Born a Crime

At break, as the only mixed kid
out of a thousand, I faced the same
predicament I had on the
playground at H. A. Jack: Where
was I supposed to go? Even with so
many different groups to choose
from, I wasn’t a natural constituent
of any particular one. I obviously
wasn’t Indian or Chinese. The
colored kids would shit on me all
the time for being too black. So I
wasn’t welcome there. As always, I
was adept enough with white kids
not to get bullied by them, but the
white kids were always going
shopping, going to the movies,
going on trips—things that required