Because I am a small person, olive-skinned, female and not old but not young, more senora than senorita, I am accepted in places white men my age are not. Not because I am blessed, mind, but because I do not matter much. I am invisible. I feel reasonably safe and secure here because it is no different from the neighborhoods I grew up in. Also, because I am walking a pit bull with fantastic teeth and lolling tongue, whom no one else knows to be a pussy cat, happy to lick the hand of anyone, good or bad, who holds out treats.

“Good dog,” I tell her, as we pass a gaggle of men and women holding court on the sidewalk. All are wearing masks, I am not. We never run into anyone at this time on a Saturday morning, but George Floyd has stirred things up.  Ashamed, I turn my head away, hide my mouth in my armpit, but not before I hear a lecture the eldest man is giving. “I told my granddaughter and I’m telling you. You do what you have to do. To stay alive.” He means like fending off men who push you into dark, deserted places. He means not questioning the police, whether in Alabama, Minnesota or NY City, whether in broad daylight or in winter’s dark. He means, “Drive to the light. Pull over. Pocket dial 911,” if you are ever wrongfully accosted or in fear of being accosted because if you are black, or dark-skinned or not invisible, like me, and you are in America you will be. Accosted. Eventually.

It is a similar feeling to being any young girl walking through a bad neighborhood or simply a trading floor in 1982. You will be accosted, whether slapped on the butt or grabbed and kissed on the mouth, because you are you, which is nothing you can do anything about. Skin color, youth, gender does not rub off. It is not something you can un-don and leave at the side of the roadway. Morphing into someone else.

The fact that I can even think or express this thought is sad and maddening. And I am not a black woman. There is so much I do not know.

By the settlement house in the center of the North Complex, we pass an elderly white woman pushing an empty food cart, or clinging to it, we are not sure which. She looks ok, just slow moving. I nod, crossing the street for a polite social distance.

We are in a shopping center now. All night long across the nation riots and protests have broken out, but it is eerily quiet here. And then it is not! A cacophony of shouts and screams to our left makes me jump. I discreetly turn my emerald ring, the one thing left from my first marriage, inward, until only the band shows when I clench my fist. Why tempt fate?

What will I do if I have to throw a punch?

I have never hit anyone with anything, though I threw a teacup at my ex-husband once. The cup went straight up, turned over, tossed the full boatload of tea all over me, then clunked down on my head, crashed to the floor and shattered at my feet. “It’s broken,” I said. I meant all of it, us, the marriage, the way we were living. “Buck up, fuzzy!” said my ex, chucking me under the chin. “You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met.”

Why shouldn’t there be protests here? Now? On a Saturday morning? Full scale riots and outrage and spitting and hooting and hawing. The breaking of so many things, already torn apart. Americana: the lost heart. Why not?

But it is only a father and his two daughters sitting in an old Ford Ecosport, car radio turned up to an old baseball game, a repeat, as no team sports are playing anywhere since the new Coronavirus came to haunt us, shrieking when their team makes a hit, ‘cussing when the fly ball’s caught. “Stee-rike. Batter out!”

Aiming unwaveringly for the bridge, we finally come to Queensbridge Park. The sun peaks through the clouds and burnishes the plane tree leaves. It’s hot. It’s humid. Several families, black, Hispanic and Asian play a highly distanced game of soccer on the green, kicking the ball back and forth, back and forth. A little girl and her sister play paddle ball in the grass. Myrtle stops to eat some of the tenderest shoots, her morning salad, which will only come back out one end or the other, completely intact, but I let her anyway, she so enjoys it. Close to the water, on the steps of the tulip garden, two friends share an egg sandwich. Myrtle trots towards them. “Perra linda!” they coo. She doles out a few friendly knee licks as they pet her head and I stand 6 feet away at the other end of her leash. What she really wants is the egg. Before she knocks them flat, I tug her back.

“Por que, Mami? Por que?” Myrtle makes her best frowny face, head down, soft back.

“You know por que!”

She looks up. “Such nice peoples.”

“Yes, until you take away their sandwich.”

“I want only a little leetle beet.” She crosses her paws like a kiss.

Further on three police people, it sounds funny I know but one is a woman, police persons, members of the police force, stand around the water fountain and shoot the breeze near their parked patrol car. One drinks lemonade from a plastic cup with a straw, while somehow keeping his mask in place. The others sip coffee, one iced and one hot, from Dunkin’ Donuts. No one drinks water from the fountain.

Iced and hot get into the patrol car. Lemonade stays behind, plopping himself down on a park bench.

I dated a detective once in Compton, which was maybe not the best place to date an Irish cop. On the night he died, he picked up his badge and gun from the night table, listened to the familiar metallic scratch as they scraped the wood, loaded his weapon with a silver clip of bullets then flipped the safety. He did this in the old days, when we first met, when we met in hotels, when I was married to someone else, the same routine every time he left. Badge. Gun. Bullets. I’d liked it then. He picked up his cuffs. I wasn’t in the mood for anything rough, but he asked me, “Do you want it smooth or rough?” In response, I kissed him gently on the mouth.

Nothing good ever comes from a gun.

“Aieeee, Mami! Watch where you go!” Myrtle cried.

Dogs have four-wheel drive, people don’t. We were on the baseball diamond, sand and clay oozing water. I slipped into the thick of the slick and landed in a half split, twisting my right knee.

“You no Broadway dancer.” Myrtle chortled.

The cop ran over, nightstick clacking, the familiar clink of cuffs hitting leather and falling on themselves. “You alright, ma’am?”

And when did I become a Ma’am instead of a Miss, I wondered. “I’m fine,” I said a little too sharply. He helped me up. I could walk, it just hurt like hell.

“Cute dog.” Myrtle grabbed his pants leg and shook it. “What the –”

“Oh shit! You got any food in there?” A couple of M&Ms fell to the ground. Myrtle pounced on them. “Sorry about that,” I said.

He went back to his bench laughing. Done with her snack, Myrtle looked up.

“Buck up, fuzzy,” I tell her, “You’re the funniest person I know.”

– Paula Brancato