When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories

Traveling with White People

© Eleanor M. Hamilton 241 Traveling with White People Colleen J. McElroy One evening—I must have been about five or six—I went with my grandfather for an early evening stroll before night and total darkness. We were giving the dog some exercise—and myself, if I could keep up. I skipped along to match my grandfather, his long legs taking giant steps. It must have been spring, because I don’t remember a coat or galoshes weighing me down. It was warm—that much I can recall. And the dog trotted in front of us, stopping now and then to sniff a tree or a bush, a collie like Lassie, with a long, sharp nose and blond coat. We called him Rex. The air was thick with the smell of fresh-cut grass, especially when we passed the all-white cemetery. “None of our folks in there,” my grandmother would say. When we passed the cemetery, I could smell the wet grass, watered twice a day in hot weather. So it must have been spring, what with the smell of wet grass, and the dog rustling the privet hedges bordering yards with more grass and flowers. And sometimes I could see parts of 242 C o l l e e n J . M c E l r o y the backyards where grape arbors would bloom later in the summer, when the bees gathered. But the bees weren’t there yet, not in the spring, nor the fireflies. “C’mon, let’s go chase the fireflies. Ten feet around my base is it,” we’d call in a game of hide and seek. But that evening, I was walking with my grandfather, walking the dog for exercise. And we were way outside of the safe zone. “Don’t you let me catch you on the other side of Natural Bridge Road,” my grandmother would warn. I walked with my grandfather across the wide avenue, into the forbidden zone, the deliciously dangerous streets that would mean punishment if I went there alone. Up close, they seemed so ordinary, no different from the streets where I lived. The same brick houses set back in postage-stamp yards. The same lampposts that would let off dirty yellow light once full night filled up the sky. Here and there, a porch swing. Here and there, a backyard with a clothes line still holding the day’s wash. Curtains hugged windows, porch lights were on, everything was regular—everything but Grandpa holding onto Rex’s leash like he was scared Rex would run away, Rex, who wouldn’t leave the yard unless you begged him. Except when my grandfather came home—then Rex was ready to go, and so was I. If Grandpa hadn’t been holding my hand, I would have been running alongside the dog. Two blocks, three blocks, four, and we heard a voice. “Hey mister.” A white boy sat on a porch. I can’t remember if he was doing anything or if he was just sitting there, that evening in spring before the weather was warm enough for fireflies. It doesn’t matter now whether he was doing anything or just sitting there, but he called out to us, that white boy sitting on a porch. And my grandfather stopped and turned to the boy. “Hey mister,” the boy asked, his voice trailing across that little patch of grass he called lawn. “Is that a white dog or a nigger dog?” And my grandfather pulled me away, on to the next block of houses with windows that shut out the light. My grandfather walked straight and tall like he knew where we were going, like he had some kind of special map to the road laid out before us. And Rex, sticking his nose into every hedgerow, turned every now and then to make sure we were T r av e l i n g w i t h W h i t e P e o p l e 243 still with him. And my grandfather finally said, “What kind of folks teach their children to ask a question like that?” n Traveling with white folks began for me the day I was born into a colorstruck world, where little children laughed when they chanted, “If you black, get back. If you brown, stick around. If you white, you alright.” In my neighborhood, beauty was a...