I was nine years old when my older brother, Jason got married to his girlfriend of several years, Miluska. He graduated from the Air Force Academy, was a successful aeronautical engineer and lived in Hermosa Beach, California. My parents, Laura and Bill, decided that myself and my older sister Ariel would take the train out to California for the wedding. It was a lovely ceremony, with nice weather and good toasts. I was thirteen months old the last time I saw my brother, and I know this for sure because there's this picture of myself, Ariel and Jason standing outside our big, white farm house in Maine, all of us smiling. I never thought it was strange that I was the only little brown kid in all the family photos, like that like that small point of chocolate icing on a vanilla cake. But here we were taking the Lake Shore Limited from Boston to Chicago, then Chicago to LA and I'm sitting up in the lounge on the train when this woman sitting next to me looked right at me and smiled. "where are you from sweetie? "
"I'm from Maine," I replied. The woman looks puzzled and then regained her composure. "So when did you move from Africa to Maine?" I didn't get it. I knew I was a tall, skinny brown girl with really short, unstraightened hair. But I never considered myself any less of an American than anyone else. I understood when people maybe looked at me differently. I remember being five years old and taking an ArtWorks! class and my six-year-old friend Jeffrey asked me if my skin color came off in the wash. Of course it didn't, and I told him that and it was fine. So why was this woman sitting here assuming that I wasn't one of them?
"I'm not from Africa, I'm American, just like you." I told her.
"No, sweetie, you're not just like me." She gets up and walks to the dining car and I never saw her again. I didn't really care, just like I really didn't care that I was adopted, homeschooled, African-American and vegetarian. But I would, soon enough. The truth is that I never really thought about being African-American, or being different. I knew that my birthmother had been a teenager when she gave birth to me, and that by some heroitcs, she decided that in the best interest of the baby (me) she would place me for adoption and I would live happily ever after in a loving home. I often fantasied about meeting this woman, a person I didn't know if I should resent or adore.
And then, as for being vegetarian, my mother decided when I was three years old, that we would not eat meat, much to my delight (I never liked meat). It was the health reason and moral ethics and I had no complaints about this whatsoever.
I also had no complaints about going cross country on the train, especially because a magician was scheduled to appear in the lounge car. He was an older, White gentleman with lots of balloons and energy. "Who wants to help with the magic trick." I looked around at the ten or so children in the lounge and raised my hand. He glanced at my direction and picked the girl behind me. I didn't mind, there would be other tricks, other opportunities. But time after time, he asked for volunteers and each time I would raise my hand. And each time, he would pick someone else besides me, besides the other Black girl standing next to me. I looked around and realized that he was calling the same people again. It wasn't even that I needed to be picked. It was that I needed, wanted to be part of the action and the fun. I tried, in vain, to get him to choose me, but it was not to be. By the time we returned, my parents had already filed and mailed a complaint letter explaining the problem. I believe Amtrak mailed us a travel voucher, as if that really makes up for that. You tell me.
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