Kobe hugs her and then reaches for the plastic grocery bag in my hand. “What you got up in there?”
I take out one of the chicken wings and pass the bag. He takes one, grabs a napkin, and gives the bag to Andrea.
The five of us feast on corner store food.
Sam says, “So do you all go to the same school?”
Andrea, Kobe, and Lee Lee nod. Andrea says, “We go to Northside. I like it there. I mean, it’s not like St. Francis, you know.” She looks at me. “We’re not traveling the world and learning a million languages.”
Kobe laughs. “How many languages do you speak now, Jade?”
“Don’t do that,” I say. “I’m only learning one other language.”
Andrea swallows a handful of chips. “French?” she asks.
Lee Lee jumps in. “You know Jade is all about Spanish. Do you guys remember when we were in elementary school and Jade said she wanted to go to Sesame Street and speak Spanish with Maria and Luis and work in the Fix-It Shop?”
They laugh at me and I laugh too.
“She was like, ‘I’m going to travel the world and be rich and buy my mom a big house.’ Remember that?” Lee Lee asks.
“That’s still the goal,” I tell them.
Lee Lee looks at Sam and says, “But for real, there’s not much to say about Northside. We don’t have all the electives you do at St. Francis. The only club worth mentioning is the after-school poetry club. It’s kind of DIY though.”
Sam says, “DIY?”
“Yeah, it’s not really an official club or anything. My English teacher, Mrs. Baker, lets us use her room after school to write poems. There’s no teacher; we just kind of meet up and write and then share.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Sam says.
Lee Lee reaches for a pillow and props it against her back. “Not as cool as having a garden on your rooftop, and cooking classes.”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t know many teachers at St. Francis who would let us stay in their classrooms and write poems. I mean, they’d make it so formal that they’d take the fun out of it. You know? It really would have to become a club or an after-school class with a staff adviser and blah, blah, blah. No freedom to just be, you know?”
“She’s right,” I tell them, just to be sure Lee Lee, Kobe, and Andrea know Sam isn’t trying to make them feel better about Northside. “Lee Lee’s poems are so good, she could probably teach the class,” I tell Sam.
Lee Lee smiles. Big, like she needed to hear that.
Andrea turns the music up a little and says, “This is my song!” and that gets us all singing and listening to music for the rest of the afternoon.
When it’s time for Sam to go home, she takes her cell phone out and calls her grandfather to let him know she’s on her way.
Lee Lee gives me a look and says, “You’re walking her to the bus stop? I’ll go too.”
We say our good-byes to Andrea and Kobe, and leave.
As we walk to the bus stop, Lee Lee says to Sam, “So, did you just move to Portland?”
“Me? Oh, no. I was born at Emanuel Hospital. I’ve lived in Portland my whole life.”
“Oh,” Lee Lee says, her brows scrunched in a fit of confusion. “So why— So where do you live?”
“Northeast Portland. Not too far from Peninsula Park.”
Lee Lee doesn’t ask any more questions. She keeps walking. We make it to the bus stop just as the bus is pulling up.
“See you,” Sam says.
We wave and say good-bye.
On the way home, I tell Lee Lee what Sam’s grandma said about North Portland. “That’s why I walked her to the bus stop,” I say. “To make her grandparents comfortable.”
Lee Lee laughs. She says, “White people are a trip.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t believe her grandparents are scared to let her come over here. There are a lot of white people who live over here. Don’t they know that?” she asks. “And maybe they don’t know—but Northeast has its sketchy streets still. It hasn’t changed over there that much.” Lee Lee shakes her head. “How you gonna live in a ’hood but be afraid to come to another ’hood?” she asks.
We laugh about that the whole way home.
27
agradecido
thankful
For Thanksgiving, Mom and I do our annual tradition. This time E.J. and Lee Lee join us. We go downtown and volunteer at the Portland Rescue Mission. “We don’t have much, but we have more than a lot of other people,” Mom says.
I hope one day my family gets to a place where we can be thankful just to be thankful and not because we’ve compared ourselves to someone who has less than we do.
After we’re done dishing out turkey dinners with all the holiday fixings, we eat dinner at my house. Mom made ham with her not-so-secret ingredient of brown sugar, and all the traditional sides are spread across the table. Everything looks so good, you’d never know this wasn’t some fancy dining room table holding it all up.
As we eat, Lee Lee says, “My teacher Mrs. Phillips doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Can you believe that?”
Mom puts her fork down. “Why not? She doesn’t have anything to be thankful for?”
E.J. swallows and says, “Oh, Mrs. Phillips—I remember her. She’s that revolutionary-activist-fight-the-power teacher at Northside. I loved her class,” he says. “I remember her telling us that Thanksgiving should actually be a national day of mourning or something like that.”
Lee Lee nods. “That’s exactly what she says.”
“What does that even mean?” Mom asks.
E.J. answers, “Basically, we’re sitting here feasting and celebrating that our nation was stolen from indigenous people. Columbus didn’t discover nothing.”
All of a sudden my food doesn’t taste as good as before.
Mom wipes her mouth with her napkin. “I’ve never thought about it like that. Thanksgiving has always been a day for getting together with family, a day to thank God for my personal blessings. But, well, I guess your teacher has a point.” Mom takes another bite of food.
Lee Lee says, “Yeah, Mrs. Phillips is always asking us to think about other perspectives. Next week we’re having a cultural exchange with teens who attend a program at the Native American Youth and Family Center.”