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Friday, April 21, 2000
If Joey Chekanowsky had a dime for every time someone asked him why he and his son Jorian aren't the same color, he'd be doing all right. Interracial families in Pittsburgh are more common than ever, but they can still raise a curious eyebrow or two.
Joey is hip enough to know that the sight of a white man and a black child shopping together can still generate millennial celebration, racial anxiety or casual indifference depending on one's expectations of the world. It doesn't matter to him as long as he gets his shopping done before Jorian and his older brother Brent start squabbling.
Joey wasn't thinking about familial symbolism two Fridays ago at the East End Food Co-Op checkout. A black woman he'd never seen before began quizzing him about the sweet-faced boy standing by his side.
"Is that your child?" the woman asked him as he balanced several bags of groceries in one arm while holding Jorian's hand. Joey has never been offended by the curiosity of strangers. Though his mind was on whole wheat pasta and chick peas, Joey patiently answered her questions.
The turban-wearing stranger wanted to know if Jorian was his biological son. Joey is asked that a lot when he and his boys are out without his domestic partner, Post-Gazette Associate Editor Don Hammonds. Because Don and Jorian bear a strong resemblance to each other despite having no blood in common, the question rarely comes up when he's in the picture.
Joey told the woman he and his partner adopted two black children because they're the hardest to place in loving homes. She asked whether Joey's wife felt the same way. It didn't take long for her to denounce him to his face when the nature of their domestic situation became apparent.
Literally taking matters into her own hands, the woman grabbed Jorian's arm, invoking God and hissing invective about gay parents into the boy's 3-year-old ears. More stunned by her effrontery than scared, Joey demanded that she back off. Jorian was caught in a tug-of-war between his father and a stranger while customers and co-op employees watched the drama in anxious silence.
"I have more right to him than you do," the woman insisted, pulling Jorian closer. Her grip was broken by Shanna Jesch, a friend of Joey's who happened to be shopping with him that afternoon. Jorian fled up an aisle, followed by his worried father who sought desperately to comfort his trembling child.
Their adversary slipped out the door, but her strange intervention into a family's life has since become a matter for police, lawyers and nervous friends and sympathizers eager to see a potential kidnapper in custody. What's to stop her from approaching another interracial couple, gay or straight, with intrusive questions and bad intentions?
Joey picked her photo out of a lineup this week. Now, detectives are on her trail. The suspect's history in a sect called the Seed of Joseph is cause for alarm. She's been arrested for defying child welfare agencies. Most of the women in her ladies-only sect lost custody of their children years ago.
Both Joey and Don want to confront the woman in court. They want her prosecuted, but they also want her to know that her assault has enlarged peoples' hearts. Churches, neighbors and strangers have responded to their situation with uncommon decency and support. They've been embraced by many more families than they ever knew.
In round one of Seed of Joseph vs. Son of Joey, intolerance is the loser.
Tony Norman's email: tnorman@post-gazette.com.