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Siblings knew all the weak spots, years passed circling each other, checking for vulnerability.
No little girl was unaware of the danger of a friendly white face and a spacious white van. Little boys didn’t get the same warnings.
The danger the boys were in lured the mother instead, gave her fangs. It took a mother’s brutality to keep the world at bay, to keep a black child safe.
They were in Dre’s special place, but middle children got nothing that was theirs alone.
He wished he knew about guns, but disarming black people was basically the only gun control the NRA believed in.
Calla wanted to tell her friends that it wouldn’t always be like this. Their babies would become mobile, puzzle out truths for themselves, that their needs would evolve until you couldn’t fix it with a flashy toy or kiss to a scraped knee.
Eventually, you’ll understand your kid is their own person. A distinct person, separate from you, with their own dreams and goals and hurts, and they have to find their own path and you have to get out of the way. Just step clear of the road and try not to hover, like you didn’t wipe his ass for years and teach him to read and ride a bike.
BookmarkedByAlia and 2 other people liked this
Other people don’t see the baby submerged in the man, the chubby cheeks overlapping the lean ones. Your baby is almost six feet tall and black, and no one else fucking cares that he once painted you a rock glittery blue and glued a mustache on top.
All Calla had to do was slip in the flow of gravity, of earthly laws; there were so many ways to kill black boys, like the world wanted them dead.