Fertile Ground

1973
Marilyn Hacker

"I'm pregnant," I wrote to her in delight
from London, thirty, married, in print. A fools-
cap sheet scrawled slantwise with one minuscule
sentence came back. "I hope your child is white."
I couldn't tear the pieces small enough.
I hoped she'd be black as the ace of spades,
though hybrid beige heredity had made
that as unlikely as the spun-gold stuff
sprouted after her neonatal fur.
I grudgingly acknowledged her "good hair,"
which wasn't, very, from my point of view.
"No tar brush left," her father's mother said.
"She's Jewish and she's white," from her cranked bed
mine smugly snapped.
She's Black. She is a Jew.