The Half and Half-Not

A Work in Progress

The first time I heard it I didn’t know what it meant. The word rolled off her lips easily, and gained weight before falling around my shoulders. It clung to me like something sticky and foul. She wasn’t even looking at me when she said it, but I knew in her eyes that I was not a nothing. No, I was something that she despised, and it grieved her to be in the same space as me, a skinny, shy eleven year old girl. Instinctively, I flinched. I looked for dirt under my nails. I checked my Converse sneakers for dog poop. I stared at her back. At my sister’s hand grasping the old aunt’s elbow, guiding her along the uneven path to the ice cream stand tucked beneath North Carolina’s Pine trees. The scent of peaches filled the humid summer air. A sign by the roadside promised fresh-churned Smithfield peach ice cream. Confusion grew around me like the Kudzu engulfing the tractor shed nearby. A soft breeze rippled the aunt’s floral blouse. Sun dappled the pine needles and red dirt at my feet. My sister glanced back at me. She looked sorry, and a bit sad. The images of that afternoon were seared into my memory.

Pam was my senior by nineteen years. We are actually half-sisters, sharing the same father. This “half” is the problem. Our father was mixed-blood. White and Native. The aunt’s hate for him was so strong that nearly a decade after his death, she still seethed with it. Pam’s, and my other sister’s saving grace was that their mother was White and happened to be the aunt’s sister. She could overlook her nieces’ paternal genetics, but not mine. I was the daughter of “That Dirty Indian” and his second wife.

I was the “Dirty Half-breed.”