colors to describe, so many colors she looked like a sampling of every flavor of ice cream ever

made. She had a red barrette in the crown of her head like a cherry on top of a sundae. The

entire bus was a mix of people like this.

It was finally time to board the bus, I said goodbye and got settled in for a nine hour

ride. I got lucky and scored a seat in the top of this double-decker bus right by a window.

Wouldn't ya know, vanilla ice cream cone came and sat next to me. We chatted while waiting

to pull out; she seemed nice enough.

Not long after pulling out everyone shut off their overhead lights and tried to get

comfortable enough to sleep for a while. I am not a person who can sleep in a moving vehicle,

so I played games on my cell phone, checked Facebook, and just stared out the window at the

dark highway rolling out in front of us until we stopped. After about four hours the driver

pulled into a truck stop. Everyone on the bus was shaken awake as the air brakes hissed and

brought the twenty-foot tall people-mover to a stop. Thankfully, little vanilla ice cream woke

up too, and we started chatting again on our way into the truck stop for a potty break and

something to eat.

Just as we walked in the door, we were finally introducing ourselves; her name was

Casey. She looked as if she had never seen a truck stop before. Casey was amazed at all of the

trinkets for sale. The place had that truck stop smell too, that dirty man smell mixed with a

just-showered man, diesel fuel and a mix of various air fresheners and whatever fast food joint

that happened to be attached to give drivers variety.

Casey found all the knickknacks! She found bells, magnets, spoons and tee-shirts, all

with Indiana blazoned across them, as that was the state we were in. She had to buy trinkets

for her mom and dad back in Tennessee. She spent so much time shopping, she almost missed

  14  
the bus when the driver was ready to pull out, but she made it just in time with a bag full of

tchotchkes and a bubbly statement, "My parents love knickknacks."

Apparently, after pulling away from the truck stop, the hum of the engine and the

vibration of tires against the road must have allowed me drift off to sleep for a couple hours

because the next thing I remember was the driver coming across the loudspeaker announcing,

"We will be pulling into Chicago's Union Station in approximately thirty- five minutes.

Please gather all of your items and be sure you don't leave anything on the bus. Thank you

for traveling with Megabus."

I was there, Chicago, where he lived now, and I just had to come. I retrieved my bag

from the cargo area and started looking for the subway. This, I was excited about. I had never

been on a subway train and couldn't wait. I asked a police officer where to go, and he told me

exactly what train to catch and what stop to get off at for the street I needed to get to my

rental car.

Two hours after arriving in this city I was finally at my hotel. After sitting on a bus all

night, I wanted nothing more than to take a shower, put on clean clothes, get a bite to eat, and

then, I would make the call.

Riiing, Riiing, Riiing...l was praying he wouldn't answer, and I would get his voicemail

so I could prolong this. We had so much fun in Tennessee. Then his job moved him to

Chicago. I guess I knew it wouldn't work as soon as he told me, but I thought I would try.

Rii...hello? It was him.

We talked about my trip and how his job was going. He asked about our friends in

Tennessee and about the latest gossip around our building. It came like I knew it would. I

asked him if he was going to be able to make it over that night. Surprisingly, he said yes. You

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can feel it when the conversations aren't the same anymore and a person isn't excited to see

you, but this wasn't the case with him. He seemed to be excited to see me.

He arrived around six o'clock that evening smelling as good as ever, like a man,

woodsy smelling cologne but a hint of sweat from working hard that day. He asked if I had

eaten dinner, and I told him no, so we went next door to Bob Evans and had dinner. After

dinner I knew it was going to happen. We would end it or drag this on longer, but I

could tell by his half smile and faraway looks during our dinner what was about to happen. We

talked more about our families and how our lives were going, skirting around the issue until I

finally asked, "So what are we going to do about this?" There it was, the look on his face, like

that of a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar right before dinner.

He explained he met up with an old flame from when he lived there before and things

were going well. While it felt like a hard slap across the face, like when I back talked my

parents as a child, at least I wasn't surprised. We stood there another hour talking about the

weather up there and in Tennessee and every other subject you can think of. It was ten o'clock.

I had had a long bus ride, and now that I knew we were done, I planned to spend the rest of my

time in Chicago as a tourist, so we kissed one last time, hugged longer than necessary, and said

our good byes.

The next two days I shopped, went to the casinos, visited landmarks, and enjoyed time

for me. Monday was another long bus ride home, home to my son, home to my family and

home to a man I had met through friends before I left who said he knew my trip was not going

to work and that he would be waiting for me to get back.

Closure is an important thing in some folk's lives. It is in mine. I knew Chicago and I

were meant to be, but I also knew when he moved, that was the end. I had to go close that

  16  
door. To close the door on that chapter so I could start the next with the man who waited on

me. The man I proudly now call my husband.

  17  
Vernesser Ausley addresses one of our most difficult and pernicious social issues: the effects of
racism on African American children. Ausley develops the essay through examples and
illustrations of the problem drawn from her and her children’s experiences as well as from
current events. Her writing illuminates sensitive issues from the perspective of someone
dealing directly with these problems, and it does so in frank and honest language.

____________________________________________________________________________

Vernesser Ausley

Professor Renee Eades

English 1010

16 February 2015

The Challenges of an African American Mother

As a mother, when my children were small, I would always talk to them about safety. I

taught them never talk to or take anything from strangers, never wander too far from the safety

of the front yard, and always look before crossing the road. I made sure to cover as many rules

of safety with my children as possible to create awareness. However, as an African American

mother of teen age and adult children and because of the constant fear of harassment by law

enforcement of African American youth, racism from peers in the public school system, and

the importance of maintaining a positive cultural identity, I am pressured to talk to my children

about how to cope with racism and the internalized oppression that it causes.

Because of the constant fear of harassment by law enforcement of African American

youth, I continually speak with my children about what to do or how to react if they are

stopped by a white police officer. It’s no secret that young African American youth are more

likely stopped, profiled, and sometimes murdered by white police officers than any other race

of people. I’ve always respected and regarded law enforcement to be noble men and protectors

of the community, but as an African American, especially an African American mother, I

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question the integrity of white police officers with a great dilemma. I’ve witnessed via social

media, news broadcasts, Internet, and cell phone recordings many unarmed African American

youth with their hands lifted in the air, posing no threat of endangerment to the white police

officers who shoot them down like animals and murder them with no repercussion or

indictment from the law. As a mother concerned for the safety and protection of my children, I

don’t trust that the law provides protection without discrimination to children of color and to

the communities of our youth as they do the communities of their white counterparts.

Because most school personnel are not typically trained to be culturally sensitive to the

complex needs of African American students, often African American students are

misunderstood, unfairly treated, and given harsher discipline than other students. Talking to

my children about how to deal with racism from school administrators and some of their white

peers in public schools is a prevalent conversation, among others, that I discuss with my

children. There are times when my children have come home from school very distraught

because of disciplinary measures taken with them by school personnel that seemed to be more

reflective of their race than their character. Seventy-one percent of all suspended minority

students are suspended for nonviolent offenses and things such as breaking school polices.

For instance, my daughter attended her first year of high school at Lebanon High

School in Wilson County, Tennessee. The first couple of weeks she came home from school in

tears every day. My daughter had always been a respectful outstanding student who had never

been in trouble before. She was given ISS (In School Suspension) for breaking the school’s

dress code for wearing a skirt a little above her knee with stretch pants. A white teacher

standing in the hallway while she was changing class wrote her up for breaking dress code

policy. My daughter made sure she was conscious of what she wore from then on; however,

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