Bay Street
I moved to Bay Street when I was eight years old. My dad bought the last house at the very edge of white people's section, and last one on the newly paved part of Bay Street. It was a little house and the yard was small, but it was brand-new, had never be been lived in before. If my dad noticed that it was at the very undesirable end of the white part of town he didn't care.
At school when I told other kids I lived on Bay Street they would say incredulously, "You live in the Nigger Quarters?" I learned that was the name white people gave that neighborhood. Nicer folks back then would just say the "Colored Section". We lived about as close to the Colored Section as you can get and not be black, though I wasn't exactly white either. Because my parents were South American immigrants our family made a good buffer, a fading gradient zone between the whites and the blacks. During the winter I could look white, but in the summer I turned a dark brown like a too-toasted slice of bread. I would turn so dark you could forget what race I was until I got bucked naked for a bath and you could see my pale butt.
Segregation happened years before, but the dividing line between black and white was drawn like a thick marker on a map. A dilapidated fence acted as the impenetrable dividing line in reality. Although most people took the long way around the Colored Section I would just jump over the dividing line fence to get the Winn Dixie store. And whereas people in the white section all stayed indoors away from the stifling Louisiana heat, everyone was outside in the Colored Section. Whole extended families poured out of their small wood houses onto porches and dirt yards. There was always lots of laughter, music, and crawfish boils and barbecues. They kept their distance from me though, just eyeballed me, like a straggling, dark-haired, too skinny, chipped tooth, scab legged ethnic-looking girl was an amazing sight. That didn't bother me too much, it was the same reaction I would get in the white section.
To be continued, I gotta eat something
At school when I told other kids I lived on Bay Street they would say incredulously, "You live in the Nigger Quarters?" I learned that was the name white people gave that neighborhood. Nicer folks back then would just say the "Colored Section". We lived about as close to the Colored Section as you can get and not be black, though I wasn't exactly white either. Because my parents were South American immigrants our family made a good buffer, a fading gradient zone between the whites and the blacks. During the winter I could look white, but in the summer I turned a dark brown like a too-toasted slice of bread. I would turn so dark you could forget what race I was until I got bucked naked for a bath and you could see my pale butt.
Segregation happened years before, but the dividing line between black and white was drawn like a thick marker on a map. A dilapidated fence acted as the impenetrable dividing line in reality. Although most people took the long way around the Colored Section I would just jump over the dividing line fence to get the Winn Dixie store. And whereas people in the white section all stayed indoors away from the stifling Louisiana heat, everyone was outside in the Colored Section. Whole extended families poured out of their small wood houses onto porches and dirt yards. There was always lots of laughter, music, and crawfish boils and barbecues. They kept their distance from me though, just eyeballed me, like a straggling, dark-haired, too skinny, chipped tooth, scab legged ethnic-looking girl was an amazing sight. That didn't bother me too much, it was the same reaction I would get in the white section.
To be continued, I gotta eat something
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