My Daughter's Skin

Jane Benney Kelly

My daughter’s skin may be the lightest yet, but she is still black. She is the future, carrying with her, her ancestors and her ancestors who are my ancestors and my mother’s ancestors and so on and so forth it goes and so on it will go until the end amen.

When I was very small, they would assume my black mother was the Maid

My black mother with her straight nose. My black mother with her light skinned grandmother. (The blood was mixed there but they did not say it and they will not say it but they all knew it but nobody proved it, but we all know it, now) my mother wondered if that was the end of the black line. She probably thought my joining of a(nother) white man would dilute the black

When I was small, but bigger than then, they would ask the light bright child with the bouncy tight curls why she spoke with a British accent and how she got her tan She would reply “Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about” Because indeed, how does a small pre-pubescent child in a new country explain to her white Jewish classmates that her parents were different colours and those colours made her skin HER skin and that she spoke that way because when she was taught English with the slippery soap slide of mother tongue scrubbed from her lips all she was left with was the taste of tea and the Queens staccato.

Like one part vinegar to two parts water to wash away the stain.

She did not know like we know now that future versions of herself and myself and my daughter retain that bloodline. The blackest blacks may fade in the wash but they’re still... well, black. Still separated into two piles in the laundry room of segregation.

My daughter’s skin pale against mine. Her dark brown eyes almond mirrors of mine. Her ovaries already carrying her children, her Grandchildren.

The science then is clear The future is present, and it was and still is, and still will be, black.