Dinner Party

Published May 7, 2021

Laughter punctuated the end of the story. The sound and the smiles danced around her, trapping her, taunting her.

She hugged her arms tighter around her body. She thought she had wrapped them as tightly as she could after the football discussion. She’d tried to interject a different - she thought more kind - view, but the volume of her voice couldn’t match the host’s. The judgement against a black man stood; its surface roots appear rational, defendable, but the deeper soil where the sustaining roots hold is racism.

That was after she’d let the girlie comment go, too accustomed to men using this label to demean their rivals, to portray them as weak. The two were connected. How could they view a black man, who made his point quietly, as anything other than a baby?

Still seeking to ground herself, she picked up only the beginning elements of the final story. A possum, hiding under the car in the driveway early one morning. The animal was hissing, defending its position. Short on time, the family turned the hose on the possum, forcing it out from under the car.

And didn’t hold the dog tightly enough.

The possum fled for the trees, but couldn’t outrun a hunting dog.

She gasped as the dog caught its prey. She felt the crunch of its bones. She didn’t have to imagine too hard; the host was all too glad to recount each gorey detail. 

She’d successfully stifled the tears, telling herself it was the natural order of things. 

But it wasn’t the end.

Underneath the parked car, where the scared possum had hissed at her foes, lay tiny baby possums. Orphans.

That the dog picked up in its mouth and tossed in the air. That the family took to a wildlife rehabilitator to raise. That caused the dinner guests to erupt in laughter.

The callous disregard for life sucked the air from her lungs.

She looked for a way out, an excuse, a bathroom she could flee to. It wasn’t what she’d expected, signing up for a dinner party with the church. It wasn’t what she needed, after working a whole day and squeezing in time to prepare a covered dish to share. It wasn’t who she was, a person who remained silent in the face of meanness and cruelty.

Perhaps by divine intervention, perhaps by human recognition of time, the party began to break up. She waited over to the side for her jacket, pretending to fuss with her crockpot. Smiled bravely and even said thank you to the host and his wife, who insisted that her husband help take the heavy cookery to the car. Because a girl couldn’t possibly carry such a heavy dish. 

She navigated out of the driveway and along the windy back roads, peaceful on her arrival in the light of the setting sun, but now treacherous under cover of darkness.

Safely on the main road, the tears streamed down her face. Tears for the mama who died for protecting her babies. Tears for people so easily marginalized. Tears of self-pity and frustration for the effort of constantly trying to fit in a world of people who are so unaware.

But most of all, tears of disappointment, for not speaking up. Because at least she knew better.