They Should Warn You Before You Are Born With Brown Skin

By Vanessa Escobar

Our first year in Georgia was tough. There was no place
for brown skin among the red clay. I can still see the face
of the girl who spits in my hair. The boy who shoves me
into the handrail, who cries with me when he realizes
what he’s done.

The long bouncing curls of my 5th grade reading partner
who makes fun of the way I speak. Her friend who pulls me
aside in private to apologize for the behavior but never stops it
when it happens. My first-grade teacher, her voice
as sweet and slow as molasses when she tells my parents
she’s failing me for not being able to speak English better.

My second year in Georgia I learned how to stay silent
so white people could like me. I stopped speaking Spanish
and buried it deep inside. My mother sat with me every night
while I read books in English out loud over and over until
I no longer messed up the words.

In high school when I have one of the highest scores
for my class in the state’s writing test there are whispers
among my classmates: “I didn’t even know she could read.”
I am ashamed when I hear this. My 11th grade teacher quickly
pulls me aside in the lunchroom. Waves her hand over
the crowd and says: “Vanessa, there is more than this.
Please know there is more than this.”

After 9/11 the kids in my brother’s third grade class
pin him down. He’s that terrorist brown they see on the tv.
He is frantic, terrified, can’t breathe, says the only thing
that will make them stop: “I’ll blow this school up.”
He is suspended and the white boys get to stay.

My mother pleads with the teacher, that he was just
trying to defend himself. The school says he’s violent,
needs medicine, needs therapy. My brother is a zombie
for the next few years.  Quiet and compliant, how
they like brown boys to be. Until my mother misses
her son, throws the medicine away, brings my brother back.

A decade later when I get the text that he tests positive
for Coronavirus, I take off running from the coffee shop.
I get home and scream. Throw my cup at the wall.
Watch the liquid stain the white, prepare myself
to lose him again.

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Vanessa Escobar is a 31-year-old queer Latinx poet living the corporate America life but always dreaming of something more. She’s in love with the city of Houston despite no desire to live in the South. She has a nefarious, escape artist dog named Stella and is currently at work on her first book of poems. You can find her at escobarvanessa.com.