I was across the street, and as a result, I didn’t hear the
words. The main street in the town of Luray, Virginia is in the midst of a
process of gentrification. Where once stood most likely general stores,
hardware stores, and other stores selling local things for local people, there
are boutiques, bookshops and cafes that cater for out-of-towners. It is such a
café that I am exiting at the time the words were spoken. My fiancée and I are
making last minute wedding plans, wishing we could find local stores with local
prices, but finding only smiles hastily assembled below calculating eyes. Eyes
that have narrowed more than once as my friends and I carelessly and happily
walk along Main Street reunited on foreign soil. Narrowing eyes don’t do
anything to dampen our spirits, but words? Words are powerful.
I haven’t seen my friends more than two or three times in
the last 2 years. I moved to Costa Rica, and they did not. Maybe they didn’t
need to find themselves; maybe they didn’t need to leave. I needed to leave,
and so I boarded an aeroplane alone. Now we walk down Main Street in Luray,
Virginia together, and everything that has happened has happened so that we may
be together again. It may well be true that you can’t put a price on
friendship, but my friends have estimated it at around two thousand pounds.
Luckily, the pound is stronger than the dollar, and we feel it as we drink
five-dollar lattes; we feel good. The caffeine, the camaraderie and the
occasion have infected all of us with an incorrigible joy. Our jokes are
funnier; our laughs louder, and nothing can spoil this moment.
My friend Rebekah is a truly incredible person. Warm, kind,
dependable. She is just the kind of friend that everyone should have. She has
flown from Barcelona, Spain to be one of my groomsmen, possibly the first
groomsmaid in the history of Luray, Virginia. She has skin the colour of dark
honey, and hair that cascades from her scalp in all directions, tight curls
that bounce as she bounces, full of energy and life. She has finished her fruit
tea, paid and tipped, and has taken a stroll with another of my friends, Jon or
Kieran, maybe both. We are not all specific people when we are together; it
doesn’t matter who said or did what, only that it was done. We are simply a
group, a family.
As we finish our lattes and politely decline a look at the
dessert menu, life could not feel any sweeter. As we emerge from the café and
pour onto Main Street, we see Rebekah and her attendants standing, still. They
look, different somehow. Bek has the look of someone pretending they are ok,
and Jon and Kieran look utterly helpless, so we move, as one unit, across the
street to find out what is wrong.
“A girl on that school bus called me a nigger.” Says Bek.
She is almost apologetic, as if she wants it to be a misunderstanding. And
ironically, at that moment, all the colour drains from the world. I feel sick.
It is not nausea; I do not want to vomit. It is the deep, aching feeling that
something has happened that is wrong. The feeling one gets when they witness
domestic violence, or watch a bully hit someone who has done nothing, those
viral videos that make us feel disassociated with the society we inhabit. It is
an empty feeling that grips your internal organs and squeezes. We close ranks
around Rebekah, and we mourn as if we truly are a family. None of my friends
has ever been called a nigger before, and we don’t know how to deal with it. I
want to chase after the school bus, find the child who said these words, make
them apologise, tell their parents, complain to the police, anyone who can make
amend this situation. But there is nobody. The bus has driven away, and we are
not local people.
Maybe half of my friends from the UK who have paid two
thousand pounds to be at my wedding are not white. Sunny has a master’s degree
and is a chartered surveyor. James is an economist. Emma is an events manager.
Rebekah is a kindergarten teacher. Her mother is white. To a child in the town
of Luray, Virginia, she is a lesser being.
Somebody perhaps seven years old has the power to rob my friend of her
humanity. The shock and disgust that we feel collectively soon turns to
something else, pity perhaps; pity for a child who has already been taught to
hate in the second most popular wedding destination in the United States, a
town that sells love to lovers and their loved ones. My fiancée and I will be
married in 2 days, and Rebekah will by my groomsmaid. The town of Luray is in
the midst of a process of gentrification, but the people of Luray are in need
of much more than boutiques and five-dollar lattes.
