You turn your head and you realize you are looking at it, the Boggs Center for Nurturing Community, Grace's home for however many decades and now something even more than that. You feel surprised. You expected you would have to walk a bit further down this block before you arrived, or at least you'd have more time to settle yourself before a chat with an activist sixty-eight years your senior. You stall for time and pull out the slip of paper, scan the address you wrote down, look up and much to your dismay, it matches the address of this house. You are not ready and yet you have no more time. You are already five minutes late compared to when you said you would be there. And your interview starts in ten minutes.
You put away the slip of paper in your handbag and you are suddenly mortified at how ridiculous you look. You wonder why you couldn't just fly to Detroit like everyone else, or at least find a place to stash your packs before arriving here. You feel very small, immature even. And yet you believe that once you get inside that door, you will magically grow into a mature adult again. You are impatient to go up to that door. You don't move.
You look at the house, really look at it for the first time. It's bigger than you expected, but then again, you probably expected something looking like a garage. You expected an old-lady house, which you picture as singular and unavoidable, not like any other house. But it is old and humble and rooted like all the other houses on this block. It's dark: no white trim, no pastels, no lawn ornaments or meticulously kept flower beds. It has nothing in particular to show off. There isn't even a sign, or a tell-tale revolutionary poster in the window. No indicators or flair; just a house. And you're a bit spooked by this, because it also commands respect, this house, and you're surprised that the respect you have is no different from what you feel looking at any house on this block, except that you are armed with a secret, this knowledge. You think you know something about this place that others don't. And then you realize that the truth of it is, this place knows something about this community that you don't.
You walk up the steps and your eyes shift to the right, to a doorbell and a small label right above: Boggs Center. You somehow know to look to the left of the door, and there is another doorbell: Grace. And you breathe in quick and you're present now, dreadfully present, and your mind has leapt forward into time, into this space. You see her answering the door, looking up at your face with shining eyes, crouched. You see yourself leaning in to hear her as she speaks, both perched on the edges of armchairs. You see people watching the interview from a slight distance, standing, arms crossed, listening closely, kneeling down to take photographs, wanting to capture this encounter. You're fanciful that way.
You press down on the doorbell, drop your packs to the ground so that they rest by your feet. You hear the muffled sound of footsteps on a stairwell, descending. The door opens: a man answers. You shake hands and you are inside.
It is dark. That is the only thing you notice and can think of: it is dark. The man is directing you forward into an even darker foyer through a heavy black door. He chats jovially with a young volunteer on the staircase leading up, and as you look up you see it's lighter on the stairwell, and you wonder why that is, why you're being made to stay in the dark on this floor, through this doorway. You knock lightly and push the door open and it is just as dark in this new space, and you start to think of how wrong this feels and why don't they install some lights in here already, and you worry your eyes are too adjusted to the brightness outside and this interview will go horribly because you won't be able to see anything, and you remember tying your white tennis shoes in the harsh glare of sunlight on the front steps of your parents' house, and the whole while you are wondering where she is, where is she in this darkness.
And you take a step forward. You ask, Hello. You turn to your left, take two small steps. Then turn another left, and there she is, sitting, facing you, mouth slightly open in a smile, like how people do when they're distracted, or when they're caught in the act, smiling because they've just been exposed and there's nothing to do about it now.
She is so small. She barely projects past her armchair; you barely detect the delight in her voice. "Yes, and you are?" And you say your name, slowly and a bit louder than what you're used to, that you're here for the interview, and she is already talking over you. "I hadn't--I didn't have any idea what you looked like. Is your last name really Peace?" You laugh and say, No. You remember your manners and say it's an honor, a real honor, and at once you're shaking her hand. You think this should be electrifying but it's just a hand, it feels dry and a bit coarse in yours, and she is talking over you again through all your manners. "So. Tell me a little about yourself." And she adds three rapid taps of her other hand on the hand she's holding. It is all going much faster than you want it to, but you sit down in a neighboring armchair and launch in.
You say, Well, my Mom grew up in a Chinese community in Augusta, Georgia and my Dad grew up in a farm town in Minnesota, and they eventually met each other in California. You think, why the fuck did I just say that? You continue (despite the eruption of questions of what it means to pinpoint your mixed-race status from the get-go with someone you meet and why you've never felt pressured to do that until now) and say, I went to college in Washington state and that's when I opened up to activism. You think, that's quite the reduction. You say, After I graduated, I traveled down south to New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, and I worked in a health clinic there and then moved back to Minnesota and I now do restorative justice work and that's when I also got involved in this social movement research group. You think, is any of this actually meaningful, is she gonna remember any of this? This Grace, who remembers from a very young age the threats of being left on the hillside to die because she was born a woman? Who not only studied Marx and Lenin but actually joined a group that studied them all day every day, published pamphlets, traveled around and outside the country, met with countless rank-and-file organizers? Who left New York for Detroit to lead political education efforts and met a black autoworker from Alabama and married him at the end of their first date? Who organized with labor movements, civil rights movements, women's movements, ecology movements, city revival movements, restorative justice movements, and environmental justice movements, and who is still writing and meeting with people today, every day? Who lived to see the rise of the automobile and the rise of the Internet? What right do you, a confused twenty-six-year-old, have to be in the same room as a ninety-four-year-old giant? What grave misfortune brought you to this moment, what stupidly misplaced confidence bluffed you into the doorway of a living history and has now left you stumbling and incoherent and uncertain and remarkably timid? What are you even doing here?
And the whole time, Grace Lee Boggs watches, and listens, and smiles that barely projecting smile, her head perched slightly up, her back crouched, and when her demeanor changes and she says, "Now, let's figure out logistics for this talk," you remember again what you're doing here, in this room saturated in darkness, in an unassuming house in Detroit, Michigan, and she's ready to talk and you're ready to talk, as agreed upon in advance, and in an instant you understand that this agreement is all either of you have to stand on, and it's enough for now, it will be enough in the end, when you're through and you're looking back on it. And you understand, too, that this is how it always is--that relationships, powerful as they are, would be confined to the realm of improbability, save the faith that propels an introduction.
