Brown Hued Rainbows - An excerpt for her

Everyone thinks that because your're red that you're supposed to be pretty. Ma is pretty and my sister Fimula is pretty too. I seen pictures of my father too and he's handsome. Even though I love my Ma, I sometimes wish that my father would have stayed in his lane and gave birth to me with a regular brown girl. That way I could have nappy hair, brown skin, big lips and a big nose and I would look normal and possibly even cute. Since my father sifted to the other side, I got yellow skin, nappy hair, a big nose and thin lips. Everytime we go to visit Ma's sisters in Bridgewater, they always remind me and Ma of how Ma screwed up and forgot to pass the pretty genes on to me. "Ewww, that child sure got hair just like her daddy and Ms. Ellabee, she sure ain't get our hair, she got that thick stuff."

I wonder if my kids will come out with hair like me and my father or if they gon' have nice curly hair like Ma side of the family. I don't really like white boys and there ain't none around here anyway and the Puerto Rican boys around here don't really think I'm pretty next to the Puerto Rican Girls with they long curly hair and sassy attitudes. My cousin Arty, he mixed, but he more on the black side and he had a baby by a real black girl, Shayla. Shayla real pretty though, and they baby come out light skin yellow like me and the baby got good hair like Ma and her family. So I guess I can still have pretty babies even if I have kids by a full black boy. I want kids one day, I just don't want them to hate me if they come out ugly. I don't think that I'm all ugly. But at first glance, I'm not what you would call pretty. When I look in the mirror, it's a certain way that I scrunch up my nose when I practice my smile, I think I look pretty then. Rasheed from Ms. Hirsch's class, he say that I got some nice lips. Rasheed is cool. He always nice to me. I always catch him smiling and watching me like he see something special. He look like the color of burnt cornbread or pound cake, he got a lot of scars on him from the chicken pox and always running around getting into something. He's not cute, he looks like a boy, looks like he'll look like a real strong man when he gets older.

-Excerpt from a larger piece - peace : )