We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

I’m afraid that Jen won’t get it. Maybe I’ve always been afraid. That’s why I didn’t tell her about when Ryan left that note in my locker, or Birmingham, or even Shaun last year. She could listen, but she could never truly get it. I can’t necessarily fault her for that, but it nags at me: Why don’t we talk about race more? Gaby and I talk about it pretty much every single day, specifically some fucked-up thing in the news or our lives—like venting about ignorant BS like someone mistaking us for the sales clerk at the mall too many times. But I talk to Jen about things I rarely share with Gaby too, like my anxiety and depression and feelings of inadequacy. And besides, Jenny and I met when we were so young, during that brief, elusive period when kids are truly color-blind. We didn’t talk about race when we were five, or ten, or fifteen, and now… it’s a muscle we haven’t used. So is it that I can’t talk to Jenny or that I don’t? Which leads me to an even more gut-wrenching question: What if, when it comes down to it, there will always be some essential part of me that is unknowable to her because of our different experiences? It’s as if an unnoticeable crack between us has stretched into a chasm and our friendship risks falling right through it. “What am I supposed to say, Gaby? ‘I can’t ever forgive your husband for what he did’? ‘He’s part of the chain of systemic racism that’s killing men who look like my father and brother’? ‘If you don’t think race is the problem here, ...