Is That Your Mother?

The few hours I spent in labor with my first daughter were short and urgent. The contractions surged through my body at a rate much quicker than expected, and my husband and I almost didn’t make it to Rex Hospital, which was just down the street from our first apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina. As soon as we arrived in the hospital breezeway, a nurse took my hands, told me to breathe, and, above all, do not push. I will always remember her wide-open eyes, short curly hair, and the pale, lined skin of her face. She reminded me of an old friend’s mother. This calmed me long enough to get us into the labor and delivery room, and me into the hospital bed.

Only a few minutes passed, my doctor hadn’t arrived, and the nurse was still putting on gloves, when Jubilee made her entrance into the world. She waits for no one, I thought.

When the nurse placed my daughter on my chest, I marveled at the way her movements were already known to me. I’d felt her internally for months, and in this way had already grown to know her. Her skin was the color of toasted coconut, and the mass of loose, slick curls, a dark brown. When I kissed her perfect bow of a mouth, she smelled like my blood, and I couldn’t believe how intoxicating this was.

Hours later, as visitors streamed through my hospital room, most of them exclaimed how much she looked like my husband, Michael. My ego was bruised. I saw my round nose and full lips. I saw my mother when she was a child. And I saw my mother’s father, my grandad, too. But her creamy skin — the coveted white girls’ tan — blanketed any of her other features that might have identified her as mine.

In a quiet moment, when it was just Jubilee and me in the room, a nurse with skin like mahogany came in to check my vital signs.

“You’re lucky Dad’s here,” she said.

Did I hear resentment in her voice?

“Why wouldn’t my husband be here?” I countered, confused.

She stared at me, hands frozen in mid-air. I wasn’t sure if she was embarrassed by her assumption, or like a prophet, showing me a small piece of the way before me.

Suddenly I understood. She was unused to seeing white fathers claim the children they created with Black mothers, or claim the mothers at all. In 1967, Loving vs. Virginia nullified existing laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Only 40 years had passed since the Supreme Court officially legitimized relationships like the one between Michael and me, offering the children birthed from this intimate connection a place to exist inside America’s psychic landscape. Forty years wasn’t long enough to erase the sustaining legacy of plantation masters and slave-drivers raping enslaved African women and turning a blind eye to the results.

The nurse and I didn’t speak again, and she finished her tasks, leaving the room silently.

Later that evening, a different nurse burst into the room, rousing me from a haze of exhaustion. A swaddled, content, Jubilee slept in my arms.

“Put the baby down in the bassinet if you’re going to sleep!” she chastised me.

“I’m not asleep,” I frowned and held her closer.

There would be more moments in the future when it seemed white women would continue to ask me to put her down. It seemed as if they pleaded with me to mollify the primal anxiety raised in them seeing a woman like me, nurturing a child that on first glance, appeared to be one of them.

Had part of me wanted it this way? My genes, combined with her father’s, gave her the gift of fair skin. The “gift.” It rankled me, yet the serrated truth of the phrase sat lodged in my throat. Her skin tone, and even the corkscrew pattern of her curls, would make her life in this country easier than mine had been, even if I also shared (albeit darker than Jubilee’s) “rape-colored skin.” History reminded me of it in the form of paper bag tests and the supposed privilege of Sally Hemings. And so did my neighbor, a retired, diminutive Asian gentleman who always waved energetically when we found ourselves outside our homes at the same time.

“Beautiful baby,” he exclaimed. “She is a good mix. She will be healthy, strong.”

If I’d asked more about his cultural background, I might’ve known which Asian country he’d immigrated from and understood what shaped his opinion. But in the haze of early motherhood, I merely smiled and thanked him, agreeing that yes, Jubilee was a beautiful baby.

Bright and high as the sun, she was the adored first — first grandchild on both sides, first child born amongst our group of close-knit friends, first to make me a mother. We burrowed at home, mapping the geography of each other’s bodies. The peaches of her cheeks. The now rippled river of my belly. The knobs of her toes. The bulb of my breast.

Feeding her didn’t come easily at first. Before motherhood, no one tells you breastfeeding isn’t always as simple as it might appear. It’s a relationship to nurture, and a skill to tune. We clumsily folded ourselves into different positions: the traditional cradle hold, a “football hold,” or side-lying in bed. Nothing felt instinctual about trying to support the tender nape of her neck and head with one hand, cup my own breast in another, and hold her body close to mine, all in perfect alignment. We were a tangle of awkward limbs, a mess of tears. The shame of being unable to perform this one, essential task threatened to overwhelm me.

Then one humid afternoon when Jubilee was 3 weeks old, I sat on the couch holding her stretched out in my lap. Michael had left to run errands, so we were alone together. I sat spent and unwound by the heat.

I stared down at her. “Listen, little bear,” I said. “It’s time.”

She stared back, trusting.

With hands grown confident, I pulled her close. She nestled into me and after a few moments, relief melted me like butter. I could feed my baby.

Hunger served as our compass, pointing us back home whenever we strayed. We ventured out for groceries, or the occasional playdate with other mothers from my birth class, or winding strolls throughout the neighborhood under a canopy of tree-lined streets.

Seasons changed and Jubilee grew into a spirited toddler. Our quiet private sphere of life became more public. The world expanded to romping through Raleigh’s parks and between library bookshelves. One afternoon, in an uptown library, we stood at the checkout desk while the librarian scanned Jubilee’s prized stories so that we could bring them home.

“It looks like she has a small fine for an overdue book,” the librarian mentioned, glancing up at me from over the rim of her glasses.

I dug through my purse for some change, but she waved at me to stop.

“Don’t worry about it. The nannies don’t have to pay the fines.”

“I’m not the nanny,” I said, my face warm. “I’m her mother. I’ll pay our fine.”

I dropped a few quarters on the counter, letting them bounce and scatter. With shaking hands, the librarian completed our transaction, refusing to meet my eyes. A cooling satisfaction washed over me but quickly evaporated.

Driving home, I replayed the moment in my head, wondering what picture Jubilee and I had painted for the librarian. A young black woman in a T-shirt and leggings, a running-errands uniform, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail on top of her head. Standing beside the woman, a pearly child outfitted in a ruffled dress, complete with a big bow in her ringlets which were tinted honey-brown from the summer sun. Jubilee belonged in the image of Raleigh’s wealthy, white-collar families, her place central and infallible. Apparently, I belonged, too, but only if I stood outside of the frame.