“Does this make you feel racist?” she said, dipping the tip of her mocha finger in the tar-colored head of my diet soda. The foam already looked contaminated, like an eddy in a dirty river.
“No,” I said. “Of course it doesn’t.”
“How about this?” she said, and licked the length of her finger like a malicious porn star. Then she stuck it down to the knuckle in my glass and swirled it, making a dark whirlpool. Did I want to drink it then? Could I? I thought that the taste might have changed from the addition of her spittle. Was it because she was black that I suddenly wanted a fresh cup?
“You’re a jerk,” I said.
“You’re a Klansman,” she said.
“Look,” I said. “Look how thirsty I am. I’m so thirsty for this soda.” I lifted the glass to my lips and sipped from below the foam she had swirled.
“Tell me,” she said, while she wiped her wet finger on her jeans, “Am I your only brown friend? Am I what you might call a ‘token’? Just admit it if I am. It doesn’t even matter anymore. You can keep inviting me over and showing me off to your lily-white parents, trying to prove to them that you’re more enlightened than they ever were. You can keep pretending like you’re attracted to my older brothers, even though they’re darker than me and they probably scare the shit out of you. You can even keep writing your stupid English essays about how multicultural you are, about how you love Chinua Achebe. You can keep getting A’s on your papers, while I get B’s because I want to write about Robert E. Lee. Just fucking admit it though. Just admit that you think I taste different. That you think my skin feels different. That you don’t want to use my toothbrush if you forget yours when you spend the night. That you’d rather have the bad breath. Just acknowledge that I am black and you are white and that means something. Why don’t you ever see me? I stuck my finger in your drink. If anyone else did that, you would smack them.”
“You took me by surprise, that’s all. I mean Jen, we have made out before. Racists don’t make out with black people.”
“You were so wasted, Sienna. I had to remind you the next day what we did. And believe me, it was nasty. I would not do it again.” I did sort of remember our kiss. We were at a Halloween party and she tasted like pumpkin pie. I had been eating from a box of Fruit Roll-Ups that I found in Brian’s parents’ pantry. There were still bits of what looked like green plastic stuck between my teeth. The senior boys had egged us on, then they all turned away once my tongue was in her mouth. But I kissed her, and I knew what I was doing, and no white boy had asked me out since.
The soda really did taste bad now. I wondered if the dishwasher hadn’t rinsed all the soap out of the glass. I just sipped it anyway. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Some of her greasy lip gloss was on the rim and I drank around it.
“I really like you, okay? You’re my best friend. And when it’s just the two of us alone together, I forget you’re black. It’s just that I always find myself thinking about your blackness when we’re around other people or your family or something.”
“So the ideal is to forget that I’m black? It’s not to accept it – it’s just to forget it? That’s what you’re going for?”
“We should all be ignorant of color.”
“You know what I just became ignorant of? Your phone number, where you live, where you sit in the cafeteria, and what your name is. Later sister.”