Sometimes the kids
try her patience beyond her limits—
she thinks about choking one or two—
but some part of her sees
knows
that these kids—
all children—
are the most important resource on the planet
and this country has,
once again,
got its priorities all screwed up.
These kids are trying to learn enough to function in the 21st century in a
building built a century ago,
with equipment older than their parents,
books older than themselves.
No wonder they're behind in the job market.
It's not because they are any less of
anything than other kids,
it's because their parents don't have
the political clout of the
rich white kids' parents.
Lots of them don't even have parents.
A vicious cycle.
Emma wants to give everyone of them a scholarship.

Papa….
Emma….
It's not fair.
He nods.
You know?
amazed and
yet not that he's reading her mind
again.
Hardly anything's fair, he says, then asks,
what were you thinking of,
in particular?
These kids, this school—
it's old,
the equipment is awful—
they'll never
catch up with the white kids,
the rich kids.
Can't I do something, give them some money
for new stuff or something?
You could, yes,
but what you're doing is the best thing.
You're giving yourself.
You're caring.
You, one of the rich white kids,
are getting right into the thick of it,
teaching what you know, what you love.
Supporting them by giving them your respect.
Oh.
Am I?
And you thought you were just getting out of the house, didn't you?
Oh, Papa…
And Emma, nothing is ever all black
or all white.
She stops and stares at him.
Black-and-white-mixed…

________________________


Emma thinks about the stories
she has heard
black mothers and white fathers
black fathers and white mothers
black-and-white-mixed
over and over.
The blacks and the whites always trying to be together in spite of those trying desperately to keep them apart.
Is it instinct?
Because we really are one species, not different?
Because we need to be mixed,
we need the black and the white,
we need both?
We certainly need to acknowledge that we have lights and shadows in each of us.
Are our skin colors symbolic of that?
No, not that black people are bad, not hardly.
But the shadow,
the way the psychologists talk about shadow,
it’s not all bad either.
Our shadows contain the parts of ourselves that we don’t claim
that for one reason or another we don’t want to have.
Good and bad are relative terms anyway.
What’s good to one person, one family,
clan, group,
culture,
is bad to another.
What’s a strong trait in one group in a weak trait in a different group.
So.
If we got all mixed up racially
maybe then we’d be mixed up culturally too
and we wouldn’t be able to hate each other any more.
And we wouldn’t be told that parts of our selves are unacceptable.
We could really be our true selves.
Be what we came here to be.
Maybe in my next life.