Like Vanessa

Pop Pop gave me my very first “Darlene” eight years ago and a brand-new one every year after that-custom-made of pressed, dried wildflowers spanning every color of the rainbow. Most kids my age would call Darlene a diary, but she’s much more than a place to write stupid lists of the cutest guys in eighth grade. Darlene’s my chill spot: a place to share the lyrics in my head, the words crawling through my bones, the latest gossip running through Grafton Hill. Today’s hot topic? Miss America.
Pop Pop and I got a bet going for this year. Miss America’s never crowned a black girl…ever. And that pageant’s been going on every year since 1933! Way I see it, the powers that be have no plans whatsoever to pick a girl who looks like me. Let Pop Pop tell you: everything’s gonna change this year.
Watching Miss America is our little tradition. Each of us eyeing the screen, clutching onto a memory long gone. His memory is of time with his daughter, my mother. Honey eyed, vanilla-coated, lullaby-singing angel. Him pretending that on this very day, every year, he could have a piece of his little girl back through me. And me watching alongside Pop Pop. My memory: pushing, hoping, forcing myself to remember her. To remember what having a mother feels like. To, even for a second, drown myself in her beauty even though I don’t look a thing like her.
I pull out the hot comb, pomade, and all my favorite hair bows. Pop Pop lets me straighten and braid his hair while he nurses a coffee cup of whiskey. Me pretending I’m the one getting my hair done, and Mama’s doing it. Pop Pop pretending the whiskey’s a cure-all. A magic potion in all of its bitter sweetness, helping him remember too.
The hot comb glides through with ease. My grandfather has some silky, long, curly hair. Says he gets it from his Cherokee side. That Cherokee blood must have skipped over me.
Halfway through the show, two black women make it to the top ten: Miss New York, Vanessa Williams, and Miss New Jersey, Suzette Charles. They’re both so beautiful-black, the light-skinned and curly-haired type like Pop Pop and Mama. Maybe they got some Cherokee in them too.