I had only heard my father swear twice in my life.

The first time was in the second grade when he sat me down on his knee and pressed a frozen package of peas against my swollen and bruise cheek. I remember the conversation clearly.

"Do you wanna explain what happened?" he asked.

"No, sir," I said, staring straight ahead at the striped wallpaper.

"The principal said you didn't fight back," he said.

"No, sir, I did not," I said. "Jesus says 'turn the other cheek.'"

"Yes, He did," Daddy said. "But I want you to listen to me, Louise."

I looked up at him.

"You will take no shit from anyone," Daddy said. "If they punch you in the face because you a different color, you punch 'em right back, you here?"

Right then, Mama walked in and started screaming at him for supporting my fighting.

I only got in one fight after that.

It was the next day at school and Jimmy had the nerve to make fun of me again after yesterday's confrontation in the school yard.

After a series of racial slurs, Daddy's comment whispered at the back of my brain, tickling whatever part gave a human being the urge to hurt another.

Jimmy woke up after laying in the Louisiana dirt for four seconds.

No one ever messed with me again.

The second time I heard Daddy cuss was when he thought no one could hear him through his bedroom door. That was the night Mama died.

Someone had killed her. I was determined to find out. But no one was willing to give a little mixed child any information on such a controversial case.

The police men came to the house every day, asking more and more questions, most of them just rephrased from the day before.

But there was no way the case was going to go anywhere.

No one would search any farther than they really had to to find my mother's killer.

My mother's death should have been my father's.

One night, I decided to remind him of that.

"Her murderer thought she was you!" I screamed, after he refused to let me spend spring break with my grandmother. "They killed her 'cuz they hated you for marryin' a white woman!"

My father just set the newspaper down over the top of breakfast plate gently.

"Louise, I'm going to give you the chance to apologize," he said.

The same part of my brain was sparked as when I beat up Jimmy.

"I will not take your shit," I said.

His eyes went wide.

I knew better than to run. Running just made the belt's whips worse.

Five lashes later, I was in my room crying.

I was eleven at the time.

You see, my parents were interracial.

There were rules. But not laws.

You couldn't do that.

Yet, you could.

1960's Louisiana didn't like interracial.

And Mama was dead because of Louisiana.

And I refused to take that shit.