Green Hi Tops

Okay. This one got me. This right here.

I didn’t post or write much on Uvalde. I ranted and raved in a couple or three Fb posts but I left it alone because I didn’t want to think about it. But this one got me.

This is from last week, June 8th. I’m seeing it today because a sistafriend told me about it. I wasn’t aware of it because I had intentionally avoided news coverage of Uvalde.

This little girl, 10-year old Maite Rodriguez, was murdered in Uvalde along with 18 other babies. She could only be identified by her mother by her green Converse Hi Tops.

Not by her body, her head, her face. She was unrecognizable to the woman who gave birth to her. Only those green Hi Tops told that woman that this was her child.

When I was a little girl at 54th Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles, I went thru a Hi Top phase. I had a collection of them and I loved them. I had purple and red and light blue and dark blue and gold! Them gold ones was TIGHT, do you hear me?! And the purple?! Whoooo Lawd the purple ones was the troof!

And green. I had green Hi Tops.

This took me back to 54th Street Elementary School, sitting in my Hi Tops in class with my friends, whispering to each other when them teachers had already told us once to be quiet.

What if someone had walked into our classroom and just started shooting at us? We were 10 years old; what could we have possibly done to make someone want to kill us?

Nothing. Not a fucking thing.

Just like Maite and her friends.

I’m so thankful my mother and father, sister and brother never had to identify my body by those Hi Tops that I loved when I was 10 years old.

My heart is broken for Maite’s mother and all the parents of those babies.

I’m crying now. I’m crying as I write this. I didn’t want to cry, that’s why I had ignored coverage of Uvalde. I didnt want to see the faces of those babies or know their names. But I’m crying now. For Uvalde, and for Buffalo, and for all the others.

I’m crying. Because of green Hi Tops.