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\u201cRichard, she can\u2019t stop looking at you,\u201d my mom said, with a big silly grin.<\/p>\n
Article continues after advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n After only three months, my father was back in my life. And it was all because of the n-word.<\/p>\n \u201cCan\u2019t stop looking at her either,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n My face heated up with delight. I pressed my cold fingertips against my hot cheeks.<\/p>\n Leaning back against the red leather booth, he seemed at ease in my favorite Boston restaurant. He opened a fortune cookie with one hand, his long fingers prying it apart. I savored his smell, a blend of sweet, citrusy cologne and the richness of tobacco smoke, and studied him like he was one of the seven wonders of the world, especially the crinkles under his eyes when he smiled.<\/p>\n The restaurant was bustling, but I saw only him, a girl in a fairy-tale blinded by her knight.<\/p>\n My mom broke the spell.<\/p>\n \u201cTell your father what happened at school.\u201d<\/p>\n Startled, I looked helplessly at my mother, her billowing cigarette smoke stinging my eyes. Failing to notice my distress, she demanded a full confession.<\/p>\n It all started on my seventh birthday when my mom told me to rush home after school for a surprise. Skipping all the way, I tried to guess what kind of present she\u2019d gotten me. I knew it wasn\u2019t a usual treat\u2014my nana\u2019s apple squares or pizza from Papa Gino\u2019s\u2014because nothing like that made my mom so bouncy. As I turned the corner onto my block, the possibilities kept my mind so busy that I almost missed the Cadillac limousine parked against the flow of traffic in front of our house. The long white car was a stark contrast to the boxy, brown and blue Oldsmobile and Chevrolet sedans that lined Houston Avenue, a tidy working-class street just south of Boston.<\/p>\n He held out a gift in his hands, an offering.<\/p>\n Before I could inspect the car or its driver, my mother opened the storm door, flapping her hand to urge me along. \u201cHurry!\u201d she said. \u201cCome on!\u201d<\/p>\n As I stepped inside, I saw him, a round-faced man peering over my mom\u2019s shoulder who looked a lot like my father, but I wasn\u2019t entirely sure. He had the same mustache, but a fuller afro. Dressed up in a white, three-piece suit with a brown silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, he looked too polished and too cool for our simple, shag-carpeted house. In the time since we\u2019d first met, he\u2019d recorded his third comedy album and had a new swagger.<\/p>\n \u201cLook who\u2019s here!\u201d my mom squealed. I was too shy to embrace him, too embarrassed to be wrong about recognizing my own father. Closing the distance between us, I walked to him, fawn-like on unsure legs. Something in his eyes reminded me of mine, but not until he crouched down and tapped my nose with his too-wet bottom lip was I certain it was him.<\/p>\n \u201cBoston Blackie,\u201d he whispered, sounding just as shy as I felt.<\/p>\n He held out a gift in his hands, an offering. First, he gave me a huge stuffed dog, then a real gumball machine stuffed with jelly beans that worked with nickels, and finally, my first-ever doll with dark-brown skin. I\u2019d never seen anything like it before.<\/p>\n Popping a jelly bean in my mouth, I noticed how extensively my mom and nana had prepared for his visit. The house smelled good, filled with the scent of all my nana\u2019s specialties, what my mom called Jewish food\u2014sweet and savory stuffed cabbage, raspberry jam and lemon rind from Nana\u2019s famous jelly roll, mandel bread with red and green maraschino cherries, and the burnt smell of an almost-empty coffeepot still on the machine.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long after opening gifts for my mom to put me on display like a contestant from the Miss America pageant.<\/p>\n \u201cElizabeth, read something for your father.\u201d \u201cElizabeth, do your Mae West impression.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cElizabeth, sing him that Stevie Wonder song.\u201d And I did. \u201cCan you teach me the words?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cA boy is born in hard time Mississippi,\u201d I recited all the lyrics as slowly as I could. He repeated them back to me word for word.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a good song,\u201d he said, and he meant it. He used it on his fourth album, 1975\u2019s . . . Is It Something I Said? <\/i>Reading from what he called the \u201cBook of Wonder,\u201d he preached the lyrics as if they were the holy gospel.<\/p>\n The next night we went out to dinner at my favorite restaurant. My parents chatted awkwardly about the weather and the next stop on his tour, and laughed when they weren\u2019t saying anything at all. Suddenly, my father seemed very interested to find out what happened at school. I\u2019d tried to resist the pull of my thumb all night, but my resolve instantly evaporated. I snuck my thumb between my lips, hooked my pointer finger over my nose, and held the rest of my fingers tightly over my mouth like a shield.<\/p>\n My dad tilted his head and looked at me for a minute. Then<\/p>\n angling his long, elegant fingers under the tips of my smaller ones, he moved my hand away from my face, tapping the palm of my hand to coax my thumb from my mouth.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened?\u201d he asked. I hoped to avoid the question, but I could not resist him.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo boys called me n***er at school.\u201d<\/p>\n I was dangling upside down on the monkey bars when Louis and Robert came up to me. Louis was Black; Robert was white. They\u2019d teased me all of first grade. As the slight chill of spring smacked my face, I reminded myself that I hated Louis because he ate spaghetti with his mouth open, and I hated Robert because he was a follower. Whipping my head back and forth, I made myself dizzy wishing the boys away. But they did not go away.<\/p>\n The n-word felt like it could last a lifetime.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a n***er,\u201d Louis said. Just like that.<\/p>\n From the first day of kindergarten, Louis wanted to be my friend. He seemed to understand we had something in common. Maybe he noticed how I struggled with the kids at our mostly white school. They said I was adopted, that it was impossible for my white mom to be my real mother. I cried and told them it wasn\u2019t true. I was afraid that if I became friends with Louis, I\u2019d no longer be able to ignore the gnawing feeling that my light-brown skin meant I was different from my mom, the rest of my family, and most of the other kids at school.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you hear me?\u201d Louis said. \u201cYou\u2019re a n***er.\u201d<\/p>\n He let me know no matter what my mother looked like, he and I were the same.<\/p>\n Tears started falling before I remembered to hold them back. How could the word be so magical when my dad used it onstage, and hurt so much when Louis said it at school?<\/p>\n The boys laughed as I tried to hide my tears and confusion.<\/p>\n I ran to my teachers to tell them what happened. The two young white women with long, straight hair hugged me and cooed and wiped my eyes. I waited for them to say something comforting like they always did when kids teased me\u2014\u201cYou\u2019re not a baby,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not stupid,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not ugly,\u201d\u2014but the assurance, \u201cYou\u2019re not a n***er\u201d never came.<\/p>\n Later, when I told my mom what happened, she didn\u2019t tell me I wasn\u2019t that word either. She was confident about all kinds of subjects\u2014cross-stitching, taxi-licensing, chic outfits, Hollywood gossip, and who in the family made the best chopped liver. But when she sat me down on her lap and struggled for words, it was clear the situation was too complicated even for her. Before that day, kids called me a baby because I was a thumb-sucker and cried a lot. I hated it, but I figured it would stop when I grew up.<\/p>\n The n-word felt like it could last a lifetime.<\/p>\n When I finished telling my story, I struggled to look at my father, convinced he wouldn\u2019t see me the same way anymore. Slowly, I lifted up my head and couldn\u2019t believe he was looking back at me with as much love and affection as he had the whole night.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t let nobody ever call you that,\u201d he said. His voice was quiet, like a secret.<\/p>\n Black people, my dad said, were resilient and powerful.<\/p>\n Since it first happened, I\u2019d been waiting for someone to tell me what Louis said wasn\u2019t okay. My heart was wide open. With a single sentence, my father earned all the trust I had to give in the world.<\/p>\n He grabbed my hands, and told me something else. \u201cYou are Black.\u201d<\/p>\n I am Black. I am Black. I am Black<\/i>.<\/p>\n The meaning of his words was just out of reach, like when I had a mole removed and the doctor used ether to put me to sleep and for days afterward my thoughts were like fireflies I could not catch or hold on to. My father was telling me something vital, I knew, if only I could keep the essence of what it was from flitting away.<\/p>\n My mom sat back and smoked her cigarette, watching us like we were acting out a scene in a riveting TV show.<\/p>\n Did she know I was Black?<\/i><\/p>\n I thought I was just a Jewish girl, like my mom and my nana and my cousins, who loved lighting candles for Hanukkah and eating brisket at the Passover seder. As the news that I was Black sunk in, my mind buzzed. My dad and I were both Black, he said, a fact that tied us to each other and to other Black people too. I thought back to a day not too long before when a carload of brown-skinned teenagers called out to me as I walked to school. \u201cHey, Little Brother!\u201d they shouted as they drove by, mistaking me for a boy, but not mistaking my Blackness.<\/p>\n Tenderly, my dad continued to talk to me without ever repeating what the boys said. \u201cThat word,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a fighting word. Whenever anyone says it, you better knock them right out.\u201d<\/p>\n The warm feelings of just a moment before oozed out and left me ice cold.<\/p>\n The irony was, while my father was telling me I shouldn\u2019t let anybody call me that, he was also making the same word his creative calling card. Just before he visited me in Boston, he recorded his 1974 album That N***er\u2019s Crazy<\/i>, a groundbreaking celebration of the very specific Black experience he knew from his childhood. It would go on to be the biggest-grossing comedy album of the year and cement his cultural influence forever.<\/p>\n His characters lived through all kinds of oppression\u2014slavery, lynching, poverty, police violence, drug addiction\u2014but came out the other side wiser and stronger for the trauma. Black people, my dad said, were resilient and powerful.<\/p>\n N***ers never get burnt up in buildings. They know how to get out of a motherfucking situation.<\/p>\n In the restaurant, my dad looked at me with the passionate conviction of a man who was confident in his Blackness and wanted nothing more than to pass it on. Turns out, my mom wanted that too.<\/p>\n When the boys at school called me the n-word, she knew she was out of her league and also knew my dad was coming to Boston to promote That N***er\u2019s Crazy. <\/i>So she reached out, convinced that only a Black father could help a little Jewish girl from Boston understand the word. Gently, he told me I was Black, but not an n-word. He also said not to let anyone ever call me that. I had no idea how to stop that from happening, but I was willing to try because more than anything, I wanted him to be proud I was his daughter.<\/p>\n __________________________________<\/p>\n <\/p>\n