At-Risk by Amina Gautier Read Free Book Online

six children, and my mother was always packing barrels full of Sweet’n Low to send to him. I had never seen my mother go out on a date, never seen her stop and smile or respond to any of the many men that expressed interest in her. Nice as he was, Leon was all wrong for her. Although he’d been living here for some time, he still seemed new.
    On our first session, the Zeta Alpha Deltas showed us a video featuring “famous women of African descent.” Then they gave us notebooks and asked us to write an essay about a woman of our choice who hadn’t appeared in the video. When we were done, they had us read them aloud.
    One by one, we each stood up and read essays about our mothers. Halfway through the eleventh essay, I could see the women’s faces falling. They seemed bewildered and disappointed. Miss Diane looked as if she was going to cry.
    When we were done, Miss Elaine put a hand on Miss Diane’s shoulder. “I don’t think they understood the assignment, soror.”
    Miss Diane took a deep breath and stood in front of us. She seemed to be making an effort to smile. Miss Linda motioned her to sit back down and she spoke to us instead.
    â€œWell, girls, I commend you for your efforts,” she said.
    Miss Tracy chimed in, “To write such beautiful essays in so little time!”
    Miss Anita added, “And it’s certainly encouraging to know that you all love your mothers.”
    Miss Diane cut them off. “Yes, it was very good. But why don’t we do this? Why don’t you girls take the assignment home and work on it for our next meeting?”
    We all groaned aloud at the thought of another essay, but Miss Diane was undaunted. She said, “This time, try to think of women outside of your immediate sphere. Try to think of dynamic women, women who were the first of their kind ever to do something, women who broke the race and gender barriers. Women who carved a space for themselves outside the realm that people have come to think of as a woman’s role. Now do you understand?” she asked us.
    We all nodded. I raised my hand.
    Miss Diane called on me. “Yes, Dorothy?”
    â€œMy mother was the first woman in her family to leave Jamaica and come live in the U.S.”
    Although I came to hate them, my mother was pleased with my Saturday sessions. She wanted me to distinguish myself from the others in my class, to stand out. She wanted to write home about me, finally to be able to use me as an example for my relatives over the sea who all thought I was lazy and spoiled. I imagined that my young cousins hated me. Here I was going to school in whatever type of clothing I chose, watching music videos until it was time for dinner, and having the time of my life, while they were forced into uniforms and still had to go to the kinds of schools where the teachers could hit you and your parents would thank them for it. Where girls who spoke to boys were fast and loose, where they didn’t have time for television after school because they had chores. These were my mother’s recollections of her youth growing up in St. Elizabeth,and although two decades had passed since she’d been a girl in grade school, I imagined that much had not changed.
    I hated the Saturdays, but there I was session after session. My grades weren’t suffering, and so I didn’t see why I had to give up my Saturdays to learn how to sit, when to cross or uncross my legs, and play with knives and forks. But, like the other girls, I didn’t have a choice. None of us wanted to be there. We took our frustration out by barely participating, by looking past and through the women so bent on saving us. Our mothers could make us go, but they couldn’t make us like it. So we slumped in our chairs and answered in mono-syllables. Of the women, we took no notice. We doodled while the Zeta Alpha Deltas talked. We smacked our gum. If we had liked each other, we would have passed