Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

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.

Lots of people can’t find beauty in my neighborhood, but I can. Ever since elementary school, I’ve been making beauty out of everyday things—candy wrappers, pages of a newspaper, receipts, rip-outs from magazines. I cut and tear, arrange and rearrange, and glue them down, morphing them into something no one else thought they could be. Like me.

One of us has to make it out of here, and I’m her only child, her only hope of remaking herself.

How I am someone’s answered prayer but also someone’s deferred dream.

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

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?

To give myself a way out. A way in. Because language can take you places.

“Every young person could use a caring adult in her life.” “I have my mother.” And my uncle, and my dad. “You think I don’t have anyone who cares about me?” “No, no. That’s not what I said.” Mrs. Parker clears her throat. “We want to be as proactive as possible, and you know, well, statistics tell us that young people with your set of circumstances are, well, at risk for certain things, and we’d like to help you navigate through those circumstances.”

“She’s all about teaching stuff we don’t necessarily learn in our textbooks.

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.

don’t really want to learn about the polluted river. I want to move where the water is clean.

“But then again I feel bad for feeling bad, if that makes any sense,” she says. “It’s kind of not fair for us to feel guilty for getting what we deserve. We work hard.”

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.

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.

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.

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. I wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole. Wonder if any of these women can answer that.

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.”

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?

I mean, they’d make it so formal that they’d take the fun out of it. You know? It really would have to become a club or an after-school class with a staff adviser and blah, blah, blah. No freedom to just be, you know?”

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 feel like she thinks I don’t know how to act in public or something.

Wonder why Maxine thinks she can be a mentor if she’s never had one.

Kira and Bailey look at Maxine and Maxine’s eyes get big and I start feeling like I do whenever I know my mom doesn’t want to tell me something. Bailey stutters, “C-can she—” “Um, it’s a play that features stories about women. It, uh, it covers issues like love and relationships—” Maxine starts telling me. “And rape, sex, getting your period for the first time,” Kira interrupts. “Okay, okay, I think she gets it,” Maxine says.

But then I think, how quick it is that Maxine reminds me that I am a girl who needs saving. She knows I want out and she has come with a lifeboat. Except I just don’t know if I can trust her hand.

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.

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 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.