Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (24 page)

“I don’t know if you sensed this, but that’s how I felt,” he added.

“I didn’t realize,” I began. “But I did wonder why you wouldn’t remove your sunglasses in a car with tinted windows, even when Oprah teased you about keeping them on.”

He laughed at the memory, then said, “I remember that. And it was because of what I’m explaining to you.” He turned to Mark. “I wanted to call you, Mark, and tell you not to go through with the marriage.

But I felt I didn’t know you well enough.”

I looked at Mark. He said nothing but was listening attentively.

“But that was all before my life changed,” Stedman continued.

“Now I see that you two really care about each other, and love needs no justification. It doesn’t have to be aware of race or prejudice or what other people may think. You two have set an example, an admirable example, of how we should see each other-as human beings.”

I was touched by Stedman’s confession, and, after a long discussion in which Mark and I revealed the internal and external pressures we had to overcome to go through with the public wedding, I thanked Stedman for being honest and having the courage to admit how he had truly felt.

“I always like to clear the air,” he said. “I couldn’t come to your home and eat your food without first letting you know how I once felt and how I now feel.” He leaned back in his chair with a sigh, as if he had just relieved himself of a great burden. “I’m flying back to Chicago tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell Oprah that I confessed to you.”

I laughed, but felt grateful to him and very glad that he and Mark were becoming good friends.

By the middle of January I could not sleep. I tossed and turned restlessly, extra pillows stuffed between my knees and behind my back and along my side, unable to get comfortable. Considering how pear shaped I had become and how many pillows I had, I’m surprised I did not pitch Mark out of bed every time I turned. I tried in vain to relax.

All I could think about was a newborn baby screaming drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by a dull pain in my lower abdomen that went around to the small of my back. It went away, then came again.

Contractions.

I sat up in bed and watched Mark, sleeping like a baby in the gray early morning light, swaddled in a white comforter. When Mark awoke I scratched his back and said, 0Hi.”

“Hi,” he replied sleepily. 0Did you get any sleep?”

“I’ve been up since three,” I said. “I’ve been timing my contractions.”

His eyes opened wide in amazement, and he started shaking. I could not tell how much was real fear and how much was a theatrical attempt to make me laugh, which I did.

“D-d-did you s-s-say cc-con-contractions?” he gasped.

“It’s all right. They’re not painful yet. Just uncomfortable. This could go on for twelve hours. No need to rush to the hospital.”

Mark pranced around happily all morning, talking nonstop to my stomach, saying such things as “Finally, boy, you’ll be coming out to deal with the real world and earn your keep. No more perpetual fiestas and siestas.”

The contractions kept going all day until, at one in the morning, I realized it was time to head for the hospital, which was half an hour away In High Point. Mark gripped the steering wheel nervously, glancing at me with concern whenever he could take his eyes from the ice-crusted road, asking every two minutes, “Are you all right?

It’s not going to be born in the car, is it?”

Twelve hours passed in a phantasmagoria of white walls, the faces of nurses and doctors, strange voices asking me questions, the rapid beat of the fetal heart monitor, music, the soothing sound of Mark’s voice reading me a Sherlock Holmes story I was too distracted to follow.

The pain came in waves, rising to a crescendo and then fading.

At the peaks I thrashed back and forth in agony, felt Mark’s hand gripping mine, heard his voice coaching me through it. Strands of damp hair stuck to my sweating face and neck. I breathed so hard and rapidly I hyperventilated: Faces and hospital equipment swirled before my eyes and my limbs went numb.“It’s a girl!” the doctor said.

I looked down to see a tiny blue creature, with groping hands and kicking feet, resting in Dr. Farabow’s hands. Mark cut the umbil let out a shrill cry. Tears of joy rushed to my eyes. Mark kissed me. I stared at Bianca Ellen (named after Mark’s grandmother Ellen Mabaso) in amazement when they put her in my arms. She looked so tiny, so helpless, so fragile. She was the same color as I, with blue eyes and thin, straight hair: It would be months before her hair would grow thick and curly, her eyes would turn brown, and her skin would darken into a beautiful light brown.

That night after Mark left the hospital, I lay in the darkened room and longed for Bianca, who was fast asleep under the harsh fluorescent lights of the nursery down the hall. She had been a part of me for nine months, and I missed having her close to me, feeling her roll and kick within me. A powerful feeling of love for my husband and my baby rose within me and grew stronger and stronger until, by dawn, I was giddy and weeping with happiness. Because my mother had suffered from intense and long-lasting postpartum depressions after the births of my two brothers and me, I feared that I too would fall into dark despondency. To my surprise I was flooded with a joy so intense it made me sob.

“What’s wrong?” cried a middle-aged nurse in a gleaming white uniform as she rushed into my room and turned on the light. She had heard my sobs and come to my rescue.

“Oh, it’s… it’s nothing,” I said, red-faced and gasping for breath.

“It’s just that I’m so happy I can’t bear it!”

The nurse smiled knowingly. 0It‘5 your hormones,” she said.

“They’re out of whack. You’ll come back to earth soon enough.”

But I didn’t come back to earth-I remained perpetually high for days.

As soon as the nurse left my room I took out some paper and wrote a note to Bianca’s father. It read, Dearest Mark, Thank you for holding my hand through the pain, for brushing the hair away from my forehead, for coaching me through it all, and for loving me and Baby Bianca so much. My heart is so full of love that it brings tears to my eyes just to think about our baby, about you, and about how deeply I care for and need you both. I love you more than words can say.

Forever yours, Gi When the day staff went home at three and the new shift came on, a young woman in white, fresh out of nursing school and with her hair high in a sand-colored pony tail, burst exuberantly into my room and, after chatting ceaselessly about sundry topics I’ve long since forgotten, caught sight of Bianca fast asleep in the padded cart beside the hospital bed. Stepping closer to examine the baby, the nurse fell silent.

“She’s a cute little thing,” she said. “My, she’s sort of got a brown tinge to her, doesn’t she? Is your husband dark?”

“Yes,” I replied, then smiled to myseu I knew she probably meant dark in terms of having an Italian’s olive skin, brown hair, and brown eyes, as in “tall, dark, and handsome.” The nurse, being the talkative type, lingered in my room long after her duties were done, telling me all about her Southern upbringing. She spoke quickly, jumping from topic to topic with ease like a monkey swinging from one tree branch to another, and with her Southern accent and Southern belle mannerisms, reminded me a bit of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. When the door swung open and Mark entered the room, she seemed petrified. She leaped backward a little.

“Are you looking for someone?” she inquired.

“Yes, my wife,” Mark replied.

“Have you checked at the front desk to see which room she’s in?”

“Here I am,” I said, smiling at Mark, who came toward me, took my hand, and leaned over to kiss me. The nurse, trying to mask her surprise, hurriedly excused herself and left the room. About fifteen minutes later she returned with a group of nursing students, saying she was giving them a tour of the maternity ward. I felt the three of us-Mark, Bianca, and I-were on display like some curiosity exhibit at a fair.

But I was too absorbed in Mark, my new baby, and my own happiness to care what strangers thought of our black-brown-white family.

For the first two weeks after Mark proudly and ceremoniously brought Bianca and me home from the hospital, none of us got a solid night’s sleep. Mark and I slept in the bed directly beside her crib, jumping up at each squeak and squeal she made in her noisy slumber, making sure the blanket was tucked snugly about her little face, making sure her little knit cap stayed on her head, making sure her diaper was dry-even as she slept. We played the role of the worried, anxious new parents to the hilt. Mark enjoyed changing diapers so much that I kidded him about making it his permanent responsibility.

after two weeks of walking around like zombies, pacing the nursery by night and quieting Bianca in the sun room by day, our lives regaIned some normalcy. In February, which is Black History Month, Mark traveled to various colleges across the country. He was loath to leave us but he had committed himself to the lectures months ago.

I tended to Bianca and welcomed the steady flow of cards, flowers, and baby gifts that arrived at our doorstep, including a huge wicker basket from Oprah and Stedman filled with teddy bears, baby clothes, lullaby tapes, powder, and chocolates.

The other young mothers in my neighborhood, who had held a surprise baby shower for me, wished to see Bianca. They called on the phone and asked if they could “drop by.” Being new to motherhood, I had no idea it was customary for friends and neighbors to deliver baby gifts in person and take a peek at the infant. I thought they wanted to see the baby merely because they were burning with curiosity, as I had been all through my pregnancy, to find out how a baby with such different-looking parents would look. They would bend over the crib or stroller and, seeing dark hair, a fairly wide nose and tan skin, would exclaim, “Oh, she looks just like Mark!”

But she’s my child too, I would think to myself. Seeing my hurt expression, they would sometimes add, “Oh, but she has your long fingers” or “She has your cheeks.” Mark was the only person who thought Bianca resembled me. He would lean over the baby and whisper, “Why do you look so much like your mommy and so little like me? You’re just as pretty as your mommy, too.”

Eager to get back in shape, I started exercising as soon as possible after delivery. I ran the same route I had before Bianca came along, but now I would run it while pushing a stroller. I still went for long bike rides along the winding country roads north of Kernersville, but now I would ride with Bianca right behind me in a cushioned bicycle seat and wearing a child’s lightweight biking helmet.

To save gasoline and get in an extra workout, I would sometimes ride to the grocery store and bring home bread and other items in a backpack.

One day, as I fastened Bianca into her bike seat outside the grocery store, an elderly Southern gentleman strolled by and stared at my baby.

It was a hot, sunny day in the middle of summer. I was wearing shorts and a tank top and Bianca’s arms and legs were bare.

He gazed at five-month-old Bianca for several minutes, then said in a slow drawl, “That baby sure is turnin’ brown.”

“Yes, she has a nice color, doesn’t she?” I said. Bianca had slowly been getting darker as the melanin came out in her skin.

“You must set her out in the sun an awful lot,” he commented.

When he got no reply he said, “You set her out in the sun?”

“No, she’s only outside when I am.”

“I don’t know that it’s healthy for a baby to be out In the sun so much.” He shook his head in wonder, and turning to walk away muttered to himself, “That baby sure is brown.”

Small children were always the first to make some remark on the difference between my color and Bianca’s. One little boy tugged insistently at his mother’s skirt, pointed to us and shouted, “Hey!

Look! That’s a white lady and that’s a brown baby! Mommy, how come that white lady’s got a brown baby?”

The mother bent over her child and whispered, “Don’t point!

How many times do I have to tell you-” “But how come there’s a white lady with a-” “Some children are adopted,” the mother explained. She looked up and, seeing that I had heard everything, asked, “She is adopted, isn’t she?”

“No, she’s mine,” I said proudly.

It surprised me how many mothers boxed their children’s ears or scolded them whenever the kids would ask, out of innocent curiosity, how a white mother could have a brown baby. The mothers probably thought they were training their children not to point, pry, or be impolite, but their scolding might later have a harmful effect. It might serve to teach them that it is wrong for a white woman to have a brown child.

Instead of scolding and chastising, I wished the mothers would explain and reassure. Many of our prejudices, I believe, develop in this manner. Children have a natural curiosity to know, they are seldom judgmental, but we adults instill in them our prejudices and narrow views.

I envied Mark, who never had such encounters when he took

Bianca out in public. A proud black father with a cute, curly haired, lightskinned brown baby in a frilly dress draws only praise and admiration from passersby. Bianca’s lighter skin did not necessarily mean that her mother was white: She could have been a lightskinned black woman, which, in the eyes of society, was perfectly acceptable.

But when I appeared in public with Bianca, there was littIe doubt that the father of the child was black.

My white friend Connie, who has a black husband, James, and three biracial children, is frustrated by the constant stares and comments she gets when she takes her children out in public.

“I just get so sick of it sometimes,” Connie said. “The reality of it hit me after having three. I’ll be loading three kids, two strollers, and five bags of groceries into my car and someone will walk up to me and say, Oh, they’re so cute. Are they yours?” What am I supposed to say to that? No, I’m just their nanny? Of course, they’re mine, lady!”

“I didn’t really see James as a black man, I just saw him as a man I loved,” Connie said. “Now my kids have to grow up. They have to face the fact that they’re mixed. Are they going to be black or are they going to be white? Since they have their father’s last name, I assume they’ll be black. But my son says he’s not black. He says he’s brown.