Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

I wonder if any of these boys ever sit in a room for boys’ talk night and discuss how to treat women. Who teaches them how to call out to a girl when she’s walking by, minding her own business? Who teaches them that girls are parts—butts, breasts, legs—not whole beings?

For months people will tell girls and women to be careful and walk in pairs, but no one will tell boys and men not to rape women, not to kidnap us and toss us into rivers.

No one will speak of the black and Latino girls who die here, who are from here.

I hope one day my family gets to a place where we can be thankful just to be thankful and not because we’ve compared ourselves to someone who has less than we do.

I think the US has a lot to be thankful for and a lot to apologize for.”

Maxine shakes her head at me. “Always the pessimist,” she says, laughing. Always the realist, I think. Always the poorest.

On the front of the old Oregon Historical Society building there’s a larger-than-life mural of Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea with her baby, and York with Seaman, the dog that accompanied them on the trip. I have never seen this mural before. Never seen York alongside the others. They seem to be stepping out of the building. The four of them so high, they look over the city.

Here I was, thinking how quickly it happened that I fit in with her friends and how we are easy with one another as if we have shared years of laughter. But then I think, how quick it is that Maxine reminds me that I am a girl who needs saving.

Tonight I make something about a different expedition. The one I am on. I want to get out, and I feel like a traitor for admitting it.

I don’t know what’s worse. Being mistreated because of the color of your skin, your size, or having to prove that it really happened.

Listening to Maxine and Carla, I think maybe they aren’t only offended at that woman’s stereotypes, but maybe they are upset at the idea of being put in the same category as me and the other girls.

she thought we were the kind of kids who wouldn’t appreciate classical music. Makes me feel like no matter how dressed up we are, no matter how respectful we are, some people will only see what they want to see.

All day long I’ve been whispering prayers. Natasha’s name haunts me. No one speaks her name or mentions what happened. It’s as if no one in this school knows or cares that an unarmed black girl was assaulted by the police just across the river.

Feels like such a selfish thing to do—to be thankful it isn’t someone I know. To call people just to hear their breath on the other end of the line.

“You know that’s what people are going to say about Natasha Ramsey. That it had nothing to do with her being black.” “Who?” Sam asks. There is silence between us.

I print the photos I took today. Leave all of them intact, except the ones of the officers, their cars, those merry-go-round lights. Every tear I’ve been holding in goes onto the page.

Tears for every name of unarmed black men and women I know of who’ve been assaulted or murdered by the police are inked on the page. Their names whole and vibrant against the backdrop of black sadness. Their names. So many, they spill off the page.

“Thanks, E.J.,” I say. “But I think it’s ridiculous that you think I could only be getting dressed up for a guy.” “Well, you look beautiful, whoever it’s for.” I think for a moment and then tell him, “It’s for me.”

Emmett Till meets Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Rosa Parks and Sandra Bland talk with each other under southern trees. Coretta Scott King is holding Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones in her arms. The faces lie on top of newspaper articles and headlines, only I take the words from the headlines and spell out new titles, rewrite history. Make it so all these people are living and loving and being.