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OTHER PEOPLE'S SKINby Tracy Price-ThompsonI entered this world on the wave of a violent midsummer heat, north of Venice, south of the French Quarter, on the wide mouth of an oxbow lake. My first drops of sweet milk were suckled in a spacious wood house crawling with Spanish moss and shaded by loblolly pines. According to Ma'Dear, mine was the year of the great drought, and instead of the river belching forth schools of laughing gull and black skimmer fish, folks in our tiny back-swamp on the Mississippi Delta were up to their chins in scorched caking mud, which, whispered by some, was the exact same shade of my newborn hide.Shortly after my birth, Peaches fainted. The sight of me was far too much for her to bear. She came from good stock, she cried, panting through the pains of my afterbirth and holding her milky arms out as evidence of her purity. A LeMoyne, she insisted. A direct descendant of the distinguished Jean Baptiste. And until I came along to highlight the stain on her pedigree, her silken brown tresses and fine chalky skin had been more than enough to prove it.
OTHER PEOPLE'S SKIN
by
Tracy Price-Thompson
I entered this world on the wave of a violent midsummer heat, north of Venice, south of the French Quarter, on the wide mouth of an oxbow lake. My first drops of sweet milk were suckled in a spacious wood house crawling with Spanish moss and shaded by loblolly pines. According to Ma'Dear, mine was the year of the great drought, and instead of the river belching forth schools of laughing gull and black skimmer fish, folks in our tiny back-swamp on the Mississippi Delta were up to their chins in scorched caking mud, which, whispered by some, was the exact same shade of my newborn hide.
Shortly after my birth, Peaches fainted. The sight of me was far too much for her to bear. She came from good stock, she cried, panting through the pains of my afterbirth and holding her milky arms out as evidence of her purity. A LeMoyne, she insisted. A direct descendant of the distinguished Jean Baptiste. And until I came along to highlight the stain on her pedigree, her silken brown tresses and fine chalky skin had been more than enough to prove it.
Papa wrung his hands as Ma'Dear revived Peaches with strong herbs and coaxed her into a sitting position, gently urging her to nurse the howling infant rooting for her full breasts. As her elder hovered at her elbow, Peaches accepted the swaddled bundle that was me, and with trembling arms lay my wriggling body atop her still-bulging belly. Pinching the thing cloth into a tent between her thumb and forefinger, she peeled back the soft blanket and peeked inside, her eyes wild and cautious. She permitted herself only the briefest confirming glance before swooning and letting the blanket fall to protect her from my stare. With her face drained of color and her hair floating in a mad halo above her skull, she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and wailed in horror, "But this can't be my child! I ain't got nothing but French, Spanish, and Indian in my blood!"
Her pale brow furrowed in mild curiosity, eight-year-old Paline leaned close to our mother and lifted the blanket to judge the anomaly for herself. She gave me, her squalling baby sister, a short but critical examination before declaring with a cynicism that truly befitted a LeMoyne, "Then Papa must have some bull, muskrat, and nigger in his."
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