b e n ' s c l o n e
pregnancy. I wonder if the chemicals at the dry-cleaners affected Junior's brain chemistry in some way. He looked healthy at birth.
Naturally Junior wanted to know about the life-support system that carried him to term.
"Technically she is my mother."
"Don't think of her that way. You don't share any of her genes--"
"I share her mitochondria."
"Uh--" Did he? Could that be the problem? Could that explain our differences? "Well..."
"You don't know what mitochondria are, do you?" he grinned like an oaf at his father‘s ignorance, the bastard.
"I—uh—paid extra to have my own mitochondria put in the egg."
He gave me that look of disbelief that would make my own father slap me cross-eyed. I resisted my instincts. It was not a "constructive urge," as the social worker put it. I tried to dissuade him. Wasn't I enough identity? I even tried satisfying him with a picture of Latanya, but that only made things worse.
"Mom's African American?"
I nodded my head awkwardly, staring at the floor, "Yes, I'm afraid your mother is--"
"Cool!"
I looked up, "What?"
"I'm black."
"You're not black," I countered, "You don't have any of your mother's genes."
"Yeah, but I spent nine-plus months eating what she ate, listening to her music, her social interactions while my brain was wiring up for life. It's not just genes, blackness is a way of life."
"I met with her once a week to talk to you in there too."
"It certainly explains a lot, like my taste for jerk chick--"
"You're my child and you're white!" I exclaimed.
His eyes went wide and he pointed at me accusingly, "You're racist!"
"What?" I exclaimed.
"You're a racist!" he laughed and slapped a palm to his forehead. "I don't believe it! All this time I never realized it, but you are a bona-fide racist!"
"I am not a racist," I defended instinctively. "I think everybody should have the right—―"
-17-
