colors of society #wattys2017 [completed]

baby white.

Annabelle has stopped by at Walmart. A birthday gift for her niece was what she was looking for.

Shamin loved barbies. Smiling Annabelle searched for one that would represent the small love of her life.

Slowly her smile started slipping away. There was not one that would represent the small hellfire.

They all looked at her with their blue eyes, their white skin, their model-like bodies. 

They were taunting her, they were mocking her. Asking why she was not like them. 

Questioning her whole being. 

Stumbling she decided on another toy. Not one that would make her little sunshine feel less than she was. 

Her brother welcomed her with open arms, smiling she accepted the love she was greeted with and that she lacked in giving herself. 

"They take what we have and taunt us for it. They inject their lips, they inject their bodies, they tan. They take our hair, they dance to our songs, they travel our countries but at the end of the day they can lay all that down. They are accepted for it. They preach self-love and confidence but take ours." Her brothers' wife spoke. 

They were cleaning the table while her brother was bringing the trash out. 

Annabelle tried to ignore those words and what they meant.

"They privilege from us but because they ain't us, they aren't confronted with our misfortune."

Annabelle kept on scrubbing the table, her head down.

"They have the white privilege even though we have been living here as long as them, they took us with them. They enslaved us and yet we still are beneath them."

Annabelle was scrubbing so hard, she was shaking. 

Before more words could be spoken loud screams and sirens were heard.

It ended with a loud shot.

Her brothers' wife stormed to her child. Annabelle went to the window.

Her fingers shaking and numb.

There he was laying. Still. Sleeping.

A police officer pointed a gun at her sleeping brother, who already was lying on the ground.

Her brother's wife was on her porch, screaming out, shouting.

Annabelle ran over to her, held her.

Trying to prevent another shot.

The police officer was screaming.

People of the neighborhood were closing in on him.

Filming.

Screaming.

Annabelle saw the trash lying on the ground.

The trash her brother had wanted to bring out.

Slowly she walked over to it. Ignoring everyone. She picked it up. She threw it away.

Slowly and calmly.

And against any odds, she lay down next to her brother.

She kept herself on the ground even as the police tried to push her away.

Looking at the closed eyes of her brother she let her owns close.

The police officer was white.

He was neither fired nor imprisoned.

That night Annabelle fully understood what 'white privilege' meant.