Andrew Wright
“There was an old black woman who lived down a lane near us. Hers was one of the few poor little houses in our neighbourhood. It was not much more than one room really. She was a bent old thing with a long dress which hung lower at the front than at the back because of her being bent and leaning forward. She always carried a worn shopping bag which seemed to be half full, never less and never more.
One day I was with my friends under an elderberry tree at the side of the road when we saw her coming. My friends dared me to say, ‘Nigger’, to her. It was wrong and I knew it was wrong.
They kept on, ‘Dare you! Dare you! Dare you!’
When she came past the tree I stepped out behind her and said in a whisper, ‘Nigger!’ and then louder, a second time, so my friends would really hear me. ‘Nigger!’
By this time she had got to her gate and my little dog had run after her and come up to her legs. She bent down and stroked his back and his little brown, smooth head and he wagged his tail. She didn’t look round at me, just undid the latch and went into her house.
I’m sure she knew it was my dog.
My comments
From the old woman a generous empathy with other people and animals.
From the boys merely a wish to be worthy of being in a gang and finding a way of defining the gang by pointing to somebody not in it.
This life story was told to me by an American teacher I met a long time ago.
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