Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

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.

The only thing fancy about me is my name: Jade. But I am not precious like the gem. There is nothing exquisite about my life. It’s mine, though, so I’m going to make something out of it.

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.

Tonight I am taking ugly and making beautiful.

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 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 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.