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Growing Up As A Girl Child in America: Part 9
What did I do wrong? Was my vice principal really prejudiced or racist?
I was a good student, but I didn’t want any of my friends to know. I’d hide papers and tests with good grades on them. One time, I changed an “A” on a hard test to a “C” so my friends wouldn’t think I was egg-headed.
I didn’t get the same cute clothes other girls did. The best I could hope for was neat, trim, and preppy. Half my clothes were hand-me-downs from my Milwaukee cousins.
After my grandfather died, life became a struggle to stay out of trouble. Not at school. At home.
One time at my dad’s house, my stepmother commented, “You’re so manipulative.”
I’ve thought about this comment for years. I helped her many times — cleaning, cooking, health-wise, as she’d already begun to experience health problems. I’m not sure she understood that survival and “manipulation” were two different things.
All I thought about was getting by, making it through the day without being yelled at, put down, pushed or hit with an object. College was the last thing on my mind.
Even though my mother had gone to the University of Redlands, where she’d been the first female editor and publisher of the Bulldog newspaper…
