The Shell

I found a vintage shell in the closet of the summer house my family got to share with our Mom’s side of the family every July. I should say that by “shell” I mean sleeveless blouse. It had carved mother-of-pearl buttons, and was a delicate seafoam blue-green, and it had embroidery. The embroidery showed some people somewhere tropical- there were two people, with one palm tree each, and they were tilling the land with hand-held tools. The people were brown. I thought the shirt was charming. I genuinely thought that the people represented were working their own land, and that the thing was from a different time and everyone would see that. I took it home when the vacation was over. 

When I first wore it it was a sweltering day and no one mentioned my brown farmers, so I dismissed the little nagging voice that had been telling me that the garment was perhaps not good for wearing. The next time I wore it I got checked, by a coworker. We had caught the same train together at the end of our shifts. “Where did you get that shirt?” she asked me. “Technically it’s called a shell,” I said, because I can be a real wanker. “I know that, but no one calls them shells except rich white lady grandmamas,” she replied. I thought of my own rich lady white grandmama and it was probably in that moment that the scales started, haltingly, to fall from my eyes: that woman was as privileged as they come, and over the years had collected some truly reprehensible views of certain people. I realized that I had just thought the phrase “certain people”, which made me a little nauseous. How privileged was my grandmother? She was so privileged, she wore sweater sets the way most people wear t-shirts. She was so privileged that my grandfather apologized for buying her an estate sapphire and diamond ring for their anniversary because they were young and didn’t have enough money for new yet. She was so privileged that during the Depression she went with a friend to Europe on the Grand Tour, and when I asked her what it was like she complained about the public toilets. But I wasn’t aware of all those associations going on in my own white lady head yet. My friend pushed me. “Isn’t it a little racist?” she said.  I looked down at my own chest, to where my farmers were working away, and thought: Nah! 

So I did what any defensive white person does in such situations: I accused my co-worker of being the racist. “They’re farmers! They own this land, you’re the one who’s seeing it that way! You racist!” I added, for emphasis. My friend seemed a little chagrined, and though she was completely in the right I felt vindicated. Check out my farmers who own the land that they are currently farming on this shirt! This shell is not racist at all! And yeah, I’m going to keep calling it a shell even if that’s pretentious! I’m not pretentious you’re pretentious!

The next time I wore the shirt I caught the train home from work alone. I sat and immediately started day-dreaming. My commute was a long one and on that trip it took at least a half-hour before I noticed that there was a young woman, younger than me by a half generation at least, who was sitting with her arms crossed, staring at me. She just stared, and it was a little hostile I thought. I looked at her and did this: (MAKES EYES WIDE, LITTLE SHRUG, SMALL MEALY CLOSED-MOUTH SMILE.) She didn’t flinch or change her expression one iota. She did look down at my chest, and since I’d already done this: (SAME THING,) I felt I couldn’t just start daydreaming again, I had to engage her. I touched the embroidery that some lily-white racist hands had so lovingly stitched decades before, and I said the words: “They’re farmers.” I said them. I was on some of the thinnest ice, morally speaking, that I had been on since I’d been caught shoplifting a bikini at the mall when I was twelve, but I said those words. The top layer of my brain kept telling me that since I thought they were farmers- and I genuinely had, it was a first thought when I saw the thing hanging by it’s lonesome in my family’s summer home closet- then any tiny stain of racism was washed away. I was confident in my own white lady thought powers, the simplest of these being that if I thought something then it was true.  

This woman wasn’t convinced. She re-settled herself, tucking her arms together even harder and making her face stony, and I squirmed. If I can be easy on myself for anything in this entire scenario it’s that I didn’t think it was her fault for making me squirm. The commute continued like that and my magical thought powers tried to help me, like a sinking freighter ship pulling a swimming passenger down with it, by throwing up different scenarios, ways this interaction might be less icky. I imagined us talking and me explaining that I’d found it at the family summer home at Seaside Park New Jersey, ever heard of it? Oh you have? The cinnamon buns at Park Bakery are the best on the whole Eastern Seaboard, don’t you agree? Or another scene: Yes, I’m sorry if this offends you but it’s really not a racist shirt- I think that perhaps the bias here is in your own eyes, no offence. Ah, now you see what I mean! Or another: Fine! Even though this shell isn’t racist because I am definitely not racist, I will tear it from my body and throw it in the garbage at my stop, will that satisfy you? You want me to take this shell, it’s called a shell god damn it, and just throw it out, which will deprive me of the joy of wearing old stuff? Fine! (In this last one I even managed to picture myself tearing the thing off and glaring at her, a bit of prime time soap opera on the Red Line at 5:30 PM.)

But what happened was that I sat there squirming, she sat there glaring, and the stops went by very slowly. I kept hoping that we’d come to hers and she’d have to get off and I could return to my pre-racist-shirt daydreams, but she stayed on the train because she lived further north than I did, or just to continue staying under my skin. I tried to meet her eyes once or twice, and each time hers were the same. They were hard, impenetrable, and they were tired. The tiredness was layered over her whole face, not just her eyes; still, she didn’t stop. Her tiredness reminded me of my own: I was dealing with my own fatigue from lack of quality sleep that comes from being in constant pain, and also undiagnosed other stuff. And since her tiredness looked so much like mine felt- the tension in the brows are all about how we hold our heads when we’re just starting to get the inevitable fatigue headache, the lines at the mouth are all about how, when you’re exhausted, everything seems humorless- the sinking ship of white lady thought powers went all the way underwater. I wondered how many things she saw that were reflections of the US’s institutional bigotry per month or per week or per day. I wondered if she talked about those examples when she got home to her friends and family, sitting around a table with food or sitting on the couch in front of the TV. I wondered how much eye-rolling and grim storytelling she had to repeat, had to endure, all the time. I didn’t wonder about her safety...yeah, it was too soon for me to start grappling with the facts of this woman’s real life and how for as much as I got catcalled and harassed she was catcalled and harassed twice as much, just for starters. 

In my memory now I did the only honorable thing I could have done, which was take the shirt off, slowly and with as little attention as possible so that this woman might know that I was removing it for her peace, not for any after-work street theatre fanfare. I can see her face softening as I unbutton it, take it and fold it and put it in my bag, feeling too bare in my camisole even though it was very hot and no one cared, not even the catcallers. I can see a tiny grin form on her mouth and a sense of satisfaction come over her almost bodily, which makes me relax. I can see myself relaxing, leaning back on my shaped plastic Red Line seat, having achieved some semblance of grace. It’s a false memory. My white lady thought powers are like the Flying Dutchman now, sending up these shimmering visions for me to chase, as if there’s some hope of pulling that vessel out of the deep by willpower alone: You’re not racist, it says. You were never racist. 

But I am, and I always was. There are shades of it. I never spray painted racial insults on anyone’s home or community center, I never raised any boys to spit in the gutter when they see a black person, but I looked away when those stories came up on my phone or before that, on the news. Always, those stories on the news that described spitting and insults were leading up to some bloodletting; I looked away. I always was. 

To the woman on the train with the righteous eyes and the formidable emotional strength: thank you. You made me feel really uncomfortable on the train once.