Mother’s Reflection
By Stephanie Mesler
Mother told me Erik Estrada needed to take more baths.
She said the same of our housekeeper, Lupe, and the boy who took me to the prom.
His name was Manuel.
No matter the temperature outside, Mother rolled up the car windows, when we crossed 110th Street. She told me never to look a black man straight in the eye and not to sit next to a brown one on the bus.
Mother skipped my wedding to a man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt and never held her grandchild. Mother disowned me until my brown baby girl was in the ground and the ink on the divorce papers was dry.
Mother was the only mother I had, so I let her forgive me. I tried to play the role of returned prodigal daughter. I tried to do my duty, but she died alone and spends eternity in an unmarked grave, prepared by a man with midnight skin.
Mother was not white. Her skin ran from summer tawny to winter taupe and her eyes were the color of dark roasted coffee beans. Her hair was thick and curly and she carried herself with the straight-backed pride of a long denied akhsó’tha*.
Mother was afraid to see her own reflection. She owned only one family photo of her blue-eyed daddy. I never knew mother’s mother’s face nor the faces of any of the women before her. Mother bleached her skin and panicked when I turned a rich brown in a Florida summer.
I have to stop myself from crossing the street when I see a black man coming toward me on the sidewalk. I am not afraid; it’s a habit learned before I knew I was being taught. I will myself not to share that lesson with my own child.
I do not scrub my skin until it is raw as Mother often did hers. I do not drench my hair in lemon juice or attempt to control the brows that grow thick above my eyes. I look at myself in the mirror and I see Mother looking back.
© Stephanie Mesler 2019
*akhsó’tha is a Mohawk word, for "my grandmother."
By Stephanie Mesler
Mother told me Erik Estrada needed to take more baths.
She said the same of our housekeeper, Lupe, and the boy who took me to the prom.
His name was Manuel.
No matter the temperature outside, Mother rolled up the car windows, when we crossed 110th Street. She told me never to look a black man straight in the eye and not to sit next to a brown one on the bus.
Mother skipped my wedding to a man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt and never held her grandchild. Mother disowned me until my brown baby girl was in the ground and the ink on the divorce papers was dry.
Mother was the only mother I had, so I let her forgive me. I tried to play the role of returned prodigal daughter. I tried to do my duty, but she died alone and spends eternity in an unmarked grave, prepared by a man with midnight skin.
Mother was not white. Her skin ran from summer tawny to winter taupe and her eyes were the color of dark roasted coffee beans. Her hair was thick and curly and she carried herself with the straight-backed pride of a long denied akhsó’tha*.
Mother was afraid to see her own reflection. She owned only one family photo of her blue-eyed daddy. I never knew mother’s mother’s face nor the faces of any of the women before her. Mother bleached her skin and panicked when I turned a rich brown in a Florida summer.
I have to stop myself from crossing the street when I see a black man coming toward me on the sidewalk. I am not afraid; it’s a habit learned before I knew I was being taught. I will myself not to share that lesson with my own child.
I do not scrub my skin until it is raw as Mother often did hers. I do not drench my hair in lemon juice or attempt to control the brows that grow thick above my eyes. I look at myself in the mirror and I see Mother looking back.
© Stephanie Mesler 2019
*akhsó’tha is a Mohawk word, for "my grandmother."
