The Mardi Gras Queen

Ishmael

Our daughter is so beautiful. That's what I tell myself as I look at her from outside the window. This is as close the nuns will let me to looking at her. They see mixed race as an abomination. I get stares when I come in here. I behave around them though, knowing the nuns are abusive, but that they haven't hurt my daughter. I always give them a tough look, so they know I will come after them somehow if they do. I believe it's just enough, because I never see a bruise on her face.

What's best of all about her blooming beauty is that her skin is white enough to be adopted by a white family. One day, however, her melanin will pop through. It will be then that she will wish to have my hand or her mamma's to help her get through. She won't know the hand she was dealt. She will want to fit into white society, engaging in the parties and political conversation.

With her daughter having melanin skin, I'm unsure that Elaine would have ever fully understood what it would be like for me looking after her as a black man, or her as a half black child. God knows I love her, but she is not here. She's probably running around a flower field somewhere, like her spoiled white ass always had.

I never intended to fall in love with a white girl. I love her skin, that never touched the sun. Her blonde hair, that would almost bleach near white after a day outside. I lusted after her the way one would of a painting. Clear of minimal mistakes, popping with color and precision in such a way that it seems you are looking at a renaissance painting of a goddess leaving the water.

After she died, it was easy to sneak out of the serving circles undetected. It had been as if I left long ago, my emotions hardly caring in the jobs I took afterwards. My coworkers didn't blame me. They knew what I had been through, and speculated to what a forbidden love would be like.

I remember how beautiful she looked on the day of her marriage to John - like an angel caught by a soldier. She smiled a smile so wide that it was easier for everyone to pretend. That was what she always did, putting on her best face and caring about other people's feelings more than she cared about herself. She understood her people went through things that they would not talk about aloud. She put her emotions on the back burner, even with me. She became the best New Orleans debutante she could be, putting the little teeny boppers now to shame.

Then, she came back from the honeymoon with bruises. My heart broke for her. It took everything I could not to injure John myself. He had found out that Elaine was not a Virgin and was very furious. Elaine did not want me to get hurt in the process of defending her. There wasn't anything we could do from keeping John from trying to figure out who could have done it, or from punishing Elaine some more. He said that Elaine wasn't what he'd "paid for."

She eventually came to sympathize with John, justifying his actions, and loving him in a sort of way. She said he only acted that way because he was jealous of her and wanting to protect her. The bruises came more and more. She found a way to slowly entangle herself to him and out of my life.

Then her sister Irene came to me one day.

"I am the reason you and Elaine were torn apart. I told my grandmother, who was determined to marry her off before she had more children."

She gave me some hush money to turn away.