It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and she said out loud, but only to herself, “I’m nowhere to be found.” She had done it again and she was delighted with herself. Again.

Oh, she knew where she was, all right. It was just that her maman couldn’t find her. She always did this on purpose. Always. She didn’t want to be found. When she felt this way, it was best to let her be. “Leave me be,” she’d tell her mother in that “I-don’t-wanna-be-messed-with” voice. 

Maman would let her be, too. For a little while, anyway. She knew it was best. She knew that when Allecia was in one of these moods, nothing or no one would be safe until she’d softened her mind. It was a scary thing, almost, but it was a bit amusing, too.

Allecia smiled, laughed, and started rolling around, back and forth, on the sawdust floor of the barn. She knew she looked a mess.  Hay was in her hair, and stuck to her clothes everywhere. Whatever it was that got in her head at these moments, it wasn’t bad. She knew that. It was just her. That was it. Just her. She needed space, think time, and she was thinking. In between giggles, and rolling around, she was thinking.

“Daughter! I know you’re in here. Come on out. Now!”

Oh no. Maman had found her. Not that it was all that hard to know where she was. She nearly always went to the same place. It was a game they played, sort of. A real game. Sometimes Maman got tired of it, though, and didn’t let Allecia come inside before she came looking for her. She was after her before Allecia’s think time was finished, and that was when the trouble would start.

“I’m not ready, Maman! Leave me be still. A little while longer? Pretend you haven’t found me yet.”

“Allecia Desessarts, I’ve had enough! There’s still plenty a’ chores left to do before our company shows up tonight, and you gotta do them. I don’t got time for yo’ silly-ass games. Get in da’ house NOW!”

Allecia, on her back, stopped in mid-roll. She was caught off-guard. Her mother rarely called her by her last name. She thought that was on account of the fact that her last name was different than Maman’s and Maman didn’t like to remember that. Allecia’s daddy didn’t live with them. Her daddy wasn’t married to Maman. Never had been. What’s more, he never would be. He was married to a fancy white lady, lily white as she heard some of her maman’s friend call such ladies. All her daddy’d ever done with her maman was lay with her and make Allecia. At least that''s how Allecia understood it.  

He treated them okay. Not good, not bad. Truth was, there was little thought he gave to them either way, really. He gave them money sometimes. For the most part, he had someone make sure they were okay. Otherwise, he paid them little mind. Why he had actually given Allecia his last name was a mystery to her, one she thought about a lot. In fact, when she had her think time, like now, that was what got in to her head the most. Why had her daddy let her know he was her daddy? The other girls had fathers who ignored them, would not even recognize them. Would not even admit they were their children.

Allecia knew she was different than most of those girls. She was different than the other girls, too. All those “lily white girls.” She was surely different from them. She was just plain different. Most of the time, this bothered her. But when she came out to the barn, or went in the woods behind the barn, or just sat in her room, it no longer seemed a problem. She felt that being different had to be a good thing. This fact would, some day, help her out. After all, right now she was only twelve, and didn’t yet know much about the world around her. She knew only about a small part of the world, the part in which she lived and breathed. Her world.

Life in the bayou of Louisiana, for someone of her color—not black, not white, not black or white but in between—was predictable. If she didn’t rock the boat, it could get boring. Nothing more or less, though Allecia had the feeling that one day, that would change because she just couldn’t stand predictability and boring. Some day, her life would be unpredictable. 

As she got up and brushed herself off, trying to get as presentable as possible for Maman before going up to the house, she sighed with resignation, knowing she had lost this particular round, but not the war. She saw her reflection in a cracked, scarred pane of glass resting against the barn wall, and made a face at herself. 

She was almost white. Almost. All those other girls may be light-skinned, but she wasn’t just light. She was the whitest of them all.