Caught Up! by Winston Chapman

The Life CHAPTER ONE

I couldn’t believe I had gotten myself into this situation.  Was old enough to know better.  My mom always said ‘The choices you make will determine the quality of your life’.  I was looking straight in the face at the possibility of losing mine.  Or at best the loss of any life that would even  remotely be described as quality.

It’s the middle of the night here I am scantily clad, sitting on a street curb wrapped in a borrowed jacket with the letters ‘APD’ stenciled on the back, answering a detectives questions. While trying to shield the blinding glare of the squad car’s flashing lights.

    This dreadful nightmare all began just two years ago.  I’d stormed out of my mama’s house in Des Moines, Iowa -- vowing I’d never come back.  Took with me the $746.29 I’d earned over the past summer working at the same diner that my mom had schlepped greasy food for the past 19 years.  Determined I’d not be sentenced to that same life, I headed straight to the Greyhound bus station and bought a one-way ticket to Atlanta.

Made my choice of city on-the-fly, looking at a US Map, while standing in line at the ticket counter.  Chose Atlanta because it was one of theplaces I was sure I’d connect with my roots.  People who look like me.  Understand me.  Relate to me.

Thought about Chicago -- too dirty.  Thought about New York -- too big.  Washington D.C. was too hard to figure out, where it actually was on the map.  Besides, Atlanta was a warm weather city. And, it didn’t hurt that it was so close to Florida.

As a black girl growing up in Des Moines, I never felt I belonged.  Felt like a permanent guest everywhere I’d go.  Being adopted didn’t help.  And being adopted by a white woman helped even less.  Not to mention, I was obviously a product of an interracial relationship.

Though, everyone in town seemed to try to help me belong.  It was just that, their need to make me feel at home, made me feel that much more like an outsider -- the Special Negro.

My soul and spirit, not to mention my smile had grown weary of pretending that I didn’t feel different from everyone else.  So, that was it.  I decided I had to get out of there. 

After graduation, I worked all summer at the diner.  Listened to my customers, my neighbors tell crude racial jokes over the cup of joe I’d just served them.  If ever I happened to wander by or be wiping off a nearby table just as they reached the racial joke punch line, they’d simply turn to me and say, ‘Oh, no offense, Raven?!’

Like that made it alright?  Like it was okay to insult my heritage, as long as you didn’t mean it towards me?

There were only two other black girls at my high school.  Shamika and Mercedes.  Yet, they didn’t nearly receive the Special Negro treatment that the white folks in town gave to me.  Best I could figure was three reasons. 

First, Shamika and Mercedes had not grown up here.  They’d moved here, when their parents decided to escape the mean streets of Chicago, to pursue a more tranquil life in a smaller town.  That, to the rednecks ‘round here, nearly makes them foreigners. 

Secondly, they were not light skinned like me.  Actually, I’m not that light.  It’s not like you can see my veins or anything.  And, I don’t turn red when I blush.  But, compared to the other two black girls, you’d think I was Halle Berry because they were dark skinned.  A very pretty, smooth dark color, almost like coal. 

Thirdly, their parents were black.  Never understood how I somehow gained points in the eyes of the community by having a white mother.  Somehow, I must be tamer.  Less threatening.  My light complexion and my so called “frizzy” black hair made me almost an “honorary white girl”.  That is, just as long as I didn’t rock the boat.