What Are You?

On my first day of Girl Scouts, Mom and I climbed the long driveway of a bright white house in the rich neighborhood where I’d only ever been to get the good candy during Halloween. We were greeted by an ornately chiming doorbell, a spiral staircase, and the narrowed eyes of the blonde girls who went to my new elementary school.  

In California, where I was born and went to preschool, there were children of all colors and creeds, but in conservative Colorado Springs in the early ’90s there seemed to be mostly people of German descent. Every little girl had the same silky hair that slipped into tiny clear rubber bands, an outfit made up of pieces purchased straight from the Girl Scouts catalog (which Mom had recycled after glancing at a single price), and sashes heavy with patches and glinting pins.  

While Mom was being led out the door, they whispered to each other, smiling in my direction like something stunk. I did not know the Girl Scout pledge and did not have any money for my dues and, by the way their eyes scanned me over, I could tell my clothes were all wrong. I wore silver Moon Boots and pink leggings with an oversized purple Minnie Mouse sweatshirt handed down from my sister, unaware yet of how to achieve the Girl Scout look or at least a proper Coloradan one (blue jeans, fleece zip-ups, an easy ponytail, Adidas sneakers or boots). 

The others grinned smugly as I struggled to sing along to the “Make New Friends” song they sang in my honor, limply clasping hands. We discussed how we would contribute to our community this season, landing on performing for our elderly neighbors at nursing homes. Confident I would fit in before long, as my mother had promised in the car, I raised my hand to be considered for a singing solo. The other girls grinned tightly, like a litter of nervous, flaxen kittens.  

After the meeting, while we ate Jell-O cups and waited for our parents to pick us up, a girl with an underbite and hair in Baby Spice pigtails was the first in my life, but not the last, to ask, “What are you?” 

I had a wild thick mass of curly hair I was decades from appreciating and skin the same yellow-toned tan as my empty new Girl Scout sash. Throughout my life, people would marvel at their inability to guess my heritage. 

“I’m eight and three-quarters,” I shared, and everyone laughed, even the only other kid who was not as white as the cardstock I clutched with the Girl Scout pledge printed on it. This girl made up for her brownness with the best clothes: an official Girl Scout corduroy skirt, a pair of official Girl Scout knit tights, an official pearl-snap chambray shirt under an official emblemed vest, and the sweetest Girl Scout ribbon for her hair, which I coveted most, because it reminded me of Matilda. With every strained moment, I was clutching my Jell-O cup tighter, downloading what it meant to fit in here.  

“No, where do you come from?” Best Dressed asked, smiling with both teeth and gums, her Cookie Seller of the Year patch gleaming at the edges with gold thread.  

“California?” They all laughed again.  

I knew from a young age that I was Italian and something else, but the something else was ever shifting. Sometimes we were Spanish, and other times I overheard the word Mexican. Most often, Mom stuck with a clipped “You’re American!”  

I don’t think my mom was trying to erase her brownness, just the father she inherited it from—an abusive man she, a young girl, along with her mother and sister, had escaped on a cross-country train and who was only ever referred to as Crazy Joe in our house, if my parents spoke of him at all. It took decades to begin to understand how my grandfather’s own shame and self-hatred fueled his hatred of his family. Why he avoided the sun and commanded my mom to stand in the shade, never spoke Spanish though it was the language of his boyhood, and routinely lied about his heritage. 

“I bet she’s Mexican,” Baby Spice said with the venom of using a bad word she hardly understood.  

Knowing nothing of my grandfather, I thought only of Mexican food and Speedy Gonzales and the hand-braided earrings my aunt had brought me as a gift from her trip to Cabo. “Why?” I asked, genuinely excited to discover this part of myself.  

“Because you look dirty,” she said just before her mom appeared in the kitchen to retrieve her. I tried to sniff my hair without anyone noticing, hair that still smelled fresh from the Herbal Essences I had scrubbed it with the night before.   

I knew I shouldn’t cry, so I laughed. I laughed like I was in on the joke. I laughed so the other girls laughed, and when Mom showed up, exasperated to be shaken down by the troop leader for my dues at the door, she smiled when she saw I was making friends.  

Sammi LaBue is a multigenre writer and educator. The founder of Fledgling Writing Workshops (a Time Out New York Best NYC Workshop) and the author of the creative writer’s guided journal Words in Progress (DK 2020), Sammi is basically obsessed with the feeling of having an idea and writing it down. Some of her work can be found in The Sun, HuffPost Personal, BuzzFeed, Slate, Literary Hub, The Offing, and beyond. She received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is seeking representation for a recently finished dual memoir written in collaboration with her mom.

This essay first appeared in a different form in The Sun’s Readers Write section.