Friday, August 28, 2009

Green leash

This is a fairly recent story.
I've been friends with Alex since our freshman year, all the way to the end, which is more than can be said for a lot of people. She dropped out after the first semester, and I was sad because when you get used to someone being there, always being there everyday life's just not the same and it's really not the same because after the parties and the drinking, it's just not same thing. After she left, our lives were completely different. She joined the AirForce, then didn't finish basic, then went to work in Hannaford, fell in love with John, moved to Washington state when he joined the Army and moved back to Maine all in the course of three years or so. I went to Spain to study abroad and then to California for the summer and it had been 8 months since I'd seen Alex. For my one day off during Resident Assistant training at school, Alex invited me to stay at her parent's house near Mount Desert, because they were gone and why not spend the day at a big house?
We drove down and sat outside for a few minutes, just thinking about life and why couldn't we just be like we were years ago? "Why don't we take the dog for a walk?" I asked, because I wanted something, some type of normalacy and I wanted to believe we could get it back, whatever "it" was. Alex turned and looked at me. "Okay, but we need to find her leash first." I didn't think so, I didn't think we needed a leash for this old dog who wouldn't run anywhere anyhow. "No, come on, help me look for the leash," said Alex. So, I go over to the closet and walk past the bookshelf and see a book by Rebecca Walker, Alice's daughter, about growing up Black, White and Jewish. I start looking at it, wondering if I'll ever finally write my book about growing up black and adopted. It won't be as good as hers for sure. I browse through the bookshelf and find some poetry books. "Yeah, those are my mom's books, she used to be an English teacher." I recognize some poets I know. There's Emily Dickenson, who was a loner, Dylan Thomas, whose name I share, and Sylvia Plath who loved to be sad. "You know she was married to Ted Warren, right and he was famous but then she sticks her head in the oven and kills herself and know everyone knows her. Is that right, is it fair?" Alex looks at me. "Yeah, but they don't know her because she stuck her head in the oven. That's not why they know her. " I look at her and I think how unoriginal, how stupid it is to kill oneself by putting their head in the fucking oven. It kills me. "I'm thinking I want to commit suicide, to kill myself. Everyone thinks its selfish, but there's too many people anyways," said Alex. I didn't want to hear it, so I suggested that we keep looking for the leash. I come across a book on American erotica, and I open the book and begin reading it. "He placed his hand on her chest and slowly began rubbing her breasts. He moved his hand down and searched for that spot...." It was something like that. "Can you believe how dirty this is? How can someone write this type of thing in a book and actually sell it and make money? I'm interested and surprised and it makes me want a man and whiskey all at the same time. Lucky for me, I get half of that, the bottle of whiskey that Alex's friend Tom bought for us, lying on the table. Alex pulls out her shot glass and pours me some, complete with a lemonade chaser. It's Jim Bean, classy, tasty and enough to give a buzz. But it's not enough, because something seems off and I can't stand it. "So what's new with you?" I casually ask, because I'm someone who likes to kow the details. She looked at me and kind of shrugged. "Well, you know I was pregnant, right?" I knew back in May she thought she might be, and then she was bleeding and I thought that was the end of that. "Yeah, I was five months, like I was supposed to be due November 17th." "So what happened?" I asked, even though I knew and didn't want to hear it. "I got an abortion." I couldn't look at her, because I didn't trust myself to portray a nice smile. "Why'd you do that dude?" I knew one of these days Alex was going to get pregnant. For years she'd been haivng unprotected sex and I knew it would catch up to her. But I imagined I would be like an aunt for her kids, babysitting and whatnot. It wasn't supposed to be like this. "I wasn't ready for a baby, so what else was I supposed to do? So, they stuck a needle in my stomach and the baby comes out, but I was on drugs so I didn't really feel anything, but then I saw the baby and it was-" "What was it? A boy or a girl?" "A boy." I started crying then, because she was my best friend and I couldn't let my friend go through that. "You did it because you thought you were alone, but I dont ever want you to think that you're alone, because I was here for you. I'm still here for you." Alex didn't really look at me, but I knew she heard me because she said "I know that, but it's not even about that. My John is in Iraq and I didn't want to take care of a baby." I'm pro-choice, even though they all think I shouldn't be because I was adopted and I'm supposed to encourage women to have their babies. But I don't like babies and I don't care about other women, I just care about my friend and I didn't want my friend to go through stuff like that. "I want to find that goddamn leash." I said, because I couldn't say anything else and I had finally stopped crying. We both looked in the closet and still couldn't find it. "I'm not having sex because I'm afraid of getting pregnant." I blurted this out to Alex. "Well, then geez, just use condoms. Like I didn't use condoms, because I didn't think I could get pregnant." "I'm going to get knocked up just like my birthmother and I'm going to be screwed." Everyone thought I was weird for being a virgin and not having sex for so long, but Alex never judged me and never said a thing. "It's up to you, you know, I'm jealous, I wish I was a virgin again." I laughed. "That's because you're a ho." "You're a skank." "You're a slut". "You're a bitch." We continued on. It doesn't get old. I checked the kitchen for the leash and it wasn't there. "You know, I'm going to call my mom and ask." So Alex called her mom, who said the leash was in the back room, and it was right there, just were she said. She we grabbed it, put the shot glass down and that was it. If we had done that earlier, like anyone else, it would have been easy. But maybe life isn't so fun if it's really easy.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Soccer

That year, the United States women made history by winning the soccer cup. I was impressed by Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm and I decided that I, too, wanted to be just like them. I realized that they were all strong women, and they even had a Black goal keeper, Briana Scurry. My mother, Laura, decided to sign me up for the local Exeter Eagles soccer team, with coach David. Up until this point, I had no sports training and I was by no means from a "sports" family. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned my biological father was very athletic and that I got my love of sports from him. For now, I was happy just to play. I showed up to practice the first day and sat down next to this small, brown-haired boy named Jeffery. "Hey, what's your name?" he asked. "I'm Laila, I live down the road." "Hey, you're going to be good, you know." "How do you know?" I asked? "Because you know you're Black and all Blacks are really good athletes. I bet you're really fast and everything." The boy sitting next to him, Lee, nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I mean you might go to college, but I'll bet you'll be speedy." I shrugged. I had watched football games and such, I had seen that the majority of athletes were Black, but I didn't really think about it. We got up to start running laps with Jeff, side by side. "You should just go, you know, don't stay with me. You're gonna be in the Olympics one day probably, so go for it" I ran fast, passing Lee, passing the two girls out of breath. I rounded the corner of the field and kept going. I looked back at Lee and Jeffry and all the other kids on the team and I knew I wasn't going to ever be like them. But maybe they weren't going to be like me either. Of course I didn't go to the Olympics, because I knew I would either become a soccer star or a writer and once I injured my groin the following month, I believe the decision was made for me. But I didn't care. I've been running ever since.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Magic tricks

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.

Monday, August 3, 2009

My life before my life actually started...

I wish I could make my life sound exciting. But it is what it is and I will do the best I can. I've tried to write these stories multiple times and somehow, I always fail. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate to fail. It's not to say that I'm a perfectionist, rather that I expect a lot from myself and I don't, I don't want to let anyone down. If I had a therapist (which I don't, and I have never been to a shrink) he or she would say that it all stems from my pre-adoption years, that all my insecurities and feelings about people all come from the first five weeks of my life. I would probably tell them to suck it, because the truth is that everyone thinks they know everything about me and they don't. So I will write this and then they really will....right? Well, okay, probably not. I was born in Dallas, Texas in the late '80s, in a time when the country had not yet recovered from Reagan's economic disasters and we were not quite yet fighting the Persian Gulf war. Things were, by all accounts, more or less okay, unless you were a seventeen-year-old unwed teenage named Latonya, who lived in Lousiana and like other students, went to school, got good grades, was on the cheerleading squad, had a cute boyfriend, and went shopping with friends. But, unlike other teens, Latonya was hiding a big secret from her parents; she was 8 months pregnant without a plan. Like nearly all secrets, her parents eventually found out, sent her away to Texas to stay with a cousin and eventually she gave birth to me. I was placed for adoption soon after, and I never saw her again. After floating among four foster homes in five weeks, I was placed with a family from Maine. Surprising enough, I am still with that family.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Goldfish Dreams

My goal is to have several different blogs on here, and hope that someone might read my material. Perhaps it is a far-fetched idea, but we will see. This blog is about my life, growing up an adopted, homeschooled, vegetarian, African-American in an all-White community.
For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be White, just like my friends and family. I wanted to fit in, to be hip, hot, cool, and popular and I associated all these things with being White. I thought wouldn't it be cool if I could climb into bed, turn off the lights and just magically turn White. Of course, I went to bed multiple times, and I can assure that every time I wake up Black, but the same cannot be said off goldfish. It is very normal for goldfish, when they are in a dark room, to turn white, and then turn back again. It's not hard really, it just somehow happens. And so, when I read this, I realized that as sad as it may seem, when I was younger, that was my one of my dreams: to turn White like a goldfish.