Kumbaya

Not weapon enough

It had been exactly a month since my bike accident where I knocked out my two front teeth. Most of the scabs on my arms and legs had healed. I still only had temporary caps glued on to cover my own little black pointy teeth the dentist had filed down for me. My father was speaking to me once again and life had gotten back to normal. 

Susie and I met one Friday night on the boardwalk and walked together toward the inlet that separated Belmar from Avon-by-the-Sea, the next beachside town.  We were both members of the Presbyterian Youth Group. In the summer, meetings were held on the Second Avenue beach where the swings were located. This was a safe place for me to hang out with my friends and I needed to feel safe.

Those days my father and I fought over whether I could hang out with Susie or not. She’s black with two older brothers. As far as he was concerned that was enough. I knew that she came from a nicer family than I did so I considered it an education and good exposure. He didn’t agree. Friday nights I didn’t have to fight, I just 'went to church.’

There were about ten kids who’d gathered from twelve to sixteen.  We had an older teenager as our leader named Jeff who had dirty blond hair that fell across his forehead. He wore long denim cutoff jeans with a loose white tee shirt, always crisply ironed.  He brought along his guitar and we held our meetings in the sand, still warm from the afternoon sun.  We sang, we talked, and we prayed, though while the others were praying I imagined Jeff as my boyfriend. “Young Girl” playing over and over in my head. At fourteen girls can be quite romantic.

We sat on the beach singing songs of peace while what I heard in the background were the sirens on the streets behind us. I hoped they weren’t on their way to my house only a few blocks away, wondering  if anyone else had that same thought. 

Eventually, we sang the old favorite, Kumbaya. It was then we noticed smoke rising toward the sky getting darker and drifting toward us from the direction of Asbury Park. We didn’t take much notice at first, caught up in the song. It was when the smoke turned black and we realized looking down the beach in the other direction towards Point Pleasant, that it, too, was on fire, we knew something was very wrong. The rioting we heard about in the news was now in the streets of two towns, Belmar, halfway between. The fury was closing in on us.

We sat on the fluffy white sand with the squawking sea gulls diving into the crashing waves of aqua, competing with the melodies played on Jeffs guitar. The clear blue skies above filled with the smoke of anger forced its way into our daily lives.  Kumbaya is not weapon enough when faced with poverty, discrimination, and rage at the disparities of life.  

My fourteenth year was a confusing time for so many reasons.  I was starting high school in the fall and not only was my body changing daily, but my family life was volatile and the world around me was in turmoil.  We watched the anger on the nightly news noting the body count of those young men killed in Vietnam that day. Now surrounded by smoke rising from the fires set by angry protestors burning down towns brought the war from South East Asia to our own front porch.   

Belmar, the town I lived in, gave me a strong foundation of cultural awareness and gave me a sense of open mindedness, too. Because our town was mixed with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant, Black, White, Italian, and Irish; I was offered the opportunity to see as a child, past  color and religion and see the beauty that lies in the differences not the commonality of each of us.  Maybe sitting on the sand singing Kumbaya was just what I needed that soft summer night surrounded by strife.