Chameleon
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
On my first day of kindergarten, in Little Rock, Arkansas, I discovered that I was different. All of my classmates had experienced their first day of school together in August, but I didn’t turn five until after Labor Day, so my first day of school, in September, came coupled with being the new girl in class.
Also, for the first time in my life, someone asked me a question that would follow me, in various forms, for the rest of my life:
“Are you Black or white?”