Turning point

Here's a drawing my 4 year old did of Ta-Nehisi Coates taking my wife to the what my daughter described as "the screaming room"

I asked her why she drew the picture, was it because she knew how important Mr. Coates was to me I enquired

"No" she said not looking up from her drawing. "I just wish he was my daddy. You are no good"

I cried. I cried like an ice sculpture whose face was melting. NEVER have I been so proud. Never before had I been proud at all. I had always hated my daughter. I hated her blonde hair the color of the gold stolen from the dispossessed people the world over. I hated her blue eyes that pierced like the bayonets of colonial invaders. I hated her white skin which seems to curdle before my eyes like the stale milk of some demonic cow.

But it was different now. Though she was not the brown child I had wanted she was at least a child that wanted to be brown. This I could love, I think, at least as much as it was right to love it.

I got up, dried my eyes, and placed my paperback copy of "Between me and the world" in my le coq sportif backpack. "This exquisite pain represents the birth of a new us" I said profoundly. Again, she did not look up from her drawing. I left for my tenants meeting smiling.