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"Mermaid Pink"
She threw it away. My aunt threw the dress away. My mom was not there to stop her. So she threw out my pink dress with the gray-white fish. It had a full-circle skirt, and when I twirled, the edges of its ocean rose to meet my fingertips, and I became a mermaid in a world of pink water and swirling silvery fish. But it was pink and my hair was red. (It wasn't red really, but Auntie said it was because my dad's was red, and when the sun lit me she could see my dad in my hair.) Redheads, she said, can't wear pink, and out it went. I miss my pink fish dress even today, fifty years later because without it, certain things are true: It isn't good to have red hair. A family of redheads is not acceptable. You can't participate in certain colors, so certain hills of the world are taboo. Reds, pinks, purples, oranges, and yellows must not exist in my clothes, my head, my eyes. It's bad to be seen in the wrong color. It isn't good to revel in a thing you own and love -- it will be thrown out if "they" discover this joy. It is wrong to go on swims of fantasy where you are the beautiful mermaid. Mermaids wear pink and I do not. Mermaids laugh among the watery air bubbles, and I do not. If someone invented sunglasses with pink eyes and fish of silver, I would buy them and enter a new world, for my hair is still red and I miss my pink dress with white-gray fish swirling round my mermaid tail.
Lera Baker Smith
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