Mom was parked in the elementary school parking lot one afternoon. She saw a little Black boy playing in a parked car. Suddenly, the car started to move, driving past a darkened carport. Mom thought the little boy was in a runaway car, and jumped out of her car and ran toward it. She wasn’t sure how she was going to stop the car, but knew she had to try something. By this time, the car was moving past the school, which was tan brick. It was then she realized the car was being driven by a Black woman, whose skin had blended in with the dark background of the carport. I’m not sure how my mom gracefully ended her rescue mission, or if she just kept running (like it was her plan all along). That is similar to what I did twenty-seven years ago when I was six months pregnant with my son. At the time, we lived on a hill in San Francisco. Across the street, cars were parked parallel to each other, all the way down to the bottom of the hill. I came out to go to work one morning and saw a man bending over to get into my car. Without thinking, I yelled “Hey, get away from there!” in my very best From-The-Bowels-Of-Hell voice. Then, I ran down the hill, my maternity dress straining against my belly. As I got closer to my car, I realized the man was getting into the car next to mine. Not wanting to explain why I was yelling and running like I was on fire, I turned the corner and just kept running. The man looked startled, and a bit scared. I’ve always wondered if anyone was watching this unfold. It could have been a YouTube moment, had YouTube been invented back then.
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