ustxtxb_obs_1981_07_24_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

Dallas gays had a setback. Mayor Jack Evans spoke to 450 members of the Dallas Gay Alliance, saying “we all have to blend together” and “accept people for what they are” and indicating he had no problem with gays as policemen and firefighters, just as long as they’re honest about their sexual orientation. But he then received about 100 calls, and these calls turned him around. In subsequent press statements he stressed that he is opposed to homosexuality himself, reversed himself on gay cops and firemen on grounds that it would be illegal to hire them, and even denied, \(implausibly, on the evidence developed by the Timesthat he had known the meeting at which he spoke was a gathering of gays. Closing the episode, he said, “This city’s not ready for the mayor of Dallas to speak to the Dallas Gay Alliance.” But he insisted “that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to work with those people and ask them to work with the police. . . . I wanted the people in the gay community to support the police. I want us to stop the harassment both ways.” Dallas is another of the six U.S. cities cited as the most progressive for gays by the National Gay Task Force, coexecutive director Charles Brydon told the Times-Herald. The others, in addi tion to Houston, are Seattle, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Of the six, Dallas is the only one considered conservative, Brydon said. The NAACP, long moribund in Houston despite 1200 national members there, is reorganizing. . . . The Austin school board unanimously favored a constitutional amendment to prohibit busing. . . . Federal Judge Barefoot Sanders, picking up a pleading from the Dallas school district that desisted, for this next school year, in the district’s request to end busing, decided to make no desegregation changes this fall. He has not ruled on the overall case. Looking for My Sister From Page 1 forward on her hands, covering her face as she spoke, holding the baby even closer to her, as the words flowed out and she cried. So did my mother. And then I understood. I could see my brother once again as tears rolled down his face like sweat; and my mother. The baby had no food, my sister explained. Her husband couldn’t find a job. Sometimes he would do odd jobs for a coke or an orange soda, bring it home, and they would put it in the baby bottle. Then she showed us his teeth. They were yellow, and brown, and rotting. They were small teeth, helpless against the acid of the drink, and when she showed us she began to cry again, quietly sobbing into her clasped open hands. As she dried her cheeks I looked around the empty room. The small table with the bare light bulb hanging over it. The small cot bed with all the clothes piled on top of it. The small mat on the floor, actually two blankets. Then her. She looked . . . well, she had aged. Gray hair hung lifeless on her head down onto her face. She was 26, but she looked weak, and tired, from the looks of her bent back. And she looked hungry. She said she was hungry. They wouldn’t eat for days because there was no one to ask. He was trying, she said, she didn’t blame him. At times, she explained, he would come home frustrated after doing what he could. In uttermost moments of desperation he would sit on the crumpled bed, his work clothes on, and hold the baby. Then he would cry, looking down at the baby as if to apologize to him. Off to the side of her there was a small stove. It was a kerosene stove they had had for other times. Now it sat there in the corner as a reminder of what they didn’t have. I walked out then. THERE IS something about being a child, I think, that had something to do with it. In the small world of my existence, the thought of her had entered, and had remained. She had become part of it, sitting in the corner as she wept and spoke. She had come inside of me, I think. And everything seems large now; I was a child. It was all important, and I walked out with the large, overwhelming impression of it all, and ran. Around the long, dull, dirty, white camp houses with the curtained doors, the puddles, and the hungry dogs, I ran. They were the skinny dogs of people, with their exposed ribs. I ran, until I stopped to cry. It was a quiet sob at first. As my small fists would rub against my eyes as tears escaped, I felt a weakling to the force which overwhelmed me. And as I leaned against the corner of the grimy houses, I could feel the women looking on. It was my sister’s face on all the women there. They walked around the place to get water from a central pump; they watched the children play, they watched me cry, then they moved on. They never laughed, nor cried, they just watched. Even the children were like they were. They didn’t play and enjoy the game, they merely played, as if spectators had replaced them on the field. Almost as if there was a need to play; they were required to play; it was demanded. And as they played, I began to notice them. Some had six toes, I think. On one foot. On both feet. Some said they could just have it cut when they got older. They would be fine. The others laughed at them. There were too many to be laughed at too much. Then they would leave, to play, or to walk through the puddles in the roads between the houses, leaving their footprints to the others, and myself, to see. And they wouldn’t look back. I had looked away at first. Someone had mentioned that the boy approaching had six toes, and I had looked away .. . then I had looked down, not knowing whether he would mind or not, and I had seen. Another had six fingers, and he pointed it out himself, knowing that I knew from the others. It was from all this that I walked away, not looking back, but knowing that they watched me walk away until I turned the corner of the dull white houses and went home. SHE WAS STILL there, my sister, but the crying had stopped. The clothing on the bed had been arranged as if it had been packed, and the sleeves of a large white shirt held it together in the bundle. that it was. We were waiting, I guessed. And as I stood, I could see him coming down the alley that the buildings formed, stooped forward from the weight of things, no longer wearing shiny shoes and golden khakis, merely moving forward. He walked around the puddles as if he knew where they were, not even looking at them at times, and no longer seeing the THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9