In His Image

Being six years old, I didn’t know everything.  It’s more likely that being six years old, I didn’t know much of anything.  But the one thing I did know was the world around me.  My world.  Small, yet full of big things – like questions and realities and magic. 

Magic.  The stuff that makes you dream at night.  Lying in the yellow glow of your night light when you can still hear the soft murmur and high pitched ringing of the TV in the next room.  The shadows you stare at are coming alive by the moment.

Realities.  There were black people and there were white people in my world, and there were poor people and there were rich people.  Most of the time, I didn’t notice that I was both black and poor.  I was just me.  Little bushy-haired, knock-kneed, doe-eyed me.

And then there were the questions, the questions that sprang about in this one moment when I did notice.  For the first time, reality extinguished the magic like a smothering blanket.

There she was.  She was grinning from ear to ear, her golden hair hung loosely at her shoulders.  Blue eyes.  They pierced me as her daddy pulled a huge white box from the shelf—the last one.  And now they were walking away with my dollhouse.

It was the perfect one with five rooms and little people with itty-bitty beds and an itty-bitty dinner table.  It was a dream house.  I could still feel the tiny wooden shingles, how they brushed against my fingertips whenever I rubbed my hand over the roof of my dollhouse. 

Her thin nose pointed high in the hair as they pushed past me, laughing together as they took my dollhouse away.  I looked up at Daddy, tears welling up.  How could he let this happen?  “Daddy!”

He slumped and pulled my shoulders close to him.  "I'm sorry, Snoopy."

But he promised.  He said if my dollhouse was still there in two weeks…

“But Daddy!”

It was a long and silent ride home.  I thought about her, with her golden hair and blue eyes—how happy she must be right now, playing with my dollhouse.

They always got what they wanted…always seemed so happy.  What if I was like her?  Wouldn’t that be better than not having the only thing I ever wanted in the whole wide world?

But like I said, I was six years old and I didn’t know much.  Suddenly, all I knew was who I was.  I wasn’t white.  I wasn’t rich.  I was black.  I was black.

For the next few days all I could do was look in the mirror, forcing myself to see a different me.  The real me was too ugly, too black.  After all, they had long silky hair that blew in the wind.  I had this coily mess, so thick I couldn’t even run my fingers through.  They had nice skinny noses.  I had a big fat pig nose.  Their eyes were pretty jewels, ranging in spectrums of grey, green or blue.  Mine were the color of mud.

“Mommy,” I said one morning as I sat between her legs.  Armed with detangling spray and a big tub of hair grease, she dragged the comb through my naps, jerking my head back.  “Ow!”  I yelped. 

“Mommy no, I don’t like this.  I want straight hair.  I want to be white!”

Silence.

Then, firmly she took my face into her greasy hands and tilted my head back until I was looking directly into her eyes.

“I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.  Do you understand?”

“But Mommy—“

“No, listen to me.  You are just the way God made you and you are beautiful.  From your golden honey skin to your skinny arms and legs to your thick and curly hair to your big brown eyes.  God said you were made in His image and that’s beautiful, no matter what people say or what people think.”

And with that, she continued working on my naps, a little more softly this time.  I didn’t say much for the rest of the morning, still trying to figure out how God could think I was beautiful.  How God could decide to make me black and still say I was made in His image.  I thought Jesus was white.  He had long blond hair and blue eyes in all the pictures I’d seen of him.

It wasn’t until later in my life that I fully understood what my mother was saying to me--that Jesus wasn’t white or black, but that his blood was red and that’s all that mattered.  And that phases of dollhouses, then perms and bone straight weaves, clip-on earrings, miniskirts and eye shadow would come and go, but that one day I would finally love myself for who I really was.  And somehow, it still wouldn’t be nearly as much as He loved me.