“Our city is not a ‘white spot’ by accident. Individual realtors through ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ have been ‘selective’ in determining renters and buyers.”
—San Leandro City Councilman Joseph Gancos, March 1969
My mother looked weary as she trudged up the stairs, her eyes glued to the eviction notice she had just received. I heard her go into her room and close the door. I went into the kitchen and picked up the extension. Mom’s voice.
“I don’t understand this.”
“Well, what’s there to understand?” came the terse and condescending reply.
It was Mrs. Wentworth, the landlady. Actually, “landbitch” would’ve been more accurate.
“You have fifteen days to vacate the premises,” she snapped at my mother.
“But why? For what reason?”
“We’re no longer renting to families your size. You’ll have to leave.”
“You can’t do this.”
“Listen, you nigger, don’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my own building.”
Did she really say that? To my mother? This hurt me. This hurt even more than the redheaded kid on the kickball diamond. She called my mother that name. My mother!
I could feel the familiar sting of the tears welling up in my eyes. Funny, after everything that had happened that day—the angry mob, the hot water, the notice to vacate—you’d think that the tears would have already come by now. Maybe I was tougher than I thought.
“We’ll see,” my mother finally said. Her tone was strange. It was as if the words stuck in her throat and she was fighting to release them. Like the word “nigger” was a blow to her gut that expelled all of the air from her body, making it impossible to emit sound, impossible to vocalize the pain, the hurt, the astonishment, and the indignity. Liberal Northern California. “We’ll see,” she said again.
A few minutes later, my mother came bounding down the stairs. She seemed reinvigorated. Alive. Determined. There was that joker again.
“I’m going to sue the bastards.”