We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,2

can either be Super Negro or the forgotten Negro.

It’s actually very accurate advice. But the problem with putting it on a kid is that if you’re not as good as—or eight times as good as—you feel like you are less than. Not just in academics or in sports: every kid cares about something and wants to receive love and praise for that particular quality or ability. You are always chasing, always worrying about being exposed as the dumb black kid. The foolish nigger. On one hand, it puts your shoulder to the wheel, so you’re always pushing, working, striving. But one misstep and it’s over. An A minus can feel like Hiroshima. It’s catastrophic because you feel exposed. It’s still an A, but what it feels like is “Dumb nigger.” “You’re a joke.” “Of course you missed it, nigger.” I had that fear as a kid, with every worksheet. Do you remember the timed tests with multiplication? I became psychotic about those. I would see “4 x 16 = _____” and hear my father’s voice: “Bigger, badder, better.” By the way, it’s taking everything I have not to tell you I know the answer is 64. Which leads me to 64 being a perfect square, which leads me down the rabbit hole of listing other perfect squares . . . and who cares?

I did. This insane need to stay beyond reproach by being perfect also applied to getting a bathroom pass. Other kids would ask the teacher for one and she would say, “You’ve got five minutes,” tapping her watch. She never gave me a time because I was the fastest piss in the West. I always timed myself—literally counting each second—because I wanted to come back with so much time left on the five-minute mental clock that she didn’t even need to give me a deadline.

The following year, Tarsha Liburd showed up on the bus from Commodorsky. Her family had moved there from Oakland. She was black—described by everyone as “so black”—and she had these corduroys she wore all the time. Tarsha had a big, grown-up ass as a third grader, and the top of her butt would always be bursting out of those cords.

I didn’t tell my mother there was another black girl at school, but she heard about it. “You better be nice to her,” she said, “because they’re all going to be mean to her.”

Because Tarsha had become a walking, lumbering punch line of people pointing at her crack, I convinced myself that if I just ignored her, I would be doing right by her. I wouldn’t join in on making fun of her—she was simply invisible to me.

At lunchtime, the girls at my table called a meeting. One girl looked right at me. “Are you going to be friends with Tarsha Liburd?”

Tarsha was sitting close by, so I quietly said, “No.” But I made a face showing that the very idea was preposterous. Why would I have anything to do with that girl?

Another girl stared at me and said, loud enough for Tarsha to hear: “If you don’t like Tarsha Liburd, raise your hand.” And everyone put up two hands and looked at me.

I heard my mother’s voice and felt Tarsha’s eyes on me. I raised my hand just to my shoulder, a half-hearted vote against her.

“Well, I don’t know her,” I said. I waved my hand side to side by my shoulder, hoping it would be read as “waffling” to Tarsha and “above it all” to the table.

A day went by. I was in my Gifted and Talented education program, doing calligraphy, thank you very much, when a voice came over the intercom.

“Please send Nickie to the principal’s office.”

I naturally thought I was getting an award. My smug self just paused, elegantly finished my line of calligraphy, and packed my books. I waltzed to the principal’s office, practicing a look of “who, me?” gratitude.

Principal McKinley, a burly Irish man with kind eyes, peered at me, taking my measure. “Nickie, did you raise your hand when asked if you don’t like Tarsha Liburd?”

“No,” I said. “I did this.” I showed my discreet half wave. “Because, I, I, um . . .” I started to cry. Bawl. In my head, I was already four steps ahead, my mom disappointed in me for being mean to the other black girl.

Principal McKinley told me he was putting my name in the Blue Book. Which was, to my third-grade understanding, an unholy text containing the names of bad children.