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January 22 - January 31, 2022
“Liliana…” She hesitated. Then, like someone had lit a match inside her, she bolted up. “Liliana, I’ve been sitting here thinking, Could my daughter really be this irresponsible? Could she really not understand the situation we are in?”
“Mom, it was just some stupid kid who was being racist because you and Dad are from Central America. That’s all.”
“No,” I said, my voice all deep like I was the parent. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting some ignorant people say where I go or don’t go.”
Dustin had sent a text. But it wasn’t the kind I’d been expecting. You know, another apology or something. Instead he simply wrote: hey, can u leave my sweatshirt in my locker? thx.
The least I could do—the least we could do—was step up to a bunch of ignorant students who thought memes like the ones Rayshawn and I got were funny.
Inside the packed auditorium a guy sitting a row ahead of me took a piece of notebook paper and rolled it like a blunt.
Rayshawn went first. With all the confidence, he said, “I live with my mother and my grandmother. But we’re not poor. My mother is a nurse. My grandmother is too.”
Someone else: “We don’t all love fried chicken. I’m a vegetarian!” Everyone laughed at that.
“There’s more to us than our hair. And no, you can’t touch it.”
“Teachers, please don’t constantly ask if I need a pass to use the computer lab. You know, I do have a MacBook at home.”
Well, Brianna had no problem speaking up. “You know what,” she said, raising a finger. “There’s a lot more to me than my accent, and my nails, and my attitude. A whole lot. I love snowboarding. And kids. I want to be a preschool teacher maybe. Or a veterinarian.” She paused. “That’s all.”
“I’m an only child. Shocker, right?”
“My parents are legal citizens.”
Genesis raised a finger. “That I need to go back to where I come from. Because I’m from my mother’s womb, and that would be really uncomfortable.” That brought a few hoots from the crowd.
Another girl spoke up. “I am white… but I can dance.”
Steve then announced, “I am white and proud, and don’t think others should feel bad about being white. You can’t control what color you are, so what’s the big deal?”
Another girl onstage raised her hand. “We’re not all rich.”
One kid was totally ready for this one. He said, “Well, like Steve said earlier, it’s not our fault we’re Caucasian. So why do we have to stand back and let… other kids… get scholarships and full rides to college when our parents and families
have worked wicked hard to get us here too? How is that fair?”
And Mr. Rivera looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.
I already knew that a bunch of resident students would tell their parents that the METCO kids had started all of this, which would be a lie. Still, if our presentation was supposed to have turned down the dial on racism at Westburg, I would say it was an epic fail. Like, 100 percent.
How who we are on paper apparently matters just as much as—no, who am I kidding? more than—who we are in person.
More poetry, less police.
I don’t see color, honestly, so I don’t know what the big deal is about race.
“The desert,” Dad went on, even though no one had said anything about a desert, “is dry, mijos. It makes you remember that we are just bodies, bones and flesh, thirsty for water. Any kind of water.”
The bagels were piled high, but the empanadas, they were almost gone.
