew about her was that she was retired and owned an incontinent dog, judging from how frequently she walked it. I have neighbors with whom I regularly drink beer and discuss the issues of the day, and I have neighbors to whom I merely wave when our paths cross in the alley as I’m hauling out the trash. She belonged to the latter group.
On this day, my neighbor decided we should get better acquainted. “Hi, there!” she called out cheerfully. “Watering the grass?”
“Just doing my part to empty Lake Lewisville!” I said.
She was nonplussed. Either irony wasn’t her thing or she didn’t know whence our water comes. Our relationship was off to a rocky start.
Somehow, though, we recovered and got the confabulation back on track. She asked about my kiddos. Happy and healthy, I reported. And then we got to talking about a new housing development on the outskirts of the neighborhood.
“You know why they built that huge wall around it,” she said.
“No, why?” I said.
“Because of the apartments across the street. They’re filled with blacks.”
“Oh,” I said.
“The blacks reduce property values,” she added.
I didn’t know how to respond. The blacks reduce property values? Like how the Jews control the media?
Or did she just mean that the presence of black people, their proximity to your property, lowers its value? Because if that’s the case, it’s not fair. Ron Kirk wouldn’t even need to request a formal hearing with an appraisal board to protest his valuation. He could just go down for one of those informal meetings and say, “Dude, look at these pictures. This one’s of my roof, which needs to be replaced. I figure that’s $10,000. And this one’s of my wife, who is black. She lives in my house.” Bingo, his M Streets pad drops a hundred grand.
These questions, of course, didn’t occur to me at the time. I couldn’t come up with a snappy retort because I was dumbstruck that this woman thought it appropriate to share her economic theory with me while I was watering my grass. Listen, even if you are a racist, you can’t be ignorant of the social contract between neighbors. You avoid any and all conversational topics that could possibly cause friction. That’s how we coexist with each other.
No: “Hey, neighbor, how about that stem cell research?”
Yes: “Hot enough for you?”
No: “Would you mind grabbing our mail for us this week while we’re down in Laredo, volunteering with the Minutemen on Operation Sovereignty?”
Yes: “I like butterflies!”
That day, when my racist neighbor told me that black people lower property values, I stood there with my hose in my hand, and—because I was so shocked and also because I guess I didn’t have the stomach for an Ugly Situation—I said, “Right.”
I said it ironically, like “riiight.” But as I noted earlier, I don’t think she appreciates irony. As far as she is probably concerned, I agreed with her. I’m a fellow traveler.
I’ve been anguishing over this ever since. It troubles me that a neighbor thinks I’m a racist. Although that’s silly, because she herself is a racist, so why should I care what she thinks of me? More than worry about her feelings toward me, I wish I had more guts and a quicker wit. I wish I’d confronted her. Although, again, that would have been pointless, because I wasn’t going to change her mind. I would only have made an enemy. But bad people should be our enemies, shouldn’t they?
Ugh.
For now, I’m just keeping indoors. I fear I’ll run into the woman and lack the courage to turn down her invitation to a cross burning. When the leaves finally fall and need raking, or when some other yard work requires attention, I plan to call a Mexican.
