When Pumkin and I started dating, I don't think we knew what we were getting ourselves into. We were just two silly kids who liked making out....really liked making out with each other. At first we were interesting because we seemed so mismatched. I was the teacher's pet and he was kind of a slacker slash troublemaker. I had a little popularity and he was rather unknown, but what became most important over the years was that I was black and he was white. Once we became serious it seemed that was all people could focus on. In restaraunts. In our families. With our peers. I was so naive and in love, I didn't really notice at first. The stares, the comments, the stupid questions (like "do you guys kiss?"). To make it worse Pumkin's last name just so happens to be a racial slur. Yeah. No lie. So it made it all the more interesting and it also made us the butt of every joke. More like me. I don't know how being in an interracial relationship has affected Pumkin. He doesn't really share it with me. I don't think he wants me to feel like a burden, and honestly I don't really want to know.
His family has been - um, passive. I don't think they would ever admit it if they did have a problem with me being black. I think they know I'm not going anywhere and that I make Pumkin so happy they just bite their tongues. But I'm pretty sure they'd be happy if he would just dump me an dcome back with some mousy brown-haired Republican girl with no opinion on anything. They'd welcome her with open arms, not make random pointed remarks in her direction, not think every bad decision their baby boy makes is her fault, not think that she's stealing him away from them. No. They'd let him go with open arms to live in a house down the street from them to work in a bank and populate Ohio with plain, boring, Catholic kids. Not a girl like me. Not a girl who has their precious son visiting the ghetto just to see her. Not me, who has given their son the gift of thought. Free thought. Not telling him what to think one way or the other. Because everyone knows that once you unleash the mind, it is much harder to keep the body shackled. Not me, who happens to be from the wrong side of the tracks, the wrong side of the city, the wrong side of life.
Mind you I have several academic awards and accolades, I have won two science fairs, been asked to speak on several occasion by various companies and schools, I've worked many charity events, won a pageant when I was four, and was valedictorian of my class. I was one of the only people in my class to move out of the city for college, I've lived on my own successfully for a year, and I'm on my way to becoming a successful clinical psychologist. I think most people would be happy to have me as a daughter in law. But there's just this one fatal flaw - pigment, melanin, shade, skin. I don't know one way to be better for him. I don't know if I would do it if I did.
But I like to believe that our love is stronger and more special because of us being different races. I think we get to bring two really rich cultures into the relationship and at the same time teaching one another about two different ways of life. Our story is one that I can't believe sometimes but I can't wait to have children who we can infuse with our heritages and looks, our flaws and ideas, the best of both of us. And ask the world "HOW YA LIKE THAT???"
- Little Miss Perfect
No comments:
Post a Comment