The Missing Pieces Of An All American Girl

Prologue: I Wanna Be A Nurse!

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Prologue

As a young girl growing up in the suburbs of Shaw, Mississippi, I was a girl of dreams. When I say dreams, I'm not referring to those princess movies in which girls meet Mr. Perfect, kiss, marry and live happily ever after. I'm referring to a realistic vision of who I wanted to become in the world around me. "When I grow up, I wanna be a nurse!" I exclaimed one day as I doctored on my teddy bear with my toy stethoscope. That was the exact same teddy bear my father bought for my mother on the last Valentine's Day they ever celebrated. A month later, my parents became Muslims and the poor bear sat in my parent's closet until I came and rescued him a few years afterwards. Although the white parts of that teddy bear had turned gray of dust, I loved it with all my heart and decided to name him Abraham (after my father). Till this very day, I have no idea why my parents kept a black and white teddy bear on the top shelf of their closet. Sometimes, I think that they were saving it as a memory of their lives before they became Muslim. Then again there are other times in which I think they saved it for one of their future crumb snatchers to come along and find as I did. Whatever their reason might have been for keeping that teddy bear, I know that they weren't keeping it for me to do what I chose to do with it later in life. "What did I tell you about that?" my father's voice thundered as he came into my play room. "But I wanna be a nurse!" I pouted as I stuck out my bottom lip in stubbornness. "What did I tell you about that?" my father asked in his dangerously low voice. As young as I was, I knew exactly when my father was getting angry. The most noticeable way to tell that he was angry was when he started to speak in that slow deadly voice of his. Knowing that my father wasn't pleased with my stubbornness, I told him exactly what he wanted to hear. "I wanna be a doctor when I grow up." I mumbled as I kept my eyes on my father. "And why do you want to be a doctor?" he taunted. "I wanna be a doctor because a doctor is over the nurse and I ain't gonna work for nobody." I said as I starred at my bare toes on the carpet of my playroom. As I glanced up at my father's facial expression, I could see that my father wasn't satisfied with the answer I offered. "I wanna be a doctor because a doctor is over the nurse and I'm not gonna work for nobody." I repeated emphasizing the grammar mistake I made. "That's my girl!" he said as he swooped me from the floor and into his arms. "You're going to be an entrepreneur just like you're daddy!" he added as he smiled so wide that I could see every tooth in his mouth. "But unlike me, you won't be quitting school in the eleventh grade. You're going to graduate high school and college!" Although I was too young to process everything my father was saying, I smiled in agreement to every word he said. Little did I know that in years to come, I'd ignore working towards my father's dream of becoming a doctor and work towards becoming a nurse. Very little did I know that within a decade, I'd no longer be daddy's little girl, but a single mother with a little girl. My name is Shakirah Abdullah and this is the story of my life.

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