The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir by Nancy Stephan

shocked.  She said to the person on the phone, “I’ll
call you later.”  She hung up the phone and folded her hands in her lap.  “What
you mean, ‘You ain’t Black?’”
    “I’m not.”
    “What are
you?”
    “I’m White.”
    “And who
told you, you were White?”
    “My mom said
I’m just like she is, and she’s White.”
    “Do your
skin look like your mama’s?”
    I’d never
given any thought to my skin.  But I knew what Black people looked like, and I
knew that no one in my family was Black.
    Not wasting
any more time on that question, Erma Lee swiftly moved on to the next.  “Do
your hair look like your mama’s?”  My hair had been the bane of my existence. 
No one in my family had hair like mine.  Aunt Betty and her three boys, Aunt
Jean and her three children, and my mother herself all had silky hair.  Mine
was the hair no one wanted to comb.  I couldn’t sling it over my shoulder, or
run my fingers through it, or sweep it from my eyes like they did.  Out of
desperation, I had, on many occasions, draped a bath towel over my head while
watching Sonny & Cher.  I would sling it left and right every time they
sang, “Babe (sling, sling), I got you, babe (sling, sling)…  My screaming and
writhing every time my mother combed my hair had taken its toll on both of us. 
She eventually had it cut off leaving me with a short, curly afro, which she
adorned on one side with a bow. 
    I didn’t
answer Erma Lee when she asked if my hair was like my mother’s.  But it didn’t
matter; she summed it all up for me in three and a half words: “You’s Black,
baby.”  I was crushed.  Even at eight years old, I knew that being Black meant
not being liked. 
    Though I had
refused to believe that I was Black, I was well acquainted with the word nigger because I’d heard it frequently.  I knew that word had something to do with
Black people and although I wasn’t quite sure what, I knew it was bad.  I had
once asked my mother if I was a nigger as the neighbors insisted, and she
became enraged, saying there was no such thing as niggers, and I was to never
use that word again. 
    My mother
had always said people were mean to me because they were jealous of how smart
and pretty I was, but Erma Lee’s explanation of why people had been so mean was
much more plausible.  My being Black was the reason so many bad things
happened, and for my mom and me there had never been a shortage of bad things
happening.
    Too often,
my mother had to call the police because of trouble with the neighbors.  The
police would tell her if she wanted to keep me safe, she should keep me in the
house.  Keeping me imprisoned in the house, however, was not an option for my
mother.  As such, there were consequences, the most violent of which came from
a little old lady who lived across the street from us.
    The old lady
had a small, white terrier, and the two of them would sit out in the front yard
on a daily basis.  Her yard was a good size and was enclosed with a chain-link
fence.  She positioned her lawn chair in the center of the yard facing the road
and tied the dog’s leash to the arm of the chair.  She had never spoken to me
before, so I was surprised when she beckoned with her finger for me to come. 
As soon as I approached the fence, the dog started barking.  “C’mon and take my
doggy in the house for me.”
    “Does he
bite?”
    “No, he
ain’t gonna bite ya.”
    I was six
years old, and she was a grown up.  She said he wouldn’t bite me, and I believed
her.  She pulled the long leash until the dog was close to her.  She grabbed
him at the collar with one hand, and with the other she untied the leash from
the chair.  I was still standing outside the fence.  “Well c’mon!  What are you
waiting for?”  I opened the gate and went into the yard.  “Take him up yonder,
and turn him loose in the kitchen.”  I looked at the long, narrow flight of
stairs that ran up the side of the house.  The