Do you feel hurt because it's the 'all black people look the same' moment, or because you are being confused with another after being so close to this other?Īn unsettled feeling keeps the body front and center. If this were a domestic tragedy, and it might well be, this would be your fatal flaw-your memory, vessel of your feelings. And you never called her on it (why not?) and yet, you don't forget. Eventually she stopped doing this, though she never acknowledged her slippage. Haven't you said this yourself? Haven't you said this to a close friend who early in your friendship, when distracted, would call you by the name of her black housekeeper? You assumed you two were the only black people in her life.

After it happened I was at a loss for words. Like thunder they drown you in sound, no, like lightning they strike you across the larynx. Sister Evelyn must think these two girls think a lot alike or she cares less about cheating and more about humiliation or she never actually saw you sitting there.Ĭertain moments send adrenaline to the heart, dry out the tongue, and clog the lungs. Sister Evelyn never figures out your arrangement perhaps because you never turn around to copy Mary Catherine's answers. You assume she thinks she is thanking you for letting her cheat and feels better cheating from an almost white person. You never really speak except for the time she makes her request and later when she tells you you smell good and have features more like a white person. You can't remember her name: Mary? Catherine? The girl is Catholic with waist-length brown hair.

Sister Evelyn is in the habit of taping the 100s and the failing grades to the coat closet doors. Philip and James School on White Plains Road and the girl sitting in the seat behind asks you to lean to the right during exams so she can copy what you have written.

Its dark light dims in degrees depending on the density of clouds and you fall back into that which gets reconstructed as metaphor. Sometimes the moon is missing and beyond the windows the low, gray ceiling seems approachable. Usually you are nestled under blankets and the house is empty. When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows.

Citizen by claudia rankine sparknotes