The Wrong Room 0
When I was very young, maybe eight or nine or ten I’m not quite sure when, my mother, my brother, and I took the bus to visit my grandmother in South Carolina. My father was to join us later.
During a layover, I walked into the wrong waiting room–the “colored” waiting room, as the sign said–in the bus station in Raleigh, North Carolina. Conversation stopped and all eyes looked at me, the little white kid in the doorway.
I have never felt more alone.
I would never wish what I felt then–the loneliness, the isolation, the other-ness–on anyone.
It’s time to make it stop, to make it stop for everyone.
