Sent Away

Sent Away
By: Mia L. Hazlett
3/4/08

I can’t believe my parents are doing this to me. This has to be illegal or something. There has to be someone I can report this to. They can’t just send me away to live with my aunt and uncle if I don’t want to. There has to be some sort of law they are breaking and I’m going to figure out which one it is. I mean I am about to go to high school. They can’t take me away from all of my friends. I absolutely refuse to spend my last four years in school away from my best friends in the whole world. There is not another, Tonya, Keisha, or Marcus…I don’t care what my mother says. We have been friends since elementary school. You can’t replace all that time.

How could they do this to me? I have been on the honor roll. I don’t do drugs. I’m on our basketball team and the swim team at the Y. And I don’t want to be away from my parents. They say I will still be able to see them every weekend and they will be right there if I need them. I know that’s a lie. I barely get to see them now. We live under the same roof and they never make time for me. Now they expect me to believe that if I call, they will come…whateva.

This all comes down to the high schools not being safe in the city and the quality of education is better where my aunt and uncle live and blah, blah, blah. My parents are just scared of black people. There, I said it. They think all black teenagers, are about nigga this and nigga that, but that’s not me. I can’t believe they don’t trust me enough to know that’s not the clique I hang with. I mean if they don’t have the faith in me, that I won’t make the right decisions, than they should at least have enough faith in themselves that they raised me right. I mean they always tell me they are so proud of me. Yeah, right…”We’re so proud of you, now go away.”

I feel like they set me up. They have always told me we could talk about things and that they would include me in any decisions that were made concerning my well-being. But I have fought this the whole way and they have completely ignored me. My aunt and uncle have had more say, in this whole move, than I’ve had. Of course they think it’s okay, because they are all about white people. I think they think that they are white or at least wish they were. Now they think they can get me out there and turn me into my cousin.

Oh and I so can’t wait for that, sharing a room with my cousin Kara. I give it about a week until we are rolling on the floor getting into it. It’s like every chance she gets, she is all about calling me ghetto. I don’t even have the time for all that. Just because I prefer cornrows over curly Q’s, that doesn’t make me ghetto. Just because I know how to dribble a basketball between my legs, instead of play a concerto on the piano, it doesn’t make her better than me. And just because my parents want to send me away, while her parents are planning their next summer family vacation, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me. It only means that my parents got sick of me and don’t want me anymore.

(to be continued)