Growing up in Between

I grew up in the in-between.

People said it like it was a compliment.

“I don’t think of you as a Black person, Linda.”

“You’re so smart and articulate.”

“You’re really Black? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

As a teenager, I had a woman approach me in the Washington Square Mall in Indianapolis, my hometown. I was standing outside of one of those photo booths, giggling at black and white photos of my friend and I making faces and striking poses.  She walked up to me, reached out and stroked my arm and said, “Your skin is so pretty and soft. Are you Hawaiian?” I responded no, I was Black. 

As if revolted, she responded, “BLACK! Are you sure?”

I learned early that who I was made people uncomfortable—and instead of questioning that, they tried to rewrite me.

The truth is, I am the only Black person in my family. My mother married young and had my three older white siblings. In the 1960s, she met my father, a Black man, and had me in Chicago. After their divorce, we moved to Indiana, her home state, and into a house where no one looked like me. Years later, she remarried a white man and had my younger brother. I was surrounded by family—and completely alone in my skin. My father was not part of my life.

In school, I was one of three Black children. That’s not a statistic—it’s a spotlight. Kids threw rocks at me. Pulled my hair. Called me names that still sit heavy in my chest: NigHonk. Half-breed. Porch monkey. Blackie. The kind of names meant to shrink you, to make you question your right to exist. On top of that, I was a straight A student and a teacher’s pet. This made me even more of a target. 

But it didn’t stop there.

Black girls didn’t always accept me either. I wasn’t “Black enough.” High yellow b-word. White kids didn’t want me around because I was Black.

I had friends at church, but I wasn’t at church every day. So most days, I stood alone.

Home wasn’t always a refuge. I grew up hearing members of my own family say awful things about Black people—about people who looked like me. My grandmother, who I loved and who I know loved me, once scrubbed my skin after a day playing outside and said, “Maybe if we wash you hard enough, we’ll get off some of this brown.” That kind of moment doesn’t just sting—it settles in. It teaches you to question your own reflection.

And there were deeper wounds.

I was sexually abused by my stepfather and another former family member. I was a little Black girl in a sea of white people, with no active father, already isolated, already unsure of where I belonged. I was vulnerable. I was easy to overlook. Easy to silence. No one protected me.

I had no dolls that looked like me. No role models. No roadmap. I felt ugly. I wished for blue eyes and blonde hair. For porcelain skin that turned golden in the summer. I thought maybe if I could just look different, I could feel different. I could belong.

For most of my life, I searched. I read book after book, looking for someone—anyone—who felt like me. I rarely found them. I wished I could have been “more Black,” though I didn’t even know what that meant. I wished I could have known my father. Years later, I found out he had been looking for me on Facebook. When I finally reached out, I learned he had died just months before.

Missed chances have a way of echoing.

And yet.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking for permission to belong. I stopped waiting for someone to claim me and started claiming myself. I built a life that looks nothing like the one I came from—but honors every piece of it. I found my people—friends across races, backgrounds, identities—people who see me, fully. I found love in a man who embraces every part of me, every story, every scar.

And I found myself.

Today, I feel beautiful in my skin. Not in spite of my Blackness—but because of it. I claim it fully. I claim the girl who survived. I claim the woman who built her own space when none existed.

I am no longer in-between.

I am whole.