"Georgia"

"What were you thinking?  Georgia confronted Dee-Dee in the car on the drive home from the Book Woman Club meeting.  "I was the only "non-person-of-color" in the room!"  Georgia made quote marks in the air with her index and middle fingers of both hands.  "Did you see that young woman, Kadi-jah was it, glaring at me and rolling her eyes?  I felt like I was wearing a KKK robe, the way she kept staring at me!"  Dee-Dee laughed.  "Oh, come on Georgia!  It wasn't that bad!"  "Oh - it wasn't that bad!"  Georgia imitated  Dee-Dee's voice.  "I fit in like a vegetarian at a slaughter house!"  "Embrace the experience, girl!  It will be better next time!"  Dee-Dee laughed.  "Embrace the experience?, Georgia screeched.  "Next time?  I'm not going to any more of those meetings!  I know when I'm not wanted!"

Dee-Dee's face became serious, a frown flashing on and off of her face as car headlights illuminated the change in her mood.  "First time in the minority, huh?  And you want to run!  Wish it was so easy for me!  Just run out of this color every time I am in an uncomfortable situation!  Well, life doesn't work like that for us, Georgia...for people of African decent in this country.  Uncomfortable situations make up our lives - everyday!  Welcome to my world!"  "I know that Dee-Dee...I'm not trying to run.  It's just that no one wanted me there.  I don't want to be one of those white people invading African-American private situations like I own the world.  I hear African-Americans talking about how we whites feel like everything belongs to us."  "I invited you, Georgia.  You are my friend, and I asked you to come with me."  "Dee-Dee, I don't want to be some part of a crusade that you have going on."  Dee-Dee 's head snapped around to look at Georgia.  "A part of a crusade?  You are not part of some crusade Georgia!"  Dee-Dee put her eyes back on the road, and parked in front of the Starbucks in armory square.   "Come on, admit it Dee-Dee.  Your inviting me to the Book Woman Club was a deliberate act to mess with those women!  You knew how they would react!" "Well, maybe I did, but so what!  You had a right to be there!  Maybe they need to integrate their exclusive Black Club.  Maybe you need to step out of your lily-white comfort zone for once in your safe life!" 

Georgia was silent as she and Dee-Dee got out of the car and walked into Starbucks.  The silence continued and grew as they each got their orders and went to the counter to adjust hot cups of coffee with sugar and cream.  They found a table next to the door.  Georgia stared at her pale white hands as they warmed themselves on the coffee cup.  Dee-Dee didn't say anything as she took a sip of her coffee and silently looked at the top of the table.

Georgia had never, ever been the only white person at any event in all of her life.  Dee-Dee's admonishment, "Maybe you need to step out of your lily white comfort zone!" echoed through her head.  She had never felt so uncomfortable in her skin before.  She and Dee-Dee had been friends since high school.  Dee-Dee had been one of just a few black students.  At dances, bowling, marching band, girl scouts, church - everywhere they had hung-out together, Dee-Dee had been the only black person. The only African-American.  Georgia had never even thought about how it must have felt for Dee-Dee all of those years in school.  They had gone their separate ways in College and found each other again when both of them returned to Syracuse in their adulthood.  Their friendship had picked up where it left off, like no time had past.  But everything seemed like it was always about color now.  Dee-Dee would suck her teeth, complain about things that had happened to her at work or at the supermarket, saying it was because she was black.  Georgia thought about how Dee-Dee said white people thought she was white when they talked to her on the phone.  She was the Director of Education for the local Historical Association and when she would go to do history talks in rural towns and villages, Dee-Dee would tell Georgia how rooms would go silent when she walked in the door.  She would be the only black person in the room and mouths would drop to the floor.  One woman even said out-loud, apparently before she had time to think, "Oh, I thought you were white!"  Or Dee-Dee would tell Georgia how she would ask to see some jewelry in a case at a store in Carousel Mall and the sales woman would say, "Oh, that's very expensive!"  Like Dee-Dee couldn't afford it because of her brown skin!  Georgia thought about the Book Woman Club Meeting.  She took a sip of coffee, now growing cold in the silence of she and Dee-Dee's together-separateness at the Starbucks table.  "Yes", Georgia thought, "She had gotten quite an eye opening welcome to Dee-Dee's world!"