Downriver Detroit
(or The Woman Who Thought I Was Muslim)
K. Biadaszkiewicz – United States

I wear long skirts even though I am not completely certain there is a God.

The breezes are strong along the river, so I often wear a head scarf to keep my hair from tangling in the wind.

Walking along the sidewalk in Wyandotte on a hot and windy afternoon in July, I saw a car approaching. It was the only car on the road, and as it approached it came closer and closer to the sidewalk.

Then the window opened, and a young woman with long blond hair wearing a skimpy top and a sneer I won’t soon forget turned her head at me and as the car slowed down and came very close, she made that tongue sound at me, stronger than spit.

Then I heard laughter and the car sped away and I was alone again. Sometimes when your throat hurts from being sad, your knees give out, and that’s what happened to me, but I caught myself against the brick wall of the beauty shop, and didn’t fall.

I am an intelligent woman. I know about history. Not only here, but in England and France and Mexico. I did it in school. In the Southern United States, until recently, it was considered sport by some white people to drive a car close to sidewalks where African American families, dressed in their best clothes, were walking to church. While the driver steered the car close to the sidewalk, someone threw mud or paint from the car at the people on the sidewalk, ruining their clothing. Had my mind been working clearly on that blistering hot and windy July afternoon, that is what I could have remembered: a sort of intellectual diversion that sometimes can clear the mind. But it was not working clearly.

All I remembered was that there are many things in my life that I don’t understand. Injustice, for instance. And throats and knees. Knees are not connected to the throat. There is no reason why they should have given out the moment my throat froze. I have a throat that quick-freezes at every opportunity to be hurt. I am way too sensitive.

I shouldn’t try to explain things I don’t understand, like why, if people make that tongue sound on TV, I am supposed to think they are stupid; but if a girl with a blond pony tail leans out of an SUV racing toward me on the sidewalk and makes the same sound, I am supposed to think there is something wrong with me.

I personally like sounds without words. It encourages people to try harder to understand one another. Nobody understands me.

I am stupid, wearing a long skirt on such a hot day. I guess you could say I was inviting that girl or someone like her to hurt me by making the sound, but I wasn’t. It’s just that I like to wear long skirts. I like the way they swish when I walk. I like the way it’s safe inside them.

It’s funny, though. I mean, my not being Muslim, and still getting hurt by somebody who was ridiculing me because she thought that’s who I was. What’s funny about it is that I still got hurt. My throat got clogged up with sadness. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know anything. As I said, I’m not even sure if there’s a God. All I know is that everyone at one time or another is filled with sadness. This makes us all the same. It is what we do next that makes us sing out our own sounds.