You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey

by Amber Ruffin

  A quick note about white tears: Why? Why do they work so well? It’s truly a great defense against being called a racist. I mean, it doesn’t work for Black people. Can you imagine if Black people cried every time we were called a name? Every time we were accused of something we didn’t do? Tell you what, I would be carrying around tissues at all times (not just when I go see musicals). I think, when a white person accused of racism cries, people think, Oh no. I need to fix this. White people shouldn’t cry. They should never have to cry! I think when white people see white people cry, they relate and feel sorry for them. And when white people see Black people cry, they can’t relate. Even though Black people have a billion things to cry about. Maybe it just boils down to the fact that white vulnerability is valuable and Black vulnerability puts the Black person in danger.

  I did not expect this book to get this deep, y’all. Dang. We are ending up in unexpected places all over this book! ***raises margarita*** To the journey!

  Fun Stories about Kids!

  Dana

  Lacey’s best friend from kindergarten through the fifth grade was Dana. A very nice little white girl who lived down the street. When they were five, Lacey and her other best friend, Laura, a little Black girl, found Dana sitting on the swings all alone and they immediately became the Three Musketeers. They had a whole elementary school career together until one day, in the fifth grade, as Lacey was leaving their house, Dana’s mom said, “I think it’s time Dana spends more time with friends that look like her.” The three of them never hung out together again. I wonder if Dana was sad or if she was like, “Good. I’ve been needing some new friends.”

  The Summer Arts Program

  When Lacey was in the fourth grade, she got to go to the gifted summer arts program. It was this really cool summer course where kids who were extra-talented artists would go learn things about art that they didn’t have the time or resources to teach you in elementary school. It took place in this big, beautiful classroom with tables instead of desks. It had three teachers instead of one, so everyone got a ton of special attention. The geek in Lacey was so excited. She arrived with a backpack full of special art supplies Mom bought for her. She arrived early, chose a spot at a table in the front of the class. All of the children laid out their supplies. Each kid had brought different supplies, but everyone had crayons. And that’s where Lacey had ’em beat. Lacey didn’t have any ordinary crayons; she had a big, brand-new box of Chubbies crayons! Chubbies had just come out and no one had them yet. By having them, Lacey was truly stuntin’ on these hoes. As we were writing this I told Lacey I didn’t remember what Chubbies crayons were and she got mad.

  If you had to google it, too, tweet at me, “Amber, it’s okay that you didn’t remember it.” And if you did remember what Chubbies crayons were, tweet at Lacey, “Lacey, it’s okay Amber didn’t remember it.” But do google it, because they are cute.

  Lacey perfectly organizes everything on her table. She takes great care to set the Chubbies out in the upper-left-hand corner. A perfect place. Before class starts, one of the teachers, let’s call her Crayon Karen, walks around and greets every child. But when she got to Lacey, instead of greeting her, saying hello, or making sure she felt welcome, Crayon Karen came over and snatched Lacey’s Chubbies off of her table and snarled, “Where did you get these crayons from?” Lacey, a frigging child, replied, “My mom bought them for me.” The teacher ignored the answer and, Chubbies in hand, walked away. She proceeded to ask every white student if the Chubbies belonged to them. At this point, Lacey was crying. The class hadn’t even started yet and this woman had made a little girl cry. But Lacey knew redemption was coming. ’Cause when this class was over, she would get to tell Mom. Crayon Karen ended up returning the unclaimed crayons to Lacey (without an apology, of course) and starting her class. Little baby Lacey was fuming mad.

  She went home and told Mom what happened and Mom calmly said, “l’ll take care of it tomorrow.” Now, if you didn’t know my mom and you heard her calmly say she’d take care of it tomorrow, you might think she didn’t care at all. But what Lacey knew was that Mom was livid and was going to hurt some feelings.

  Mom parks the car the next day and walks Lacey into class. Before they walk into the classroom Mom says to Lacey, “Let me see your backpack.” Mom proceeds to go up to each staff member and tells them about the items in Lacey’s backpack. “This is Lacey, my daughter. These are her crayons. The items she brought with her in this backpack belong to her.” The first two teachers think, What an odd thing to say, but do your thing. When she walks up to the last teacher, Crayon Karen, and says it, the teacher is dumb enough to make the mistake of replying, “Yes. Um… Yes. I see that. We, ummm… We figured that out yesterday.” Mom has her idiot. “Did you? Did you get to the bottom of that mystery? Well, if you couldn’t tell they belonged to Lacey by the fact they were on her desk and came out of her backpack, and she told you so, I thought you would need to hear it from me before you waste everyone’s time again by accusing little girls of theft.” Crayon Karen smartens up and says nothing. She’s scared and she should be and it feels good. Mom walks Lacey to her table, watches as she lays out all her stuff, and eyeballs the teachers hard. They act right for the rest of the summer.

  A lot of these stories end badly, but watching Mom tear into this lady was one of the most satisfying things of all time. Reread it, imagine it vividly, and store it in your mind to replay the next time you’re in the mood to watch someone get their comeuppance.

  Scary Art Man

  In high school, there were two art teachers. A nice one and one that was comically mean. Luckily, Lacey had the nice art teacher. There was so much interest in art that the two art classes would take place next door to each other at the same time. That’s right, reader. Public schools used to have art classes! One day, while Lacey is sitting safely in the comfort of her normal art class, the mean teacher bursts in. He walks into Lacey’s class, points directly at Lacey, and he says, “You! Come out here right now. Follow me.” Lacey is terrified. The mean art teacher has her now. She won’t survive much longer. Mean Art Teacher takes her to the front of his completely white class and says to her, “Face the students.” He gives a short art lesson using Lacey. He says, “This is the face of the Negro. This is what the negroid race looks like. They have a big nose and full lips. Their skin can be light brown to almost black. When you’re drawing a Negro, it should look something like this.” Lacey stood there, mortified. “Go back to class now.” She walked back to her class in shock.

  Can you imagine if that guy had been Lacey’s teacher? She’d probably be insane by now! Just kidding. She’d be fine. Every other story in this book is proof!

  Jimmy

  The gym teacher who we all hated at school also worked at the local bowling alley. We didn’t live that far from it, so we would go there to hang out or bowl or have a hot dog. Our brother, Jimmy, absolutely loves video games and would go there to play them as much as he could. One day, Jimmy took a bunch of coins to the bowling alley. Nothing special about the coins. Mostly quarters with some silver dollars or fifty-cent pieces mixed in. When he paid for his food with those coins, Mr. Gym Teacher called the cops. Because he had never seen a silver dollar or a fifty-cent piece, he accused Jimmy of using counterfeit coins. He accused a child of inventing a special denomination of coin, minting it, and using it to buy hot dogs. When I think about this I wonder, How in the fuck did this man, the dumbest human being alive, have two jobs? The kicker is, the cops brought Jimmy home. Jimmy had to cut his time at his favorite place short because some idiot had never seen fifty-cent pieces before and decided to call the cops on a little boy. And, for reasons that include but are not limited to racism, the cops put a child in their car and brought him home instead of telling the idiot gym-teaching cashier that he owed a child an apology.

  This book isn’t about Jimmy, but I could talk about him all day. Jimmy is a video-game comic-book nerd. Once, in high school, he had left fireworks in
his backpack and they were found by the principal or a counselor or whoever that lady was. He had no idea they were in there and wasn’t planning on setting them off in school, but it was against the rules to have them there, so the lady sent Jimmy to spend two weeks at a juvenile-delinquent school downtown. Those kids broke Jimmy’s collarbone. If this lady knew anything, she would’ve been able to see that coming. But she didn’t because when she looked at Jimmy, she saw someone who belonged at that school instead of the king of nerds and someone who forgot he had fireworks in his backpack. This lady is my friend’s mom’s friend and I will always, truly, madly, deeply hate her guts. Because—and I don’t think this needs to be said—if this were a little white child she was friends with, she would not have sent them there.

  The Actually Scary Story

  When Lacey was five, she was walking to the grocery store with our two older sisters. On the corner of our street was an old, rundown house. An old man who you almost never saw lived there. It was known as the “old man house.” The old man’s lawn was crazy overgrown. It had a lot of weeds and vines and stuff and spilled over onto the sidewalk. As they were walking by, our sister Angela’s shoe got caught in the weeds, even though she was on the sidewalk. That’s how bad his lawn was. Angela bends down to free her shoe from the lawn and re-tie it. The old man sees them and comes outside. He is enraged. He’s yelling at them to get off of his property. No one is on his property. They’re all on the sidewalk. Angie, even though she’s so young. is completely unbothered. Still shouting, the man walks right up to Angie. Angie stands up, toe-to-toe with this old man. He’s tiny, so they’re about the same size. Angie has both her fists clenched as she looks this screaming old man in the eye. She is waiting for this bitch to make a move. He’s a billion years old and has decided to scream at children! But okay. In her face he shouts, “N*****, get your foot off of my lawn!” Again, she is on the sidewalk. Lacey is frozen in fear, but Angie just looks right up at him and says, “Your lawn reached out and grabbed my foot! If you took better care of it, people would be able to walk down the street!” She doesn’t budge an inch. She looks at him like, “Feeling froggy, bitch?” Fun fact about Angie: She ain’t no punk.

  Angie stares this old man down so frigging hard that he walks away from her! Terrified, they continue to walk to the store. They cross the street and turn the corner so they’re still in front of his property, just across the street. The old man is shouting from his yard, following them, shouting, “N*****, go back to where you came from! Go back to where you came from!” Lacey looks at Chrystal, the oldest, and says, “Let’s just go home.” Chrystal replies, “When he says, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ that’s not what he’s talking about.” The old man is yelling things like “You don’t belong here!” and “You’re gonna get in trouble!” Now, it’s funny that he thought they didn’t belong there. The neighborhood wasn’t Black yet, like it is now, but it was browning up pretty nicely at that point. He must’ve seen the “blackening” of the neighborhood and thought, I’ll scare some kids. That’ll send a message!

  As they ignore him, the old man, furious that he isn’t getting the attention or fear he feels he deserves, goes back into his house and reappears on his porch with a shotgun. He got out a shotgun to defend himself from the five-, eight-, and ten-year-old children who are, at this point, directly across the street. They don’t run or scream; they just stand there, staring at him. They may have encountered racism before, but this is something new. A frigging shotgun! A double-barreled shotgun like from the cartoons. Truly a weapon as old as his beliefs. He’s shouting, pointing his shotgun, and his wife comes out of the front door crying and screaming for him to come inside. He raises the shotgun, aiming it at them, and his wife keeps pulling down his arm, pleading for him to go back inside. Lacey’s not sure why they stood there, or what would’ve been the best thing to do, but when someone is screaming at you, irate for fun, pointing a gun at you, who knows what the right thing to do is. Lacey is so sure this is their last moment on earth. They stand there for what seems like forever, praying for a miracle, when, out of nowhere, a young African American man pulls up right in front of them and yells, “Get in the car!” They were raised not to talk to strangers, but this, I think, is the mother of all exceptions. They dive in the car without hesitation, and he takes them home. That neighbor with the shotgun lived only four houses away from us. The house has since been demolished. Now it’s just an empty lot. If you’re wondering why no one called the police, put this book down. You’ve learned nothing, and this isn’t the book for you.

  This is just one of the billion crazy racist stories that have happened to Angie. The next book will be all of Angie’s stories. There will be no jokes. It will be 1,100 times harsher than most of Lacey’s stories. If that’s hard for you to imagine, think of the difference between Hop on Pop and Twelve Years a Slave. You will get four pages in and throw the book out the window. And with Angie’s luck, it will hit her right in the head.

  SAY HELLO TO CURTIS, THE PALATE-CLEANSING DUCK!

  White Church:

  The Worst Place on Earth

  I am so sorry about this part of the book. These people are real and are probably still at this church. Recently, I saw a headline about one of the pastors who may or may not be mentioned repeatedly in this section. It was an article about how some nutjob pastor said America is safe from coronavirus because Trump is anti-abortion.

  My older sisters got invited to a white youth group. That invitation changed their lives.

  For many Black teenagers in predominantly white spaces, you begin to ignore the racist things people say. I don’t know how to describe this, but you are well aware you live in a racist society. You even know that Omaha is out of the ordinary. You kind of report what is egregious and ignore the less insane. But it is such a regular part of life that you’ve spent a ton of time just “rolling with it.” You’re young; you may not even fully understand how or why you’re being discriminated against or what you can do about it. Church is the perfect place for crazy racist behavior because your guard is completely down. It’s church. Okay, so white church was a bunch of different youth groups gathering from all over the city, from every corner of Omaha. But the church itself is in Bellevue, a city right outside of Omaha. It is whiter than white. So, at this church, Lacey’s was the only Black youth group—among the 300 members of the youth group, they stood out. As you read these stories, keep all that in mind and try to remember that in between all these stories are a fun group of Black and white friends who were great, whose friendships have lasted to this day. Let’s explore that 1980s small-town dynamic, shall we? Here is a collection of stories from this confusing yet eye-opening time in Lacey’s life. How ’bout a fun quote from the pastor of the church to get us started:

  “Music with drums is satanic jungle beats from Africa. It hypnotizes you to make bad decisions.”

  —Pastor Frank

  Jenny

  There was a woman named Jenny at this church who was the most condescending woman on the planet, one of those white women who truly thought she was “down.” Lacey is sitting with a group of white people at church. They’re talking about talking on the phone all night, and Jenny turns to Lacey and says, “Lacey, there’s this thing on your phone and when you’re on a call and a second call comes in, you can just press a button and you can answer the second call. It probably hasn’t reached North Omaha yet.” This woman was talking about call waiting. At this point it had been years since it was invented, and she is a full dum-dum who doesn’t understand how technology works.

  She thought advancements in technology are doled out according to race.

  She may not have thought you had a phone.

  Oh my god.

  I know.

  If you go out to eat with Lacey, you have to send her the menu ahead of time because it’s hard for her to decide what to eat. She’s what I call “dinner indecisive.” One day, she goes out to eat with Sherri and some others and she’
s taking forever to decide what to eat. Everyone else is like, “Lacey, can’t you decide what you want?” “Hurry up!” Then Jenny comes to Lacey’s rescue by saying, “Lacey’s probably never been to a place this nice.” She turns to one of the guys they’re with. “Craig, you’re cultured. Why don’t you help Lacey by explaining to her what’s on the menu? Help her figure out what she wants.” Lacey said, “You need to stop talking right now.” That restaurant? Olive Garden. The Olive Garden: When You’re Here, You’re Condescending.

  Pastor Frank

  It was a large white church filled with white people they were invited to on Wednesday nights. It was a fun, youth-group type of place. The music was loud and they played games and it was a cool place to be with a ton of people their age. The church had big buses that picked up all the young folks. My sisters and their friends didn’t know they were looked down on at first. They didn’t know they came from a place people thought of as bad. Even though the Black kids outdressed them by a mile, the kids at this church still thought the Black kids were dirt poor.