Junot Diaz How To Date A Browngirl

The New Yorker, Dec 25, 1995 P. 83

Wait until your blood brother, your sisters, and your mother leave the flat. Yous've already told them that you were feeling as well sick to go to Union City to visit that tía who likes to squeeze your nuts. (He'due south gotten big, she'll say.) And fifty-fifty though your moms knew you weren't sick you stuck to your story until finally she said, Become ahead and stay, Malcriado.

Articulate the authorities cheese from the fridge. If the daughter's from the Terrace, stack the boxes in the crisper. If she's from the Park or Society Hill, and so hide the cheese in the cabinet higher up the oven, where she'll never see information technology. Leave a reminder under your pillow to go out the cheese before morning or your moms will kicking your donkey. Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the campo, especially, that one with the one-half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope. Hide the motion picture of yourself with an Afro. Make certain the bathroom is presentable. Since your toilet tin't flush toilet paper, put the bucket with all the crapped-on toilet paper under the sink. Spray the bucket with Lysol, then shut the hat.

Shower, comb, dress. Sit on the couch and watch TV. If she'south an outsider her father volition bring her, maybe her mother. Her parents won't want her seeing a boy from the Terrace—people get stabbed in the Terrace—but she'southward strong-headed and this time will become her fashion. If she'south a white girl, yous're sure you'll at least get a hand chore.

The directions you gave her were in your best handwriting, and so her parents won't recollect you're an idiot. Get upwardly from the couch and check the parking lot. Zip. If the girl'south local, don't sweat. She'll flow over when she's skilful and ready. Sometimes she'll run into her friends and a whole crowd will bear witness up, and even though that means yous ain't getting shit information technology volition be fun anyhow and you'll wish these people would come up over more often. Sometimes the daughter won't menstruum over at all and the next day in school she'll say, Sorry, and smile, and you'll believe her and be stupid enough to enquire her out once more.

Y'all wait, and afterward an hour you leave to your corner. The neighborhood is full of traffic—commuters now cut through the neighborhood—making information technology hard on the kids and the viejas, who are used to empty streets. Give ane of your friends a shout and when he says, Still waiting on that bowwow? say, Hell, yep.

Get back inside. Telephone call her house and when her begetter picks up ask if she's there. If he sounds like a main or a police main, a dude with a big neck, someone who never has to watch his back, and so hang up. Sit and wait. And wait. Until finally, just every bit your breadbasket is about to give out on you, a Honda, or maybe a Cherokee, volition pull in and out she'll come.

Hey, she'll say.

Come on in, you'll say.

Wait, she'll say. My mom wants to meet y'all. She's got herself all worried well-nigh nil.

Don't panic. Say, Hey, no trouble. Run a hand through your hair like the white boys exercise, even though the only thing that runs hands through your hair is Africa. She volition look good. White girls are the ones you want most, aren't they? But the out-of-towners are usually blackness—black girls who grew upwards with ballet and Girl Scouts, and have three cars in their driveway. If she'due south a halfie don't be surprised that her mother is the white ane. Say, Hi. She'll say, How-do-you-do, and you'll see that you don't scare her, not actually. She will say that she needs easier directions to go out, and fifty-fifty though she already has the all-time directions on her lap, give her new ones. Make her happy.

If the girl's from the Terrace, none of this will happen.

Yous accept choices. If the girl'south from around the mode, take her to El Cibao for dinner. Order everything in your busted-up Spanish. Amaze her if she's black, let her correct you if she's Latina. If she's non from effectually the way, Wendy's will do. As y'all walk to the eating house, talk about school. A local girl won't demand stories about the neighborhood, but the others might. Tell her nearly the pendejo who stored cannisters of Ground forces tear gas in his basement for years until one mean solar day they all cracked and the neighborhood got a dose of military-force stuff. Don't tell her that your moms knew right abroad what it was, that she recognized the olfactory property from the twelvemonth the United States invaded your isle.

Hope that y'all don't run into your nemesis, Howie, the Puerto Rican kid with the two killer mutts. He walks them all over the neighborhood, and every now then the mutts corner a cat and tear it to shreds, every bit Howie laughs and the cat flips upwards in the air, its neck twisted effectually like an owl'due south, red meat showing through the soft fur. And if his dogs haven't cornered a cat, then he'll be backside you, request, Is that your new fuckbuddy?

Let him talk. Howie weighs two hundred pounds and could eat y'all if he wanted. But at the field he'll turn abroad. He has new sneakers and doesn't desire them muddy. If the girl's an outsider, that'due south when she'll hiss, What a fucking asshole. A homegirl would accept been yelling dorsum at him the whole time, unless she was shy. Either mode, don't feel bad that y'all didn't do anything. Never lose a fight on a beginning date.

Dinner volition be tense. You lot are non good at talking to people you don't know.

A halfie will tell you that her parents met in the Movement. Back so, she'll say, people thought it was a radical thing to practise. It will sound like something her parents made her memorize. Your brother heard that one, besides, and said, Sounds like a whole lot of Uncle Tomming to me. Don't echo this.

Put downwardly your hamburger and say, It must have been hard.

It was, she will say.

She'll appreciate your interest. She'll tell you more. Blackness people, she will say, treat me existent bad. That'southward why I don't similar them. You'll wonder how she feels about Dominicans. Don't enquire. Allow her speak on information technology and when you've finished eating, walk back through the neighborhood. The skies will be magnificent. Pollutants have made Bailiwick of jersey sunsets ane of the wonders of the world. Indicate it out. Touch her shoulder and say, Isn't that overnice?

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/12/25/how-to-date-a-brown-girl-black-girl-white-girl-or-halfie

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