When I was fifteen, my parents kicked me out so my older sister could have her own bedroom. When I asked them where I was supposed to go, my mom just grinned and told me to figure it out. That was seven months ago. Today, they’re both begging for forgiveness. My dad is Black and my mom is white. I came out looking very Black, while my older sister, Kate, looks much whiter, and that one difference shaped my whole life. Despite being Black himself, my dad had a vicious kind of colorism toward Black people, and my mom was simply racist. To her, my dad was the only exception. Kate and I are only two years apart, but growing up, our lives could not have been more different. Every one of her birthdays came with not just a cake, but huge celebrations that seemed to stretch across her entire birth week. My birthday, meanwhile, was treated like any other day on the calendar. Still, instead of soaking up all the attention and hating me the way our parents did, Kate was always kind to me when they weren’t looking. On my ninth birthday, she knew our parents wouldn’t do anything for me, so she asked if she could celebrate her birthday on my day. Of course they said yes.
When the day came, she let me choose who to invite. When it was time for the cake, Kate distracted our parents and lured them into another room so everyone else could sing “Happy Birthday” to me. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Another time, when report cards came home, she got all C’s while I got B’s. She knew our parents would probably wail on me for not getting A’s, so while they were looking over my grades, she begged them not to hurt me because she didn’t like violence. In the end, they only pinched me a few times. So even though my parents basically saw me as a cotton picker, as they liked to call me, I still felt lucky, because Kate was always there. Until the day she wasn’t.
It was her seventeenth birthday. I woke up to the sound of not just my mom and dad, but my entire family throwing my things into boxes. When I asked what was going on, the first thing my dad said was, “Your sister said all she wants for her birthday is her own room. Sorry.”
My eyes widened. I asked where I was supposed to go, because there were no extra rooms in the house.
My mom cut in. “I don’t know. You have phone numbers of friends and family. Figure it out, Darky.”
Tears filled my eyes. I looked at Kate, but she wouldn’t meet them. Her whole body was tense. It took nearly half an hour before I finally understood this wasn’t some sick prank. I started howling with a kind of grief so deep I still don’t have language for it, because the one thing I had clung to in that house, the one ally I thought I had, had abandoned me. Even when I curled into a ball and rocked back and forth with a loneliness I can’t describe, they ignored me. They just kept packing. At some point, my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. I went numb, grabbed what I could, and called the only other family member I trusted: my aunt on my dad’s side, Bonnie. After Kate’s betrayal, I had no idea what she would say, but she immediately told me I could come stay with her for as long as I needed. I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning. I didn’t even give Kate her birthday gift. I just took the boxes, ordered an Uber, and left.
But on the ride there, Kate called me. Hatred flooded me the second I saw her name on my screen, but I answered anyway.
“I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.”
My eyebrows pulled together, and I went completely silent.
“Are you alone right now?” she asked.
I told her yes. Kate didn’t say anything else. She just turned on FaceTime and showed me a pregnancy test with two pink lines. It was hers. I gasped.
“Lily, I’m pregnant. I don’t want to tell Mom and Dad yet because, well, you know how they can be. But I don’t want you to be home when they find out.”
I thought back to the time Kate came home with a hickey and our parents screamed at me for almost an hour, telling me I was a terrible influence and that it was all my fault. So I understood.
“Kate, what can I do to help?” I asked.
She told me to ask Aunt Bonnie for help. Then I heard our parents coming up the stairs, singing “Happy Birthday,” so I hung up. My head was spinning. Part of me felt relieved that Kate was still my best friend after all. But mostly, I was terrified. By the time I got to Aunt Bonnie’s apartment, my stomach was tied in knots. She opened the door with a huge smile and pulled me into a tight hug.
“I’m so happy you visited.”
I hadn’t told her what happened, and clearly my parents hadn’t either. We had barely started making polite small talk when I blurted everything out.
“My parents are racist, and my sister is pregnant.”
She laughed at first, thinking I was joking. Then I burst into tears. By then we had already carried my boxes inside, so we went in and she listened while I told her everything. I made her promise not to tell my parents about the pregnancy, and she swore she wouldn’t. For the next hour, I unloaded all of it: the racism, the favoritism, being thrown out. She promised I would be safe with her, and she held me while I cried myself to sleep. At the time, I didn’t know Aunt Bonnie was already getting ready to make my parents pay. I didn’t know Kate’s life and mine were about to change forever.
When I woke up the next morning on Aunt Bonnie’s couch, I had that disoriented moment where I didn’t know where I was. Then everything crashed back in at once: being kicked out, Kate’s pregnancy, all of it. My eyes felt swollen from crying, and my back ached from sleeping twisted on the couch. I checked my phone. Three missed calls from Kate. Nothing from my parents. That wasn’t surprising, but it still stung. I could hear Aunt Bonnie in the kitchen making breakfast. The smell of bacon and eggs drifted through the apartment, and my stomach growled loudly. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Aunt Bonnie said when I shuffled into the kitchen. “I made you breakfast. Eat up. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
I sat down at her little kitchen table and started eating. The food was incredible. Or maybe I was just starving. Either way, I inhaled it while Aunt Bonnie sat across from me with her coffee.
“I’ve been thinking about everything you told me,” she said after I’d finished about half my plate. “And I need to ask you something important. Has your dad ever hit you?”
I nearly choked on my orange juice. No one had ever asked me that so directly before.
“Not like punched me or anything,” I mumbled. “Just slaps, pinches, that kind of stuff.”
Aunt Bonnie’s face darkened. “That’s still abuse, Lily. And the emotional stuff, the way they treat you differently from Kate, that’s abuse too.”
