Uncle Tim and TJ kept some distance, just nodding at him, barely laughing at Auntie Nora’s jokes about how he looked like a mummy. When she said Meechie could stay at her house and heal there over the summer, believing it was an isolated incident, that her house was still safer than our building, Uncle Tim cut in and said, “No. He needs to go home.”

We all snapped our heads in his direction, but he was still looking at Meechie. When Auntie Nora said, “Timothy!” he only moved his eyes in her direction. Before she could assert herself, Uncle Tim seemed to communicate something with his clenched jaw and the stern expression on his face. She looked over at her sister with an apology, and Mama said, “I’ll take him home.”

Just like that, Uncle Tim had cast Meechie out, and we’d taken sides; every household squaring up, Auntie Nora not sure what her husband knew but trusting his decision. The quiet tension in the room made the beeping machines and TV show playing over our heads seem way too loud. He needs to go home, that’s what Uncle Tim said. I needed to go home too.

Ten
Name-Calling

I went home wounded, hating my uncle for ejecting my brother from his house. I kept thinking about the looks Uncle Tim and TJ had on their faces. Initially, I wondered, Do they know something that we don’t? but then resolved that they too had labeled us project kids. The truth was that I spent all my time around project kids, and when I discovered what kind of things they got into, I didn’t like some of it, but they were my friends, and I wasn’t going to stop playing with them. That girl in Roseland had called me a project kid, and it was the one slur I couldn’t get out of my head that whole summer.

At a pretty early age, I learned that people used names to tear one another down, so I’d become sensitive to name-calling. Later in college, I’d study history and discover that one of the first acts of a colonizer is to take away a captured person’s name and give them a new one.

When we’re young, this is especially true because we’re already ashamed about our teeth or the shape of our heads or how our ears stick out or about our hair length, underdeveloped bodies, overdeveloped bodies, family history, sexual activities, or lack of sexual activities. Anything can make you vulnerable to name-calling, and those names cut into the skin sometimes, enter the bloodstream. Somehow that summer, I stumbled upon an important fact about naming: it also has the power to build people up.