chapter/ Color Coated

The day I stopped being a Black Girl is unclear to me now.

I do know that I felt it, for a while, before I let on. It must have been a slow transition. I would be able to name it better, had it been a single moment that brought the change. I don’t think it was anything I said or did; the label changed, and fell away, as other people saw fit.

My mother had always told me I was black.

“You’re black, like your father. My beautiful black girl.”
Not white, like her. Because where I come from, if you have any trace of brown in your skin, you’re not white. You’re the other thing that made you brown. The choices were clear: black and white. That’s how we were seen. A white woman with a black child.

I accepted what I was told.

I was definitely black through elementary school and junior high. It helped that I went to an independent school all those years, where the student body was small, and its diverse cultures were recognized with equal weight. But none of the other black kids had a white parent. Or white cousins, or grandparents. “Black” felt clear, and strong, even though it didn't define my place in the world.

In ninth grade, I transferred to an enormous public high school.

I was one of seven hundred freshmen, each of us craving acceptance into the vast fold. I quickly befriended a tall, beige-skinned girl named Lisa, whose gingery afro and grey-green eyes gave her away. Together, we wrestled the challenge of devising a label we could comfortably wear.

We agreed on the following:

BLACK kids came from black neighborhoods, had uniformly black relatives, and spoke about white people from the outside. 

HALF-BLACK sounded half-baked. Not whole, not representative of a complete story. 

MULATTO was totally out-dated. It conjured the illegitimate offspring of slave and master, long ago and far away. And was inevitably tied to “tragic”.

HYBRID came up during biology class. We liked its scientific slant and modern sound. But the word had yet to enter the common vernacular, and failed to convey any relevance to racial identity when applied to self. 

MIXED worked. But it begged to be clarified. And that loosed a torrent of internalized defenses. Why do you need to know?  Is my ethnicity really any of your business? How would you like to tell me about your parents’ lineage, and their parents – wouldn’t it be weird if I demanded that information from you?

Resentment beat enlightenment, and “Black” beat “Mixed” because it was just easier.

Most people were just curious, I guess. When kids asked, “What are you?” I knew what they meant. I tried to keep it simple.

“I’m black.”

“You don’t look black.”

“Well my mom is white.”

“Oh.”

Versus:

“What are you?”

“I’m mixed.”

“Mixed? What and what?”

“My dad is black, and my mom is Russian and Spanish. And my dad is also Irish and Native American.”

“Really? Wow. So what’s that like?”

“I don’t know. It’s just how it is.”

“Yeah, but - blah blah blah blah blah…..” 

Lisa and I were marked outcasts, adrift in a cafeteria teeming with culturally connected cliques - the Greek Club, the Korean Club, Italia, etcetera – until the kids at the punk rock table mercifully reeled us in. They were one of the few groups whose identity had no relation to the ethnicity of its members.

We were an angry lot, disenfranchised and disconnected - from our families, and in some cases from society at large. My anger was all about my father. I needed his attention, but couldn’t figure out how to get it. The more rebellious I became, the farther away he stayed.

On one of our rare visits during those strained high school years, I coyly mentioned that I had earned a National Merit Scholarship. The prize was an annual stipend that would put a substantial dent in my forthcoming college tuition. Appropriately impressed, he asked for the backstory of the award, and how I had come to win it. I explained that it was based on the scores of my achievement tests, and that it was specifically designated for black high school students.

“You’re not black!”  My father said, with complete authority. “Your mother has you filling out applications for those things?”

“Yes,” I answered, quietly, and unapologetically.

“Well, you’re not black.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You’re not.”

“But you are,” I said, as objectively as I could.

“And you’re not.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. He was that certain.

I didn’t look at him either. Instead, I stared out the window, at my reflection in the side view mirror. The girl looking back was about sixteen, her eyelids heavy with black liquid eyeliner and too much mascara. An asymmetrical, frizzy bob of pink and black hair completed her post-apocalyptic front. If I didn’t know her, I would have assumed she was Puerto Rican, and a real badass.  She was into clubbing, and staying out all night, and playing bass guitar in a loud band. Her mother allowed all of it, as long as the grades didn’t suffer. Her father aired his impotent disapproval with the tired refrain: “You’ve made it this far without any input from me. I suppose you’re too old for me to start interfering now.” She had come to expect very little. But his DNA was hers, and his repudiation of that bond left her broken. 

                                                              +++

It was August, the month of savage tans: one week past my fortieth birthday, and time for my annual mammogram.  Mom’s history of breast cancer put the fear in me. I would not follow her down that path. Any other, but not that. She loves her doctor, a breast specialist with a thriving practice in a small Westchester hospital. So I go there too, every year, like clockwork. And every year, the hospital paperwork seems so excessive. So many in-take questions, robotically posed and answered through a thick plexiglass partition, designed to quantify my chances of wellness.

My name was called, and I was directed to a closely walled cubicle, the domain of a highly groomed, twenty-something-year-old male clerk with a muscular build and very long eyelashes. I sat facing him, directly across his tiny desk. He half smiled, eyes glued to his computer screen. He struggled with my name, then proceeded without looking up.

“Height?”

“Five-four.”

“Weight?”

“One-forty.”

“Eye color…” - he glanced at my face for a split second, then answered for himself, “... dark brown. Hair, dark brown.” His were the same, his eyes an almost vacant black. I observed him intently, waiting for his vapid expression to reflect even the slightest interest in my personal details. He typed with superhuman speed, making eye contact with me only twice during the interrogation, probing my physiology with the curt efficiency of an alien abductor. Waxed eyebrows, straight gelled hair and a clear polish manicure completed his android persona.  Finally finished, he returned my insurance card, handed me the forms in duplicate, and sent me down the hall, through a poorly disguised construction zone. 

I sat alone in Mammography Reception, a temporary vestibule with three sad chairs and none of the basic niceties: no ventilation, not even a magazine. Hot and bored, I resorted to scanning my outpatient stats in shaded blue fields. That’s when I discovered I was White. My android friend had checked WHITE in the race field. All those tedious, stupid questions, and he didn’t even ask. He just filled it in, as he saw me.

I had been re-defined. And my new identity was documented.

I was my Russian grandmother, a teenaged refugee, at Ellis Island circa 1920.    

Documented.    

I was an African ancestor, human chattel in chains.   

Documented.    

I was a lost Indian cousin, subsisting, stranded on the rez.   

Documented.    

A strange white man with a desk job strikes again! 

I took out a pen and scratched out his checkmark and the word WHITE. Then I checked the box next to OTHER, daring somebody - anybody - to look at me and ask.  Maybe the mammography technician would notice. Maybe she would ask. He hardly even looked at me when he checked that box.
He was that certain.