The hat of the Statue of Liberty

The knot in my stomach tightens. I realize that with every experience of racism, I am never given the benefit of the doubt. “No,” I say, “I don’t think so.”

When I get back to my dorm room, I decide to put the incident aside. And when I process what happened a few days later, it’s in therapy. I have the session via Zoom, alone in my room. After describing what happened, I tell my therapist that it doesn’t bother me that much.

“It’s okay,” I insist.

“No, it’s not,” she says.

We sit in silence for a moment. I think of the other times I described similar incidents to my therapist. Being insulted as a child makes my encounter with the salesman in Times Square fade away.

Today, when I look at the little foam crown, I try to imagine the Statue of Liberty as a real person. I can never decide what she looks like. Maybe an older woman. One day I pick up my phone and look up the inscription at her feet.

“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore / Send these, the homeless, thrown to me / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I haven’t thought about those words much since school. But now I’m thinking about it. They are engraved in stone, as if they meant something important. I also ponder the words of the Times Square salesman. His words also feel like they are written in stone.

I wonder if Lady Liberty was a real person, if she was there with her daughter and saw it happen – would she intervene? Or would she shrug her shoulders and say, “I don’t know, I’m just passing on the message.”