In the middle of dinner my little sister reports
her first day of kindergarten was fun except
for the teacher who gave her a brown
crayon to draw a self-portrait.
"I said to her, ‘I'm not brown, I'm Black’" Roza says,
adding, "She didn't even know that!"
I feel my father object from across
the table. I don't take my eyes off Roza.
She stands up on her knees in her chair,
her small body barely able to contain her big
ideas. She says that the teacher pointed
to her hair to make the distinction between
the color black and the brown of Roza's skin.
Instantly I picture the classroom scene,
Roza glaring at the teacher, unable
to argue with a lady who clearly knows her colors.
I wait for her to finish chewing
a mouthful of chicken, followed by a long sip
of water. She loves being the center of attention.
I wonder if she knows my heart's in her mouth,
anxious that I hadn't been clear enough
about the complexities of color and race,
and how to tell my father that
the moon made me do it.
Finally she says, "I said, ‘Yeah my hair is Black
and I'm Black and my sister is Black and
my family is Black, so I need a Black crayon.’"
She gives a big laugh.
Contributor Notes
BeeLyn Naihiwet is a Seattle-based Ethiopian-American poet who was born in Ethiopia and immigrated with her family to the US at the age of ten. She has been getting caught (and un-caught) between these two different cultures ever since. She fell in love with poetry upon discovering Rumi in a Medieval Literature class in college. BeeLyn is a mental health therapist by training and a poet by instinct, which stirs the witness in her.
