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COLORFUL BLURRED LINES
We moved from LA to the valley a short time after my little brother turned four, a place where I thought the neighborhood kids would stop asking “who’s that white man answering you guy’s door.
My mom and dad tried to make it work but they had problems that had nothing to do with the color of their skin, so they listened to that inner voice to free each other that called from within.
My parents separated when I was thirteen giving in to the pressures of life. Even though they couldn’t live together she still remained his wife.
My mother worked at the college daycare while putting herself through school, so that left me to run the house doing what she had to do even though to me it wasn’t cool.
That’s when the attention from the boy’s came who thought I was cute and actually liked the way I danced, when their only objective really was to get into my pants.
Beaten down on both sides of the color line and no daddy to guide me and tell me ‘dispite what the world says I was his little princessâ€, I got sucked into all the lies they told me and really made my life a mess.
My first real boyfriend I really remember because I was a virgin and had no intentions of giving it up, but I finally gave in and let him have it because I wanted so badly just to be loved.
My next really wrong relationship was trouble from the start, being I was fifteen and he was twenty one and in wisdom and maturity we were worlds apart.
Instead of running him away my mama let him move in with us, she really should have beat myand put up more of a fuss.
By the time I turned sixteen I was pregnant with my first kid, and the truth be told it wasn’t even his.
I was young and hadn’t even experienced life, and here he was trying to mold a little girl and make me a housewife.
I rebelled against his plan and ran the streets and did a lot of club hopping, during the 80’s and early 90’s every club you went to was poppin’.
That’s where I encountered darker skinned women that really hated my guts, I wanted to tell them “lady I have never done anything to you†without people thinking I was nuts!
In a crowded room when I seemed to be unaware, I could feel the hatred coming from you in the intensity of your stare.
Just because I wear my blackness a little more on the inside and my hair hangs down in waves, doesn’t mean my ancestors weren’t stolen from their lands and spent their lives as slaves.
Even the children born to the women from the French quarters in New Orleans were considered bastards and couldn’t carry their father’s name, so how am I any better than my darker sisters in this messed up colors game?
Mainstream history also hides them from its pages like they didn’t exist, so tell me what part of this segregated America did I really miss?
So glad I got to live long enough to see a time when it’s not uncommon to be a swirl, that’s a cute little nickname given now to biracial boys and little girls.
The tides are changing even though it’s taking time, when the color of someone’s skin will be will be erasable just like blurred lines.
