They Call Me Mellow Yellow
Skyler Drevan

 

They Call Me Mellow-Yellow

By: J. Williams

“To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.”

I was around seven or eight years old when my mother’s best friend at the time came over to the house for a visit from North Carolina. She embraced my mom lifting her up in the air and gave me a big warm hug and a kiss on each cheek. It was at that time when Rene (my mother’s friend) told me that I was lighter than the color of healthy urine. At the time, I wasn’t sure what she meant but that wasn’t the first or last reference to my complexion from her that weekend. It was, however, the most disturbing of her insulting commentary on my skin tone.

That evening shortly after dinner, Rene said I was so very light skinned that I resembled a bottle of pledge or a three foot banana when it is nice and ripe for peeling. That was another perplexing comment to me at that age. Am I the color of piss, pledge or bananas? Why was she making reference to my skin tone so often? I asked myself. I laughed at the time because I thought it was a funny thing to say because to refer to me as a big banana sounded innocent.

When I stepped away, I heard my mother turn to Rene and tell her not to make me feel insecure about my complexion because people always make a little comment here and there about the brightness of my complexion “especially in pictures.”

At the time I had no idea comments were being made about me. It was an eye opening experience which made me run into the bathroom and look in the mirror. As the conversation progressed, I heard Rene address the situation to my mother in the most serious, matter of fact way possible. “Roz,” she said with conviction, “your son is very bright. Jeffrey is mellow yellow.”

It was at that moment that I learned that Rene, a fairly light brown skinned woman in her own right, was not speaking of me and my skin tone in any kind of positive light. In fact, at that time after hearing her call me mellow yellow, I thought she was just trying to be cruel and make me cry. She made it seem that my skin complexion was something that I should be ashamed of, rather than proud and accepting.

It was after that summer weekend visit from Rene that I really started to pay attention to the words people were using to describe me or address me. I was weary of everyone. Mellow-Yellow was just the beginning of the many years of vicious name calling. To accompany that offensive description were: Sunshine, Light Bright, White Boy, Chinese Boy, High Yellow and The Golden Child (reference to the 1986 Eddie Murphy movie which starred J.L. Reate whom I resembled one summer when my mother shaved my head), just to name a few.

Between the ages of seven and eleven, the onslaught of names were somewhat manageable, however when I got to the sixth grade, the name calling graduated from simple insults and ribbing to physical and sometimes brutal battery. Seemingly overnight, my fellow classmates – all African American kids whom were medium skinned to very dark skinned, started to hit me as I passed them in the halls and class or as they passed me.

Going outside to the playground for recess was once a part of the day that I would wait for with anxious abandon. However, in the sixth grade, the school yard for me resembled the surroundings of a prison yard at Leavenworth. I was often singled out and assaulted with various hits or slaps. I was thrown to the ground on a few occasions, had dirt thrown at and on me, rocks pelted at me and I was ostracized to restricted parts of the yard to avoid further abuse.

Fighting back wasn’t an option as I was severely outnumbered and totally alone. Teachers and school yard administrators were as useless to me as a car with no steering wheel. I learned the hard way that to fight back using words, especially proclaiming my love for my skin (whether a lie or not) would often result in a beating far worse than to physically fight because, to them, to be proud of my complexion is to feel you are better than they are. Though never my intention to offend anyone, they were far removed from understanding that. To them, I felt entitled and superior.

To show my fellow classmates that I harbored no ill feelings about their skin tone, I began to secretly try to darken my skin using methods that I would hear comedians say in the movies or stand up routines and my very own relatives would say that make ones skin appear “dark as Hell.” The first trick I tried was to lather my entire body in cocoa butter when no one was at home and try and bake myself, literally. It was mid to late November, sometime just before Thanksgiving, and everyone was out shopping for the upcoming holiday season.

It was November 1992, I was 11 years old and ready to transform my skin into a brown sculpture of beauty that everyone seemed to love so much. I caked on a half a jar of cocoa butter my mother had bought to aide in concealing stretch marks. I walked into the kitchen, covered in butter, mostly naked and turned on the oven to the max heat of 550 degrees. I knew that the sun in the beginning of the winter was not strong enough to color me so I made the oven act as a makeshift tanning bed. Of course I couldn’t crawl inside. Instead I went into the dining room and removed three chairs and lined them up directly in front of the oven and set the kitchen timer for 45 minutes. As a distraction while I lay there, I was listening to Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ album on my Sony Walkman.

Fifteen minutes into my tanning attempt, I felt my skin begin to burn. It was as if my skin was literally being rubbed up and down by a hundred watt light bulb and sand paper. When the pain grew unbearable, I turned over to expose my backside to begin the second part of my tanning experience. Within minutes, much to my dismay, I had to stop as the pain on the front was intensified by lying on top of the scorching leather seats of my mother’s dining room chairs.

After I put the cocoa butter in the fridge and returned the chairs to the dining room; I made a mad-dash to the bathroom because of the good lighting and expected to see a healthy glowing brown complexion. It was at that moment I knew what real disappointment felt like. I stared at my mostly nude body and saw that but for some burning sensations and scattered red patches, there was no change at all to my skin tone. I couldn’t help but wonder what had gone wrong.

I was disappointed yet still determined to achieve the level of color I dreamed of. I decided to try it again, only this time, to numb myself of any potential burning, I downed three of the muscle relaxers and four table spoons of Nyquil I found in a medicine bag in my mother’s room. I took the pills because I remember my mother telling my aunt that the relaxers were so powerful that they would put her to sleep within twenty minutes after consumption. Once again, I thought I had the whole thing figured out. I had all the answers. I set the timer for 45 minutes again but I must have slept through the alarm because I woke up nearly three hours later in intense pain.

My heart was palpitating and my legs were burned and were as weak as noodles. I felt that I had the upper body strength of a newborn because getting up off that makeshift tanning bed, felt as if it took hours and every ounce of energy I had.

I eventually had to throw myself onto the floor which was piping hot as well. The house had to be at least a hundred and ten degrees inside. When I mustered up enough energy to get to the bathroom, I saw that the front of my body was not a golden brown, rather it was beet red; I had severely burned myself. I was devastated and unsure how I was to explain this to my mother.

The excuses were limited. Eventually I told her that I was attempting to make something in the oven and fell asleep. She was so thankful that I was not badly hurt and that the house had not been burned to the ground, that punishment wasn’t on her mind. Besides, the punishment was self-inflicted as I was home from school for nearly three weeks as the burns slowly began to heal with the aid of prescription cortisone crème.

Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, I continued to try to self tan and between the ages of sixteen and twenty, I would constantly frequent tanning salons, try tanning on the beach, which I hated, and even using make-up to add color to my face which led to various rashes and other breakouts. Nothing worked.

Today at the age of twenty eight, twenty-two years after feeling I wasn’t attractive because of my skin tone, I am still painfully insecure about the color of my skin. I try to deny it but as much as I would love to, I must admit that I am still not over it. It’s a devastating realization that the pains of childhood can haunt us for decades. I am slowly learning to accept myself but the journey is moving at a glacial pace.

I’ve realized a few years ago that my skin cannot tan; I burn very easily so the option of a tanning salon is no longer there. Instead of caking on cocoa butter as I did so many years ago, I must now wear sun block SPF 100 to prevent painful burns. In the last couple of years, the issue of complexion has reared its ugly head. From Tyra dedicating several episodes of her show to the issue of complexion in the black community, her show ‘Bleaching for Beauty’ being the catalyst for this paper, to Senator Arlen Specter of Nevada saying that President Obama will be accepted by the American majority because of his “light-skinned complexion.”

Even in the rap world there was controversy where up and coming rapper Yung Berg allegedly made reference to not being attracted to any black women darker than a paper bag. Rap producer Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs even put out an ad for his vodka promotion asking for a casting call of only light skinned or Latino women. This is colonialism at its very worst. However as much as I hear and read about darker skinned people of color who are insecure and going to extremes to get lighter, never have I read a paper or story where the reverse was true.

For nearly all my life, I wished to be something that I wasn’t meant to be. I cannot become darker no matter how hard I try. The Tyra episode showed that the pain of unhappiness due to ones exterior can be so devastating that it is crippling. One can wish to go to extremes to get darker skin (such as in my case) or lighter skin (such as in the case of those all over the world who try to ‘bleach for beauty’).

Though I am trying to accept my own skin, I still take minor measures to appear darker. I often try and refrain from taking pictures in the day light, under florescent lights and in dark clothing. I try to wear neutral colors as to blend in rather than to stand out. I also tried growing facial hair but that just irritates my skin more. One day, I am sure; I will become completely secure in my own skin. However, until then, I will continue to reluctantly be a slave to my own insecurities and remember the name that ignited my two decade old quest for external darkness. No matter what I do or how hard I try, I would always be mellow-yellow.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Skyler Drevan
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"