The Light-Born Daughters

The light-born daughters of black fathers (who never knew their fathers except to sit on their laps when they visited once or twice) go to the back of the closet to trace the brilliant & vulgar sketches their white mothers kept even years after they both found other lovers.

The white-passing daughters of black fathers born of the late, trophy-collecting marriages (who watched their mothers’ eyes fill with tears when they were asked about their fathers) download the DNA-inspecting cell phone apps, spit in a tube, send it out, wait interminable weeks for permission to learn the code of their missing fathers.

The well-spoken white-presenting daughters of black immigrant fathers (who long since changed their foreign names and pressed their Afro-curls straight to match the ivory & roses of their skin) collect the lives of their fathers, their radical, Black fathers in stories told by aunties & ex-lovers and ancient newspaper clippings & legal judgements.

The aging, white-assumed, childless daughters (who spend the best years of their lives hiding from & chasing their resentful dark-skinned fathers) trade chess strategies & song lyrics with their lonely fathers asking always for absolution from the great sin of being born in the reverse of their image, a reminder of how this country might have kept their secrets sacred, if only the DNA coin flipped the other way.

*(After Liesl Mueller’s The Late-Born Daughters)