The parking lot at Safeway was crowded, as it always is, around 5:00.  All of us there were tired and trying to gather a few things for dinner.  Frozen dinners and pre-cooked rotisserie chickens moved down black conveyer belts to be rung up and bagged by employees whose exhaustion mirrored ours.

A young Black man, wearing faded light blue, saggy jeans that landed in waves of cloth around his ankles and a black wool cap (though it was over 85 degrees outside) stood at the edge of the my line, in front of a small refrigerator, and juggled a large Gatorade back-and-forth between his hands.  A White man in his 40s , carrying a middle-aged pot belly and a small basket of items was scanning to see which was the shortest and fastest moving line. He asked the young Brotha, “Are you in line?”

“Naw man.  I ain’t in line so I don’t know why in the fuck you talkin’ to me,” the young man snapped.

“Really now,” the white man retorted as he laughed (condescendingly) and met the Black man’s stare.

I immediately tensed up – or rather – I tensed up more.  All week, everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve been on edge. Americans are in a such a state of collective mourning and anger that decency, manners and patience seem more difficult to conjure.  We are all like those people who come back to work on Monday after burying someone we loved on Saturday. We don’t know how to function anymore. Things that used to matter, no longer do. You get an email from your boss, or a client asks you for something and immediately you want to curse them out; your friend from high school posts a picture of her kid going to summer camp and you have the fight the impulse to write, “No one gives a fuck . . . do you understand what’s going on in the world?” A driver looks as if he is going to cut you off and you look at him in the back mirror and think, “Not today.  Not TO-day.  Do NOT fuck with me today.”

Throughout the week, I’ve swung from Malcolm X to Martin (and then back and forth again). Part of the time, I’ve been walking around in the, “I wish a motherfucker would” frame of mind.” Yes, I’m an adult non-violent, got-a lot-to-lose sista, but this week, I felt all my education and upbringing could disappear in two seconds.

Conversely, at other points I have craved healing.  When I am out, I’ve noticed White people who look at me and simply smile for no apparent reason. I smile back. I see the “Black Lives Matter” signs and t-shirts, and notice the social media hashtags.  With those simple exchanges, I believe some of us are signaling a hopefulness.  Despite our country’s madness, I am still hopeful.

So when the young Brotha snapped at the White man in Safeway, my emotions swung like they had all week.  First, I was just human: “Damn dude, why do you have to be so mean for no reason? What are you so angry about?” Then I remembered what he was angry about and I became a Black American. I was angry too. Then I swung to being an American, and I was sad. I hurt for both men. I hurt for us.

America is not who we thought she was.  Not for any of us.  She betrayed us. She, a chameleon, revealed different parts of herself to various groups and each group thought that they knew her intimately (some thought she was theirs exclusively). And now, her assertions about “We the People”, and “Justice for All” have been revealed to be the lies that they always were. And instead of accepting that America is troubled and in need of therapy, we are pissed at the other lover. Some are mad because they’ve realized that they may be losing their America, their dream. Some are mad because they realize that America was never theirs in the first place. Some are enraged because they’ve always known that America couldn’t be trusted; and that she has literally broken hearts along the way. But some find it easier to bury other people than to look at the truth and bury the dream.