“Mommy, why is that girl’s skin so dark?”
It was an innocent question asked by a little girl who could not have been more than 4 years old. She stood three yards away from me in the cool, mist that hovered over the grass along the banks of the Thunder Bay River. A waterway once filled with logs of white pine for the thriving lumber industry that built the town more than 150 years ago. Apart from the occasional honks of geese protecting their goslings from walkers along the foot path, it was a quiet July morning. The small town of Alpena, Michigan had changed since its heyday in the 1800s. People retired here. The pace of life was slow. There were only a handful of employers, like the hospital, schools, and a quarry. All that was left of the logging industry was the giant Paul Bunyon statue keeping watch over the parking lot at the community college. The lack of jobs kept the population small and homogeneous. The sunrise over Lake Huron was the most colorful thing about the place. So maybe it should not have surprised me that in 2016, this little girl had never seen a Black person.
I arrived at the river bank a few minutes early that morning to pick my girls up from sailing camp. I wanted to see what they had learned so far about how to navigate using the power of wind. They moved with ease around the boom smiling as they guided their picos to the dock. It was nearing noon, but the sun could not penetrate the dark, low clouds. My girls were quickly approaching after spotting me among all the other parents arriving to pick up their young sailors. I held up some big, dry beach towels hoping to shield myself from the scatter of water droplets I could see flying off the ends of Simone’s ponytail. Ella’s gait was playful and silly as she walked with exaggerated long steps toward me. At 11 years old, she still had the disinhibited joy of a child, the one that most girls lose in adolescence. Her lanky cocoa brown arms and legs were covered in goosebumps.
The little girl was still pointing at Ella after she asked the question. I watched and waited for her mother to respond. A few more seconds had passed; her silence became awkward. She was pretending that she didn’t hear the question looking everywhere except at us. She tightened the grip on her daughter’s hand to distract her from staring at my Ella. After a minute had passed, I realized that her mother was not going to respond.
Thankfully, my daughters didn’t hear the little girl’s question or the mother’s louder silence that followed. A piercing stifle that would have started to fray the edges of my Ella’s innocence and left her gasping in that moment like there was something wrong with her. It was hard for me to breathe standing there waiting for a response that didn’t come. I decided not to engage with this woman. Her eyes were icy. She looked like she’d rather that the earth open and swallow her daughter to avoid having a conversation with me.
While I stood there watching my girls dry themselves, my ears remained focused on the loud quiet by the river where once white pine logs knocked and swayed and rumbled their way to cargo vessels on Thunder Bay. Another minute passed, and the silence began to decay the earthy, freshwater musk in the air. The chill made me regret that I didn’t grab my sweater before I left the house. I wanted something to wrap my arms in and give myself a hug. The silence between us created an uncomfortable roaring wind tunnel until I broke it.
“Who’s hungry for lunch?”
“Me! Me! Meee!” sung in unison by my daughters now swaddled in their towels.
When I was 2 years old, my parents purchased their first home in a suburb outside of Baltimore, Maryland called Columbia. They were attracted to the developers’ words about diversity and inclusivity. My parents had difficulties finding a safe place to live and start a family. Because of my mother’s straight hair and light complexion, she was mistaken for white during a time when mixed race marriage was illegal.
The first Christmas I remember, I was about the same age as the little girl by the river. I woke up to find a toy carriage under the tree. Tucked in below its light blue canopy with lace trim I found two baby dolls. One was Black and one was white. That same Christmas in 1972, I received Free to Be You and Me, an album with songs, poems, and sketches from a diverse group of celebrities. Its messages of kindness, empowerment, and inclusion defined a cultural evolution that seems to have skipped an entire generation.
I think back to that morning and wonder if the other mom holding tightly to her little girl’s hand wished, as I do, that she had cleared the air between us. It wouldn’t have required much.
Has she thought about all the things she could have said? Something like “Hi! My name is Paula, and this little observant one is Riley. Where are you all from?” or
“Isn’t her skin so pretty, honey? Your daughters are beautiful. My name is Paula. Nice to meet you.”
How has a child in 2016 never seen images of people with brown skin? It’s possible, but even in the remote, small town of Alpena, Michigan one would have to be deliberate in excluding the existence of people of color from their lives avoiding television and movies and never traveling to the nearest urban area downstate. One would have to risk coming off as unkind while sidestepping a teachable moment. A mother would have to ignore the curiosity of her young child while pretending that she doesn’t see us.
Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash
