For Black Girls Like Me Read online

  Now in the van I open the purple notebook and steady it on my knees.

  Thursday March 10th

  L

  We just crossed the state line into New Mexico. We’re gonna be at our new house soon! Wish you could see how red it is here. Not one willow tree in sight. Eve doesn’t even care about the scenery changing. She sleeps through it all. ***EYE ROLL*** But I’m awake.

  Did you know that the desert gets REALLY cold? Like 35 degrees at night and in the morning. But it heats up in the middle of the day with the sun. I thought the desert was supposed to be hot all the time? Just another thing my parents forgot to mention. I start at my new school on Monday and I’m nervous. It’s going to be hard starting in the middle of the year. What if nobody wants to talk to me?

  At least I have you.

  Anyway. I’ll let you know if there are any cute boys. Did you know the mountains in Albuquerque are called the “Sandias” because they turn pink like watermelons at sunset? Oh! And that a lot of the houses here are single-story and made of a mud called “adobe”? Everything here is the color of fire and burnt things.

  My skin feels so dry. I’ll email you some pictures soon.

  XO

  K

  Are We There Yet?!

  “We’re here.” Mama says pulling onto a long dirt road a few hours later.

  Maryland Pennsylvania West Virginia Ohio Indiana Illinois Missouri Oklahoma Texas and New Mexico. Ten states and three days later we finally arrive in Albuquerque. It’s midafternoon and the sun has turned the valley into a simmering bowl of dry air.

  “Thank you sweet baby Jesus!” I yell. Stretching my cramped legs.

  “Keda. You know we don’t believe in Jesus. Why do you always say that? We’re humanists.” Mama says. Snapping her head around to glare at me.

  “Geez. It’s just an expression.”

  “Where are we?” Eve sits up now and rubs the sleep out of her eyes.

  “At our new house.” I almost yell.

  “It looks like the middle of nowhere to me.” Eve grunts.

  “It’s on some land.” Mama replies.

  “How much land?” I ask. “Bigger than our yard in Baltimore?”

  “At least five times bigger. One acre.”

  “Oh great!” Eve continues. “So we live in the country now. Like a bunch of smelly organic hippies.”

  “We kinda are hippies.” I say. “I mean. At least the way we eat.”

  “Girls. We are not hippies. We are environmentally conscious women. We just care about what we put in our bodies. What we leave on this earth. I for one am going to make the best of this land. It means I can finally start a little farm.”

  “Sounds like some hippie BS to me.” Eve mutters as we pull up to a set of metal gates held together by a big chain.

  “Makeda jump out and get the gate!” Mama yells ignoring Eve’s tone.

  I unhook the big chain from one corner of the gate and jump onto it as it swings open. Mama continues in and I run up the driveway behind the van to our new house. The driveway is long and lined with crab apple trees. The house at the end is made of adobe the color of pennies at the bottom of a jar. It’s long and L-shaped with a big sunroom peeking off the back-left side. And Papa is here. He comes out of the front door grinning with his crooked front teeth and gray hair that looks like a mop. I run right into his arms.

  “There’s my little chocolate scoop!” He teases. “And my big vanilla scoop!” He says to Eve who sticks out her tongue as she climbs out of the back seat and nuzzles into his embrace anyway. “My two girls. Sweet like the perfect bowl of ice cream. Welcome home!”

  And Mama doesn’t join us. She walks past us. Into the house. As if she knows where she’s going. How rude! I think. But then I run inside after her to claim my room.

  My New Room

  Is painted a happy-face yellow. The polished wood floors are lined with a thin coat of dust and there is one big window looking out eastward onto the front yard. My bed is already set up but everything else is in boxes. My new room sits at the very end of a long hallway. My new room is twice as big as the room Eve and I shared in Baltimore. It even has a double closet lined with mirrors. I sit on my bed and look at my reflection. I feel so small. I hear Eve unpacking her things. Playing music softly from her phone. Her room is right across from mine and the exact same size except it faces the backyard.

  “Eve!” I yell.

  “What?” She says peeking out from her door.

  “Want to have a sleepover in my room tonight?”

  “Not really.”

  “Please?”

  “Keda. We just got here ok? We need to get used to being in our own rooms. I’m too old for sleepovers.”

  “Fine.” But my face is hot. I don’t get what’s changed. In Baltimore we used to wait until Mama tucked us in and then I would climb into Eve’s bed and we’d whisper about our days. And when it would thunderstorm Eve would let me bury my face in her hair.

  “Don’t be scared.” She’d say. “It’s just the sky putting on a show for us!” And she’d let me stay until the storm passed.

  But then Eve started 9th grade. She got a cell phone and instead of gossiping with me she stays up under her covers chatting with her friends or watching musical theater videos. She never looks up from that stupid thing!

  Who needs her anyway? I get up from my bed and close my door. I stand in the middle of MY NEW ROOM. I hear Papa begin to practice in the sunroom. The low notes of his cello vibrating through the walls of the house like the dull throb of a stubbed toe. I open my window and smell bonfire smoke from a nearby property. And then I see it. The mountains are covered in the messy light of the setting sun. And they really are a deep watermelon pink.

  First Impressions

  Tall throbbing mountains

  Dust in the eye

  Gaping cliffs

  Everywhere I look

  A hurt

  Even the dusk

  A scab

  The horizon hard

  Leering

  That first night

  I fight sleep

  Curl in and out

  Of thicket dreams

  Wake to more distance

  More red red rock-ache

  “How do soft things

  Grow here?”

  I whisper

  The two women

  Appear even clearer

  In my new room

  You will see

  You will see

  Baby girl baby girl

  The Georgia Belles

  Are here and we go

  Where you go

  But I am panicked

  “How will she ever

  Find me now?”

  You will see

  Baby girl baby girl

  A mother never forgets

  Boxes

  The next day Papa leaves for a weekend of concerts in Santa Fe so Mama Eve and I spend all day unpacking boxes and taking breaks to slide around on the wood floors in nothing but our socks and underwear. When we get too tired we sit on the screened-in porch listening to the wild dogs. The strange Albuquerque desert notes. The house begins to fill with empty boxes. Some collapsed. Some so large I climb in and close the tops over my head. Some with holes worn through the sides from the jam-packed moving truck that brought all our things from Baltimore.

  I start collecting all of the empties. The big ones. Even some of the ones with holes. Holes make good windows for spying. I stack the boxes in the backyard binding them together with duct tape to make long tunnels. Different mismatched rooms.

  Mama is crabby all weekend. And even though she’s always telling us to be creative she yells: “You have a perfectly good room of your own. Put those boxes in the recycling!”

  Eve won’t even look inside of my box fort but I keep at it. I bring blankets and my songbook and pens. I graffiti the cardboard walls with my favorite words: home violet sky. And when it gets dark out I turn on my flashlight and read until Mama screams to get in t
he house for bed.

  “You’re not a hobo you know.” Eve foams at the mouth as we brush our teeth for bed. “You belong inside.”

  Inside. That’s another one of my favorite words. I can’t explain how the box fort makes me feel but it is something like what I imagine the word inside feels like. And when the rainstorm comes on Sunday afternoon along with the return of Papa. I sit on the back porch and watch my boxes collapse. No. Melt into the dirt grass. And I do not cry. Instead I hum. Then I sing inside inside gone gone gone.

  How It All Began

  That night before bed I crawl next to Papa on the futon couch. “Tell me about my special day please?” We are in the sunroom and Papa takes off his reading glasses and sighs a deep sigh pretending to be annoyed.

  “Aren’t you getting too old for this story?” He teases as the lines around his eyes crinkle into a smile. “I’ve been telling it to you since you were barely potty trained.”

  “Come on. Please.” I whine.

  “Once upon a time…” He begins as I settle in. “There was a mother and a father who so badly wanted another baby. But they knew they could not get pregnant again. One day they saw an ad for an adoption agency in Atlanta and they knew it was a sign. So they called the agency and ten months later a picture arrived in an email. A picture of a newborn. Brown eyed. Baby girl.”

  “Me.” I sigh into the soft cotton of Papa’s shirt.

  “And there you were. Our baby girl. We loved you the moment we saw you. We picked you up from the airport six weeks later. Your mother cried when the social worker put you into her arms. She wouldn’t let me hold you at first. You were hers. And then you were mine. And you know what kid? You were so small. So small that I could rock you in the palm of my left hand.”

  “Yeah right!” I roll my eyes. But I watch as Papa picks up his left hand and cups his callused palm and rocks it back and forth. Back and forth in the air.

  “Just like this.” He says.

  And even though I’m too big for fairy tales. Even though tomorrow I face a new school and a new set of 6th grade teachers and a new locker combination. Even though these days I can’t help feeling like I’ll never be whole. That somewhere out there is a woman with my face. Another mother. Missing me the way I miss her. I try for a moment to imagine what it must have felt like to be so small. To sway and sway and sway. To belong in the cradle of his hand and not fall or blow away like hard dirt in the wind.

  El Rio Charter Academy

  Is only a mile away from our new house so on Monday Mama and Papa walk us over to register for our first day. El Rio means “the river” and when we arrive I watch a rush of brown and white faces stream out of cars waving goodbye to their parents. But I do not see any faces that look as dark as mine.

  In the office the secretary can’t stop talking excitedly to us. “Oh my! What an interesting family. So unique. I’m sure the girls will be just fine here. We really are a very diverse school. As you can see we have a very large Latino population. They make up almost fifty percent of the school.”

  The principal Mr. Bowman takes us on a tour and gives us our locker assignments. My 6th grade classes are all in the main building but Eve gets to be in her own building out back for the high schoolers. We walk across the basketball courts separating the two buildings and Eve nods a quick goodbye before ducking away into her first class.

  Then it’s just me Principal Bowman and my white white parents standing in the middle of the court. Even though we are all alone I feel like people are watching. I feel like a big smear of color in the middle of a freshly washed sheet.

  “Ok sweets.” Mama says trying to grab my hand. “Let’s get you to your first class.”

  “Yes. That would be social studies with Mr. Newman.” Principal Bowman says leading the way.

  And when we get there Mama just can’t help herself.

  “Anna” Papa starts “let her go in alone. She’ll be fine.”

  But Mama waves him aside and comes into the classroom with me to look around. She watches me take my seat and then she gives me a dorky thumbs-up. She hovers in the doorway as Mr. Newman introduces me. Everyone’s eyes are on me. And then they are on Mama. I bury my face in my backpack and pull out my supplies. And I don’t take a deep breath until I hear the door shut. Mama’s footsteps echoing down the hall.

  20 Questions

  At lunch a group of 6th grade girls swarm me.

  “THOSE are your parents? The ones who dropped you off?”

  Yes.

  “The white hippie lady with the braid and freckle face? The skinny white dude with the crooked teeth?”

  Um yeah …

  “And that pale girl is your sister too?”

  Yeah. Eve. She’s in 9th grade.

  “So your family’s just all mixed up?”

  I guess …

  “So what happened to your real mom?”

  You mean my birth mom?

  “Did she leave you in a trash can? I heard sometimes babies get left like that.”

  No …

  “So those are your stepparents?”

  They are my parents.

  “So that’s your stepsister?”

  She’s just my sister.

  “So why didn’t your real parents keep you?”

  You mean my birth parents?

  “Yeah your real parents.”

  My “real” parents are my parents. The ones who adopted me.

  “Well whatever. What happened to your mom? The one that gave you up?”

  I don’t really know.

  “Why not?”

  I had a private adoption. I can’t search for her until I’m eighteen.

  “That’s messed up. But don’t you want to know who she is?”

  I think so.

  “What if she’s famous? She could be like Kerry Washington or OPRAH! What if your mom’s OPRAH? You’d be so rich.”

  I …

  “Ugh. Why do you talk so white?”

  This is just how I talk …

  “Are you sure you’re not mixed? You talk too proper to be black.”

  Well my family is mixed …

  “So you’re like Obama? An Oreo!”

  Kinda. Wait. What’s an Oreo?

  “You know when you’re all black on the outside but really white on the inside?”

  Um …

  After lunch even my math teacher Mrs. K has questions.

  “So KEE-DAY why don’t you stand up and tell us all where you are originally from?”

  I’m from here.

  “No dear. I mean what country are you from?”

  “This one. The good ole U S of A.” I say standing up real stiff to give the whole class a fake salute. “And my name is pronounced KAY-DAH.”

  After School

  Eve is waiting for me. She sits on the basketball courts talking to a group of kids in her grade. I watch her exchange phone numbers with some of the girls and they laugh. Already familiar enough to have inside jokes. Making friends is always so easy for her.

  Eve sees me standing awkwardly next to her. “Oh hi.” She says. “Ok. See you guys tomorrow. I gotta take this one home.”

  “Do you babysit her?” A boy with long hair and a lanky build asks.

  Eve laughs. “No. This is my sister.”

  “Hi. I’m Keda.” I give a half wave but it’s like he doesn’t even see me.

  “Like your cousin-sister? Or like your SIS-TAH?” He continues with a grin.

  Eve’s eyes narrow. “No. Like my sister. Like we have the same parents and live in a house together. Ever heard of it?”

  “Oh that’s cool. Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend you. I’m all about rainbow families. I have a cousin who is half Jamaican.”

  “Good for you.” Eve says rolling her eyes. “Let’s go.” She says to me but I am already walking away.

  We walk in silence until we get to the edge of the school property and cut over onto the sidewalk.

  “Starting in the middle of the year sucks.” E
ve finally breaks the silence. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just stay in Baltimore till school let out. But whatever. At least the kids in my grade are not too bad.”

  “Yeah.” I say. “The girls in my class are ok I think. They ask a lot of questions.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Did they ask you if you play any sports? I died. I don’t think either of our parents have ever picked up any kind of ball. We are so the opposite of an athletic family.”

  “No. They asked me a lot of questions about being adopted.”

  “That’s kind of personal.”

  “Yeah. I—”

  “Oh my god. Ha! Jasmine just sent me this hilarious gif!”

  Eve shoves her phone in my face and I see a flash of a cat flopping dramatically onto a couch with text that reads: I’M LOST WITHOUT YOU.

  I MISS YOU TOO B*%#@ She texts back.

  Jasmine is Eve’s best friend from Baltimore. They met in drama club. I don’t really get why they call each other female dogs but Eve tried to explain it to me once. Something about “reclaiming” the word and its power. I watch Eve text back and forth for the rest of the walk. I want to ask her if anyone had questions for her about our family. Or called her a vanilla wafer. But I can tell she’s moved on.

  Little House on the Prairie

  That night before I go to bed Mama comes in to say good night. “So how was your first day?” She asks. “You girls just did your one hour of piano and then disappeared to your rooms after school. And then at dinner you just gave short answers. Did everything go ok?”

  “It was fine. Nothing major to report.” I say burrowing under the covers. “Where’s Papa?”

  “He left for rehearsal. He’ll be home late and up early for a meeting. But I’m here.”

  It’s hard to tell Mama how I really feel. To explain all the eyes crawling all over me. The questions that never seem to stop. How sometimes I wish I didn’t stick out so much. How sometimes I hate her messy hippie braids. How other times I just want to bury my face in their clean shampoo scent. But she looked so worried leaving me earlier that day. Better not to bother her. Mama and I get along so much better when we are lost in a book. Now Mama flips open the page we left off on and begins. Her voice like a swarm of bees lost in the honeysuckle bush.