Race Relations at the Muller Family Reunion
My son’s a dark island in a stream of bright-haired relatives in the Lutheran church hall. Uncle Bob approaches him, reaches out, and says,
“Ray?”
No response. I launch a vicious mind-kick in the boy’s direction. Uncle Bob’s trying; it’s not an easy name for the elderly man to pronounce. The transcendental messaging doesn’t work. My thirteen-year-old angles away; shoulders scrunched in surliness. Uncle Bob works his mouth like he’s swallowing a potato whole and manages,
“Raoul?”
Raoul turns. He’s written ‘Mixed Bag’ on his nametag. I suppress a groan.
I had a feeling this would happen. Swore I’d never come and subject my family to the Mullers’ awkward scrutiny, but I have, for Dad. He’s in long term care now. This will be his last reunion and I’m his only child. Had to bring him. That blue vein in his temple throbbing under the barest strip of translucent skin (surely it wasn’t so thin when I saw him last summer?) makes me tender like a sore muscle. His visible pulse reveals an insubstantial heart. It could cease beating at any moment. Hard to believe my dad is so diminished. He was a sturdy man in my youth; tireless, tough.
Maryse couldn’t make it. She’d committed to teaching a summer intensive at UCLA and the dates clashed. The kids are both with me, though—one reluctant, one eager. And me? Wishing my wife was here to keep me steady and blunt my edginess. Nervousness fizzles up my spine; I don’t know how this is will unfold, especially with Raoul. He’s at an awkward stage. And I haven’t been with this many Mullers since the last time I attended a family reunion thirty years ago as an eighth grader, at the same age Raoul is now.
Was I as sullen as my kid back then? Internally, for sure, though I’d never have dared Raoul’s sniggers or eye rolls. Sassiness would have earned me a clip around the ears and extra farm chores. And I couldn’t hide my moroseness under a cascade of riotous hair, either. My dad and I got a short back and sides every other Saturday at Catizone’s barber shop, regular as the sun came up.
Mom would have known how to handle Raoul. She’d have teased him, then found a positive quality he possessed and pointed it out to him. His abrasiveness and my frustration would have gentled under her attention. I miss her. Growing up, she was the only Muller with one foot in our traditional Virginian valley, and the other on the road out. A path she urged me to take when I got a scholarship to Cornell University out of high school. Dad wanted me to stay and take over the farm, of course. I’d be the twelfth generation Muller working on the land.
“Go, go,” my mom had pushed me away with the backs of her hands, “go discover different places, ideas, people…” Her voice had trailed off. At the center of her eyes, surrounded by luminous excitement, I’d seen sharp points of longing. It took me a week to get up the courage to tell Dad I was breaking with tradition; I’d be leaving for college before the end of harvest. He was a stalwart, upright man then, and he told me his disappointment straight up, as though I couldn’t see it in his clenched jaws and the bitter gleam in his eyes. We toiled together in misery through the summer before I left. We’ve never adjusted back to the sort of relationship I want for me and Raoul; a father happy for the man his son has grown to be, a son proud of his father.
After my son’s snappy rebuff, Uncle Bob sees a friendlier relative across the church hall and takes off with a slither of embarrassment. I feel sorry for him and pissed off with Raoul. He didn’t have to be so rude. I lean toward my teenager. “Look, half your DNA is from this family, whether you like it or not. When we visit Mom’s folks back home, you learn about your Haitian background. Why not your white side?”
My son scowls at me. Across the hall, a group of his cousins chat easily. They don’t know prickly Raoul; he’s never spent holidays with them. We live in Chicago—hundreds of miles and several worlds away from here. A swell of resentment builds in his torso and ripples through his kid-bursting-to-be-adult frame. There—that feeling—I remember it; the spitting resistance which has no aim or outlet, the tension of wanting to be different and at the same time fit in, the jittery disturbance which will lead, eventually, to settling into an identity. White, black, brown, the biology is the same. A boy Raoul’s age snarls at the world whatever the color of his skin. Mixed Bag, for God’s sake.
Then I’m worried what Raoul’s seven-year-old sister might write on her nametag, and whirl around, searching the hall for her. There she is, elbows on a trestle table, tongue between lips, enclosing her name in a spectacular border of multicolored flowers.
As Marie-Cécile leans back to admire her own work, I catch her resemblance to my wife in that self-assured pose, and recall my first sight of Maryse at a campus anti-poverty rally. She lent over the table, pulling in passing students with her zestful smile and pressing pamphlets into their hands. When we bent together over the paper, the coils of Maryse’s astounding hair sprung against my arm, and in its unfamiliar scent I understood the power of her conviction, the possibilities in her otherness, and the certainty my Virginia life was over.
Marie-Cécile draws the accent and hyphen of her name as bold, clover-green leaves, like a parody of an ancestry search website. No other Muller name contains accents or hyphens, guaranteed. On the family tree tacked up on one wall of the hall, plain puritan names repeat through three centuries since the Muller settlers arrived from Germany: John, Peter, Carl, Susan, Sarah, Ann. Physical features repeat as well. Fair hair and freckles, sinewy pale limbs, blue and green eyes. It’s clear these people share antecedents.
Cousin Patricia sent her DNA to 23andMe she tells me. Patricia and I are about the same age. She’s worked at the local feed supply warehouse for the last twenty years, and must be on every church committee in existence. I doubt she even vacations outside of Virginia.
Patricia hugs her elbows close to her sides like she’s scared she and I will touch, and mixing races is contagious. Her arms are cornstarch white and splotched with patches of sun damage—like mine—I note with a nip of surprise. “Everyone’s got a tiny bit of African DNA, of course,” she says, glancing over at the stage, where my daughter is dancing her African half like no one is watching. Beaded braids swing from Marie-Cécile’s head, twirling like painted carousel horses. Her arms fling up and out with wild abandon; she’s really enjoying herself, not caring who might be watching her, and certainly not worrying about their opinion. My daughter rocks the world and trusts it will applaud. I envy her that solid confidence. She gets it from Maryse, not me.
“But the extraordinary thing about our family is,” here Patricia indicates the nearly homogenous crowd, “we are ninety-two percent German ancestry until our generation. That’s practically unheard of, to have so little DNA mix. It’s because the Mullers stayed in this valley. They didn’t move around.”
“Or sleep with the slaves,” I say. Damn. Why’d I say that? Patricia never did me any harm. I’m just like Raoul, can’t help myself.
Raoul’s afro froths into my peripheral vision. He’s slunk up behind me and heard the exchange. He snipes, “I guess Marie-Cécile and me kind of mess up the family DNA then?” and Patricia goes rigid, one hand fanned on the other and pressed against her throat, like an actress from a silent movie. A little “Oh!” slips out, then she mutters something about finding her seat for Uncle Bob’s family history talk and scuttles away, still clutching her neck as if she’s swallowed Raoul’s venom and needs to find the antidote fast.
I turn back to Raoul and catch him smirking. Any control I thought I had in this situation drains away, leaving me with dregs of dread in my belly. My son’s going to mess up my dying dad’s last family reunion, and maybe destroy the tenuous relationship my side of the family has with the Mullers. “Keep cool,” I whisper to Raoul, making a ‘tamp it down’ gesture with my hands. Raoul’s in my face immediately, hands held up in a question.
“What? Dad, I’m just stating facts. You’re always telling me to tell the truth.”
“Not like that!” I blurt out. Ridiculously, I think I’m going to cry. I blink the tears back and search for words which will make sense to my son. “Be subtle, it’s more satisfying.” Raoul sneers, then delivers a strategic swipe.
“Could have been in California with Mom,” he says, a serpent’s sting in his newly deepened man’s voice.
I adjust Dad’s hearing aids and ease him onto his seat. Being in the church hall reminds me of Sunday school in the summers of my boyhood, trying to angle myself under the ceiling fans, my legs sticking to the wooden chair, the sweet scent of pasture seeping through the open windows. I swear Uncle Bob’s presentation is a duplicate of the one I heard thirty years ago. It’s like the Mullers are stuck in the past. Except now he has PowerPoint slides. A grandchild must have made them for him.
Now I’m upset. Mullers live all over the country and the world these days. They mix their DNA without a second thought. Some of them marry, some of them don’t, some are gay, some adopt kids, some, like me, have created unconventional Muller families. Like Raoul earlier, I feel a snide remark forming in my throat, so I swallow it back, press my hands into the hard chair corners. I promised myself and Maryse I wouldn’t ruin the reunion for my dad.
After the interminable history lecture, it’s time for the Muller family photograph. Raoul balks. “Look at me,” he says, tugging his hair out roughly, “I don’t belong here, don’t fit in.”
My energy plummets as if an emergency brake is dragging on my feet. Physically, my child is right, he doesn’t fit in. I survey the milling crowd of Mullers, golden-haired, chattering, all dressed in the same T-shirt, light blue with white lettering. We all got one that morning. “And yet you’re wearing the T-shirt,” I say to Raoul, and point to the inscription.
I’m a Muller
Family Reunion 2024
“Come on, Raoul, you’re a Muller. You can’t fight that fact. Do it for me, for Grandpa, please?” Raoul shrinks into his T-shirt and produces an Oscar-winning scowl. When I reach out to shepherd him into line, he twists away from me as if avoiding contamination. Eventually the judgemental glares of elder Mullers overcome his resistance, and I manage to hustle him into the back row. But he won’t smile for the photographer however much I cajole.
How I wish Maryse was here with us. Raoul would have to smile with her radiance around him, and I need her certainty people get you if you get over yourself and concentrate on them. She’d find the right thing to say, diffuse the tension. Plus, Raoul would make so much more sense if his mother was with us, to himself and everyone else, right? I bite my lip hard, hearing my wife’s voice in my head. “It’s not Raoul’s job to explain himself to people who can’t see beyond his skin color, my love.”
Preoccupied with my son, I’ve no idea where my daughter is in the melee as the photographer arranges the Mullers for the shoot.
When the photo arrives in my email inbox a week later, though, it’s easy to spot Marie-Cécile. My shout of laughter lures Raoul to come see. Smack in the middle of the first row, beaming, Marie-Cécile draws your attention, not just because she’s black, but because she’s the only Muller not wearing a blue T-shirt. She must have pulled hers off in the heat. Under it, another T-shirt displays the red, black and green colors of the Pan African flag.
I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams
Raoul and I grin at each other. For the first time in months, he raises his chin, and laughter erupts from his wide mouth. His expression is so like my mother’s that my breath catches. I put my hand on his forearm, and he doesn’t jerk away. “Spot on, right?” I say and know his little sister’s innocent actions have forged a finger of connection between my older child and me. We are unabashed in victory together, co-conspirators in his adolescent rebellion.
“Oh my God,” Raoul says, “Like—everyone’s gonna see Marie-Cécile in the photo with that message—all the Mullers.” In my son’s eyes, I see a spark of pride and a pinprick stab of satisfaction. He gives his glorious head of hair a slow shake. “Subtle. Real subtle,” he says.
• • •
Elizabeth Collis is a former business owner and educator who writes from her home in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Pithead Chapel, Emerge Literary Journal, Fictive Dream, and elsewhere. She’s a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, winner of the 2025 Intrepid Award, and her work appears in several anthologies. Find out more at www.elizabethcollis.com