Found in Translation

When I was a little girl, I watched Sesame Street religiously. Each episode started and ended with the same montage - children of different sexes and races running over green, rolling hills. Each new day was brought to me by another letter. I learned how to say "open" and "closed" in Spanish, easily rolling my tongue around each word like second nature. A caped Count lived alongside a blue monster with a cookie addiction. Bert and Ernie lived together and shared a bedroom with noone questioning their sexual persuasion. Nobody knew what Snuffalufagus was but nobody cared. I traveled the block around Sesame Street where neighbors of different races and creeds lived happily side by side. They lived together. They shopped together. They laughed and cried together. Growing up as one of the few white children in a black neighborhood and elementary school, I thought that the world was like that. I don't remember ever feeling unaccepted or different during those years until one day during recess on hot asphalt playground when things shifted. Things suddenly became black and white.

The other girls, who were all black were doing each other's hair in intricate braids and colorful plastic beads. One of the girls, Nyleecha turned to me and asked to do my hair. I looked at the large comb and said politely that I didn't want her to do my hair with "that n_____ comb." All of the other little girls gasped as if they had been been physically assaulted. I didn't know why. My cheeks flushed with heat. I was stunned as they looked at me with large eyes and stepped back. The "n" word was a word that I had heard. I did not however know what it meant. I had no idea that it was insulting or that it divided people. Until then.

The word froze in the air above us and lingered there.

I wished that I could spring upwards and pull it down and hide it.

For a couple of days, all of my best friends treated me differently. They picked on me and called me names. For one simple little word. I had no malice in my heart. Friends were just friends to me. I had yet to understand that skin color mattered. It ended when another friend (a little black girl) took me aside and explained to me - with the wisdom that seems to this day quite remarkable for a child - that she and the other little girls didn't hate me. They just hated the word that I had used and were surprised that I would use the word. I was one of their friends. They had never expected it from me.

I went with her and apologized to the other girls. They accepted. We were friends again but I always kept the shame in the back of my mind. The shame of one word that made us realize the difference between us.


Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood....they're the people that you meet when you're walking down the street...they're the people that you meet each day..

Ah, que es las personas en su vencindario....they're las personas que usted encuentra cuando usted anda calle abajo. ..they're las personas que usted encuentra cada día..

Yesterday, Mark and I went over to his neighbor's house to learn the meaning of a note that he'd received from her while he was out of town. As the little old lady yelled over and over, "The codes people was at yo house!", I could see the lost look on his face. He repeated patiently, "Who? Who was at my house?" I had to step in. You see, this little lady was speaking another language. Southern, to be exact. Mark is from Kansas. Being bilingual as I am, I had to step in and translate. Up until that point, Mark had believed that the "coats" people had been around. Perhaps taking donations of coats for the coatless.

The conversation continued as she loudly explained through me to him that while he was away, some guys from the codes department had been peeking around his house and yard. She then went on to tell us the low-down on all of past and present neighbors in thick, slurring drawl - a bit too loudly for a front porch conversation. She pointed at the neighbors to the left of Mark's house and told us that "A SLUT LIVED OVER THERE!" and then to the house to the right and again, "A SLUT LIVED OVER THERE!" Mark and I looked at each other with looks that telepathically said, "Oh boy..." as she then told us about her next door neighbor who was also apparently one of those "sluts". The neighbors across the street occasionally peeked out from behind their house at us. We grinned at her uncomfortably and nodded. I worked my way down the walk way as Mark politely thanked her for alerting him to the codes department visitors.

When we got back to Mark's house, he told me that he once had been on her front steps while she yelled ethnic and racial slurs at booming volume for all to hear as he squirmed and wished to dissolve into the pavement.

Later in the day, we went for a walk and stopped by his Laotian neighbor's house. He and his family were sitting out on their back patio on the ground, eating rice from mats and drinking beers. We waved at them and one of the family yelled for us to come eat with them. The man who lived there immediately said that no, we couldn't join them. He then realized what he had said and jumped up to explain to us across chain link fence that he was worried because his family isn't like American families. He hadn't meant it that way. He just didn't want anyone to feel uncomfortable. He apologized over and over.

As we walked back to Mark's house, this time with him translating lost parts of the conversation to me , I immediately felt bad that the Laotian neighbor would think that we would look down on him and his family for their traditions and customs. I then looked over at the outspoken lady's house and realized that the Laotian neighbor quite possibly thinks that all Americans are like she is.

We are leaps and bounds away from the "melting pot" that we are supposed to be. One walk around an average neighborhood on a crisp Fall day made me remember that.

Come and play,
everything's A-okay,
friendly neighbors there...
That's where we meet

Can you tell me how to get,
how to get to Sesame Street?

It's a magic carpet ride,
Every door will open wide
To happy people like you...