Colored People

Maisie's Dad has an adult daughter from his first marriage. That's her, above. Chelsea. Chelsea moves through the world like she's floating on air; the serenity is breathtaking, and so is she. She flashes a smile--it's hard to describe--and it's literally dazzling: disorienting, like you've been let in on something exquisite: a gift. It's hard to connect to her, though, and I realize the serenity is really a moat of sorts, to keep people at a distance. An ironic tool, since--for me, anyway--it's so alluring. Thoroughly allured, I made the mistake of giving her some freelance work years ago, and she fucked it up thoroughly--proactive and responsive only in matters related to collecting her check. The cleaning up of which was a bit of a disaster (never work with family, never work with family), but it was my mistake; never mind.

That's Maisie in her lap--the pasty white kid. The toddler is her daughter, Shaina. Shaina and Maisie are fast friends now: partners in crime: goofblls extraordinaire. Everyone needs one. Fast-forward a few years, and the goons are going to a Halloween performance at the Baltimore Symphony, where they will lie in the aisles with their ballerina duds and cowboy boots, kicking away to Peter and the Wolf:


When Liam came along I lost my job and we moved to Connecticut, and so he has never been part of that group; Maisie visits with them when she's in Baltimore, but his whole world is white.

* * *
I've decided not to buy the house.

I hate it, for starters. Everything about it (except the commute, which is about 10 minutes), including the fact that it's in a town as white as Connecticut; one of the things I imagined when I decided to look into this job was that Annapolis was a city and would have diversity--something Liam's been aching for. But it's a rich city--not really a city at all. And it's also hitting at the ceiling of what I can afford. It rankles to struggle to pay for a home I hate. Rankles to have to look at all that aluminum every day.

So I'm pulling out of the contract and buying a house in Baltimore, where Maisie will be in the minority and Liam will get to see how it feels not to be the only brown kid in the room. There's a beautiful old area north of the city where I'll look, and the kids will go to a great public school near Johns Hopkins. My employer will let me work at home 2 days a week, so I won't have to deal with the commute every day. And the kids have other family excited to spend time with them--they won't need to sit in a noisy cafeteria for hours after school waiting for me to get there.

I feel so much better than I did. It's finally beginning to feel like the right thing for us. Before this, it was a sea of dread.

Happy Sunday!