Blueberry Pie

As a child in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I didn’t have much, but I never knew it. I never knew a time when my parents did not have at least two jobs each, but they always made my three older sisters and me feel like we mattered. It was the many small things they did that added up to an undeniable sense of my value in the world. Many of the gifts I got from them came when I didn’t realize how much they mattered or even recognize them as such. Little did I know that on one Sunday evening, I would receive such a gift from my father.

My mother had cooked another delicious meal. My father—“Da-dee” as he was called—was feeling particularly good and decided to treat us to a blueberry pie from Pitt restaurant, where the blueberry pie was the best. What a treat to get a store-bought pie for dessert1! Moreover, I was lucky enough to go for a drive and sit in the front seat next to Da-dee.

As we drove up to Pitt, I could feel my father tense slightly, but my childish youth read it as impending2 excitement for the pie. He held my hand tightly as we entered the smoke-filled roadside restaurant. Everyone was white, except for us. To my left were families with dusty little boys and girls crawling on their knees around the vinyl-covered booths3. To my right, seated at the counter, were smoking faces and glaring eyes.

Da-dee walked up to the counter and said, “One blueberry pie.” I didn’t get the joke, but the man behind the counter found the statement humorous. He was still laughing with some other man as he took a pie from the big glass case. My mouth watered as the light hit the blueberries and the ring of heavenly whipped cream sitting atop4 the flaky5　crust.

The laughing man turned and, looking at my father, let the pie slip from his fingertips and drop to the floor. Then he picked it up, put it in a pink cardboard box, plopped it down6 and grinned, “That’ll be seven dollars, boy.” The way he said “boy” just sounded different and struck me as curious.

Again, my father said, “One blueberry pie.”

“There it is, boy,” said the man, pointing at the box—which now had pie dripping7 blue and purple through the corner—“And I said seven dollars.”

My father stared at the man behind the counter for what seemed like an inordinately long time. All I could think was: we have the pie. Give him the money and let’s go. But then, Da-dee did the most peculiar thing. He suddenly smiled and politely pushed the blueberry pie onto the floor. I watched as it fell in slow motion at the feet of the man behind the counter. In that moment, it felt as though the swirling cigarette smoke lay suspended in the thickening air.

We left the restaurant in a hurry. Needless to say, we didn’t have blueberry pie that night.

I was very angry at Da-dee for a long time for not giving that man the money, because before that moment, I wasn’t conscious of the fact that people treated each other in certain ways because of their race. What I did receive from Da-dee, however, was a life lesson. It didn’t matter to those people at Pitt that my funny, beautifully fearless father would be the first black man to run for mayor of Baton Rouge some ten years later.

Later, I began to learn definitions and deGREes of race and racism, and how they are applied to people, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was that Da-dee’s lesson had left sugary8, blue-stained memories of his dignity on my heart—and he never let go of my hand.

Notes:

1. dessert：甜点

2. impending：即将发生的，迫近的，迫切的

3. vinyl-covered booths：乙烯树脂制品覆盖着的餐厅小室

4. atop：在上面，在顶端

5. flaky：薄片状的，成层状的

6. plop down：啪地摔下，重重地放下

7. drip：滴下，漏下

8. sugary：甜蜜的

Ladies’ Home Journal magazine August, 2003