One day, while I was in a planning meeting, I heard my name over the paging system, “Yvette!” It was the receptionist, and she sounded ticked off. She continued, “Another call for you.” My coworker looked at me and raised her eyebrows as if she was wondering what I’d done to piss off the receptionist. I knew I had to do something about the way she was paging me. If I was in a meeting with a potential vendor, a page like that could hurt my credibility. The problem was that I hardly knew her. There wasn’t any tension between us as far as I could tell.
By this time, my mom had been promoted to a managerial position at her university job. She was responsible for a budget in the hundreds of thousands. Since she’d been successfully navigating the work world for years, I went to her for advice. At first, it sounded as though she was going to provide me with insight that was both logical and tactful. But then she started raising her voice in indignation, “. . . and you tell them that you’re the only one she does this to, and you’re also the only Black person who works there!” She went on, but I’d stopped listening.
She was right about one thing: I was the only Black employee, but I had not even noticed it until my mom pointed it out. She was always like that, blaming every problem on race. It drove me nuts. As part of the story I was creating for myself, I’d chosen to evolve into a person who didn’t notice color. Actually, the fact that I hadn’t realized I was the only Black employee until she mentioned it made me realize just how far I’d come, how far I was moving away from my family, from the people who didn’t seem interested in loving me.
The truth was that I never thought about race anymore, but my mom certainly did. For months her neighborhood was abuzz about a new fast food chain being built there. The company sent mailers to the residents, and like everyone else, my mom was really excited to try them out because apparently they sold burgers that were somehow healthier and fresher than the competition’s.
I was with her the first night she went to eat there. She was pretty upset to find that they’d only hired White kids. “Now, they know they could’ve hired at least one little Black girl,” she said. I didn’t respond, but I felt disbelief. Checking to see how many employees were Black vs. how many were White would’ve never occurred to me. I felt confident that it hadn’t occurred to the hiring managers, either. It was the 1990s, after all.
It seemed to me that there was a force alive within the nation—like a powerful living, beating heart representing our collective conscience, our sense of right and wrong—that had come to realize the magnitude of what it had done, of how it was complicit in the systematic oppression of an entire group of people. The weight of this was so strong that the core of the nation, the intangible sense of community meant to bind and unify us, was racing like the wind to just move on.
These things weren’t really said out loud, but someone like me, someone desperate to find her place in the world, someone who was paying incredibly close attention, could see there was a new set of rules at play. Questioning whether or not an incident, situation, or social problem had anything to do with race relations was simply anathema to who we were as a nation. It was an idea spread by the uninformed, the radical, or by angry Blacks who coddled some sort of “reverse racism,” or, God forbid, were themselves “crack babies.” The only other people still talking about race relations were the entitled, like the “welfare queens” who hoped that by playing the “race card” they’d get just a little bit more.
I was definitely not going to take my mother’s suggestion. I was confident that if I said to anyone at work that the receptionist was calling my name in a voice that made it clear that I didn’t deserve her time, but even worse, that with her tone she seemed to be communicating that I was somehow less than her because I was Black, they would’ve thought I was crazy. Instead I went to the receptionist and asked if there was anything I could do differently in our work relationship. She had a few suggestions, and in time, it smoothed itself out.
That was one of the last times I went to my mom for advice. I was determined not to segment the world into camps of Black and White, even when race was obviously the issue.
There was a mall in downtown San Diego that I enjoyed visiting. It was an outdoor mall with several floors. It felt like a little village, separate from the outside world. They had an upscale department store, and whenever I entered, the sales ladies would approach the women walking in—always the ones before me and the ones behind me—to ask them if they needed help. The saleswomen were tall, attractive, and always approached with a smile and outstretched hand as they walked right past me.
I knew what would happen if my mom were in my shoes. She would just assume she was being passed over because of her race, then she’d storm into the manager’s office screaming and making a scene—a perfect embodiment of “the angry Black woman.” The manager would glance at the saleswomen, who would shrug their shoulders, look bewildered, and say they must have just missed her, but they’d be happy to help her find whatever she needed. Score: 1 for the Department Store and 0 for Progress.
I was not my mother. If I wasn’t being helped, it was because there was something wrong with the way I was dressed or an odd coincidence. I refused, absolutely refused, to believe that not being helped had anything to do with my race. To test my theory, one day I went to the department store dressed in one of my finest outfits. Back then, I was blowing most of my paychecks by purchasing a new suit almost every week; some cost more than a thousand dollars.
When I entered that day, dressed up and feeling good, there was a woman standing next to the makeup counter. It was instantly clear that she was good at sales. She looked confident as she made eye contact with everyone who passed by her. She was dressed in all black, her hair was colored a deep, dark red, and she managed to convey charisma without a shred of desperation when she called out to the women walking by, “Do you want a free makeover?” With her high heels and perfectly made-up face, it felt like she’d be doing them a favor.
At the time, I was still struggling to find eye shadow and lipstick shades that worked best with my dark skin. I wanted that makeover. I moved closer to the woman at the counter so I’d be ready to accept her offer when she made it. But she didn’t offer me anything. Instead, she awkwardly adjusted her body so she could look past me and then motioned to another woman, “Free makeover.” I wanted to believe the best. This was not about race. Somehow she just wasn’t noticing that I was interested.
I stood in front of her, smiled, and said, “Hi, I’d like a makeover.”
Her persona of crisp excellence and warmth fell away in an instant. She let her shoulders sag, rolled her eyes, and said, “If I give you a makeover, you’re gonna have to buy something.”
Quickly, I said, “Of course I intend to buy something.” She sat me down, began my makeup, and allowed her mood to lighten. As I sat there listening to her share stories about this and that, I kept wondering what it was about me that made her think I was a waste of her time. We finished and I bought a bunch of makeup.
Nevertheless, I left feeling proud. My mom would’ve made that interaction about race. I refused to do so. This place of disagreement became the location where I put all of my hurt and confused feelings about my mom and my race. I didn’t say these things out loud to myself. I wasn’t quite self-aware enough to put together just how and why I was letting things with my mom fall apart. I would need time to myself and time in the Delta before I’d even have the ability to consider how I’d let our differences on race define the fault line between us.
In my new way of thinking, the reason my mother and I had such a troubled relationship was because I saw the world as being beyond race, while she was obsessed with it. At the time, I remembered that when I was in my early elementary school years, my mom had instructed me not to trust White people, but she knew she was sending me to a school that was almost completely White. How was I supposed to manage? Who would I play with?
Coming into my own as a woman, I began to dump the fear
s of my youth, the fears that something was wrong not just with me but also with my entire family. I thought there was nothing wrong with us, there was something wrong with her, something wrong with the way she saw the world. I could be free from whatever ailed my mother and the rest of my family because I wasn’t going to wear my race like a martyr’s cloak. I was beyond race. It didn’t matter to me or to anyone else what color I was. I would never be accused of playing the race card.
When I was twenty-four, I met a man who fell in love with the self I’d created, and I chased that love to Phoenix, Arizona, and got married. I married someone who was half-White and half-Black, allowing me to continue in my ambivalence.
My future seemed so bright. My husband was college educated, and we paid our bills early, saved money, bought cars with cash, and abstained from drinking alcohol. We began to dream of having children who would thrive in our loving, stable environment. So, we made our dream come true. We had two boys: Bishop and Dexter.
To friends and my husband’s family, I was a picture of peace. But inside, something was always moving and shifting, as if I was carrying a heavy load. There were moments when I was filled with rage, others when I was consumed with fear. I didn’t explore the origins of those emotions. I just moved past them and turned back to writing my story, making revisions as necessary.
“Are you okay, Mommy?” Bishop, my two-year-old, asked one day while I was sorting through papers.
I looked down at him and smiled what I hoped was a radiant, sunny smile. “I’m okay, sweetheart.”
He put a tiny little hand on my thigh and shook his head. “Mommy, not okay,” he whispered, then turned and sauntered off.
Something was beginning to break. My lovely story was nothing more than the surface of something deeper. Beneath that surface was an unplumbed sea of shame and fear that pressed against me, threatening to burst free.
About a year later, I was home alone with my two boys when my story, my protective surface, ebbed away. I was standing in front of the kitchen sink, looking out the window, lost in the green of the leaves that sprouted from the palm trees in my yard. Warm water was running over my fingers as they moved a sponge in and out of a water glass. I felt a tug on the left side of my shirt. I glanced down to see Bishop. He had wide, vulnerable eyes, insanely long eyelashes that curled up at the ends, and smooth, caramel-colored skin.
He was staring up at me with a concerned look on his face, his little brow bent with worry. He stuck his arm out and rubbed his tiny little fingers along its smooth skin. “Mommy, why am I this color? Why do I look like this?”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I felt as though I’d been playing “White” with my sister and someone had come in and pulled off my wig, just ripped the skirt from the top of my head.
He touched the skin on my chestnut-colored arm and said, “Why are you that color and Daddy is a different color?”
I smiled a smile that felt plastic even as it was spreading across my face. This wasn’t part of the story. The mother of happy kids who defied racial stereotypes—that was my story. The mother of boys who felt colorless, who were blind to their difference—that was my story, his story. I tried to smile wider, dried my hands off, and lifted him into my arms. He wrapped his legs around my waist and let his bottom rest on my hip.
“There are lots of people who look like you, just not here in Arizona,” I said, and then fumbled through an explanation of colonization. He looked at me as if I’d responded in a foreign language, wiggled down, and ran off.
But that was just the beginning. Over the next several weeks, he kept asking questions about his color and talking about being brown as if it was the worst thing on earth. I put on a strong front and offered him answers that sounded like things he might hear on Sesame Street. The truth was that I didn’t have any answers for him, just like I hadn’t had any answers for myself. I pulled out the script of my made-up story and repeated the lines I’d memorized to get through life: Nothing in my life has to be influenced by my race unless I allow it to be. I don’t think of myself as Black or White, and no one else does, either.
I continued my routine. I went to book club and church, met friends to exercise, read to my children, cleaned my house, applied my makeup, and kept going.
One night a few months later, I was sitting on the patio of a restaurant with some girlfriends. We were telling funny stories about our husbands and sharing silly things our kids had done. In response to a joke, I tossed my head back as if I had magic hair of my own. In the middle of that simple motion, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the darkened restaurant window. My breathing quickened and I was struck with a feeling of alarm.
I was the only dark image in a sea of white. I was suddenly aware of how loud I was, how my clothes were too bright, and my lipstick too red. With hair sticking up in a way that White hair never does, I felt as though I’d been caught pretending I belonged. As I smoothed my hair down and dabbed my lipstick, I shut my eyes and, for a moment, I could almost make out the sound of someone screaming—“I see her, I see her, I see her!”
Surrounded by laughter, the smell of warm cobbler, and wine, I looked at the hands on my lap and rubbed the skin that covered them the same way Bishop had.
I’d been willing to settle for a made-up story as the only answer for myself, but the mother in me desperately wanted something better for my sons. I wanted an honest story, one they could hold on to with pride, but I didn’t have one to give them. I longed for a tale I could wrap up like a gift, one they could return to every time they doubted themselves or wondered about their color.
I wanted to find a way to tell my sons what it meant to be Black that would leave them feeling proud and excited about the future. I imagined a place for them to stand in the massive narrative of the Black story, a spot that would enable my boys to see themselves the way I did. In my eyes, they were glorious.
But part of me feared that a story wouldn’t be enough. The truth was that something was wrong with my family. Even the word “wrong” felt inept. There was something there that managed to trip us up. I’d let myself believe I was so different from my parents, but maybe I wasn’t. Had they once dreamed a dream for me? When they left the Deep South, they must’ve had some hope of giving their children a better life with more opportunities. Was there something they had tried to escape?
I pictured my parents gathering up the strength of all their hope and thrusting the old story away before turning and running toward a western sea, away from the land of their ancestors—only to have the story find them again. But not just them. Somehow this thing, this crippling, suffocating thing, had dislodged itself from where it lay in the Deep South and traveled across a thousand lands until, once again, it struck my parents, and then their children, and now their children’s children—efficient, void of mercy, like a malevolently enchanted boomerang.
A Catalyst
I didn’t know how to start. When Bishop began expressing concerns about being Black while everyone else in his world seemed to be White, I’d looked a lifelong anxiety in the eye and decided to face it. I promised myself that this was it; this was where it was going to end. Like stopping a cycle of abuse, we were no longer going to feel confused or ambivalent about our race. Days later, when I began taking apart what it was I actually hoped to accomplish, my audacity quickly began to fade.
It was 2007, and I was a stay-at-home mom living in Arizona and finishing up my college degree while the kids napped. I was already overwhelmed by my responsibilities. And I had another problem. My knowledge of Black history was dismal at best. When my elementary school teacher taught us about the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman’s accomplishments sounded more like an extended road trip than a series of courageous, death-defying journeys.
I figured the best place to look for stories that would help my kids see Blacks as heroic overcomers was the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, aside from a few names and approximate dates, the story of those fiery sp
eeches and impassioned marchers was little more than a pile of embers to me. Even the ongoing stories in the media about the link between socioeconomics and race, debates over affirmative action, and questions regarding the high prison rates for Black males were little more than occasional crackling sounds from already wasted wood. I was pretty convinced that the raging fire described every February during Black History Month had definitely lost its roar.
I decided that, instead of trying to make sense of a time period so massive, I would focus on my own family first. I started by pulling together the data I already had, which was basically a pile of disconnected stories.
As a child, I’d seen very few photographs of my grandparents, their siblings, or their cousins, but I knew just enough about several of them to imagine what they might look like. I made a family tree in my mind, filled with faces I’d constructed based upon the roles each person played within the stories I’d heard. My father and his brothers wore sheepish grins because they were always getting into scuffles with other kids from the neighborhood. My mother’s maternal grandmother had a set jaw and stubborn eyes because in one of her stories she’d held her own against a group of White men who tried to enter her home late one night.
As I continued to sift through the stack of memories they’d shared with me, I kept coming across a blank face, one person who I knew so little about that I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he might have looked like: my mother’s father. I remembered that over the years there were a few times when she’d mention something about him having a café, but I couldn’t seem to conjure up any other details. I’d never seen any photos of him, didn’t know his name, or even how he died. I felt curious about him, but I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I even wondered if he was to blame for whatever seemed to be plaguing my family. Maybe that was the reason my mother hardly spoke of him.
The Song and the Silence Page 6