The Beginning

"Mommy, why don't I look like you?" the girl looked up at her mother with a puzzling look as if she had just discovered the phenomenon. "Honey, you look just like me, see." Her mother held her up to the mirror and brushed away her tangled curls. She pressed her cheek up against her daughters, as if the closer she got the more apparent the similarities would be. "You have my nose, and we have the same cheeks" pinching the girls cheeks, she evoked a stubborn grin. "And look, you even have my smile." The little girl's grin soon wilted into frustration for she was not satisfied with her mother's evidence. "No mommy, I have swirly hair. You have hair like my Barbie" Now her mother saw that her five year old was asking a much more complicated question. She understood she was different, the way a green apple sticks out in a basket of red ones. The little girl had not been exposed to many biracial children, at least not in a way that she could grasp at such a young age. She herself was not aware of her own mixed heritage. At five brown is brown, no matter how it got that way. She understood that babies came from mommy and daddy, but to explain the genetics involved in the baby's appearance to a five year old would be futile. So her mother pacified her with her usual answers until she was old enough to understand how. Of course, this question could not be answered by the simple fact that white mixed with black makes brown. It didn't explain why she felt different and why that difference felt wrong.