 I was small. Small and skinny with legs like a chicken. My arms always floundered at my sides, two stick-figured poles. At times I would stand in the mirror and force my arms to behave like those of a ballerina. They looked awkward. But I would smile at myself, smear petroleum jelly on my lips for the glossy-look, and pretend to be beautiful. And I was. I wasn’t pretending. And I finally had the opportunity to prove it. Out of the whole kindergarten class, I was one of the lucky ones selected to be a snowflake in the Christmas production of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Preparation was serious. I didn’t have to dress up as a silly reindeer with dead branches for horns or as a sugar plum with fatten cheeks pinched red. No I was to be graceful. A graceful snowflake twirling out of the sky and melting on the ground as soft as dissolving cotton candy. And once spring came, I would sprout out of the yielding ground full of greenness. My part was special. I was one of the special kids. I had to be the envy of others. During the dress rehearsal, I nervously waited backstage for my entrance. I had on a glittery tutu puffed out like an upside down carnation, my skinny torso was the stem. I waited, and every few minutes I would peep out to the stage in anticipation for my cue. Only it never came, at least to my five-year old mind. Frantically I searched out for a towering figure, a teacher. A beautiful snowflake such as myself should not miss her grand entrance. I tugged on the teacher’s dress, my toothpick arms quivering. “Has the snowflakes gone?” I asked. The teacher looked down, agitated. “It’s ‘have the snowflakes gone yet,’ ” she corrected, “You missed your cue long time ago.” Abruptly the teacher began laughing, “Imagine, a Black snowflake!” With that, she shooed me from backstage, stony hands grasping my delicate shoulders and twisted me out to a jeering audience of fellow kindergarteners looking life-sized. I was falling, not as a snowflake from the heavens, as I imagined, but as frigid as hail. Falling heavy and landing on the numbing ground, unfruitful as chimney soot. |