Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

This time it’s not a program offering something I need, but it’s about what I can give.

This is a good opportunity for you.” That word shadows me. Follows me like a stray cat.

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.

You told me that knowing how to read words and knowing when to speak them is the most valuable commodity a person can have.

There are twelve girls who’ve been selected for the Woman to Woman mentorship program. Twelve seeds. Twelve prayers. Twelve daughters. Twelve roots. Twelve histories. Twelve reasons. Twelve rivers. Twelve questions. Twelve songs. Twelve smiles. Twelve yesterdays. Twelve tomorrows.

When she says this, so many thoughts rush through my mind. I am thinking about how Mom had plenty of dreams, and E.J. is not short on self-confidence, and Lee Lee has known she wants to be a poet since we were in middle school, so it can’t be just about believing and dreaming. My neighborhood is full of big dreamers. But I know that doesn’t mean those dreams will come true. I know something happens between the time our mothers and fathers and teachers and mentors send us out into the world telling us, “The world is yours,” and “You are beautiful,” and “You can be anything,” and the time we return to them.

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.

And the other girl talks so bad about Northeast Portland, not knowing she is talking about Sam’s neighborhood. Not knowing you shouldn’t ever talk about a place like it’s unlivable when you know someone, somewhere lives there. She goes on and on about how dangerous it used to be, how the houses are small, how it’s supposed to be the new cool place, but in her opinion, “it’s just a polished ghetto.” She says, “God, I’d be so depressed if I lived there.”

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.

“We don’t have much, but we have more than a lot of other people,” Mom says. 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 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.

Be bold. Be brave. Be beautiful. Be brilliant. Be (your) best.

Maxine is right and wrong. Wrong because I am like those girls. I am the Kool-Aid–drinking, fast food–eating unhealthy girl she wants to give nutrition classes to. I know all about food stamps and dollar menus and layaway. Know how to hold my purse tight at night when walking down dark streets, know how to duck at the sound of a shooting gun. I do. I am the girl who walks down the hallway, hoping for at least one boy to notice me. But the boys at school don’t like me because I look nothing like their mothers, look nothing like the Dream. The boys over here, well, to them I am good for tutoring and friendshipping and advice giving. I am. So Maxine is wrong—so wrong—about me. But she is also right, because I know more than that, want more than that. Right because I am the girl who spends her summers reading books and working, tutoring at the rec, when a lot of her friends are at the rec, playing their summers away. I am the girl who knows when to stop talking back to a teacher because I know my mother will be waiting for me when I get home, asking me if I forgot who raised me. I am the girl who dreams of going places: to college, to grad school, all around the world, if I can. 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.

And even though we’re all dressed up in our new clothes, even though none of us had opened our mouths and talked to her, 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.

try to let the music wash away that feeling that comes when white people make you feel special or stupid for no good reason. I don’t know how to describe that feeling, just to say that it’s kind of like cold, sunny days. Something is discomforting about a sun that gives no heat but keeps shining.

“I want something more from Woman to Woman,” I tell her. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I mean, I do like going on all those trips, but sometimes you make me feel like you’ve come to fix me; only, I don’t feel broken. Not until I’m around you.”

Why am I only seen as someone who needs and not someone who can give?”

How I Know Sam Is My Friend We ride the bus to and from school together. When Mr. Flores tells us to choose a partner, he says we can’t be partners because we’re together all the time. When something is funny, we laugh loud and long even if that means we’re the only ones laughing. When something is sad, we don’t hide our tears from each other. When we misunderstand each other, we listen again. And again.

I am with York, both of us with maps in our hands. Both of us black and traveling. Black and exploring. Both of us discovering what we are really capable of.

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.” –Toni Morrison, Beloved