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Cringing. Did they see the softball under your skin?

Here's the weird backstory: I grew up in the suburbs of London as a black-ish girl in a white world. My English-Irish parents never explained why I didn't look like them except to say—when pressed—that I was a brown-skinned miracle baby who had inherited her melanin and mixed-race features from ancestors rooted in the very distant past. My brother and I never discussed our differences; he is blue-eyed, pale, and kissed with freckles in the weakest glow of the sun. I'm brown-skinned, frizzy-haired, curvy, and physically unable to blush.

From the Broadly/Vice article: ‘At first, my mom denied it and said there must have been a mix-up. I spent night after night screaming at her for answers when I returned home from work. Finally, she confessed to a one-night stand with a black man in west London.
In the past year, our relationship has gone to hell and back. Mom started out by refusing to accept any blame on the basis that she made the best decision she could at the time. "Your father and I gave you a great life," she maintains. And this is true. We weren't a rich family, but we had two holidays a year and my parents never missed a school play or parents' evening. They weren't perfect, except in their unconditional love for me and my brother. And my dad never once brought up the fact that we didn't look alike.’