Black Lives #6

Hello folks, this is RISK!, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and every Thursday we release these special episodes where we look back at content from earlier episodes of the podcast. This past Monday was Juneteenth, where we celebrate the emancipation from slavery for African Americans in the 1860s and commemorate how that extraordinary struggle for freedom otherwise has lived on right up to the present moment. So we thought it would be a nice time to do another Black Lives compilation of stories.

This will be the sixth episode in this truly remarkable series. In a little bit, we'll hear from Daralise Lyons, before that Nate Runko, and we're going to start things off with Tori Weston. So here's Tori now with a story we call, We Are Sisters. I am the oldest of four, two sisters and a brother.

Four of us, three different dads. We were raised in pairs. My sister Dell and I are a year and 10 months apart. My two younger siblings are a year and a month apart.

If you were to line us up, the skin color range would be dark chocolate, light brown, sun-kissed tan. Now Dell and I knew that we had different dads, but we weren't aware of our racial difference. You know, my dad was black, Dell's dad was white. And the first time I was aware of our racial difference was when I was seven and Dell was six, and I was in the second grade.

This is back in the 80s, so the school that we attended was a very diverse elementary school. We had, you know, black kids, Puerto Rican kids, Vietnamese, Laotian, Irish American kids, French American kids. So we were a very racially diverse school. Also the way, you know, our building, our school building was, if you walked through the front door of the school, the principal's office was in plain view when you walked up the stairs.

And then there was a floor of classrooms and then another floor of classrooms. And my second grade class was right next to the principal's office. Now on Sundays in my classroom, we could hear our principal yelling at a student as if she was in our class yelling at the student. Sometimes it would just be boys who would play pranks or would, you know, flood the bathroom sinks.

And other days we could hear the principal's secretary listen to the radio and sing along to the radio. All of our teachers were white. Principal was white, principal's secretary was white. So my sister's teacher was this tall white woman with long brown hair, walks into my classroom and speaks to my teacher, Mrs.

Raptes, who was a medium height, white woman, you know, with a bob, black bob hair. And she says, one of my students is in the principal's office and I was told that her sister is in your class and their grandmother is going to come and pick them up. So my teacher's like, okay. And then she says the name.

She's like, her name is Tori. And my sister's teacher's looking directly at one of my classmates, who is this girl who, white girl who has like bushy, curly brown hair. And she's like, you know, Tori. And she's looking directly at her.

And then my teacher, Mrs. Raptes, turns and looks at me and is like, Tori, gather up your stuff. Your sister's sick and your grandmother's coming to pick you up. And out loud, my sister's teacher says, that can't be Tori.

And my classmates and I are like looking at this other teacher, like, what do you mean? Now it's, you know, the 80s. Tori's not a very popular name. I am the only Tori in the school.

So I go get my stuff and you know, Mrs. Raptes, like, you know, walks me to the principal's office and I walk into the principal's office. I see my sister, her nicely braided ponytail is now, you know, coming out of the elastic. Her face is flushed.

Her nose is really red. She's crying and she's using her sweater as a tissue. So I go sit next to her. I put my arm around her.

And then she whispers in my ear, I threw up on my desk. And so I am like, you know, trying to comfort her. But my eyes are drawn to the teachers in the hallway and they're talking above a whisper. And all of a sudden I hear the words, the other girl's father is white.

And as soon as those words come out of her mouth, the front door opens and my grandmother sort of glides up the stairs. And my grandmother was very beautiful woman, voluptuous woman. You know, she had like cinnamon brown skin, you know, her hair was always like curled to the nines. And she looks at these two teachers and she says, they are sisters regardless.

Don't ever tell my grandchildren that they're not sisters. And my grandmother walks towards the principal's office. She motions us to come toward her. We gather our things and we walk out of the school.

And it's not until we get into the car that I realize how upset my grandmother is. And she tells us, no matter what someone tells you two, you two are sisters. And it is the first time I realized what the teacher saw. I'm holding my sister's hand and I see the difference.

I see my dark brown skin hand holding her sun-kissed tan hand. And I look at my sister's face and I see that we look very different. And it's the first time I see what they saw. Years later, my sister and I don't live in Rhode Island anymore.

But every now and then we come home, you know, and visit friends and family. And to this day, people still are like, Della is your sister? And I'm like, yes, Della is my sister. What's up, friends and family?

All right. So when I was a kid, I loved the Muppets. All right. And my favorite Muppet, the Muppet that I loved the most, the one that I related to, was Gonzo.

Okay. Because while Kermit was a frog and Piggy was a pig, Fozzie was a bear, Gonzo, well, Gonzo was a whatever. Gonzo was, nobody knew what Gonzo was. It was whatever Gonzo is.

Gonzo was weird. Gonzo was different. And I really related to that because you see, I have dark skin. All right.

If I were to describe my skin color to someone who maybe isn't sitting in this audience, but is maybe, I don't know, listening to me tell a story on, say, a podcast or something like that, the best way I could describe myself, and audience, back me up on this, is I look identical to the Rock Dwayne Johnson. Okay. I look like the Rock Dwayne Johnson's kind of scrawny younger brother who's somewhat built like E.T. with these tiny little arms, a little bit of a belly.

Okay, I'm losing the thread here. What I mean is, the Rock and I share a complexion. And the reason I mention this is that no one else in my family has the same complexion as me. Not my dad, not my mom, and not my sister.

My mom, when she was alive and she was younger, she had like blonde hair, really fair skin, much like my sister does now. My dad, dark hair, slightly darker complexion, but nothing you would ever confuse for anything other than white. And I, I look like me. You know, I had heard we had Irish and Welsh and some German in our background, but nothing, nothing that could explain the way that I look.

You know, I used to tell myself, I never met my maternal grandfather. Okay, my mom was born out of wedlock and we had no pictures of him. And I always thought to myself, well, my grandfather, he must have the same skin color as me and it must be like some sort of like recessive gene, like being a redhead or like blue eyes or something. And that's where my complexion comes from.

But even with that thought, I always felt different. Okay. And I always felt other. And that's why I related so hard to Gonzo.

And we never talked about it as a family. We never had any conversation about it until one night we actually did. You know, my mom passed away when I was in my twenties and I failed out of school and I moved back home. It happens to the best of us.

Okay. And I'm living at home for a very long time. All right. And I'm in my thirties and my dad came home from the bar drunk.

All right. My dad was a drinker. My dad had a little bit of a problem with alcohol. You may call it alcoholism.

Okay. So my dad comes home drunk one night and he was a jovial drunk. You know, our family always said Runkles are lovers when they drink. And it's true.

And my dad came home from the bar and I don't even know how it came up, but somehow he let slip. Did he have reservations that he was actually my biological father? And I just sat there and all of a sudden, all of those feelings of being other came flooding back to me. And those feelings from childhood and some of those stories I hadn't thought about in years.

Like my grandmother used to take me to work with her and all the ladies in the office loved me. And there was one woman who always said, oh my goodness, Nate has the most beautiful tan. I wish I had Nate's tan. And that was the first time I ever remember anyone mentioning that I looked different than my family.

And then, you know, you Don't you want to know? And I didn't, because we talked about avoidance. And she used to joke. She would say, while you're asleep, I'm going to swab you and I'm going to send it off.

And I'm going to find out just for me. And then I won't even tell you. Well, you know, after we got engaged, I started thinking, we're starting a future together, possibly even starting a family together. And what if my story is no longer just my story anymore?

What if we have kids? What do I tell them? Do I continue the train of avoidance? No.

So what I did on Cyber Monday with a very good deal, I ordered a 23andMe health and ancestry kit. It came in the mail. Spit in the tube, put it in the envelope, sent it off, felt perfectly fine. That also is 100% a lie.

I had 30 days of anxiety as I waited for this thing to come through. But then one day I'm sitting on the sofa and notification pops up. Your 23andMe results are in. Cool.

Let's check this out. So I open it up and I start reading. And it says 28.6% British and Irish. Okay, there it is.

Welsh and Irish like I always thought. 24.8% French and German. My dad's German. All right.

Confirmation. My parents are... That's not 100%. So I keep reading.

32.6% West African. 18.4% Nigerian for a total of 44.5% Sub-Saharan African. I'm half Black. But my mom's not Black.

And more importantly, my dad's not Black. Fuck. Katie comes home from work and she can tell something's off. And she says, what's going on with you?

You don't seem present. And I said, well, my 23andMe result came in today. She goes, oh my God, what did it say? And I said, well, it said that I'm 44.5% sure that I am allowed to rap along with Wu-Tang Clan songs without self-censoring.

I laughed too. But then I cried. And I had another breakdown. You know, Katie afforded me the space to kind of deal with what I needed to deal with.

And then a few days later, we're out for a walk and she had some questions and I had some questions. But she wanted to know how I was feeling. And one of her most important questions was, well, how do you identify now? And I'm going to be honest with you, because of the way I look, I have always identified with marginalized groups.

And I've done that, as a therapist very recently told me, because as he said, when you get pulled over by a cop, you know exactly what that cop sees. Because here's the honest truth. Racism doesn't look for a DNA test. It doesn't care.

It looks to hate and it looks to hurt. So I have heard every single racial slur for every single group that has dark skin my entire life. Be it Black, Arab, Indian, Puerto Rican, anything, I've been called it. But I've always presented myself as like a nerdy white guy.

So to even say that I'm half Black feels like appropriation. It honestly feels like I didn't live that experience, that I haven't earned that experience. And she asked, well, are you mad at your parents for never telling you this? And my God, no.

If anything, I love and respect my father possibly more than any person I have ever met. Because here's a man who had very strong doubts that he was my biological father, but he stood there and raised me to be the man I am today. And to my mother, I feel nothing but sympathy and love and compassion towards her because she had a very hard life. You know, I told you she was born out of wedlock.

That was in the 50s. And she was made to feel lesser because of that. She had a lot of trauma in her past. Sexual assault, multiple suicide attempts.

I told you about the heroin addiction. And then in her 40s, she succumbed to leukemia and she passed away. So I have nothing, nothing but love and sympathy and respect for my parents who did the best to raise me to be who I am. If there's any anger whatsoever, it's directed towards myself because I was never strong enough.

I was never adult enough to have a conversation with them about how I felt. And it was all because of our mutant superpower of avoidance. And what I was avoiding, what I have been avoiding my entire life has been based in fear. And it's the fear that my dad or my dad's family, they might think that if I were looking or asking questions that I didn't think they were enough, that I wanted something else.

And that couldn't be further from the truth because the main thing that has made me the neurotic person that I am today, the people pleaser, everything is all based in the other half of that fear. And that is that fear that they would love me less or maybe even not love me at all. You know, I talked about Gonzo. Muppets from Space came out and that was like a slap in the face to me.

All right. I rejected it. It was an insult because they tell you where Gonzo came from. They told you Gonzo was an alien.

And I never wanted to know that. Much like myself, I never wanted to know. But ever since finding all of this out, I've kind of revisited that. And now it has brought me nothing but comfort because in the end of the movie, the aliens come back for Gonzo and they offer him a chance to go back to his home planet.

But he decides to stay on Earth with the Muppets, with the family he found and the family who loves him. So much like Gonzo, I was able to discover who I am without ever losing sight of who my family is. And if you guys don't mind, I'm probably just going to stay here on Earth and be a Muppet. Thanks.

We'll be right back. We are back. I'm not the type of person to spend holiday with family. Not my own family, not other people's families.

Part of that is because I've spent most of my late teens and early twenties in and out of eating disorder treatment facilities. And part of that is because I just really avoid exposure to the phase, which as a recovering bulimic can be great when alone, but terrible in the company of others. I am not very good at self-restraint. But in 2010, eight months out of being released from my last treatment center, seven months into my relationship with my girlfriend Lee, we're so enamored with each other that when she asks me, hey, dare, will you come with me to my family's for Thanksgiving?

I forget my aversion to families and buffets. And I say, sure, I'd love to do that. Even though I would not love to do that at all. Lee and I could not be more unalike.

Physically, mentally, emotionally, in terms of background. She's five foot two inches. I'm five seven and a half. She's got spiky hair that she teases into a mohawk and she's slender and she's got tattoo sleeves and works as a teacher.

I'm Black and white biracial with curls like cumulus clouds and skin, the color of Werther's caramel candies that I cannot eat in moderation, PS. Anyway, a few years back, she served a six month prison sentence that was expunged from her record so she can now be a teacher, which is a very respectable job. But she was put in prison for assaulting the husband of a woman with whom she was having an affair. And I noticed this has impacted her because when we go out to eat together, she hunches over her food and shovels it in because apparently when you're five foot two inches tall in prison, people steal your food.

So Lee and I make a very strange looking pair and we have no business being together. For one thing, when I was in treatment, the professionals there warned me not to get into a relationship for the first year of recovery. And we met when the ink on her divorce papers still was not dry. I think she was a week out of her relationship with her ex-wife.

But nevertheless, we are all over each other. I am so attracted to everything about her that is different than me. And I think she's attracted to me for being weird and quirky and a hot mess. And even before moving in together, we find ourselves having sex in every room of my apartment, as well as every room of her house, which she bought from her grandmother.

It's this house in wildhood with bubblegum pink tiles in the kitchen and formica countertops. But we do it on those formica countertops because they do not phase me. All I can see is Lee. She tells me that when she was growing up, all she ever saw were white people, which although I grew up around a lot of white people too, including my white mother, I don't really have a framework for because I had a very diverse and eclectic background that was reflective of my identity as a black, white, biracial person.

And she tells me that her family didn't have a lot of education or a lot of resources, which is pretty different than my background growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut. And she also shares about some of the violence that she experienced as a child. And I forget all of that when she asks me if I'll come with her to her family's Thanksgiving. And I say, of course I'll come with you to your family's for Thanksgiving.

I should have made note of the fact that my family would have been fine if I invited Lee to come with me to Connecticut. They are very celebratory of my identity as a bisexual person. But And you know, it reminds me of gag gifts, but I feel like these people are somehow being serious. And so I don't quite understand.

And my girlfriend isn't laughing as we make our way, not holding hands, which is weird for us because we're typically all over each other. So we make our way up to her brother's front door and the door flings open and this enormous man with a brown buzz cut steps outside and punches my girlfriend hard in the shoulder and greets her with a, Hey, pipsqueak. And she punches back with a, Hey, asshole. And then she turns to me and says, uh, this is my friend Dara.

Dara, this is my brother, John. And I'm trying to figure out if I heard her right and wondering if maybe she mumbled the girl part of girlfriend, but no, because when I meet her other brother, Steve, and then her sister-in-law and her nieces and her mom and her stepdad, she introduces me the same way each time. Meet Dara, my friend. And when I meet her stepdad, he leers at me and says, well, now, ain't you a pretty young thing.

Can't believe you ain't spending Thanksgiving with a boyfriend. And I'm like, oh wow. But I'm not necessarily put off by him thinking that his stepdaughter and I aren't together because I'm too mesmerized by his cavernous mouth. The man has only three teeth and somehow in the midst of this three-toothed smile, he's managing to dangle a cigarette between two of said teeth and smoke without using his hands, which is fascinating to me.

But also I'm mildly allergic to smoke and have a little bit of asthma. So I'm like waving my hand in front of the face as I reply, no, no boyfriend, but I'm really happy to be here with Lee. I didn't come out as bisexual until my twenties and have never felt pressured to hide any aspect of my identity from sexuality to race. So the feeling of not being accepted or embraced as a bisexual person is completely new to me and very, very confusing considering that my girlfriend is a gold card lesbian who was married to a woman for five years and has had more girlfriends than she can count.

So I'm really not certain how she puts up with her family's intentional ignorance or how they can pretend not to know because my family is the kind of family that talks openly about everything, including sex in a way that is very uncomfortable and off-putting for most outsiders. So I look at my girlfriend and I raise my eyebrows in a gesture that is clearly saying, are you going to tell them or should I? And she just rapidly shakes her head back and forth, a clear sign that I am not supposed to voice what they have all decided will remain a family secret. And I look at my watch and it's 3.03.

So there's about 27 minutes until our awkward 3.30 designated Thanksgiving linner time. And clearly there's going to be no discussions about indigenous history or the invasion of America today. There's no recontextualizations of the lies that Americans pass off as history. And I feel myself panicking.

There's panic, panic, panic, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. Oh my gosh, what did I do? Why am I here? Lee's stepdad has three teeth.

Her and her brothers punch each other hello. There's more food than I assumed. She's telling them I'm her friend and I can't tell my girlfriend how I'm feeling because for one thing, she's going through her own parallel panic. And for another, she's being careful that the two of us don't get too close or give off like sort of together vibes.

And so I find myself just in the corner of the living room talking to Lee's mother and she says, I'm glad we could all get together today. And this is a woman who's been married three times, always Lee's told me to men who beat her. And it's pretty clear to me that she has her own food issues as evidenced by the fact that according to my girlfriend, her weight has gone up and down the same hundred pounds at least half a dozen times. And today she's stretching the limits of spandex that are clearly a size too small.

And she seems to have some sort of stain on her Christmas sweater, which I assume because we're at Thanksgiving that this Christmas sweater has become some sort of holiday catch-all. And then she says, Lee, your stepdad brought his bathtub moonshine. Y'all can try some of that later in her weird hybrid New Jersey slash Southern accent. That's clearly a mixture of the influences of having spent about 40 years up North before moving South to be with a man who has a history of beating her.

And as we all sit down at the table, I whisper to my girlfriend, are you seriously going to drink alcohol that was made in a bathtub? And she just shrugs. And so I let it go. And I remind myself of my investment in diversity.

And I remind myself that if she came to my families, there would be things about us that she found weird, like how my vegetarian mother can't cook anything except meatloaf and beef stew, which is strange. And how my family openly discusses childhood wounds, race, religion, and sexual orientation and how they have no shame. And I have no shame except about one thing, which is my history of bulimia. And that's the only thing I don't openly talk to my family about.

And I could, if I wanted to talk to them about it. But I feel like it's the one thing that makes me unlovable. So I don't. And at Thanksgiving with Lee's family, I pick listlessly at my turkey and I take a bite and I'm so relieved that it's dry and mildly disgusting.

And so I have no urge to eat more than my designated portion. And Lee's stepdad says, well, it's chilly out there, ain't it? And her mom replies, not as chilly as Thanksgiving 1972. I'm pretty sure it snowed that year.

And he says, yeah, glad it didn't so much as rain while we were driving up. And I cringe on the inside because seriously, are these people talking about the weather? And I who have been in treatment 18 times, who live and breathe therapy, want to talk about the depths of our souls. And I can't fucking believe that we are talking about the weather.

And it seems that when they go a layer deeper, still the deepest they can go is now talking about the stuffing. This is really good. Barely even needs any gravy. Ugh, food, the weather, and then traffic.

Fuck my life. Nothing about hopes and dreams. Not a single question about Lee. And definitely they don't ask me anything about me except lecherously wondering why I'm not with my non-existent boyfriend.

I find myself eyeing the pie on the counter, pumpkin. But no, there's no way I can have some without having all. And the last thing I need to do is spend this holiday locked in the bathroom because even this family wouldn't be able to ignore that. Beside me, my girlfriend's leg is vibrating.

And I distract myself by staring across the table at her three-toothed stepdad as he shovels mashed potatoes in his mouth because it would seem that he does better with mushy foods, almost like a baby, which I get, right? With only three teeth, what are you going to do? And luckily, again, my appetite evaporates. No pie, no turkey.

It's weirdly a relief. Lee, however, is staring daggers at her stepdad. Long before I ever met her, he was arrested for putting hands on her mother. And today he's all smiles as if all of that was a thing of the past.

I take a bite of overcooked green bean casserole, refrain from spitting it out, swallow, and don't take another bite. Then Lee's stepdad changes the subject. You know, our town in North Carolina is going to shit because of them. And then he says the word that grates on my soul like nails on a chalkboard.

He says the N-word. We're sitting around having Thanksgiving dinner. I'm half black. And yet he continues.

Then blacks are stealing our jobs. From what Lee's told me, the man hasn't worked in decades and lives off the government. And before that, he sponged off her mother. And I wonder if anyone's going to say anything.

So I look over across the table at Lee's sister-in-law, who like me, is an outsider. And her head is down. And I think at least she has the decency to be ashamed. But no, she takes a bite of mashed potatoes and looks up again.

So it wasn't shame. She's simply focusing on her food. Meanwhile, Lee's brothers are inhaling their turkey and gravy. And then her other sister-in-law puts more cranberry sauce on her husband's plate because this is an environment where women have been conditioned to serve the men around them.

And I look at Lee's mom, another woman who gets into a relationship with men with questionable views, beliefs, and behaviors, and find that not only is she not ashamed, but she's nodding along as her husband continues with his monologue. Meanwhile, my girlfriend clenches her hands into fists so tight that her fingernails are cutting into her palms. And I see little fingernail blood trails that are the only evidence that anything about this Thanksgiving is not okay. And I reach out and I take one of her hands covertly under the table so no one sees and so that she won't harm herself because this family has injured her enough already.

And I could say something. I know I could say something. I'm the type of person who always says something. But I also know that if I do, Lee's stepdad is only going to tell me how I'm not like them, whoever they are, right?

Or he'll double down and continue to berate these people who I know he'll never accept because he doesn't even that wherever they are, their hearts and minds have changed about Black folks and queer folks and anyone who isn't the same race, orientation, or religion. And for my part, I've tried to let that experience not change how I see people whose identities and whose ancestors carry a complicated history of bigotry and oppression. And I like to think that these days, maybe not on Thanksgiving, but on all the other days of the year, I can be grateful that I don't have to live in fear or hate, that I can embrace the humanity in all of us. And to me, that seems worthy of giving thanks.

Well, that is all for this Black Lives Number 6 compilation of Risk stories we put together to commemorate Juneteenth this year. We just heard from Darryl East Lyons. And before that, Nate Rongko, who's going to record a Patreon check-in with me that we're going to run next week, all about how sharing that story on risk changed his life. Because risk does that for people, which is why we need our listeners to help keep risk running over at patreon.com slash risk.

Folks, today's the day. Take a risk.