{"id":272,"date":"2019-02-12T13:46:37","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T18:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/?p=272"},"modified":"2019-02-12T14:05:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T19:05:50","slug":"birth-marked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/birth-marked\/","title":{"rendered":"BIRTH MARKED"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Donna Dufresne<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A\nfew years back, my ninety-one-year-old father made one of those odd confessions\nthat come with old age when the brain wanders around in the tangled past, grasping\nat threads. I had just told him that I had sent in my DNA test to find out\nabout our heritage.  I joked that when I\ngot the test back I would tell him \u201cI told you I was Puerto Rican\u201d.  He laughed, of course. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an inside joke\nafter having spent much of our lifetime together in a struggle over racism. In\nthe 60\u2019s, we engaged in fierce arguments, as the civil rights movement marched\nthrough our living room, and riots exploded into angry retorts.  \u201cSend them back to Africa,\u201d my dad would\ngrumble as if it were 1830 and he were a member of the Colonization Movement.  We egged each other on as Meat Head and\nArchie Bunker did later in the 70\u2019s. I remember how that show, All in the Family<\/em> astounded us as we saw\nourselves on T.V.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Race\nand class are the undercurrents that have carried my people through\ngenerations. The tension between the two narratives pustulate and emerge in\nugly sores, and they then go underground as if they never existed, much like\nthe post racial society we imagined we would become after President Obama was\nelected.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            My\ndad\u2019s response to my joke was much lighter hearted than it would have been back\nwhen civil rights and racism were unwelcomed guests at the table. The\nunfortunate fall-out of those violent times was that it became too easy to\nblame racism on those people in the South. Armed with the smugness of Northern\nelitism, we had proof in the pictures of police dogs and fire hoses that a real\nracist was someone other than ourselves. And if you were like my people, who were\nstruggling to climb that ladder toward the elite, you just stopped talking\nabout it, unless you had an annoying pre-teen getting up in your face for every\noff-colored remark you made. Civil rights and racism left our living rooms when\nMarin Luther King Junior was assassinated. The Black Panthers and Angela Davis\nmay have raised a few eyebrows, but white people like us were disengaged. There\nwere other things on our plates.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my dad started\ntalking about his fading birthmark and the possibility that he had the blood of\nan African in his veins, I realized there was a conversation about bloodlines that\nbound us together. There were family secrets rarely discussed, festering below\nthe surface. The question about heritage serves as a lens through which we\ninterpret and navigate the world. He did that funny little high-pitched laugh\nI\u2019ve noticed as of late when he wants to tell me something that might tether my\nattention and keep me from returning to my life away from him.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said, \u201cHeh, well,\nmaybe we\u2019ll find out that we\u2019re black. \nI\u2019ve always joked \u2013 you know I have a birthmark on my inner thigh, and its\ndark brown. I always wondered if it was because I was part black. Grampy Dunham\nused to grab my hands when I was a boy and press my fingernails. He\u2019d say, \u201cAt\nleast there\u2019s no nigger blood in you. You belong to my side of the family.\u201d\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cO.K.\u201d, I thought,\n\u201cThat\u2019s interesting.\u201d  I remember that\nbirthmark, because it was so obvious when he wore shorts in the summer or\nwatered the lawn in his underwear.  In\nfact, I swear to God I had a smaller, lighter version of the same birthmark on\nmy inner thigh, but it seems to have disappeared. Is that even possible? And if\nnot, why did I imagine myself to have that birthmark all these years?  Was it the psychological mark of my heritage?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not like I\nhadn\u2019t heard that story about Grampy Dunham before.  My dad has repeated it many times in the last\nfew years as he\u2019s tried to rectify his long dance with the past and the short\ndance of his future.  I know that Grampy\nDunham, was both a savior and a racist son-of-a-bitch. He was an angry man \u2013 a\nformer blacksmith turned chauffeur and then mechanic for model T Fords. When my\ngrandmother married a Catholic French Canadian, whose mother was a Micmac\nIndian, you can imagine the ire raised in his protestant Irish blood.  My father caught the brunt of that ire, being\nthe first born child of that mixed marriage.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was six years old\nwhen I learned that my great grandmother was an \u201cIndian princess.\u201d It was Crazy\nUncle Bob who spilled the beans, and my mother was none too pleased, I can tell\nyou that. My father\u2019s brother Bob was a little \u201coff\u201d and you never knew when he\nwould turn up on your doorstep and turn everything upside down. But I could not\nhave been more elated or elevated. \nFinally, even at the age of six, I had a trump card to hold over the\nneighborhood kids. I had real \u201cIndian\u201d blood beyond the sagas about cowboys and\nIndians we played, and that meant that I had moral authority. I can\u2019t tell you\nhow I had absorbed the moral truth of the \u201cnoble savage\u201d, but somehow it had\nwended a path into my soul. It wasn\u2019t long after my discovery that I began\nleading my friends along the secret childhood paths to China Hill as we\ntraversed further and further from our screened porches through middle\nchildhood.  I was convinced that my Indian\nblood was some kind of nobility. We collected \u201cIndian silverneers\u201d, triangle\nshaped rocks became arrowheads, and sticks riddled with bark beetles were hieroglyphics\nin my desperation to capitalize on my new-found heritage. It was a phase that\nwent underground after I convinced my friends that they should eat Jack-in the\nPulpit berries because they were \u201cIndian Corn\u201d. One of my friends ended up in\nthe hospital because Jack in the pulpit berries are full of oxalic acid, and\nour tongues were pricked by a billion pins and needles, and her throat closed\nup, and I got in a shit load of trouble.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My childhood is\nriddled with the angst of race.  My\nmother and my brother, (may they rest in peace) were fortunate to have\ninherited the traits of the Irish side. Green eyes, golden locks, that\nparticular cleft in the chin, were far more noble than the dark skinned curly\nlocks I inherited from my father. My mother used to try to cover me up from the\nsun so that I wouldn\u2019t turn dark, because just a little bit of sun would turn\nme into a little \u201cpapoose\u201d. It seemed to me that she was embarrassed by my complexion.\nGod forbid I turn out like the Dufresne side of the family.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reminded\nconstantly, after every minor mistake I made or any time I contradicted my\nmother\u2019s lies with my truths, that I did not belong to the good side of the\nfamily, because I looked too much like the bad side of the family. And then\nthere was the time I overheard my mother talking about my Indian princess\ngrandmother during one of those gossipy knitting circles, whispering that she\nwas \u201cblack\u201d in that wrinkled up nosed snobbery, as if it was a terrible thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That image has been\ntucked away in my psyche my whole life. I adopted myself into my Micmac Indian\ntribal ancestry at an early age, and often wondered if my great grandmother was\nin fact black. It wouldn\u2019t be unheard of. \nMany African Americans escaped to Canada in the 19th<\/sup> century\nbefore emancipation. Some intermarried with the indigenous people of Canada,\nincluding the Micmac.  It\u2019s plausible\nthat the reason why my great grandmother was so dark skinned and tall, compared\nto other Micmac people, was that she was part African American.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that I may\nhave wondered about these things because at an early age I was taught that I\ndidn\u2019t quite belong anywhere.  There was\nthat thing where my father couldn\u2019t quite believe I belonged to him because I was\nso smart, while my mother rejected me out of the rage she held toward my father\nbecause I was too much like him. Regardless of the psychological damage my\nparents may have tried to impart, the only palpable scar that I can calculate\nis the interminable desire to find my people. At first I hyper focused on the\nNative American heritage. I did vision quests, sweat lodges, and dived into\nNative American storytelling. But I never felt recognized or welcomed by any\nNative American Shaman.  Although I was\ntoo dark for my mother, I\u2019m definitely too white for them.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More peculiar, as I\nhave gotten older, is the longing and desire to connect with African Americans.\nI have tried desperately to develop relationships and friendships whenever I\nhave crossed paths with people of color. But the geography of race continues to\ncreate the great divide between us. Still, it is the desperation of my desires\nthat makes it impossible to bridge the gap.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that my\nDNA test came back mostly northern European, with a speck of Scandinavian, Spanish,\nIberian, and Middle Eastern (where the hell did that come from!). I share DNA\nwith some second and third cousins I\u2019ve never met that shows an iota of Native\nAmerican and an ancestor from West Africa who appeared between 1760 and 1840.\nBeing the life-long wanna-be that I am, I have pretty much ignored the Scotch,\nIrish, English thing that blaringly absorbs most of my DNA chart and zeroed in\non the teeny tiny percentage shared with a cousin I don\u2019t even know. It\u2019s my\ngreat BINGO! My \u201cI TOLD YOU SO!\u201d  A comeback\nfor a lifetime of feeling that the picture my people painted of who we are was\nskewed toward who we wanted to be. Like my dad, who has always questioned his\nheritage and wondered if he really was black like Grampy Dunham insinuated, I have\nbeen searching for my long-lost tribe. But in the end, what use is a birthmark that\nfades away with the stories of our ancestors? Once the stories are gone, so is\nthe cultural connection, and we are left with the fading of skin and memory. In\nthe end, skin tone becomes another barrier and I\u2019m just another milk-toast\nwhite girl who doesn\u2019t quite belong. <\/strong>\n\n\n\n\n\n0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donna Dufresne             A few years back, my ninety-one-year-old father made one of those odd confessions that come with old age when the brain wanders around in the tangled past, grasping at threads. I had just told him that I had sent in my DNA test to find out about our heritage.  I joked that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “BIRTH MARKED”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"BIRTH MARKED: From my memoir, \"Big Truths and Little Lies\". My dad and I engage in a conversation about the racism in our working-class family and our own search for belonging.\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memoir","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Dick-Dufresne-1942.png?fit=768%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paDBMs-4o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}