#90 - For A Black Girl

Today’s words: Flange, Tibia, Scrabble, Special

Word count: 421

Completion time: 30 minutes

Summary: A little girl realises early in her life that being black is not the same as being white

--

Gracie would sometimes wonder no-one in school that looked like her. It didn’t occur to her until she was around eight-years-old, when someone in the art lesson had asked for a ‘skin colour’ colouring pencil. Her fingers shot to the light pink implement and she took a look at the skin on the back of her hand; if that was ‘skin colour’, then what about her skin? And, how did she know which colour the boy had meant? Who taught her that? It certainly hadn’t been her teachers.

When she reached eleven, she was sent to a private school for high achievers (“special school for my special girl” her mum would sometimes sing). The building was beautiful – light grey stone surrounded by patches of ivy, royal blue roofs, and a cream and grey pebbled driveway that led up to the heavy oak doors like a red carpet to an awards ceremony. She felt grand, and yeah, pretty darn special...but that didn’t last very long.

Once again, Gracie was one of the only black children in school, and the only one in most of her classes, but this time, the kids were very aware of it.

It started off with looks, whispers behind hands, fake smiles, a small, easy diffusible scrabble in the yard, until one day she was elbowed at the top of a staircase which caused her to fall. Hard. Not only did she break her tibia, but her arm and a few teeth, too.

The last thing she heard before unconsciousness took over was that she should go back to the jungle and join the ugly flange of baboons where she belonged.

Bruises fade, cuts heal, bones fuse back together...but those words stayed with her until adulthood, occasionally making a prominent appearance when she descended a flight of stairs or scrutinized her flared nostrils in the mirror of her dresser.

When she recovered, she wished more than ever to be white; to be white meant to be normal, beautiful...something that she thought she could never achieve. She could google ‘How to make skin whiter’ and, ‘Bleach for black skin’ all she wanted but she would never look like the girls that everyone seemed to find most beautiful.

When mainstream society tells you that you’re unattractive, or that you’re attractive with ‘for a black girl’ as a disclaimer...it can make you feel like you’ll never be good enough.

You feel you’ll never amount to anything unless you shed your skin and pray for a lighter one to take its place.