My gran still tells the story of
when I was three years old and, fed
up with being a prisoner, I dug a
hole under the gate in the driveway,
wriggled through, and ran off.
Everyone panicked. A search party
went out and tracked me down. I
had no idea how much danger I was
putting everyone in. The family
could have been deported, my gran
could have been arrested, my mom
might have gone to prison, and I
probably would have been packed
off to a home for colored kids.
So I was kept inside. Other
than those few instances of walking
in the park, the flashes of memory I