In Full Color Page 7

  When I was a teenager, I was scared that the subtle racism and abuse routinely directed at my younger siblings might affect them in a similar way, but whenever I tried to talk to anyone about it, I was dismissed. How could Larry and Ruthanne possibly be racist? They were devout Christians who were doing God’s work! At least that’s how Larry and Ruthanne presented themselves in the annual newsletter they sent to the Christian supporters who helped finance the babies’ adoptions and ongoing expenses.

  The newsletter started its life as a very detailed Christmas card, giving approximately a hundred people an update about what each member of our family was up to, but it quickly turned into a letter of need. For Larry and Ruthanne, adopting babies was an integral part of the mission field to which God was calling them. Of course, missionaries receive donations, and, as Larry and Ruthanne would soon come to find out, missionaries who write newsletters and include photographs of Black children they’ve adopted get even more donations. They often used pictures of my siblings taken after they’d gotten dirty from playing outside in an attempt, I imagine, to generate more pity (and more money) from donors. As young as I was, I still understood that making money in this way was unacceptable and just plain disturbing, and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

  After I moved out of the house, Larry and Ruthanne succeeded in pulling in enough money from guilty white do-gooders to pay for moves to Colorado and South Africa, where they lived in a three-story home in a gated community with a pool and Black servants. In describing the adoptions of four Black children as being part of a mission, Larry and Ruthanne created an image of themselves that made them appear holier-than-thou. They deserved medals or a pat on the back.

  Given what I’d witnessed inside our house, I knew better.

  *Due to the long history of hate and oppression associated with this word, I’ve done my best to limit its usage in this book. Like the NAACP, I believe the word should be permanently removed from our vocabulary. To this end, I have replaced it with “the N-word” wherever possible, but have kept it in places where it was directly quoted to limit awkwardness and underscore the emotional trauma it delivers.

  Chapter Ten

  Hair I

  AS MUCH TIME AND ENERGY as I devoted to my little brothers and sister, it rarely felt like work. It was, in fact, true love. The bond we shared was much deeper than that typically found between a big sister and her younger siblings. As I was often asked to assume a maternal role with them, my feelings toward them became more motherly than sisterly.

  There was also something else going on, something that I’ve come to realize as an adult but that I wouldn’t have been able to articulate back then, as it was more of a feeling than a thought. Spending so much time with these four beautiful Black babies—changing their diapers, feeding them, bathing them, dressing them, and rocking them to sleep—I found myself drawing closer to something that felt oddly familiar. With Larry, Ruthanne, and Josh, I’d always felt distinctly other. We rarely saw eye to eye about anything. But now, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was truly part of a family, surrounded by people who loved me exactly as I was. Growing up in a house where guilt, anxiety, and occasional moments of terror were the norm, I’d never felt like I was home (and all that word implies: safe, loved, comfortable, relaxed, happy). But something changed after we adopted these babies. I suddenly didn’t feel so alone.

  With love came fear. I grew fiercely protective of my younger siblings. Having witnessed how they were mistreated within our household, I began to worry about how they were going to be treated by the rest of the world.

  Despite Larry and Ruthanne’s belief that, unless I was studying the Bible, doing chores was a more valuable use of my time, I’d always loved books. I was a voracious reader—imagine how many books you’d consume if you didn’t have a television or any electronic devices!—and while reading about Black history I’d started to understand how many land mines there were in America for Black children. Preparing one’s kids for negative encounters like the racial profiling they could expect to experience came to be called “The Talk,” the painful yet necessary conversation nearly all Black parents give their children to make them mindful of how most white people perceive them and to emphasize the importance of being cautious when confronted by the police. The Talk has become an obligatory responsibility when raising Black children—particularly boys, because it would be difficult to find a Black man who hasn’t felt threatened or harassed by the police. As a rule, white parents don’t need to have this discussion with their kids, and many haven’t even heard of it. I wasn’t aware of The Talk at this point in my life, but I instinctually understood the importance of educating my younger siblings about the perils of the world around them—and I had no confidence that Larry and Ruthanne would ever do it.

  There were numerous threats to their dignity and self-worth that they needed help avoiding. When our family went to the grocery store or church, strangers often walked up to my siblings and stroked their hair and skin as if they were exhibits in a sideshow. The way these people acted you would have thought it was perfectly normal and acceptable to fondle vulnerable (and confused) children simply to satisfy one’s curiosity. Seeing this always turned my stomach. I made it my duty to shield my siblings from such ignorance as best as I could and serve as a bridge between them and the all-white world that surrounded us for miles and miles. I made it clear to them that strangers had no right to touch their bodies or their hair unless they gave them permission. At times, I felt like a ninja, as I whisked them away from hands that threatened to touch them inappropriately and corrected rude comments directed their way.

  The slights my younger siblings suffered were often so veiled no one else seemed to pick up on them but me. Grandma Schertel wanting to give Ezra a drum for Christmas. Ruthanne referring to them as a gang. Dinner guests, encouraged by Larry and Ruthanne, asking my siblings to sing for their entertainment. People staring at them whenever we went into town. The sheer absence of Black people, and therefore Black culture, in our small town underscored their otherness. There were no Black doctors, teachers, coaches, or pastors who lived anywhere near us. Even Fabian, now divorced from Rosie, had moved on, settling in Redding, California, to work for the Forest Service.

  In 1970, Chester M. Pierce, a professor of education and psychiatry at Harvard University, coined a term to describe instances of racism that were so subtle (but no less offensive) they were easily overlooked or misunderstood: “microaggressions.” I wasn’t aware of this word when I was growing up, and yet I still had little trouble identifying them when I saw them. And from what I’d read, I knew the treatment my younger siblings could expect to receive as they grew up would only get worse with time. People saying things to them like, “I never think of you as a Black person,” or, in a surprised voice, “You’re so articulate.” Having store managers follow them up and down the aisles to make sure they didn’t steal anything. Having white people cross the street to avoid walking past them on the sidewalk. Getting stopped by police officers for no good reason.

  Many researchers have argued that microaggressions can actually be more damaging than overt expressions of bigotry because of their frequency and, counterintuitively, their size. Because they’re so small—nearly invisible to most white people—they often go ignored or get downplayed. In the white community, that is. In the Black community, these subtle slights are always picked up on, and Black people often talk about them with other Black people. This dichotomy often leads to victims of such transgressions feeling isolated, distrustful, hesitant, and abnormal. Studies have shown that long-term exposure to microaggressions affects one’s mental health, decreasing happiness, energy, and productivity while increasing frustration and anger.

  In 1991, the clinical psychologist and author Na’im Akbar produced a groundbreaking article titled “Mental Disorder Among African Americans,” which claimed that, even in the mental health world, Black Americans were treated unfairly. According to Akbar, the
current view of what was considered normal behavior was based on that exhibited by the majority of the population—that is, white people. Akbar argued that many of the mental health disorders Black Americans had been diagnosed with were actually just normal responses to being forced to live in an alien (and often cruel) society. Meanwhile, actual ones, including alien-self disorder (seeing yourself through the lens of the majority, rejecting your true identity, and living in isolation and confusion), anti-self disorder (wanting to be part of the majority so badly you adopt the temperament of that group and promote negative feelings toward your own), and self-destructive disorders (engaging in harmful behavior such as doing drugs or binge eating as a way of escaping oppression), were being overlooked. Studies like Akbar’s show how much impact microaggressions can have on the mental health of individuals from minority groups and how often that impact gets overlooked.

  Why was I aware of the microaggressions my siblings faced while everyone around me remained ignorant? I believe it was a combination of intuitive awareness, protective instincts that emerged from caring for my siblings, and the knowledge I’d gleaned from reading about Black history. I certainly didn’t have a “white” perspective. I was starting to think more from a Black one.

  That I was the only one picking up on the microaggressions aimed at my younger siblings flipped something like a light switch inside of me. It was an awareness of just how vulnerable they were and a realization that I was the only one who was willing and somewhat able to protect them. I was aware; therefore, I was responsible. I knew that if I didn’t serve as a buffer for them against ignorance, misunderstanding, isolation, and hostility, no one else would. In the process, I became a kind of cultural translator, helping them navigate the white world safely while trying to keep them connected to the Black one.

  Because dolls that had white features and books that starred white characters were the norm, I passed my Black Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls down to Esther and painted over the illustrations of the white characters in the Bible Larry and Ruthanne had given to Izaiah to make them look Black. Whenever I went into town, I searched for and collected Black children’s books, dolls, and toys. I also became an ardent researcher of African history and Black fashion, culture, dance, music, and food in the United States, making frequent trips to the local library to borrow armfuls of books on these subjects. Larry and Ruthanne grudgingly approved of books that had to do with my younger siblings’ heritage. Employing knowledge gleaned from library books, I was able to educate my siblings about Black history in America, including but not limited to the biographies of Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. I would soon be going off to college, and my goal before I left was to help my younger brothers and sister gain an appreciation for the wonderful world of Blackness from which they’d come.

  A funny thing happened while I was teaching my younger siblings about Black culture and history: I began to feel even more connected to it myself. I began to see the world through Black eyes, and anything that had to do with Blackness or Africa always grabbed my attention. When I’d read about the Rwandan genocide and the plight of the children caught in the crossfire between the Hutu and Tutsi groups, it touched my soul. While I bathed, fed, and dressed my siblings, I couldn’t stop thinking about the refugee children, who were being punished just for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Late at night, in between rocking babies to sleep, I worked on a piece of art that allowed me to express my concern for the people of Rwanda. I didn’t have canvas or paints, so I took an old white bed sheet and stretched it over a piece of wood. I tacked down the edges and stained the sheet by dunking it in hot tea to give it an earthy hue. With dough made from flour, water, and salt, I sculpted a two-inch relief of two faces and a hand, baked it until it was hard, molded pieces of leather over the faces, and painted them with shoe polish and bear lard. Using a piece of wood I found behind the house, I fashioned a crutch to fit the hand. For the background, I made a mosaic out of eggshells, forming the continent of Africa on one side and a small globe on the other. I titled this mixed-media artwork “In a Broken World” and saved my money to get it framed in a shadowbox relief frame.

  When I began reading library books about Black history on my own, I was not only educating myself but unconsciously feeding my soul. I became particularly enamored with the books of James Baldwin, who seemed to perfectly capture what it must have felt like to be Black in America during the 1950s and 60s. While he wrote from a viewpoint that was unapologetically Black, he projected a sense of open-mindedness that resonated with me. I particularly enjoyed Go Tell It on the Mountain because it brought all the issues that most concerned me together in one book: corporal punishment, religion, sexuality, and Black culture.

  I had a much different opinion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I appreciated the important role the book played in strengthening the abolitionist movement in the Northern states prior to the Civil War and understood how dated books written in a previous era can feel, but the way the characters were written still bothered me. The little white girl, Eva, acts so entitled and condescending toward Tom, the Black slave who saved her from drowning. Everything seems to revolve around this spoiled little girl, and the fact that a grown man must spend his life catering to the needs of someone so young registered as an injustice to me. Why is no attention paid to what Tom wants or what his goals and dreams are? The Black characters Harriet Beecher Stowe describes are basically walking stereotypes, and the ones who get portrayed in the best light are the “good Christian” characters like Tom, who in retrospect I believe suffered from something like the alien-self disorder Na’im Akbar described. Stowe’s book may have garnered sympathy for Blacks among nineteenth-century white Northerners, but it simply didn’t align with the way I saw Black people. Blackness to me was bold, beautiful, and empowered.

  As many hours as I devoted to shaping my younger siblings’ minds, I spent just as much time caring for their bodies. Because I was conscious of how they were being viewed and “othered” by the residents of our small white town, I went out of my way to make sure they were well kept and well dressed in an effort to dismantle stereotypes. If one of their noses started to run while I was shopping for groceries, I wiped it immediately. If one of their pants had a hole in the knees, I mended it as soon as I could. I was determined that, on my watch at least, no one would ever find a reason to see them as somehow being beneath them.

  Keeping their skin healthy was a challenge. In Montana, the winters were long, cold, and dry, which meant “ashy” skin was even more of a problem than usual. I applied lotion to my siblings’ skin at least once a day—several times a day for Zach—and I wouldn’t have even considered leaving the house without a bottle on my person. I’m not talking about the watered-down kind so common in white households, either. I made sure Ruthanne ordered thicker, more effective moisturizers made from cocoa butter or shea butter from the local food co-op, because the St. Ives lotion found at the local drugstore was useless.

  When it came to taking care of my siblings’ hair, I had a steep learning curve. One of the biggest hurdles was the fact that none of the stores in town carried any Black hair products. The biggest shampoo companies design products meant to be used on straight European hair, and most of the information they provide about how to take care of that type of hair is flat-out wrong when applied to Black hair. Most of the shampoos found on grocery store shelves do far more harm to Black hair than good, stripping it of its natural oils and drying it out so badly it causes “breakage.”

  Unaware of this fact, many white parents who adopt Black or biracial children often cause tremendous damage to their children’s hair. Because this is so common, they can expect any Black women they might pass on the street to give their children’s hair a long careful look. If it’s found to be wanting—chopped off or unkempt—the white parents should also expect to be given a hard side-eye. Such scrutiny is warranted: poorly maintained hair can be a great source of ang
st for Black children, making them more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and have a much harder time being accepted.

  From reading about Black hair in library books, I learned that Black hairstyles are under-braided, not over-braided, so I initially concentrated on giving Esther plaits and cornrows. Unable to find any books that included braiding tutorials, I studied photographs of Black women in Sports Illustrated and learned how to style Esther’s hair through much practice. As a budding artist, I was used to working with my hands and using photographs in books as inspiration. With regular repetition, I found I could braid hair the same way I saw it done in magazines.

  After all, who else was going to do it? There wasn’t a Black hairstylist within one hundred and fifty miles of our house—and even if there had been, Larry and Ruthanne weren’t about to pay someone else to style their kids’ hair. Ruthanne had always cut Larry and Josh’s hair herself using scissors, and she did the same for Ezra, whose hair was loosely curled on top and straight in the back and around the sides. But she grew frustrated by my other siblings’ “difficult” hair and was relieved that I enjoyed cutting and styling it.

  Using clippers to cut Zach and Izaiah’s hair, I quickly mastered the flat-top fade, the classic look of the early 1990s with its clean, boxy shape. Izaiah liked getting a bald fade with a part cut into the side, even though Ruthanne thought it looked “silly” and would try to mess it up by rubbing his head whenever she saw him. When I was cutting Zach and Izaiah’s hair, Ezra would sometimes sit on the stairs and sulk, complaining that he didn’t have a “fancy” cut like his brothers. To appease him, I tried to cut his hair with clippers several times, but it didn’t work very well and he and I quickly got discouraged.