I was born with white skin that burned and freckled in the sun. At least twice a summer I would lay in bed on my stomach while my mom rubbed aloe lotion on my entire body as she lectured me about the sun. “You get no sympathy from me.” She’d say, shaking her head as I winced in pain. “I tell you every day to put sunscreen on and you nod and say you will so this is what you get.” At that point, she’d leave the room, slamming the door behind her. I would lie there, still in my bikini, motionless. I knew that if I so much as turned to reach for the TV remote, my entire body would scream and punish me for even thinking about it. Without fail, five minutes after my mom’s heated exit, she’d open my bedroom door cautiously, pushing through with the plug-in fan, an ice pack, frozen grapes, two Tylenol, and a huge glass of water. She’d plug in the fan and face it directly towards me, the wind sending goose-bumps down my back as it cooled the aloe gel still sitting on my skin. “I’m sorry.” She’d coo as she ran her fingers through my hair. “Just no more sun, okay? Skin cancer is serious. “ I’d nod and promise her never again as I sucked on a frozen grape in a hot-and-cold-chill-induced coma. But without fail, as soon as my skin stopped peeling off in large uneven flakes, I’d be out again, headed to the beach with my Uncle Bob who would let me pinch his leather skin as hard as I could.


Growing up, I learned to believe that white skin, especially white like me- when the closest thing to a tan I ever had occurred when my freckles popped up close together- was ugly. Undesirable. I grew up playing basketball in my alley with my neighbor’s sons who were all varying shades of brown and never turned red like me when they ran around. I grew up as the only one who put sunscreen on at recess. My best friend, Caitlin, was beautiful. She had caramel skin with a few freckles scattered across her nose, and the only thing that stood out more then her red afro (attributed to her Irish mother), was the way she smiled to show only half her teeth (which apparently took lots of practice). She only smiled like this on occasion, however, since the majority of the time her mouth was open, telling anyone who would listen about her future as a marine biologist, why it was unethical to serve hot pockets at middle school lunch, or what the biblical take on any presented issue would be. She stayed with my family on occasion, mostly when her mom was too drunk to pick her up or too broke to pay for gas to get her home- but it never fazed her. “Strong things happen to strong people” she would say to me, “and God’s tests of faith are simply an acknowledgment of the things he knows you are strong enough to overcome.” I was jealous of her determination. I knew she could accomplish anything she set her mind to.

Then, her stepfather was arrested. Being the get away driver in a failed bank robbery that led to the unintentional murder of a bystander got him 15 years without parole, and left Caitlin’s mother with no job and three mouths to feed. He would miss his new born daughters sweet sixteen.

That summer, everything changed. She moved in with her cousins (her drug-ridden father’s extended family), dyed her red hair brown, referred to her new boyfriend as her “nigga” and abandoned the extended vocabulary she’d worked so hard to achieve. Instead of waiting for marriage, as she’d promised, she lost her virginity in the back of a Honda to Cedrick. I didn’t understand. She had transformed into the epitome of what she had promised to never become, and then went further. She called me once, three years later, on Christmas. I let it go to voicemail. “Merry Christmas Mary! Just wanted to let you know I’m finna be having a baby. Cedrick’s mad cuz he say I aint ready for no child, but remember when we used to talk about the day we’d both have kids? Guess I never knew it would come up so quick.” The baby never came, and I never asked why. But three months later when she uploaded pictures of her new tattoo- $$ Property of Cedrick $$ across her hips- I understood. And I realized the rumors were all true.


Society wants to believe that children don’t see in color. By believing that youth are unaware of racial differences, it is easier to believe that we are raising our children to be accepting and tolerant individuals. But the truth is, we all see color, and we are all confused by the implications of different skin tones from a young age. We quickly we learn that these are not questions we are allowed to talk about openly. The child in the grocery store who asks why the black woman’s skin is “dirty” is loudly shushed, but her question is never addressed. The kindergarten teacher who tells her multiracial students “all people are created equal” appears to be promoting and accepting diversity, but what does equality mean to a kindergartener who wonders why all the Hispanic kids in his class get free lunch when he doesn’t? What does equality mean to the child who watches all his White friends get picked up in nice cars while he waits for the bus with his mom? I went to a high school in the richest part of San Diego County, where kids got dropped off in Maserati’s until their sixteenth birthdays when they drove in a new BMW’s. I got dropped off in my mom’s grey 1996 Toyota until my sister left for college and I inherited her 1990 Honda.
Unlike some of my classmates who were unaware of discrimination or thought it was irrelevant to them, I was taught from a very young age “all people are created equal” does not mean that all people all treated the same. I saw discrimination everywhere, and was overwhelmed by it. I understood what racism was, but didn’t know what to do about it. I understand, or at least attempt to understand, how my race has contributed to my identity. My race allowed me to be placed into honors classes at my inner-city middle school without taking the standardized test. My race allowed me to fit in with the students at my high school without them knowing or assuming I came from a working class family. My race allows me to hide what is different about me when I want to, because no white people stereotype me as anything more then a teenage girl. But once people do get to know me, my differences become clearer: I am not wealthy, and by being raised by two gay parents I have never experienced a “normal” family structure. As a result of this, at a certain point in my life, every time I had been singled out because of my race I felt like I deserved it. I had spent so much of my life feeling different even when I didn’t look different that when my friend Xavier’s mom met me for the first time and instead of saying “hello” screamed “who the f*** is this white b**** and why is she sitting on my couch?” I felt like I deserved it. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand how I was lucky enough to be born into a world where I am not limited by my appearance.



The day I met Jacob, he refused to look at me. As a plot by the administration of our high school to attempt to instill a sense of family within the school community, all students were forced once a week to go to “Family Groups”, where two students at each grade level were put together to hang out and “make lasting connections that make the school a more friendly and comfortable place”. Jacob, as a senior, was my “father”, but he refused to look at me. In fact, he refused to look at anyone. He sat in the back row while my “mom” read The Bernstein Bears to our extremely un-amused “family”. I’d seen him before around campus, as one of the three Black kids in his grade he definitely stood out among a sea of white faces, but not for the same reasons the rest of the minority students did. He was always quiet and never rude. Throughout the remainder of the school year he was the only member of my family who did not acknowledge me in the hallway. He was a football player, headed to college on an athletic scholarship, and even though throughout the year we had a lot of the same friends, he never addressed me individually apart from his duties as my “father”. Which is why, even though we had begun to develop an almost-friendship by that summer, I was still nervous the first time I went to his house.

I hesitantly knocked on the door and heard dogs barking in the background. “Coming!” A voice called to me. The door opened and a middle-aged White woman stepped through the opening.

“Hello!” She greeted me. Who was this woman? Was I at the wrong house? I just stood there, not knowing what to say.


“You must be Mary, come on in. Jacob’s out back with his dad.” I muttered a thank you and walked in to the house.


A few months later, after I had become a regular guest at family dinners, Jacob’s mom and I laughed about the awkwardness of our first encounter. “It happens all the time.” She told me as I sat with her after dinner one night while Jacob did the dishes with his brother in the next room. “No matter if it’s people whispering comments at the grocery store about the white lady with the wild children, or a woman sitting next to me at my grandson’s preschool graduation pointing to Dillon (her grandson) and saying what a bad kid he is before I claim him as my own, people always seem to separate me from my family.” She pointed to the family picture that hung on the wall above us. It showed the faces of her, her black husband, her four children, and her five grandchildren. “Look at them.” She told me. “They all look like me.” I nodded, noting the striking resemblance all of her children had to her strong facial structure. “But somehow, it’s Kelsey, who is always my responsibility.” Kelsey, a white fourteen year old, has lived with Jacob's family family since her mother was murdered when she was eleven. “We were all created in God’s image; I don’t see why it matters what color their skin is.”


But it did matter. It mattered when her oldest son was the only Black person on the water polo team. It mattered when he got in to an Ivy League University because of his outstanding grades and athletic achievement, but was told endless amounts of times it was “just because he was black”, and it certainly mattered when Josh, Jacob’s older brother, repeatedly told him that because he was “burnt” and not “caramel” like Josh and his other siblings were, that no one would ever love him.

I quickly fell in love with the boy with burnt skin. My parents told me when I was thirteen years old that there were two requirements the people I dated must meet in order to deserve her approval. They have to smart- meaning they have a good head on their shoulders and plan to do something with it- and they have to be nice to me. Period. She said nothing of gender (although I know my dad always secretly hoped I’d turn out to be a lesbian), nothing of socioeconomic status (I was expected to have my own career, and due to my just-enough kind of upbringing, I knew that money never bought happiness anyway), and nothing of race (except when my mom let it slip a year later that she’s be surprised if I gave her white grandchildren). My mom fell in love with Jacob almost as quickly as I did. Jacob was not as lucky. He fell in love with a girl who he dated for almost a year before her parents forced them to break up because they didn’t want their daughter to get seriously involved with someone who in the long run would “inevitably bring her down” and “was only interested in her for her money.” It didn’t matter to her parents that he was half-white, and brought up in a conservative republican home, just like she was.


I remember listening to Pink Floyd by the campfire and shaking my head as we sang every word but couldn’t remember the name of the song. Jacob fell asleep that night with his arm wrapped around my waist. I turned away so he couldn’t feel me shaking. He kept asking me why I wasn’t talking. I had nothing to say that he hadn’t already heard. When I asked him what he was thinking about and he said he was listening to the river I wanted to scream. I was thinking about him, and the last year we’d spent together, and the fact that we only had three more days before I left for school. I wanted him to tell me that he was afraid of losing me, that he still needed me the way I needed him. But he said nothing. So I stretched myself to the corner of our sleeping bag and let my arm hang out onto the cold, hard, ground. When I remembered the name of the song, I laughed to myself. I Wish You Were Here.

He told me it was better for me to be alone, and that I needed to experience the world outside of my hometown without anything holding me back. “You’re going to leave this place and realize there is a whole world out there for you. And if I fit into that world, that’s great. But if I don’t, I don’t want to force you into something you’re not ready for.” I let two months go by before I told him how much I missed him. Over Thanksgiving I told him the real world was different, but that he’d always have a place in my world if he wanted one.

“I’m afraid” he said.
“Afraid?”
“Of losing you. Of not being here and having no say in what happens. I can’t do that again.”

“Like you lost Sarah?” I asked.

“Yeah.” It was the first time we’d spoken of her.

“Do you still love her?”

“It was a long time ago.” He paused. “But I will always love the memory of her.” Part of me wanted him to tell me he hated her for what she put him through. But at the same time, I knew that losing Sarah how he did had to hurt in ways that I could never truly comprehend. I knew that losing her because of what her parents saw in him left the memory of her untainted; their relationship was never given time to run its course, and just as with all things that end to soon, he was left with a longing to understand why. I hated that she still had a part of him. But if I owed her even a fraction of the strength of the love and compassion he had to give, her memory lingering in his mind was something I could live with.

The next morning our elbows bumped while we brushed our teeth. He told me that brushing your teeth with your left hand builds self-control because it forces you to focus on something you don’t usually have to think about. I switched my toothbrush to my left hand and started brushing. The handle felt awkward between my fingers and the bristles scratched my gums. I switched back to my dominant hand, wondering how much he thinks about that I’ll never have to.