Sprinklers

I'm going to share something that makes me uncomfortable.  I've told a couple of people this story, and now I want to write about it.  I think it's important.  At least it is to me.

When I was a little girl one of my favorite summertime sports was to play outside in the sprinklers.  Once in a while, we would drive to my maternal grandmother's house and along with other aunts, uncles, and cousins, we would have a Saturday of fun.  The moms would probably go shopping, the dad's were most likely inside watching sports and my grandmother would be keeping an eye on us grandkids.  Sometimes there would be 7 or 8 of us outside in her little front yard playing in the sprinklers--laughing, yelling, singing, all the things that cousins do when they're finally together just having fun.  On this one particular day, my grandmother called me back inside the house.  She told me that I couldn't play outside anymore that day.  I thought maybe I was in trouble, maybe I had laughed too hard, yelled too loud--really I had no idea what I had done wrong.  What she said next made no sense to me.  She said, you have to come inside now, I don't want you looking like a darkie.  I didn't know what a darkie was, but I knew it had to be something bad.  I remember pouting a bit--after all, my other cousins were still playing outside and having fun.  While I, on the other hand, had to stay inside and look at her many photo albums.

That night while my mom was tucking my sister and me into bed I asked my mom, what's a darkie?  My mother's response was of course, where did you hear that?  The look that crossed her face let me know that my grandma was in a heap of trouble.
I don't know what my mother said to her, I just know that after that day I could play in the sprinklers in the hot summer sun for as long as I wanted.  And, my mother's explanation to me was that a darkie was what some people called black people.  And that I was never to use that word, that it was mean and would hurt their feelings and I might make someone cry.

I nodded, I said that I understood, but really what was going through my mind was--so am I one of them?  I was too afraid to ask.  I was only 6 or 7 years old.  But even at that age, I felt like I was less than.  Less than all my other cousins on my mother's side of the family.  I was darker, had brown hair, I looked like my dad, not my mom.  My cousins were light skinned and blond.  Different.  They were good, I was bad.  My skin was bad.  From then on I closed off a little.  I would hang back.  I didn't mean to, I just felt bad about myself inside.  I wanted so badly to be accepted but I would look at myself in the mirror and think, why am I so much darker than them, why am I bad?

It was racism pure and not so simple.  My grandmother was raised in a different era than I was.  She was raised in a state that had once engaged in slavery.  It disgusts me to even think about it.

Years later when my grandmother was pretty much on her deathbed she told me a story.  She said that when she was a child she had been raised by a black mammy, her word not mine.  And that she loved that woman more than she loved her own mother.  She had always felt guilty over her love for her mammy and deep down inside knew that it was wrong.  She dealt with her emotions via racism.  She said it was the only way, and that she should be punished for not loving her mother more.  It was a convoluted thought process for sure, but things started to make sense to me.  I began to forgive her a little.  I began to understand.  And while I didn't agree with her, I tried hard to put myself in her place.  I asked her if she remembered the sprinkler incident.  Her eyes teared up and she said yes.  She asked me to forgive her and I said I would.  I thanked her for that day--I told her that I was glad it had happened because it made me into a person who would never stand for racism or discrimination ever.  She said she was proud of me and told me for the first time in my life that she loved me.  I was in my 30's.

What's interesting to me now, is that I am not dark skinned.  I can get dark when I'm out in the sun, but not any more than any other olive skinned caucasian.  However, I can pass for a Latina, or an Italian, or an Eastern European.  It doesn't bother me in the least.  My grandmother though was afraid.
It was ignorance born of fear--racism born of ignorance.

I battle self-esteem issues even today.  I wonder if we all do to some extent.  Mine began with one racist sentence.  It hurts my heart just to think of it.