My english class finishes The Yearling a month after my arrival. I didn't bother catching up. I cheated the ending out of Vanessa by telling her I was reading it before I came here and left my copy at Hope House. Jody shoots the deer. I failed the exam with a thirty-nine. I guessed six answers right. One of which asked how the story ended. Quelle surprise.
The next book is called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, written by Maya Angelou. I know her. We read passages from her stories in group therapy at Hope House. She changed the world with her words, spoke up. Shouted.
The book is about Maya Angelou's childhood, how her parents abandoned her and other kids taunted her because of her race. The world ripped her in half and left her for dead, but she survived and wrote a book about it. This book shouldn't be trapped in this glass-walled prison where kids read for straight A's. This book belongs in marble columned libraries with ladders against the walls, a place where the good books of the world are reserved for the people who deserve to read them.
Ms. Rishanki shoots me a sidelong warning glance when she tells the class to make sure to read each assigned section carefully so we remember the details for the exam. The only thing I'll make sure to do is not return the book and tell Ms. Rishanki that the monsters beneath my threadbare foster kid mattress gobbled it up.
For the last ten minutes of the period, we're supposed to read the first two chapters. I refrain from drawing on the inside cover. I respect Maya Angelou too much to mehndi over her words. It takes guts to share a story like that. I don't know how she does it. My caged bird doesn't sing. It shrieks, clawing at the walls of my chest and tearing my flesh off in beakfuls.
I zen with Maya Angelou. I wish she went to Wilmington. I bet we'd hang out.
YOU ARE READING
SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda
Fanfiction"Sometimes I think the universe sets certain people out into the world like gifts meant for others, people whose purpose is to save someone else. That's how I think of families. And if the universe couldn't do me that favor, couldn't put someone on...
