Mixed: My Life in Black and White (24 page)

The Bright Girl in the Photo

“I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.”

—Popeye the Sailor,
on individualism

The day before my mother’s wedding to Reverend Rob, I
was lying in my backyard, trying to get a tan.

“Angela, we have a lot to do,” my husband said. “Shouldn’t you start packing?”

Getting a bit of sun was more important than packing. Whenever I take photos with my mother, I am struck by the difference in our complexions. The flash makes my skin turn bright white, while hers lights up to a color that reminds me of a nice warm cup of hot chocolate. I always imagine people seeing the photos and thinking, Who invited the ghost? Or that they would make the perfect promo poster for the updated version of
Imitation of Life.

I explained this to my husband. He acted like he got it, but even I understood that this much obsession with getting browner for my mother’s wedding photos was a bit abnormal.

Maybe I’m trying to burn away the guilt, I thought, only a bit facetiously. I feel like I put my mother through a lot, growing up. I thought about the time I shouted, “I hate black people!” after giving her Fat Pam’s weed leftovers. How, when I got older, I apologized for it and she brushed the apology away. “You were only twelve; you were going through an identity crisis,” she said. “I know how that is. I used to get teased so bad for being dark-skinned, I used to sleep with clothespins on my nose and tried to bleach my skin.”

That made me feel even worse. I wondered if Jacqui or Maureen did the same thing after I teased them or ignored them because of their darker skin. I felt bad because I’d had plenty of opportunities to heal my racial emotional scars. I wondered if Maureen and Jacqui had had a chance to do the same. Did they believe me when I looked down on them? Were Jacqui and Maureen buying bleaching creams and clothespins today?

I thought of how, a few weeks before, I overheard a group of junior high students I tutored call a classmate “black and burnt.” How I tried in my calmest voice to explain that black people separating each other by color was a horrible hurtful thing we learned to do in slavery. How they looked at me in the same embarrassed way I looked at my teachers when they talked about slavery. I called out sick from tutoring the next day. I needed a race day off.

I turned over to get some sun on my back and flipped on the radio. As if on cue, a popular female rapper’s latest hit blared out. In it, she rapped that light skin was passé and that brown-skinned girls like her were the “in thing.” Suddenly it felt like 1988 all over again.

My husband stepped into our backyard and sat down next to me.

“Listen to this song. Just a few more UV rays and I’ll be in fashion, baby,” I said, shaking my head. The song had embarrassed me into getting up. I’d just have to be light and proud.

Before I could gather up my towel and tanning oil, my husband grabbed my arm.

“What are you going to do if our daughter comes out blond-haired and blue-eyed and is late for one of your events because she’s tanning to look more like her mom?”

I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of that before. Probably because we had just gotten married and planning that had been enough stress for me. (How do you know what kind of pots to register for when you don’t even know how to cook?) My husband was right, though. We could have a blond-haired blue-eyed child. There were all kinds of recessive genes lurking in our DNA.

By American racial classification, my husband is not biracial, but his family photos look like the covers of World History textbooks. His grandmother and her long Native American hair, his cousins who look like they could be anything
but
black. Even his last name, my new one, is a mixture of cultures. His grandfather was a black Jamaican who didn’t want to emigrate to the States with two marks against him—black man with an Irish name—so he added an “A” to McCalla and changed it to MacCalla, a traditional Scottish surname.

I shuddered at how I was going to decode all this for my children. Will kids at school tease them for being zebras even if they look white? It’s the twenty-first century and there are barely any books out to help parents raise mixed-race children. There is
no
literature to help two black-identifying parents raise a blond-haired, blue-eyed child. I’m not sure I have the patience to blaze new trails like my mother did.

I’d love to tell my children that race doesn’t matter, or even that the race thing gets easier when you get older, but I don’t want to lie to them. Unless the United States becomes remarkably different in twenty or so years, race still will matter and not to prepare them for that smacks of irresponsible parenting to me. Plus, I’m sure my children will catch me having a
where do I fit in?
moment. Even though I don’t go through the agony of my formative years by trying on different races and religions in response to people’s perceptions of me, I still have a bit of racial schizophrenia. When I’m with my family, I’m a black girl, shouting at racist news coverage, fanning people down in my mother and stepfather’s church when they get the Holy Ghost. At home, in my predominantly white neighborhood, I choose to be racially neutral at times, flaunting my exoticness when people ask me what I am.
I’m everything
or
I’m
American,
I say, enjoying the looks on their faces when they’re caught between being politically correct and just dying to ask me to be more concrete, so they can place me in some kind of box.

I’m also a woman who can’t eat in places that remind me of slavery. My husband loves this soup buffet chain out here called Souplantation. He has tried to convince me to try it, but I’m adamant. Why would they call it Soup
Plantation
unless they wanted to keep black people out?

However, for all my desires to stay away from things that remind me of pre–Civil War America, those same things are hanging right on my family tree. While researching my ancestors online, I found some cousins in Minnesota who have an award-winning polka band. One of their hit songs is titled “Cotton Fields.” I am gathering up the nerve to contact them.

There is a part of me that still holds on to the positive things I acquired from hip-hop and Nation of Islam Lite. That part is certain that even if I choose a racial label other than black, it won’t make me blind to injustice. I also know that I don’t have to move to the hood to make a difference, but that I feel better when I’m doing
something
(hence the tutoring).

And, of course, I’m still partly that confused mixed girl, although now when my two identities clash, it often leads me to laugh at how surreal being biracial in America can be.

For example, on my first day of tutoring, the students automatically thought I was cool because my last name sounds exactly like the slang word rappers use for
nigga.
My
Nissel.

“That’s your real last name? That’s hot,” a girl said, before blowing a gum bubble bigger than her head.

“Yes, that’s my real name,” I replied. I refrained from telling her that
Nissel
is not only slang for
nigga,
it’s German and one of the whitest last names around.
Save it for another lesson,
I thought to myself.

“We’re going to be late for the plane!” my husband shouted. My tanning had screwed me. My foundation no longer matched my complexion. I gave up on trying to fix my face and helped Reuben load our pets into the car. Thankfully, their kennel was right near the airport.

Our dog, Woody, is a stubborn old mutt who did not want to share the seat with the cats. When he started barking at them, they responded by hissing at him and trying to claw through their carriers.

“Honey, we don’t need to be talking about kids. Aren’t these kids enough for now?” I said, struggling to hold our dog in the backseat.

Reuben wasn’t listening to me. He was frustrated that we were running late. “I hate being late. People expect black people to be running late. I’m reinforcing the black stereotype, that we’re always running on CP time!”

I understood, but I had to hold back a giggle because I didn’t see the difference between his worry and the tanning he had gently admonished me for. It’s all worry over something that has to do with skin color.

“I remember this one time, I was late for a dinner reservation and the hostess gives me this look, you know the look?” Reuben said as he stopped at a red light and again helped me get hold of our ninety-pound mutt to keep him from jumping into the front seat. While I was still settling Woody, the light changed and my husband pulled forward, causing the dog and me to knock skulls. I could feel the beginning of a headache. My husband started telling another story, about a time he was late to Little League when he was twelve and a racist coach used that as an excuse to bench him for two games.

I needed to focus on something else besides race and my headache. Plus, my husband drives like he’s blind when he’s afraid of being late. I reached for an old newspaper lying on the floor and opened it to the World section. The feature story detailed the sky-rocketing rates of bulimia and anorexia among Black South African teenage girls.
Really? Black girls from the motherland?
My mind wandered to what ethnicity box a white South African who immigrated to America would check off on the census. Technically, he’d be African American.

“I remember when we were the only black family in La Jolla. I used to get pulled over so much, I seriously thought about getting a bumper sticker that said I LIVE HERE, OFFICER,” my husband said, eyeing a police cruiser.

I tried to laugh, but my headache was getting worse. I needed a break. Just one day of not thinking about race. But I knew it was impossible. There will always be police who stare at my husband and me in our own neighborhood, just like there will always be check boxes to fill out. I still have trouble finding a hair salon, and I doubt I will ever have to stop explaining to people what race I am. The other day, a white person at work told me that my opinion on a black character didn’t count because I’m “barely black.” I wasn’t sure if he was joking, but I went into the bathroom and cried with my head between my legs, where I noticed a new mole. I have skin cancer! I thought. Maybe I
am
barely black—I’m going to die from a white-person disease! I went to my desk and Googled “skin cancer and black people.” The first result was Bob Marley. I never knew he died of a malignant melanoma. I also didn’t know his father was white. No one would dare call him barely black.

Still, with my head throbbing and the dog barking, I decided to take the rest of the day off from thinking about race. For the rest of the day, I wouldn’t care if I was black enough or white enough. I gave up.

Suddenly my husband slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of us, which had stopped for no reason. I braced myself, preparing for a hit from behind. Instead, the car behind us swerved around us and pulled up to my side of the car. The driver rolled down his window. I rolled down mine.

The driver, a middle-aged white man in a business suit, studied Reuben and me for a brief moment and yelled, “Where did you learn how to drive? Go back to Mexico!”

I laughed so hard, I screamed. My headache suddenly went away. The man looked confused.
You’re supposed to be insulted,
the look on his face said. If he only knew that he had insulted us with one of the few ethnicities we have no ties to.

Well, I wanted a day without thinking about being black or white. I never thought about
Mexican.
I laughed again. Reuben started laughing, too. This made the driver even more pissed. He flipped us the bird, still looking for an explanation of why we were cracking up.

“I’m Italian!” I yelled out, through my laugh.

Reuben and I pulled off. We rode the laughter that only racial insanity can provide all the way to the airport.

Acknowledgments

To the Nissels, the MacCallas, and the Marshalls, for putting up with me and my deadlines. Thank you in advance for not disowning me because of anything contained in these pages.

To my agent Andy McNicol, whose enthusiasm kept me going. I couldn’t have done this without you. To Marc Provissiero at William Morris, for keeping me safe in Hollywood. Thanks for signing me even though I was “incredibly naïve and green.” You’re more than my Hollywood superagent. You’re my older brother, my friend, my cousin Vinnie (smile).

To Bill Lawrence and Randall Winston, for making the cutthroat entertainment business chockful o’ fun! I would be lost without you guys (yes, especially you, Bill). I feel too dorky to tell you how much I appreciate you in person (yes, I especially appreciate you, Bill).

To Melody Guy for everything. You changed my life with one e-mail. You’re like a good virus! Thank you!

To Brian McLendon, Benjamin Dreyer, Jennifer Jones, Danielle Durkin, and Janet Wygal, for working your tails off even when I was holding things up.

To the Mesa Refuge Writer’s Retreat for understanding that writers need a place without a television or a phone.

To the
Scrubs
writers for being so much smarter and more witty than me that I’ve lost my ego and developed a stutter.

To Tommi Crump for being the strongest, most supportive homegirl in the world.

To Neal Brennan for your brutal honesty, support, and patience.

To Uhuru Smith, Shani Lee, and Tanya McCrae for being born cool and mixed and for helping me laugh and pick out the right hair products.

ANGELA NISSEL was born and raised in Philadelphia, where she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in medical anthropology. She later started a dotcom, Okay
player.com
, which is still alive and well, but she left it permanently to the care of its cofounder after
The Broke Diaries
was published. She decided to pursue writing full time and finally ventured out of Philadelphia to Hollywood.

Upon arriving in Hollywood, she learned that just because people call themselves producers and say they can give you a job writing the screenplay of your book, it doesn’t mean they can. Broke, she put a few possessions on eBay; the winning bidder on one item was an executive at Warner Brothers who had read
The Broke Diaries
and who then introduced Nissel to her television literary agent. This agent sent copies of
The Broke Diaries
to everyone hiring comedy writers, and soon Nissel had numerous job offers. She accepted a position as a staff writer on NBC’s medical comedy,
Scrubs.
She’s been there for four years and is currently consulting producer of the show.

This is the only job she’s had where her medical anthropology degree has come in handy.

Visit the author’s website at
www.angelanissel.com
.