"He Had No Shoes"

“How much do you think this suit cost?” my father inquired. Can you hear the tone in his voice? Think Socratic method. He was trying to teach me something about how small my world was, how small my thinking.
“I dunno, $500?” I offered, thinking that a preposterous price.
“Fifteen hundred dollars,” was his reply. I was busted. Busted for shabbiness.
“Fair enough,” was my retort, “How much did my suit cost?”
“$200”
“Six”
“Hundred?”
“Dollars, as in, I gave them ten dollars and they gave me change.” Score one for your plucky daughter. This is me and my Dad.
He was once a truant officer, a Sociology professor. Think “Talented Tenth.”
Later, after we had grown, he discovered his will to power. Now, he’s Cliff Huxtable. Yes, with the sweaters – yes, all of it. And he opines aloud why his children do not show more enterprise. And we say, um, because we were raised by do-gooder civil servants. Duh.
My shabbiness has become a point of pride, but I’m not above exploiting my father’s material success – at least when it comes to establishing my “cred” to my clients.
They want to meet me on my terms. They say,
“Back there, we were rich. If you’d come to our house, we would have showed you such hospitality. The servants would have had the coffee out before you could take off your shoes. That’s the thing about America that is hard. Here we are at the bottom. These White people. Nobody can tell that we were rich.”
And I say,
“That’s the thing about America that is miraculous. Nobody can tell. Why should they? You were rich. You may be rich again, if, that is, we can settle your immigration matter.” And they start to roll their eyes and I say, “My father came from Jamaica. He didn’t have shoes.”
This has the desired effect. They pause in the middle of their cynicism. They look me over. Maybe they don’t know that my suit came from Target. And when I say Target, I don’t mean that I bought it at Target. I mean somebody bought it at Target and gave it to Goodwill, where I bought it. They think I’m wealthy. They think I’m powerful. They think, her father is Black. He didn’t have shoes. Now here she is.
And they believe.
Now the thing about the shoes – that is a bold-faced lie. He must have had shoes. He came over on a plane. Surely they wouldn’t have let him on the plane if he didn’t have shoes. It is a story my family tells. He came over. It was snowing. He had never seen snow. This barefoot boy from Jamaica. And somewhere somebody embellished. And now it sounds like he rowed over in a leaky raft. And shoeless, to boot.
It’s a lie, just like my Target suit. But it’s my shortcut to telling them, “You say these things because you want me to respect you. Because you think that to me, to America, all you are is your poverty. But that’s not what we’re about here. I want to see what you’re made of. And so does this country.”
And THAT is no lie.