Metro Times Special Pandemic Fiction and Poetry Issue: Jean Alicia Elster
“Alphabet Day”
(Fiction based on real events)
by
Jean Alicia Elster
I.
I didn’t go to preschool. Ma was a stay-at-home mom until I went to kindergarten. Before I was old enough for school, we had lessons at home. Each day of the week was reserved for a different subject: one day was numbers day. You can guess that we counted stuff. We added and took away stuff. We made a huge number line where I discovered the wild concept of negative numbers. Another day was for field trips: If the place was within an hour drive of our home, we went there. Another day was for art and drawing.
But my favorite was alphabet day. We had alphabet puzzles made out of wood and cardboard and squiggly foam pieces. Now most folks probably remember turning the puzzle boards over, dumping the letters onto the table and then fitting them back into the right space for each letter. Not us. We dumped out all the letters and then we built things with them. A car? No problem—there were plenty of round shapes to make four wheels. A house? The v and even w make a perfect roof. We made people, boats, books. It was dorky, I know. But then it got crazy dorky: Ma bought a room-sized alphabet puzzle that we would put together and then walk all over those letters, calling them out as we stomped on them. Before I knew it, I could recite the alphabet backwards and forwards and any way in between. I loved alphabet day. It was my favorite. And that’s a good thing, too, because down the road— many, many years later—alphabet day saved my life.
II.
When I was high school age and learning to drive, my dad is the one who put me behind the wheel and did the honors. Mom left it to him to teach me about blind spots and how to merge onto the freeway and how to parallel park. Soon enough though I learned that my driving lesson from her was going to be quite a bit different.
Now understand that I’m mixed. Bi-racial: Daddy’s white and Mom’s black. And one evening when we were almost finished with dinner, I saw Mama look over at Dad and he nodded his head as if to say now’s as good a time as any.
“You’ll be driving out on your own soon. And you need to know this,” she said, turning to me.
It was her turn to give the driving lesson.
“When the police pull you over,” she said—and I noticed that she said when, not if—“they won’t look at you and see that you have a white Daddy. They’re just going to see your brown skin.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at me. The look was deadly. I knew right away that this lesson from Mama was not going to be as much fun as alphabet day.
“There are some very fine people out there who are police officers. And there are some who are psychos who take great pleasure in terrorizing black drivers. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing which of these types of officers has pulled you over, sometimes until it’s too late,” she said.
Ma proceeded to tell me that when I’m pulled over, keep both hands in plain sight, on top of the steering wheel at all times. She told me to answer only when the officer spoke to me and then respond with as few words as possible. Don’t make any sudden moves, she said. And if I have to get something from the glove compartment…
She kept talking, but I had pretty much tuned her out by then. I had gotten the message loud and clear: Driving with brown skin could be risky business.
III.
It was my first job out of college. I had just finished a week of off-site training and was driving home on a state road, passing through a suburban area, when I saw flashing lights behind me in my rearview mirror; then I heard the siren. I pulled over on the shoulder and turned the key. I hadn’t been speeding. I had no unpaid tickets—no reason for him to stop me. The police car pulled up close behind. A white cop got out the car.
I had my window lowered and was gripping the top of the steering wheel with both of my hands in full view before he got to my door. I was sweating over my entire body before he even uttered a word.
“I pulled you over because I smelled liquor on your breath,” he said.
Oh shit, this is it, I thought. This is the psycho cop. He smelled liquor on my breath while he was driving 50 yards away from my car. Right then and there, I knew I might not make it out of the encounter alive. I wondered when I might start seeing images from my relatively brief life flash before me.
He bent down and leaned closer to me. “Recite the alphabet backwards,” he said in a low voice.
It was instinctive. I didn’t miss a beat. Looking straight at him, I started at it: Z, Y, X, W, V…
He scratched his forehead.
U, T, S, R, Q, P…
His jaw dropped.
O, N, M, L, K…
“OK, OK, that’s enough,” he said. He stood straight up. He just looked at me and stared. Then he asked, “Do you think you’re sober enough to make it back home?”
I was on a roll. I wanted to finish. But I had sense enough to stop. Yes, I answered.
“Then get on now.” He turned and went back to his car. He was back on the road before I even turned the key in the ignition. Then it started to sink in what had just happened and what I had just done. I started laughing, then came the tears.
Thank you, Mama, I said out loud. Alphabet day just saved my life.
A group of Detroit writers and artists contributed to the Metro Times “Special Pandemic Poetry and Fiction Issue,” guest edited by Kresge Artist Fellow, Drew Philp. The special issue was dedicated to supporting the publication which is facing dire financial difficulty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of Kresge Arts in Detroit’s ongoing commitment to supporting Detroit area artists in times of need, the organization provided retroactive stipends for the writers who participated in the project many of whom subsequently donated their stipends to support the fundraising efforts of the publication. This is what solidarity looks like within the arts.