“Juneteenth” by Rae Cobbs

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There was a time I’d never seen a person with black skin. Tanned to honey, easily burned, folks living in my neighborhood were blended: Aztec, Spaniard, Roma, Greek, Polish, English, Navajo, Cheyenne, Ojibway, and Scotch-Irish. Each people were the best of the best, according to proud narrators of various old lives— until we visited a public pool alive with children, their dark bobbing heads like seals, the air full of screaming in delight. I was a bit afraid, my volume turned way down. I think we didn’t stay, going home to play with the icy hose. I had seen the massive thirst, answered in the village joy.

My secret friend had been Maria Constantia, shyly watching from the shade while I explored a rare rain puddle, rimmed with fool’s gold, home for dozens of hatched tadpoles. Already late for school, her mother had me wait for warmed tortillas filled with jam. For a season, they were living in the Quonset huts, high off the ground, brought in to house the people my father called “the Basques,” who stayed until the sheep were shorn and sent away. At Christmas, right before they left, she knit bright-colored earmuffs for me, on a spool with nails. My friends became
my secret bond to all that lived close to the earth.

Pedley Elementary was built with pride and school-bond money to replace the storefront two-room school that had sufficed. It was my portal to the universe—other than the country sky split open by the Milky Way. Sixth grade, we graduated, moving to Jurupa Junior High, where families of our little towns could finally meet each other. Meet we did, in the crowded corridor at 2:15, churning students bent on summer. Explosion—a cherry bomb thrown into the center, tearing my friend’s dark skin. Her leg was raw and glistening with pain. I grabbed her—she grabbed me—but no one could save the peace that actually was split at Limonite, beyond where Negro people lived. Hidden from majority, not by their choice, they emerged, an angry people like a fallen nest of wasps—the name that we became. This shame was what was feared.

I turned myself into a victim, gradually. At nineteen, my parents kicked me out. I was unwilling to limit all my friends of color to just one in ten. I was at the mercy of just two, Lydia Rodriquez
and Janice Moriuchi, my best friends, who took me in. We shared an attic—no fridge, just a shower, sink, and toilet, one bed, and a couch. We ate Product 19 with a melted half-gallon of ice cream for breakfast/lunch to hold us until dinner—a taco, two hot sauces, and a milk. At ten, when Jan came home from work, we ate a little fresh ice cream, before we went to bed: one on the bed, one on the couch, and one rotating to the floor. My friends learned I was imperfect, and I learned that I could help with English, but they wrote and worked and studied as if tomorrow was here. I learned Jan’s family had lived in a prison camp, five children to a bed, in Northern California. Lydia’s papa was a doctor, before they immigrated. With his English peppered in his native tongue, he became a wetback; even the dark suit that he wore to work each day was wet with Southern California sweat.

Eventually, a lonely Christmas night, I drank what I believed was fourteen beers and wandered out to walk a mile home under stars. A car stopped, and a man from March Air Force Base signaled to get in. There was a gun on the console, not a car in sight, so I got in. Instead of home, he drove right up Blaine Street, up the side of Big C Mountain, where he got out of the car and we had sex, without the love. I wondered if he followed me from La Casita’s where a mixed-race crowd could celebrate. When we were almost to my home, he asked what I would have done, without the gun. I told him honestly that I didn’t know.

Therefore, on September 22nd, 1972, my son was born. After a day, the nurse showed me his Mongolian spot: almost a bruise above his hips; he was a mixed-race child. I had always wanted a dozen children from all parts of the world, so why would I abort or give him up? My mom said their decision was that I would let him be adopted, or, she swallowed, I could not see my sisters or my brothers, or come home. They made an easy decision for me: I was twenty-two and the rest were right behind. I didn’t give a second thought; this perfect child was mine. I was the illegitimate one.

My son could not avoid conceit. He was my moon and stars. Home from school, the first day, he was sad. When asked, he said, “I’m brown. My name is Brown, my shirt is brown, my skin is brown, my paper bag is brown—even the bread in my sandwich is brown. You baked brownies. No one else is brown. I am the only one who isn’t white, like you.” My grandchildren are mixed: I think they simply are themselves. I hope someday the books I send, the love I gave, the hopes I have to celebrate the people of all colors has effect. Someday, may they be proud of every drop
of African, European, and Indian blood inside their bodies. I cannot live on Juneteenth alone, but I rejoice with tears of great remorse and pride: I am mixed race because my son is black—one drop is all it takes—and all my children love the people of the world.

-Rae Cobbs