identity on hold

v. first time

I remember the exact moment I heard it for the first time. Ashley Walters' father had a temper; even I knew that at seven years old. My childhood best friend looked just like her dad, and she had the temper to match. But my mom knew her mom, so I was allowed to stay nights while my mother worked.

Mr. Walters blew up at his wife almost every time I was in the house, which didn't faze me. I figured if I had a dad, he'd blow up at my mom, too. Ashley and I would sit in the living room, playing with dolls and watching TV while her parents yelled in the kitchen. Ashley never flinched as terrible words spewed out of her father's mouth. He'd call her mother stupid, a bitch, a slut—and we'd sit there, taking our Barbies through magical forests.

There was a day when Mr. Walters was particularly upset, and Ashley played with the pink-haired doll I envied so much. She never would let me play with it. No TV this time as we listened to her parents argue. It was maybe the fourth time Mr. Walters accused his wife of cheating, only this time, it was "with that nigger."

The word got my attention, and I didn't know whether it was just my internal self knowing how it applied to me, or the fact that the house became completely silent afterward. I only knew something was desperately wrong when Ashley became red in the face, standing up fast. Within seconds, Mrs. Walters was in the living room, staring at me as if it was the first time she'd really seen me, her eyebrows furrowed and her lips pursed shut. I began to panic when she told us to go outside, and Ashley immediately complied.

"I'm sorry he said that," Ashley said sadly, giving me the pink-haired doll. I simply blinked, knowing exactly what she was talking about, but having no clue why. "Nigger. That's a bad word."

"Why?"

"You don't know? It's really bad. My mom says never ever say it."

"What does it mean?"

Ashley pulled on her French braids and shook her head. "It's a bad word to call black people. Like you. It's really, really bad."

"Why just black people?" I whispered, because I couldn't hear her parents arguing anymore, and wondered if they may have been listening to us.

"I don't know, but my mom said it's really bad. It means you're dumb, I think. They used to call it to slaves, and other black people, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The guy we learned about in class. If you say that word, you're a racist. It means you hate black people."

Her father hated me? I'd never spoken to her father. Why did he hate me?

"But I'm not just black. I'm not a nigger. I'm Mexican, too."

"I don't think that matters."

White, blonde, seven-year-old Ashley gave me my first black history lesson that day.

My Aunt Joanna gave me my second two months later. She didn't know it, of course. And at first, I thought Aunt Joanna didn't know it was bad to say. But why would she say it if she didn't know what it meant?