We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

gentrification creeping into every corner, as relentless as water finding its way through every crack, the grit and grime replaced by sleek lofts and craft breweries. I barely recognize my hometown.

Without even quite meaning to, I edit the scene to a more familiar sight—Jen’s

Back then, I thought if I studied her enough, I could train myself to be more like her—breezy, outgoing, fearless. But that never happened—turns out you don’t outgrow yourself.

Sometimes you just need to be around someone who loved you before you were a fully formed person.

Jenny pops two into her mouth back-to-back like popcorn, errant globs of mustard dribbling down onto her belly. I dip the corner of my napkin into my water glass and reach over to dab at the stain. There’s a reason I stopped sharing clothes with her.

It’s Jen who, like every married woman with an unattached best friend the world over, has a single-minded mission to find me someone.

I love you, Puff.

“Man, oh man, these white girls with their tears and flat asses and rich daddies.”

Imagine fucking up in any other job like this. Imagine you work in McDonald’s and you serve someone fries you’ve accidentally covered with rat poison instead of salt and that person dies right in front of you. No one’s gonna say that ain’t murder. But this… these cops murder someone and their bosses just go, ‘Ooops, we did it again.’ Every single time.”

this is what it looks like when you settle down, you evolve, your dreams and beliefs and desires are more conservative.

“It’s awful. I know. It’s just awful.” God, can I manage anything more than these empty platitudes?

when you’re a kid and adults are scared, well, that’s the worst feeling.

activism is easier when it’s cloudless and fifty-five degrees.

So how will you confront the lie? What will you sacrifice? What are you willing to put on the line? Are you going to send your kid to the public school down the street? Are you going to rent your house to a young Black family? Are you going to hire more eager dark girls with kinky curls to be your junior executive? Because your well-meaning intentions, your woke T-shirts, your Black Lives Matter tote bags, your racial justice book clubs are not going to cut it.”

sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”

I didn’t speak to my own brother all this time. And you know why?” Momma releases a strange, high-pitched cackle. “I don’t even know! That’s the awful truth. That’s something, right? I know we were both so mad and we said some terrible things to each other and then waited for the other to come to their senses and apologize while the years piled up. Now here we are, at our momma’s grave, like strangers.

Always all up in your head trying to reason everything to death. Sometimes you can’t think your way out of a thing. You have to feel it. And sometimes you just have to let it out. You can’t just push it away and pretend it’s not happening.

Part of our friendship, of any relationship really, is the tacit agreement to allow a generous latitude for flaws and grievances. A trade-off that goes both ways, glass houses and whatnot—and besides, if you start holding your friends accountable for all their flaws, if you let the annoyances add up on a mental spreadsheet, the whole thing could come toppling down.