Hurricane Child

The idea of not being alone -- of having someone who sees me, same way I see the things that no one else can see, makes me feel like I'm real. Like I deserve to exist on this planet alongside everyone else. That I get to be here because there's someone else who wants me here too.

White people once used the Bible to say that we should be slaves.” “What does that have anything to do with this?” “Everything,” I tell her. “It means we should think for ourselves. Decide if something is wrong just because someone says it’s so, or decide it’s right because that’s how we feel.

Just from listening to what the other children at school say, I know that not many mothers like Miss Joe. They say she’s a woman that isn’t really a woman at all, but is a snake in disguise. When her red pickup truck breaks down, she doesn’t have a man to call, so she fixes it herself. When she’s thirsty or hungry, she cooks for herself and only herself, not for a husband asking for this and that. She’s like the slaves back in the day who weren’t really slaves at all because they’d taken their freedom, and lived in their own houses, and owned their own clothes, and ate their own food. People didn’t like seeing slaves like that, and people don’t like seeing a woman like that now either.

No one would ever say, "Come and join us, Caroline," so I would then spend the rest of the lunch period feeling sorry for myself and trying to remember that the lonely children like me are the ones who grow up to be someone that everyone wishes they could be.

I thought the lights were the ghosts of those slaves coming for me because they were jealous that I'd been born free

There’s much more in this life to fear than just spirits, and if I let fear rule my every move, I will become nothing more than a little ghost child myself. I want to be brave. I want to live the life I was given. So what if the spirits hear us call their names? Let them hear it.

I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind before in my life. That’s what feels worse than anything else. Silencing myself, when I’ve so often fought to be heard against people like Missus Wilhelmina and Anise Fowler and her hyenas. They aren’t telling me to shut up now. I’m telling myself. I’m a traitor to my own voice.

I know he tried, and he's still trying, and he'll still make mistakes sometimes, because he's a human being, and I've learned now that this is what human beings are always destined to do. Including me" -Caroline