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

breaking into the church and stealing a tape recorder, raised his hand.
    “Knight Rider’s not part black!” Tony called out.
    “That’s not a question, Tony,” Sister Danielle snapped. “Phrase it as a question.”
    “Why would you lie and say Knight Rider is mixed?” Tony asked. His face turned bright purple, and his lips twisted like he wanted to curse me for sullying the sacred name of the premier nighttime television star.
    “He’s half black because my mother said he is,” I replied.
    We were still at the age where we respected our parents. Whatever they said was law, so Tony had no choice but to accept that I was right until he got home to ask his parents if my mother was wrong.
    There were no further questions, so I walked back to my desk, mulatto pride fully intact.
    “Good job! I learned a lot,” Sister said, approaching me with her grading pen and giving me my first-ever
A
in public speaking.
    As I gathered my papers, Sister leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Now, Knight Rider, that’s the black fellow with all the gold chains and the mohawk, right?”

Zebra Kickball
    “Zebras. You see, they’re black, and they’re white. The Black Panthers become the Zebras, and membership will double.”
    —Sean Penn (as Samuel Bicke) in
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    “Are you black or white?” Michael, a popular fourth- grade boy, asked me. We were around the corner from my house preparing to pick teams for a kickball game.
    I knew I should have played with the black kids today, I thought as I glanced longingly down the street at the three black girls jumping rope. I wondered if it would be too obvious if I dashed away from the white kids and hopped into their rope.
    It seemed the kickball game was on hold until I answered Michael, so I gave the response I’d been trained to give, the sentence that was as much a part of my childhood as knowing my phone number and the proper way to sit when wearing a skirt.
    “My mom is black and my dad is white,” I said.
    “So you’re a zebra!” Michael said. The kickball group gasped and giggled in amazement, like Michael was a comedic genius for calling someone who’s mixed with black and white a zebra. If he were truly witty, he would have called me a panda or a penguin, I thought.
    It was the first time I’d experienced opposition to my mother’s standard-issue empowered-biracial-child answer. The word
just
in her instructions made it seem like a simple thing:
Just
tell them your dad is white and your mom is black;
just
answer honestly and then get back to playing kickball. I needed a sentence on what to do if an angry mob
just
didn’t like that answer.
    “Zebra!” another boy shouted, and the virus spread, infecting two more boys until there was only one boy not chanting the word. When that boy realized he was the only silent one, he sputtered out a half-hearted
zebra
under his breath and looked at me apologetically. I understood. No need for both of us to be misfits.
    Michelle and Heather, two girls from my class, were laughing at the chant. The five boys, pleased with that bit of attention, decided that playing ring-around-the-zebra was more fun than kickball. “I am
not
a zebra!” I yelled as they circled around me. Unfortunately, no one could hear my great comeback over five male voices, so I expressed my anger by violently kicking their ball toward the sewer and then turned the other way and sprinted home.
    Once inside the door, I tried to tell my parents what had happened but only one sound dropped out of my mouth. “Zee-zeezee-eee,” I said to my parents, trying to hold back my tears and talk at the same time.
    My parents were actually smiling at me. Later, they admitted they thought I was imitating a deejay scratching a record, like in the rap songs that were beginning to get popular. Finally I spat it out. “Z-zebra! Zebra! They called me a zebra!” As the words flew out, so did my tears.
    My mother shot my father a look, snatched