(4/32) “All I ever thought about was getting out of that house....

(4/32) “All I ever thought about was getting out of that house. I’d spend hours watching those old black-and white Hollywood musicals, with Esther Williams doing ballet in the water. She’d be surrounded by rows and rows of smiling white women, kicking their legs high in the air. I’d fantasize about running away from home and dancing right alongside them. That’s the problem with growing up in a white world. You think you can do anything that white people can do. By the time I was a teenager, the only black person I knew was an old lady at our church. I didn’t know anything about black culture.  I didn’t know anything about black music.  I had an entire record collection, and my favorite album was Rhapsody in Blue, that’s how white I was. I began to feel like I didn’t belong, which is probably why I fell in love with the first black guy who would talk to me. His name was Birdie. And he was from the hood, but he didn’t act like a hood guy. He had a car. He took me places. I don’t remember much else about him. I just remember that he told me he loved me, which I believed cause I was stupid. I didn’t know what the fuck love was. I was all alone. There was nobody to discuss girly stuff with: this happened, that happened, none of that stuff. So when Birdie told me that all I had to do was pee after sex, I believed him. And you can guess what happened. Three months later I was pregnant. I knew my mother was going to kill me. But Birdie came to my house, and showed her this big, fake diamond ring. He spun this story about how he was going to bring me to New York and give me this great life. My mother actually seemed impressed. I think she was happy to be getting rid of me. And I was excited too. The plan was for Birdie to go ahead to New York and find us an apartment. I’d drop out of school and follow behind a few weeks later. I remember arriving in Penn Station, four months pregnant, thinking I was about to have The American Dream. Birdie showed up with flowers in his hand. Then he gave me a kiss and told me to go back upstate. Turns out he was already married, and his wife was some sort of invalid, so he decided that he couldn’t leave her. I was shit out of luck.”