Open Mic (8 page)

No. The A would stand, “because you’re pompous,” she told us.

Okay, so Mrs. H. wasn’t confused. But clearly she needed a sabbatical.

Looking back, though, Mrs. H. might have been onto something. K. and I
were
certain that our all-around fabulosity knew no bounds, and certainly not racial ones. Our high school was an oasis of suburban racial integration. These were the ’80s; “Ebony and Ivory,” Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s pop hit of the era, could have been our school song. Jheri-curled and Sun-In’d hairstyles were equally welcome at the best parties. Our school put on
The Wiz
with a multiracial cast, and when we did
The Crucible,
the drama coach was sensitive enough to ask the Black members of the troupe if we’d be uncomfortable playing the role of slave Tituba. “Ummmm . . . yeah,” I murmured, imagining my mother’s face if I’d dared to come home saying, “Hey, Mom! I’m going to play the slave in the school play! Invite the whole family!” She would’ve thought I’d lost my mind.

Still, I was secure enough in my two-word identity to wear different personas like the rubber bracelets that snaked up my arms. In playwriting workshop, I explored my younger days of dancing on the bed with a “blond” towel on my head in a thoughtful piece; after school, I giggled through the mall talking like a Valley girl with friends of every shape, size, and hue — we were like piano keys, melodious and harmonic, dancing to the same beat of mutual respect. We acknowledged the chocolate-and-peanut-butter perfection of Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C on “Walk This Way.” Smurf was both TV noun and dance-party verb, and Prince vs. Michael Jackson? Stumped us all. Just when
Thriller
and the moonwalk took our collective breath away,
Purple Rain
stormed in, wearing high-heeled boots and rolling pop, rock, heavy metal, and R&B into a glorious ball of awesome. Black and White, we all loved the spare beats and synthesizers of ’80s music (and the hair! Have you
seen
the
hair
? Seriously, google it. I’ll wait.).

So of course, my friends and I were sure our White classmates weren’t
racist.
Racists were red-faced people wearing white sheets. They were not sitting next to us in AP English or competing with us for the Individual Research Projects in Science Award. We giggled and got good grades alongside one another, we were on the honor roll together, and we collectively celebrated the rise of hip-hop and blue-eyed soul.

But surface harmony notwithstanding, there were cracks in the veneer.

When I proudly displayed one of Keith Haring’s giant Free South Africa posters in my room, a friend came to visit and went white with outrage (pun intended). “That poster seems like it’s saying the Black people should rise up and crush White people,” he said. “They should really
try talking to them first.
”

Of course.

The nearly fifty years of resistance to the government system of apartheid could not have possibly included some talking.

Even the music we shared started to feel a bit offbeat. As much as I admired the philanthropic sentiment, some of the lyrics in “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” the star-studded musical call for famine relief in Ethiopia, made me squirm. At school assemblies, the whole student body rapped and sang along to “Caravan of Love” and “King Holiday,” but the ugliness of Howard Beach, where a group of Black men were chased by a mob of White men through the streets of New York City and severely beaten, was only minutes away.

My visits to the school library stopped after I’d asked the librarian where I might find resources for my research paper on Zora Neale Hurston and she told me there was “no such person.”

Oh-kayy . . .

Whatever. I had work to do. I was getting ready to move on to college, where surely more enlightened adults waited to affirm my brilliance. Pompous, that’s right.

Then the school newspaper published a cartoon featuring Black teens speaking “Ebonically” (“Dat’s nasty!”). My friends and I (also on the newspaper staff) were not amused. Accompanying the cartoon was an op-ed of sorts decrying “Black” behavior at parties, and Black students drafted and signed a petition condemning the piece. We were at first buoyed by the number of student allies who immediately expressed their support. But things got sticky when those allies wanted to add their names to the petition, and we held fast to the notion that a petition from “We, the Black students” should be signed by . . . well,
the Black students.
It went back and forth. Feelings were hurt. We held our ground, suggesting that sympathetic parties start another petition, add a rainbow coalition of outrage to the voices of protest. That didn’t go over so well. We were called “reverse racists.” The principal called me into her office and gently asked that as student body president, I lead the charge to amend the petition so that White students could sign it. I declined politely. Later that day, the newspaper advisor explained to me and a friend that it was one big misunderstanding and had not been done to offend and oh-so helpfully added that in her day, minstrel shows were legitimate entertainment. The newspaper editors, genuinely chagrined, issued an apology, and life went on. Or so it seemed.

After the school newspaper incident, my friends and I were no longer at ease, but the discomfort was muted by empowerment lessons imparted by our parents and people like Ms. B., who shared both Oprah and Okonkwo (of Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart
fame) with us in African history class. There was Ms. Z., who had the vision and authority to shove nudge us into extracurricular Black theater. I played Mama in
A Raisin in the Sun
(my chagrin at having to play an “old lady” — with padding! — barely mitigated by the fact that I’d gotten a lead role), and yes, we revisited the dashiki days to dance interpretively to Claude McKay’s poem “White Houses” in front of the entire school. We were frequently mortified, but more often filled with confidence and pride. We took pride in knowing our roots (and how to dramatize them), and since my friends and I were a competitive group in a competitive class, the A+s flowed. We envisioned ourselves easing on down the road to a top-tier-college future.

I had a pretty good portfolio of College Material that could open doors at a variety of hallowed halls named after Rich Dead Guys. Here I was — honor roll? Check. Good SAT scores? Check. More activities than I actually had time for? Check. I once calculated my after-school commitments and the time that each needed, and it came out to just under sixty-six hours a week. And that was before I counted weekends. Let the record show that I was undeterred. As a reader of both science fiction and fantasy, I figured it was only a matter of time before I uncovered the secrets of time travel, transmogrification, and magic wardrobes that would allow me to Do It All. Looking at the “me” on paper, how could I not expect to be a desirable candidate in the world of higher learning?

And then I signed up for my first and only college prep meeting with my guidance counselor. He took one look at my list — Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and SUNY Binghamton — and smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as he said, “These schools are kind of a reach for you.”

A reach? For
me
?

I was a certified, bona fide, flag-waving geek. I assumed it was generally accepted common knowledge. Giving him his smile right back, I left the office feeling a little sad for this man who so obviously didn’t know Whom He Was Dealing With.

Growing up with Maya Angelou and Malcolm X, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Black History Month every month of the year in my home, and a rainbow coalition of friends and family meant that I
knew who I was.
(I knew who Zora Neale Hurston was, too.) And where I should apply to college.

I waited for the acceptance letters to roll in.

And they did. For all of us. We wore our status like the alligators emblazoned on our shirts. We were academic superstars, remember?

Apparently, not everyone did. At least, not many of our counterparts remembered that we were the same people who sat next to them in AP classes, occasionally gave homework help, and assisted in decoding the poetic genius of hip-hop’s pioneers. When the news spread about our acceptances, all of that didn’t matter anymore.

We lost one of our labels just like that.

Suddenly, we were no longer part of the school’s elite geekarati.

We were only very, very Black.

“It’s just . . . so
wrong,
” sputtered my Don’t Free South Africa acquaintance on the phone, who was now more well versed in the nature of injustice. “It’s
not fair.
Someone like E., who’s worked so hard and is so smart, gets rejected from Harvard, but all of these Black people get into Ivy League schools.”

Excuse me?

“People like me, you mean?” I said sweetly, ever polite. My mom taught me manners, even in the face of extreme jackassishness.

There followed much stammering and blustering, and assurances that, of course, he hadn’t meant me.

I realized then and there that the same people who’d asked for my notes were always going to see me as more C– than A+, no matter what the report cards said or how good my notes were. And their parents, grumbling about affirmative action and lowered standards in the same breath, probably fed them those thoughts at the dinner table. And some of the wonderful teachers who quietly but fiercely looked out for us let us know that some of their colleagues felt that way, too.

It broke my heart.

I thought I knew the face of racism. In second grade, a classmate who knew a lot of bad words and very little about personal space followed me daily murmuring
“Niggerniggernigger”
in my ear. Yeah, that was A Year to Remember. And then there was the way our community welcomed an interracial couple — with a cross-burning. Thankfully, a number of neighbors had led a march and vigil in objection to that heartbreaking display of ignorance.

Now I looked around our school and wondered, “Are
you
like
those
cross-burning, epithet-spitting people?”

My teachers and classmates
knew
me. And still the answer to my question wasn’t clear.

It. Broke. My. Heart.

But it didn’t take long to open my eyes and see the truth:
It was their problem.

If they didn’t get it; well, that was too bad.

I wasn’t going to
try talking to them first.

I’d gotten into the colleges of my choice because I’d worked every multidimensional bone in my body to get there.

I didn’t need to be in AP Bio to know how wrong it is to be reduced and flattened to a color (but I was). I wave my identity flag high and wide, marching-band style (yep, did that, too — polyester uniform and all).

I’m Black. I’m a geek.

And nobody can divide that beautiful partnership.

Berlin is like a theme park.

You got your Nazi Land —

with its huge war monuments,

stone eagles staring you down,

and gold bricks in the ground

telling you how many Jewish folks

from your building died in the war.

You have your Commie World,

all gray and rectangle blocks

of boring buildings,

old Karl Marx statues,

and leftover parts of the Berlin Wall

standing next to a Starbucks.

Then you got Futurama,

where you can ride around on those weird

Segway people movers,

zipping past gleaming towers

and lit-up pyramids

(like Las Vegas but more classy),

all built in the empty space

where the Wall came down.

It’s all interesting, I guess.

We’re only here

a year for Daddy’s work,

so I can put up with anything —

even starting high school

in a place that never heard of

homecoming.

What makes it okay is the food.

There are these amazing gelato stands

(only eighty cents a scoop!),

bakeries on every corner with sweets

you wouldn’t believe,

and the currywurst —

that’s bratwurst with curry ketchup —

man, I could eat that
forever.

I’m thinking of opening

a chain of my own

when we get back to the States.

It’s that good.

But there are things that suck, too.

German is
hard,

and nobody ever smiles and says,

Hey, wassup, girl?

When it’s cold,

everybody
seems grumpy —

I guess complaining about winter

must be like a national sport here.

And then there’re the subways. . . .

Me and my family head down

the subway stairs

past the stone eagles

and homeless musicians,

past the currywurst stand

where we usually get a snack.

No stopping today,

it’s wall-to-wall

people —

all Germans —

tall and pale,

towering over me

like Euro-gods with tiny glasses.