With every single move I made and every word I spoke, I stayed hyperalert to what I called the Black Pitfalls. What were the things that would make me appear blacker? I only ate chicken with a knife and fork, and never in front of white people. Certainly not KFC. And no fruit on a rind. You were not gonna see a toothy-grin-and-watermelon scene from me.
I had been warned, of course. My parents gave me the pep talk when I started school, the same speech all black parents give their kids: You’re gonna have to be bigger, badder, better, just to be considered equal. You’re gonna have to do twice as much work and you’re not going to get any credit for your accomplishments or for overcoming adversity. Most black people grow accustomed to the fact that we have to excel just to be seen as existing, and this is a lesson passed down from generation to generation. You can either be Super Negro or the forgotten Negro.
It’s actually very accurate advice. But the problem with putting it on a kid is that if you’re not as good as—or eight times as good as—you feel like you are less than. Not just in academics or in sports: every kid cares about something and wants to receive love and praise for that particular quality or ability. You are always chasing, always worrying about being exposed as the dumb black kid. The foolish nigger. On one hand, it puts your shoulder to the wheel, so you’re always pushing, working, striving. But one misstep and it’s over. An A minus can feel like Hiroshima. It’s catastrophic because you feel exposed. It’s still an A, but what it feels like is “Dumb nigger.” “You’re a joke.” “Of course you missed it, nigger.” I had that fear as a kid, with every worksheet. Do you remember the timed tests with multiplication? I became psychotic about those. I would see “4 x 16 = _____” and hear my father’s voice: “Bigger, badder, better.” By the way, it’s taking everything I have not to tell you I know the answer is 64. Which leads me to 64 being a perfect square, which leads me down the rabbit hole of listing other perfect squares . . . and who cares?
I did. This insane need to stay beyond reproach by being perfect also applied to getting a bathroom pass. Other kids would ask the teacher for one and she would say, “You’ve got five minutes,” tapping her watch. She never gave me a time because I was the fastest piss in the West. I always timed myself—literally counting each second—because I wanted to come back with so much time left on the five-minute mental clock that she didn’t even need to give me a deadline.
The following year, Tarsha Liburd showed up on the bus from Commodorsky. Her family had moved there from Oakland. She was black—described by everyone as “so black”—and she had these corduroys she wore all the time. Tarsha had a big, grown-up ass as a third grader, and the top of her butt would always be bursting out of those cords.
I didn’t tell my mother there was another black girl at school, but she heard about it. “You better be nice to her,” she said, “because they’re all going to be mean to her.”
Because Tarsha had become a walking, lumbering punch line of people pointing at her crack, I convinced myself that if I just ignored her, I would be doing right by her. I wouldn’t join in on making fun of her—she was simply invisible to me.
At lunchtime, the girls at my table called a meeting. One girl looked right at me. “Are you going to be friends with Tarsha Liburd?”
Tarsha was sitting close by, so I quietly said, “No.” But I made a face showing that the very idea was preposterous. Why would I have anything to do with that girl?
Another girl stared at me and said, loud enough for Tarsha to hear: “If you don’t like Tarsha Liburd, raise your hand.” And everyone put up two hands and looked at me.
I heard my mother’s voice and felt Tarsha’s eyes on me. I raised my hand just to my shoulder, a half-hearted vote against her.
“Well, I don’t know her,” I said. I waved my hand side to side by my shoulder, hoping it would be read as “waffling” to Tarsha and “above it all” to the table.
A day went by. I was in my Gifted and Talented education program, doing calligraphy, thank you very much, when a voice came over the intercom.
“Please send Nickie to the principal’s office.”
I naturally thought I was getting an award. My smug self just paused, elegantly finished my line of calligraphy, and packed my books. I waltzed to the principal’s office, practicing a look of “who, me?” gratitude.
Principal McKinley, a burly Irish man with kind eyes, peered at me, taking my measure. “Nickie, did you raise your hand when asked if you don’t like Tarsha Liburd?”
“No,” I said. “I did this.” I showed my discreet half wave. “Because, I, I, um . . .” I started to cry. Bawl. In my head, I was already four steps ahead, my mom disappointed in me for being mean to the other black girl.
Principal McKinley told me he was putting my name in the Blue Book. Which was, to my third-grade understanding, an unholy text containing the names of bad children. Teachers said it could follow you and you might not get into the college of your choice. The principal then told me that if I behaved for the rest of the year, he would have my name erased from it. But I didn’t believe him. Even years later, when I was applying to colleges, there was a small part of me that wondered, Is my name still in the Blue Book?
I was the only person to get in trouble for this conversation, and it had to have come from Tarsha. I wasn’t mad at her. I was very aware that I had done the wrong thing, but I also knew why I’d done it. It was survival of the fittest—Lord of the Flies in suburbia—and I had to eat.
Tarsha remained invisible to me through elementary school. At the time I told myself she was invisible because she just didn’t have much of a personality. I know now that I was only justifying my refusal to connect with her. I was afraid to take the risk of being black by standing next to her.
FROM SECOND GRADE TO SIXTH GRADE, JODY MANNING AND I WERE NECK and neck when it came to grade point average. Her family lived in the Meadows—one of the richest neighborhoods in Pleasanton—and they just had nice stuff. Their house, in my mind, felt like a museum. It felt rich. When I was little, one of my barometers for wealth was if the family had Welch’s grape juice. I noticed that all the rich kids drank it after school. The Mannings definitely had Welch’s. The Unions had grape drink.
After school and at recess, we started playing Days of Our Lives. Everyone chose a character and we just invented scenarios. Jody Manning was Marlena, Scott Jenkins was Roman Brady, and my friend Katie was Hope. I’d like to tell you that this is where I discovered a love of acting. No. Maybe because I always had to be Abe the policeman. He was the only black guy on Days. Black Lexie didn’t come on for a couple more years. So I was Abe the policeman.
As if it weren’t enough that she got to play Marlena, Jody and her sister also always had coordinating, full Esprit outfits. And it wasn’t from the Esprit outlets where you got like the sweatshirt and paired it with Garanimals trash. They were just perfect, those Mannings, and Jody set a high bar for competition in class. I remember we once did a presentation together in the sixth grade. The job was to come up with an ad campaign for a product, and we were assigned Bumble Bee tuna. I was the talent, thank you. Our catchphrase was just saying “Bumble Bee tuna” emphatically. Everyone was saying it at recess, so we got an A plus.