Something strange happens when you talk bad about someone to someone else you consider an ally. You bond in this weird way that I would call scapegoating. You don't have anything else to bond over so you bond over hatred of that person.

People of different social circles will work together to achieve common goals called superordinate goals, but in the case of scapegoating, the bond only lasts as long as there is a scapegoat. Then you have to find another scapegoat.

My grandma once told me that my mom and I are lucky to have been born in the century we have. That her mom didn't have it so easy. Society tells us what's acceptable and what's not, and we buy into it.

I suppose not that long ago in the grand scheme of things there was a mass influx of migration from the South to places like New York. Largely black families trying to escape the segregation of the South. 

I guess that's what my family did. They also tried to hide who they were.

My grandma tells me how she never knew they were different until a particularly nasty lady at the train station looked her mother up and down and called her a mulatto. Biracial. Beautiful. She caught the eye of my grandfather, the son of Italian immigrants. He never ran from his heritage but brought it with him overseas. She told me to do the same. She didn't want me to grow up and be surprised by exclusive hearts.

My grandma sings Frank Sinatra and oils my fluffy hair and tells me never to hide my beauty.

I have my grandma's nose and curls that fan out when I don't brush them down. Though my dad is blond haired and blue eyed, I still got my mom's chestnut hair. She's olive skinned and forever young in my eyes. I'm proud of my African heritage, even though my great great grandparents carried the pain of passage all the way to Brooklyn.

I've been told it looks prettier straightened by all my friends, and dance class used to bring about a deep insecurity over the wildness of all the stray hairs, but now it makes me proud.

As I stare at myself in the mirror now, it's hard not to blame the shame I feel on my nature. On what Eva told me. That I'm one of the popular girls now. That I always was a backstabber. 

My mom's "ex" was right.

After my mom and dad got divorced, my mom dated "the ex."

He lived with his mother, and that's why we're living here now. "The ex" stayed for a while, and after it didn't work out, he left to live off of his next girlfriend and we stayed. I'm glad we stayed, because I'm not sure where else we could have gone. I think my "ex" grandma-in-law likes us better than her own son.

He lived here for only a short time after we moved in, but a lot can happen in a short time.

"The ex" was mean: to my mom and me. He liked to call me stupid a lot, and even when he didn't say it, I could tell that was what he was thinking. He used to get angry when I didn't answer him with a "yes, sir" whenever he said something to me. Sometimes I preferred just to nod. He was convinced I couldn't possibly relate to anyone my age. "How do you expect to make any friends doing a stupid thing like that?" he would ask me.

I hate walking in front of people because one of his favorite things to do was to step on my heels when I counted steps. It didn't matter if I got good grades, it didn't matter if my artwork got hung up in the library at school, he seemed to think there was something deeply wrong with me and hated it when I fidgeted too much with my jacket zipper or requested a fork and knife with my pizza because biting into it with my front teeth left an awful feeling in my gums.

Going to a restaurant was enough stress without him throwing a fit if I managed to stutter the same order twice to the waiter. God forbid I become a person who always gets "the usual." But I liked the usual. It was comfortable in a place that wasn't, among people who weren't.

It might not seem like a lot, but he had a way of making you feel like everyone around you must think you were just as inferior as he did.

I feel he was probably right about the relating to friends part, though, just like how it was his fault I was switched tracks.

I fell behind that year he lived with us, and I wasn't quite sure if I could ever forget the emotional scar he had punched through my confidence.

I brood in my room and hope my mom won't bother me, and my ex-step-sisters won't ask me to watch any TV with them. I wonder if he has punched an insecurity through their guts, too.