Take My Hand

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

My daddy had made sure that I was educated not only in my books but also, as he had once described it, in the code that dictated our lives in Alabama. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Picking your battles. Letting them think what they wanted because you weren’t going to change their minds about certain things.

Although I refused to believe there was such a thing as an unwanted child, there was such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy—and I could speak to that firsthand.

There are a lot of things a mother can say to hurt her child, even long after the child is an adult.

There is no greater right for a woman than having a choice, Anne. And I exercised that right. Fully and consciously.

“Now, you know how some white folks feel about Black bodies. They think we can tolerate pain better than them. According to some of these documents I’m about to show you, some of them even thought syphilis couldn’t kill us. It was as much an experiment about the effects of the disease as it was a crazy white man’s idea of a laboratory game with Black bodies.”

I had never known that good intentions could be just as destructive as bad ones.

I needed to talk to her, to tell her I understood how a person could get so caught up in doing good that they forgot that the people they served had lives of their own.