Stephen Banks

Dark Year Round

The skin on my chest was never the right color. As I stood in my parents' bathroom, perched on a purple footstool, hem of my shirt tucked under my chin, I stared at this pale flesh. It was white, but not the kind of white I grew up seeing. Not the kind of white on TV, the sort that carries in it a pinkish glow. Movie stars, politicians, talk show hosts. They all had it. Pink from blood rushing just below their skin. Pink from sun burning them raw.

My skin wasn't pink, it was spectral. It looked like baby powder, or marble countertops, or my mother, back when she was younger. I'd seen a picture of her from back then--she's sitting on the floor of her home in Taiwan, holding a little black girl in her arms. My sister. You look at the photo and you can't quite process it. The white and the dark. So close in the same room. But the contrast diminished over time. Mom got darker when she moved to the states. Unlike the ones on TV, mom gets crisper with the sun. Golden, almost. She absorbs a different kind of light--not the rosy hue of dawn or dusk, but the blistering yellow of tropical sun.

I let my shirt drop from my chin. That yellow light lived in all of her now. But it only lived in parts of me. The arms, the back of the neck, the bridge of my nose--all those parts that feel the sun's rays the most. They crisped nicely that summer. For the next three months, I thought, I will get to look like mom. And maybe, if the sun is just right, if I spend enough time outdoors, those golden tones will turn brown. Then I will get to look like my sister. But not for very long, never for very long. When fall comes, I will go back to being pale. My face will turn snow white.

And then what am I?

I placed my hands on the bathroom countertop. Leaned in close to the mirror until my nose was almost touching the glass. A little circle of fog appeared near my mouth. There was another picture I remember seeing. A picture of me, two or three years old, dressed in a blue sweater, white sweatpants, with a tuft of black, curly hair spilling over my forehead. I remember staring at that tuft of hair, staring at the skin it hid beneath its curls. Dark skin. Skin like my sister's. Right below my hairline. As if it had been painted there in secret. None of the baked, yellow tint of my mother's skin. None of the pinkish glow of the people on TV. None of the lifeless white that clings to my chest. Just dark. Dark with no strings attached. Dark year round.

I palmed my forehead. Raised the curls and stared at the dark hidden there. Spent what felt like hours just looking at it, almost afraid to let my curls cover it up again. Afraid to go back to having skin that's never quite the right color. At least when winter comes, when my arms and neck and face go pale, I'll have this bit of color to myself. This little reminder that more than sun lives in my skin.