whatiwas

she had those too-light eyes that always seem so out-of-place on dark-skinned people, even though she was comparatively light-skinned, so obviously East African that I had to double-take when she asked me a question, because I thought I'd mis-heard her.

I hadn't. "Where are you from?" she asked.

"Iowa," I chuckled hesitantly, cupping her accent in my imagination and twisting it in circles, inventing her life story in the moment it took her to count the bills I'd given her for the parking ticket.

Her eyes grew in diameter and the story grew in magnitude; she was a princess, lost and exiled in the States in one of those nouveau-myths that have become as trite and cliche as any other story these days, kept from her throne by some stereotypical warlord or guerilla leader whose politics were never fully explained in the plot I spun.

"You're Black American?" she asked, sounding younger than she probably was.

"Yeah," I said.

She grinned sweetly as she handed me my change. "You look African," she said, smiling in that way Ethiopian women smile, like they know how important they are to the turning of the world. That, coupled with the compliment, made me wonder why I deal with the drama, why I spend my time with white women and their games or the Black women who won't give me the time of day because I have no money or the mexican women who just don't talk to me at all, or the Chinese woman for whom the time just isn't right.

I thanked her profoundly and drove away, wondering if she'd remember me.