Swimming Hole By Noella Deonarain
Back in the beginning of September, I was struggling with post-grad blues—no job lined up, no calls back, applying to positions that didn’t pay enough—just coasting through life, bitter about having gotten my degree at all. But day-to-day life had to continue because I didn’t want my life to end (or to end my life), and so I went on a road trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee with my friends. I was nervous about this trip, going through Tennessee with my brown skin and a big, bleached afro. I told all my white friends just that: I am legitimately hesitant about going, will it be okay? I made a joke about the cops pulling us over while I was driving, maybe another joke about just getting out and ghost riding to Dolly Parton. My friend who was from there told me we’d be fine. There was more to my hesitation, but I didn’t express it entirely. I didn’t express that I thought I probably would be fine because I had them as a buffer—my white friends, though leftist and Jewish, still would not be the first targets. I didn’t express that if I were alone, I’d be much more susceptible to risk, and that they’d be safer without me if something were to happen. Anyways, I agreed to go and we were off. From Philly to Chatt, probably twelve hours, driving split in half with my friend whose car we took. We stopped for snacks and toilet breaks at rest stops and each took turns controlling the aux cord. The weather was nice and it was an enjoyable ride. There was all of this strange but very interesting Americana along the trip. We passed a Bass Pro Shop pyramid in Memphis—this very weird, big, shiny ass pyramid right off the highway. We stopped at multiple Cracker Barrels, all basically the exact same, some with heavier white-patron-to-black-staff ratios than others. We stopped to use the restrooms at the Johnny Cash dedicated rest area in Dickson. I found this all slightly funny in its absurdity and strangeness to me. But it wasn’t so funny passing through Charlottesville, where only a month before, the Unite the Right rally had resulted in some white supremacist piece of shit driving into a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring many and killing one. They killed a white woman, Heather Heyer, whose whiteness was all but dismissed—they just saw her as a nigger-lover. I knew that white supremacy spread far wider than the South and in more corrosive ways. I mean, I’ve seen blatant and microaggressive racism more times in Pennsylvania than anywhere else with my own eyes, and I’d be lying to myself to think being there was any safer. The closer to Chattanooga we got, the more beautiful the scenery became. Lush, mountainous, and the air smelled pure. Although this had been a place of black lynchings, I couldn’t smell bodies in the air right then, only the trees. It was dark out and it all felt peaceful. When we got to my friend’s brother’s place where we were staying, we were greeted at 2:00 a.m. with plenty of Southern hospitality.
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