Black And White

No shades of Grey

She was crouching in a deserted part of the university underneath a ramp with her cellphone. “They’re after me.”
“Who?’’
“The FBI. They are on hold, Jade what should I say to them?”
“Holy shit what did you do? Just call your father.”
“No, no way.”
“OK Sandra let me talk to them”.
All summer Sandra’s campus had buzzed with the injustice of shootings and racism. The barometer of racial tension was high. But somehow this had not communicated anything to her. She was engrossed in her project of setting up a macramé business. Her head spinning out in some kind of startup space.
And it never occurred to her she was weird. After all, why wouldn’t you walk around campus all day in your white silk dressing gown with your head in a black bandana. Why should she get changed in the morning? It just used up time and anyway Hugh Heffner did it. Only she didn’t have a cigar. At the twenty-four hour store they would look at her as if to say ‘what the…’ but she never felt their stare.
This semester she was sharing a flat with Jade. And in a way with Marco, Jade’s boyfriend who was always at their place.
Jade put up with her. But Sandra didn’t see that. She didn’t pick up that Jade thought of her as strange. The day before while unpacking the dishwasher Jade asked her
“So have you ever had a screw?”
“Arrr no,” she replied.
Sandra’s head was in a money idea. That day she was going to visit the local bank to get a business loan. She planned to take her funkiest macramé and surprise the manager with it. In the end that didn’t go so well. So when she didn’t get the loan she asked the manager, a white middle aged guy from Texas if he’d ‘like a screw?’ He looked at her and said
“Yeah heck why not, you on tinder?”
“No”
“ In that case let’s just meet at the Lake hotel.”
Later that night after several attempts at letting go of her virginity she walked out while the manager shouted
“It’s not me honey, you’re finding it hard to connect.”
This somehow agitated her and she wanted to cuddle. These feelings arrived with such monster intensity she lost control. Usually she did not like people touching her. Now she wanted a human cuddle more than the black fur on her old Titanic teddy from Grandpa. She reached the flat, ran upstairs, into Jade’s room and hopped into bed with Marco and Jade. It turned out they were just in the middle of foreplay
“Sandra you Kook, what the!” Jade had whined.
Sandra however wiggled between the two of them.
“I just want a cuddle.”
“Oh my God’ Jade shrieked.
Marco forever Sandra’s pal just said
‘Aww she just wants a little snuggly hug’.
And so she snuggled right into his black broad hairy chest.’
“I tried Jade I tried to have a screw with the manager at the bank but well…’
to which Jade shot back
“Oh for fucks sake. You what! Get GET get out!”
Jade swung out of bed, dragged Sandra from the bed and pushed her out the door. But Sandra persisted
“If I bring my teddy back can I sleep with you two?’
Jade had yelled
“You need to see someone”.
Which seemed strange to Sandra—who else was she to see?
The next morning in her own bed the monster feelings had disappeared. Mostly she did not have them. Strange visitors that they were. She got up and went out carrying her black and white balls of macramé string and her latest large piece ‘the curtain’. During the few lectures she attended, to keep herself awake she would weave macramé. That day she had made a beautiful belt but the lecturer took it from her and wore it on his little stage whilst quoting Japanese TQM on change management
“And so Sandra If you stay in this world, you will never learn another one”.
She was completing a business degree – mainly for her Dad a white banker.
Later that afternoon her cell phone rang on the way home—it was Toby. Toby was always after a little stimulation when bored with writing his wildly overdue assignments and he knew Sandra to be a sure touch for answering the phone.
“I’m badly babe, only four hours to go and I’ve got at least 10000 words to finish one years’ worth of reflective bullshit journaling—what you up to?”
“Oh nothing much, call you back in a minute.”
And that’s when the idea smashed into the left side of brain. She had long wanted to decorate the bronze beam near the toilet block. Ceremoniously she hung her large black macramé curtain over the beam and then pinned a big note on it with the words ‘It’s curtains for you’.
She had photographed it and had meant to send Toby the photo but had become distracted with a problem in her next macramé project. It was for a black white macramé sash to put over the hideous bronze plaque honoring servicemen near her flat. An old woman had caught her measuring it and asked her to leave it alone. After working out how to get the dimensions for the plaque the idea for a name for her Business came to her ‘Random acts of black and white macramé’ and she drifted home.
Overnight the black curtain stayed wafting in a light summer night breeze. A group of late night drinkers saw it and the note when they went for a piss. By morning the twitter feed was jamming with comments of racist outrage. On her phone she could see hysterical reports of a sinister black curtain suggesting threats to black students. Below a video of her lovely curtain, white supremacists made comments like:
“if I hear a university supports affirmative action I won’t donate”.
She was being described as likely a member of the Klu Klux Klan. The FBI had tracked down her cell phone.
And now, overhead on the ramp, a column of black and white student protestors was walking to the chant
“We stand together and we’re not afraid”
After a while the FBI guy agreed to talk to Jade
“You know Sandra?”
“Yes she lives with me”.
“Is she some kind of racist?”
” No, but she’s a total kook—you see she’s got an obsession with black and white macramé.”
“So she IS some kind of extremist”
“No! No Sandra is harmless she doesn’t understand… look she likes to decorate the university with macramé, here talk to my boyfriend Marco—he’s black.”
“This girl sum kind of racist son?”
“Sandra, get on, this some kind of joke! she’s not racist why she’s just finished a black and white macramé tea cosy for Michelle Obama.”
Having been reassured of her harmless character the FBI guy hung up from what seemed an eternity of teleconferencing.
Sandra put her phone away and looked up to see Kerry Johnson the psychologist.
“I Had a call from the FBI Sandra.”
“That’s odd, me too.”
“Okey dokey lets you and I see if we can get some shades of grey happening with the administration on this one. Been taking your medication?”