3.27

Of course I noticed she was black. People who claim they don't notice are lying to you. Anyway, she's black enough to have the color bleed into the whites of her eyes and the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet--the last places color goes before it peters out entirely and has nowhere else at all. Her teeth are almost violently white against her skin and lips. She looks like brushed velvet, reflecting the light of some distant lamp your aunt gave you when you moved into your new apartment, and when she takes off the velvet coat (who owns those anymore) and drapes it across the couch, all you can think is how it matches what you feel about her skin just at that moment. That's how black she is, and if you didn't notice, you're blind.
I noticed, all right. But I didn't think about what it meant until after I had kissed her out on the street under the night lights, me so white I seemed to glow, her so black she seemed to sink. I thought about it then--the picture we must make in the neon from the bar and the saccharine yellow from the corner lamp post--and I said to myself "by God, if my father could see me now--" and that ruined it for me; the knowledge of other racisms and other hates ruined it for me, and I began picturing how my own racisms would grow and my own hates would develop until I could no longer kiss the black girl underneath the lamp post in the dark of a night into which neither of us wanted to stray. So I held her tight for what time I had and whispered her name to myself until it was all I could hear: "Ivory."