Piecing Me Together Quotes

I am learning to speak.

To give myself a way out. A way in.

And then so many of my classmates nodded, like they could all relate. I actually looked across the room at the only other black girl in the class, and she was raising her hand, saying, “She took my answer,” and so I knew we’d probably never make eye contact about anything. And I realized how different I am from everyone else at St. Francis. Not only because I’m black and almost everyone else is white, but because their mothers are the kind of people who hire housekeepers, and my mother is the kind of person who works as one.

But girls like me, with coal skin and hula-hoop hips, whose mommas barely make enough money to keep food in the house, have to take opportunities every chance we get.

Of everything Mrs. Parker has signed me up for this one means the most. This time it’s not a program offering something I need, but it’s about what I can give.

“We want to be as proactive as possible, and you know, well, statistics tell us that young people with your set of circumstances are, well, at risk for certain things, and we’d like to help you navigate through those circumstances.”

“I’d like you to thoroughly look over the information and consider it. This is a good opportunity for you.”

That word shadows me. Follows me like a stray cat.

“Oh, it’s a last-minute thing. Maxine called and asked if I wanted to do brunch with her to celebrate my birthday.”

“Do brunch? You mean go to brunch?” Mom laughs. “How does one do brunch?” Mom pours milk into her mug, then opens a pack of sweetener and sprinkles it in. She stirs. “That woman has you talking like her already, huh?”

“It makes me feel like I’m learning a secret code or something. I don’t know. It’s powerful.”

“Powerful? Really?”

“Yes, all language is. That’s what you used to tell me.”

Dad puts his fork down. Leans back in his chair. “Me? I told you that?”

“Yes, when I was little. When it was story time and I didn’t want to stop playing to go read and you would tell me I ought to take every chance I get to open a book because it was once illegal to teach a black person how to read,” I remind him.

Listening to these mentors, I feel like I can prove the negative stereotypes about girls like me wrong. That I can and will do more, be more.

But when I leave? It happens again. The shattering.

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 wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole.

And the other girl talks so bad about Northeast Portland, not knowing she is talking about Sam’s neighborhood. Not knowing you shouldn’t ever talk about a place like it’s unlivable when you know someone, somewhere lives there. She goes on and on about how dangerous it used to be, how the houses are small, how it’s supposed to be the new cool place, but in her opinion, “it’s just a polished ghetto.” She says, “God, I’d be so depressed if I lived there.”

She will be on the news every day because she is a white girl and white girls who go missing always make the news. [...] For months people will tell girls and women to be careful and walk in pairs, but no one will tell boys and men not to rape women, not to kidnap us and toss us into rivers. And it will be a tragedy only because Sam died in a place she didn’t really belong to. No one will speak of the black and Latino girls who die here, who are from here.

Maxine is full of ideas. “There are lots of free things too. I mean, even taking a drive to Multnomah Falls or going to Bonneville Dam.”

“Yeah, well, my mom doesn’t have a car, so there goes that idea,” I say. “And if she did, I’m sure she’d need to be conservative on where to drive in order to keep gas in the car.”

Maxine shakes her head at me. “Always the pessimist,” she says, laughing.

Always the realist, I think. Always the poorest.

“Kira—please leave Jade alone. She is not like that. She’s smart. She’s on scholarship at St. Francis and has a four-point-oh GPA. This girl right here is going places. She’s not going to mess things up by betting caught up with some guy,” she says. “I’m going to see to it she doesn’t end up like one of those girls.”

I know when Maxine says those girls, she is talking about the girls who go to Northside.

“You hanging around all those uppity black women who done forgot where they came from. Maxine know she knows about fried fish. I don’t know one black person who hasn’t been to a fish fry at least once in their life. Where she from?”

Mom won’t stop talking. She goes on and on about Maxine and Sabrina and how they are a different type of black [...]

I haven’t spent much time with Sam. Partly because I usually have something to do after school, but mostly because I don’t know how to be around her when I know she doesn’t think that salesclerk treated me wrong. I don’t even think she feels the tension between us. She has moved on and acts like everything is fine, but me? I’m stuck wondering if I can truly be friends with someone who doesn’t understand what I go through, how I feel.

Everyone is so excited about Nathan’s announcement that the family check-in stops, and all Mrs. Winters can do is make plans for the baby shower. No one asks Maxine if she has any news. I can tell Maxine is hurt by this. Because when Mia says, “We should paint a mural in the baby’s nursery. That would be so much fun, wouldn’t it, Maxine?” Maxine says, “Yeah, sure. That would be awesome,” but her voice is flat and without emotion.

“But I don’t look up to Maxine,” I tell her. “She’s using me to feel better about herself. And her mother gave us all this food because she feels sorry for us. If that’s how you act when you have money, I’d rather stay poor.”

“You need to talk to whoever is in charge. Have you said anything to anyone?”

I don’t answer.

“They can’t read your mind. I mean, I get what you’re saying—some of that stuff is a little corny, and a lot of it is offensive. But I don’t know; what’s the better option? Stay silent, leave the program, and they never have a chance to do better?”

“All right, all right. I’ll think about it,” I tell Lee Lee. I don’t know why I never considered it before. Here I am, so focused on learning to speak another language, and I barely use the word I already know.

I need to speak up for myself. For what I need, for what I want.

This conversation isn’t as intense as I thought it would be.

Maxine asks, “So what are some things Woman to Woman can do better?”

[...] “Well, I’d like to learn about real-life things—I mean, like you know, how to create a budget and balance a checkbook so I’ll know how much money I can spend and how much to put aside so the lights don’t get turned off,” I tell her.

I stare at the picture, can’t stop looking at her face, at how she looks like someone who lives in my neighborhood. Maybe she used to?

When the star-filled sky blanketed him, did he ever think about what his life was like before the expedition? Before he was a slave? How far back could he remember? Did he remember existing in a world where no one thought him strange, thought him a beast?

Did he remember being human?

Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh [...] and not be told I’m too rowdy, too ghetto. Sometimes I want to go to school, wearing my hair big like cumulous clouds without getting any special attention [...] At school I turn on a switch, make sure nothing about me is too black. All day I am on. And that’s why sometimes after school, I don’t want to talk to Sam or go to her house, because her house is a reminder of how black I am.

“I just want to be normal. I just want a teacher to look at me and think I’m worth a trip to Costa Rica. Not just that I need help but that I can help someone else.”

“When I went to St. Francis, most people assumed that because I was black, I must be on scholarship.”

“I’m on scholarship,” I remind her.

“I know. But you were awarded a scholarship because you are smart, not because you are black,” Maxine says. “I got tired of people assuming things about me without getting to know me. [...] Sometimes, in class, if something about race came up, I was looked on to give an answer as if I could speak on behalf of all black people,” Maxine says.