My skin is coffee with cream colored now but as a child I was a deep bronze. My curls are loose and manageable now but as a child they were tight and frizzy. My voice cuts through the crowd now but as a child I often stood paralyzed by silence. My stature has been a mere 4’8” since I was twelve but now my presence will make you wonder that math. My feminine curves are all in the right places but as a child I wanted no part of them. With all my features that I am most grateful for now as a woman came stigma as a child.
At first the reproach was debilitating. I would run home and cry to my mother, “They call me nigger. They call me black dog girl. Why do they say that?” I would ask her.
Her answer was always the same, providing no comfort or honesty. She always said, “You are CUBAN…you aren’t black.” If I could find a typeface to express the disdain and lack of respect that she would say the word black in I would but alas I have not enough time to search for it.
“Mom, but they call me Medusa. They tell me that my hair made of snakes will turn them to stone. I hate my hair.” I would cry.
“You want me to take you to get it cut short?” She asked until the day she DID take me to some white Barbie looking lady who cut my hair short into a layered bob.
“Mom, now they say my hair looks like a palm tree. They say I’m ugly, stupid, and a poor black bitch. I can’t take it anymore!” I cried. I cried. I cried.
My mother laughed and said, “Honey, you know you are Cuban. Just ignore them!”
I wasn’t like the other kids at that elementary school. I should not have been at that school yet that was the school I was designated to attend because I was “gifted”. I was the ONLY child of color in the program. I was one of two Spanish children in my regular class but the other girl was white Cuban like Gloria Estefan. Everyone, even white people thought Gloria was beautiful and they loved her music. Everyone loved the other girl. I was one of two children of color in my regular class but the other girl was really tall for her age. She was taller, bigger and stronger than even all the boys in class. NOBODY messed with her. She stayed mostly to the boys who she could always outshine in every sport they played.
I sat alone on the monkey bars wondering when will this ridicule end. Will I ever be accepted for who I was? I didn’t ask for any of my features. I didn’t want any of them. I wanted to have white skin like my mother. I especially wanted her perfectly wavy very long hair that she could just wash and go. I wanted to be free of that school, of that time. I wondered if in my past lives I had been tortured like this too. I knew that to be true. I wrote in my journals, “I hate myself! I want to die!”
“BITCH, your mom is a PROSTITUTE!” yelled the perfect Barbie girl that everyone loved as she pushed me around. I grabbed her by her hair, slammed her face in the mirror and didn’t stop until the teacher came into the girl’s bathroom to get me off her.
I was freed from that place and time. My younger brother was to start school. He wasn’t in the gifted program so he would have to attend the school assigned to Fruity Acres. Our neighborhood then was mostly poor white folks. Those kids were being bussed to the school in the black neighborhood. I could have stayed in my gifted program that I loved so much because of my writing teacher. I could have stayed under the wing of that teacher who taught me to escape pain by writing. I was tired of fighting with words, fighting with my fists and especially tired of fighting a system that didn’t fight for me. I didn’t stay because I so desperately wanted to protect my younger brother from all the things I figured happened to every brown Cuban child in school.
Summer passed and sixth grade quickly came. The first day was like any other school day for a child in a half day Gifted program. Spend part of the morning in the regular class then spend sometime before lunch with the Gifted teacher…lunch would be with my regular class before going back to her. I ate. I went to use the restroom like all the other girls after lunch. I stood at the sink washing my hands when a beautiful chocolate black girl approached me from behind. She started to play in my hair and I started to cry. She asked why I cried. I told her that I thought she was making fun of me by saying that I had such “beautiful good hair”. She smiled said I was silly and assured me that she wasn’t and that I was beautiful.
She SAW me. Her soul and will were strong. I was drawn to her. She to me was a beautiful Queen. Eleven years old yet she didn’t take any shit off anyone. She wouldn’t allow anyone to tell her how to think without having concrete evidence in the science, math and nature of it. She wouldn’t accept that is how it is, because the bible says or because you are child and should respect me. Everything she was I wanted to be. Everything she knew she would teach me. She would become my best friend…for life.
As our friendship grew so did the strife at school. I went from being the “black dog palm tree head girl” at the white school to being the “red bone with good hair and thought she was cute” at the black school.
“BITCH, you AIN’T SHIT!” yelled the darkest girl in our class, that many made fun of by calling her so black she was blue, as she punched me in the face. This fight was not like the first one. This girl knew how to fight. This girl through repeated attacks would teach me how to fight. The more she beat me on me the more the other girls stepped to challenge me. The fighting went from just her to a couple of white girls from my neighborhood in my class also fighting me. The external fights with others I could endure but the war inside me was worse than ever.
My best friend realized how much I hated myself. She explained why the black girls didn’t like red bone Lidia. She explained why I didn’t fit with the Spanish girls. She explained why the white girls would always want to hold me down. She explained that everything that people hated about me were beautiful things. She explained that no matter how small I was I could never let another person determine who I am, who I want to be and much less where I will go. Yes, she was a very wise eleven year old…she got all of it from her brilliant beautiful mother.
Her mother was a woman who was very comfortable in her own skin. Her mother was the type of woman that would make heads turn when she walked into a room; not only for her beauty but the sheer power of her presence. Her mother was very positive and spoke to us in manner that I had never heard an adult address a child in. My parents were nice they tried their best but many of their uplifting messages included a disclaimer about how the world would only let someone like get so far. Not her messages though…her messages said that her daughter and YES, you too Lidia, can go to the top of the mountain. Her messages spoke of the love, understanding, acceptance and soft place we would have to land in when we failed or chose unwisely…that place was her arms. Her knowledge was to protect and guide us. Her pain never limited her and taught us that happiness was always a choice not a condition.
Sixth grade passed quickly. For seventh grade my best friend would be bussed to the school in the white neighborhood and I would be bussed to the school in the black neighborhood. For me seventh grade was more of sixth grade…fighting white girls, fighting black girls, a lot of time spent talking to my best friend, a lot of time at her house wanting to learn from her and her mother but mostly a lot of time learning how to fight the war inside me. Eventually, I was freed from that time and place too.
My writing got me accepted into a new school that was billed to be the next FAME. I was EXTREMELY HAPPY when I found it was walking distance from my best friend’s house. The School of the Arts was a very special place. At the very least the first 352 of us who attended made that place a utopia for the very first few years. We had our ups and downs but for the most part everyone was accepted and loved for exactly who they were…no matter what color, what race, what religion, what sexual preference or how strange we were to the outside world.
My journey would continue and for a long time I would be a brown Cuban who hated white people especially white women. My journey would lead me to other women who would mold me but this part of my journey made me stronger, more confident and willing to fight for myself. I will forever be grateful to Maisha and Pat for taking the time to free the mind of this child.
For the ONLY mission in life should be empowering the next generation so their minds can be free!
