Caro White
- Natalie Gachoka
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
by Natalie Gachoka
At the bottom of the cream tub, Mama scraped the edges for the last remnant of slime, her peeling nails working like a spoon. On the sticker, a rusty, yellow-skinned woman smiled upward, wide piano-key teeth beaming at some unseen heaven. Her eyes frightened me, soulless in their happiness, yet they entranced me, made me want to borrow them. Behind her, the featureless void stretched on—a cage of white that she loved. Mama rubbed the cream between her palms until sparks seemed to catch at her fingers. She smeared the cream all over my body, pressing lotion into the crust of my skin, grinding it past the surface. My pores resisted; my night-dark skin turned ashen where the white base clung. She looked at the pores of my face, and disappointment creased into her waterline.
“I don’t know how you keep getting darker. Are you going outside more?”
“No, mama,” I kept my eyes to the ground, afraid to lift them.
Her face stayed unconvinced as she scrubbed the ointment further. She studied me, her full lips pressed shut, her eyes searching for an error. She touched my straightened hair, and my bumped pigtails tickled the edge of my ear. She flattened my dress, making sure every inch of skin was covered. The fabric clung to me, heavy with humidity.
“You look… like me,” she whispered as if it hurt.
“Thank you, mama,” I said, my words caught on a lisp.
*
We entered the church, and the mural of Jesus—his hollowed eyes—seemed to judge my new sins. Mama tightened her grip; the glove edges bit into my palm as if daring God to answer the prayer she’d already rehearsed. The churchwomen noticed her and clustered around, like admirers drawn to a peacock; her long curls fanned them, and her practiced smile took the stage.
Their voices swelled—too loud, too bright—so I let go of Mama’s hand and blended into the white wall, a dark blot on polished concrete. “Sister, we missed you at the women’s meeting,” one woman offered, all honey and needle.
“I couldn’t make it, my baby doesn’t like it when I leave her alone,” Mama's innocence settled in the room, mingling with the women’s envy, thick as their cheap perfume.
“I don’t know how you do it. I always take a chance to leave my kids at home.”
“We’re inseparable.”
“How do you do it? She looks nothing like you, though. How can you have a daughter so dark? Her daddy must be real black.”
Mama gave a thin, condescending smile and let the question hang. I shrank against the wall, trying to melt into the paint. If I made myself small enough, maybe the light would wash over me and erase what they saw. But their eyes found me anyway; Jesus and Mama made a perfect jury. I was handed a life sentence of silence.
“Let’s find our seat, I don’t wanna lose our seats upfront,” Mama said, steering the women and keeping me in the open, a stain she refused to scrub out.
*
Mama sat us in front of the pastor, whose breath seemed to hang thick through the mic. The pastor's voice throbbed with the word. Shadows chased his feet across the stage as he moved. I tuned out the noise, my legs kicked the air as the choir sang off-key over the pounding keys. Mama stood on the patchy floor, arms raised to the heavens. Her yellow skin caught the light, cloaked in a false warmth. She hummed tongues that I didn’t think the Lord even understood. The older women, seized by the Spirit, ran wild across the stage as if caught in an unwanted possession. Sweat reflected on a range of brown and yellow skin that the women would say is holy water.
“Come forward and take the oil! Let us all pray under the Lord.” The pastor preached into the microphone, but his voice escaped the room. His suit was ruined, dark stains spreading under his arms. Mama yanked me up like a rag doll and dragged me to the altar. She shoved me to my knees until my stockings tore. Light from the stage seared my eyes.
“Girl, lower your head,” Mama pushed my head down to eye the ants that danced to the song. “Pastor, save my daughter. Cast the devil out, make her skin no longer his home.”
I felt the pastor looking down on me, as if he saw the Devil in me. He assumed the role of God in his play of judgment: Mama, the director who fed the lines behind the stage.
“My brothers and sisters, gather around this poor child and pray over her.” Hot bodies closed in, boiling me alive.
“Pray!” the pastor boomed. Their voices blended into a single chant, the words lost in a unified drone.
“Louder!” Their chants turned into a melodic song, where they all knew the lyrics, but their mouths did not match up. The beat of the drums hit the tempo of the prayer's heart, an off-key song.
“Y'all not hearing me, I said pray!” Forces of hands touched all over my body.
“Mama,” I said with my throat tied together. I looked to her, but her attention was on the ceiling that illuminated her light skin. The white light cloaked her skin as angel wings.
“Do you feel it!” The pastor sang, the vowels drowned out in the line of power. The music got louder. Every time he stomped, the keys aligned with him. The music was one with him in a symbiotic dance.
The world blurred by my tears; hell pressed in through the seams of their black bodies. I jumped onto Mama’s chest, finding haven in her bosom.
“It's okay, baby, you’ll be saved. I say this in Jesus' name,” Mama said with a smile that wasn’t hers.
*
Mama stayed inside, entertaining the women beside an old car, ten years past its prime. I sat on the curb, hugged my knees, tears staining my dress. Laughter carried from the church kids as they played rough games on the grass. They kept their distance from me, as if I held a fatal disease. I felt a body overhead, its form blocking the sun's rays. A woman with high yellow skin—so pale she could be mistaken for white—stood above me. Her nose was a small button that even a white woman might envy. Her pale eyes mirrored the watered grass, and her loose curls fell in ringlets that hands could brush. She was the woman on the cream—the woman lost in the white. The woman with high yellow skin bent close, her curls brushing my cheek like silk threads. She smelled of soap and flowers that never grew in our yard.
“Don’t cry, baby,” the woman mimicked Mama’s voice.
“Who are you?” I croaked.
The woman’s smile trembled, unused to wearing it for so long. “I’m what you prayed for.” The sunlight rays surrounded her like a crown of halos. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to heaven.”
Her hand reached toward me, the air around her cleaner, sweeter, as if it was blessed. I touched her hands, soft as silken clouds, and she intertwined our fingers.
“But isn’t heaven far away?”
“No, baby, just lie in the grass and you’ll feel it.” The parking lot tilted, spun, and blurred. The cracked asphalt melted into a valley drenched in green, colors so vivid they stung my eyes.
“Where are we?”
“You are with me, and that's all that matters. Just run in the sun and feel the light.” In the bliss of ignorance, I let go of her hand and basked in the sun's rays. They poured over me like warm water, clouds of soap and suds stinging my eyes. I rolled on my back, spinning in delight. The grass bent to my body, each blade rising like a green bubble, bursting and reforming. The sun sluiced over my arms, my face, my chest. It soaked into the fabric of my dress, clinging to me like damp linen fresh from the basin. I felt free. I twisted further in the dirt’s tub, wanting to get darker, wanting to show I could feel this joy that my coal skin was clean.
“Baby, you look so beautiful,” the woman who used Mama’s voice sang.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I whispered, a smile tugging at me. “I look just like my mama.”
*
I woke on the gravel road, flat on my back, a mass of children gawking. Mama pushed through the kids, fast enough that I tasted the dust off her feet. Her light-colored eyes flared in anger.
“Girl, why you on the ground?” she hissed, her teeth gritted as though holding back the shame of more eyes on us. “You tryna embarrass me.” Mama yanked me from the dirt, my dress splattered with a fresh stain of mud. She scrubbed at the mud with the heel of her palm, then steered me toward the car without a second of softness. The drive home smelled like church—hot vinyl and leftover incense—and Mama’s jaw was set so tight I thought it might break. At the house, she didn’t wait for the porch light to warm our faces; she pushed past the door, her heels scuffing the linoleum, and hauled me straight to the bathroom.
“Why don’t you listen to me? You never listen to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, the apology tripping out of me before I could hold it.
“You already dark like this, you wanna get darker? Do you wanna be a dark blackie forever?”
“No, Mama.”
“Take off your clothes,” she ordered, her voice stern, familiar. I fumbled with the buttons;
I wasn’t fast enough.
“Can you do anything right?” She snapped, and the dress's stitches came apart like frozen bones, screaming. Cold air hit every exposed inch of me, and I shivered like peeled fruit. She twisted the faucet, the tub groaning awake, water crashing down in a dull roar. Steam rose, but the porcelain remained cold; the room smelled sharp and metallic.
“Everything I do for you,” she said, pacing between the sink and the tub. “And you act like this. You think I want people laughing at me? You already too dark—darker than any nigger straight outta Africa.” Her hands rummaged under the sink, the clatter of bottles and jars, until she found it: a whole container of bleach. She held it like salvation. She twisted the cap and poured the bleach straight into the water. The sharp sting filled the room, burning my nose before the fumes even reached my throat. The liquid unfurled like a ghost, veiling the bath with its promise.
“Get in,” she ordered.
The water lapped at my ankles, steam biting my skin in small shocks. My legs trembled as I lowered myself in. It felt like sinking into knives.
Mama dipped a dish sponge into the water until it was heavy, dripping poison. “Don’t worry, baby,” she cooed, the same voice she once used when I was sick. “We gonna make you pretty.”
She pressed the sponge to my arm and scrubbed. The burn came fast, sharp, searing—and I gasped. “Mama, that hurts.”
“That means it’s working.” Her hands moved harder, faster, as though she could peel the night right off me. My skin screamed under her touch, and I begged again, “Mama, please—it burns.”
She didn’t hear me. She dipped the sponge again, then tipped my head under the water. My scalp prickled, my eyes stung, and the world turned white. Her voice cut through the blur: “Hold still. Let it do its work.”
Each pass of the sponge left me raw, the surface of me stripped thin. Red welts rose, then split, pale muscle flashing beneath. I no longer knew where my skin ended and the pain began. When she finally stopped, her hands trembled, but her face softened. For the first time, Mama truly smiled at me, as though she was proud. “See? You’re beautiful now.”
I couldn’t move. My body refused. My heart stopped. My senses blurred—heaven and hell wrapped together. Mama held me. She did not see that my eyes hovered above my body. All she saw was my beautiful skin.
***
Natalie Gachoka is a Liberian-Kenyan writer from Newark, Delaware. Her work explores Black girlhood, mythic transformation, and the sacred intersections of trauma and rebirth. Rooted in the African diaspora and drawn to the surreal, she writes stories that make space for grief, godhood, and the strange beauty of becoming. She is currently pursuing a joint degree in creative writing and law.