1983, Madison, Wisconsin

By Tracy Dingmann

I met Shawndra when she happened to speak to me in Women’s Studies class during our sophomore year, but I definitely had noticed her previously. We were the only two black women in the class, a literary survey of historically important but unknown black women writers.

It was the kind of class most students took because they thought it would be easy. We were no exception. But this particular class was taught by a rising star in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Women’s Studies Program. She was a brilliant, old-school feminist with a tight, kinky fro who took her shit seriously and “didn’t take no mess” from light-skinned girls like Shawndra and me.

Stupidly, we assumed that she would cut us a break, but, if anything, she was harder on us. So when Shawndra reached out to me for help late in the semester, I was happy to find an ally in a study partner.

As finals loomed, Shawndra and I tossed our notes together and studied like crazy, first at the library and later in her room. She lived in one of the high-rise dorms on campus – the equivalent of downtown – while I lived in one of the decidedly more bucolic Lakeshore dorm rooms north of campus. The ancient brick buildings were charming to live in throughout the spring and fall, but they made for a long, frigid walk from the heart of campus when it was cold.

On the eve of the final, we had a lot to cover, so Shawndra invited me to stay overnight in her room. We ordered pizza and studied late, finally giving up, turning down the lights and talking drowsily about all kinds of stuff.

At the time, I didn’t know much about Shawndra. Having grown up in Chicago, she was one of the cool black girls on campus who could dance and dress, and she seemed to have known everyone before she even came to Madison.

I didn’t stack up. While I looked normal, my upbringing placed me at the rock bottom of the hierarchy of black students on campus – or at least below the well-connected folks from the big Windy City two hours away. I was not from Milwaukee, a relatively big city with a large black population, or even from Madison, but rather from a little almost-all-white town in northern Wisconsin.

Black students would visibly recoil when I told them where I was raised. My world was small, and I just wanted to fit in. So I was grateful to Shawndra for accepting me and so glad to be making a friend.

That night, in the first really personal conversation we ever had, Shawndra told me that her father had died of stomach cancer when she was 16. She said she was an only child and that she and her mother, a nurse, were very close. Her mom was young and fun, and she took good care of herself, she said.

“It’s just me and my mom,” Shawndra said, sounding very tired but happy. “We talk every day, and we talk about everything. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

I fell asleep feeling bad about Shawndra’s dad but even more touched by her sisterly relationship with her mom. I didn’t have a close connection with my own, white adoptive parents, and I was secretly envious of people who did.

The next morning, around 6 a.m., we awoke to persistent knocking on Shawndra’s door. It was odd: college students didn’t get up that early, much less wake each other up. And it was finals week, when every floor was supposed to be a quiet zone.

Half asleep, we tried to ignore the knocking and the voices calling Shawndra’s name, until Shawndra suddenly realized that she recognized the voices, from Chicago.

Shawndra threw open the door to see her mother’s sister and a cousin standing there. I was just waking up as I saw the comprehension dawn on Shawndra’s face. If they were here, something was terribly wrong.

I watched as Shawndra started to pant and gasp and pull at her hair. Stricken, her aunt and cousin grabbed her but kept silent. Shawndra already knew it was her mom. Who else could it be? Just hours ago, she’d told me that she had no one else in the world.

“Is she dead? Where did they find her?’ Shawndra bent over and screamed. “In her bed? Don’t tell me she died all alone in her bed!”

Her relatives held her arms down and grimly told Shawndra that, yes, her mother was dead. She had died of an aneurism a few hours before, while on duty at the hospital. Doctors and nurses were with her when she died. There was nothing they could do.

For a second, I thought Shawndra accepted the news. But then she started screaming again in deafening, piercing wails. Tearing loose from her aunt and cousin, she ran to the window. Clawing at the sharp metal mesh protecting the glass, she said she wanted to jump. “If my mama’s dead, I want to die too. I want to be with her!”

By now, girls who lived on the floor were banging at the door, wanting to know what was happening. Their faces froze as the news sunk in, and the peals of screams went on and on. Most of the dorm mates went back to their rooms and, as I later learned, hid their heads under pillows.

I stayed, but I didn’t do much better. I barely knew Shawndra, and I was of little use trying to comfort her. And Shawndra’s family members, so stoic at first, were clearly dealing with their own grief and shock.

Eventually, Shawndra stopped screaming and collapsed in exhaustion. We packed her a bag and bundled her into the car for the trip home to Chicago. I watched as they drove away. Then I began the long trudge back to my dorm.

Word had traveled fast. All along the way, Shawndra’s friends kept stopping me to ask what happened. I was trying to accommodate them all when, finally, I realized that I was in some kind of shock. The screams were still ringing in my ears. I needed to get home. I needed to call my mom.

Any show of emotion was always taboo in my parents’ house, but after what I had just seen, I didn’t care. I called my mom and told her what happened to my friend.

Years of hurt dropped away as I sought her comfort and sobbingly told her what I had just seen and heard. Our relationship wasn’t all I wanted it to be, but she was my mom, and my heart had just been ripped out by seeing someone lose the chance to ever again tell her mother in person that she loved her.

I wish I could say that Shawndra and I remained friends long after college, but we didn’t. She came back to school the next year, and we roomed together, but we had a spectacular falling-out over a $500 phone bill.

It’s been 25 years since that morning in the dorms, but I never forgot that day, Shawndra’s pain, and my newfound appreciation of my mother.

Tracy Dingmann is a newspaper reporter and freelancer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has written for Hispanic Magazine, FineLiving.com, and Mediabistro.com.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | Email This Post

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