Tomato toast + Mommy and Gargantubaby talk about the racist history of the United States of America

We’re in the car, driving across San Francisco. It’s Sunday afternoon.

Mommy? How did people ​m​ake this world? GB asks.

What do​ ​​you mean? I glance at him in his car seat over my shoulder.

The restaurants and stuff like that.

This is the conversation I've been preparing to begin for four years. Maybe it’s not the conversation he’s asking for, but I see my opening. We’ve talked about skin color, racism, the police. He knows the names of some people: Malcolm. Frida. Maya. Langston. Martin. I’ve stocked our house with books about all kinds of people. I make sure that the communities he’s a part of every day are diverse racially, socioeconomically, gender-wise, as many ways as I can think of. But for the first time, my kid has asked a question.

​We’re driving down Alabama Street to El Farolito, taking the long way. I start by going all the way back, to when there were no buildings and no roads. I tell him that​ people lived here, and that we now call these people Native Americans, and they still live here, but more of them lived here then. That they had a great relationship with the Earth, and they didn't live in houses, they lived in teepees, which I describe as sort of like tents, and longhouses — and I falter, and he says, "Like long, long houses that get longer when you get hungry?" and I say, "Something like that." I say that they didn't go to restaurants because there weren't any restaurants, that they planted food the way Pops plants food in our backyard. That they caught fish in the rivers and hunted buffalo and made things with the earth and the grasses, like jars and baskets.

But a buffalo is big, he says. It's too big to eat.

It is big, I say. But killing a buffalo was good, because it fed a lot of people. I wonder if I should talk about preserving meat with salt or smoking and I realize I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about, I have no idea how people preserved meat. We talk about buffalo for a pretty long time, and I wonder if we’re going to get derailed. He says, I wish I could see a buffalo, and I can’t believe my luck, I tell him that he can actually see buffalo, like today, in a pen in Golden Gate Park, and this is remarkable and becomes an activity for us for later. I bring us back around.

But it's kind of a terrible story, I say. Are you ready for kind of a terrible story?

Yeah, he says.

People who look like us, people with white skin, came on boats. They came on lots and lots of boats. And they saw this beautiful land.

It's a beautiful land, he says. So it's not all a bad story.

You're right, I say. The land was beautiful. But the White people said, we want all of this. We're going to take it. And the Native American people said, well, we'll make a compromise.

GB knows about compromise.

And the White people said, OK, we'll make a compromise. But the White people tricked them. And you know what they did?

No, says GB.

They killed them, I say. We’re parked now. I look at him when I tell him this. They killed a lot of people.

They killed the Native American and the Black people? he says.

Well, the Black people are a different story. That's pretty bad, too, I say. The stories of Native American and Black people are not all terrible, but the beginning parts are pretty bad.

I feel bad about the Native American people, he says as I'm getting out of the car. I feel like crying as I walk around the car to open his door, but it passes.

I do, too, I say as I open his door and unbuckle his car seat. We walk to the taqueria on the corner, intermittently talking about time, and I know he doesn't have a sense of when any of this happened, or whether I'm talking about myself who did it or people we know who enslaved or were enslaved or killed or were killed.

Was it Friday? he says.

It was on a lot of Fridays, I say.

I want to hear the story about the Black people, he says.

OK, I say. Well, that's different. So the White people came here, and they planted lots of food, and then they planted lots of other things. And they planted this thing called cotton. Do you know what a cotton ball looks like? I realize he doesn't. We don't have cotton balls in our house, we have cotton pads, but he really never sees them.

Cotton is a plant that looks like a little puff ball, I say. And if you grow it, you can process it into a lot of things. You can make clothes, and blankets. And the White people planted all this cotton. But picking cotton is really hard. And they thought, I don't want to do this work. I want someone else to do this work. So you know what they did?

GB is rapt. I can't believe how much I'm condensing, how much I’m saying at one go, but he’s still paying attention, so I keep going.

They got on their boats and they went back across the ocean and they went to a continent called Africa. And you know what they did? It's not good. Are you ready?

Yeah.

They kidnapped people. And they put them on their boats. And they told them, you have to pick our cotton. You have to do whatever we tell you to do, or we're going to kill you. Do you think that sounds fair?

No.

Me, neither.

Now we're talking about the police, because we've talked about the police before, and how the police used to be people who made sure enslaved people did what they were told to do. And we're talking about Indian schools, where Native people were told they had to wear different clothes and speak a different language. Somehow it's not coming out in a complete jumble, and he's still paying attention.

It's our responsibility, I say, as people with white skin to share what we have, to share our resources. It's like sharing your toys. We need to share what we have.

But if I share all my toys, then I won't have any toys left.

Well, I say, it's not giving people your toys. It's giving them back. They weren't really ours.

He chews on this. We continue toward the taqueria. A man sitting on the sidewalk and leaning against the wall asks for money. I tell him I don't carry cash but I can buy him something to eat. I take his order. I stand in line as GB climbs all over the tables and benches. After I order, I take the man his horchata and go back inside to wait for the food. When it comes, I poke through to make sure I have the man's tacos.

Gargantubaby, I say. Remember when I was telling you about sharing? That man is hungry and he doesn't have any money. These are his tacos. I want you to give them to him. GB takes them from me without question. I'll be right behind you, I say. You can say, Here are your tacos! I walk right behind him out the door.

In the sunshine of 24th Street, GB says, Here are your tacos!, in a sweet voice and sets them on the ground beside the man.

Hand them to him, honey, I say, but this is all he's got. The man smiles at me for the first time, smiles at my son, uses a sweet voice in return. His face softens. I wave goodbye.

When we round the corner, I tell GB I'm proud of him. Then I ask him, why did you set the food on the ground instead of handing it to him? Were you afraid?

Yeah, he says. I was afraid he was so hungry he was going to bite me.

Uh-huh, I say. You know, a lot of people are afraid of people who are hungry, or who are Black or who are Native American. But you know what's really true?

But I'm almost at the end of my capacity to translate all this for a 4-year-old. I don't know how to explain this part. I don't want to compare people to spiders, the way my mom used to tell me that spiders were more afraid of me than I was of them. I don't want to tell him not to be afraid. You did great, I say.

Hours later, when we're at home, GB says, Mommy? Will you tell me more of the story about the Native Americans? I've been trying to distract him for hours so I can work, but I close my computer. I get all the books off our shelves about Native Americans. I try to back up again, to tell him about the concept of tribes, telling him they're like families, but he just wants to read the books. So we read a Cherokee book about gratitude, and the book mentions the Trail of Tears, so I tell him about how White people forced Native Americans to move from their homes, killing thousands of them. I'm not sure I'm connecting the dots, about why we remember this history, so that people like him and like me can try to reverse the damage instead of compounding it. He wants to read about Coyote going to the Big Show. I read him the story, filling in the gaps of what I know, noting what I don't. ​

​That night, GB gets up from the dinner table at 7 p.m., curls up with a blanket on the couch, and falls into a deep sleep. He has never done this before. His sister is at her mother's house, his father is on a shoot in Napa Valley. It's just the two of us. Does he do this because he refused to nap today, although he's periodically refused to nap for almost a year? ​We met a friend at a playground earlier today, before the taqueria, who noticed his calm detachment — not a bad mood, just not engaged — who said, Aha. It's a full moon in Aquarius, and he's a Leo. This is why.

Maybe he just took in a lot of pretty intense information about the history of our country and White privilege and our complicity in racist structures.

Or maybe he has COVID. Who knows.

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The tomatoes are ripening in the backyard, so almost every morning I have either a piece of toast with butter or a piece of toast with cream cheese and a fresh tomato and salt. Sometimes we have basil. Sometimes we don’t.