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When I learned the Spanish word for succeed, I thought it was kind of ironic that the word exit is embedded in it. Like the universe was telling me that in order for me to make something of this life, I’d have to leave home, my neighborhood, my friends.
“Who are the invisible people in our community? Who are the people we, as a society, take for granted?”
But girls like me, with coal skin and hula-hoop hips, whose mommas barely make enough money to keep food in the house, have to take opportunities every chance we get.
I wonder how a people’s culture, a people’s history, becomes a mascot. I wonder how this school counselor and her three grandsons can wear a stereotype on their shirts and hats and not care.
Why do people who can afford anything they want get stuff for free all the time?
The whole time Lee Lee is talking, I am thinking about York and Sacagawea, wondering how they must have felt having a form of freedom but no real power.
Like what she is telling me is she comes in peace.
I have never thought about my deserving the good things that have happened in my life. Maybe because I know so many people who work hard but still don’t get the things they deserve, sometimes not even the things they need.
I am looking through the book, staring at these brown women and their faces that are pieced together with different shades of brown, different-size features, all mismatched yet perfectly puzzled together to make them whole beings.
study the making of me.
I wonder how it feels to be here as a person who’s supposed to have it all together but has some of the same questions that we do.
Something happens when people tell me I have a pretty face, ignoring me from the neck down. When I watch the news and see unarmed black men and women shot dead over and over, it’s kind of hard to believe this world is mine.
Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces. Mom’s love repairs me.
And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone.
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? I was going to eat at Dairy Queen, but I don’t want to sit through the discussion of if I’m a five or not. I eat a few fries before I walk out. “Hey, hold up. My boy wants to talk to you,” Green Hat says. He follows me, yelling into the dark night. I keep walking. Don’t look back. “Aw, so it’s like that? Forget you then. Don’t
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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.
And it will be a tragedy only because Sam died in a place she didn’t really belong to. No one will speak of the black and Latino girls who die here, who are from here.
“She was like, ‘I’m going to travel the world and be rich and buy my mom a big house.’ Remember that?” Lee Lee asks. “That’s still the goal,” I tell them.
Even though this is good news, Maxine’s eyes are full of pity. She sounds like those annoying adults who take babies by the hand and talk in gibberish, in that childish voice. “So many people can’t find work in this economy,” she says. “Your mom is lucky.”
I wonder why people didn’t think Maxine needed a mentor. Wonder why Maxine thinks she can be a mentor if she’s never had one.
It takes me a while to answer. Not because I don’t need someone, but because I don’t want to say yes and have her thinking my mom is not a good mother. I don’t want her thinking I am some ’hood girl with a bunch of problems she has to come and fix.
But then I think, how quick it is that Maxine reminds me that I am a girl who needs saving.
Maxine is right and wrong. Those girls are not the opposite of me. We are perpendicular. We may be on different paths, yes. But there’s a place where we touch, where we connect and are just the same.
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.
Things That Are Black and Beautiful: A Starless Night Sky Storm Clouds Onyx Clarinets Ink Panthers Black Swans Afro Puffs Michelle Obama Me
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.
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.
I look it over: Sacher torte, pink champagne, crème de menthe, chocolate ganache. I go with the one that has chocolate in the name. You can’t go wrong with chocolate.
I do not want to be Maxine’s experiment, charity case, or rebellious backlash against her mother.
“She’s using me to feel better about herself. And her mother gave us all this food because she feels sorry for us. If that’s how you act when you have money, I’d rather stay poor.”
When Mom comes back to the kitchen, she is carrying a jar of coins. A big jar, like maybe she bought something at Costco and saved the container. “You want this to be your life, Jade?” Mom sets the jar in the middle of table. “You want to grow up and have children and only have this to leave behind as an inheritance?”
She learned how to navigate this white world, and she is trying to show you how to do the same.
sometimes you make me feel like you’ve come to fix me; only, I don’t feel broken. Not until I’m around you.”
“Prayer ain’t nothing but the poor man’s drug.”
Sam and I are in the cafeteria, standing in line to fix our burrito bowls. 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.
water shuts off. I hear dishes clank, then a drawer open and close. “Well, you know why Hannah didn’t get in trouble,” Sam says. “Because she’s white.” I can’t see Sam, but I’m pretty sure she just rolled her eyes. “Uh, no. Because she’s rich. Her parents donate a bunch of money to the school every year. She can say and do whatever she wants,” Sam says. “That had nothing to do with her being white and your being black.”
The first thing Lee Lee says to me is, “I was just about to call you. Did you hear what happened?” “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it all day.” “We had a town hall meeting for students who needed to talk about it. I went,” Lee Lee tells me.
I feel, it just feels—” “Too close?” “Yeah, I guess.” “And like it could have been you or me?” There are no words from Lee Lee, only the sound of her breathing. We sit there, not talking, just listening to each other’s breath. Just thankful.
“You have a lot of support and are in a lot of programs.” He pauses, then continues, “Jade, other students need opportunities too.”
Why am I only seen as someone who needs and not someone who can give?”
At school I turn on a switch, make sure nothing about me is too black. All day I am on. And that’s why sometimes after school, I don’t want to talk to Sam or go to her house, because her house is a reminder of how black I am.
I tell him, “I’m really sad about it.” I tell him sad because I think white people can handle black sadness better than black anger.
“Why can’t we talk about how unfair it is that at St. Francis, people who look like you get signed up for programs that take them to Costa Rica, and people who look like me get signed up for programs that take them downtown?”
“You know nothing about being nominated into programs that want to fix you.”
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.
“When I went to St. Francis, most people assumed that because I was black, I must be on scholarship.” “I’m on scholarship,” I remind her. “I know. But you were awarded a scholarship because you are smart, not because you are black,” Maxine says. “I got tired of people assuming things about me without getting to know me.”
“Sometimes, in class, if something about race came up, I was looked at to give an answer as if I could speak on behalf of all black people,” Maxine says. “It was exhausting.”
At school, with my white friends and teachers, there were all these stereotypes I felt I had to dispel, and, with a lot of my black friends, I had to prove that I was black enough—whatever that means.
“But I think what my grandmother was saying is that it feels good to know someone knows your story, that someone took you in,” Maxine says. “She’d tell me, it’s how we heal.”
There are handouts, but I didn’t want to write on them. I want to save them and share them with Mom and E.J. and Lee Lee. Bring back something other than food this time.
