Clarification
ME: Honey, do you know why all the sales people kept telling you how pretty your eyes were today?
RUBY: Because I have brown skin and they don’t think brown skin is very good.
ME: Well (crap), no. (Think quick.) That’s not why. (Address it or not to address it, that is the question.) I mean (always address it), it’s true: There are people in this world who don’t think that brown skin is as good as pink skin. And they’re wrong about that. They’re what we call “ignorant”.
RUBY: And I just walk away from them!
ME: That’s right. You just walk away with your shoulders back and your head held high. You do not listen to them. You do not let their words get inside your heart.
RUBY: No!
ME: But those sales people who told you your eyes were beautiful? Remember them?
RUBY: Yeah.
ME: Yes?
RUBY: Yes.
ME: Well, they told you your eyes were beautiful because they are.
On bullies
I was running down the stairs, weighted with my overstuffed backpack, jammed in next to all of the other students—some going in my direction and some going up—trying to make it to fourth period on time, when she hit me in the back of my head. For no reason that I can remember now, or that I was aware of back then, the 8th grade bully had punched me from behind. I was in 7th grade with braces, gawky and unknown. She was pretty with long dark hair, was intimidating and unprovoked. After she struck me, I cried in the girls bathroom, alone. My head ached. But more than anything, I was humiliated.
Naked
Every Wednesday at 5-o’clock, Ruby has swim class. Once her thirty minutes of floating, leaping, belly-flopping and retrieving pink plastic rings has elapsed, it is our routine to head for the locker room and change her into her “soft pants.” This has proven to be a giant effort because while I’m trying to get her wet clothes off and her dry clothes on, she is involuntarily frozen in place like a zombie, transfixed by three 8-year-old girls who are also changing—secretly, beneath towels pulled around their bodies like cocoons—at the same time each week following their swim team practice. Oh, how her eyes swirl when these little girls tramp through the locker room in their swim caps and racer-back suits, dripping wet, shivering and hugging themselves on the way to the showers.
Ruby stares at them as I wiggle her swim suit over her bottom, around her hips and down to her ankles. She stares as I dry her naked body with the mostly wet towel, as I coach her like I might an invalid to step into her underwear (if I remember to bring them) and then into each of her pants legs. Meanwhile, the girls completely ignore her—with the exception of a slight smile offered by one on the very first day of lessons—while they gossip about other kids and prevent any accidental exposure of their privates.
As I’m pulling Ruby’s clothes across her sticky skin, watching her rapturously watching them, I’m aware of the already-in-full-bloom body image issues being modeled not 6 feet away from my daughter. And I’m reminded of 7th grade gym class. And my teacher, Mrs. Allen.
At nearly 6-feet tall, Mrs. Allen was an imposing figure. She wore white tennis socks, white leather athletic shoes and pleated navy blue Bermuda shorts, always with a cotton tank top, usually white. She might wear a wind breaker or warm up pants if it was cold, the kind that made a wooshing noise as she walked. She was big boned and thick-kneed with a voice like ball bearings and short, curly brown hair that looked like it had been plucked from a mannequin head circa 1977. I used to watch for wig confirmation, to see if it would slide around when she scratched her head, something she did often when she wasn’t handling equipment or managing fitness tests.
Whatever our activities, each day at the end of dreaded gym class, we were required to take a dreaded shower and then, to prove it. Mrs. Allen would lean against the doorway of the shower room with a clipboard in her hand, inspecting each girl for shower evidence. I don’t know where I’d learned to be self-conscious but, like the other girls in my class, I wasn’t about to get naked in front of anybody, which of course makes it fairly challenging to shower. But, like the other girls in my class, I managed my way around the requirement quite well.
I wrapped myself in a white towel, tucking it at mid chest like I’d learned from my mother, and I did the hokey-pokey in the communal shower like the rest of the troops: Stick one leg in, then the other. Stick one arm in, then the other. I’d splash some water on my chest, shoulders and face (sure, actual showering would have been less effort but this was equally convincing and less…nude). Then I’d show Mrs. Allen the necessary proof to be freed for a day. I was 12 years old.
Later, as a dance major in college—a situation that sometimes required full costume changes not just backstage, but in the wings—I had a very difficult time unlearning the don’t-get-naked-in-the-locker-room rule that had defined my self-loathing since junior high. I’d hidden and hated my body for a long time and that didn’t just magically come undone. And now my four-year-old is learning, from girls only twice her age, that she should be embarrassed and ashamed of her body.
Raising a daughter is treacherous. Short of stripping off my clothes in the locker room every Wednesday, I’m not exactly sure how to combat this message or if anything I say will be half as cool as what those girls do.
About my normal behavior, Part 1
I’m back from a most spectacular gallavant across the pond and let me tell you that, amazing as this might sound, I didn’t die from fright. I was riding the Metro in Paris all by myself on day two, nearly imploding from fear, when I realized that, from the outside, I probably looked completely competent like everyone else on that train.
Right then, I decided to embrace the fake-it-till-you-make-it method, unwound from my ever-tightening fetal position and recorded a woman playing an accordion between stops, which is a totally fantastic recording that I desperately want to share here, but which despite trying, I cannot embed, which has resulted in a certain amount of swearing and the throwing of one semi-soft object across the room, which in turn resulted in an argument with my husband about how much longer he is going to keep his goddamned handle bar mustache. I adore run on sentences but am not a big proponent of facial hair.
Anyway. About my fear.
Mrs. Robinson’s ego needs a little love from time to time
I had just come from Madalena’s and was driving to meet my husband for a late afternoon drink when I got picked up. Never mind that I had worked out that morning and was still in my gym clothes, marinating in my own grit and stink and general grossness derived from being packaged in Lycra for 8-plus hours. It wasn’t pretty. I was disgusting enough that I apologized repeatedly to Madelena as I lifted my arms so she could pin and stuff padding into my favorite strapless dress, but not so disgusting that I decided to postpone my alterations for another, more shower-filled day. Poor Madelena. Suffering the slings and arrows of dried gym sweat, all because I’m derelict when it comes to time management.
However evident my yuckness was to anyone within arms-length, the state of my filth was apparently well shielded by a) my car, b) my tinted windows, c) my over-sized sunglasses and d) my lip gloss. (Lip gloss has magic powers. Praise the lip gloss!) All I know is that I slowed, smiled and waved into my lane a car full of wild-haired, teen-ish boys at a two-way stop on Adams Avenue and suddenly, I was Eva Mendes.
On my best day I should hope to look so gross.
And so I found myself crawling along in single-lane traffic, behind a white Honda Civic filled with lanky kids of the male persuasion who probably weren’t old enough to vote in 2008. The driver, wearing Ray-Bans circa Risky Business—a movie he’s probably never heard of—kept checking on me in his side mirror. The two boys in back turned to face me, as excited to watch me follow as my friends’ small daughters, who make funny faces out the rear window of their father’s car whenever our families take our Minis for an afternoon drive. And the guy in the passenger seat poked first his head, then his arm, out his window, waving a cell phone, signaling me to call him. Which required a number, so he set the phone down and began slowly and methodically flashing a series of numbers with his long fingers. It was like the mating dance of some rare, exotic bird that was vaguely familiar and yet incredibly foreign. It didn’t matter that he was of a different species; I understood the language. He was thoughtful and precise, leaving enough time between digits for me to write them all down. Too bad I was DRIVING! Further evidence of an evolutionary gap.
My hands were on the wheel and I was smiling wide at this point. Chuckling, even, as the passenger twisted to flash an eight, a six, a nine. Oh, if they knew, I thought. If they only saw me close up. I imagined the surprise that would register in their eyes if we were to stand face-to-face, realizing their mistake and figuring out how best to get out of this uncomfortable situation. I contemplated what their conversation under such circumstances might be—surely involving several “DUUUde!”s— when I noticed the driver eyeballing me again in his mirror. I held his eye contact and pointed to myself slowly and methodically, making sure the line of communication was open. He adjusted his glasses, rested his elbow casually across the door and nodded at me. He was ready to receive.
I lifted my right hand off the steering wheel and pointed at myself one more time. He nodded: Got it, got it. He was sort of adorable, this man-child. The whole group of them was. But I had to have my say. I crossed my thumb over my open palm and held my arm straight out toward my windshield. I held it there until the boy in the mirror nodded again. Then, with my fingers touching my thumb, I made a perfect O.
The boy didn’t move. I laughed and repeated my message knowing I’d undercut myself; flashing my real age would have required both hands on my part and maybe a little too much work on his. He was using a mirror, after all. Plus there was that other hurdle of DRIVING A CAR with which we were both grappling. I conceded the six months because a one-handed “four” and “zero” were the safest route to the same destination. And anyway, at their age, what the hell’s the difference?
4-0 babe, I smiled. His eyebrows went up and that’s all I saw because I’d arrived at the bar where I’d be meeting my husband. I performed my award-worthy parallel park job, and looked up in time to see the boys disappear into the rain, their four mussed heads a silhouette against the gray day. It had been good while it lasted. It was silly but exciting, I admit this. And I was slightly more dirty when it was over.
Grateful
One comb out, a few tears, a great new stylist and 3-1/2 hours later (no, that’s not a typo), this is what her hair looks like. She chose the “clicky-clackies” and her birthmother chose me.
God Bless America (aka The Good, The Bad and The Ugly)
Real questions I received from grown adults during a 24-hour period this past weekend. Ruby was within earshot for all of them:
“Adoption? That is so wonderful! I want to adopt my 20-year old maid. I love her but I don’t know how to adopt her.”
“Why is her skin black and yours isn’t?”
“Do you like that color of skin?”
“Does she know she’s adopted?”
“Why would you tell her? Why would you do that?”
“Did you know you were getting a black baby?”
Momentum
Much of the literature I’ve read about transracial parenting has said that three is the age at which the questions about race begin. I’ve been apprehensively waiting for the inquiries, hoping I’d have the right answers when put on the spot. I’ve tried to prepare myself for it, and at the same time—however wrong this might be—I’ve tried not to think about the daunting task of handling it because it’s just so…big. There’s this giant complicated thing we have to help Ruby learn and I don’t know how to do it and can’t she just be a happy kid with no worries? Cocooning her in bubble wrap is becoming an increasingly attractive option.
Nevertheless, this waiting hasn’t been passively done in avoidance. Sam and I talk to Ruby about adoption as part of our ongoing family dialogue and have since the very beginning. The topic mostly comes up during reading time, in particular with Todd Parr’s The Family Book or A Mother For Choco or the poetic Black Is Brown Is Tan or any number of books that include some aspect of adoption. For the most part she seems disinterested.
But we also tell her about the day we got The Call and the 36-hours that transpired between learning we had a daughter and then huddling with her in our arms on the floor of a Chicago apartment, feeding her her first bottle on a sweltering summer night. In all of the re-tellings, we haven’t put a lot of emphasis on race, preferring to let her lead us as she’s ready, and it wasn’t until last week that she showed her first real awareness (see post just previous to this one). Tonight, there was more.
After reading to Ruby at bed time, I rubbed her back and told her the familiar story about when we met, careful to be as consistent as possible in detail. When I got to the part about her birthmother, Ruby asked to see a picture.
I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do and I immediately wondered whether it was an age-appropriate maneuver to show her a photo. It wasn’t exactly a moment where I felt I could stop to consult the experts. Changing the subject or inventing a white lie to ease my anxiety or put her off seemed disingenuous at best. The parenting philosophy Sam and I embrace is one of honesty and openness and our child asked to see a picture of her birthmother, which, it seems, is her birth right.
I called Sam into Ruby’s bedroom and had her tell him what she wanted. She fluffed the pillows behind her head so she and I could be more comfortable, then Sam knelt at her bedside and the two of us together showed our child—our joy, our light, our reason—the only picture we have of her birthmother.
“You have her eyes,” I told her. She was serious and quiet for I don’t know how long before she ran her right index finger back and forth across Sam’s forehead. She said to him, “But she’s the wrong color. Why is she brown? How come she’s not pink like you?”
I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. I wanted to gasp or heave or rewind, rewind, rewind! Sam talked to her in the most loving, simple language possible to help her understand and inside I was thinking Oh, man! We’ve fucked this up, we shouldn’t have shown her, she’s not ready.
Or perhaps I’m not ready. It’s not that I feel threatened in any way or that I’m worried she will stop loving me. It’s none of that. It’s about what this information will mean to her as she grows and how she’ll process it and whether she will come to be okay with it. It has to be this way, I get that. I signed up for this. It’s the way it’s supposed to be. The hardest part, though, is that it felt like a part of her innocence simply evaporated. It was like I watched it get up and walk right out the door.
Rising to the occasion
Ruby’s grasp of language seems to have exploded in the last week. She was a sappling on Friday morning, I swear, but she somehow sprouted branches and roots in every direction by sunset, which is when she pointed out that I hadn’t asked Sam to pass the salsa please.
Polysyllabic words and multi-sentence paragraphs, combined with her unnerving attention to everything happening around her, leaves me no room to be under-the-radar imperfect. Over the weekend, she scolded me for talking with my mouth full and pointed out that I needed to stop picking my lip. “That’s a bad habit,” she said as she walked past me en route to the backyard. She didn’t slow her pace or even stop to look at me but instead used the eyes in the back of her head as she made for the door. They’ll serve her well someday, those extra eyes, but I prefer she not use them to spy on me, thank you very much. It’s like I’m living with a hall monitor.
Yesterday at the park, some kid was having a bit of a nervous breakdown just across the grass from us. Ruby shrugged her head in the direction of the outburst and asked, “What’s friggin’ happening over there?” Sam and I—thankful it wasn’t our kid shrieking about the the misfortune of spilled Goldfish—plucked the finest parenting skills from our quiver when we fell over each other laughing and asked her to please repeat herself. As if we actually wonder where she learned such a ghastly turn of phrase.
And then there was the pesky issue on Saturday of Bambi’s mother. What happened to Bambi’s mother? Where did Bambi’s mother go? Is Bambi’s mother under the snow? Each of my answers seemed to lead to another question and frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to come up with 17 different ways to explain why I don’t believe in heaven or a “rainbow bridge.” Eventually, with no exit from the question labyrinth in sight, I shrugged and told her that Bambi’s mother is living in the North Pole and will be Santa’s 10th reindeer come Christmas. Then I sang for her just to prove what I was saying:
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,
Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen and Bambi’s Mother…
The silence in the room was so loud, it was blinding.
The keeper moment in all of this, though, came while reading Thank You, Dr. King, a book in the Little Bill series that I’ve been reading with Ruby for two years. For the first time ever, Ruby pointed to Little Bill and said, “HEEEEEY! He has my kind of brown skin!” Then she pointed to Alice the Great. “HEEEEEY! So does Alice the great!” It was a discovery more exciting than bubbles.
“Yes, they do have your kind of brown skin,” I said, sort of holding my breath. I didn’t want to make the issue more important than she could handle, but I also wanted to avoid a ridiculous (though tempting) Easter bunny analogy.
“Your skin isn’t brown, mama,” she ran her fingers up and down my arm, tickling me. “Your skin is pink and MY skin is brown!”
“It’s true,” I said. “Though you have some pink, too. See your hands?” I took her hand, flipped it over in mine and stroked her palm. “Your palms are pink. And look at the soles of your feet. They’re pink, too. You’re lucky because you have brown and pink. And! Get this!” I moved in close and whispered in her ear. “Do you know who else has your kind of brown skin?”
She turned to look at me. “Who, mama?”
“Barack Obama!”
Her eyes got wide. “Barack OhBAH-MAHHHHH!” She yelled. I explained that Michelle and Malia and Sasha all of have her kind of beautiful brown skin. I was elated to be able to make such a positive and concrete connection. And she was elated too.
Well. Not really. Having the attention span of a gnat, she was already onto the next thing while I was staring at her in the dreamy annoying way my mother-in-law stares at my husband. I snapped out of my daze and we finished the book, just like we always do. Then we snuggled up under her favorite blanket, nose to nose, her brown arm draped over my pink neck. That is until she said, “I don’t want to smell you anymore, mama,” and she rolled to face away from me.
She will not be restrained
“When I grow up, I catch the moon! I jump real high and catch the moon!”
