I KNOW THERE IS MELANIN SOMEWHERE

I'm not white.

I'm not black.

I'm not rich.

I'm not poor.

I'm not a man.

I'm not always perceived as a woman.

I'm not intelligent, or rather a genius.

I'm not ignorant; more specifically, a dumbass.

I'm not of the sky.

I'm not of this earth.

I never knew what I was, but I always knew what I wasn't.

Dr. Petrichor has asked me many times not to speak of what I'm not but of what I am.

When he does this, I can't help but get a tightness in my chest and that familiar ancestral lump in my throat that never lets me cope.

"If I knew, I would be. But since I don't, and you don't, where does that leave me? And even if I did know, you would be of little help."

I hate when my temper comes out in front of doctors. I always feel regretful and disappointed in myself for not following the archetypes they've presented me so clearly to play with.

Strong Black Woman.

A lecture from Professor Perry races through my mind. The only thing is, I'm not black. No one is now - Black. No one uses that word anymore. Sure, it's in the dictionary but only to describe the color, not a people.

Now it's HiMel.

"I'm... I'm a NoMel, how about that?"

"A NoMel?" he asks me inquisitively; his elbow rests on the sidearm of his chair, with his index finger pointed against his temple.

"Well, look at me. Have you seen anyone with this color? A HiMel or a LoMel?"

"No, I haven't. And how does that make you feel?"

"How does that make me feel?"

I huff. Cross my arms, and look to the ceiling, hoping the answer is written somewhere above for me just to read aloud. To make this easier than drawing it out from myself without pain or recollection.

"It makes me feel like I don't belong much of anywhere."

"Do you think you would feel better if you were a HiMel or LoMel?"

"Of course I would!"

"And why is that?"

"Because then I would finally fucking belong...somewhere. I'm never HiMel enough for the HiMels and never LoMel enough for the LoMels. What would you even call this Dr. Petrichor? I've been trying to find the words all my life, and I think NoMel is the best I've come up with."

"Well, NoMel would imply that you have no melanin, and all humans have melanin."

"Yes, but I've never seen anyone who looks like me. Nowadays, anyone can look HiMel or LoMel if you've got the money and your over 18. Or well, I guess a fake ID or the right plug. Did you know they have melanin light districts where people sell their melanin?"

"Yes, I've heard of this. Are you interested in buying melanin, Ino?"

"No, I mean, I don't know, maybe. I mean, my family started the whole thing, but I don't know how it all works and like its effects. I don't know if it's worth it. Maybe it is. If it meant I could look like my family? I've thought about it."

"And why do you want to look like your family?"

"Wouldn't anyone?"

===

A raindrop fell on the inside of her bottom lip.

The rain had come suddenly, but she was relieved of the Celsius dropping as she pondered the last rainfall. Ino discreetly licked the drop with the tip of her tongue.

"I should drink water."

She reaches in her pocket to feel the opal and selenite crystals Lapris has given her in Sentence, the glasses her mother never let her leave without, and the black notebook her grandfather gifted her for her Invitational Ceremony she would no longer be...attending.

She remembered the last time she had gone all day with no water; she found herself sleeping by a train track, passed out under a tree—pleasant sleep, but challenging to explain to Justine.

Ino takes out the black notebook and writes:

"2.a.sol.3333 - woke up, again."

"sigh. it looks like I missed some days."

A sky captain's hat rested on her wet blonde locs as her ocular gold-rimmed glasses lay quaintly on her nose. It was a bit activated from the Quebecuan sun and blended well with the tints of rose in her arms her father had chosen/bestowed for/upon her.

She came from men rich of the land on one side - cowboys mixed with Natives of Equi. While her mother's light complexion, freckles, and curly loose hair gave hints of Panacean descent and the Carib Sea - aboriginals of Afrique.

Whenever asked of her ancestry, Ino toyed with which part to tell.

Microaggressions were an hourly occurrence, expected, considering her status quo as the token had been reinstated with her entrance across the Cardinian border.

"I know there is melanin somewhere," Ino thought or had been thinking. The thought never left her for very long.

She had come for no particular reason. Surely it couldn't have been for Lily or even Justine. Possibly, probably, if Ino was honest, it was to avoid the inevitable - Jarques.

Why she was cleaning dishes in Tadouqua, only she knew.

Maybe, possibly the Belugas.

They and the St. Lawrence River offered a sanctitude she was forced to reconcile with. If not that - the skinned knees she suffered from after climbing an ungodly but rather godly mountain and falling on the bend in the road by the cemetery kept Ino closer to her body.

She tended to leave her body. Most of the time, conscious. Her dream self she had come to love the most and played with for other's entertainment. It was the blackouts that were digging into the veil she had been ignoring for so long.

Ino knew the blackouts would continue with or without the help of whiskey, cocaine, and ganja.

With this knowledge, she began to heal herself and daydream daily about how she would one day tend to her animals on her farm. It was a nice thought that comforted her, never really planning the concrete details or what animals exactly.

The blackouts resulted from a vaccination program her mother enlisted her in as an infant and later adolescent. Baat would later tell her with a gripped mouth that she had made a mistake in trusting Dr. Numad (Ino's physician since birth).

The trust would lead to a host of disorders, and Ino would also learn - an inability to conceive. The last thing the AFTA wanted was people like Ino procreating.

Ino took this knowing and ran into many girls and even more boys without fear of her life, stopping for a copy of herself.

That's what she felt - copies, narcissism, loneliness - no reason to have a child.

So she played with her mother's small ounce of guilt. Baat was an AFTA officer's daughter, so emotions, sympathy ran low to almost obsolete.

Ino grew up with not silver but iron spoons.

Ino's father, Jarques, had traveled somewhere he could not tell Ino and came back with many gifts every return - always adding to Ino's collection, claiming iron would keep his daughter's lips and mouth virgin.

Whenever Jarques offered Ino gifts, Castria cast a subtle yet decisive glare at her husband.

Ino would come to understand the truth of this glare and the reason for the iron much sooner than her mother expected.

Virgin.

Ino was not.

+++

They had met on one of the hottest days of the year. Her arms had been the first noticeable love. The curvature of her forearm extended to her tricep to form the most perfect intersection with her clavicle to her shoulder. She wanted to touch it. Consume it.

"Wooo! It's hot as balls!" the woman said as she poured a half-empty bottle of water down her chest, revealing the outline of her breasts and generously sized areola.

Ino couldn't help but glance, but quickly and what she hoped was smoothly brought her gaze to the woman's face.

"I don't quite know what we are supposed to be doing, but I was told if you stand here long enough and look as unassuming and unattractive as possible, no one will bother you. I guess that water move was kinda sexy, huh?" she laughed.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Aren't you here for the lineup?"

"The lineup? What's umm, the lineup?"

"Boo, where you from, and how the hell do you not know about the lineup? It's how all this shit works, well, at least the pigment draw."

"Pigment draw?"

"Lawd. Really? How is that even possible. I mean, unless your father is keeping you locked away in some dungeon somewhere, there is no possible way for any Earth Dweller to NOT know about the lineup."

Ino's face must have been evidence enough of her disgust with her lack of knowledge of where she was exactly as the woman's voice began to soften.

"I just, well you see I have sort have been, I guess you could say, 'kept away'"

"And what, now you have escaped?"

"Well, sort of."

"And this is the first place you end up? In the lineup?"

"Yes, well, I was with a friend of mine, and she has just left me."

Ino looked around at the people that surrounded her hoping to find Justine or more to show that she did have some placement of her life in front of this beautiful woman.

"Not much of a friend. This is not a place you want to be left. You also don't seem the type to be down here."

"What do you mean?"

"In Marcy"

"Well, I am. So now what?"

"Ah! Finally, some personality! What's your name?" As her lips enveloped the question, Ino's stomach jumped. The kind of jump she had only experienced the few times a handsome or gentle person had made it past her father's tight grip on her time and seclusion of her. The kind of jump she craved.

"Ino."

"Ino. Hmm. Ino. Weird name, girl. But you cute, so I'm sure it works for you. My name is Lily. High pseumelanin ass name for sure, I know, but my father decided way back when that he wasn't fuckin with all this and decided to get him a white girl. That's what they used to call them back then. Funny. White. Like what's white? Snow, snow is white. Like it still astounds me how much they were trying to push that 'white is right' crap. Anyway, I'm veering. I do that. You'll love it. And me. If we make it past this"

As soon as Lily spoke, a man appeared wearing nothing but white glasses covered most of his face - leaving a small sliver of skin revealed, almost steel Ino whispered to herself.

"Everyone, please step forward to the white line. As I come by, please present your right forearm for the Reflectometer to make a clear read. As you can see, we are looking for a Jones once again. If you have somehow made it past the firsts and you are not of the Jones clan, please leave now."

Ino didn't move. She didn't know if she was in this clan or not; how was she supposed to know. For all she knew, the only name she had ever heard was the Frasiers

A distant woman called out towards Ino while gesturing to the man, "she doesn't look it! Why no Jones I know had dem pigs."

Suddenly all eyes were on Ino. The man holding what looked like a mix of a ray gun and a lazer walked towards Ino with a feline-like saunter that almost seemed predatory.

"Looks like it's your lucky day, Jone's... melanin is going for 20k. Scan your code and head over to the Script Room for processing. Your deposit will be sent to your stripe card upon your contribution."