Gray Child

VICTORIA (TORI) HARRIS

“The sign was particularly concerned about how everyone was marrying everyone else, and soon America wouldn’t have any black, white, yellow, or red people anymore – just gray ones.”

- Cherie Priest, I am Princess X

Poor, gray child.

Mixed and mixed and mixed until you’re just addled What’s it like to be defined by your background?

You have no background.

You are only misshapen parts, Fragments of backgrounds stitched together To create a raggedy jaggedy figure central to them all.

Background:

Before I was born, my parents were told they couldn’t make it work. My mother would be seized from her safe suburbian sunset And be dumped barefoot, broke, and bearing in a trailer park; My father would be left without a worthy Black woman When the going gets rough (and it would).

It’s funny how a baby fixes things. I was born, and suddenly being half and half was fine For both sides. Suddenly, everything was okay. Wonderful, even.

As though my mother can’t leave us now with a Black baby

As though my father can’t capsize us now with a White baby. Never mind that I had nothing to do with the equation; Suddenly I was central to the solution.

Poor, gray child.

I bet you get all the awards:

Every scholarship they have thrown at you

Every contract they have thrust under your nose.

You can be the race that is most convenient

Whatever is the most convenient in the moment. Where is your brilliance now?

You never were brilliant. There is no brilliance in this Melted eddies of Black and Brown and White. It’s so easy to be whatever’s convenient. But remember, my child: There is no brilliance in broken reflections.

Convenience is a tricky thing. I am conveniently light-skinned, Conveniently more palatable to the White taste.

Only, that’s not quite it, is it? I am more tolerable by miniscule parts.

In comparison to other Blacks I am the better scenario. Barely.

I am better until they learn that Black this light doesn’t just “happen.” That my parents are traitors to their race. I am brilliant and bright Until they learn my mother is White. I am a special kind of Black magic That dulls when I am stuck in the spotlight. Convenience is a double-edged sword.

Poor, gray child. You are not enough, You can never be enough. You are fifty, twenty-five, twelve-and-some-halves You are not whole, Let alone wholly White Wholly Black

Wholly Chinese or Cherokee or chose one of any. What’s it like to have no background?

It is not that you have no background, It is that your backgrounds are incomplete. A banged-up patchwork of two, three, five different cultures

Knowing how to pass Never knowing enough to be.

What they don’t tell you is everything you miss When you try to be both.

I grew up resisting one or the other I am equally both I am equally me. But in truth, our society is constructed in boxes And no matter how flexible I am I can only fit into one at a time.

I have just enough Cultural currency to buy into both. I will never truly belong to either.

Poor, gray child. You get the worst of all worlds. A contradiction of the highest degree. What’s it like to know you shouldn’t exist?

You shouldn’t exist.

You defy scores of different principles

All at the same time.

You were illegal in dozens of states

Within the past century. Racial theory says that we are immutable White is not Black, Black is not Asian, Asian is not Latino

Yet here you are.

An all of the above baby.

Consider Trevor Noah.

I read his book Born a Crime once. Our backgrounds are decidedly distinct, Yet I had never before felt a kin to anyone like this, Memories so akin to each other It was as though he had copied them directly from my head And laid them bare on the page.

He shouldn’t have existed. I am societally illegal–He was literally illegal, The kind of Coloured that gets you killed In a country where categories are drawn by fire and fences.

Still, he kept living his Milk-and-chocolate life Defined by racial relativity and chameleon changes Lightning-quick as he crossed Johannesburg streets.

He embraced being all of the above. The ability to pass.

Navigating the silted eddies of Black and Brown and White. Fading in and out of the background like second nature Like gray fog slipping through buildings. It was painful. It was easy. It was the only way he could survive.

Now, he inhabits the space in-between, Halfway between White and Black. I don’t know if it’s peaceful But at least it’s quiet.

I think I’d like to be there someday. Instead of the relentless tug-of-war between White and Black, Just… be.

Gray child indeed.