By Melissa Flores Anderson
Daniel and I ducked out of the rain into a posh bar in Port Stewart. The place had a long counter with modern stools that looked to be made of clear acrylic, and in the center of the room sat a few empty couches and armchairs around an abstract art rug. The white leather furniture had silver accents and it seemed like the kind of place I didn’t belong. We took a seat on one of the sofas, our wet clothes and hair dripping onto the fabric. Daniel’s hair curled up into ringlets against his forehead and I wanted to reach out and touch them.
“Seems a bad idea to have a material like this in a place that rains all the time,” I said. “Like, I didn’t pack my leather jacket to bring here.”
Daniel laughed at that and my confidence grew a bit.
“Do you have a leather jacket?” he said. “Are you a Hell’s Angel on a motorbike?”
“I’m not,” I said. “And I think you mean motorcycle.”
I’d ended up with Daniel after some of the other Americans from my exchange program had been so rowdy, they got us booted from our regular spot. Too rowdy in a country where I had seen 16-year-olds pissing in the streets the night after completing their A-levels, for context.
But I was glad to be alone with Daniel, who had green eyes, a wicked sense of humor and an Irish accent I enjoyed hearing. I’d had just enough to drink at that point in the evening to relax against him a bit, to touch his arm as we talked. I settled into the cozy vibes between us in the near empty bar.
We might have been on our second drink when someone Daniel knew came in, a guy named Rich who hailed from Manchester.
The guy ordered a gin and tonic and sat across from us. The lounge was spacious and the clink of the glass against the table echoed.
“Your accent,” Rich said. “You’re not Spanish? I thought you were Spanish.”
“No,” I said. “I’m from California. My dad’s Mexican. My mom’s white. I’m probably more Irish than you.”
“I’m not Irish at all,” Rich said. “And proud of it.”
He and Daniel talked about European soccer clubs for a while before Rich turned back to me again.
“So your family are wetbacks?”
I knew the word, of course, but I’d never had it so directly pointed at me.
I stumbled to find a response and looked to Daniel for support. He was Irish, after all, and they’d faced oppression from the British for centuries. But he had grown up in Limerick, far from the segregated neighborhoods in Northern Ireland, in a well-off family that hadn’t been touched by the Troubles.
Daniel shrugged.
“That term is offensive,” I said and stood up to leave.
That semester in Ireland my junior year of college was the first time I lived anywhere that lacked a diverse population. My brown hair and eyes, my brown skin, they stood out in a place where everyone else was white.
Daniel followed me to the door and pleaded his friend’s case.
“Cut him a break. He didn’t know any better.”
But I knew that wasn’t true.
***
At 25, I spent a summer in South Africa working as an intern in Cape Town. I became friendly with one of the photographers in the newsroom who offered to serve as a translator when I needed it. Mats spoke English, Afrikaans and Xhosa fluently. I took all the help I could get in a country with 11 official languages and at a newspaper that had only one computer connected to the internet.
His skin was a shade darker than mine and his close-cropped hair was black. He wore a gray photographer’s vest and white Adidas sneakers he pronounced like “awww-dee-daws.” I knew he was mixed race without asking. Almost everyone in the newsroom was except the editor, who was a white Brit who liked to yell at all of us during pitch meetings.
In South Africa, part of Apartheid law included a Race Classification Act. People were classified as White, Black, Indian or Coloured (mixed race). People were classified into groups based on physical features such as skin color, hair texture, facial features and sometimes people within the same family were classified into different races, which all came with privilege or lack or privileges attached to the categories.
When I got my last assignment of the summer in mid-July, Mats offered to drive me and shoot the photos for my story. We drove to a hotel where government officials were hosting a launch of a new infrastructure project to expand internet access in several provinces in the county. I was tasked with writing about a training program and a job creation plan that would support the project.
Mats moved around the room snapping photos of some of the interns who were setting up audio-visual equipment at the front of the room. I looked over the printed program to see who would be speaking. The interns tested out their equipment and then one of them walked back toward the row I was sitting in.
He sat down in front of me and twisted around, his wavy black hair falling into his face. He looked younger than me by about five years.
“I’m Aqil. This is a fancy hotel, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You’re one of the interns, right? Part of the training program?”
“Yes, there are two dozen of us, but only two of us were selected to be here today. Do you work for the government?”
“I’m a reporter, writing a story for the Cape Argus,” I said.
“Are you Coloured?” he asked.
I hadn’t anticipated that kind of question.
“I’m American. We don’t really use that term there,” I said. “I’m actually Mexican and white. Are you?”
“I’m Cape Malay, but if you aren’t all white or all African here, you’re Coloured,” he said. “Can I have your number?”
“I’m leaving in a week so you can have it, but my phone will be out of service soon.”
In the car ride back to the newsroom, I told Mats what the intern asked me.
“Kind of a weird pick-up line,” he said and laughed.
“He did ask for my number.”
“Oh, that kid was watching you all afternoon,” he said. “I think he just wanted an excuse to talk to you. I don’t think he meant to offend you with his question.”
“Do you find it offensive? When someone calls you Coloured?” I asked him.
“I’m used to it,” he said. “I’ve been called much worse.”
“Does it bother you, being in this middle ground?” I asked.
“I’ve always been here,” he said. “Maybe if I have kids, it will be different. For your kids, too.”
***
About six months after I got married, I took a new job in executive communications. On the first day, the administrative assistant for the communications team walked me through a maze of cubicles and introduced me to dozens of people. I shook hands and tried to remember everyone’s names. Toward the end of the tour, she stopped by the cubicle for a tall, thin blond woman with freckled cheeks and ice blue eyes.
“This is Melissa Anderson,” the assistant said.
“Oh, another Scandinavian,” the blond woman said. She had an accent I couldn’t place. “Welcome aboard.”
“What?”
“Anderson,” she said. “That’s a Scandinavian name. There are a few of us here. We make aebleskiver in the break room during the holidays. You can join in.”
I blinked. No one had ever mistaken me for a Scandinavian before.
“It’s my husband’s last name. I’m not Scandinavian. I’m Mexican and white,” I said.
***
My 5-year-old son grumbled when I put him on hoja de maíz drying duty. He didn’t remember the last time he had that job, when he was 3 and gleefully splashed in a sink full of water. This year, he complained of bugs and rough edges, and asked to play his video game. But I made him stay for part of the morning, washing and drying corn husks.
It is the job that every tamale maker in my family starts with. There is a graduation to more complex duties like spreading the masa, adding the fillings or tying both ends of each tamale because we don’t fold ours like some families. We don’t have a recipe, either, and it’s all done by testing taste and texture.
As soon as the tamales went into the giant steaming pot it took only 30 or 40 minutes before my house smelled like my grandmother’s house did every Christmas morning when I was growing up. My son refused to taste the tamales, just like he won’t taste 85 percent of the food we offer him. I hold hope that someday he will appreciate this taste of my past that I’m trying to give to him, a tiny connection to his heritage.
My son has light skin that tans in the summer, brown hair with a small streak of blonde in his bangs and dark brown eyes, a dimple in his chin that matches mine and my father’s. Like me, he is somewhere in the space between white and Mexican. I know someday he will be confronted with it.
Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian who lives with her young son and husband. A 2023 Best of the Net nominee for CNF, her creative work has been published in more than two dozen journals or anthologies, and she is a reader/editor with Roi Fainéant Press. She has co-authored a novelette, “Roadkill,” that is forthcoming with Emerge Literary Journal. Follow her on Twitter and Bluesky @melissacuisine or IG/Threads @theirishmonths. Read her work at melissafloresandersonwrites.com.