Reflections In My Mind's Eye

Is that Your Sister?

Myles hated the way people stared at them when he introduced Meridian as his sister or she introduced them. It was stupid, it was ignorant, more times than not, it was an indication of their intelligence. No matter if the person where black or white, it was the same thing. Slack- jawed stares. His girlfriends, at least the ones he didn’t bring home...would call him demanding to know, "Who was that bitch?" if they happened to see him driving his sister around when she came home to visit.

As if it was impossible for Meridian to be his sister. Like they didn’t know people came in different colors. Especially black people. Their grandmother was a brown-skinned woman with freckles, while their mother was a very dark-skinned woman. His oldest aunt, Lea was the color of tea while his youngest aunt, Sarah was the color of coffee.

Myles thought his mother was so beautiful, and his older sister looked exactly like his mother. But even a blind man would argue that Myles wasn’t his mother’s natural son. Not even a slight resemblance. Lea liked to say that since Meridian helped their mom raise him when he was little that he often got confused about who was who. Now that his sister was twenty-one years old, she looked like his mother more than ever and he found that he envied that. Meridian was even more beautiful in some ways. Her skin was flawless and she stood on long, strong legs that were well muscled from years of dance classes and gymnastics lessons. Her hair, which he had watched his mom brush for hours every night, lay long and thick on her shoulders. His mother’s prodigy Sometimes Myles felt as if their mom had put every effort, all her hopes and dreams into Meridian. Meridian had even graduated from the New York School for Performing Arts. Everyone knew she was fulfilling their mom’s dreams of being a dancer. Oh, he knew his mom loved him, no doubt about that. He had just as much as Meridian had growing up. All the basketball camps, the Boy Scouts, swimming lessons, he even had piano and drum playing lessons. He felt privileged, he felt loved. He just didn’t ever feel like he belonged.

When the family was together, his aunts and cousins, his sister and mom, he felt like the family secret they kept in the basement. He did not look like these people. They were his family though, he wasn’t adopted but... For one thing he was very light skinned, not a ‘pass for white’ skin tone, more like a "Are you mixed?" color. A very nice skin tone, he thought. He was a pretty boy with a baby face. Which came in handy, it got him as much ass as he saw fit to have without trying or becoming addicted, but still he felt average looking compared to his family.

All the women that had raised him, who had grown up with him, were very brown or dark skinned, exotic looking. With almond shaped eyes and heart shaped lips, high brows and cheekbones. He loved these women, thus he’d developed a strong attraction for tall, dark-skinned women. His aunts were into all kinds of men, but mostly the type they referred to as ‘high yellow pretty boys’. His cousins and his sister didn’t have any particular preference from what he could tell. His mom was too busy to have a man and she made it seem easier to be on her own. Ask her if she were ever lonely without a man in her life, she would tell you that Myles was the man in her life.

It didn’t help that he was the only male born into the immediate family. All the other males had married into the clan, most of them were light too. Myles had seen pictures of his father; he was a very good-looking light skinned man. His mom would talk about him sometimes, which meant he was probably a good man because his mom did not bother to mention ‘good for nothin’ men’. She had told him that they had lived as a family for a short time when he was very young, but he didn’t remember any of that time. Now, Meridian’s father was a sore subject. If you didn’t know, you’d think his name was ‘That Motherfucker’ because that was how Myles’ aunts had referred to him the few times he had listened in on their conversations about Ramsey. From what he had gathered, Ramsey and his mom had been high school sweethearts back in New York and had married young, but he had hurt her, betrayed her over and over again until his mom had no choice but to leave. His source, Meridian, would tell him about first living with both her parents until she was three, then later being allowed to see her Dad on the weekends and some holidays. Myles couldn’t even bring up a memory of being with his father, but Meridian was always more than happy to share her memories with him. When he was just a baby and his dad left, he bought them a camcorder just so their mother could make and send tapes of Myles to him. Of course their mom made tapes of them together, playing, eating and having birthday parties.

Meridian and Myles were born three years apart and two days apart, so they always had their birthday parties on the same day. As far as Myles was concerned, most of the tapes were Meridian’s shows. Meridian dancing, Meridian singing, putting on a performance for everyone. Once in a while she would turn to him and yell, "Mommy the fat baby is in my way", or "The fat baby is touching my stuff". One tape, which he’d go as morbidly far as to say was his favorite, showed him and Meridian in the bathtub together and she was standing up and dancing with suds all in her hair. He was looking up at her, then he tried to use her legs to get up too, but like she was brushing off a fly, she pushed him down and off her by shoving his head to the side. While he was flailing and struggling to get up, she kept right on dancing. He tried to see the humor in the little scene, as everyone else did, but it escaped him every time. Myles knew, despite everything, Meridian did love him. And he loved his sister very much.