When Mom Went for Artichokes (But Got Arrested Instead)

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Mom didn’t mean to get involved; she only wanted to help. She just felt somebody should call the wife of the man who was getting arrested, to let her know that her husband wouldn’t be home for dinner. As it turns out, mom didn’t make it home for dinner either. It was uptown New Orleans, February 9th, 1973. We all remember the date—it was also dad’s birthday.

“It was the first snowfall in New Orleans in fifty years,” Mom told me recently, as we  watched whiteness blanket the patio picnic table from the comfort of matching Lazy Boy recliners in her home in Ulster county, New York. That’s not quite true, I discovered later. According to The National Weather Service, whose records date back to 1849 for the Crescent City, there have been seventeen “snow events” with sticking power. Still, it was an oddity, and my mother understood the significance. I was seven, and my brother Robey was ten. This was our first snowfall. It was just starting to come down as we walked to the Winn Dixie market after school. Mom wanted to elevate a weeknight meal to a celebration. Stuffed artichokes, that would do it. When we reached Palmer Park, it was clear that these flakes were going to stand up to the semi-tropical climate. “I only have to pick up a couple of items,” Mom said. “You stay in the park and play.” Then she walked across the street and out of sight.

… A tower display of canned yams rose high in the center of the produce aisle. Mom was weighing artichokes when a police officer, who’d been moonlighting for the pharmacy next door, rounded the corner and chased two girls straight into the pyramid, sending sweet potatoes in all directions. The cop was white, the girls black. Everyone was screaming, including a young bystander from Tulane Law School. “It was an altercation,” Mom told me. Altercation? I thought. Sounds like an understatement. Altercation felt too civilized a word to describe the scene. Mom seemed uncomfortable talking about this. As the cop arrested the girls for allegedly stealing Kodak film, the law student intervened. “I want to give you my business card because I have observed this,”  he told them. The cop saw this exchange and arrested the law student next.  “Then, “Mom said, “the young man started ranting that his father was a prominent judge, somewhere in the Midwest. You should be allowed to rant and rave though,” Mom added, “that should not be grounds for arrest, unless you’re threatening someone you see.” I did see. Then Mom made a big mistake. She said to the would-be attorney: “Give me your card so I can call your wife,”  At which point, the policeman also arrested Mom. “Now that was clearly above his line of duty,” mom said. “He should not have done that. That policeman should have let me take this law student’s business card so I could call his wife. It was an unjust arrest, both for the young lawyer and for me.” “And what about the girls?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Mom replied. That was a different case. They may have been guilty, that’s possible, but that wasn’t the point. Even if someone is guilty, they need to be treated with respect when they’re arrested.”

… 

It was getting dark. I watched flakes fall through halos of light crowning the street lamps as I lay in the grass making angels in the snow.  I can’t remember what my brother was up to, but I imagine that he was hurling snowballs in the direction of the streetcar on St. Charles Avenue. My gloves were soaked through, and my thin coat was not made for true winters. Snow continued to sift down from blackness now, like powdered sugar falling generously on a plate of hot square donuts at The Café du Monde in the French Quarter.

… 

This is where the story goes from troubling to outright disturbing. As Mom was escorted out of the Winn Dixie and into a squad car, she told the cops that her children were waiting for her across the street. “Officer, my children are alone in the park. I have to get my kids.” The cop ignored her and opened the back door of the sedan, “Get in.” Mom hesitated, then slid into the back seat of the cop car alongside the apprehended. They headed downtown to the precinct. 

A graduate of all-female Hunter College, little Connie from Zerega Avenue in the Bronx has never had a problem finding her voice. Her father was an FDR democrat, a union man and an atheist. Her Suffragist grandmother marched up 5th Avenue in 1915. Maybe all this played a part in making Mom the independent thinker that she is. Throw some astrology in the mix, if you like. Whatever it is, stubborn Taurus Mom has always had the courage to speak up. But Mom was also raised in the 1950s, before questioning authority was the norm, especially questioning law enforcement. I’m sure it didn’t feel right to just go along with the police that February evening. Mom didn’t make a scene. She got in the car. “You can imagine how I was feeling Maria.” I thought about when I was separated from my own six-year-old, when he had wandered off a path at the  zoo. Oh those ten minutes of terror—as the security guard sped me around in his golf cart, through flocks of peacocks, pointing out every white male under four feet tall. “The police wouldn’t let me do anything Maria.” She spoke softly. This was hard for her.  “They didn’t care that I had left my kids in the park. They were not compassionate.” Not compassionate? I thought. Again, her choice of words didn’t match the grim scene. Mom seemed detached, as if she was talking to a reporter and not her daughter. It was good we were seated side by side, not face on. We watched the snow fall through the French doors—about three inches thick on the picnic table already. Summer seemed far off. “That cop was a bastard mom. He should have lost his badge that night.” I watched my mother’s pain, in profile. It was not explosive, like those cans of yams that had crashed down and skidded in every direction. Her anger was not directed towards the cop so much, as towards herself. In that moment I saw that Mom has never forgiven herself for getting into the squad car that day. 

…

 “Take off your sweater,” a rookie cop told mom, in front of a roomful of male officers.  Did they think she was concealing a steak knife between her breasts? Mom was thirty-four and a dead ringer for Italian movie star Anna Magnani. Not so many people know who that is today. Magnani wasn’t classically beautiful like Sophia Loren, but La Lupa had something. And so did mom. “Well I didn’t have anything on underneath,” Mom explained. I could feel her humiliation, forty-eight years later. “I was not wearing a bra because, well,  that was the time when women were throwing away their bras.” Mom the bra-burner. Cool. “So the officer understood that and didn’t force me to take off my top. Instead he asked me ‘Where are you from?’ I told him ‘New York.’ He said ‘New York? I thought so…’ And you know Maria, the way he said  ‘New York,’ well, he said it like it was a dirty word.”

They fingerprinted and photographed Mom, then put her in the cell with the two younger women. For some unknown reason, my Mother had the business card of a civil rights attorney in her purse, and after she called Dad, she used her second nickel to call Beau Switch. Beau came down and got her out.  

… 

No one remembers how Robey and I happened to be rescued and taken to a grand townhouse across the street from Palmer Park—how we climbed a tall stoop and met a nice lady—how we were fed, given hot baths in a deep tub, and dressed in pajamas, rolled up  at the cuffs. Looking back, I had good reason to feel afraid, but I don’t recall really being scared by any of it —not by being left in a park for hours after dark, nor by being naked in a stranger’s bathtub. I do remember feeling numb to my core from the cold, and happy to finally thaw out, but that’s it. Eventually, Dad found us at this townhouse and took us home. No one remembers how that happened either. Then Beau dropped Mom off. It was far too late to celebrate Dad’s birthday, but we were home safe under the same roof, which, quite possibly, was more than could be said for the three others arrested that afternoon.

...

Mom did have her day in court, such as it was. “There’s always some humor in a good story, am I right?” “You’re right mom.” “It turned out Beau Switch was an alcoholic,” Mom laughed.  I failed to see the humor. “That’s not funny mom.”  “Can you let me tell the story Maria?” “Go on,” I said.  “So before the hearing, Beau had like three martinis at lunch—and no lunch. And we were late getting to court. And here’s where the racism comes in. When we finally got there the judge said ‘Oh had I known it would be someone like you, (translation: white) I never would have heard this case.’ So my case was dismissed on the spot. Beau was drunk and I didn’t have to do anything.” 

...

Mom had never been willing to talk about this—until now. Over the decades, I’ve tried. “Mom, tell me about the time you abandoned me in an empty park after dark.” Finally she did, and now I felt her shame. More than forty Februarys have passed since Mom ignored her conscience and went downtown without a fight, leaving two small humans in the dark.  Two little people were waiting for one big person to come into focus through a flurry of white, to scurry towards them, clutching a bag of artichokes to her breast, spilling apologies and artichokes, pulling them into her tight. I was a witness to my mother’s remorse. Of course she did know her first duty was to her children, not to the New Orleans Police Department.  

I tried to make it better, because that is what I’ve always done. “Don’t worry mom, I don’t remember feeling abandoned. Really. I didn’t even notice you were gone. Except towards the very end. When it was getting cold.” For once my mother didn’t respond. It felt right for me to say this, and it felt mostly accurate. But I think I would have said these same words, even if they weren’t true. I wanted to add “I’m proud of you mom,” but I didn’t. That would have been pushing it. She would have accused me of being phony. But that’s actually the most truthful thing I can say about the whole incident. I was proud that mom did as much as she did. She saw something wrong and chose to get in the middle of a messy situation, in the produce aisle of a 1970s Louisiana supermarket. This was not small, given who she was, and under those circumstances.  “I want to watch the forecast now Maria. Are we done?” “Yes Mom, we’re done.”