Bettina M. Walker

My daddy understood the richness of color and shunned my oldest sister’s whitewashed birth. Who the white child belong to? He asked in the delivery ward shaming himself as the source. Shadism colored my siblings’ perception. An ideal hierarchy with light skin the pinnacle after the paper bag test proved me cocoa dark and of less value. Burned biscuit defined what I could not erase. When they tired of sidewalk chalk and strike ’em out their feigned indignation made my smile give and give unsuccessfully, reaching eyes where ducts emptied silently. Turned my cheek on juvenile acceptance and sibling rivalry reminding myself that After all, I’m the real thing and it comforted me.