Our marriage counselor said, “Oh, you two are going to have a beautiful baby… with your skin tone and his hazel eyes.” I looked at my twenty year old husband and smiled. He held me from behind like a rag doll, arms around my hips, fingers interlocked. My brown hands rested on his pale pink hands.
“Thank you.” I bowed my head a little. I let my mind wonder to being good parents, and how much our life would evolve, for a second.
“So long as it’s not White,” he said.
He laughed as if he’d said the punchline to a joke we all knew, “I’m part Italian and Cherokee. She is Cherokee too, plus Aztec, and who knows… She’s Mexican, so we’ll get a tan baby for sure,” he smiled.
Our marriage counselor’s expression seemed aghast. Bill snickered again, as if the joke was obvious, but the only obvious thing was that Bill was probably not Cherokee. Our counselor looked outright disgusted, as well as confused. I looked at him fully mouthing the word “Stop” trying not to let my mouth extend open too dramatically. His eyes avoided mine, I shook my head, and looked back to our counselor. Instead of her empathetic eyes, I looked down, embarrassed, and focused on the branches of veins in our hands.
My pulse quickened. The moment caused my hands to become darker than tea-dyed muslin, while his hands, a tint of green as faint as that found in calla lilies, lay locked and dormant beneath mine. No one breathed a word before we broke the air with rounded thank you’s and goodbye’s… we left her office finally and for the last time.
