Growing Up As A Girl Child In America: Part 4
The summer I rode the short bus and was in a special needs class
After my grandfather Bampy died, I lost who I was.
My best friend ran away.
The regular school year ended and it was time for summer school.
I didn’t always go to summer school. Sometimes I spent summers in Milwaukee with my cousins.
I think my aunt didn’t want my grandmother Nana to be by herself after losing her spouse of 50 years, so I stayed home and went to junior high summer school.
Because we lived in the rural outskirts of town, I was assigned to attend summer school at Clement Junior High in Northside Redlands. This was the poorest of our town’s three junior highs, located in the neighborhood where the poor, brown, and black families lived.
The 10-acre orange grove I grew up in was on the Northside: now it was gone, replaced by a huge mobile home park.
They put all of us into orientation classrooms during the first week.
I only knew a few kids at this school.
I don’t remember what misbehaviors I did, but I could tell that the young teacher in my first classroom disliked me. After a couple of days, I got called to the…
