Mixed

by Angela Nissel

  “I think I can work with her texture, but I’d have to charge you five times my rate because it’s going to take all day,” a high-class stylist said.

  The last place my mother tried was the Hair Cuttery, figuring it would be discrimination if they refused to do my hair. Apparently, it’s not, so long as they are polite about it. After the all-white staff corrected their initial looks of shock, the only available stylist looked closely at my scalp and declared that I had the most hair follicles she had ever seen. “I’m so sorry. Try a shop that does relaxers,” she said, handing me a Blow Pop and walking us to the door.

  After the double-Dutch incident on 56th Street, my mother decided to give in and pay someone to cornrow my hair. Actually, a young neighborhood woman, Crystal, embarrassed her into doing it. “Your daughter looks a mess. If I braid it, you won’t have to deal with it for a month. Just rub a Q-Tip on the scalp with some shampoo, and you’re good to go,” Crystal said, offering her best sales pitch. My mother made an appointment and Crystal was set to braid my hair in our bedroom the next day.

  Once upstairs, when Crystal took her tools and hair grease out, my mother tried to haggle over the price. Crystal noticed the VCR my mother had taken from our old house. My mother asked Crystal if she wanted the VCR instead of the money. They bartered for a while and finally the destiny of my hair was handed over along with a VCR and two Amos and Andy tapes. I thought that was outrageous, but to my mother, the VCR was worth nothing and control over my hair was priceless.

  “Oh, girl, you have a lot of hair!” Crystal said as I sat on the floor between her legs. She started putting razor-thin parts in my hair with a comb and then twisted my scalp into tiny knots. After four hours, Crystal said her arms were hurting and called in her sister to help finish. My grandmother, who never visited the third floor, preferring to yell through the vents when she needed to reach us, came up to watch the progress and the two young girls in her house. She flipped when she saw both of them with their hands in my hair.

  “No, don’t let two people braid your hair at once. Y’all know that’s not right. Too many cooks in the pot!” she screamed, looking at me like I had “666” on my scalp. Crystal’s sister, now chastised, sat on the bed and let Crystal finish. I wondered if I was now under a spell or if my hair would suddenly turn “bad.”

  If I was cursed by the two cooks in my hair, it was worth it, because Crystal left me with a head full of tiny braids lying flat across my head. Each braid was capped off with wooden beads held in place by small pieces of aluminum foil. Being downgraded to living without AC became bearable. I could face the hot days that had crept up on us by sitting in front of my grandmother’s fan with the cool air hitting the exposed areas of my scalp.

  Unfortunately, my hair joy was short-lived because no one bothered to tell me the rules of life with braids. Certainly I had noticed that the black girls kept their heads bobbing above water in the city swimming pool, but they all seemed to do it, not just the black girls with braids. I had no idea that a different hairstyle meant that I should follow the “head above water” rule, so I did what I’d always done as soon as the lifeguard blew the whistle: I dove into the pool cannonball style, getting an automatic wedgie along with a head full of water.

  Swimming back to the surface, I noticed that the water was extra sparkly around my head. The foil had rocketed off my hair when I hit the water and was now floating in the water near my face.

  Underwater, a boy swam by me then blasted to the surface with a face full of snot. He pointed at me and screamed, “Ewww, she doodooed in the water!” I looked down and saw my wooden beads in an almost perfect pile under my feet.

  “She doodooed! Look, y’all, she doodooed!” the boy called out, leading a swimming tour around my legs. The lifeguard stared at me in disgust and yelled to another lifeguard, “We got a pooper!”

  I knew what was coming. If they cleared the pool out and people thought it was because I had an underwater bowel movement, I would never be able to show my face at the pool again. “It’s just my beads!” I yelled out, holding up the one braid that still had a rack of beaks on it.

  With this revelation, the boys started diving under me to retrieve my beads, not to give them back to me but to the cutest girls, who of course could not dive for their own beads because they couldn’t get their hair wet. The pretty girls with the perfect hair bobbed above the water like beautiful lily pads as I tried to dive and reclaim some of the beads I’d waited so long for.

  Only getting two beads back, I crawled out of the pool and walked home. My mother screamed when she saw my hair. She’d lost a VCR and two tapes, and my hair was worse than when we’d started. She had to cut out the remaining beads; the curls and the wetness had strangled them.

  We sat up all night as she washed my hair and tried to pull it straight back into her original two-braid style. That style lasted a record four hours the next day, which my mother took as a sign from God that we should just leave my hair alone.

  Patron Saint of White Fathers

  Martin of Porres is the only known biracial patron saint. He is also known as Martin of Charity and the Saint of the Broom (for his devotion to his work, no matter how menial).

  —Catholic-Forum.com (www.catholic-forum.com/ saints/saintm02.htm)

  “Aren’t you excited to go to your new school?” my mother said, dragging me out of bed by one arm.

  I clutched the headboard. “Please don’t make me go, I have a fever,” I wailed.

  “There’s going to be a fever on your butt if you don’t get in the shower,” my mother replied. I still wouldn’t budge. I preferred a spanking over going to a new school.

  I had no idea what this new school would be like, but I wanted to go back to my old one, where I knew my place in the pecking order. Being biracial, two years younger than the other students in my grade, and non-Catholic, I knew I was stuck as a Middle: not cool enough for the popular kids but not dorky enough that they constantly picked on me to maintain their popularity. It was comfortable, almost like being invisible.

  “Young lady, you will go to school and get an education. That’s the one thing a man can’t take away from you when he declares bankruptcy and every single thing is in both names,” my mother said, clenching her teeth.

  Like separate bedrooms and cable television, my mother’s flowery “you’re beautiful and everyone will love you” speeches were a thing of our two-parent-home past. A conversation getting dressed for school now could easily devolve into a conversation about the benefit of separate checking accounts.

  I got up. My mother had laid out the same school uniform I’d worn to St. Irenaeus. As I put on the familiar navy-blue tunic, I was grateful that at least one thing was staying the same.

  If you want to guarantee a horrible time at a party, show up wearing the wrong dress. When my new teacher, Miss Shannon, escorted me into her fourth-grade classroom and had my new classmates introduce themselves, no one looked me in the face. Instead, they said their names to my solid-blue uniform. Everyone looked offended by me, as if I’d worn a Cinderella costume to their grandmother’s funeral.

  At recess, the girls gathered around me like moths to light. As they stood around me, each girl tried to shout out her questions a little louder than the next, like a schoolyard press conference. Why are you wearing that uniform? Did the store sell you the wrong uniform? Are you going to wear that uniform tomorrow? Did you keep the receipt so you can return that wrong uniform?

  I answered the questions as fast as I could. I was happy for some attention, even if it was to how weirdly I was dressed. Suddenly, the circle parted and Maureen, a girl I recognized from the back of my new classroom, approached me.

  If Martians had landed in that fourth-grade class and asked to be taken to the leader, everyone would have pointed to Maureen. She was as tall as Miss Shannon, and everyone treated her with the same reverence. Maureen looked like a woman squeezed into a child’s uniform, someone my mother might work with or my father mi
ght have dated. While everyone else sported braids, Maureen’s hair was straight, like a model in a Dark and Lovely ad. She stood over me and blocked out the sun. “Can you jump double Dutch?” Maureen asked, shifting her jaw.

  “I’m not very good,” I answered.

  Without further ado, Maureen walked away, taking the press conference with her.

  Most of my classmates watched Maureen’s double-Dutch game from the sidelines. They hung on the wall of the school with their bodies posed nonchalantly, but their eyes begged for a chance to get a jump. A few girls gave up and headed to the chalk hopscotch board. I followed them. Janine, a girl with about the same complexion as mine, was about to throw the stone. I shuffled over and put my mouth close to her ear.

  “Is your dad or your mom white?” I whispered. I was certain Janine was mixed because on the rare occasion I saw a woman with full lips, thick black hair, and a very light complexion in our old neighborhood, I’d ask my mother, “Is she mixed?” to which my mother would always reply yes. Spot the Mixed Woman was one of my favorite childhood games.

  I thought I had the whole biracial thing figured out. People with my complexion—Lisa Thomas-Laury, David Hasselhoff, Janine, my younger brother—were mixed, and when I spotted enough of them I’d gather them up so we could hang out in our own group like black and white people did.

  Janine’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “Is who white?” she asked.

  I repeated the question in a lower tone to hint at the secrecy of my biracial unity plan. In response, Janine puffed her cheeks out like a blowfish, slammed the hopscotch rock down, and stomped away. Their hopscotch game halted, the other players stared at me.

  “What’s her problem?” I asked, flipping my hair back in feigned coolness.

  “You’re about to get your butt kicked,” one girl offered. She pointed behind me. I turned and saw Janine talking to Maureen. Maureen’s mouth dropped along with her rope. Instantly, she started walking toward me, a crew of girls bringing up the rear, like some Catholic production of West Side Story.

  Maureen stood directly in front of me. Her face was so close to mine that if I’d stuck out my tongue I could have licked her nose.

  I closed my eyes. I am going to die. I’m going to die right here in the schoolyard.

  “Did you call my friend white?” Maureen asked. Behind her, the all-girl ass-kicking squad shifted nervously on their feet. One girl cracked her knuckles.

  “No. I asked her if she was half white.”

  “Why would you ask her that?”

  “Because my dad is white.”

  Maureen flicked her hand dismissively. “You’re buggin’,” she said, and turned to the girls, laughing. The group, seeing their leader laugh, knew what to do. They fell over one another, cackling and clutching their chests as if their lungs were about to burst. “She’s buggin’!” several girls called out, echoing Maureen.

  “Ladies! Ladies! This is a schoolyard, not a zoo!” Miss Shannon yelled from the other side of the yard. Chastised, the girls lowered their volume. I wanted them to laugh again. Laughing people can’t throw punches.

  “Your dad ain’t white!” Maureen said.

  “Yeah, your dad ain’t white,” another girl yelled.

  “He better not be white!” someone called out. “I drank behind you at the water fountain, and I don’t drink after white people!”

  “If your dad was white, you’d be rich like Arnold and Willis and could afford the right uniform!” someone observed astutely.

  “True, true, they always have nice clothes on Diff’rent Strokes,” someone else yelled.

  I knew, no matter how much I wanted to cry, I couldn’t let them see that they had hurt me. I didn’t know I could probably have ended it right there by falling in line behind Maureen and agreeing with the reality she had chosen to give me. If Maureen wanted to rearrange my family tree, I was supposed to stand there and catch the branches as she sawed them off.

  I thought Maureen was just pretending not to believe me so she’d have an excuse to whip my behind. I didn’t know that ten-year-olds who lived in West Philly didn’t come in contact with too many white men. There were no white male teachers at the school. No white male students. White men were read about, prayed to, and watched on television. They weren’t people you hung out with. They certainly weren’t your fathers.

  “If your dad is white, bring him in to school!” Maureen yelled.

  “Yeah, bring him to school!” the backup fighters sang out.

  I pictured how smoothly school life would go if that were possible. On the next show-and-tell day, Miss Shannon would say, “Thanks, Jahiem, for bringing in your Hot Wheels Mechanic Garage. Next, Angela will present her Caucasian Father.” Ooh, can I play with him? the whole class would shout.

  “I can’t bring him in because I don’t live with him anymore!” I screamed.

  Maureen’s eyes rolled back in her head and she stuck an open palm in my face. Yes, sure. How convenient that you had a white dad and you can’t bring him in because you don’t live with him anymore.

  Dana, a thin girl with a thick country accent, waved her arms in the air. She had an urgent announcement that might settle this inquisition. “Wait, wait, wait, y’all!” She stepped between Maureen and myself. “Is your dad white-white like Miss Shannon or white like light-skinned?”

  “He’s like Miss Shannon, except a little whiter,” I said.

  That was it. I had blown my last chance to color my dad. Dana threw her skinny arms in the air in a sign of surrender and walked back over to the double-Dutch ropes.

  “You’re a liar,” Janine announced, and looked up at Maureen like she was expecting a pat on the head and a biscuit for bringing a person of such low morality to her leader’s attention.

  Maureen punched her fist into her palm. “If you don’t bring your dad to school, you have to give me a fair one!”

  “Yeah, a fair one!” the girls chimed in.

  “How was your first day of school, honey?” my mother asked. We were watching Wheel of Fortune with my grandmother. A black woman had just landed on Bankrupt.

  My grandmother moaned. “Awww, shoot. This game is racist. How come Bankrupt is the only black space on the wheel?”

  “Mom, I don’t really like that school. The teacher said I can’t come back if I don’t have the right uniform,” I lied, figuring if I couldn’t produce a white dad, I had a better chance of surviving if I dressed according to regulation.

  “Angela, I am not buying a uniform just for one month of school,” my mother replied. “Please promise me that when you have a job you won’t spend money on anything except things that are absolutely necessary, because if your husband doesn’t pay child support you’ll be stuck.”

  “White people love Vanna White. She got a body like a colored woman,” my grandmother mumbled.

  “Please, Mom. I don’t want people to tease me,” I begged.

  “Did someone say something about your uniform? Because if they did, they can buy you a new uniform or they can take their little butts over to your dad’s house and tell him you need a new uniform.”

  My grandmother shifted in her seat. “Can y’all quiet down? The colored gal is about to solve the puzzle.”

  I excused myself and I went upstairs to search for a photo of my father. I’ll show that to Maureen and everything will be cool, I thought.

  Of course, I didn’t stop to think that when women leave their husbands, the last thing on the “to pack” list are photos of him. I tore the third-floor bedroom up: I rummaged through dressers, I crawled under the bed, I dumped out shoeboxes full of receipts.

  An hour later, I was bathed in sweat and exhausted. Frustrated and desperate, I picked up my mother’s purse, hoping to find a wallet-size of their days as a happy couple. My mother must have had a handbag motion detector installed, because as soon as the last penny fell from the bottom of her purse, she appeared in the doorway.

  “Are you stealing from me?” my mom said, grabb
ing her purse and sweeping the contents back into it. “Did you know that in China they cut your fingers off for stealing?”

  I started crying. Maureen was going to kill me, and this would be the last day I’d ever see my mother. “I was just looking for a photo of Daddy,” I said, tears dripping on the collar of my uniform.

  My mom’s eyes filled with water. “Awww, honey,” she said, mistakenly assuming that I was exhibiting signs of Broken Home Syndrome.

  The next morning, the Yellow Pages was on the bed, opened up to CHILD PSYCHIATRISTS.

  “I’m picking you up early today. You’re going to talk to a counselor,” she said, giving me another look of pity to add to all the ones I’d received the previous day when Maureen announced that she was giving me a “fair one.” I was unsure of what a counselor was, but I didn’t care if my mother had said I was going to a dentist who didn’t use anesthetic. I was leaving school early, which meant less time to spend hiding in the school basement (my plan B to escape a fight).

  Still, I had to get through a half day. When I got to the schoolyard, I saw Maureen fake-boxing with two sixth-graders. Her face perked up when she spotted me trying to tiptoe toward the safety of Miss Shannon. Maureen pointed to me, and the two sixth-graders jogged toward me and blocked my path.

  “I’m Keyana. Janine, the girl you called white, is my play cousin,” the taller girl said. I thought it odd but weirdly polite that she would introduce herself before fighting.

  “You can’t come to a new school and bust on somebody, then lie about your dad and not get a fair one,” Keyana’s friend added. She paused and looked at me expectantly, as if I had one last chance to say something to change her mind.

  All I could do was ball my fists up and concentrate on holding back my tears. Keyana started slicking her hair into a ponytail. Her friend unfastened her gold hoop earrings and pinned them to her uniform collar.

  I looked up to the church roof. I tried to will the Virgin Mary statue into toppling off the building and knocking the girls over like bowling pins. Of course, the Virgin was not going to be my accomplice in a homicide; she’d rather stand there with pigeons on her head.