Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [149]
Both girls had a focus that carried them beyond the painful days in junior high. June wanted to behave in a way that made her mother proud, and Caroline wanted to make something of herself academically. Even in their darkest times, they were preparing in their own ways for brighter futures.
Evonne’s and Maria’s stories are quite different. Both girls come from strong families with strong women. They learned from their parents the importance of fighting back and resisting others’ efforts to define them. Evonne, like many black girls, saw strong women all around her. To Evonne, growing up female was compatible with growing up assertive and strong. Maria had grandparents who risked their lives for what they believed in. They taught her to be true to her own values no matter what the cost.
EVONNE (16)
Evonne was a black student who had toured with a women’s gospel choir and starred in school and community musicals. She was an A student, she was on student council and popular with her classmates. I was curious about her social success and invited her to come to my house for an interview.
Evonne drove up in her new red sports car, a present for her sixteenth birthday. A week earlier, her parents had given her the keys at a dinner for twenty of her friends. Evonne was dressed in an olive silk blouse, black slacks and gold rings and earrings. She was beautiful, with butterscotch-colored skin, enormous black eyes and dimples. I asked her to tell me about her life.
Evonne was the only child of professional parents; her father was an attorney and her mother a physician. She’d been a loved and pampered child from day one. Every summer she spent with her maternal grandmother in Arkansas, and winter holidays she spent with her father’s parents in Virginia.
She attended a private Montessori school in Chicago until she was in third grade, then she transferred to a racially diverse public school for gifted students. Her early school years were happy ones—she was immediately recognized as a gifted performer. She danced and sang her way through school and was in a children’s choir that was on television regularly. Her parents had paid for private lessons with drama and singing coaches.
I asked about racism in Chicago. “As a kid, I only experienced one racist. This guy called me ‘nigger’ and said to stay out of his neighborhood when I rode my bike down his street. I avoided that street for a while, and finally Dad noticed. When I told him what happened, he insisted that I ride on that street. He told me I shouldn’t give racists any power over my life, even the power to decide a bike route.”
Evonne said that she liked school until fifth grade, when the girls at her school changed. She told me, “Everyone became materialistic. I could afford the right clothes but some of my friends couldn’t and they were left out of everything. I never, ever teased anyone for wearing K Mart clothes, but other girls did.”
She shook her head. “I wish I could tell you that I didn’t fall for the snob scene, but I dumped my friends and hung out with the popular kids. I was a total bore in sixth grade.”
She paused as our cat jumped on her lap. She petted Woody for a few moments before continuing. “Junior high was the pits. I went to a new school that was 95 percent whites. I felt alone. Even the nicest white students didn’t invite me to their homes. But the blacks weren’t like me either. They were poorer and from different backgrounds.
“I thought about where I fit in. I looked for black movies in the video stores and they were about drugs and gangs, which wasn’t me. I felt like an invisible black person. I didn’t want to be an Oreo, but I didn’t want to hang out with crackheads. I couldn’t find a place. Sometimes I was angry I wasn’t white and sometimes I hated whites.”
Evonne looked sober as she thought about race. She continued, “In junior high I prayed that I would wake up in a world where everyone was the same color. Simple decisions paralyzed