R.E. Hayes
Author
BE WHITE WITH ME
With apologies to the great Tolstoy, all happy Black families are not alike and every unhappy Black family is unhappy in its own way. Meet the Dunlap family: Linnea is the polar star in the firmament. Her father Eddie has early-onset Alzheimer’s and is acting out with a loaded gun. Recently at her workplace, a disturbed criminal shot a cop. Inexplicitly, the shooter asks Linnea to be White with him. Rowena, the mother, dotes on Linnea’s big brother Terry and she is helplessly codependent. Terry arrives home from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba harboring deeply personal secrets. Rowena resolves to cope in this ever-changing world just as Donald Trump emerges on the political scene, while Linnea secretly longs to have Eddie institutionalized which leaves her grappling with nagging self-recrimination.
As an attorney and daughter of a soon-to-be convicted felon, Linnea fears her life and legal career will never again be the same even as she grapples with complicated matters of the heart involving different men, and both are keepers. Then, one winter night, Eddie vacates the rational world and now Linnea must save him from himself or two unrelated families could be shattered forever. Be White With Me empathetically spotlights the emotional turmoil set in motion when a by-product of Alzheimer’s is senseless violence. And while the public generally thinks of dementia as tragic memory loss, sometimes that’s the least of the problems.
Sample - Chapter 1
“Don’t Stop Believin” faded out and WLIT FM 93.9 segued to a commercial sending Linnea’s finger skipping to the classical station. Rigoletto. Humming along with a lilting voice, she smiled, remembering the catchy melody from her childhood. Next, she heard a report from the car radio of a “shooting incident at a major supermarket in the Wrigleyville neighborhood,” one of many operated by her corporate employer. Another shooting. But this time it involved Linnea’s company, her job, her life. An unknown person had shot a cop and furious Chicago law enforcement personnel were combing the area.
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The announcer completed the news summary by predicting a forty percent chance of showers later that night. Linnea switched back to the golden oldies on WLIT where The Pointer Sisters were brazenly yearning for “a lover with a slow hand” after all these years, manifesting our eternal need to sing. Earlier Linnea had let herself get carried away by the music, dancing behind the wheel at a stoplight, hands flying, head bobbing, forgetting how she, a corporate attorney, might unintentionally trigger road rage. Driving while Black, with misinterpreted hand gestures can be hazardous to your health: Chicago gangbangers shoot people dead for less.