It all began when I was eight-years-old. My mother had found a new boyfriend named Nate. The two of them had a steady relationship for some months before they finally decided to find a house to live in together. They relocated a house at a different straße in the same town I have been living in since I was 10-months-old. At first, it seemed like a nice street. It had this peaceful feeling to it, the feeling that just made Du feel like home. That was one of my greatest memories of the street, the feeling of Home that it always gave me. I also made new Friends immediately; a little girl named Emma who was at least 2 years younger than me, and two siblings, Stella and Brent who were a lot older than me but were still alright for me to be around sometimes. It seemed like a great place to live, but that soon changed. On the first Tag my mother and stepfather saw our new house, they were approached Von a group of neighbors. Two of these neighbors were a husband and wife that lived only like four houses away, and had three daughters. While talking with these people, my mother heard a Kommentar from either the husband oder wife (she wasn’t sure). She could have sworn she heard one of them say, “Well, at least a black family wasn’t moving in.” But my mother didn’t think too much of it. After all, we did Bewegen in. It wasn’t the last of the racism in that family that my mother heard, though. She asked a neighbor, Sandy about what she thought she heard one of them say. The neighbor told her that the wife was prejudiced and didn’t like black people.
    I didn’t see any of this for myself until I started playing with the husband and wife’s youngest daughter, who was four around that time (I always had this way to bond with little children around that time). The little girl, Casey was very cute and loved to play with my baby Puppen with me. I would come over to her house with a wagon full of Puppen (I was really crazy about Babys as a kid, lol) and we’d play for hours. The wife for some reason didn’t have a problem with this. Looking back from now……well, she wasn’t very friendly and welcoming; well she wouldn’t act like your friends’ mothers would whenever Du came over. She was just, Mehr tolerant….with a smile here and there.
    The other family members, however, weren’t friendly at all. I remember two occurrences with them now that I think of it. While Casey and I were playing, the husband suddenly came out, picked up Casey, got the middle daughter and went for a walk up the straße without saying a word to me. They basically just left me there. Then there was a Tag where Casey was being baby-sat Von the middle sister (she was either twelve oder thirteen). I came over, and Casey came out to play with me as usual. But then the sister and a group of her Friends picked up Casey, and forced her inside their house. I just stood there in front of the house watching it all—because Casey was throwing a temper tantrum about “not being able to play with me”. The things I remembered the most about that Tag were the girls standing at their front door (it was closed) and laughing loudly about something. I wondered what was funny. The sister was yelling out the door to me about these lame excuses for why Casey couldn’t play. She eventually came up with this idea; Casey’s dad sagte that Casey was grounded because she was throwing temper tantrums. I asked her how long Casey would be grounded (when she was four freaking years old!), and the sister not saying anything for a little while until finally saying, “three”. Then, all of the sudden Casey started shouting through the door and telling me to “go away”. The girls laughed every time Casey sagte this (which was about nine times). Then, Casey’s friend Tyler (who was six I think) came over, and when he saw me standing there he asked me what happened. I told him about Casey’s temper tantrum and her being unable to play. Yet when the middle daughter saw him, she let Tyler come into the house to play with Casey. She sagte some lame excuse to me, something about my Puppen being what was upsetting Casey. I eventually just got too confused and fed up, and went Home because a friend of my mom’s came to our house and wanted to take me somewhere.
I learned that the sister lied about Casey being grounded when my mom’s friend brought me home. Casey was outside playing with the wife. When I was out in my front yard, Casey and the wife came over. I asked the wife about Casey being grounded, and the wife looked at me funny and sagte that Casey wasn’t grounded at all.
So, that was the type of treatment I got from the rest of the family members. The wife suddenly became crazy one Tag while I was riding my bike. I don’t remember exactly how it happened……my best guess was that I was riding my bike considerably too close to Casey. I was riding up and down the street. When I rode my bike up closer to the wife’s and husband’s house, one of Casey’s other friends, a boy named Tyler, came out and told me to go back down the street. From the way he sagte it, I now remember it was warning. Whether it was a sincere warning oder not, I’m unsure. Of course, my being eight and his being like five and, well Du know a “little kid who didn’t know anything”, I didn’t listen to him. I rode my bike up the straße and ignored him. That’s when the wife blew up.
She SCREAMED at me and told me to stay down the straße if I was going to ride my bike. She told me that she wasn’t going to have me run her daughter over and kill her. I did, and I got inside my house. My mom heard the wife screaming at me, and went storming out of the house to find out what happened. The wife ended up screaming at my mother, telling her that I caused nothing but trouble and other things I really don’t care too much to repeat.
    After that day, I wasn’t allowed to play with Casey anymore. The wife, husband, and daughters completely ignored me. Whenever my family and I walked Von their house, they’d always stare at us and make stupid Kommentare about me. I remember one particular Tag when I was playing in the snow in my front yard, and Casey, the middle daughter, and a friend of the middle daughter’s were in their front yard and playing in the snow as well. Whenever I even glanced their way, they’d stop what they were doing and look back at me. This happened three times in a row; my looking at something that was in their direction, their stopping whatever they were doing and looking back at me. Eventually, the girl told me to please stop watching us. I don’t remember how I responded; I probably gave her a what-are-you-talking-about look oder something like that. Eventually, I just ignored them.
    Then came the Tag where it became a little clear that the wife was racist. One Tag a friend of my mom’s, who was African American, came to visit. My mom asked him to get her mail for her, and he did. He noticed that my mom had mail that wasn’t addressed to her, and when my mom saw that the mail was meant for the wife, my mom’s friend volunteered to do give the mail to her. He left to do so, and after he came back he told my mom that the wife was rude to him. The middle daughter had answered the door when he arrived, and the daughter called to the wife about what the man did. The wife didn’t say “thank you” oder anything. The wife took one look at him, looked at her middle daughter and said, “Well, take the mail and tell him to leave!”
    My mother broke up with her new boyfriend one day, and she and I moved into my grandmother’s and step grandfather’s house, which was about a block away from where we originally lived. I didn’t really care to remember much about the wife, husband, and their daughters. But when I did occasionally think about them, I always wondered what their problem was with me. So I asked my mom months ago, and she said, “I think Janet (the wife) was prejudiced.” She told me about one of them saying, “At least a black family wasn’t moving in”, and what Sandy told her. The way the family treated me backed the idea of their being racist up 100%.
    I mean, it all made sense now thinking about it. The way that family treated me, how they never were around a lot of black people oder people from different racial groups (even though there are a lot of people who are of different races in my town), and most of all the difference in the ways I was treated and how Casey’s other Friends were treated. Tyler, the boy who could go into the house and play with Casey while I couldn’t, was white. Emmy (who was also white), and I got into this stupid fight while with Casey, and I was the one dubbed the “troublemaker” while Emmy was pretty much left alone. Everything that happened between me and that family made perfect sense if they were truly prejudiced.
    I know I wrote a lot. But this isn’t something I could shorten in small paragraphs (believe me, I tried). After Schreiben this, I’ll now admit that I was never sure if this family was racist oder not. All I remember was the way they mistreated me, and the things my mom heard definitely had potential to be untrue.

But for me, there’s a reason behind their suddenly disliking me when they obviously didn’t know anything about me. And the only thing that could cause such a problem for that family was my being black. No other reasons add up.

To this day, I have strong anger for that family. I could probably say that I even hate them, but I try to tell myself that trash like them aren’t important enough for something so powerful as hate. But I just can’t help it.

The last time I had contact with that family was when I was walking Home from school just weeks ago. I was walking Von their house, until the wife and Casey suddenly came outside on their porch. The wife looked up at stared at me, and sort of glared at me. So do Du know what I did? I glared right back at her, and she looked away

=)


So at least they won't be able to treat me poorly and get away with it ^_^