I have a clear memory of another incident that seriously disturbed the peaceful and agreeable life that I was living with the Winstons. On the day before the start of Easter vacation, as I walked into the student cafeteria in our small bilingual school, I waved to Cynthia, picked up a tray, and joined the food line, where women dressed in white uniforms behind a counter served sandwiches, vegetables, salad, and spaghetti and meatballs. I heard a boy ahead of me ask if he could take another carton of milk. I saw his disappointment when he was told that he had to pay extra and returned the carton. By then I had been in the United States for three years and still had not adjusted to drinking cold milk, so I told him he could have mine. Instead of being grateful, he gazed at me with his icy light-brown eyes, causing me to think I had done something terribly wrong. With my head lowered and holding onto my tray, I looked for Cynthia, wondering why the boy had acted the way he did.
“That nigger better not sit here,” the boy said to a girl who was sitting next to him and across from Cynthia. “They’re loud, lazy, and stupid.”
I raised my eyebrows and set my tray on the table. “Are you talking to me?”
The girl snickered. “There’s no other nigger here, is there?”
I didn’t know what the word “nigger” meant but suspected they were talking about my skin color. Back in Monn Nèg, people talked about my complexion with admiration and envy because its reddish-brown color was different, but I never detected contempt in their voices.
“If you don’t want to sit with me, you and your friend should move,” I told him, holding my head up high and pulling back a chair.
“Why should we move? Go back to Africa!” the girl snapped, fixing me with a cold gaze. She and the boy then burst into laughter.
“What does Africa have to do with this?” I asked.
“Isn’t that where you people came from?” the boy questioned, pulling back his lips.
Cynthia’s face turned red. “Leave my sister alone!” she screamed, hitting the table with a fist.
“Your sister? Which one of your parents is the nigger lover?”
Cynthia reached across the table like a thunderbolt and slapped the girl, who was about two years older. Seconds later, they were on the floor tearing each other’s clothes and pulling each other’s hair.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” the other students screamed.
The girl was on top of Cynthia, throwing punches. A hollow sensation sped inside my stomach, prompting me to jump on her back. I bit her shoulder as hard as I could. Several teachers rushed to the scene.
All afternoon the words “nigger” and “Africa” echoed in my mind. Later that day, sitting in the family room at home with Cynthia, I couldn’t concentrate on the book I was trying to read. I needed to talk. “How do you feel about being adopted?” I asked, breaking the silence, happy to have a common issue we could discuss.
“Sometimes I wonder who my real parents are. But I don’t really care.” Cynthia shrugged and buried her head in her Nancy Drew book.
It now occurs to me that she probably didn’t care about being adopted as much as I did because she had our parents’ skin color. Besides, she had no recollection of a life without the Winstons. And I did.
“Why did you fight that girl?” I asked, determined to hold her attention.
“Didn’t you hear what she called you?”
“What’s a nigger?”
“I’ll answer that question,” Mom said, walking into the room with Dad.
The headmistress had contacted Dad about the fight, and he had picked us up from school after calling Mom at work.
“Racists in this country use this name to insult black people,” she said, taking a seat next to me.
“I don’t understand.”
“Those kids didn’t want you to sit with them because they don’t like people who are different.” Mom leaned back and crossed her legs. “They have a disease called racism. A lot of people in this country are infected with it. Dr. Martin Luther King is trying to cure them.” She touched my hand gently as she spoke.
“Are they in a hospital?”
Mom and Dad looked at each other, smiling at my confusion.
“Dr. King is not a medical doctor,” Dad explained. “It’s just like people call Margaret ‘doctor’ because of the degree of education she has earned.”
“How is Dr. King going to cure them?”
“With his ideas,” Mom answered. “He wants to make them understand we can live together no matter how different we are. But he doesn’t believe we can achieve that through violence.”
That evening, I overheard Mom and Dad’s whispering in the living room on my way to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I stopped to listen when I heard my name.
“I wonder if adopting Iris was the best thing for her,” Dad said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know if this country is ready for a black child living with a white family. I’m afraid she may suffer from more racist acts.” He took a deep breath and went on: “Maybe we’re taking this dream of little black and white children living happily together a bit too literally.”
“I still think she’s better off here than in Haiti.”
“What happened on the phone?”
“The father said he didn’t owe me any explanation, that liberals like us are ruining this country, and that life would be better here if we would leave Negroes where they belong.”
I didn’t want to hear anymore. Tears filled my eyes as I wondered where people like me belonged. The girl in the cafeteria said Africa.
Chapter 2
For the black man there is only one destiny.
—Frantz Fanon
I sat in the waiting room with Mom and Dad, trying to figure out why I had to see Dr. Connelly. Mom had said he was a different kind of doctor who was just going to talk to me.
“Is he going to give me shots?”
“No, no shots.”
“What is he going to do then?”
“He’s going to help you understand the things that bother you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.”
“It’s good to have somebody to talk to,” Dad insisted.
“Why can’t I talk to you and Mom and Cynthia?”
“It’s not the same.”
Dr.
