The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson

Author:Danielle Henderson [Henderson, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

12.

Why do you call it a ‘book bag’?” Meg Linkh was staring at me with her ice-blue eyes, her nose wrinkled in confusion. “It’s a tote bag.”

I’d always called the thing I used to carry my schoolbooks around in a book bag, which seemed logical. I didn’t have a good answer for Meg.

“I don’t know. That’s just what we called it at home,” I said, flinching a little at the realization that “home” wasn’t the right word anymore.

“Well, it’s a tote bag,” Meg said, smiling. We had become friends in elementary school when I was staying with Grandma, and we shared a love of baseball. Grandma would stop anything for baseball, and we watched countless Mets games in the summers before Cory and I moved in permanently. My love for it developed alongside my love for spending time with her.

Warwick was a lot like Greenwood Lake in one particular way: I was the only Black kid in my class. The interrogation I used to get about not having a father now became a grilling about living with my grandparents in an apartment. These were the kinds of facts that I leaked out on the playground or when we did assignments in groups.

“Where’s Smith Street?”

“Why do you live with your grandparents?”

“Why is your hair like that?”

“You don’t have a washer and dryer at home?”

Every time I was asked to account for the weirdness of my family life, I felt shame creeping in like a drop of water on the edge of a page. I couldn’t tell them the truth—no one knew about Mom and Luke, and I wanted to keep it that way. Instead, my answer was always the same: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.