Tell Me You Don’t Belong Here Without Saying You Don’t Belong Here

There are all those memes on social media — “tell me you are a dog owner without saying you are a dog owner” or something like that, and the photo will be of a shredded dog bed, chewed inside out and stuffing strewn about by an overzealous, rambunctious labrador. Or “Tell me you have a kid home from college without saying you have a kid home from college,” and the photo is a mountain of laundry.

My meme a few Sunday mornings back would have been: “Tell me you don’t belong here without saying you don’t belong here.” I was driving to a trail head on the Weston/Wayland line.

The photo would be my 10 year old Toyota Camry in front of one of the sprawling 6,000 square foot homes with multi-car garages and manicured lawns, my slate gray car dented at the fenders and scratched on the sides from a decade of parallel parking on Boston streets, coated in a tinge of powdery yellow green pollen, punctuated with bird shit.

Another “Tell me you don’t belong here without saying you don’t belong here” is this sign, one of many lining Route 30 in Weston. In two years, my 12 year old will be entering 9th grade, and like many BPS parents who don’t already have a child in one of the three selective, exclusive exam schools, we are thinking about moving to the suburbs. I can’t afford a home in Weston, with a median list price of $2.5M, even an old, not updated home on a tiny piece of land. But maybe an apartment I could do. I already live in an apartment, and the proposed apartments are affordable housing under the Massachusetts 40B Housing Statute. But as the sign shows, there’s a lot of opposition in this friendly town. The facebook page for “Stop the Weston Whopper” says they are a group of concerned citizens who support affordable housing. But you know — just not there and like that, in this 90.26% white town with a median income of $196.6K (thanks, Google). I hear lots of dog whistles, tuned to pitches that only the mutts can hear, the ones without pedigree or papers to prove their purity.

The last meme is a picture I didn’t take but should have. As soon as something felt extraordinarily wrong, I should have taken out my phone and turned on the video to document what was happening just in case I got hurt or died. Someone was driving too close behind me. I figured it was because I was on a winding, unfamiliar two lane road, and I was too slow for the man behind me. He was driving a white BMW SUV; maybe he lived there and knew this road like the back of his hand. Surely he’d go around me as soon as he could.

But he didn’t. It was 7:30 on a Sunday morning; there was no one else on the road. He had plenty of opportunities to pass me. I had assumed the speed limit was 45mph, which felt too fast for me on an unfamiliar road, but with the man so close behind me, I had no choice but to maintain it. He didn’t let up. I could see his face clearly in my rear view mirror. All I can tell you is that he was white, his mouth twisting and top lip curling as he uttered — something. There was a time I could have convinced myself he was shouting a song, but, no, I couldn’t hear him.

I thought about the bumper stickers on my car — an Obama sticker from 2012, the Human Rights Campaign equal sign, Kamala Harris — all weathered and peeling. Did they make him angry? At some point since I could see him, had he seen my Asian face, and did he blame me for the pandemic? Why didn’t he just go around me? I could slow down and wave him around me and pray he’d do exactly that. What if I stopped short — would he slam into me? There was a time, when I was younger, much more indignant, and far less afraid, that I might have done that, especially in a 10 year old car. But not now. Now I know that even when I do tell this story, there are people who will not believe me. They won’t tell me they don’t believe me, but they will ask me questions that say they don’t believe me.

Finally, when Siri told me that — thank God — I would soon be making a right turn off of Route 30, I used my turn signal to communicate that I would be slowing down. He didn’t turn on his signal, so I was relieved to be getting away from him. As I made the turn, I glanced in my mirror, expecting to see him peel away from me. Instead, the front bumper, grill, and BMW blue and black logo entirely filled my rear view mirror. He was going to ram right into me, regardless. I gunned my car, taking the turn way too fast. Then I was alone on the street, my hands shaking at the wheel.

Dear Weston, Message received. I don’t belong here.

(Side note: When I shared some details about an early draft of this piece, which included someone else’s snarky but humorous comment about BMW drivers, more than a few were quick to point out that it is offensive to make such a broad generalization about BMW drivers. It sucks to be stereotyped, doesn’t it?)