Color Me In

by Natasha Díaz

  “All right, we’re doing double duty here. Spread out the strength,” she commands as my mom takes a seat.

  Zeke, Jesus, and Darnell and Mr. DeSantos, Stevie, and Geoff break into two teams and bend to lift the chairs’ legs and thrust us into the air. Mordechai demonstrates the dance to the people on the ground, and after some test runs, Rabbi Sarah tells everyone to grab hands and follow her. They circle us, weaving in and out and raising their arms up and down like a human carousel. My mom sits still on her chair with her eyes squeezed shut and her breath held.

  She’s missing it. We’re flying, and she’s missing it, the voice inside me says.

  If there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that you only receive what you are open to, and you are only open to what you believe you deserve.

  After everything she’s been through, my mother deserves to fly.

  “Mom!”

  I lean toward her, accidentally throwing my chair off balance, and begin to slip. Anita’s shriek makes my mom’s eyes pop open to see me next to her, falling. She reaches out to clasp my arm, but before I’m halfway off the seat, Zeke catches me and slides me back into place.

  With one arm gripping the chair and the other holding on to each other, my mother and I fly up one more time, together, with our eyes open, to catch a glimpse of the magnitude of what awaits.

  Chapter 45

  When the last piece of garbage has been picked up and the last dish has been cleaned and the final colorful orb has been pulled from the living room ceiling and crushed into a tiny ball of tissue paper, we sit.

  My mom went to bed hours ago. She tried to allow herself to enjoy the party, but the hours ticked on, and as each one passed, the permanence of our new life settled in, so she left to lie down and think and cry a little and sleep and wake up, new.

  Rabbi Sarah left early too. It was right in the middle of all the commotion, when Stevie was performing his best Britney Spears imitation. She waved at me across the crowd, but by the time I made it through the people and the hugs, she was gone.

  All she has ever known is people coming and going, so I guess it’s easier to skip the goodbye. This way, if we ever run into each other, we can just pick up where we left off. When we do, I’ll tell her that in my story, it was a woman who was the superhero who saved my life.

  Anita walks into the living room in her bathrobe.

  “I’m going to my room to put on a Korean face mask and watch Rocky. I don’t wanna hear from any of you until the morning.” She turns to Stevie. “You are sleeping down here. I know every creak, every sound. I know every trick in this house. Do you understand me?” she asks in a way that isn’t a question at all.

  “Y-yes,” he stutters, shifting nervously on his butt.

  “The air mattress is somewhere in that closet at the top of the stairs. Take a flashlight,” she says with a flip of her wrist before she disappears up the steps with her robe fluttering behind her.

  “I’ll go,” I say.

  “I think I know where it is.” Janae follows me.

  “I need to grab a hammer to fix my desk drawer,” Jordan announces.

  “Bet. I’ll help you carry it all down,” Jesus says.

  Stevie stays on the couch, unsure where he fits in all of this.

  “You better come on,” I say. “Someone has to hold the flashlight.”

  We climb up the stairs to the very top and open the closet door. It is one of those closets that is filled with the loose ends and random items that end up in a house after a lifetime.

  Stevie squeezes his skinny frame inside and begins to hand us items one by one.

  “Damn, B, what’s this ladder? Whoa! You didn’t tell me you have roof access!”

  “What?” my cousins and I ask, peering in with the light.

  “Most of these old brownstones do. You’ve never been up there?” Jesus asks.

  “Shine the light higher,” Stevie calls from some secret universe we didn’t know existed.

  He climbs up the ladder and opens the rusty hatch.

  “Come on!” he shouts.

  The evening is warm and sticky, but the silver paint covering the rubber roof membrane is cool on our feet, and we each take a seat to watch the sunset.

  I pat the twists on my head to relieve the strain from the restricted blood flow. They itch like crazy but have shown zero signs of loosening. Lucia really doesn’t play when it comes to hair. Jesus pulls me toward him and begins to take the bobby pins out, one by one, undoing my hair crown. When the twists are freed from their structure, he carefully removes the tiny black rubber bands that secure them to my scalp and releases my hair.

  “When we moved here a year ago, I really thought I knew what the rest of my life was going to look like,” I say. The thought comes out of my mouth as quickly as it pops into my head.

  “And you wish you could go back to that?” Jordan challenges.

  The sunset turns from pink to orange, shifting colors on colors like scales on a mermaid’s tail catching the light.

  “Of course not!” I sit up and look her right in the eye.

  Jordan’s eyebrow remains raised, and her arms are crossed over her chest like she’s a Wakandan warrior—always a little skeptical of me, but I don’t blame her.

  Jesus frees the last twist from my scalp and runs his fingers through the brittle gel that clings to my curls.

  “I just have no clue what’s going to happen now,” I say, pushing past my instinct to keep my thoughts to myself.

  “None of us do,” Jesus says as he grabs at the spot on his neck where he was assaulted several months ago. “How can I be worried about the future? There’s no guarantee I’m going to make it long enough to see what that is.”

  Cars and block parties and a train pulling out of the Metro North station just a couple avenues away fight to silence the truth that he and my cousins face every day. The deflection is no match for our reality, and it hits us all with a gut punch, because in this moment, right now, there is nothing we can do about it. The hopelessness burns more than anything else.

  Just a year ago, I was hiding. Hidden. Convinced I wasn’t a real person, just a mashup of thoughts and truths I didn’t believe I deserved to own. Now there is so much more for me to learn and grow into and feel, and to be honest, I’ve barely brought myself up to speed, but it is there: a world, a life, most importantly, a voice. A challenge to try and fail and fight. A challenge that I accept.

  I look at my family and I see the strength and the hope and the joy that they represent. We make the world turn, and I don’t know how I ever lived at all before I knew that to be true from the tips of my fingers deep down to my soul.

  “Everyone stand up,” I command, and rise to my feet, wiping the layer of soot from my hands to face reluctant stares.

  “Nuh-uh, we’re not doing that kumbaya group-hug mess,” Janae protests. “It’s corny and makes me uncomfortable.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “No physical contact required.”

  Stevie is the first to stand, then Jesus, then finally Janae and Jordan (though I’m sure Jordan would claim that she stood first and left Janae no choice but to follow suit).

  I spread everyone out, forming a slightly staggered line.

  “Okay, this is going to feel dumb, and maybe it is, but it will make you feel better, and that has to count for something,” I say. “Just do what I do: one, two, three!”

  I go first and then, as a human chain, they follow.

  Our arms stretch out and we open our mouths to release the negative toxins into the abyss in a shrill, unified roar. The hurt flies out of our bodies and disintegrates into the air: a momentary relief. A gift.

  We scream until there is no air left in our lungs and we have to stop and regenerate by sucking in the power from the plump orange sky.

  As i
f summoned by sorcery, the clouds crack open and send sheets of rain that soak us on contact, breaking the weeklong heat wave and drowning out our cries. Kids laugh on the sidewalk below thrilled to avoid a normal shower courtesy of the cosmos. Cars honk long and loud, as if their horns hold any influence against the heavens. On the rooftop, everyone runs around, gathering their phones and shoes and trying to cover their hair and bodies with their arms. The hatch to the attic opens and they get in line, eager to head inside.

  “Nevaeh? Come on!” Janae yells, her head barely visible from halfway down the ladder.

  “I’ll be right there,” I call back.

  Jordan and Stevie follow, hopping from one foot to the next as if the movement might trick the rain and keep them from getting soaked.

  “Babe?”

  Jesus stands at the opening, torn between the shelter that calls to him and the concern that he shouldn’t leave me alone on a roof in a downpour.

  “I’m good, go on.” I nod, but he hesitates, unsure if this is some unspoken girlfriend test. “I’ll meet you down there in a minute,” I assure him.

  The rubber soles of his sneakers squeak against the metal ladder as he climbs down, watching me as he goes, until he can’t anymore.

  Alone, I look up to find that the orange expanse is undiluted despite the clouds. Instead, hues of fire and candy corn deepen with each second that passes, so I stay for one more moment in solidarity with the sky. Tears slide down my cheeks in mascara streams that I drink, salty and unavoidable and mine.

  As small puddles begin to collect, I root my feet to the ground, solid and ready to start anew.

  And I throw my arms out,

  And I scream so they can hear me,

  And I match the wind and the rain in their fervor,

  And I stand on the other side of the shadows,

  And I refuse to be washed away.

  Dear You,

  Color Me In is the book of my heart. I based this novel on my real life, even though I have written the story as fiction, but these elements are totally true: I am a multiracial woman who inadvertently passes as white; I had a bat mitzvah—my heritage is Liberian and Brazilian as much as it is Jewish; I am from the New York City area; and I have a wonderful, loud, blended, multicultural family.

  My parents separated when I was four years old. Judges in divorce cases usually gave custody to the mother back then, unless there was an obvious threat of danger to the child, so I lived with my mom. My father wanted to be involved in my upbringing, and as a result, my parents’ divorce papers stated that I was legally required to be raised Jewish. My father is ethnically almost 100 percent Jewish, but he has never been religious, so when I got a little older and he told me that I had to start attending Hebrew school, I was furious. Not because I had anything against Judaism, but you see, I mostly grew up around my mom’s Black Baptist family, where I was the different one because I looked white and had a different last name, and now I could not be baptized in my grandfather’s church like everyone else.

  All I wanted was to be more like my mom’s family, but my father’s attempt to be in my life made me even more different.

  So I pushed back against my Jewishness every step of the way, barely engaging in Hebrew school and being even less cooperative when it came time for my bat mitzvah preparation with a rabbi. I went through with it, because I had no other option. But in terms of the engagement necessary to properly “come of age” and understand the true meaning of the Ten Commandments and the obligations of the mitzvahs, I definitely fell below the mark. The bat mitzvah itself ended up being fine (albeit unconventional, considering the majority of the audience were my mom’s family members and therefore not Jewish), and then it was over. I actually blocked the whole experience and tucked it into some far corner of my brain where I genuinely forgot it ever happened, as if this monumental spiritual experience were just a blip or hiccup on my lifeline.

  When I decided to write about the multiracial, white-passing perspective, I was flooded with memories of this time in my life when I was actively fighting against who I was. As strongly as I believe that individuals should be allowed to choose their religious practices, I wish I had taken advantage of the experience of being a bat mitzvah. It was an opportunity to immerse myself in a culture that comprises half of my DNA, and as such, it was an opportunity to find a connection to the Jewish community I hadn’t felt was mine. Writing this book was my opportunity to engage with Judaism as not just a religion or lifestyle, but as my people. It was a chance to claim this part of my heritage as my own.

  I have always had a deep connection to my Brazilian and my Black, Liberian heritage. Both are also aspects of my identity for which I have zero visual claim.

  Like Nevaeh, I was young when I realized just how different I was: people at the playground continually asked my mom how long she had been my nanny, as I was a little white girl with a Black lady. When I was older, I was stopped and questioned by the police while walking down the street with my stepfather, a Black man, because they wanted to be sure he wasn’t hurting me. I have seen family members and friends who are darker-skinned harassed by cops on the street. And one time, the cops showed up at my grandmother’s house and made my whole family watch surveillance footage of an armed robbery—they thought my uncle was involved because he was a Black kid in a “good” neighborhood in Westchester, even though he didn’t look remotely like either of the perpetrators.

  As I got older, I continued to find myself ever aware of active racism and prejudice, but it bypassed me because I was white. Instead, it was directed at the people around me. I quickly came to realize that my identity as a multiracial woman is inherently tied to my white privilege.

  Now, as an adult, the shame and guilt I feel for unintentionally benefitting from my white appearance is what ultimately motivates me to never stop trying to dismantle the system of white supremacy that creates an unfair and illogical advantage.

  I wrote this book because I wanted to talk about the uniquely complicated world of biracial and multiracial identity, but the only way for me to do so authentically was to also shine a light on the colorism that benefits those of us who are light-skinned or white-presenting. I wanted to talk about how these ingrained privileges negatively affect communities of color. I wanted to talk about how it is possible for someone who is a legitimate member of these communities to be willfully ignorant to the damage they are causing by remaining silent. If a person is not actively fighting against oppressive white supremacist systems that hurt and hinder communities of color, specifically Black communities, then he or she is complicit in them.

  I can’t change how I was born, just as much as my family members can’t change how they were born. I was born the way I am, and as such, I have the opportunity and the choice to speak out with more safety (and possibly more impact) because I look white.

  My hope is that reading Color Me In encourages all readers to initiate or partake in difficult conversations. I hope you will be emboldened to shut down a joke about any group or stand up for a stranger being harassed. And if you are white-presenting, I hope you will make the choice to step out of the spotlight to make space for someone who may not otherwise have a chance to shine, because sometimes it’s better to accept that you don’t have the right to speak on everything, even if the opportunity to do so presents itself.

  My deepest hope is that anyone who has felt confined to the “other” box feels empowered to take ownership of their identity in as many ways that feel necessary. I believe that you have every right to be who you are, and that no one can take that from you. No matter the color of your skin or your religious affiliations, be who you are. Our society needs you and your unique perspective, now more than ever.

  I write this with love, admiration, and an unwavering hope that this world can be equitable and safe for us all.

  Natasha Díaz


  Acknowledgments

  Welp, writing the book was hard, but WOW, this is where it gets real. Thanks for sticking with me up until this point…let’s do this.

  Get you some incredible managers like mines. Jermaine and Richard, from the moment we began to work together, you have been nothing but bright shining lights of support and enthusiasm for this loud, NYC broad, and I couldn’t have made it here without you. BIG PROPS TO SOPHIE AND RACHEL FOR FIELDING MY MILLIONS OF EMAILS—y’all truly make the world go round.

  Beverly, I will never be able to thank you enough for taking a chance on me. You simultaneously gave me the space and the encouragement necessary to dig deep and tell this story of my heart the way I was supposed to. I feel so blessed to have you as the conductor behind the symphony that is the mind of Nevaeh Levitz.

  Huge thanks to Colleen, Trish, Shameiza, and Tamar for making Color Me In look and sound better than I imagined it in my head. Rebecca, you are an angel—thank you for being so patient with my constant questions and check-ins. I love you, Delacorte Press. I really, really do.

  To Regina and Bijou, you turned this world into a piece of art. I cannot thank you enough for your talented mind’s eye. This cover is a masterpiece, and I adore it with every inch of my being.

  Mom, thanks for reading each iteration of this novel, including the dreadful first draft. I feel so proud to have created a book that I know you truly, deeply love and support. It is perhaps my biggest accomplishment.

  Dad, thanks for injecting poetry into my bloodstream. Without your DNA, this book would be missing its heartbeat.

  To my beautiful blended family, Blonnie, Naomi, Noah, Nia, Bonita, David, Simone, Kaylah, (Baby) David, Lourdes, Jonathan, Alistaire, and Jaspar, I am so proud to be related to you and to share the richness that is us through stories inspired by our lives.