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Like many of us, I went into a state of depression for about two weeks following the re-election of George W. Bush. I wrote this during that period. Before I read it, I need to touch on the heritage of racism and sexism that it addresses. Currently, I’m a Realtor, though I prefer to think of myself as a Real Estate novelist – you probably remember that line in the old Billy Joel song, “Piano Player.” Coming out of the Civil Rights legislation in the ‘60s were Fair Housing laws. Basically, as a Realtor I am strictly forbidden to steer my clients to certain neighborhoods based on race, sex or national origin. This no-no is called “steering.” In the last two months I have had a diversity of clients – Korean-American, Latino/Latina, African-American, and white-American. At one point while showing them houses, the Korean-American man told me that quality schools were of the utmost importance. He didn’t want a neighborhood with too many Hispanics. On another day, my Latino customer made an off-color joke about blacks while R&B music played on his car radio. My black customer said he preferred not to live in a Mexican neighborhood because in L.A., the blacks and Mexicans don’t get along well. And when whites called on my attractively priced listing in the largely Hispanic, worn part of Phoenix called Maryvale, they virtually never show any further interest in the property, even though the house is respectable and the cul-de-sac quiet and safe. When expressed to me, these things hit like a hammer striking an anvil. Our attitudes forge who we are as a people. Whether blue state, red state, black, white, yellow or brown, are we really copping to our own steering, to our own Rainbow of prejudices? This short autobiographal piece is called:
Nullify
I.
My Swedish grandmother, Amanda, set out the meatballs and lefse. “It’s none of your business who I voted for, Adolf,” she told my Norwegian grandfather when she turned back toward the kitchen. My mother was young then, at least ten years younger than her teen siblings. They waited around the table for their father to say prayer before starting to eat. “I know who you voted for,” he said. “Your brothers are filling your head again, aren’t they?” A pile of ungraded school papers tilted at the edge of the long kitchen counter waiting until after dinner when she’d washed, dried and put away all the dishes. Adolf’s grocery store apron hung from a wooden hook by the back door. These were the Great Depression years before Pearl Harbor when he would land a good paying job with a Puget Sound defense contractor. Amanda sat down in the chair nearest the kitchen. Onto my mother’s plate beside her, she ladled chunks of steaming rutabagas – Swedish turnips she called them. She tried to ignore her husband. “You wasted your vote on Norman Thomas, didn’t you?” The children looked at him, still waiting for the prayer. “I’ll vote for whoever I want and I don’t have to tell you who it is.” She set the bowl down with a thud. “No Socialist will ever be President.”
II.
Archibald, my grandfather the railroad engineer, sat in the overstuffed armchair like the patriarch he was, his cigar snuffed cold in the ashtray on the thick myrtlewood coffee table that he’d personally cut, planed and sanded until smooth. He’d lacquered the slab and mounted it on stout iron legs where eagle talons gripped glass orbs that touched the floor with solid footing. My aunt was braver than my mom, but both were daughters-in-law here. My aunt argued round and round with Grandpa about Civil Rights and the niggers and where the world was heading. Cigar smell permeated those rows and rows of historical, literary, philosophical and practical books that I perused in the hallways and walls of the big old house, books that Grandpa had mostly read. “There’s a difference between prejudice and bigotry,” I could hear my Grandpa saying in the living room. “It’s one thing to be against something and another to be hateful.”
III.
Mom divorced that side of the family and moved to Seattle where teachers made $8,000 a year, twice the salary as in Idaho. She stood in the drizzle with a picket sign along with her new friend Bonnie and her new lover Jay who was more than ten years her younger. They protested the Pay N’ Save stores because the corporation would not hire blacks. I had protested a couple months earlier about Jay. He was my eighth grade social studies teacher when we first moved there and I didn’t like his class. I also didn’t like that my mom taught in the same junior high where I went because some of the other eighth-graders harassed me about it. I transferred out of his class before he started dating my mom. I never liked him. The following year I was elected president of my junior high, even though I ran unopposed.
IV.
Metallic colors fought wildly for space on the artwork my father-in-law created. He sold them at Northwest arts and craft shows along with my mother-in-law’s watercolor block prints and the intricate pen and ink lithographs that my wife and her brother had been rendering since they were kids. A true artist family. Our son was toddling then and, after the holiday feast, I was asked to describe the senior honor’s thesis I was completing for my degree. I talked about my model for political power as it applied to the still active system of apartheid in South Africa. “There were no blacks on Cape Hope when the Dutch landed there. The Zulus weren’t that far south then,” he said, growing agitated the more I tried to explain my pragmatic theory about how, with only twenty percent of the population being white, it was only a matter of time before the blacks gained power. “Besides, apartheid’s morally wrong,” I said. No one in my wife’s family argued with their father, the patriarch. His face grew crimson below his dignified white hair, and he walked away from the table, bellowing. My father-in-law never talked like a racist and I’d heard his humorous story about when he was a carrot top white boy tap dancing next to the colored kids at the train depot in his West Virginia resort town. None of the tourists would tip him, even though he told us he was a pretty good dancer. “I argue politics with my own dad and he doesn’t take it personally,” I whispered to my wife sitting next to me at the table. She shrugged and tried to hush me. “I can see why you’re all good artists,” I continued quietly to her. “That’s the only expression he’ll allow.”
V.
On election day, 1980, we were on the road and moving, the old Volkswagen bus loaded down with our few possessions. Our bohemian summer in California was chilling into the responsibilities of a Pacific Northwest winter and my new newspaper job. Jake, age two-and-a-half, sat on the bench between us as we pulled off to overlook the Pacific. It didn’t matter that we were nowhere near the polling place. She was voting for Ronald Reagan and I for Jimmy Carter, so our non-votes cancelled out. Her man won.
VI.
My father looked out of place in the hot tub, and I shouldn’t have brought up the election, but I was still angry about George W. Bush winning Florida in 2000. Dad’s verbal skills were slowing and his frustration level surfaced more than ever, but at 71, we had no way of knowing that Alzheimer’s was just beginning to steal him. “That’s bullshit,” he yelled when I insisted that Gore had won the popular vote. Hot tubs are supposed to be relaxing, but our waters had always churned when it came to politics. Yet I reminded him of a trip to Montana when I was twelve – that last family vacation before the divorce. He had argued stridently with his cousin whose family owned the golden-grassed hill above Missoula, the steep one with the large white “M” that everyone could see. “You were so Democrat in the ‘60s, how’d you get so right wing?” I asked. He was done with the hot tub and, after we got out and toweled dry, I went to the computer and pulled up the vote tally to show him.
VII.
Jake’s been calling me at least once a week since he’s become “Mr. Mom.” My grandson chortles on the phone. The baby looks most like my ex-wife. My son has two quarters remaining to get his degree, but it’s been like that for the last three years. Age 26, he slowpokes with keen, but meandering interests, and lives boho. His wife has a decent job, though she’d prefer not to be the breadwinner. She wants to spend more time with the baby. “I guess neither of our votes really counted,” Jake said to me after we were done discussing my grandson. Jake lives in a “Blue” state and I live in a “Red” one. Jake knows I disdain the arrogance of “W” Bush more than I disliked his father, who seems tame now, and even more than I opposed Nixon or Reagan. Still pissed at the results, I asked Jake how he turned out so conservative. “Even your mother voted for Clinton,” I reminded him. He starts telling me that he thinks Bush should have the chance to finish what he started in Iraq, but I’m fatigued at knowing how much of our fate is in Dubya’s hands. I ask Jake if we can save this discussion for another day. My mouth tastes bitter and the thought of arguing a lost cause, tires my mind. With my goodbye, as always, I tell Jake that I love him.
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