Small Great Things(98)

Violet sets down her crayon. Her face is twisted in thought.

“We weren’t the first slaves,” I tell her. “There are stories in a book I like, called the Bible. The Egyptians made Jewish people slaves who would build temples for them that looked like huge triangles, and were made out of bricks. They were able to make the Jewish people slaves because the Egyptians were the ones with the power.”

Then, like any other four-year-old, Violet bounces back to her spot beside my son. “Let’s color Rapunzel instead,” she announces—but then she hesitates. “I mean,” she corrects, “do you want to color Rapunzel?”

“Okay,” Edison says.

I may be the only person who notices, but while I’ve been explaining, he has taken off that chain from his neck and slipped it into his pocket.

“Thank you,” Micah says, sincere. “That was a really perfect Black history lesson.”

“Slavery isn’t Black history,” I point out. “It’s everyone’s history.”

A timer goes off, and Kennedy stands up. When she goes into the kitchen, I murmur something about wanting to help her and follow her. Immediately, she turns, her cheeks burning. “I am so, so sorry for that, Ruth.”

“Don’t be. She’s a baby. She doesn’t know any better yet.”

“Well, you did a much better job explaining than I ever would have.”

I watch her reach into the oven for a lasagne. “When Edison came home from school and asked if we were slaves, he was about the same age as Violet. And the last thing I wanted was to have that talk and leave him feeling like a victim.”

“Violet told me last week she wished she could be just like Taisha, because she gets to wear beads in her hair.”

“What did you say?”

Kennedy hesitates. “I don’t know. I probably bungled it. I said something about how everyone’s different and that’s what makes the world great. I swear, when she asks me things about race I turn into a freaking Coke commercial.”

I laugh. “In your defense, you probably don’t talk about it quite as much as I do. Practice makes perfect.”

“But you know what? When I was her age, I had a Taisha in my class too—except her name was Lesley. And God, I wanted to be her. I used to dream that I’d wake up Black. No joke.”

I raise my brows in mock horror. “And give up your winning lottery ticket? No way.”

She looks at me, and we both laugh, and in that instant we are merely two women, standing over a lasagne, telling the truth. In that instant, with our flaws and confessions trailing like a slip from a dress, we have more in common than we have differences.

I smile, and Kennedy smiles, and for that moment, at least, we really, really see each other. It’s a start.

Suddenly Edison comes into the kitchen holding out my cellphone. “What’s the matter?” I tease. “Don’t tell me you were fired because you made Ariel a brunette?”

“Mama, it’s Ms. Mina,” he says. “I think you better take it.”

—

ONE CHRISTMAS, WHEN I was ten, I got a Black Barbie. Her name was Christie, and she was just like the dolls Christina had, except for the skin color, and except for the fact that Christina had a whole shoe box full of Barbie clothes and my mama couldn’t afford those. Instead, she made Christie a wardrobe out of old socks and dish towels. She glued me a dream house out of shoe boxes. I was over the moon. This was even better than Christina’s collection, I told Mama, because I was the only person in the world who had it. My sister, Rachel, who was twelve, made fun of me. “Call them what you want,” she told me. “But they’re just knockoffs.”

Rachel’s friends were mostly the same age as her, but they acted like they were sixteen. I didn’t hang out with them very often, because they went to school in Harlem and I commuted to Dalton. But on weekends, if they came over, they made fun of me because I had wavy hair, instead of kinks like theirs, and because my skin was light. “You think you all that,” they’d say, and then they’d giggle into each other’s shoulders as if this were the punch line to a secret joke. When my mother made Rachel babysit me on weekends, and we would take the bus to a shopping center, I sat in the front while they all sat in the back. They called me Afrosaxon, instead of by my name. They sang along to music I didn’t know. When I told Rachel that I didn’t like her friends making fun of me, she told me to stop being so sensitive. “They just crackin’ on you,” she said. “Maybe if you let it slide a little, they’d like you more.”

One day, I ran into her friends when I was on my way home from school. This time, though, Rachel wasn’t with them. “Ooh, look what we got here,” said the tallest one, Fantasee. She yanked at my French braid, which was how the girls in my school were wearing their hair those days. “You think you so fancy,” she said, and the three of them surrounded me. “What? Can’t you talk for yourself? You need your sister to do it for you?”

“Stop,” I said. “Leave me alone. Please.”

“I think someone needs to remember where she from.” They grabbed at my backpack, unzipping it, throwing my schoolwork into the puddles on the ground, shoving me into the mud. Fantasee grabbed my Christie doll and dismembered her. Suddenly, like an avenging angel, Rachel arrived. She pulled Fantasee away and smacked her across the face. She tripped one of the other girls and pummeled the third. When they were all flattened, she stood over them with her fist. They crawled away, crabs in the gutter, and then scrambled to their feet and ran. I crouched down next to my broken Christie, and Rachel knelt beside me. “You okay?”