A Special Topic from The Lady Geek: "Mixed Girls and Mamas"

A Special Essay From the Lady Geek

"Mixed Girls and Mama's": A Personal Journey

"..she raised me to never ever forget I was on parole, which means no black hoodies in wrong neighborhoods, no jogging at night, hands in plain sight at all times in public, no intimate relationships with white women, never driving over the speed limit or doing those rolling stops at stop signs, always speaking the king's English in the presence of white folks, never being outperformed in school or in public by white students and most importantly, always remembering that no matter what, white folks will do anything to get you.

...Mama's antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it's to insist on excellence at all times...There ain't no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival."

From:"How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance”

An Essay By: Kiese Laymon

I will not lie. I never go to the website that I found this essay on because most of the news I follow is only available through technological sites. It was fortunate for me that not only did I see the link on a dear friend's Facebook page, I became so engrossed after the first few sentences that I opened the link and read the powerful story of a man's experience growing up black in the south.  I read that entire essay maybe six or seven times and though the entire thing excited me, it was those two small paragraphs that spoke to me...

I am and always have been an interracial woman of Philadelphia. I don't claim to be otherwise unless someone asks me where I'm from then I'm free to speak the truth and say "I'm from Bayside New York”. When I get tired of hearing, "What are you?” I will lie and lie and lie.

"I'm Batman!"

"I'm Vulcan!" 

"I'm Klingon"

"Me? Why I'm Japanese!" 

As for the of vs. from conversation, well, I am of Philadelphia because that is where my parents - the real ones that raised me, loved me, beat me, created both my demons and my angels - happened to be retired to from their real home of Bayside. However my freedom, and thus my only childhood memories of laughter and light and of happy and relaxed within my own skin...that makes me from Bayside.

In Philadelphia proper, I have never been fully black. The times that I grew up in were never particularly embracing of a pale skinned reminder that a black man actually put his dirty, nasty, disgustingly unworthy penis inside of a pure and respectable white woman.  Neither were they particularly embracing that a black man would 'succumb' to that stereo type of 'reaching for better'. That they created not one but at least three equally pale skinned, soft haired, white featured children was a sin as grave as burning a cross on the White House lawn.

I've written often of the differences between my home life and my real life before I was old enough to reach peace within myself. I've touched on the Philadelphia neighborhoods I've been the victim of, I've focused on the abuse from my mother, the never ending love of my father. But after I read that except from that wonderfully rendered essay, it poured over me, touched my soul and brought back something important that I'd forgotten my parents gave me, all of them.  

Especially my mothers, the biological one that walked away as well as the important one that owns the title to my heart. 

They gave me life. Whatever her reasons, Elizabeth H. gave life to Mary-Alice Burney and walked away two months later. Whatever her reasons, Fannie Ware Reynolds Paris gave life to MaryAnn Elizabeth Paris and stayed for the long haul.

There was no way Beth could fathom the possible fate of her first born daughter. Had the young, upper class white family she'd first left me with never discovered my black ancestry, I would have been accepted as a white child with no other family. I could have had a life without the death of my elderly parents so early, without ever knowing the sting of welfare, without my husband, Dion, without the chronic abuse and four and a half children and without a brother. 

I could have been Mary-Alice. When my skin finally darkened enough to tell I was something else, or the first time I had a sickle cell trait attack we would have been shocked and I would have had a whole different set of problems with my identity and race. 

Much like I suspect my white brother, Bobby, went through when he found that not only had he not actually been the oldest of his clan to be abandoned, but that the older, blood related siblings he had were of the races. 

Yep, That's all of us

Had they never discovered my parentage, I would have been a "whole race" living a lie. Instead, Beth chose to tell the truth on the adoption forms and I got to go to my mother and father's house to be raised with my brother and perpetually be hated from all races within Philadelphia boarders. Elizabeth H. gave me both life and truth before she walked away.  Perhaps the best gift any parent could give to their child. That's important.

And then there was my real mother.  Fannie Paris forged me when she wasn't raising me. That's a fact. I was forged through harsh fist, iron will and lack of even the softest of words. I was raised in experience, example and caring.  Under her tutelage, I became. That's important.

So the question now would be, of all the words in the world, why would those excerpted from that essay strike such a chord with me?  Let me share something with you. 

When my parents adopted my brother and me, my daddy was sixty years old and my mother was fifty-six.  Think about that. I do, quite often.  I'm only thirty-six and my children, as much as I love them, will be my last. I can not see about signing on for another round when I'm supposed to be in my golden years. That takes something.

My mother, the daughter of a brown hued bi-tribal Native American (Blackfoot/Cherokee) sharecropper named Claity Ware and a bi-racial (white Irish Catholic/Blackfoot) pale skinned woman named Mary Charity Carroll Ware. 

My grandma spent her life in Georgia, 'Passing' so that my grandpa, acting as her 'hired help' could get the better deals on their crops. They were both born in 1878 in post war Georgia. In 1921, Mary Charity and Claity Ware had their baby girl, my mama Fannie, and her brown skin revealed the whole 'Passing' thing. Mama was classified as "Negro" on her birth certificate and grandma and grandpa were forced to pull up stakes and move to Long Island .

Mama was defiantly reddish brown, as would be my Uncle Bubba when he came along a few years later. There was no 'passing' on Long Island, but there were more opportunities for them. My grandpa started 'Ware Construction' and it was he who paved all of Long Island back then. For sixteen years after mama was born, grandma stayed with grandpa and her kids. But according to mama, grandma just up and left one day leaving mama with my Uncle and Grandpa on Rocky Hill Road.

However for those sixteen years, my mama and I had something in common, something she tried so powerfully to hide from me until I was too old to need the information, but grateful for the glimpse into my family's history before Daddy and Sissy and Carl and I came into it, nonetheless.

Mama's parents were 'old' for the times that she grew up in. Forty three-year old couples were usually on their way to becoming grandparents back then not just starting their family.  Just like she grew up with 'older parents', I grew up with everyone who met my family assuming that my parents and I were grandparents/grandchildren until we set them right. 

The main thing we shared was that mama knew what she witnessed from my grandma being deemed 'tainted'. A pale skinned woman with a brownie child. No matter where they were, mommy was a brownie.  Grandma, looking like a white woman, would tell mama, when she went to the 'better' shops, not to call her mommy.  In their community, grandma was called names and demeaned for having her skin. My mother witnessed that. When mama was six, she witnessed white men try to rape my grandma while calling her a 'nigger lover'.  

My mother grew up defending her skin color, as she was deemed a 'shame to have not gotten your mama's color'. My mama got 'what are you'? from her peers because her skin was reddish brown like grandpa's, but her hair was 'white'.  My mama had to witness all of this, had to protect my Uncle and had to justify her existence and defend against the realities of being the brown spot in the pot of rice. Compared to my life in the seventies, eighties and early nineties, I don't think I could have survived it. Just the 'forced to deny my own mother' part would have left me dejected and broken. But she did it. She did it and lived it and spited it and became. 

 My mother, too, became.

That attitude, that hardship, that pain. It forged my mama just as certainly as it forged me. You see, when she decided to adopt a child, she didn't want to go with a 'pure' anything.  My mama wanted two things in her new babies. 

1. That they be mixed with something 

2. That they know their real place in this world.

The piece I excerpted above -

"..she raised me to never ever forget I was on parole, which means no black hoodies in wrong neighborhoods, no jogging at night, hands in plain sight at all times in public, no intimate relationships with white women, never driving over the speed limit or doing those rolling stops at stop signs, always speaking the king's English in the presence of white folks, never being outperformed in school or in public by white students and most importantly, always remembering that no matter what, white folks will do anything to get you..."

 - explained so eloquently my mother's attitude with both my brother and I. Her goal was that we never be ashamed of our skin, that we never 'Pass', never deny either side of our heritage, that we be prepared to deal with the Philly whites as well as the Philly blacks. 

She dressed us in the best clothes, she took the time to make sure we were well coiffed, well scrubbed, well spoken.  Forget hoodies. We had Pierre Cardin and London Fog coats and blazers. Sneakers? Hell no, only for gym class.  McDonald's and Pizza Hut? Forget about it.  We ate in "Whitey Land" at handpicked restaurants with cloth napkins and quiet ambiance, where the monied lived. Walking into the establishments, her lessons started, "Look at the way they're looking at you! Don't you dare slouch. You have nothing to be ashamed of." 

We were monied too, we were 'Good Enough' to eat at the establishment. 

We shopped at the best Department Stores and boutiques. We studied the dictionaries, we left our 'ghetto talk' out of the house. We got the grades or we would die. When there were Whites about, we were articulate, well informed about the news, politics, history, philosophy and we were always more cultured than the 'Filthy Slugs' of South Philly White Trash. Mama made daddy hire only white Italians in his business, you know just so she'd further prove the point that "White or Black, green speaks loudest." 

If we were going to curse, we'd better enunciate the entire word. When we were around whites, we'd better not misbehave or we'd go to the bathroom and be promptly beaten with the strap she kept in her purse. When asked "What are you." she made sure we had clever retorts. When I came home and told her I was sick of being the only black girl who no one wanted to play with, she told me, "Well then be the only mixed girl that's too good to play with them."

She and daddy took an entire lifetime pounding these lessons and more into my brain. On top of that, I was a smart mixed girl.  I was talented. My grades and achievements belonged to them and them alone, no one helped me of any race. So for me, there were ‘special’ extra lessons on decorum, on subtlety, on snobbery.  There was a work ethic of "be the best or die trying". 

 

I had no friends in Philadelphia that lived close to me. My friends were school friends only. No matter where I went, school friends were not good enough to bring home. There were no boys. There were lessons to be learned, multi-level educational excursions, there was Carl. This Iron Gate was for my protection, not Carl's.  Mama made sure the real face of Philly stayed far far away.  My skin always got me into trouble. The fact that I was a seventh grader who could quote history from sources besides my texts books to my 'White Trash Teacher' made me a target. My articulation, even when I tried to speak the 'ghetto talk' of the neighborhood, got me labeled as "Wanna be".

"...Mama's antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it's to insist on excellence at all times...There ain't no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival..."

My mama's antidote to being a pale skinned mixed child in Philadelphia was also excellence. The lessons we received in Philadelphia from my mother were also about survival.  I got through it with my soul intact.

Bayside was home.  By the time I came along, our neighborhood was full of people of upper middle class blacks, mixed couples, retired Jews and blacks.  No one gave a crap what color I was, how old my parents were, and forget language. These people spoke the exact same language I did.  It was no ghetto, there were no Filthy Whitey Trash, and there were definitely no NIGGERS. This was home. 

Mama and daddy relaxed, the lessons stopped to be replaced by my sister, the evangelist's, religious training. I could run and play and breathe. My friends were welcome into my home and my yard became the hub of activity - often overfilling with children. Mama would encourage us, there was music and laughter and there was happiness.

My children were born when all the Philly racists finally got a clue about keeping their mouths openly shut. They are honey colored and beautiful. What do I give them? They know the rules, expect a fight that hasn't happened yet. 

Do they identify as black or white? HELL NO.

They identify as the Second Generation Philadelphia Paris children. They know the measure of a man is in his heart. They are mine.

So I am who I am because of two women. A white one who gave me life and truth. A Native American/Irish one who gave me life, forged me and gave me love.

Written By: MaryAnn Paris

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