Six years ago, shortly before the 2000 presidential election, Mark and I went to visit his father somewhere in the mysterious region south of the Mason-Dixon. I was not looking forward to the trip: I'm an anxious traveler at best, yet here I was, hugely pregnant, boarding a plane to visit someone who routinely made me uncomfortable in a place where I felt out of my element.

I once went to Atlanta (Atlanta, a major city!) on business and a clean-cut, all-American looking teenager called me, "Ma'am." Ma'am? I was in my twenties. In fact, he used "ma'am" in a polite sentence: as in "Oh, excuse me, ma'am," as he accidentally bumped into me on the street. It freaked me the hell out. In Yankeeland, where I grew up, if someone said anything when bumping into you on the street, it would be, "Jesus Christ! Look where the fuck you're going, lady!" See, they'd call me "lady," but "ma'am" I wasn't used to.

We were visiting a smaller town than Atlanta this time, a place neither or us had ever been; Mark's dad moved south at the request of his fourth ex-wife. On Sunday, my father-in-law said he wanted to take us to church. I have never been that excited about going to church in my life. I knew this wasn't going to be church like I had experienced church; this was going to be the kind of church Mark grew up with: fabulous gospel music, dynamic preachers and people being seized by the Holy Spirit. The Catholic God of my youth just couldn't compete.

Imagine my disappointment when we arrived at an all-white church completely devoid of gospel music and even more bent on saving me from hellfire my mom's Catholicism. There were three black people in the entire church: my father-in-law, his girlfriend and my husband. And on every pew, for our pre-election edification, was "non-partisan" campaign information that helpfully called out the differences between Gore and Bush on a variety of subjects, without telling the reader which way to vote. For example, on the position of "roasting and eating human infants alive," Bush's position was a very reasonable "opposed." But Gore (whose team had been sadly lax about filling out this organization's campaign survey) was marked "no position." How could anyone fail to have a position on the live roasting and consumption of human infants?! He must be evil, that Gore guy... Well, they weren't telling me how to vote, but after reading that I knew I was going to vote for Bush.

I kept myself occupied during the service by sneaking looks around the congregation and imagining how they would all look in the white hoods I was sure they put on after dark. I tried to pick out the Grand Wizard or Grand Dragon or whatever they called the leader; I settled on a little balding guy in glasses who looked shrewdly Napoleanic. I knew this was not fair of me; these were very nice God fearing people who had let my father-in-law live so far, so they were probably not planning to lynch Mark and me later. But churches make me edgy and political propaganda makes me doubly edgy and, having no experience with the South outside of movies like Mississippi Burning, traveling in the South as a hugely pregnant white woman with her black husband makes me edgy.

After the ceremony, some of the other churchgoers came up to the four of us (my father-in-law, his girlfriend, Mark and myself) and said to Mark's dad, "Ah, this must be your son and his wife. So nice to meet you!" Only when they said "wife," they weren't referring to me, the hugely pregnant white woman clutching Mark's arm to keep from passing out under the weight of God and travel and heat and politics and pregnancy hormones; they were referring to my father-in-law's girlfriend, who was at least 30 years older than Mark and not clutching his arm, but did happen to be black.

They were all very sweet, and apologized for the confusion, saying they didn't see me. Which, I think, was completely true, because I blended right in to that sea of lily white faces in a way that my three companions didn't. But instead I comforted myself by thinking that they didn't notice me because it was inconceivable that a white woman would marry a black man and carry his baby; it made me feel safer to think we could walk around anywhere, invisible, rather than enormously scarily visible.

And all those nice Southern ladies hugged me and felt the baby kick and took us home to a barbecue. We went to a house with a wrought iron fence and a Bush/Cheney 2000 sign in the yard and a pink living room filled with lace doilies, silver framed family photos and dolls in glass cases. Everyone was kind and polite and clearly trying their best to save my father-in-law, both his immortal soul from hell and his mind and body from alcoholism.

I spent the whole barbecue wishing I could really talk to them and get to know them and figure out what this whole strange southern, conservative, religious thing was about. And to get them to see we liberal northern agnostics weren't such bad people, the way I was seeing they were kind and caring people in spite of the church and the political propaganda and the pink room full of dolls. But there was a distance there bigger than the distance between our two states, some fundamental difference of values and culture that I knew I wasn't going to bridge in just one barbecue, and neither were they. So, I ate my jello and went back to the hotel room, exhausted and ready to get on the plane back home.