Blended

Izzy’s father is a cultured man and a high-powered, highly respected, and very wealthy attorney in an international investment banking firm headquartered in Cincinnati. Secure in his identity as a Black man, he nurtures in his daughter not only her love of music but, more importantly, a sense of her African heritage. He also gifts his daughter, however, with a realistic appreciation of the problems Black people face in white America. He is careful about his dress and his mannerisms in public, aware, as he tirelessly tells his daughter, that Black people are inevitably judged differently by white people. He disdains the stereotypes of welfare Black people living on government money. His home, his suits, and his Mercedes all reflect his belief in the trappings of wealth and the elegance of a lifestyle that defies racist white caricatures of Black people.

Although the circumstances of his marriage to Izzy’s mother are outside the range of Izzy as first-person narrator, the marriage to a white woman indicates Isaiah’s confidence in himself in defying the inevitable judgments the two would face as a mixed couple in middle America where, as John Mark explains to Izzy, racism is still a vital element of the culture. Isaiah wears ties around his home and irons his jeans, which he wears only infrequently. As Izzy, exasperated, tells her father at one point, “This isn’t the opera, Daddy—why are you always so proper?” (37). The answer is more complicated than Izzy is ready to understand. There simmers just beneath the surface of Isaiah’s carefully cultivated public persona a rage that erupts at odd moments. These flashes of anger indicate his difficult adjustment and the pressures he faces every day as a successful Black man in white America. However, he is quick to rein in his anger and to show Izzy how much he loves and respects her as a product not of Black and white but rather of two people who loved each other. At the unshakeable core of his character, then, is his love for his daughter.

To understand the character of Izzy’s mother is to transcend the question of race. Nicole’s role is neither as white nor Black—she is a mother. Her life centers on her child. Indeed, when she stands up to her ex-husband over the conflicting dates of their remarriages, Nicole asserts her parental rights to protect Izzy from being torn in two, forced to decide which wedding she would attend. Nicole understands the emotional chaos and long-term damage such a conflict might cause.

For Izzy, her mother, with her protective love, is best symbolized by a mother bear. Although she is fierce in her demands for equal time with her daughter, in everything else, Nicole is a giving and loving free spirit. She talks to Izzy with unforced ease. She is emotionally open. Her love for John Mark is unaffected and without irony. He makes her happy, and that, despite his rough edges, his gaudy plethora of tattoos, his prized pick-up truck, and his blue-collar status, is more than enough for Nicole. She is uninterested in materialism. She loves her work as a server in a Waffle House. Her home is a happy confusion of knick-knacks and mismatched furniture. Meals there are casual. Her manner of dress, particularly her fondness for t-shirts with goofy sayings that sometimes cause Izzy to roll her eyes, reflects that unprepossessing nature. She has only a casual understanding of time and schedules, and that is what causes her straight-laced ex-husband to call the cops on her.

It is one of the ironies of Izzy’s upbringing that her parents upend stereotypes of their respected races. The music of white classical composers Izzy studies is careful and restrained and mathematical, while the Black music she is introduced to is wildly syncopated and unrestrained—just the opposite of her parents. In the end, with Izzy in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, it is the free-spirited and joyous Nicole, wearing a t-shirt she picked up at Goodwill that says, “My Other Car Is a Unicorn,” who stays through the long nights with her, sleeping in a tiny cot, making sure her daughter is never alone.