Let's Not Get Started.

The patrol cars, twirling red and white and blue, sat aligned perfectly pulled up on the avenue all along side the cars parked at the curb before Gitsis' Diner. Bodies were crowding the diner door in the open air and, with the exception of an occasional one working his or her way inside through the rest, all their suddenly silent attention was down the street on the gathering of young officers on the pavement outside one of the blue and white cars. There were some dozen officers and they were standing and milling a car length and a half south of Gitsis' door.

It was nearing three in the morning and a young black man of a tall and slender build was stretched out full-length on his stomach on the pavement. His hands were cuffed behind his back and he was, from time to time, struggling to roll himself over. When his rocking or his trying to twist his legs and shoulders to right himself became too much, some one young man in a blue uniform or other would either kneel between his shoulder blades with cautions or crouch at his feet to hold his angles.

Whether trying to turn or laying as lain, the young man's invective was constant, loud and sputtering.

"BITCH! BITCH! YOU A BITCH! NIGGAHS! YOU'RE NIGGAHS!"

He bitterly protested,

"GODDA SLAVE DOWN ON THE GROUND! THA'S ALL Y'WANT! THA'S WHAT Y'WANT!
GIDDA SLAVE DOWN ON THE GROUND!"

Those lined along the front of the diner, bunched in the diner doorway to see, nearly all of them black, watched in somber silence. The only time any turned away from the scene for a moment was when one or more people came out of the diner and two or more people in the line that was no longer even so much a line for admittance were allowed in the Gitsis' for food.

"NIGGAHS! NIGGAHS! YOU BITCH! I GIDCHEW BITCH!"

The crowd of officers was oddly a seemingly relax gathering standing and talking among themselves apparently of nothing immediate or of importance. For them, it seemed, what ever had happened at Gitsis' was over and they only attended the young man at their feet on his repeated efforts to turn himself to where he could struggle erect which wasn't going to happen. None responded to or, even seemed to be cognizant of his on-going angry and repetitive diatribe. Eventually, a strap retrieved from one of the cars bound his attentuated legs at the ankles. A yellow hood faced about with a fine mesh went over his head when he began to hotly spit his anger out at their feet.

Through the yellow netting of his hood, the young man's violent face could be seen, his sharp chin lifted up off the asphalt from time to time to warn,

"BITCH! I GID YOU BITCH! NIGGAHS!"

The young officers appeared, too, to be unaware of the eyes on them from the diner door.

Leaving their prisoner to yell and trash about on the pavement of Monroe Avenue so long a time seemed cruel and unnecessary, probably even racial to the spectators. Police attentions to the young man on the ground were perfunctory and clinical and their orders unthreatening. Once the mask and strap had been applied, he seemed forgotten entirely. Leaving their prisoner to yell and trash about helplessly on the pavement of Monroe Avenue so long a time seemed cruel and unnecessary and, probably even, racial to the spectators. That it might have been in anticipation that he might exhaust his anger somewhat before transport to the lock-up where more forceful methods would have to be used to restrain him wasn't likely to occur to them.



"'Lo?"

"Did I wake you; you sound as if I woke you?"

"Yeah. Y'did, kinda."

"Sorry."

"S'o.k., I didn't sleep much last night - or, at all!"

"Another late Saturday on Monroe?"

"Yeah, kinda. Had one of those Gitsis' incidents again last night."

"Well...."

"Something of a racial character, or not, y'could say. I didn't see how it began so I can't comment. But I came home and, what I did see, I had to write down. Not enough for a story though."

"Well!...y'know how I feel. I suppose it is fun, exciting living where you do but it's,well, not my thing at all. I wouldn't want it."

"It's not...fun -"

"That was a poor choice."

"...or so much exciting. There is something always to be gleaned, gathered. I just don't know how competent I am to comment on any of that. This matter last night, like Isay, I didn't see how it started so I can't really say anything about that, about the larger issue of it. I'd like to! I wouldn't have written what I did if, what I did see hadn't been so striking and, maybe, complicated enough in its self to do something with. I don't know. I'd like to, but, I don't know...."

"And, then, you were up all night."

"The writing didn't take all that long. It was just that it seemed it might be something I might make something out of. I couldn't stop thinking. Could I do, say more with it. I imagine if I could find a way, I could use it to say some things I've been thinking about. The race card came up and -"

"Imagine!"

"Well, like I say, I can't say for sure if there wasn't something to justify it even a little. I know what I saw -"

"Let's not get started!"

"Yeah, I know. I know how you feel. And, you might be surprised - I mean I know what I saw was, probably, what you'd have seen, too. But there is that other way these things are seen."

"Things are what they are. People get liquored up and -"

"And that's what I saw. Still -"

"...police get called and they have to handle them."

"No question. No question about it. I don't fault those guys for what they did or how they did it! Still...there's that other way of looking at things, that other wayof reacting to them. I saw that out there last night, too. Or, at least, I saw people reacting different from the way I was. That matters, too, and I don't think some things are being said about it, about the situation we're in."

"I think more is said than should be most of the time."

"And I'd agree with that, too - kind of. Some things that do get said that don't help at all. I don't know if it's understood how people like you and I reacted when we hear claims being made we can't see any basis for. And, then, when we're told that even if it doesn't directly apply it should because of second and third hand experiences - that doesn't help any either. That'd be worth writing if I had a way to say it."

"Let's please not get started."

"We just don't all see the same things. And, the people who see things differently, have their reasons and think they're important, too."

"I doesn't do any good to drag race in just because a black person is involved. Crying wolf -"

"I know. Of course, that's what I'm saying....It doesn't do any good. Like I say, it's one of the things I'd like to say...if I had a way to. Everytime that happens it only makes it harder to convince some that race does really matter when and where it does."

"Wolf!"

"Yes. Long as it is understood that there are reasons people make the wrong assumptions, assertions at times and those reason have consequences for us. It matters."

"Well....let's just not get started. I've got to know what we're doing this year about Easter, are you planning...."


There was sullenness and no small resentment in the unvoiced judgmental stare of the crowd outside Gitsis' door. There was evident defiance in the wide-armed gesture of the broad young man in the long white shirt who stopped mid-Monroe well down from the scene and announced to the police that he was only going to his car to leave. Perhaps, too, there was mockery in the walk and carriage of the heavy hipped woman crossing the street with her home-sack of Gitsis' dinner held up above her waist to dangle and sway at her heavy, dainty stepping, something straight out of vaudeville. Maybe nothing was said....

Posted 4/15/09.