Free If I Tell by Janet Gurtler

couldn’t help it, I joined her. I’d had the worst rat’s nest as a kid. She’d tugged at it and messed around with it and usually put it in pigtails. Two round clumps of coarse hair that sprouted from the sides of my head.
    Then she’d tried cutting it really short, Afro style, and I cried about it so much she let me grow it out. Finally she’d started sending me to the black hairstylist in town.
    I did my own hair now. I was pretty good at it too. A skill I’d been forced to acquire. Spiral curls were easier with good hair products like the Mixed Chicks gel I bought on eBay.
    “Oh, God, your hair,” she said, giggling, and then she sobered up.
    “I’m sorry.” She sighed heavily and took her hand from my knee and patted her gray hair. “I didn’t know what to tell you. I just wanted you to be proud of who you are.”
    She tugged on her ear. “Does it matter, Jasmine?” she finally asked. “What other people see? You’re half white too.”
    “It matters,” I told her. How could it not? “And my father’s family, they never even acknowledged me. Not even when I was a little baby.”
    “I know. And I’m sorry. But it’s their loss, you know. We always wanted you to believe that. They missed out. Oh, did they miss out.” Grandma sighed. “You are the most beautiful child. Inside and out.”
    I stared at my bed. “That’s easy for you to say.”
    She had no idea what it was like not to know where she belonged. No matter how white or how black I was, it seemed like neither was enough.
    “I know. I know it is.” She stroked my arm. “Don’t think I never saw the way some people looked at us when you were growing up. Some of them still do. I know that.” She pressed her lips together. “It still makes me angry. Sometimes I wanted to slap people for their ignorance.”
    I couldn’t help grinning at that image. My do-good, volunteer-addicted grandmother slapping people around for looking at me funny.
    “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know what to do. I never knew how to help with the black part. I left it up to your grandpa, and I don’t suppose he did much either. I wish we’d done more. That’s why when Simon showed up and stuck around…” her voice trailed off.
    I bit my lip, not wanting to think about Simon. “Remember when you gave me that black doll when I was a kid? That Cabbage Patchy thing.”
    She groaned. “You hated it. You threw her in the garbage and pretended it was an accident.”
    I bit my lip. “It was different from the other dolls girls were playing with.”
    “So were you, I guess. Different.” She patted me as if I were a little dog or cat. “Maybe we should have moved to a place where there are more kids like you. More mixed couples with kids.”
    I held my breath, overwhelmed. She’d never said anything like that to me before. Never.
    “Well, Grandpa loved Tadita.” Washington was in Grandpa’s blood, he’d said. Especially the wide-open spaces right outside our town. We spent a lot of time hiking the mountains, and even now when I needed to put my life in perspective, a trip to the mountains with a pair of hiking boots did wonders. I should have hiked instead of going to Marnie’s stupid party.
    “Grandpa knew as much as I did about being black or African American or whatever the polite term is these days. I don’t know why I thought he’d be any better at explaining than me.”
    I smirked. “Well, he made sure I had a great background in blues history. And he got me lots of CDs. Even though he ended up teaching me rock and roll.” I glanced over at my guitar leaning against the wall and the posters of white rock-and-roll stars on my walls. Something else I loved that set me apart from the few black kids I knew in Tadita.
    Grandma reached up to cover her smile. The skin on her hand was thin and spotted. “He tried. We both tried.” She lowered her hand, her smile gone. “But really, what did we know about anything?”
    “Grandpa was my dad,” I