Apologize for Living
I don’t know if my father has ever been prouder. He still tells everyone that I go to Yale when he introduces me, right after he tells them my name. “But how can you afford it?” white strangers often wonder. It’s in their eyes even if they are too polite to ask. They see the disparity in my father’s clothes, covered in sawdust and sweat after a long day of work, in his black skin and the bones beneath that hold him upright and proud.
“Yale meets 100% financial need,” I say, but not because it’s true. There’s always fine print. There’s always the student contribution.
It’ll be okay, I thought. I can get a job. When I stop being sad. A job because textbooks and rain boots will cost you, but then, so will depression—feeling all the ways you are dark, in body and mind, powerless and impoverished, wondering if you can belong in a white and rich world.
They’d be okay, my parents said, as my student contribution became theirs. “I’m sorry,” I tell my mother. It’ll be okay, she says. She can never quite wash the sawdust from their clothes. They don’t want me to be any different from the students who don’t have to apologize every time they buy food. They’ll never ask me to give up the hours I spend in theaters, dreaming stories of girls with skin like mine in a world that wasn’t made for us. Not even if that means having to apologize for living.
“Yale meets 100% financial need,” I say, but not because it’s true. There’s always fine print. There’s always the student contribution.
It’ll be okay, I thought. I can get a job. When I stop being sad. A job because textbooks and rain boots will cost you, but then, so will depression—feeling all the ways you are dark, in body and mind, powerless and impoverished, wondering if you can belong in a white and rich world.
They’d be okay, my parents said, as my student contribution became theirs. “I’m sorry,” I tell my mother. It’ll be okay, she says. She can never quite wash the sawdust from their clothes. They don’t want me to be any different from the students who don’t have to apologize every time they buy food. They’ll never ask me to give up the hours I spend in theaters, dreaming stories of girls with skin like mine in a world that wasn’t made for us. Not even if that means having to apologize for living.
