I attended college at Buena Vista University (“BV”) in a town of five thousand people in the northwest corner of Iowa. BV had about a thousand students, and I was the only black person for two of my four years there. Many students told me I was the first black person they had ever known. Sadly, twenty-five-plus years removed from BV, I am still the only black person many of them have ever known.
Since I was the first black person most of the people from BV ever knew, I was a topic of conversation at dinner tables when students went home and on phone calls. Nothing says your kid or sibling is in the big city — and Storm Lake was a big city compared to many of the small towns that dot Iowa and send their best and brightest to BV— than knowing a black kid. Since most of the students who attended BV were first-generation college students, going to school with a black kid and knowing him was a certain cache that others did not have. Plus, I had dreads in 1994–95.
When I was 20, on the cusp of turning 21, I met a girl who captured my imagination and caused my heart to flutter. She was beautiful; today, she is still beautiful after a divorce and three kids.
She was short like me, with freckles and brown hair. She had the cutest glasses but would wear her contacts when she went to the college bars or tried to impress someone.
Our paths crossed for the first time, with about three weeks left in the school year. I thought she was older than me, but my confidence kicked in once I confirmed she was not.
I summoned all the courage I could muster and employed the meager and inept skills I had accumulated to court this young woman. I was shocked that I was actually able to go on what would be considered dates with her. We would go to restaurants (diners, but this was Storm Lake, IA, and I paid no 50/50).
She would stop by my dorm room after she returned from drinking at the bars to check in on me (I did not go to the bars until my senior year). I was smitten, and if I may be so bold, I believe she had been charmed by me.
Later, I learned that she had a horrible boyfriend who was abusive. She hardly mentioned him to me. Instead, a young woman who wanted to get with me (I was oblivious) told me she had a boyfriend. I didn’t care; I was living for the moment.
The school year was ending. She might have mentioned me to her mother during her routine calls home. I remember grabbing some guys to help her move out of the dorms when I met her Mom for the first time. I can’t describe what she looked like then. She was small like her daughter.
However, what I remember was rigid body language. She was dour when all the students were excited about leaving college and enjoying a carefree summer.
Her face channeled displeasure.
I didn’t care because I was young and naive and had not fully understood the complexities of race.
The brown-eyed girl and I had made plans for when she returned back to BV in four days. She had to sing in the choir for some graduation-related event. For some reason — unknown to me now — I had to stay for the graduation.
I attended the event where she sang, and I got the best advice from the speaker: you are the books you read and the people you meet. I live my life by that quote.
After the event, I waited an eternity to see and embrace her. She had been gone for about four days. When you are young and in the throes of a crush, the time apart is unbearable.
Finally, she called me using a gorganteum cell phone. It was 1996.
We met up and hugged, perhaps for a beat too long. I escorted her to my 1994 teal green Ford Escort (one of the best cars at BV, and it was owned by a black man). I opened the door for her.
It was a sunny May afternoon. She was dressed in a conservative navy dress. No skin was able to escape from that impenetrable fortress of fabric. We drove to Dairy Queen to get some ice cream, then went to a park and sat on swings, talking and eating our ice cream cones.
As the sunlight started to wane, we both made excuses to extend our time together, but it would soon get dark, and she had a long journey back to her tiny Iowa town. We hugged again…this time for three beats too long. I should have kissed her, one of my few regrets, but I didn't. We parted ways, but I was sure she was the one for me.
A few weeks passed, and I told my parents I wanted to make a long-distance call on the landline and would cover the phone call cost. I called her, and her mother answered. She instinctively knew that her daughter did not have many friends, let alone male friends, so she asked who was calling. I told her who I was. This woman had deposited my name into her memory bank. Even when age had stolen many of her memories, I would wager my name and appearance withstood any erosion. I was an existential threat to her and her family, and she was focused on destroying this threat.
Once she had confirmed it was me, the black boy from college who was smitten with her daughter, an onslaught of hostility rushed me.
She began to excoriate me for calling her daughter. She informed me that her daughter had a boyfriend and that I shouldn’t be calling.
I lacked the perspective to know what I was dealing with then. Sitting at my desk, I now comprehend fear fueled her hostility toward me. She was afraid that her daughter was going to fall in love with a black man. That love might cause us to start dating. Then, the neighbors and other people in the community would learn that her daughter was dating a black man. What if they got married and had kids? Her grandkids would be black.
This was too much for her.
I attempted several more calls over the summer, and her mother always answered. She was disturbed by my audacity to court her daughter.
I was met with smoldering white rage.
She successfully completed her mission: her daughter and I never talked that summer.
Despite no contact, I was excited to see her when school started. However, this year, her boyfriend helped her move into the dorm along with her mom overseeing with a sardonic smile directed at me.
While denying me contact with her daughter, she strengthened the bonds between her daughter and her boyfriend.
When this brown-eyed girl and I finally caught up, she professed love for her hometown boyfriend that she had never mentioned the previous year.
She seemed happy…so I was happy for her.
I started dating other girls and going to college bars.
I remember the coup de grâce was when the woman who had infatuated me the previous year introduced me to her troll of a boyfriend. I don’t remember his name, but his lifeless eyes still haunt me. He was trash. I called it the first time I met him. So did her suitemates. They all hated this degenerate, but she was committed to him.
Her mom had won, and the brown-eyed girl and I drifted apart.
One day, towards the end of my senior year, she brought her mother to see me. Her mother was grinning ear to ear, soaking in my failure to court her daughter.
Her meddling had caused her daughter to become ever closer to a trash human being and destroyed any chance we had to have a relationship.
I stared at her, armed with the knowledge I was leaving Iowa and going to study law at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California.
The daughter even told her mother I had been accepted to law school in Los Angeles, California. She was genuinely excited for me and proud of what I had accomplished. Her mother dismissed my accomplishment by expressing how she hated Los Angeles. Yet, she snidely remarked that I would probably like it there.
That was the last time I spoke to the mother.
The brown-eyed girl and I would eventually reconnect about five years after I graduated from law school. We spoke on the phone. I asked her how her life had been. She was married but to a different man. She told me that the troll of a boyfriend had been abusive. She explained once I graduated from BV, he dumped her. She confessed that it was so bad that she left BV early while still earning her degree. She told me how depressed she had become because of the abuse she suffered.
Her suitemates and I knew this was inevitable. The only thing that kept them together was her mother’s need for her not to fall in love with a Black man.
She allowed her daughter to be abused and witnessed the wake of destruction this piece of garbage left to protect her from loving me.
That is the price some are willing to pay for whiteness: the suffering and torment of their own loved ones to protect their bloodline.
The brown-eyed girl is still sweet. We have made two plans to see each other in the past seven years. I have canceled both times at the last minute: once in Iowa and then in Arizona.
I don’t know why I canceled both times. This is worthy of contemplation and exploration. I could have seen her if I had wanted to see her, but I refused.
I am still fond of this woman, but I suspect she is a Trump supporter. Her eldest son has some pictures of himself wearing the red MAGA hat.
Then, her mother died.
I watched the funeral. The large cavernous church was sparsely populated. Only a handful of people were not family. The preacher was the only speaker and no one eulogized her. It was a sad affair.
The problem with bigotry is it abrades the foundation on which all community is built. Those who harbor and feast on a false sense of superiority are often considered insufferable by even those who share the same worldview.
My friend’s racist mom died, and the world is a better place with one less bigot in it. Try to live your life so that when you die, people don’t celebrate your passing.