Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

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. 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.

Sam is not on the first bus, and for one moment—just one—I think, What if something happened to her? The whole story plays out in my mind—she will be on the news every day because she is a white girl and white girls who go missing always make the news. I will volunteer and join the other searchers. We will search all the many places a body could be. Cathedral Park. Some hidden bush under the St. John’s bridge. 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.

I am wondering how choices are made about who gets what and how much they get. Wondering who owns the river and the line, and the hook, and the worm.