Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

Why do people who can afford anything they want get stuff for free all the time?

How she wants me to have a mentor. How she’s always ready to give me an opportunity, a gift. Like what she is telling me is she comes in peace.

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 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.

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.

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. It was complicated,” Maxine says.