Piecing Me Together(45)

Their names. So many, they spill off the page.





57


silencio

silence

I know Sam is back from Costa Rica. I sit on the bus, and the closer we get to her stop, the more my stomach turns. I don’t know what to say to her, but I know I need to say something. The bus pulls up to her stop. A man gets on and walks all the way to the back, even though there are free seats closer to the front. A pregnant woman gets on and sits in the first available seat.

Sam is not there.

I think maybe she’s so exhausted from the trip that she overslept and now is running late. I look out of the window, thinking I might see her running down the block, calling out for the bus not to leave. But she is not there.

My stomach settles. But just a little. Sooner or later we’re going to have to talk.

Not having Sam’s company makes the ride seem longer. When I get to school, Sam is already there, which means she took an earlier bus or her grandpa dropped her off. I see her walking down the hall toward her first-period class. Instead of running up to her and trying to start a conversation, I test out a wave to see what her response will be.

She waves back, but there is no smile. There is no stopping and waiting for me to catch up with her so we can talk. And so I know her coming to school on her own this morning was not about being too tired to get up early. It was about not wanting to be with me.





58


pieza por pieza

piece by piece

Today Maxine takes me to the Esplanade. I’ve never walked the whole thing, and I have a feeling Maxine is going to want to do just that, because she is dressed in sweats and Nikes. Portland’s Esplanade is a path for cyclists and pedestrians, and it goes along the Willamette River. I love seeing Portland’s waterfront park and bridges all at once. Camera in hand, I take photos as we walk, capturing the boats on the water.

A cyclist dings his bell, so we step aside.

We find a bench and sit down. The Tilikum Crossing bridge behind us, the Hawthorne Bridge in front of us. The sun is warm, but every few minutes Portland’s breeze embraces us.

Maxine asks, “So, what’s been on your mind lately?”

I tell her how I’ve been thinking about being stitched together and coming undone. “Do you ever feel that way?” I ask.

“Absolutely,” Maxine says.

“Really?”

“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.” Maxine squints and goes into her purse. She digs for a moment and then pulls out her sunglasses. “Sometimes, in class, if something about race came up, I was looked at to give an answer as if I could speak on behalf of all black people,” Maxine says. “It was exhausting.”

“Very exhausting,” I say.

A couple walks to the edge of the boardwalk and takes a selfie.

I tell Maxine, “I didn’t think you dealt with any of that at St. Francis. Seems like you really liked it there.”

Maxine crosses her legs, leans back against the bench. “I loved a lot about St. Francis, but just because I had a good experience there doesn’t mean everything was perfect,” Maxine scoots closer to me, lowers her voice and says, “And to be honest, not all of the negative messages were from white people.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You remember my dad is in real estate, right? Well, when I was a little girl, like elementary-school age, I’d overhear him tell his clients who were black that they should take down the photos and artwork in their homes in order to have a better chance to sell.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And I never heard him say that to white families,” Maxine says. “And so, I don’t know. I think I internalized all of that.” She stops talking for a moment, like for the first time she is realizing something. “I guess it made me feel like blackness needed to be hidden, toned down, and that whiteness was good, more acceptable,” Maxine says.

Then she laughs as a memory comes to her mind. “I remember being so embarrassed about having friends over to my house.”

“Are you serious? Why? You have a nice house; it’s like a mansion.”

“Well, it’s, you know—black.”

We laugh. Hard.

“I mean, the art on the walls, the food my family eats,” Maxine explains. “When I was in high school, I wasn’t sure how my white friends would react. Remember—I grew up with parents who believed you should tone down your blackness when in public. I didn’t know how to function when the public came to my private home. I grew up feeling tremendous pride in our culture, what we as a people overcame and accomplished, but at the same time there was this message from my parents telling me not to be too black. At school, with my white friends and teachers, there were all these stereotypes I felt I had to dispel, and, with a lot of my black friends, I had to prove that I was black enough—whatever that means. It was complicated,” Maxine says.

All this time I’ve been thinking how easy Maxine has it. How she has no idea how I feel, what I go through. We start walking again, making our way back to the car. The boardwalk is crowded now, cyclists and joggers whizzing by. Every now and then we see two women speed-walking and pushing strollers. Makes me wonder if they planned to get pregnant at the same time so they could have their children together. Makes me wonder if I will ever have a child and if Lee Lee will ever have a child and if we’ll ever push strollers and walk along a boardwalk together.