Pink-Palmed Black Hands

So...here goes take 2 of Pink-Palmed Black Hands!! I like this much better though it couldn't have come about without the original version:


Pink-palmed Black Hands. The confusion they used to raise in the eyes of my white friends was unsettling. “How come?” they would say, “How come your palms are so pink?” And for those who didn’t dare ask I knew where the rest of the question would lead. So I took a breath and waited. In a minute I knew it would come tumbling out of their mouths in an awkward mix of wonder and embarrassment. And it never failed: “How come your palms are pink, but your skin is so BLACK?” Slightly irritated, I would turn my palms upward and stare, as if somewhere between the lines etched there I would find an answer good enough to satisfy their curiosity. As if! Their curiosity, I realized, was like the deep end of a river. You just never knew when your feet would touch the sandy bottom. And so I would stare while an eternity passed between us and wonder whether I should be ashamed of such hands. Pink-palmed Black hands. I couldn’t possibly tell my friends that I actually liked my hands, liked my long, slender fingers. I couldn’t tell them that where I came from, Pink-palmed Black hands weren’t an oddity at all. They would never understand. For them everything about my Blackness was peculiar. My hair, which they loved to run their fingers through, was like a ball of yarn; my skin, a lovely caramel tone, they compared to black chocolate or the black bar of soap we used at the morning bath. It was amazing to them that I shouldn’t feel at odds in my own skin. Unthinkable. So I gave their confusion back to them in the bewildered look of my eyes. I told them that I didn’t know. They should go ask God if they wanted the perfect answer. That’s what I thought. But I never dared say. I didn’t want them to be ashamed of their innocent confusion, of their bottomless curiosity. In a fleeting moment before the silence broke, I would think perhaps it was true. Was I not different? Was I not odd? As I grew into my skin, the question gradually leaving my friends’ mouths to settle into their eyes where it could be kept discreetly, I began to realize that my Blackness left people in awe of me. My ‘tan’ skin had the ability to simultaneously amaze and anger them. To produce both jealousy and envy. That was the contradiction contained within my Blackness. I would carry this contradiction around like a weight until I realized it was actually a prize. The beautiful alliteration of these hands would always belong to me. Pink-palmed, Pink-palmed; Pink-palmed Black hands.