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

me by one arm, and smushed my face into her overly powdered chest. I wheezed and cried while my father paced back and forth.
    Once the last tear had flowed from my eye to her Jean Naté– flavored cleavage, my mother and dad went into the kitchen for a Grown Folks Meeting. Usually, when this happened, they’d mumble by the sink about how to punish me for some recent minor back-sassing. The last Grown Folks Meeting resulted in my not being able to watch TV for a week after I mimicked the sexy ways of a television circus trainer. “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?” I’d asked our mailman, and then licked my lips. This Grown Folks Meeting, it seemed, someone else was getting punished.
    “I’m going to kill those little sons of bitches,” my father said.
    “And you’ll go to jail!”
    “
They
should be in jail!”
    My father came out of the kitchen with my mother trailing him.
    “Jack, where are you going?” she asked.
    “To tell their parents. I won’t hit anybody,” my father said, grabbing my hand. “Show me where they live.”
    “I don’t know where they live,” I said, still swiping teardrops from my cheeks.
    “We’ll go to every door until we find them,” my father assured me.
    Suddenly, every tear was worth it. We were going door-to-door to kick some racist ass. It would be fun, just like trick-or-treating, except no candy and my father might punch someone in the face.
    “Wait!” my mother yelled as we pushed through the screen door. I was afraid she was going to stop our mission, but she wanted only to wipe some of her bosom’s baby powder off my nose. (That’s my mother—how will you get people to stop teasing your daughter if you send her outside looking a mess?) Once she had wiped my face with a dab of saliva, it was time to go racist-boy-hunting.
    My father didn’t go door-to-door. Like the new microwave and electronic garage door he’d recently purchased, he was all about efficiency. My father saw Michelle and asked her where the boys lived. She squealed quickly, giving up the addresses of Michael, Teddy, and Jimmy, the three main chanters. My father thanked Michelle, and we stomped up Jimmy’s front steps like his family owed us money.
    After we rang the bell, a man and woman cautiously answered the door.
    “Can I help you?” the man asked.
    “Yes, you can,” my father said. “Your son Jimmy called my daughter a zebra.”
    “Oh, God,” Jimmy’s mother said, slapping her palm to her forehead as if Jimmy always got into trouble and his antics were about to give her a nervous breakdown. She turned and shouted, “Jimmeee!” Jimmy came running down the stairs, stopping short of the last step when he saw me and my father.
    “Did you call this girl a zebra?” Jimmy’s father asked.
    “Yeah, but I wasn’t the only one—”
    “I don’t care who else did it. You apologize to her!” his father screamed, veins bulging from his neck.
    “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, more to the carpet than to me.
    “Are you okay with that?” my father asked me.
    Are you okay with that?
is one of those questions you shouldn’t ask kids. Kids don’t understand that some questions aren’t meant to be answered truthfully. I didn’t know I was supposed to say,
Yes,
I’m okay with that.
    “No,” I said, turning to Jimmy’s father. “Is he going to get a beating?” I asked.
    “Angela,” my father said. In retrospect, I think he probably didn’t want anyone to know he still doled out corporal punishment. Because of television news reports on time-outs being preferable to beatings, our family had switched from spankings administered by hand to ones given with a wet washcloth, as a sort of compromise. According to my mother, that method “packed all the sting and none of the marks.”
    “Yes, he is most certainly getting a beating,” his mother replied. Jimmy started crying and flew back up the stairs. It’s my only memory of taking pleasure in someone else’s pain. It felt