The Dividing Line: ABSOLUTION #COMPLETED (Book 3)

32 ѱ LETTER #3 (BWWM)

THE TRUTH

Darkness.

Since he was a child, it was the one thing he feared more than anything else. At times he would wake up from the restlessness of his mind hoping to find that the nightmares he'd seen in his dreams were nothing more than useless images.

People were speaking in loud voices laughing and talking about stuff that made no sense to him. Not one of them looked like him. They were all a bunch of darkies sitting around, but he was there with them for some strange reason, listening to their conversations. Everyone talking seemed to be much older, and there was no way to see how he fit into the picture. Surely, someone would notice a white man sitting amid their conversation, but no one said a thing as if he wasn't even there.

Only when a tall young woman with the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen came to him that he felt at ease. It was so hard to describe the color of her skin. She wasn't the same color as the people surrounding her. It was like looking at a combination of milk chocolate, caramel, and pecans. The shape of her eyes reminded him of a China doll he had seen once, and those eyes were just a bit darker than her skin, like an amber color. With long jet-black braided ponytails running down past her shoulders, she came to him with her arms outstretched. It was then that he realized he was a small child. Short, plump arms reached out to her, eagerly waiting to be picked up from someone's lap as she hugged him close and cooed in his ear.

He couldn't make out the words, but a warmth spread over his whole body as he held onto her so tight and placed his head in a place that felt like home and safety to him.

Lub dub... lub dub... lub dub...

The sound soothed him as she made her way into another room where they were the only people lying in a gigantic bed watching television. On the old box, people were standing in a line, and two blacks were dancing up and down the line as other blacks, a few whites, and one or two Asians stood on either side, rooting them along as they danced like a couple of jiggaboos in between the two lines of people. Old nigger music played on the TV set as the young woman got up with me in her arms to copy their dances.

In the dream, we magically seemed to have been transported to a room full of them. I looked around at the people, and then it hit me. I realized these colored people, somehow, were my folks. I lifted my arm again to confirm that it was indeed white. Then, I turned to look up to the woman who kept me at peace as she cuddled me in her arms. She had the same brown skin.

Even though I knew I was small, I scrambled to get off her lap to place some distance between me and them. She tried again unsuccessfully to soothe me. Finally, I BEGAN TO CRY because I was too small and could do nothing about my situation.

She paced back and forward, singing to me, and as we passed, a big mirror was standing attached above a grand wood dresser. That was when I saw that the adorable little white boy with blond hair wore my face when I was a baby.

The sight of her holding me close screamed out the truth. So then, when she sat on the bed and adjusted her shirt to present the coffee-colored nipple to me, I latched on as if I had done so a million times.

My mother held me, and she fed me. ME!

As I suckled the life-giving substance, everything became clear. My eyelids blinked open and closed, open and closed.

I was in a house full of black people, but none of them seemed at all moved by the fact that I was white.

The stark realization of my truth often visited me in my dreams lately, pushing me to the edge of my own personal nervous breakdown as I admitted why this was one of the many nightmares that plagued me.