Yellow

We are in bed.

It is morning.

Gabriel opens one very grown-up-looking eye and he is still latched onto my nipple. Yes, I know he is two years and eight months, but...in Japan kids lead the weaning. We are not Japanese, but we both like it. His Ghanaian dad thinks it is way too village that we still breastfeed, but he doesn't live here. And opiates get released in our bloodstreams upon suckling, and without that we'd be too stressed out to enjoy our everyday life, which we do enjoy a lot. Like when we jump in puddles and let disgusting earthworms squirm all over the palms of our hands after the rains.

Gabriel says to me, "Yellow."

He opens the other eye and grins at me knowingly.

"Yellow?" I ask.

"You. You are yellow, Mommy."

"Oh," I say, noting my sallow skin. It hasn't stopped raining in the Bay Area for weeks.

"And you, Gabriel? What are you?"

"I am red."

"And your daddy?"

"Buh-lack. Daddy is black."