Nigger Sticker
January 4, 2010 by nina
Filed under Blog It Out, Bitch
Wanna know the funny thing? The funny thing is that I didn’t even want to go to Walmart. We haven’t shopped there for groceries in months – not since I found a local supermarket that not only sells the same stuff cheaper, but does so without attracting the kind of people that make me itch.
But I need to replace the power cord for my laptop and the supermarket doesn’t sell power cords. It was New Years Eve and we didn’t want to make two stops. It seems easier to get the power cord and groceries necessary for the weekend shut-in we have planned from one place.
So, there I am in line with this sense of foreboding. Like, I shouldn’t even be there. But, there I was watching as the cashier scanned snacks, beverages, and groceries to get us through the next five days because Donny was on vacation and we have no plans to leave the house before then. We usually did the self checkout, but Jack started getting fussy in the cart and Donny decided to carry him. He wouldn’t be able to help (pass while I scan and bag or vice versa) so it seemed faster to use a cashier.
The cashier was friendly; an older white lady who agreed with me that spending New Years Eve at home was the best. She tried scanning the $1.00 package of Twizzlers I’d pick up as a check-out impulse buy, but the barcode wouldn’t read. She asked if Kali minded grabbing another, but the big tall black man behind Kali reached for one instead. I thanked him and felt bad that we were holding up the line so when the second package wouldn’t scan either, I told the cashier to forget it.
“Probably God’s way of telling me I don’t need to be eating it…. or that maybe I should buy it at Blockbuster when we go to rent movies later.”
We all laugh – me, Donny, Kali, the white cashier and the big black guy. I’m taking my debit card back from the cashier when I realize that a man in the next checkout lane has been looking at me. He looks away with a smirk on his face, looking in Donny’s direction and then away. The cashier is still making small talk, but now my attention is really on this guy. He was heavy and wearing tight jeans and a trucker cap. He was with his equally-heavy wife and he wore a gun on his hip. He gave off a bad vibe.
As I’m sticking my card back in my wallet, I wonder if he’d been checking that out. A lot of people stare at it because I have a small replica of my father’s gold shield from the New York City Police Department. I’ve had people actually ask if I’m a cop when they see it because the engraving on the leather wallet, “Detective’s Daughter,” is too small for them to see.
We put our bags in the cart and headed for the car. As we approached it, I noticed creepy gun guy and his wife are loading their groceries in a big red pickup parked right next to us. When he sees us, he starts singing something. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I just knew it wasn’t anything good. I stop at the back of the car with the cart and Kali is standing next to me. Donny heads to the passenger side backseat and waits for me to unlock the car so he can strap Jack in his carseat. I’m having a hard time finding the keys in my purse and I realize that this guy has me frazzled.
After searching for a bit, I said, “I bet they’re in my jeans.” I reached down to pat the front of my pants and sure enough, I felt the keys in my pocket. I never put the keys in my pocket so I laugh and Donny just kinda shakes his head. I hit the button to open the door just as creepy guy’s wife returns from taking their empty cart to the corral a few feet away. He has started his truck and revved the engine loudly. Kali jumps and then giggles.
“That scared me.”
“I think that was the point,” I said. I instinctively move her closer to me and our car as the pickup backs out of the parking spot. I also begin to move our cart out of the way so I can lift the trunk door without hitting it. Jack, and Donny’s top half, are in the car.
As the truck passes me, the creepy guy kinda leans out the window and says, “That’s a nice nigger sticker you got there.”
You know how a million things seem to happen at once, and when you relay them later to others, it seems impossible that they all occurred within a fraction of a second?
My first feeling was that I was not surprised. I have never been called a nigger to my face. And though, to be fair, he wasn’t calling me a nigger, I think we all know that if he considered Obama (whose mother is white) a nigger, he damn sure considered my ass a full-fledged nigger. But despite having gone 35 years without having a white person call me a nigger, in person, to my face, I was not surprised for my first thought was, “Of course it would be this guy to say something like that.”
Then, in the next fraction of a second, I glanced at the bumper sticker on the back of my car. I knew what he was referring to, of course, immediately. The only other sticker on the back of my car is the parking sticker for my college’s campus. And, to my knowledge, my school has never been called, “The Nigger College.” He was talking about the Obama ’08 bumper sticker.
Then, as I looked back at his car, which was now pulling off, I made eye contact with him in the driver’s side mirror. And he was smirking. And then I got pissed. And despite the fact that I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to hear me, I wanted to yell, “Fuck you, you big fat redneck.” I also wanted to creatively tell him (you know, in a way that Kali wouldn’t understand) that I was sure he couldn’t see his tiny dick under all that belly fat, but words failed me.
I didn’t say anything. I just met his smirk with a squinty-eyed “are you really that ignorant” look of my own and then turned to Kali. She had that kind of dazed smile of disbelief on her face. You know, that inappropriate laugh or smile you get in a bad situation that you didn’t see coming.
“Get in the car.”
Donny pulls his head from the back seat, Jack is now strapped in, and I ask, “Did you hear what he just said to me?”
“No. What? Who?”
I repeat it and point towards the red pickup which is now stopped a stop sign, but too far away to see the license plate or even throw up a middle finger.
“Are you serious?”
“Very.”
My hands shake as I start to put the bags in the trunk.
“I wish I would have heard him”
Kali is turned around watching us. She knows what has just happened and I find myself praying this doesn’t shape her. That this doesn’t stick with her. That this won’t be some story she tells her friends in college ten years from now.
“One time, this white man called president Obama a nigger right in front of me.”
Every black person I know that has been called a nigger, can tell you every detail of that moment, that day. I did not want this incident to be a moment for Kali. And because he potentially made it one, I suddenly wished creepy guy and his wife would run head-on into a moving bus. A bus carrying barrels of gasoline. And sharks.
As I drove home, I knew that I shouldn’t let it spoil the evening we had planned – eating, drinking, and playing lots of Halo 3. I knew that was what he wanted. He wanted to hurt me and make me angry and I was angry with myself because he did. We pulled into our subdivision and I thought, we live in a nice home, but it doesn’t matter, he thinks I’m a nigger.
Donny went back out to rent the movies and pick up pizza. I sat there holding Jack, who was now sleeping, and thought, “How could someone say something like that in front of my children?” I know that the world is full of people who don’t give a fuck about children. There are people that kidnap, rape, and murder children. I know this. But for some reason, it really bothered me that this man couldn’t keep his hate and ignorance to himself in the presence of my children.
But why should he? To him, my kids are niggers.
It’s been four days and I’ve thought about it every day since, several times a day. This was unlike hearing the little boys we play Halo against toss around nigger. That doesn’t even make me angry. Those are young punks who think the worst two things in the world are to be black or gay. And if you really piss them off, you’re a “nigger fag.” They call people nigger and fag as easily as you and I might call people that annoy us “idiot” or “asshole.” They call everyone who plays better than them nigger. This was different. This was pointed and personal.
As much as I love my husband and even some of you that are white and reading this, I’d be lying if I said this incident hasn’t made me feel some type of way. I find myself wondering now if every white person I’ll encounter in this area thinks I’m a nigger. It has made me not want to be around white people. I’m applying to jobs, and I wonder what will they think if they’re white. Will they not hire me because they think I’m a nigger? We’re thinking of moving to a smaller place. Do I have to worry that people won’t want us living near them because they think I’m a nigger, my kids are niggers, and my husband is a nigger lover?
I think I’m gonna take my friend’s Mary’s advice and pray on it.
Nina is a 34-year-old mother, wife and writer who spends her days blogging, studying, changing diapers and watching ridiculous amounts of TV. She currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, two children and three TiVos.
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