Piecing Me Together

When Jade gets home, Mom is asleep but she is still wearing her nylons and shoes. Jade turns off the TV and she looks through the cupboards and the fridge: both are full of food. In the freezer, she finds ice cream. Later, Lee Lee arrives and the girls talk about their day over bowls of ice cream. E.J. interrupts and he tries to steal Jade’s ice cream. When he leaves, Lee Lee says she loves her history teacher. She taught them today about York, the black slave who traveled with Lewis and Clark. Jade is shocked that a black person was on the expedition at all.

Lee Lee pulls out her worksheet, which has a picture of York, and she tells Jade that both York and Sacagawea helped on the expedition. York was a good hunter, and both he and Sacagawea got to vote when the party had to vote on what to do. It was the first time a black man and a woman got to vote. Lee Lee says that Lewis and Clark told tribal leaders that their new “great father” was in the east and that he owned all their land now. They didn’t mention that York was a slave or that their great father owned slaves too. The girls wonder if the Native people saw their displacement coming and if York and Sacagawea knew it was coming, too. Jade allows Lee Lee to change the subject but she continues to think about York and Sacagawea, and how they had a sort of freedom but no power.