(S)Kin

by Ibi Zoboi

This corner of Brooklyn could be anywhere in the Caribbean with all its island flavors and sounds. The smell of curry stew and jerk chicken grilling outside a restaurant and the lingering scent of Haitian pumpkin soup from New Year’s Day wafts into our apartment. Soca and compas rhythms blasting out of car speakers make our walls shake.

I am a ravenous creature born out of war and all I want to do right now is inhale life so that I can keep on living.

If the sea and sun are her dream for me, then the other meaning of my name is a curse. Forever alone, forever my mother’s only daughter, forever a sole shooting star in the night sky.

Here, ambition takes the place of superstition and the immigrants like us have turned their eyes away from the wonders of the unseen world.

I am made of vapor and vengeance. I am both ghost and deadly smoke.

The skin that is given to you by them: Black, girl, poor, and immigrant— Wear the skin that is given to you by your foremothers: powerful, cosmic, and incomprehensible,”

Genevieve is not from the islands. Genevieve lives with her white father and a white mother who is not her mother—

When Genevieve stands next to my mother and my eyes move from one face to another, questions, answers, secrets, and lies become a cosmic storm in my mind— a collision of galaxies, crashing into each other to expose one big truth. What is this place? Who are these people? Who is that girl? What is this family to us?

my heart shatters into a billion pieces. Is this what truth feels like? An earthquake in my soul? A fault line on my skin?

“And you must soon learn how to shed this skin, Genevieve. The skin that is given to you by them: mixed race, girl, middle-class, and American— To wear the skin that is given to you by your foremothers: powerful, cosmic, and incomprehensible.”

we understood that vengeance is a monster that can shape-shift too; becoming envy and greed and all those emotions that come with being human.

And, maybe, my American dream is to peel away the layers of our magic one beautiful metaphor at a time—