WHEN I WAS ALMOST TEN AND REALIZED THAT GOD wasn’t going to lighten my skin any more than he was going to let the moon rule the day, I began to wonder what it was like to be white. More specifically, I used to wonder what I would be like if I were white. Would I be nice like old Mrs. Jamison, whose husband owned a clothing store uptown? It was rumored that she allowed her colored maid to enter her house through the front door as well as eat with her at the dining room table. The only time Ma Pearl got to see Mrs. Robinson’s front door was when she had to answer it. Or would I be spiteful like Ricky Turner and chase Negroes off the road with my pickup just for the fun of it? I always figured I would be a nice white person, that I wouldn’t hate Negroes or mistreat them. But maybe that was because I was a Negro and knew what it felt like to be mistreated simply because my skin was brown. And among my own people, I also knew what it felt like to be shunned simply because my skin was too brown.
Hallelujah once showed me a copy of Jet magazine that had an article called “The Most Beautiful Women in Negro Society.” On the cover was a woman labeled “Pretty Detroit Socialite.” She looked as white as Mrs. Robinson.
Hallelujah, twelve years old at the time, cooed and clucked over her, claiming that he’d marry a pretty woman just like that one day. I didn’t see one picture of a woman with dark skin among those listed as “the most beautiful women in Negro society.”
Also in Jet I saw an advertisement for a product that could make my skin light. After that, I started bleaching my skin with the stuff Aunt Clara Jean used to keep her complexion “even.” Every time I went to her house, I’d sneak into her bedroom, grab the jar of Nadinola Bleaching Cream from her dresser, then smear the cream all over my face. The label read “Lightens skin fast!” and “Results guaranteed!” I’d return home thinking that in no time at all, my skin would be pretty and caramel like the rest of the women in my family, with the exception of Aunt Ruthie. Of course, just like the prayer, the cream didn’t work, as it had to be used daily in order to see results.
A lot of good the cream would have done anyway, seeing how much time I spent in the sun, chopping and picking cotton. That’s where I was supposed to be that morning. Instead, I was somewhere I wasn’t even allowed: Ma Pearl and Papa’s bedroom. I should have been in the field picking cotton, but I just couldn’t go. I couldn’t take it a third day in a row, especially knowing I wouldn’t get to go to school the next week when everyone else went.
Heavy-hearted doesn’t begin to describe what I was feeling that morning. Since the Chicago boy was still missing, so was Aunt Belle. She and Monty were riding all over the Delta in search of any signs of the boy and in search of answers as to how something like that could have happened. I couldn’t believe she cared more about someone she had never met than she did about her own family. She had only a few days left before she returned to Saint Louis, and she couldn’t bother spending them with us.
That morning, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. So, like my wanna-be-a-movie-star cousin Queen, I faked an illness. Not cramps, but a summer cold. The dry, hacking cough and sneezing were easy to conjure with a little help from a black?pepper?filled handkerchief, but the fever was a bit harder to fake. Sitting close to the woodstove helped, though.
As I stood before Ma Pearl’s dresser and studied my reflection in the clouded mirror, I felt as black as a crow and uglier than a mule. The room was dark because of the thick curtains Ma Pearl had made to block out the sunlight, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing the frightening figure before me. My bony shoulders jutted out from the sleeveless croker-sack dress. And my shapeless arms were so skinny it’s a wonder I was able to even work the pump long enough to fill a bucket with water.
I stared at my reflection and felt guilty for wishing I were more like Queen. Despite her ugly catfish eyes, her light complexion and long hair still made her attractive. And she was shaped just right, like the women in Jet, who showed no shame when displaying their perfect bodies in what looked like nothing more than bras and bloomers.
With Ma Pearl at Mrs. Robinson’s and Queen still sound asleep, I knew it would be safe to slip my dress off for a second and see what I looked like in my bra and bloomers. I knew I’d look nothing like the models in the magazine, but something in the back of my mind made me wonder. Why I turned the radio on for this occasion, I will never know. But I did. I turned the dial several times to quiet down the static; then the music came through.