Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Just waiting for Nina to call me back

By Carl Heintze

I tried to call my friend Nina yesterday, but she wasn't in. I get the urge to call Nina every now and then, usually when something like the march on Washington or the O.J. Simpson verdict takes place.

What I'm looking for is reassurance. Nina sometimes gives me a little. At least, I think, she's still talking to me. Nina is about the only black friend I've got, at least the only black person I know well enough to talk frankly about who and what we are.

We're an unlikely couple of friends. Nina is about 20 years younger than I am. She and I met when we both briefly worked at the same place. Then she moved on and I retired. Since then I've kept in touch with Nina sporadically, usually by telephone.

That's not intentional. Nina moves. She shuttles back and forth between her mother's in East Palo Alto and other places. In effect she shifts back and forth between the relative social safety of East Palo Alto (if not out of physical harm's way) and economic necessity.

Nina's talented. Besides her business skills, she's always wanted to be an actress, and, in fact, she has been. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of parts for young black actresses, so it's not easy for her to find roles.

As a consequence, Nina has had several jobs--or at least more than I've had--and acquired a lot of skills.I think of her as an upwardly mobile professional female. She's made her way in the mostly white business community of Silicon Valley, successfully, as nearly as I can tell.

What I don't know is how much this has cost. Outwardly, apparently not much. She has a hearty confident hello, a terrific sense of humor (she can always make me laugh, anyway) and a certain toughness that's evident after you know her a little while.

But the toughness doesn't mean she isn't sympathetic. I like to think it conceals some tenderness, too, especially for her nieces and nephews.

Nina and I became friends for one reason. When we first met, I amazed her. I told her I'd been born in California and I'd never met a black person socially until I was 23. Nina found this so incredible, and me so socially naive, that she just had to study me further. Somehow out of this we developed a friendship.

It's a wary connection. I can only imagine what it must be like to move back and forth between black and white society, to always bear a skin that immediately identifies you to the world. She knows.

How she knows and what it means to her are subjects we've only skirted about. It's not easy to be candid about things like that. But I have had a few clues. One is that she feels more comfortable where everyone's skin is the same color. Who wouldn't? I've only passed through East Oakland in a car, just long enough to feel outnumbered and odd. But I don't have to go through East Oakland very often and I don't have to get out of my car.

Nina goes to the white world almost every day. Every day she has to be different than most of those around her.

I wonder how she sees this. I think of it as looking through a window, a window that can be easily shut.

I also think of it as a window through which a lot of hate and anger has been thrown in both directions. But perhaps it's not the anger and hate that are hard to take; it's the latent fear, indifference and prejudice.

So I'm trying to keep my little window open with a telephone call now and then. I know that's not very much, a gesture really, a very small measure of concern. I know why I do it, too. I'm scared. I'm frightened for both Nina and myself, for all the Ninas and all white people like me. But the terrible part is I don't know what to do about it so I just sit and wait.

I sit by the telephone waiting for Nina to return my call. I don't know if she will. But I hope so.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.