Mixed: My Life in Black and White Read Online Free PDF Page A

strike,” I heard my mother tell my father. Adult women carefully enunciated all three of Lisa Thomas-Laury’s names, never disrespecting her by referring to her casually as Lisa.
    “Lots of people are mixed,” my mother said, looking at the ceiling as if she kept the mixed people’s names written up there. “Like . . . uh . . . Lisa Thomas-Laury.”
    “She has green eyes!” I said. “She’s white!”
    “Who said mixed and black people can’t have green eyes?” my mother replied. “My father has blue eyes.” She was right; her father did have blue eyes. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized everyone with cataracts had the same cloudy blue eyes.
    After that day, I became Lisa Thomas-Laury’s youngest devotee. I would gladly sit through the whole newscast to see the only other mixed person I knew. I summoned the courage to ask my mother to help me mail her a letter. We decided on a postcard, since a prestigious woman like Lisa Thomas-Laury was probably too busy to open mail. I went with a simple greeting.
Hi, Mrs. Lisa
Thomas-Laury. I’m mixed, too! Write back!
    She never wrote back. That could have been because, as I would later find out, she was not mixed and probably had no idea what the hell my postcard meant.
    Back then, I didn’t know my mother would lie to encourage self-love. In my mind, Lisa Thomas-Laury’s lack of response meant she’d received my postcard, read it, and immediately trashed it. During school, I would daydream about the possible ways she had rid herself of my unwanted postcard—I had a full-blown panic attack during religion class after I fantasized about Ms. Thomas-Laury ripping my note up then tossing it under her car’s tires for traction in a snowstorm. Watching her newscasts became painful; I was certain that she was just waiting for the right moment to annouce on air how she felt about my postcard. “That’s some bad weather, Dave. Speaking of bad, I received the most stupid fan letter recently. . . .”
    My mother soon realized I was spiraling into a depression whenever the news came on. She knew what she had to do—lie about another celebrity.
    “David Hasselhoff is half black and half white,” my mother mentioned casually after I collapsed into a crying spell while watching Lisa Thomas-Laury host the Thanksgiving Parade.
    “Look at his skin! It’s as tan as yours. And his hair,” my mother continued. “Isn’t that what your hair looks like when it rains?”
    She was right. Michael Knight did have a curly ’fro! However, I still wasn’t ready to risk the rejection of an unanswered fan letter, so I decided instead that my new idol would be the subject of my Black History Month oral presentation.
    My new teacher, Sister Danielle, had given our class the assignment of independently researching an important black American to speak about. After sixteen consecutive oral reports on Martin Luther King, Sister Danielle expanded the topic criteria—we could also write about important people who were friends with black Americans.
    The last day of February, I fidgeted in my seat as Emma Russell, the most popular girl in fourth grade, gave a stellar black history report on Abraham Lincoln. It was terrifying enough reading in front of the entire class without having to follow the Emancipation Proclamation done as a football cheer.
    I took a deep breath before taking my place at the front of the classroom. I paced myself and held my head high as I rattled off two minutes and thirty seconds of David Hasselhoff trivia. Then I hit my last paragraph:
    “Like me, David Hasselhoff has a German last name and a black mother.”
    Half the class burst into laughter. Rather than wait for them to settle down, I bit back tears and zoomed through the last sentences of my report.
    “Knight Rider is a great show. It comes on Channel six at eight P.M. The end.”
    Sister Danielle asked if anyone had any questions for me. Tony Aiello, class bully, who was later expelled for