It was a cold February day and, despite my first grade classmates’ complaints, it was too cold to go outside. I was fine inside. I hated the cold and hated the long lines for the slide even more. The room was big and was filled with colorful posters. The book shelf was full of children’s books. The air smelled of strong marker fumes and Lysol wipes. My classmates and I were coloring self portraits.  The teacher marketed this assignment as something that we could use to decorate the classroom, and also take home to our families.

 As I drew disproportionately large eyes onto my face I realized that I needed to color my drawing. Dozens of Crayons were scattered all around the table and hands grabbed them by the fistful as if they were candy. I waited patiently for an opening and grabbed two Crayons -one named sepia and the other generically named brown. As I tried to figure out which one to use, a tablemate, a blonde girl with disproportionately small eyes, turned towards me.

“Why are you coloring yourself with that color?” she asked.

“What?” I replied, confused.

“Why are you coloring yourself with that color?” she repeated, truly befuddled.

“Because, I’m brown and I need it in order to draw myself” I answer. 

There were only two brown Crayons on my desk, but I thought they were okay matches for me. I mean one was a little too dark and the other was a little too light, but it’s all I had. They matched enough.

“What in the world is this girl talking about?” I thought to myself.

Then it hit me.

Do you know those moments in movies when the hero finds out something that fundamentally changes their life? The music takes a dramatic turn and their mind becomes liquid as you see their every important moment in flashback. Then you can hear their heart start to beat out of their chest. Boom! Boom! Boom! Soon the character is spiraling, and you, as a viewer, start to think “how will they survive this?” That’s the only way that I can describe what happened to me.

I started to revisit every single memory I had. 

I thought of the previous week. My teacher was reading a book about Ruby Bridges, and once she was finished she walked over to me. As the other kids rushed out of the room to go to recess she asked me “Sabry are you okay?”

 I thought she was asking me this because I was always quiet and kind of a loner in class, but now I knew that wasn’t the case.

My mouth grew dry.

I thought about how a girl in my class colored Fredrick Douglas with a peach Crayon. Did the student think the story was fiction or was race interchangeable to her?

I remembered how during Christmas time I was the only person that had used a brown Crayon to color their Santa. I remembered when the pictures lined the hallways and mine was the only one in the school that wasn’t a plump white man with a white beard. Instead it was a man that resembled my grandfather, with brown skin and a silver beard. 

My hands started to get clammy.

As I replayed all of these scenarios I realized they all happened because I was black. I was always aware that I was black. I knew about my family history. I knew what being black in America meant. But I had never thought of myself as a minority. I never needed to. Sure, I was the only person of color in my class, but my family was black and that’s who I was constantly surrounded by. 

The girl didn’t know why I was using the brown Crayon because no one she knew ever had. My teacher asked me if I was ok because I was a young black girl and the book was about a young black girl being oppressed. The girl colored Fredrick Douglas with the peach Crayon because every other book we read in class was with white characters. I was the only one that colored their Santa with a brown Crayon  because I was the only one that needed to in order to have Santa represent them. 

I spent the rest of the day in somewhat of a daze. What do you do with new information that technically was not new? When I went home that day, I didn’t talk to my parents or even my sisters. Instead I picked apart the situation in my head. I was black, an identity that I had always been aware of and embraced. 

Now I was also a minority.