“You may not hear the accent now, because it’s been years since I lived there, but I’m originally from New Orleans.”
Now that she says it, I do detect something reminiscent of that city in her voice. A drawn-out drawl spiced with music and mystery.
“My family moved to Atlanta after Katrina.” She gives a puff of air disguised as a laugh. “But I’m NOLA, through and through. I come from good Creole stock. As if Creole wasn’t already mixed up enough, my father’s German and Irish.”
I think the ambiguity of her beauty is part of her appeal. Something elusive and indefinable. I would never have guessed the ethnicities that coalesced to make a face like hers—the wide, full lips, copper skin and striking bone structure. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like her. Hers is not a face you would soon forget. Maybe never.
“I’m a mix of everything the bayou could come up with,” she continues, taking a sip of her drink. “So my cousin says I had more ingredients than—”
“Gumbo,” I finish with her. We share a smile, and she nods. “So you’re a mutt like me.”
“I wasn’t gonna say anything.” Her eyes run over my face and hair, my looks almost as ambiguous as hers. “But now that you mention it …”
“Lemme show you something.” I pull out my phone, flipping through the photos until I land on a picture of my family from a camping trip a few years ago. “Here.”
She takes the phone, her smile fading at the corners. I know what she sees. My mother smiles into the camera, her auburn hair a fiery halo around her pale face in the winter sun. My stepfather and stepbrother stand at her shoulder, both tall blondes.
And then there’s me.
My hair cut close to tame the dark curls that can never decide which way to grow. My skin is the color of aged dark honey, and my eyes are gray as slate. I couldn’t look less like a part of the family if I tried.
“One of these things is not like the others.” I grin over the rim of my glass, sipping my ginger ale. “I guess I’m gumbo, too.”
She returns my smile and my phone, but the humor slowly fades from her expression. Curiosity clouds her eyes when she looks back at me, but whatever that question is, she’s not voicing it.
“What?” I finally ask.
“What do you mean what?”
“Just seemed like you wanted to say something.”
For a second, her face shutters, and I think she won’t tell me, but she glances up, a smile settling on her lips after a few seconds.
“Did you ever feel like you didn’t quite fit anywhere?” Her words come so softly, competing with the revelry in the bar. I lean in to hear until our heads almost touch. “I mean, like you were always kind of in between?”
Her question echoes something I haven’t articulated to many people but often felt. I sometimes felt displaced in my mother’s new family. I may not look a lot like my African–American father, but I look nothing like anyone in the family I have left. Most kids were one thing or the other and clumped together based on that. It left me sometimes feeling adrift. Basketball—that rim, that rock—became the thing I clung to.
“I think I know what you mean.” I clear my throat before going on. “My father died when I was really young, and my mom remarried not too long after. It took me a while to adjust to everything, especially being different when all I wanted was to fit in.”
“I get that,” she says.
I shrug and turn down the corners of my mouth.
“Thanks to basketball, I started worrying less about fitting in and more about standing out.” I roll the glass between my palms. “But even then, yeah, I sometimes felt … I don’t know. Displaced.”
“Me, too. My skin was lighter than just about everyone’s in my neighborhood. My hair was different.” She shakes her head, the movement stirring the air around us with the scent of her shampoo, some mix of citrus and sweet. “Most girls there assumed I thought I was better than they were, when I would have given anything to look like everyone else. To fit in. I had my cousin Lo for a few years, but besides her, I kind of just had myself.”
What was that like for her? A beautiful anomaly in the Ninth Ward. Maybe I don’t have to wonder. Maybe I know firsthand.
“It got kinda lonely, huh?” I ask.
“Yeah, it did.” She circles the rim of her glass with an index finger. Her lashes lower like that might hide her memories from me, hide her pain, but it’s in her voice. I recognize it.
“Sometimes, even when we had a full house,” I say, dropping my voice for just our ears, “I’d end up in the backyard shooting hoops by myself until it got dark.”
Like there’s some magnetic center, our bodies have turned in toward each other. Our confidences enshroud us, blocking out the ribald conversation, the impromptu karaoke across the room, the wild response to the games on the flat screens. It’s just us two misfits. A few minutes with a complete stranger, and I suddenly feel understood in a way that’s always been hard to find.
“You get used to being alone,” she finally says.