I brought a friend home once. When I was in elementary school.
I felt I could save her. Her name was Naaira, an Haitain immigrant, who lived in the apartment building around the corner from my house. Like Chimere, Charda, and Janiya, she was a very close friend of mine. However, unlike all of my other friends, I related to Naaira in a way I wish I didn't. She would come to school with tales of how badly her mom beat her and how her mother would starve her. I remember seeing her in the nurses office; lying that her bruises were from a bike fall.
While my mother never starved any of her children and never beat us in the way that Naaira's mother had beat her, Naaira and I did relate in regards to physical abuse. In our only shared class, Language Arts, Naaira and I sat a desk away from one another. During our reading time, while all the other kids sat on the plush beanie-bags and gathered themselves in comfort to read the adventures of Captain Underpants, she and I would compare our bruises. Naaira had a cool chestnut brown complexion, always wore dresses or skirts - even when it was cold - and had yellow-tinted eyes. We would fascinate at how our bruises would heal differently due to our complexions. Mine were always first red, then purple, followed by a greenish tone and finally into a fading mustard yellow. Naaira bruises always seemed to remain purple.
I felt some kinship to her pain. Since my mother never beat us with a heeled shoe or locked us in our room for two days without feeding us, out of the two, I felt my mom was the lesser evil. One day, I brought Naaira home. On the walk to my house, she and I talked about how we would be soul sisters, a pair of unorthodox twins, who would share a bunk bed. (She wanted the top bunk.) We talked about matching outfits and the excitement she held at the possibility of being able to wear pants. We promised that we would protect each other from any harm that came our way.
She was in my home for all of two minutes before my mother pulled me to the side and told me, very lovingly, that Naaira could not live with us. My mother held me as I cried, "I want her to stay! She needs our help!" My mother handled my outburst of disappointment with understanding and tenderness. I felt like I had let Naaira down.
Eventually, Naaira left to go home and over the school year, I saw her less and less. She would no longer talk to me in class, never sat next to me during reading time, and one day upon entering the classroom, I saw that she no longer was my neighbor. Unbeknownst to me, she had asked our teacher, Ms. Jenkins, could she move to the empty desk in front. I tried to ask Naaira if she had grown angry with me through passed notes, notes she never returned answered. I watched as she would open the note and immediately ball them up. She would sit the contorted ball on the corner of her desk until class was over then would throw it in the garbage bin on her way out.
As I grew older, I realized that I had given Naaira false hope. She was only eleven years old and was, unfortunately, utterly stoic and apathetic. I had come into her life promising I would change it; unlatching the aspiration inside her, which allowed her to positively daydream about her future for the first time. In the end, I failed her.
I hated myself for not being able to save her, then for not being persistent and walking home with her, and now ultimately not keeping in touch. I can't recall if she even graduated with us; we became so lost to one another.
YOU ARE READING
Three Miles in Baltimore
Non-FictionI was born in Baltimore, Maryland to a single struggling mother of four. Last year, in the midst of a mental breakdown, I began writing. I wrote in hopes of understanding my depression. I wrote to calm my ever present anxiety. I wrote to acknowledge...
