My American passport took me many places over the years—to visit my British relatives, to a family vacation in Jamaica, and to France when I was fifteen.
The France trip was the summer after my sophomore year of high school, a few months after I’d tried to avoid going to the prom with Rob by inviting Frederick. It was a three-week exchange trip organized by the daughter-in-law of my Auntie Polly (my father’s adopted sister). Aunt Polly’s daughter-in-law, who taught French at an elite New England prep school, had invited me to join her class since I, too, was studying French in high school. Though the kids were all white, and all affluent, I quickly found a connection with them because they were worldly, familiar with places beyond their hometowns, unlike most of the kids with whom I was attending high school. Some of the kids listened to music on their Sony Walkmans. The Police’s new album, Synchronicity, was a huge hit among these kids and allowed them to tune out during our long plane flight to Paris.
We traveled on the red-eye and emerged bleary-eyed into Charles de Gaulle Airport. We then boarded the Paris Métro, which would take us to our youth hostel. The train was packed when we got on and we had to stand in the center, hanging on to the shiny metal poles for balance as the train bumped along the tracks beneath the city. I gripped my purse, my hand on the zipper. The crowd got thicker with every stop and at one point I was jostled by what looked like a tribe of small, ragged children. Moments later, I realized my purse was unzipped and my wallet was gone. My Aunt Polly’s daughter-in-law took me to the police station while the rest of our group settled in at the youth hostel. It’s not like I’d lost much. I was fifteen. All I had in there were a handful of traveler’s checks and a photo of my boyfriend, Mark. But I felt ashamed. I’d been assaulted by, of all people, small white children.
A few days later I stayed behind after our language lesson at a local university to ask the professor a question and then found myself walking back to our youth hostel alone. I came upon a small park where a little white girl of no more than ten was kicking the gravel out of her shoes. As I neared, she stopped what she was doing, looked up at me, and spoke.
“Pourquoi es-tu noire?” (Why are you Black?)
Decades later I would read the work of Frantz Fanon, who had also had a humiliating encounter with a little white French girl. But on that day as a fifteen-year-old walking through Paris I was alone with just my rudimentary French and my fragile sense of self.
“Pourquoi es-tu noire?” she demanded.
“Parce que j’ai de la chance.” (Because I am lucky.)
I didn’t believe it. But I wanted to. I hoped my words would send this little stranger home with some big questions. Maybe they’d even fuck her up a little bit. I didn’t mind. As far as I was concerned, she was every white person who had ever questioned my right to exist, to be a regular person just going through my day without drawing the scrutiny or fascination of others. I didn’t want to make excuses or give this little girl a lesson in anthropology. I wanted to fucking shine. I wanted to shine so fucking much that that little white French girl would ache to be me. Ache like me.