In a book called "One More Sunday", John D. MacDonald used a very provocative metaphor. In a conversation between two of his characters, one of them, a less than admirable human being, says "I'm trying to peel myself down like an artichoke, one dead leaf after another, to see if there is anything at all left in the middle."

For some reason, these words have been stirring around in the back of my mind lately, trying to resolve themselves into some kind of restatement that applies to my life experiences. And this morning, after I had finished reading a review of a television special called "Spic-o-Rama", I knew what that restatement was going to be about.

My birthplace, El Paso, Texas, had a population that was about 70% Spanish speaking when I was growing up there. There were many Mexicans who had immigrated into the United States to take up residence in El Paso, and many more who came across the border several days a week to work as day laborers and/or domestics. All of them were collectively referred to as "spics", a word whose derivation I never knew or asked about, but which I somehow realized must be uncomplimentary.

Through all the years of the depression my mother was able to lead an active social life, with her church, charitable, and club activities because, during most of those years, my father was able to afford the two dollars a week and carfare that permitted Mother the luxury of having a Mexican girl to "help out".

Chole, whose formal name was Soledad, was a combination laundress, housekeeper, cook and nanny for the household, and was worth her weight in diamonds to my mother. To Toots and me, Chole was a figure of great interest, very much admired, because we felt that we were learning all the secrets of being beautiful from her. Each afternoon, when she had finished her work she took a bath, splashed herself with dusting powder and cologne, dressed as far as her underslip and then opened the door so that we could watch as she combed her hair and put on her makeup...a fairly complex process, as I recall.

We were enchanted and full of questions like "Why do you pull out your eyebrows and then put them back on with a pencil?" and "Can we put some of your lipstick on?", to which we never got an answer that we considered satisfactory!

Chole's boyfriend, Frank, always picked her up at our house when he had finished his grocery delivery route. Frank's nickname was "Mad Dog", which sounded like "Meddo Peddo" in Spanish. We loved Chole and our feeling was that she was an important part of our family.

I do not remember ever knowing any Negro people in El Paso, although there certainly may have been some. My first Negro friend was a young man at Long Beach Poly High School who was in a couple of my classes. He was an outstanding student as well as being a good athlete and was president of our senior class.

When I went to New Orleans in early 1945 at age seventeen, having joined the Cadet Nurse Corps, I entered nurse's training at Charity Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the country at that time, four thousand beds, a teaching hospital for both Tulane and Louisiana State Universities. The hospital was divided into halves: one for whites and one for "coloreds". Talk about "cultural shock"...I was dumbfounded, but didn't say much because most of the students in my class were white southerners, and I quickly learned the hard way not to comment about the separation of the races. I also learned that there was a world of difference between caring for the patients on the "white" side and caring for those on the "colored" side, not in terms of differences in the quality of their care, but in terms of differences in the attitudes of the patients themselves, who were unfailingly courteous and grateful on the "colored" side.

My first personal experience with racial segregation practices was on the Canal Street streetcar coming back to the hospital one day, from downtown. There were movable signs in the cars that said "Colored Only" and were placed to accommodate the mix of races on any given trip. That day, all the seats were taken in front of the sign, but the conductor came running back when he saw me about to sit behind the sign. He moved the sign back one row of seats, obliging a Negro man to stand and move further back in the car so that I could take his seat. I tried to decline and asked the conductor not to do that, but he just looked at me scornfully and walked away. The man who was now standing nodded at me and gestured for me to sit down. I did.

When I went on duty later that day in one of the "colored" wards, I was still upset, and the head nurse asked me what was wrong. So I told her about the incident, starting to cry as I did so. She smiled, teeth gleaming in her dark face, put her arm around me and said comfortingly, "Now, honey, don't you let that bother you...that's just the way things are." I dried my tears for then, but later wept again, when I was alone, for her attitude of quiet acceptance. It did not seem right to me.

In my first year of college, when I was dating a boy named Jimmy Casteel, whose mother was Mexican, I realized that my mother was a bigot. After she met Jimmy, she expressed her displeasure at my dating a "spic". I was not deterred from my relationship because I didn't consider his heritage a problem. But I was surprised at her attitude. Then one day, when I told her about the fun time I had, jitterbugging in the Student Union, during a break in afternoon classes, with one of the students in my chemistry class, who was a Negro, she really hit the roof with her attitude about that.

I have thought, rather smugly, most of my life that none of her prejudice and bigotry had rubbed off on me, and in fact, much of it didn't. But every now and then, a leaf of the artichoke falls off and a discolored spot appears on the heart. And I am ashamed.

Some years ago, while friends and I were leaving a parking lot near the Oakland Coliseum, a passing black man slapped his hand hard on the trunk of the car because it was partially blocking the driveway, and, to my horror, I blurted out the words "You black bastard!", shocking myself and my companions. Fortunately it was unheard by the offending man. How deeply hidden was that seed of bigotry, only sprouting to the surface because I felt threatened and afraid?

Last week, while driving back along Pacific Coast Highway after dropping departing friends at the Los Angeles airport, the car in front of me came to a sudden stop because the car in front of it had swerved and stopped and then driven off rapidly. I almost managed to stop in time, but did hit the rear bumper of their car. The three people in the car were Hispanics, only one of them speaking a little English. She immediately began telling me how much damage I had done to their car, a pretty beat-up old Ford.

After making sure that no one was hurt, I walked to the nearest highway emergency call box and asked for the highway patrol to come because I wanted to report the accident. I had not done any real damage to their car, but I didn't feel comfortable dealing with the problem alone, and every word of Spanish that I ever learned flew out of my mind under the stress of the moment. Eventually the Sheriff's office responded and the officer helped us to exchange the appropriate information, declining to file an accident report. He said the damage was too minor to merit a report, and he also had verified that no one was hurt. He told the driver of the other car that I could not possibly have done the damage they were describing and demonstrated it by pulling my car up so the two bumpers touched. It was clear that, at worst, I had caused their trailer hitch to buckle..

As I drove away and finished my trip home, I gradually stopped shaking and tried to understand why I had been so upset. It was fear, I realized. We are conditioned these days to fear many things, and this conditioning explains some of my attitude, but some of it, I must confess, may be coming forth from the center of the artichoke. I feel diminished.