“I told you, Ella, outta both of yo’ kids, Bianca was going to be the one that was going to give you the most trouble,” Bianca’s grandmother had said to her daughter, Ella. “Them yellow ones always think they better than everybody else and that the world should cater to them because they so damn light-bright, they almost white.”
Growing up, Bianca swore Grandmother Williams hated her with a passion. She could not figure out for the life of her what she’d done wrong to make a churchgoing woman look at her like she was the devil. As respectful as Bianca had always been, it just seemed like it was never good enough for her grandmother. Even when Bianca got an A on a test, her grandmother wouldn’t say a thing: no pat on her back, no compliment, and no “job well done, granddaughter.” Just nothing!
Now Bella, on the other hand, would get a C-plus, and her grandmother would take her out for ice cream.
For many years, Bianca analyzed, wondered, and tried to figure why, but time and time again, she could never explain the favoritism, so eventually Bianca just chalked it up to her grandmother’s own emotional scars. As a result of her being a dark skinned, bitter woman, she had taken out all the bad treatment she’d gotten because of her skin complexion on her own granddaughter.
“Ella, you should have had you another dark one like Bella,” Grandmother Williams continued lecturing her daughter. “Now, that girl got some good sense. She got her li’l job at Goodwill, and she going to enroll in school next semester. That girl got her head on her shoulders. See, Bella know as black as she is, and the way these men folks run around sniffing behind women that look like Paula Abdul, Vanity, and Vanessa Williams, that she gotta be humble and take what she can get.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jackie, her uncle Peanut’s wife, agreed.
“But that damn Bianca just stuck up and think she all that just ’cause she pretty.” Grandmother Williams shook her head and continued, “Told you not to mess with that ole El DeBarge–lookin’ Negro. He thought his dookie balls didn’t stank, and now so does his offspring. You’d think the no-good gigolo would have raised Bianca every day of her life by the way she act just like him. And you better hope this bastard that she pops out with her hot tail is by a dark-skinned dude as black as charcoal, or you gon’ have another high yellow heifer running around here thinking she cute.” She rolled her eyes, leaned back into the kitchen table chair, and let out a harrumph.
“That is, if we ever even find out who the baby daddy is,” Jackie added.
“Well, I do know this: Don’t expect me to do nothing for that bastard baby. Not nothing. I’m not babysitting, making no bottles, or changing no shitty-ass diapers.” Those were the words that, unbeknownst to Grandmother Williams, Bianca overheard her tell to her mother.
The old saying goes, “Stick and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Whoever came up with that saying told a lie, Bianca thought. They had never heard the words of Grandmother Williams.
Words couldn’t explain the feeling that ripped through the fourteen-year-old ninth grader’s body when she heard her own flesh and blood say those things about her. For a minute there, she thought she was having labor pains. And even though the words her grandmother spoke were killing her softly, she still decided to stand, hidden off behind the kitchen door entry, and continue to listen.
“Oh, Ma, please. Bianca just made a mistake,” Ella said in her daughter’s defense. “The same mistake both you and I made.”
Bianca felt some sort of relief to hear that her mother was sticking up for her with the truth. Her mother was right; her grandmother was no saint. Grandmother Williams had her first child, Bianca’s Uncle Billy, when she was sixteen. She would then turn around and have Anne at seventeen and Edward at eighteen. Ella, herself, had given birth for the first time at the age of fourteen. They were twins that were born premature, and both eventually died after a couple of weeks in the hospital.
“Your brother was no mistake,” Grandmother Williams was quick to shoot back. “I ended up marrying his daddy as soon as I turned eighteen. I can’t help it he got sent over to fight them Chinks in that useless war and was killed.” Grandmother Williams used her tongue to push her upper false teeth around in her mouth. “I married your daddy, but that jive turkey ended up running off with that white woman he worked with. Light skin wasn’t good enough for him.” She let out a laugh that she hoped would cover the pain.
“Yeah, but with Angel and Angela’s father,” Ella, said, referencing her younger twin sisters, “you knew that man was married. You can’t say that wasn’t a mistake.”
“And it wasn’t. Got so much hush money out of that fool that I was able to maintain a nice house for all my children, and when they turned fifteen, that’s when I had Peanut, to seal the deal all over again.” This time when she laughed, it was the complete sound of victory.
“Umph, umph, umph.” Ella shook her head, grinning at her mother. “Well, Bianca is going to be all right. I’m going to help her with the baby, and—”
“How you gonna do that? You work from sun up to sun down. Hell, you didn’t even raise your own. I did,” Grandmother Williams said, getting so turned up that her teeth almost flipped out of her mouth. “You do remember the girls stayed with me more than you,” she reminded her daughter.
“I remember, Mama,” Ella acknowledged. “That’s why I’m going to pay it forward and help Bianca. I been saying for years Bianca is brilliant and smart.” Her eyes lit up.
