Brown Girl

Leilani Taneus-Miller

Description

Shelly Nacre is the brown face in a sea of white, washed up on the rocky shores of Long Island. Life changes suddenly when tragedy befalls her family, leaving Shelly to make sense of what has happened in the only way she knows how. Her father, an armchair activist, feeds her plenty by way of philosophical ruminations, but these words do not anchor her. Shelly must breeze carefree into her daydreams and drift into the realms of the past to visit her ancestors.And somewhere between these worlds there is Dolly, who never fails in giving her comfort and advice.But when Shelly tries to befriend two of her teenage classmates in a neighbourhood where prejudice is deeply rooted, she brings about havoc on a mystical level, making waves much too big for Long Island in the 1980s.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781398473928
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

B rown G irl
Leilani Taneus-Miller
Austin Macauley Publishers
2023-01-06
Brown Girl About the Author Acknowledgement Copyright Information © Dedication Chapter 1: Yellow Chapter 2: Red Chapter 3: Green Chapter 4: Grey Chapter 5: Pink Chapter 6: Orange Chapter 7: Periwinkle Blue Chapter 8: Brown Chapter 9: Saturnalia Chapter 10: Lace Chapter 11: Light Chapter 12: Purple Chapter 13: Meadow Chapter 14: Confessions Chapter 15: Martyr’s Red Chapter 16: Dandelion Chapter 17: Graduation Chapter 18: White References
About the Author
This book is not about me.
Yet I lived through the same time and in the same place.
So some of the things that happen to Shelly have happened to me, And others like me.
I was born in the city but moved to a small town.
We became the first blacks in our neighbourhood.
And then of course, like Shelly , I was the only black kid in my class.
Brushing racism aside was the done thing.
As good “negroes” we knew our places as second-class citizens.
‘Work harder, expect less,’ we were told.
‘Just pretend that didn’t happen,’ we were told.
Lucky for you, dear reader, I remember enough of what happened to write Shelly’s story.
Acknowledgement
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32
Copyright Information ©
Leilani Taneus-Miller 2023
The right of Leilani Taneus-Miller to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398473911 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398473928 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2023
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Dedication
pour maman
Chapter 1 Yellow
Snapping a towel in the changing room is dangerous and so is flying a cardigan with the school stripes. You can, in all seriousness, injure someone. Particularly when it is aimed at the one face you call, black. Today, it went snap. The zip scraped across the bridge of my nose. I touched it and a shard of brown skin decorated my finger. Stratum corneum, the outermost protective layer, is now distinctively spotted. Brown, the colour I so rarely see, has found me. A finger-sized dose doesn’t startle me. But when I walk past my reflection in the window, though the colour is muted by thick panes of glass, I am startled. I am so very different from what my eyes look upon in all my waking hours. I am the dark one, the noticeable one. I make a show of the day, just by turning up. Yet despite being technicolour, my features are dulled in every photograph. I swipe again and the deep red blood on my nose, not yet dry, smears the dainty spot on my finger. Now, it can be a smudge. Much more tolerable.
Behind me, I can hear the pleather cushions squeaking as the noisy boys squirm with delight at their catch. It is not complete until they reel me in. Don’t they know, they should relax and let the rod do the work? I wait like a good drag. I wish that my ears had a mute feature, so I can turn off the sound at an even pressure of 45. But no, I hear it too clearly.
“Moolie pitcher, bring us some water!” This is their custom – squeak the seats and harangue the bus with their erroneous version of the Battle of Monmouth.
Any true history buff would put it to them straight. Mary Ludwig Hays is an amalgam of more than one woman on the battlefield of 28 June 1778. They need not narrow it down to one, especially not a struggling brown girl like me. I suppose it would be in my nature to take up the pitcher to quench a struggling soldier’s thirst, but right now, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Not for the likes of the squeaky seaters, who rename me at liberty.
I’m afraid to ask them, Why, why me? Believing it would feed the flame of their hatred. So, I answer the question with my own personal supply of abuses: black, whip, slave, beat, dark, low, chains, dirty, lynch. Wherever I have collected such a store in just 13 years, I need not wonder because it can’t be returned for a refund or credit. It is all mine to accumulate and use up as required.
I have my own rituals. They keep me company and I theirs. My long intervals of silence can only be swapped out with the words in my head. It’s a transaction and it adds up. I’m up to 3,908 since I started counting them up and that was three years ago. But it doesn’t add up to anyone else. So, yes, I am soundless to them. Their ears are spoiled. I guess it’s just too sweet, all that chatting, giggling, screaming and whatever else they fancy making happen with their sound booth mouths. My vice of choice is the orb. I keep everything in, nothing loose, nothing hanging. It has to stay neatly contained in the orb. The words live nicely within the orb. Well, there is the occasional pettiness between the two factions, but they mostly get on quite well. But it’s the belly that rumbles, an aggravated fellow he is. Really doesn’t seem content to let things swirl around with no outlet. I think belly wants out, but he’s going nowhere fast, because, well he’s got to stay put, keep within the orb, I say. I didn’t mean to invent this vice, it just so happened, organically. Well, I read the two words in the red and white and blue book that everyone calls dictionary. First came the word orb, then came the word organically. So, yes, orb happened organically. It flew in through the eyes, settled in for a long stay and grew wide. Perhaps, everyone with a vice thinks the same. It’s not me, it’s that thing. Or it’s not me, it’s those people. In any case, it is homegrown and natural, so in a way it feels soft and comforting even. But the kind folks, I can tell they see it as a weakness. They incline their heads, crease their brows and woe mournfully when I won’t speak. But the mean folks, well they just see it as a badness. They crinkle their noses, widen their eyes and feign delight at my crime. So, I have two heaped spoons being held too close to my face, one dosed with pity and the other dosed with nasty.
The squeaky seaters have their own vice too, of course they do. It’s funny, at least I find it so, that I actually don’t spend much time on the bus trying to pinpoint their brand of self-damage. Nope, I hear them just fine yet I am elsewhere. The world on the other side of the window lets me in. No discrimination there. Ah, the relief of it, watching the world I know bound away like a galloping pony. This island is flat but the pony doesn’t mind. I guess he figures he won’t get a lame leg today. Try as they might, the grain-coloured grasses try to cover up the fact that the island is covered in sand. But I know and so do plenty of others, especially the folks at the market, that this land does not yield a good harvest. I’ve only ever seen strawberries, plenty of them, wind their way out from this earth. It’s long, one hundred and twenty miles worth says red, white and blue. I’ve only ever seen 20 of them, except for that one day we went into Manhattan on the train. That was the day I probably totted up 40 miles of window gazing before I grew too dizzy because I can’t gaze without daydreaming. And it's squat, all snug at the sides, no more than 23 miles wide. This I know well and I’m fine with the squatness. It’s only the length that I find troublesome. But when I look out the window of the school bus, I don’t think about these measurements. I let go and live the life past the panes of glass. The life that can take on any form, any colour, any experience. Whimsical. I float away in tall tales, playing endless parts, rearranging destinies.
“What kind of life will you live today?” the wind sings to me. And my response blocks out the taunts of the squeaky seaters and wipes the smirks right off the faces of the girl gang.
Shame their ears are untrained. So, they carry on and on, likely condemning my inaction, until the school bus reaches my stop. I don’t know why people say, “Just ignore them and they’ll leave you alone.” Because that is not the least bit true. It’s the air that puts an end to it. A gazillion tiny particles roaming free, come between us. It’s the fresh air that hastens to welcome me. The school bus need only do one thing and that is to open its jack-knife door. The rest comes easy. The air licks the blood off my nose and swirls cool across my face. I walk, it is a reflex that I know well. Gravel, roads, grassy bank, road, driveway, porch, front door. There is a distance now.
Small, crushed crystals fidget beneath my feet. I am not the crusher but I can hear them give way. It is not a devastating cry. It is not a high-pitched scream. No fighting or biting in protest. It seems as if they have no real will to live. I can tread without guilt. Time and temperature are its deconstruction, an elegant ending. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one that hears it – the sound of the rocks getting chafed by water on all sides, from moon to moon, no matter the season. It’s the island’s fault. It’s got to be. It’s a misshapen fish so it can’t possibly get it right. Too wonky to swim in the big sea, it must accept being moored in the Sound. On one side, it does the rocks and on the other it does the sand, and in the