working at schools with cemeteries—a white one and a black one. A white one and a Spanish one. An acknowledged one, and a place where people picnic and play frisbee on the grass over the unmarked graves.
Trying to find “Timmy”, a boy who was fostered with his family for a few months, who went back to an orphanage that doesn’t exist anymore. Where’s the archive of their records? Were the books just tossed when the school closed?
Orphaning and belief in the power of whiteness—orphaning is supposed to create and protect and preserve whiteness. It makes nuclear families possible. Ka-boom.
It felt like finding a needle in the haystack to get a genetic match to confirm paternity of a father who abandoned woman with child. Now I will try to find Timmy too. Mapping kin relations, sorta like genealogy but based on the people we temporarily considered family, non blood relations. No quantum shared. No needle, no haystack.
I am family oriented, but in a different way.
