SWITCHBACKS // Taking the Car Out of Park: After lifelong silence, a conversation about race brings joy and love
by Clarissa F. Griebel
illustrations by Christopher Spencer
EXCERPT //
“We can’t remember who suggested playing in the car. My cousin Fayelle, 7, and I, 4, were probably outside, saw my parents’ car, which happened to be unlocked, sitting in the driveway, and looked at each other knowingly, eyes wide and twinkling, both thinking ‘car!’
This is my first memory of Fayelle: sitting in my dad’s car circa 1984, a red, four-door sedan with a white leather interior. Her hands were on the wheel (I think) and I was in the passenger seat (maybe). Honestly, it could have been reversed. But, regardless, we locked the doors, put on our seatbelts, and one or both of us took the car out of park, at which point it started rolling down the hill, heading for a shed and/or a rhododendron (peony?) bush behind my parents’ house in Parker’s Ford.
As the car headed slowly toward its destiny—scratched in the bushes or crumpled into the side of said shed—Faye scrambled to unbuckle her seatbelt, opened up the driver’s-side door, and lept to safety, just as my father, and Faye’s mother, Aunt Coni, sprinted across the lawn of our 18th-century stone farmhouse and someone, someone!, put that car in park.
I still feel the relief of someone putting that car back in park.
That’s the type of fun we had. Glorious. Heartfelt. Slightly risky. Joyful. We exchanged Dean Koontz books, played hard in her tree house, went on road trips, and wrote letters and postcards back and forth through elementary school and on into college.
There was one thing we never did, however, and that was talk about race.
We never spoke about race, racism, prejudice. Specifically, I never asked Faye what it was like growing up in Georgia as a person of color. And I don’t think she ever mentioned it. Faye is a Black, White, and Narragansett woman. I am White. Both of us were what Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum calls ‘color-silent.’”
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //