The word was something my mother sometimes called African Americans when she was talking to her friends. Some told me the word meant “cotton picker,” others claimed it meant “bush animal.” Whatever anyone thinks it means, it is a nasty word. At the time, the way those girls were behaving, I was glad to call them “akata.” I’d have loved to see the pain in their faces if they then learned what the word meant. But a word like that, you don’t really need to know what it means. The meaning is all in the way it’s said, the sound of it. It’s ugly. It’s an insult. It’s like a dagger that is a word. She was bleeding, and I’d just drawn more blood.

She looked down and saw the blood on her pants, and a look of horror passed over her face. She was so embarrassed. The other girls looked embarrassed, too, and a disgusted look passed over Yinka’s face. Yinka was just a mean, foul person, turning on everyone in two seconds. In all the years I’d known her, she was always the same. Mean, and loyal to only herself. Faye’s embarrassed face changed then to that look girls get when they are going to destroy something.

I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. They descended upon me. Slapping me in the face, pulling my hair, shoving me against the wall. Then Faye dragged me to the coat hooks. She was so big that picking me up was easy. I struggled, but the other girls helped, too. They hung me there by my sweater. I couldn’t get down, no matter how hard I tried. They laughed at me, and then they left me there.

I was bruised and achy. My face felt like it was on fire, and my nose was bleeding onto my white sweater. My cheeks were wet and itchy with tears. I was so mad, but I was also ashamed and scared . . . scared of myself. Even back then I knew what I’d said was evil. I was American, too. And their history was connected to mine, even if it was not exactly the same. Faye’s ancestors had made America what it was, built it with their own blood, sweat, and tears, by force. They’d suffered and persevered. She was the product of survival. I knew this better than my mother, who wasn’t born there. And I shouldn’t have made fun of that girl’s shame, either. I knew what it was like to be made fun of and hated because of the way I looked.

But they hurt me. Just because I was African and had a defect. They, too, called me dirty. Why do we people from Africa always call each other dirty? Even I did. And why did they hate me so much? Why? I know why I confuse people. When people are confused, sometimes they get mean and violent. I wonder if this has anything to do with what I saw in the candle. Confusion.