Following Reagan’s victory came the routine dismissal of all the previous president’s appointees, including my father. By January 1981, Daddy had decided to return us to Wisconsin where he’d take a high-level administrative position at the medical school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and resume a part-time pediatric practice there.
My parents might have chosen to buy a home in the vibrant, multicultural capital city of Madison, a real city with people from all over the world, as is the hallmark of any university town. Instead they bought the larger plot of land and nicer house their affluence made possible in a development west of Madison in the town of Verona. The development was called Cherrywood—a bit of wishful thinking. It was actually surrounded on all sides by cornfields and had a middle-of-nowhere feel to it.
We moved to Cherrywood in the summer of 1981 and soon met our across-the-street neighbors, the Sullivans, a family of kind white folk originally from rural Vermont with a grown child living back in New England and a younger child named Lisa who was then ten. Unlike both of my parents, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Sullivan was college educated. Mr. Sullivan had worked his way into senior management in the food industry. He’d recently been made president of a company headquartered in Madison and they’d moved to Cherrywood just months before we had. Despite the fact that I was thirteen and headed off to high school, and Lisa was only ten and still in elementary school, we bonded over being outsiders, lonely, and new. Our parents also quickly became fast friends and over the years would become true confidants, dear to each other. They cherished the improbability of being neighbors in the first place, let alone folks who genuinely liked each other.
One weekend evening when we’d lived there about a year, as our fathers fussed over the barbecue in Lisa’s backyard and our mothers made side dishes in the kitchen, Lisa and I were upstairs in her small bedroom, sprawled out on her carpeted floor, reading a teen magazine. When we finished leafing through the glossy pages, I smelled dinner penetrating the stale air of the bedroom and suddenly felt very hungry. I rolled over, got up, and headed for the door when Lisa began to speak.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this—”
I paused and turned around. “What?”
“My sister was visiting when you guys first moved here. She saw your dad across the street on his riding lawn mower and said, ‘Oooh look, they have a Black gardener.’”
For a split second I stared at Lisa lying there on the floor, my eyes wide, my breath clenched in my throat. Then I shifted my gaze up toward the far wall, keeping my body as still as possible, as if a bad smell had arisen from her and if I just didn’t move at all, didn’t disturb the air between us, the smell wouldn’t come any closer to me. Through her bedroom window I could see a portion of our lawn, large, green, and plush, across the bucolic street.
Daddy loves riding that mower, I thought to myself. Steps on the running board with his left foot and swings that bent right leg over and around, like getting on the back of a horse. He’s so proud to have all of this land, these lawns, so excited to think ahead to next spring’s gardens. My parents would take a stroll around the property every night, cocktails in hand, admiring the gardenia—Daddy’s favorite flower—that grew near the back door, pointing to where the tulips would come up after the cold winter, checking on the three pines they’d planted to give the lawn a bit of character. Our house was bigger than the Sullivans’. My father was the fucking former Assistant Surgeon General of the God Damn United States. I took a deep breath and cocked my head back toward Lisa, who still lay on the floor.
“Swear you won’t tell?” she asked. Then she scrambled to stand up. “My parents made me promise not to tell you.”
I nodded slightly as if in a trance, feeling the heat rise up my neck. I looked to the walls of Lisa’s small bedroom, to the photos of a Vermont childhood tacked up above her desk.
“C’mon,” I said, turning toward the bedroom door and opening it. I walked out of her room and strode down the hallway to the stairs that led to the kitchen. I could hear Lisa calling out, her voice sputtering, could hear her footsteps as she scrambled to catch up with me. I smiled at this satisfying feeling, this small bit of control I had in this moment, this choice I had, this chance to say something, and what, or to say nothing at all, as I made my way toward our four parents.
“You have to promise,” I heard her say from the stairs, as I reached the kitchen.
“Promise what?” Lisa’s mother asked.
“Nothing.” I forced a smile, picturing this small-town Vermont family having their secret conversation about mine. The mothers glanced at each other.
I grabbed a bowl of potato salad in one hand and the green salad in the other, and edged my way through the partially open screen door leading to the backyard. I plunked the food on the picnic table on the small patio, then found a place at the end of one bench and sat. I took in the sight of the salads, the hot dogs and burgers, fruit, beers and sodas, the bottles of ketchup and mustard, the freshly picked corn. I listened to the sound of adults in easy conversation, relaxing into their strengthening friendship. My stomach grumbled. I took a cheeseburger and began to eat it, and worked hard to keep my feelings to myself.
I was embarrassed for Daddy, who took such pride in mowing the gorgeous lawn at the large home he’d worked so hard to provide for us. Embarrassed for the Sullivans that they’d had to have an uncomfortable conversation they thought they were keeping safely from us. Embarrassed for Lisa for being so naive—or just young—as to relay this story to me, as if revealing what her ignorant family member had said was a greater gift than keeping it to herself. And maybe it was. I took a bite of my burger, and then another, and another, and then a gulp of iced tea. I looked over at my smiling, innocent parents and was embarrassed, in a way, for all of us.
It was only natural that Lisa’s big sister was confused seeing Daddy astride his tractor mower. Most Black people didn’t own homes like this. Most Black people were more likely to be someone’s gardener than a home owner in a community like this one, weren’t they? I watched Mr. Sullivan pop open a can of Leinenkugel’s and hand it to my father and then grab one for himself. They shared a hearty laugh over something they wanted to keep between themselves. Was I going to get Lisa in trouble for “telling” what we all knew was true—that Blacks tend to play roles of subservience to whites? No. It was the fact of the Sullivans whispering about it among themselves that made me feel most uncomfortable. I calmed that feeling by eating my burger. I felt safe knowing that none of the grown-ups knew what I knew.