Genesis Begins Again

Genesis’s dad comes home as Mama is finishing up her hair. Mama immediately notices that he has been drinking because he is sweating profusely. He says he is celebrating that he just got the promotion at work he’s been talking about. Mama says that maybe instead of drinking with his friends, he could have celebrated at home with his family. Genesis tries to relieve the tension by acting excited for him, but things continue to escalate.

Mama asks Emory if he is still going to AA meetings, and if he is, what they think of his celebration tonight. He doesn’t answer her question and instead watches Mama press Genesis’s hair. He asks Mama if she’s glad she never had to press her hair like Genesis, then asks Genesis if anyone ever tells her she looks like Mama because he can’t remember. Genesis reminds him of the other night when he told her that she has Mama’s smile, but he acts like he doesn’t hear her.

Mama starts to get angrier at him and raises her voice. Genesis is hoping she will lay into him so he will regret drinking. He tells Genesis that her hair now looks “as straight as an Indian’s” (133). Genesis corrects him and says that they are called Native Americans. Mama says that he gets mean when he drinks and that she is not going to let him be mean to Genesis. He says he is just playing, but Genesis knows that he isn’t.

Genesis goes to her room. As she brushes her hair in the mirror, she wishes she had hair like Mama’s. She always dreamed of having hair like Cinderella or Pocahontas. She takes out her list and puts a star next to #64: No one says that she looks like Mama. If she did, her dad would smile at her the way he smiles at Mama.

During dinner, Mama tells Genesis that she is going to school to get her degree and then hopefully a better job. Genesis worries that Mama is saving for school because she is thinking of leaving her dad, but she encourages Mama. They talk about Billie Holiday. Mama tells Genesis that Billie was addicted to drugs and her husband tried to help her get clean. It suddenly occurs to Genesis that her dad is like Billie Holiday, and her and Mama are like Billie’s husband. She asks Mama if she would ever leave her dad, and Mama hesitantly tells her that it is possible if he doesn’t change. Later, when Genesis tries to sleep, she can’t stop thinking of their conversation, so she listens to Billie Holiday again and hears sadness and hope in her voice. She looks at the CD cover and notices that Billie’s eyes look lonely.

The next day at school, Genesis tries to find Sophia so she can tell her about a biography she found on Billie Holiday in the library. She finally finds her in a bathroom standing in front of the sink. She has clearly just been crying. When Genesis asks her what is wrong, Sophia says there are no paper towels. Genesis wonders what is really wrong, but she runs to another bathroom to get her paper towels anyway. When they leave the bathroom, Sophia admits that she was just upset because she’s worried about her social studies test.

Genesis stays with Grandma on Friday night. While waiting for Mama to pick her up on Saturday morning, Genesis asks Grandma about their family history. She asks if they had any slaves in their family, and Grandma replies that her side of the family comes from hard-working people like senators and lawyers, not slaves. Grandma says that her dad was a proud man who believed that if they wanted to stay ahead, they had to “marry up,” as in marry other light-skinned Black people.

She tells Genesis about the time her father held a brown paper bag next to her sister’s boyfriend’s face to make a point of how much darker he was than the light shade of brown of the bag. His message was clear: he would not break with family tradition and have her marry a dark-skinned man.

Grandma admits that she held up a brown paper bag to Emory when Mama first brought him home. She says that it isn’t personal, that her grandad just understood the rules: darker-skinned people were the ones getting arrested or getting the worst jobs. Genesis hates to think that Grandma might be right, but she remembers all of the times girls thought she was mean or “ghetto” because she was dark-skinned.

Genesis wonders if Grandma looks down on her in shame because Mama married “down,” and she is her father’s child. She realizes that is how her dad looks at her when he is drunk, maybe because he tried to marry “up,” and it didn’t work since she didn’t come out light-skinned. She thinks to herself that it doesn’t matter how good your heart is, all that matters is how beautiful you are, and being dark-skinned isn’t beautiful.

After Grandma goes to sleep, Genesis goes downstairs and gets two lemons, three yogurts, and a scouring pad. Back in her bedroom, she begins to scrub at her skin with the scouring pad, scrubbing harder as the voices in her head get louder. The voices are of her family like her dad and Grandma, even Grandma’s dad, and her classmates. They taunt her and ask her who is going to love her looking like she does.

She scrubs so hard “at the blackest parts of [her]” that it feels like razor blades against her skin (157). She tries to scrub her face, but it hurts so much that she can only manage to scrub a little bit of her chin. She moves instead to scrubbing her knuckles, knees, and elbows. After she scrubs her body as much as she can, she rubs the lemons on her skin. The lemon juice stings painfully as it seeps into the cuts on her skin from the scouring pad. The yogurt she spreads on her skin afterward soothes her skin at first, but then the pain comes back even stronger. It feels like she has a bunch of blisters all over her.

Genesis is in so much pain the next morning that she can barely move her arms and legs. They are covered in scabs, but some are raw and bleeding. Her chin also has little scabs on it. She goes into Grandma’s cabinet and finds ointments to rub on her skin to try and ease the pain. The worst part, she thinks, is that even after all of this, she is still dark.

She puts on clothes that cover her whole body and goes downstairs for breakfast with Grandma. She asks Grandma if she wishes she looked more like Mama. Grandma doesn’t say anything comforting, like Genesis hopes. Instead, Grandma tells Genesis that life would be less complicated for her if she did look more like Mama.

Genesis is hurt and angry, so she is extra relieved when Mama comes to pick her up. When Mama notices Genesis’s chin, Genesis lies and tells her that she fell down the basement stairs by accident. Mama doesn't know where Dad is.