Portland Symbol Analysis

I am learning to speak.

To give myself a way out. A way in.

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.

“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.