[The following article was written by Dr. Mark Long and appeared in the January 18, 2015 print edition of the Houston Chronicle]
“Looking for a Boy Named Rhonda”
To grow up in the South in the 1950s was to enjoy all the comforts of segregation, at least if you were white. And so I did. In my suburban neighborhood in Houston (West University), mine was an almost idyllic early childhood of segregated security, segregated good schools, an all-white Little League baseball team. My acquaintance with Black Americans was rather limited, and those I did meet showed me a kind of deference as a white that now causes me to wince as I recall it. Moreover, to travel in the South was to see firsthand the Jim Crow laws that still prevailed: motels that were marked “whites only,” the crudest sort of toilet facilities marked “coloreds only,” and the side by side water fountains, one with a deluxe water cooler and the other little more than a simple faucet. I need not indicate which was for whom.
Apart from our black maid, a kind of surrogate mother (both “ship and safe harbor,” as writer Toni Morrison puts it), my only other contact with people of color was limited to our neighborhood yardman, someone we knew simply as “Wallace,” and with his sons. Wallace–first name? Last name? I never learned–came weekly from cross-town to do several of the lawns in our area. All his boys save the youngest, who appeared to be about my age, helped with the chores. For at least two summers I saw Wallace’s youngest from a distance as we would stand and stare at each other briefly. Then came the day—I would have been about nine—when we bridged the distance. “Hi, my name is Mark.” “I’m Rhonda,” he replied. Rhonda? I had heard clearly; it was no nickname. Only later would I consider the oddity of the name, which was never explained, but to my nine year old ears, it seemed normal enough, and I didn’t question it. And with little more than that, the play began. We climbed. We ran. We threw grass cuttings. But what I recall best was wrestling in the new-mown grass. Rhonda was slightly shorter, but he was certainly my match. As we rolled back and forth in the grass (a few hours later, I would experience the itch and burn from the St. Augustine. Did he?), I was struck by the strength of his sinewy muscles; he was much stronger than I expected. Oddly, my sharpest memory was the profuse sweat. In the ever-humid climate of Houston, the copious perspiration poured from us and mixed together. And I kept thinking: the sweat of this black boy is mixing with mine, and it seems so natural. All too soon, Wallace and the older boys finished the lawns, and Rhonda left.
That night at dinner my parents told me we would need to have a talk. We sat in the living room, my dad, mother, and I, and even as a nine year old I knew something unpleasant was about to unfold. “Scooter, Mrs. A. called us.” Mrs. A was the neighbor across the street. “She looked out the window today and she saw you, ah, well, playing with one of Wallace’s sons.” “Yes,” I recall telling them enthusiastically. “That’s my new friend Rhonda.” “Well…” dad began, looking uncomfortable. He told me that it wasn’t right for white children and black children to play together. “Why,” I repeatedly asked, but he offered no explanation despite my remonstrations. It was simply wrong, he said, and he seemed a little surprised that it was not self-evident. Thus, the severing of a promising friendship that was only a few hours old. I saw Rhonda the next week, but he stood two houses away, in Mr. M’s front yard. We didn’t say a word. Apparently, someone had had the talk with him, too. Was it Wallace? Probably. Had my dad explained the natural ways of segregation to his father? Perhaps. I never saw Rhonda after that, and soon enough, we would all feel the jolt of cultural plate tectonics. The ground would shift. Dr. King would go to jail in Birmingham, then preach on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Watts and Detroit and even Houston would break out in flames, as would other major cities. The natural order of segregation would crumble, and none of us would be the same.
What happened then to Rhonda, I have often wondered. Did he one day go to jail, as a tragic number do, or to college, as I hope? Is his occupation lawns or the law today? Is there even a “today” for him? I wish I knew, but I don’t, and having only the names “Wallace” and “Rhonda” means there is no Google path to finding out. Certainly today I wish I could talk to him, to learn how my too-brief playmate of the late 1950s feels, say, about our incumbent president. But I can’t. So what do I have then? A hope, certainly, that this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day would not be perfunctory, that the content of our character, individually and nationally, will soon be ascendant in society and politics. But just now I mostly have a few jagged memories and an ache, an ache as I remember a summer afternoon in long-ago Houston when two boys played joyfully, mingling their sweat . . .then fell victim to others’ prejudices. Rhonda, how I miss you. I really think we could have been such good friends.
[Article and image from Houston Chronicle]
