“Jade. You’re a smart girl. Are you really going to pass on a chance to get a scholarship to college?”
“I’ll do it,” I say. And then: “Thank you for the opportunity.”
She hands me a sheet of paper with a list of questions on it. “We’ll give this to your mentor before you meet so she can learn a little about you,” she says. She hands me a pen.
I fill out the form.
Name: Jade Butler
Favorite Color: Yellow
Hobbies: Collaging
And then there’s a question:
What do you hope to get out of this program?
I leave that one blank.
5
promesa
promise
Mom’s scent hugs me as soon as I get in the door. She is stretched out on her twin bed. And even though she is resting, I can tell by her face that there is no peace for her, not even in her dreams.
She did not bother to take off her nylons or her shoes that she says are more comfortable than clouds. The TV is watching her, so I turn it off. Mom likes to go to sleep to noise. I think the voices keep her from feeling lonely.
In the kitchen, there are empty brown paper bags on the counter top, which means there are groceries. I open the door to the fridge: milk, butter, mayonnaise, bread, eggs, hot dogs. And in the pantry: peanut butter, jelly, cans of tuna, packages of Top Ramen. And in the freezer: family value–size ground beef, frozen pizzas. And in the way, way back—ice cream. Mint chocolate chip.
6
historia
history
Lee Lee comes over after school, and over bowls of mint chocolate chip ice cream, we swap stories about our first day. Before we can get good into our conversation, E.J. comes home, smelling up the whole living room with his cologne. He joins us at the kitchen table, but not before grabbing a spoon from the dish rack and helping himself to my bowl. I give him the meanest look I can muster.
“I mean, you can’t share with your favorite uncle?” he says.
“Get your own.” I point to the freezer and move my bowl closer to me.
He laughs, goes into the living room, and puts his headphones on and starts bobbing his head.
“Okay, what were you saying?” I ask Lee Lee.
She is laughing at the two of us and shaking her head. “I was just saying how much I like my history teacher. She’s my favorite already,” Lee Lee tells me.
“Why?” I ask.
“She’s all about teaching stuff we don’t necessarily learn in our textbooks. Like today we learned about York—the black slave who traveled with Lewis and Clark.”
“A black person was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition? Really?”
Lee Lee tells me, “My teacher says he was just as important as Lewis and Clark.” She reaches into her backpack and pulls out a work sheet and hands it to me. A picture of York is front and center. He looks strong and confident. He looks so regular, like he wasn’t a slave, like he wasn’t treated like less than anyone else. Lee Lee says, “My teacher told us that York and Sacagawea helped during the expedition. She said Sacagawea helped to translate and that she was very knowledgeable about the land and could tell which plants were edible and which ones could be used for medicine.”
“What did York do?” I ask.
“Mrs. Phillips said he was a good hunter and he set up the tents and managed the sails. Once, he even saved Clark from drowning.” Lee Lee scrapes the bowl and eats the last morsels of melted ice cream. “When they needed to decide on where to go next or how to handle a challenge, York got to vote. Sacagawea, too. The first time a black man and a woman were ever given that privilege.”
Lee Lee tells me that Lewis and Clark came with gifts and that it was a ritual to have a meeting ceremony. At that meeting, Lewis and Clark told the tribal leaders that their land was now the property of the United States, and that a man in the east was their new great father.
They did not tell them York was Clark’s slave.
They did not tell them that their new great father owned slaves.
I give the work sheet back to Lee Lee. “I wonder if the native people saw it coming,” I say. “Did they know that the meeting ceremony ritual was not so innocent, that it wasn’t just an exchange of goods?”
Lee Lee looks at me. “I’m sure they didn’t. How could they know this was the beginning of their displacement?”
“But York and Sacagawea—they knew?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Lee Lee says. “But even if they did, what could they do about it?”
I have so many more questions, but Lee Lee is on to the next topic. She starts telling me about all the Northside drama—who’s broken up, who’s gotten back together. I know so many of them because we all went to middle school together.
The whole time Lee Lee is talking, I am thinking about York and Sacagawea, wondering how they must have felt having a form of freedom but no real power.
7
arte
art
Lee Lee has been gone for at least two hours. E.J. is in the living room, turning the sofa into his bed. I have on headphones so I can block out the TV show he’s watching. One of those real-life murder mysteries. He has the volume up so loud, I am sure the neighbors can hear.
I am sitting at the kitchen table, which is really a folding card table someone gave us a year ago. It’s not that sturdy or wide or long, but it is enough. Tonight it is holding scraps of paper, the 35 bus schedule, and old copies of the St. John’s Review—our community newsletter.
I am ripping and cutting. Gluing and pasting. Rearranging reality, redefining, covering, disguising.
Tonight I am taking ugly and making beautiful.